29

In his first long summer vacation Rad took a job in a bakery, hefting red-hot trays of loaves in and out of ovens. He would return home at nine in the morning, exhausted, with flour in his hair and eyebrows and weals on his hands. He didn’t need the money – in fact he had already saved enough from his grant to buy a second-hand car – but he had some odd notion, inherited from his father perhaps, about the nobility of manual labour. His knack of living on almost nothing was a source of concern to family and friends.

‘I’m worried about Rad,’ I heard Lexi telling Clarissa over the phone. ‘He seems to be saving out of his grant. What can he be doing up there?’ This was unusual because Lexi never worried, on principle.

Nicky, who managed to be in debt almost before term started, and who had to be bailed out regularly by Obs and Solic, was disgusted. ‘It’s people like you who give students a bad name. The government will never put grants up if it gets out that someone can actually manage.’

‘There’s nothing I need to buy,’ Rad protested. He was wearing ripped jeans which he had attempted to patch up with black insulating tape, and Frances’ old P.E. shirt which had ‘Greenhurst School for Girls’ embroidered across the chest and her netball, tennis and swimming colours down one sleeve.

Only Mr Radley appeared to welcome this state of affairs. ‘I think it’s very encouraging that he has a responsible attitude towards money. Er, Rad, you don’t happen to have any on you, do you?’

‘I must be the only student who comes home for the weekend and ends up giving his father money,’ Rad grumbled, reaching for his wallet.

In Rad’s defence it must be said that he hadn’t saved quite enough to buy a good car. It was a tinny Citroën 2CV, reliable only in the respect that its unreliability could be depended upon, and therefore precautions were taken. Nevertheless it was treated by Nicky, Frances and myself as an object of veneration since it offered us the prospect of day trips to the coast, picnics in the country and broadened horizons. In truth we spent as much time sitting in the car awaiting the RAC recovery vehicle as enlarging our horizons, and still more time dithering over where to go. Our deliberations were marked by a lack of leadership: no one wanted to be held responsible for nominating a venue which would turn out to be a dud. Invariably by the time a decision was made half the day would have elapsed.

One Sunday in July Nicky, Frances and I were lying on the living-room floor looking at an Ordnance Survey map of Surrey, hoping to have fixed on a destination by the time Rad came in from work. Although it was early it was already hot, and Growth kept sidling over to find a cooler spot and flopping on his stomach, panting, in the middle of the North Downs. Lexi’s recommendation of Kew Gardens had already met with derision.

‘What is Kew Gardens exactly?’ Frances had wanted to know.

‘It’s a botanical gardens.’

‘What is there to do there?’

‘It’s a botanical gardens,’ said Lexi patiently. ‘You go there to look at the plants. There’s an Azalea garden and a tropical palm house and a lovely rose pergola …’ Frances gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘Hmm, you’re probably too young to appreciate it,’ Lexi acknowledged, knowing this would rile Frances.

‘What about Shere?’ suggested Nicky, pushing Growth, who gave a growl.

‘Been there,’ said Frances, heaving herself up to open the windows. I watched her move a dead cactus out of the way so she could kneel on the sill, and then carefully replace it.

‘What about the sea – Hastings or somewhere?’

‘Too far.’

‘Box Hill?’

‘It’s just a hill,’ said Frances. ‘Oh, look, that’s a nice name. Half Moon Street.’ She planted a stubby finger on the map.

‘I know that place. I’ve been there,’ I said. Suddenly it was before me as clearly as a remembered dream: that day out with father, the pub, the lake, turquoise sky, apple-green leaves, the cottage, mud, my ruined sandals. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘Well, let’s go there, then,’ said Nicky, after I had described it to them. ‘It wouldn’t take more than an hour.’

‘Settled,’ said Frances.

When Rad came back and was happy to fall in with the plan I rang father to check that the Half Moon Street on the map was the same place I had in mind.

He had been in the garden installing Granny in a deck-chair under the magnolia and was puffing slightly as he picked up the phone. I could picture him, hot and flustered, in his jacket and tie. My question took him by surprise and it was a while before he answered. ‘Did I take you there? … Good heavens, fancy your remembering a thing like that … Yes, it’s not far from Dorking.’

‘Was there a pub near by?’

‘That’s right. Half a mile back down the lane, where you leave the car.’

‘It’s probably not even there any more.’

‘Well, you should never revisit childhood haunts – they always disappoint.’ He wished us a happy day and then excused himself. He was not keen on the telephone and I could always sense his agitation to cut things short. ‘I’d better go and check your grandmother. I left her in that deck-chair that snaps shut like a clam.’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Church. Cleaning the brasses. Do you think it’s too late for me to take up religion?’

‘Yes.’

My memories hadn’t let me down. The pub was still there and Rad, flush with a week’s bread money, treated us to lunch. We sat in the garden eating peanuts and dodging wasps while a girl in a greasy apron turned our steaks on a spitting barbecue. Afterwards I led them down the sunken lane to the lake with a proprietorial air. Within the tunnel of trees it was cool, dark and silent, like the interior of a cathedral. An occasional spear of light shot through a chink in the leaves, and as we turned the corner the sunlight burst off the surface of the water, making us cover our eyes.

The cottage was still there, though uninhabited and boarded up, and the garden overgrown with dandelions and nettles. At the water’s edge a warped and flaking boat drifted back and forth on its leash, causing only the faintest tremor in the reflection of the treetops and sky. The NO BOATING NO FISHING NO SWIMMING sign was still tacked to a stake in the water.

‘I told you,’ I said, nudging Frances. She had been keen to swim and insisted on bringing swimsuits and towels in spite of my warning. Rad had been obliged to dig out a spare pair of trunks for Nicky, while Frances offered me her second best bikini.

‘I hope these aren’t held together with insulating tape,’ was Nicky’s comment.

On the opposite shore a couple were walking hand in hand. The man was wearing a backpack in which a baby perched, swaying, a knotted hanky on its head. Every few seconds its little hand would reach up and drag the hanky down over its face and it would cry until the woman straightened it up again, and the whole performance would be repeated. Someone was taking a setter for a walk in the woods just beyond them. The dog kept bounding out between the trees and shivering to a halt at the water’s edge before tearing back again. On our side two girls were lying on their stomachs on the grass asleep, or just sunbathing. The walk had been enough to deter other visitors.

‘I thought you said it was a lake,’ said Frances, when we had arranged ourselves on a dry patch of grass. ‘This is more like a pond.’

‘I was only six when I was last here,’ I said. ‘Everything looked bigger then.’

Rad had brought a book – Narziss and Goldmund – and was lying on his back reading. Frances and Nicky were playing poker. I didn’t know the rules and couldn’t be bothered to learn, so I made daisy chains for a while and then lay down with my eyes shut and watched the red and yellow lights swim beneath my eyelids.

‘Typical bloody Rad,’ I heard Frances say a moment later. Rad carried on reading. ‘You’re so anti-social.’

‘What’s anti-social about reading?’ he said, without looking up from the page. ‘What would you like me to do? Morris dancing?’

‘You could talk to Abigail. She brought us here, and she’s bored.’

Rad sighed and put down his book. ‘What do you want to talk about, Abigail?’

‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘It’s Frances who finds silence unnerving, not me.’ This was quite true. During our O-level exams the previous year I used to call round at the Radleys’ house to be told that Frances was upstairs revising, and find her lying amongst her books, singing along to the radio. ‘I can only work with music on,’ was her excuse. ‘Silence distracts me.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rad, rolling on to his front and finding his place again. Watching him covertly I could see that he was not reading properly – the pages were not turning fast enough – and when Nicky brought up the subject of their forthcoming holiday he was happy to be distracted. They were intending to travel around Europe at the beginning of September, ‘when the kids are back at school.’

‘I wish you’d go earlier,’ grumbled Frances. ‘Then this kid could go with you.’

‘You can’t come,’ said Nicky, ruffling her hair in a patronising manner. ‘We’re going to be sleeping on stations, scavenging for food, living on our wits.’

‘That wouldn’t bother me. Do I look like someone who needs pampering?’ Nicky had to concede that she could probably scavenge with the best of them.

‘Your mum and dad wouldn’t let you come anyway,’ he said.

‘Mum wouldn’t mind – she thinks you and Rad would look after me.’

‘Don’t know why she thinks that,’ said Rad.

‘It’s Dad who’s being difficult.’

The itinerary was still in dispute. Nicky favoured the Greek islands; Rad wanted to go to Berlin.

‘We’ve got to spend a few days crashing out on a beach somewhere hot.’

‘We’ve got to get behind the Iron Curtain.’

‘We don’t want to spend the whole holiday on trains.’

‘We want to cover as much ground as possible.’

The only point on which they seemed to be in agreement was a determination to avoid Switzerland at all costs. ‘Too expensive,’ said Nicky.

‘Too clean,’ said Rad.

‘What’s your dad doing this year?’ I asked Rad.

‘He keeps whinging about having no one to go with – Mum’s going to a health farm with Clarissa. I suggested one of those activity holidays for the lonely – you know, sketching in the Trossachs or something. He didn’t think it was very funny.’

‘That explains why he won’t let me go with you,’ said Frances. ‘He’s jealous that you’re going off without him, so he wants to make sure someone else has a rotten summer.’

‘What are you doing, Blush?’ asked Nicky.

‘Granny-sitting in suburbia.’

Rad was just about to turn back to Narziss and Goldmund when Frances, anticipating him by a second, snatched it up and with a triumphant cry slung it over his head to Nicky. Rad lunged, a moment too late, and then, recovering his dignity, sat back resignedly as the two of them chucked it back and forth. ‘Children, children,’ he said in a nanny-ish tone. ‘Don’t scrunch the cover up,’ he added, more seriously. He was fanatical about the condition of his books. I had often observed him trying to read a fat paperback without breaking the spine by holding the book open a fraction and squinting between the pages.

Nicky and Frances, provoked by his failure to rise, were getting closer to the water’s edge. I could see what was going to happen. Sure enough, Frances next throw was a high lob; Nicky leapt, too early, and the book went winging over his head and hit the water, where it floated for a few seconds before sinking gracefully.

Rad looked at the empty ripples in disbelief. ‘You complete bastards,’ he said. ‘I’d throw you in after it, but you’d only make my car seats wet.’

‘I’ll buy you a new copy on the way home,’ said Frances. ‘If you lend me the money.’

‘What about my annotations?’ he demanded, and when we burst out laughing even he had the grace to laugh at himself.

By mid-afternoon the sun was getting too much for us: our patch of shade had shifted and the air was like hot treacle. Frances suggested a walk in the woods to cool off, but once we’d packed up and brushed the grass out of our clothes and hair it seemed pointless to prolong our departure.

‘Good choice, Blush, well done,’ said Rad as we made our way back up the lane between the walls of exposed tree roots, and I felt as pleased with myself as if I’d invented the place.

‘You’ll know not to bring a book next time,’ said Frances.

‘I’ll know not to bring you two jerks next time,’ he corrected her.

We drove home with the roof peeled back and the car radio on – a piece of extreme frivolity for Rad, indicative of unusual good humour. Frances flagged down an ice-cream van just outside Redhill and bought four unnaturally white whippy ices which melted and ran down our arms faster than we could eat them.

‘De Is-r-ael-ite,’ sang Desmond Dekker and the Aces on the radio.

‘The ears are alight?’ said Rad.

On the way back we stopped at the local pool as Frances was adamant that the swimming costumes and towels she had packed shouldn’t go to waste. Mine was the only dissenting voice. I used the excuse of my fear of water, but privately what put me off was the fear that Frances’ 36D bikini top wouldn’t do me any favours. I was overruled of course.

‘You can’t swim?’ said Rad in amazement, as if I’d just admitted that I couldn’t do joined-up writing. He and Frances, who had been tossed into a pool as babies by Mr Radley and could swim like dolphins before they could walk, tended to assume the ability was inborn. ‘What if you fell in a river or something?’

‘I’d drown. Unless someone rescued me.’

‘Didn’t you have lessons at school?’ asked Nicky.

‘My mother had a morbid fear of verrucas,’ I said. ‘She made me wear white rubber sockettes which filled up with water and dragged me under.’

‘I remember that,’ Frances said. ‘The rest of us would be up at the deep end in our pyjamas diving for bunches of keys and Abigail would be sitting on the side of the kiddies’ pool trying to shake the water out of her surgical socks.’

‘I never quite understood what emergency diving for keys while wearing pyjamas was supposed to prepare us for,’ she said later as we stood elbow to elbow in the crowded changing rooms. ‘A flooded bedroom?’ She was struggling into a tight black one-piece designed to flatten the female form into a torpedo shape for Olympic competition. The white bikini she had lent me gaped in every direction. Even if I had been able to swim only the sedatest of movements would have been safe. If I jumped in the top would be over my ears; if I dived in the bottoms would be round my ankles.

Rad and Nicky were already in the water by the time we waded through the freezing antiseptic footbath to the pool. Nicky was doing lengths, ploughing up and down the fast lane, head down, scattering children. Rad was diving off the high board, as graceful as a seabird. Frances went to join him while I dawdled in the shallow end, lying on my back with one hand on the rail, and letting my hair fan out behind me like a peacock’s tail. All around me small, fearless children were leaping off the side, shrieking and bombing each other. On the wall a sign illustrated with cartoons said NO RUNNING NO SPITTING NO SPLASHING NO DUCKING NO BOMBING NO SMOKING NO PETTING. Every so often the pool attendant, a small man in very tight white shorts, would blow his whistle and point at someone or summon them to the edge for a telling off. I put my head back and my ears filled with water, muffling the sound of splashing and squealing which echoed off the tiles, and I watched the light playing on the ceiling. When I stood up Rad was next to me.

‘Your hair looks amazing from above,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Like seaweed,’ he added as he swam off, which qualified the compliment rather. Even so I allowed myself to feel flattered, and put my head back again until my hair spread out and the attendant gave a blast on his whistle and told me to go and tie it up or wear a swimming cap because it was unhygienic.