The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde Page 8

  She shakes her head. ‘Don’t start dissecting everything like always.’

  ‘But we must.’

  ‘Oh, Margot. I do love you. But I’m tired. It’s late. And we’re talking nonsense into our heads that’s going to make this summer even more unbearable. We’ve just got to get through the next few weeks, that’s all.’ She tugs the top sheet over her knees and lies back on the pillow. ‘It’s only until the beginning of September. Then you’ll be at Squirrels again and everything will go back to normal.’ Flora extends one graceful arm towards the lamp. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ I say, closing her door, struck by an odd, overwhelming sense that nothing will ever be normal again, that this summer is going to change everything.

  Whatever is about to happen, I’m ready.

  In a bathing-suit there is no escape from the plain fact of myself. My skin is mottled, mauve, a heat rash pinpricking the pudge of my breasts. The unsightly, unkissable backs of my legs itch where they meet the wooden deckchair frame. It’s impossible not to stare enviously at Flora lying beside me, those long limbs languidly spread as if for a lover, her firm soft skin, radiating gauzy light, the gentle tip of her conical breasts as she reclines. I wonder if Audrey’s body would be like Flora’s now, womanly, desirable, a little treacherous. Trying to take my mind somewhere else, I open my novel, but it’s impossible to read – sweat drips from my eyebrows – so I cover my face with the book instead, wishing someone would invent a way of reading a story by inhaling it.

  ‘This is intolerable.’ Pam’s voice. To my left. We’ve instinctively arranged our deckchairs beside the pool in a protective semicircle, like wagons. ‘What day is it?’

  I try to work it out. Time is shapeless here, the hours indistinct, sliding into each other in the heat. ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘It feels like Sunday. It’s going to be a summer of deadly dull Sundays.’ Pam groans. ‘And we’ve not even been here half a week.’

  I remove the book. Scorching sunlight. A damselfly, long and blue as a pencil.

  ‘We could be at a lido, Margot, the Serpentine. Swimming with friends. And young men. Remember them? Rarer in the Cotswolds than pheasants on the Mall.’

  I smile. For distraction we have only Billy Waters, Applecote’s new young gardener, tall, blond, tanned walnut-brown; he has a particular way of carrying a spade and a shy smile that transforms his face. Or the ghost of the pilot who crashed into the meadow, the spit, we’ve decided, of James Dean. We no longer care that he is German, or headless, or dead. He is someone to long for, as we twist in our sheets through the airless night.

  Pam sighs theatrically. ‘Oh, dear beloved London.’

  ‘London’s hotter than Africa now,’ says Dot, perching on the edge of her deckchair, throwing crumbs of smuggled bread on to the terrace for the blue tits, the thick nylon of her school bathing-suit bagging around her thin child’s figure. ‘I read it in Uncle Perry’s paper at breakfast. It’s an official heatwave. And it shows no sign of stopping.’

  ‘No wonder Ma wanted to emigrate.’ Pam bends over, runs a hand along her muscular calf, checking it for stubble. ‘She always did have a finely tuned sense of self-preservation. Swim?’

  I stagger into the icy water with my arms above my head, gasping, stepping deeper, seeking the shock of sensation, the floating rose petals sticking to my skin like tiny pink tongues. Pam and Flora dive in confidently, quickly becoming a spinning ball of limbs and hair, trying to outdo each other, hands grappling ankles, trailing bubbles, bobbing up, laughing, cursing. Dot sits on the side of the pool, dreamily swishing her feet, the coldness of total immersion too much for her, her skin just not thick enough. And I think how we all swim like how we are.

  Afterwards we flop around on the poolside, eating apples, taking bites out of each other, until Pam says, ‘Ssh!’ and puts a finger to her lips. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  We fluster, arrange ourselves more glamorously, hopeful it might be Billy the gardener with his kind, river-green eyes.

  But it doesn’t sound like soft-footed Billy. There’s a crashing animal sound, the birds chattering electric warnings. The pool gate flings open and the animal is Perry, panting, fanning his hat in front of his face. ‘Ah, Wildlings.’

  There is a moment of stunned disbelief. Perry and Sybil never swim in the pool. Sybil said so. We are meant to be safe here. Dot sends me a look of distress as our uncle puffs over to the changing hut, clearly intent on joining us. As soon as its door swings shut, we move fast, muffling our horrified giggles, tugging our dresses over bathing-suits, catching pool-tangled hair in buttonholes. Dot hisses, ‘Hurry up, hurry up, oh, Margot, he’s –’ She stops short, her lips parting.

  Our uncle strides out into the sunlight, legs splayed, hands on his hips, the handsome muscularity of his former shape just visible beneath the rolls of flesh, his knitted blue swimming trunks bulging. The sight of those terrible trunks, my sketchy knowledge of what is beneath them, jumpy as a pumping garden hose, separated from us by just one layer of fabric, makes me feel peculiar. And I’m suddenly aware of the round circles on the bust of our dresses, caused by the wet bathing-suits beneath; how the easy innocence of those old childhood summers has been replaced by something that worries the edges. So I try to look away, but, confusingly, my eyes are drawn to his trunks again, as if my body and my mind are splitting apart, developing different opinions.

  ‘It’s splendid to see you girls here, the pool used again.’

  We smile politely, glance at each other, trying to agree silently on a rescue plan.

  I stare at his hands, squeezing into the flesh of his hips. They are strong, fat-fingered, big as spades. They look capable of anything. The air thickens. And I suddenly remember another summer, Perry throwing Audrey into the pool, Audrey squealing, a glittering splash, the jealousy I felt that she had a large, loud father who could pick her up and swing her about and I didn’t. And I can’t arrange my thoughts properly, or reconcile the two different Uncle Perrys. There is still that gap between them, a long drop of darkness, where the truth about Audrey’s fate might lie.

  ‘Well, we’ll leave you to enjoy your peace, Uncle,’ says Pam, pushing her swim bag over her shoulder. Water drips crudely from beneath her dress on to the stone paving.

  ‘Peace?’ His short laugh bounces across the water. ‘You think I can ever find damned peace, Pam?’

  Not even Pam knows what to say.

  ‘Swim with me,’ he says, raising his chin in the manner of a man challenging another to a duel.

  ‘It would be lovely to swim together another time,’ says Flora, rushing to Pam’s aid. We all agree insincerely. ‘But we’re worn out now, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh.’ His forehead rolls into a frown, his bluster gone, replaced by something a little lost, confused. And we move so fast out of that pool gate, stumbling, running, chased by the monster in our heads. When we reach the meadow we collapse into a gasping fit of stifled, horrified laughter.

  I peer through the triangle of my bent elbow. Waving wands of yellow grass. Hot blue sky. A lichen-starred chunk of stone. Dot’s bare toes wiggling, trying to cool. ‘When will it be safe to return to the pool, do you think?’

  ‘An hour,’ mumbles Flora, who is sitting on the ancient stone next to me, her dress tented over her head for shade. ‘Two, to be safe.’

  ‘I’m going to expire of thirst,’ moans Pam.

  ‘You know, you sound just like Ma,’ Flora says waspishly, from inside her dress.

  ‘Very funny. Lest we forget, while we roast in this godforsaken meadow, hiding from the lascivious troll of Applecote –’

  ‘Pam!’ Flora says, pretending to be shocked, encouraging her. Dot giggles nervously.

  ‘– Ma is sipping Gin Slings in the shade of some Moroccan palace,’ Pam continues blithely. She has a sunburned streak across her nose, like war paint. ‘By the way, Billy isn’t around, Flora. Your display of underwear is quite wasted.’ She shoots an irritated glance at Flora’s slim,
shapely legs.

  ‘There’s always the dead pilot,’ Flora jokes, emerging from her dress, smoothing it over her thighs.

  ‘Well, he did leave you flowers,’ Pam retorts.

  It was Dot’s eagle eye that spotted the wilting posy in the gouged dip in the meadow, where the plane crashed all those years ago, a small unlikely bunch, tied with twine. We still can’t work out who might have left it or why.

  ‘I think that might be this summer’s epitaph, don’t you?’ continues Pam. ‘ “There’s always the dead pilot.” A summer so empty of young men we had to dig up a dead one.’

  Flora laughs, and tickles Pam’s arm with a blade of feathery grass.

  After a while the sun sinks lower, bringing relief, a new, sleepier heat. We give in to the meadow, sinking back against the stones. Dot starts a daisy chain, her little fingers working fast, pinching, threading, each link locked to the next: my brain tries to move as fast as Dot’s fingers, but I can’t get Audrey’s story to link. I lean back on the warm stone, my eyelids heavy, and I think of how my body is touching something Audrey touched, and someone else before that, back and back, to the dirty digit of an ancient, as I, too, will one day be to another girl, not yet born, lolling, just as hot and tired, eyes slowly closing until all is birdsong and scorched grass and hot pink clouds …

  ‘Margot, there is a God.’ Pam yanks my big toe.

  ‘Ow. What?’ I rub my eyes. Everything feels different immediately. Pam’s face is rose-tinged, magically lit. The dusk sky is aflame, volcanic and otherworldly, as if something might actually be about to happen. ‘Where?’

  ‘Look, Margot. Over there. Yes, yes, just up from the river.’ Flora points to the edge of the meadow at the two tall figures in the distance. They are male. Definitely male. And there is a youthfulness to their energy, the way they are kicking through the long grasses towards us, exuding a louche confidence, a sense of entitlement, as if the meadow, the golden evening, each one of us sisters, were theirs for the taking.

  5

  After a late lunch Jessie and Will loll back on the orangery steps, making the most of the afternoon sunshine, legs outstretched, their bare feet on the mossy stones, investigated by tiny black ants. The television chatters from inside the house, a cooking show, one of the rare programmes Bella and Romy both enjoy, meaning that Jessie and Will are alone for once.

  It’s the last day of August, mild, damp, already autumny. Birds are nesting in the ivy that beards the house. Insects everywhere: dragonflies, moths, midges, earwigs, bees, more butterflies than Jessie’s ever seen. For a brief moment, a cabbage white poses on Will’s shirtless tanned shoulder, then spins away as he lifts his bottle of beer. Jessie watches it vanish into the undergrowth, picks a wild strawberry from the bowl cradled between her knees, in the folds of her red dress, and turns to Will with a smile. ‘Open.’

  Will swallows it with a wince. ‘Christ. That is seriously sharp.’

  ‘How a strawberry’s meant to taste.’

  He laughs. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

  Jessie pops one into her own mouth. She likes its bittersweet seediness. She likes that it grew in the cracks of the veranda paving too. Somewhere in the house they can hear Will’s mobile ringing again.

  ‘Oh, ignore it.’ She smiles, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s Sunday. It’s almost sunny. And we’re still officially on holiday.’

  ‘Using the term loosely.’

  Jessie’s lips brush the underside of his jaw. ‘The best thing about this particular holiday is that we’re already home,’ she murmurs. ‘It doesn’t end.’

  Will looks up at the sky. ‘And we’re never in danger of sunburn.’

  Seconds later the rain starts to fall hard. They leap up, squealing. Jessie won’t let Will shut the orangery’s glass doors, tussling with him, laughing. She doesn’t want to close off the outside, not yet: the sound of rain dripping off branches, the smell of apples and river. He gives up, as she knew he would, stands behind her, one arm wrapped around her waist, and picks out the burrs hooked in her hair.

  The wettest summer for twenty years, it’s not been quite the heat-hazed August idyll Jessie and Will imagined. Will really has had to start chopping wood – and cut open his thumb with an axe last week. (Six stitches. ‘The mark of a real woodsman,’ he said, impressed.) The central heating is proving temperamental, so to warm the place up – Applecote seems to have centuries of winters trapped in its walls – Jessie’s been stoking smoky fires that don’t draw properly, coughing smoke into the house. Country walks have been elemental rather than bucolic: ‘Insane hikes into the squall,’ Bella groans, even though Jessie suspects she secretly quite enjoys them.

  The weather has put off all but the most determined visitors: Jessie’s sprightly mother, Will’s aged parents; Lou and Matt, Lou entering the house with her hands clapped over her mouth, laughing, muttering, ‘Oh, my God, you’re not serious?’; a small group of Will’s friends who stayed one night fewer than they’d planned, a relief since Jessie and Will seemed to spend most of the time washing up, cooking and justifying their decision to leave London without offending those who had stayed.

  She has much preferred it when it’s been just them, hunkering down in their old house in its river valley, like a sort of dysfunctional Swiss Family Robinson. None of them has been back to London yet. They’ve been living another life altogether, hazy, unreal, the damp days seeping into one another: she and Will making love by the fire long after the girls are in bed; Romy stomping around in the fudgy mud, her baby curls dreadlocking; Bella wandering down to the stones to be alone, wearing her huge silver headphones and, to Will’s quiet consternation, her dead mother’s summer kaftans, retrieved from the Mandy Boxes that Jessie has started to fear are bottomless, their contents tumbling out like lost treasures from an Egyptian tomb. Occasionally, Jessie’s glimpsed a local, necklaced in dog leads, peering through their gate, and more than once she was pretty sure it was that woman again, the one with the dogs. But by the time she’s gone to greet her, or any of the others, they’ve melted back into the mizzle and it was as if they were never there.

  ‘Dad!’ Bella shouts from inside the house, over the drum of rain. ‘Phone!’

  Hearing her approach, Will and Jessie instinctively edge apart. Jessie goes to close the glass door. She sees the rain has splattered her red dress with dark spots, like blood.

  Bella appears, trailed by Romy, who is now dressed inexplicably in knickers and a swimming cap, waggling a fistful of dirty feathers above her head. Bella speaks into Will’s phone, ‘I’m handing you over now, Jackson.’

  Will looks at Bella quizzically. ‘He says it’s urgent.’ Bella shrugs, pushing away Romy’s hand with the feathers a little too roughly.

  Will takes a breath, clicking his brain out of Applecote mode, and presses the phone to his ear. ‘Jackson, old boy, what’s going down?’ He stops, frowns. ‘I’m sorry to – What? Wait a minute …’

  ‘What is it?’ Jessie whispers, wondering why Will’s business partner should be calling on a Sunday, why Will’s face is growing suddenly so serious. But Will doesn’t hear her. He is already walking away.

  Jessie takes a breath and dives into the deepest channel of the river. The current is surprisingly strong after yesterday’s heavy rain, tunnelling cloudy, brown-black, like marrow in a bone. As she emerges, her hair caps her skull, the dark rich copper of Applecote’s pipes, and her face glows with the river’s mineral cold, unexpectedly so. Although she’s a strong swimmer, she can suddenly imagine the deadly creep of that coldness, the way it would stiffen the muscles, weaken a stroke. She’s never felt this with Will swimming beside her. She misses him – he left for a crisis meeting with Jackson yesterday morning, stayed in a hotel last night. She misses the summer already.

  She can sense that something is over. And she doesn’t know what comes next.

  Neither of them could have anticipated Jackson’s bombshell, his sister in Australia’s breast cancer di
agnosis. Jackson wants to be there. Single, unencumbered, he’s long thought about moving to Oz. (News to Will.) A wake-up call, he says. Will’s changed his life, scaled back, why not him? The only difference is he can’t run a European-based company from Brisbane. He’s really sorry to bail but he wants to sell his share.

  It couldn’t have come at a worse time. However much Will sympathizes, it feels more like a divorce – old university friends, Jackson and Will started the company from a kitchen table years ago – and it leaves him with the problem of either raising a huge amount of money to buy Jackson out, or selling the stake to an outsider, losing control of half the company, which he desperately doesn’t want to do. If he’s to raise investment himself, Will needs to be in London more than ever, not taking his foot off the accelerator, as planned, but flooring it. How the hell is he going to do it from here?

  Jessie pushes the thought away – they will manage somehow – and starts to tread water, waving to the girls on the bank.

  Huddled under a hoodie, Bella’s watching her carefully, protectively even, while ignoring her vulnerable charge, who is picking her way along the gravelly river beach in her bumble-bee swimsuit, carrying a red bucket rattling with pebbles. When Romy starts wading further out, oblivious to the chill on the chub of her thighs, the sudden shelving of the river floor, Bella does nothing to stop her.

  Jessie swims back fast, tugs Romy up the bank. ‘What were you waiting for, Bella?’ she says, more sharply than she intends, still on edge from the night before. Hearing noises in Romy’s room in the small hours, Jessie had investigated and got the fright of her life: a figure in the gloom, standing motionless beside Romy’s cot bed; Bella, blank-faced, sleepwalking. Shaken, Jessie had led her back upstairs. Bella didn’t remember anything about it this morning, which sort of makes it worse.

  ‘She was fine.’ Bella shrugs, hands Jessie a towel. Rain starts to fall in a fine mist, like a collapsing cloud. Bella rolls her eyes upwards. ‘There can’t seriously be any water left up there.’ She unfolds her long heron legs and stands up, digging her hands into the pockets of her denim cut-offs. ‘I’m off, then. I’ve got pictures to put up in my room.’