IN THE MORNING the air smelled of left-over bonfire, of smoke and dewy leaf mould. Clare, up early, could see chill clouds of breath when she went out for a last look out along the creek and out into the misted harbour.
The hippy on the raft had gone, off to the Azores to pickup a crewing job on a yacht to the Caribbean for the winter, heading south like a migrating swallow. Clare wondered where he had parked the raft, or if he dismantled it and built a new one each summer, like a new nest. You had to be alone to live life as such an insecure adventure, she thought.
‘I can smell autumn,’ Miranda said, coming to stand next to Clare by the creek wall, and sniffing at the air like a cat.
Clare put an arm round her thin shoulders. Miranda, at last did not flinch, or flounce off into the house. I’ve got her back again, however temporarily, thought Clare, glad now that Liz had saved her from a close intrusion into Miranda’s diary, glad about the torn-out pages, and knowing that she would never be tempted to pry like that again.
‘You’ll catch your death in that thin kimono, let’s go in,’ she said.
The sounds of furious cleaning could be heard very early in Celia and Archie’s cottage. The sink was scoured, the fridge emptied and scrubbed, the terrace hosed down. There were soda crystals down the drains, bleach down the loo. Archie kept well out of Celia’s way, doing things with the dinghy, the trailer and the car. He had already made one mistake, the night before, of admitting with a smirk that he had found the whole episode rather amusing. He couldn’t help grinning to himself, even now, alone in the garage at the thought of Beryl and Andrew. Fancy the boy having that much nerve.
Celia, in a state of profound and unrelenting shock, had said nothing more than ‘humiliation’. If she could have scrubbed Andrew’s soul that morning, disinfected it along with the kitchen floor, she would surely have done so.
In the car she sat silent throughout the long drive, longing and longing for the safety of Surrey.
Andrew had less luggage to take home than he had brought with him. He wished he could be around to see the dustmen’s faces when they emptied the bins at the Parrot. Before the rest of the village was awake he had taken his collection of pornography, gloves, magazines, notebooks and all and dumped them, unwrapped and exposed in one of the restaurant bins. Probably, he thought, the one from which he had taken the empty wine bottles all those weeks ago, before the non-seduction of Jessica. He didn’t need any of that stuff any more.
In the back of the Rover he watched contentedly as Devon went by, smiled quietly to himself and slotted a tape of Mozart opera into the Walkman.
Eliot unplugged the word processor, packed the disks ready for use in London and wished his deadline was a couple of months later. It might be an idea to take Liz somewhere hot, so she could keep herself occupied doing nothing in comfort while he finished the book. He thought Jamaica might appeal to her, he’d mention it in the sleeper on the way home. It would put her in an excellent mood, and he liked sex in trains, so very James Bond.
Liz did not need to empty her fridge and clean her house, that was what Jeannie did. There wasn’t much to pack either, the secretary had taken most of it. So with Milo, Jessica and the dog despatched by taxi to the airport, and the twins more than ready for a good night’s sleep, Liz boarded the sleeper at Penzance in her best knickers and an accommodating frame of mind. If she was nice to Eliot, he might be persuaded to take her somewhere hot, then she could recover from the summer.
Clare drove up the A38 past Plymouth, thinking about the family’s future.
‘What we really need is somewhere with a few outbuildings,’ she said to Jack.
‘A studio each, you mean, so we can work properly?’ ‘Partly that, though what I really had in mind was something like stables that we could convert into holiday cottages, rent them out,’ she smiled broadly. ‘There’ll always be people like us, wanting a brief taste of country life.’
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper!’ Jack laughed. ‘We could do painting holidays too, where people pay and I teach them and accommodation is included. What do you think Miranda? How much do you mind about where you finish your schooling?’
But Miranda wasn’t listening. She was playing a noisy fortune-telling card game with Harriet on the back seat, giggling like a tickled child.
A little later when the game finished she looked up and gazed out of the window. A spiritual county, Devon, full of mysteries, it would do very well. She settled back into her seat, making a start on her A-level reading list, with James Joyce. The syllabus would probably be much the same wherever they decided to live.
As Miranda read she thanked whatever gods there might be out on the Devon hills that when she started to feel sick it would be entirely due to the fact that she was reading in the car.
As the car filled up with sweet papers and crisp packets, Dartmoor was looming temptingly ahead and Clare took a turning off the main road.
‘Can you find Totnes on the map for me please Jack,’ Clare said, smiling. ‘I think that’s about halfway.’
‘Are we going to find somewhere for lunch?’ Amy, ever-hungry, asked.
‘No, love,’ said Jack, grinning at her happily, ‘We’re going to find somewhere to live.’
Jeannie took a large cardboard box up to Eliot’s house. You needed one that big, for the contents of their fridge and larder. It was lunchtime. She rooted round the cupboards and made herself a sandwich and a cup of tea. Then she wandered into the sitting room and went and sat with her feet up on Liz’s cream sofa. She didn’t bother to take off her shoes. Who was to know? Jeannie picked up the remote control, switched on the vast television and settled back on the silk cushions to watch Neighbours.
They’ve all gone home, she thought. No question, this is always the very best day of the year.
THE END