Summertime Read online

  BANG. We achieve a direct hit to the middle of the smart boat, and at such a speed that we bounce off, enabling me to turn the way I want to go, but also to stall. It is a miracle that none of us has fallen in the water; indeed the children are all beaming, flushed with the sense of success one has when achieving a hit in bumper cars. The yachting types, however, were not braced for disaster, and have collapsed in a bobbing, orange-life-jacket heap. They pull themselves together in a trice. The leader, bespectacled, grey-haired and sporting a red baseball hat, shakes his fist and roars rhetorically, ‘Can you drive that thing? The answer is no. Emphatically no. I hope you’re well insured, my girl, I really do.’

  I hold my breath for the grim moment of name and address exchange and insurance company details, but after peering over the side of his still immaculate and un-chipped boat, he simply grunts and turns his back on me. Another of his party bounces up to add her might.

  ‘Are you sure you should be taking that parrot out on the sea? They catch cold very easily, you know.’

  Manage not to yell, ‘Sod off, you interfering old cow,’ but smile sweetly at Gertie, who is sitting on Giles’s shoulder in a very professional fashion, and answer, ‘She’s not a parrot, she’s a hologram.’

  Two scarlet spots appear on the woman’s cheeks, and she looks as if she would like to hit me.

  Giles bows his head, muttering, ‘God, this is so embarrassing. How could you, Mum?’ and Gertie, who has been biding her time, suddenly groans horribly and starts quoting the line of Shakespeare she has just been taught by Giles:

  ‘Hubble bubble, toil and trouble

  Fire burn and cauldron bubble,’

  she shrieks, much to The Beauty’s delight.

  I make matters a million times worse by bursting into nervous hysterical laughter. Our boat owner has assumed tortoise or ostrich position and has managed to shrink his neck so his head is invisible inside his collar as he walks away. Another wave of panic hits me. I still can’t believe The Beauty, who is perched on top of a box of vegetables, clapping her approval at this sport, has not fallen off and into the sea; delayed shock at having almost killed all my children in a hideous boating accident redoubles my hysterical laughter. Felix has managed to insinuate himself between a giant packet of Frosties and a rucksack and is burrowing downwards like a crab, determined to make himself vanish.

  ‘Just tell me when we get there and please don’t crash again,’ he mutters, adding, ‘Hey, Mum, can I have the troll in this packet?’ as he slides down to the bottom of our heaped possessions. Giles, still crimson with shame, sighs heavily and climbs past me.

  ‘I think I’d better drive, Mum. I’ve done it before with Dad on holiday.’ He takes the handle, saying, ‘It’s a tiller, actually, not a handle,’ and after wrestling for a moment with the spluttering throttle, and yanking the long string which I wish was a communications cord, he guides us out from the jetty and into deeper, emptier waters, respectfully slowly as we are travelling in the wake of the crosspatch yachting types. Manage to transfer much of my mortification into fury at David. I remember him jubilant with excitement at the outward-boundness of it all, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with all the nautical elements.’ Huh. Have to button my lip tightly to prevent myself from ranting about him to the children. More deep breathing, and a tiny bit of chanting ‘Ooommm’, dilute savage thoughts about him and we skim merrily across frilly waves towards open sea, at one with our boat, and definitely not thinking about Jaws or any other horrors of the deep, but trying to become Swallows and Amazons people.

  Ozone saturates our nostrils and lungs, and light, cleansing to body and soul, bounces off the sky and on to the sea and up again. Exhilarated, I begin to relax and believe that this will be a perfect, heaven-sent holiday. However, an abrupt mood swing accompanies a rush of agoraphobia as the land falls away on either side of us and we leave the channel for the never-ending horizon of the North Sea. I am alone in charge of three children on the ocean. If the boat capsizes, I cannot possibly save them all, I don’t have enough arms. Tears well and slide down my face with the enormity of this, and Felix, watching me, quietly delves in my handbag for our mobile telephone.

  ‘Here Mummy, why don’t you ring David and ask if he can get here after all? He always meant to come camping with us, didn’t he? Or maybe you could ask someone else. Get Hedley to come, or Uncle Desmond. In fact I’m sure Helena would let Daddy come if you said we really need his help. Or I could ask her for you, if you don’t think she’d do it for you.’

  Tears now course freely, but I manage to smile at the same time, speech impossible though, as I am pole-axed by his very sensible request for a man. Any man. I must try to supply one. The Beauty is a tiny sea dog high on a wave of clothes behind me, in her own small boat of vegetables, podding broad beans and delicately picking out each tiny green ear-shaped morsel; Giles is reading a How to Sail manual in order to discover the meaning of the various bobbing buoys we are passing; Felix and I fall upon the telephone. Before we can so much as dial a number, the outboard motor gurgles and slows to a murmur, and looking up from my fevered perusal of my address book, I am delighted to see that we have reached the peninsula.

  ‘Oh, we’re here now. Let’s not bother ringing them until we’re desperate,’ I suggest to Felix.

  ‘I think we’re desperate already,’ he replies, gazing at the oozing mudflats spiked with bright green samphire shoots into which the boat has subsided. ‘It’s too muddy, can you carry me to the house?’

  I decide it is best to ignore this absurd request, and affecting deafness towards him, I scramble to find the anchor under our possessions and hurl it into chocolate-mousse mud. Giles cuts the engine and we hear silence first, and then the cry of gulls, hissing of mud and the gentle slap of water.

  Ahead, up a winding path between beds of sea heather and gorse, lies the air-raid-shelter dwelling David has chosen as the base for our summer holiday. A tiny breeze-block construction with one small window and a red front door, the house has a curved iron roof, grooved and rust-coloured like an old pair of corduroy trousers, and looks distinctly uninviting. But the sight that elicits a strangled shriek of joy from me is so welcome I am afraid it may be a vision, like the time the Virgin Mary appeared in a pizza to a very exhausted woman in San Diego. There is Vivienne standing in the doorway, and off to one side the crouched figure of Simon, for once appropriately dressed in his favourite giant Boy Scout outfit of shorts and knee socks. He is fanning a fire upon which a pan of bacon sizzles.

  ‘I can’t believe it. You’ve come. Thank you. Thank you,’ I yell up the path to them. The relief on the children’s faces is dazzling. I am unfit to be in charge of them, and they know it. So shaming.

  ‘Breakfast,’ beams Simon, ‘and then a swim with the seals for me.’

  Felix and Giles are aghast at the swim notion.

  ‘No way are we doing that,’ Felix mutters, discarding the sleeping bag and pillow he has deigned to carry from the boat. ‘There are probably sharks in the sea now, it’s so hot. Let’s go and play with the GameBoy after breakfast.’ Once again, I choose deafness as the easy option. How I wish I was more hearty.

  August 4th

  The boat has broken down, and we have nothing for supper. The tide is defying all natural laws and seems to be out most of the time, so even if we had a boat we couldn’t use it. Look across the mud-riven channel at the masts and rooftops of civilisation and fantasise about chips. Vivienne tries to rally my flagging spirits. ‘Come on, let’s leave The Beauty with Simon and Gertie to do her bedtime story and walk to town with the boys. We can give them chips and buy something for our supper.’

  The boys brighten considerably at the chance to set foot upon tarmac, and we set off.

  Town turns out to be much further than it looks. We meet a woman walking a fat black pug. ‘Oh, it’s seven miles I should think,’ she says, waving vaguely along the beach. Felix, who has been lagging behind muttering crossly, collapses in a heavy stunt
man fall at these words, and lies on the shingle moaning.

  ‘I can’t walk any more, my legs ache, it’s too far,’ he whines. I too have trembling, exhausted limbs, and snap back at him.

  ‘Well, either you can lie here and wait for a gull to mistake you for a worm and eat you, or you can stop making such a fuss and come with us. I don’t care which.’

  I march on with Vivienne, who nudges me and whispers, ‘You could get a job in the Foreign Office with those diplomacy skills. He’s coming now, don’t look.’

  We arrive finally at the village, panting and faint with exhaustion and find that the Spar shop closed ten minutes ago. The only place open is an organic teashop, so Felix, Giles, Vivienne and I sit down firmly at the table, shedding the waterproof coats I insisted were necessary, even though outside the evening is warm and lit yellow brown, like an African dusk. We stuff ourselves with vast Victoria sponge slices, cinnamon hot chocolate and flapjack. The waitress, herself very organic-looking, with two teeth missing and a scar on her neck, takes a keen interest in our greed, and upon discovering that we are starving campers on the Sand Bar, shrinks in horror.

  ‘Oooh, I wouldn’t stay there if I were you. There’s a lot of undead up on the Bar.’ She shudders dramatically, enjoying the sensation of having an audience rapt. ‘Long ago we had pirate wreckers off the shore here, and they kept a lookout from the Sand Bar for ships to wreck. They wrecked them by beckoning them in at night with lights across some rocks hidden under the sea. The ghosts of those poor souls on the ships are everywhere about here now.’

  She stops, pursing her lips expectantly, and Felix sighs, ‘Totally cool. I hope we see them tonight. I’ve always wanted to actually see a real live ghost. Can we sleep on the beach, Mummy?’

  ‘They’re not alive. They’re undead,’ says Giles the pedant, and an argument flares about degrees of deadness.

  This is not at all the reaction the waitress likes, and she wanders off to another table, somewhat deflated. We persuade the café to sell us a pint of milk and tramp back up the shore, scanning the horizon eagerly for signs of wrecks, feeling fat and guilty that Simon and The Beauty shall have no supper.

  Simon, however, sees it as a challenge, and sets to with a penknife and some silver foil to make a mackerel line. He then rows off with Giles, who insists on taking Gertie on his shoulder, into the hazardous, wrecking, dusk-lit sea in his inflatable dinghy. Vivienne and I watch from the beach as he casts his line, now decorated like bunting with slivers of foil every eighteen inches, and winds it in. This pattern established, and unbroken by the appearance of any fish on any of the six hooks, they gradually shrink away down the shore, into softly lapping dusk. We return to the hut, where I realise I have put The Beauty to bed with no supper, just a dollop of toothpaste. Amazingly she has fallen asleep. Do people really need three meals a day?

  August 5th

  We have become savages in less than forty-eight hours. The Beauty has gone back to nature in a big way, and refuses to wear any clothes, just a pebble with a hole in it on a piece of string round her neck and a tea towel on her head. She has not used a knife and fork since we arrived here, which saves on washing-up, but adds to her cavewoman demeanour. I think she has also forgotten how to speak, as all I have heard for a day now is high-pitched squawking as she emulates the gulls, or roars of rage at Felix, who keeps trying to remove her tea-towel hat. He and Giles are halfway through the standard early summer holidays malaise. This is the same every time, no matter where we are or with whom, and involves a week of whining, ‘I’m bored’ and ‘I hate you’ at everyone in their path. There is usually a bit of fighting too, and The Beauty, who likes to be part of everything, has taken to pulling their hair if they sit down anywhere near her. Torpor is a big part of the daily routine, so being here and not having to wash is great, while not being able to watch television is truly ghastly. Giles roused himself this morning, though, when he heard that Hedley is coming today with Tamsin, and slunk off with the mirror from my make-up bag to try to smooth his hair into shape.

  Vivienne and Simon departed at dawn for civilisation, taking with them the broken outboard motor engine, so I am now Robinson Crusoe with my three children and our parrot until the arrival of Hedley, Tamsin and what the boat owner promises to be ‘a top-class outboard for you’.

  Rather worried about being on a desert island with Hedley, as am not at all sure how we should conduct ourselves. Have discussed this with Vivienne, who says any romance must be suspended until we are back on dry land. We conclude that I shall put my faith in single camp beds and sleeping bags, ‘Better than condoms,’ said Vivienne bracingly as she departed.

  I have become expert at lighting fires, and using very few plates, knives and forks or indeed saucepans. Desmond would be delighted, I think, with our economy on this front, if surprised. Am keen to live in this more streamlined fashion at home, where far too much time is wasted on washing-up, putting away and laying the table. Much better to eat off a slice of bread than a plate, and more filling. This morning was a record. I managed to feed all children and myself with just one fork and a frying pan. Surely this is female emancipation in its highest form? Can’t wait to share my wisdom with Rose, and wish it was her and not Hedley coming in with the next tide. She has not been in touch again since the migraine, which is pretty feeble if you ask me.

  The channel from the sand bar to the harbour begins to fill with bright sails as the tide creeps in, the water aquamarine and glittering as the sun intensifies. Giles takes his book down to our beached boat, determined to be the first to see Tamsin and Hedley. The Beauty and Felix run past me with water pistols.

  ‘Let’s be aliens,’ suggests Felix.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ squeals The Beauty, and they whisk into the tent to find torches.

  Aliens, it soon appears, must have torches turned on in their mouths at all times. Settle down to read, but cannot concentrate on the improving volume of short stories translated from Icelandic and all about catching shellfish, which is my cleverly chosen seaside reading.

  ‘Roll me over, in the clover,’ warbles Gertie from her perch on top of the chimney. She has been swearing at seagulls since we got here, and is now eyeing the oystercatchers with great interest. I find it best to ignore her.

  Can’t help Wishing I had brought a book on motor-boat engines instead, and something comforting – G. Heyer would be nice of course, but so too would a bit of Scott Fitzgerald, or Jane Austen. Anything about a civilised way of life before outboard motors and camping were invented, and preferably with clothes and food as well as a love story. The cookery book I have picked up, ‘One Hundred Ways with Mussels’, is not working for me. Have noticed, though, that just as I always pack clothes for holidays by including all the garments I have never previously worn, found at the back of my wardrobe and chosen for the holiday because it’ll look good over a swimming costume or it’ll look much better when I am brown, so do I pick my holiday reading from the giant pile of books I ought to read. This is a very dusty tower on the floor by my bed, much bigger than the pile of books I want to read, which in turn, good intentions being what they are, quite eclipses the pile of those I have read.

  A thin cry interrupts my musings. Giles is jumping about by the water, gesticulating. ‘Look Mum, they’re rowing. They haven’t even got a motor.’ He points to a small black insect, jerking towards us through the shimmering glare of midday sun. Its progress is painfully slow, particularly when a large catamaran slices past, throwing the tiny craft about in its wake, making the oars shake and wriggle like beetle’s legs. Someone on the boat groans, and screwing up my eyes to look more closely, I see to my horror that it is Rose. Rose and Tristan with Hedley and the lovely Tamsin. What a terrible combination. Suddenly wish Jaws, or the Loch Ness monster, would come and get them all right now. Rose is bound to be on head commandant form as far as Hedley is concerned, and she’s very outspoken. She’ll never believe that Felix needed a man here and Hedley was the only one I could get. S
he knows me too well.

  August 7th

  Everything is going much better than I expected. Hedley and Tristan have discovered that their sisters were friends at school, or their dogs were both born in November, or some equally tenuous, but to them cement-strong link, and it has served to unite them as hunter-gatherers and firewood-providers. The centuries have rolled back, and Rose and I have settled happily into our role as Stone Age home and hearth-keepers. It is easy to be gracious about this as there is no housework beyond the occasional shaking of a sand-filled shoe, and the once-a-day washing-up ceremony. Do not know whether to be relieved or insulted that Rose sees Hedley as a joke figure, and beyond saying with a giggle, ‘Really Venetia, what were you doing with him? Such a lapse of taste!’ clearly considers my interlude with Hedley to have been an aberration. Perhaps she is right. I too am finding it hard to believe I ever managed it, or that anything more will happen when we reach real life again. Worried that the boys might notice something, I have taken care not to be alone with Hedley at all, and am becoming increasingly skilled at avoiding meeting his eyes.

  Tamsin and Giles, with much snatched laughter and accidentally-on-purpose bumping into each other, have taken over the cooking, which is achieved on the open fire, while Felix bustles around, experimenting with a Spanish accent and writing fantasy menus. Best so far was the one which offered coffee and Indian or China tea for forty-five pence or fifty pence if stirred, and as the main course, steak and chips with the vegetarian option of ‘carrot puera’.