Excess Baggage Read online

  Cathy held up one of the little frocks. It was white, with a full gathered skirt and a deep frill round the hem, a high waist with an elasticated bodice and a pair of little white shoulder straps. The fabric was patterned with almost luminously pink leaves. The other dress was the same, but the leaves were a vivid shade of tangerine.

  Theresa reached out and touched the soft cotton and smiled. ‘Actually, they’re rather sweet, wonderfully tropical. Yes, they’ll look lovely.’

  ‘And we thought flowers for their hair would be good but we’ll pick those on the day and we got some ribbon as well. We were really lucky, all the shops were closing up.’

  Lucy looked at the pattern and laughed before she could stop herself.

  ‘What is it?’ Theresa asked. ‘What’s so funny? They’re lovely.’

  ‘They are, they are,’ Lucy admitted, her giggles increasing. ‘It’s just, the leaf shape …’ Becky came and peered at them.

  ‘Oh … yeah! That’s cannabis. Yo, little cousins,’ she called out to Ella and Amy digging in the sand. ‘Cool!’

  Given that the world might end for all of them about twenty-four hours from now, Lucy thought it quite ridiculous that she was going through a what-to-wear crisis. It wasn’t as if she had that much choice. It was going to be either the black linen drawstring trousers or the grey ones, either of which would have to be teamed with the pale blue cotton top or the floppy white linen shirt. The blue top was stretchy jersey and clung around her breasts emphasizing every bit of the curve (not that there was much; looking at her naked reflection Lucy conceded that the family D-cup gene had been awarded to Theresa). Henry hadn’t seemed to be much impressed by her attempt at sexy dressing the other night, so she might as well relax with her body slouched under the white shirt. She put the black trousers on.

  ‘You’ve got paint on them,’ Colette commented. Lucy looked down at the tiny yellowish flecks and recognized Farrow and Ball’s Hound Lemon from a house in Richmond where the owner had insisted on ‘authentic’ eighteenth-century colours and then complained that it looked ‘antiquated’. She hadn’t worn these trousers to do the job, the paint must have found its way to them as she cleaned brushes in the kitchen sink at the flat. Too often, exhausted by early-morning starts and going on too long so as to finish at a satisfying point, she’d come home with paint-sodden brushes wrapped in clingfilm which she’d abandon next to the sink and rediscover late at night on her way to bed. Thoughts of the island colour schemes crossed her mind as she picked the paint flecks off the black fabric. Wherever she lived next she would find time for painting something that reminded her of this trip – hot pinks and brave turquoise, a mural of dancing figures perhaps, like the wall at the school along the beach …

  ‘What time do we have to be there?’ Colette was ready to go. She was wearing her favourite blue towelling skirt from a company that charged a whacking premium for its surf-cred label, and a plain white sleeveless hooded T-shirt. Lucy wasn’t sure for a moment if it was a trick of the light, but her eye was caught by an unfamiliar shape to the fabric: it was a shock, though it shouldn’t be. Her daughter was growing breasts.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Colette met her gaze by way of the mirror.

  ‘Oh, just you. You’re growing up a bit faster than I’m ready for.’

  ‘Yeah well, Mum, it’s what we kids do. Didn’t you realize?’

  Mark was sitting on the pink sofa in the reception area reading a three-day-old Daily Telegraph as Lucy and Colette arrived to wait for Henry to collect them.

  ‘Lucky you, an evening out.’ He grinned at them.

  ‘You could have taken Theresa somewhere. You don’t have to stay in and suffer your in-laws.’ Lucy sat down next to him while Colette dashed out through the entrance to look for Henry.

  ‘I tried, actually. I rang round, but everything’s closed up till this bloody hurricane passes. I’m not sure she’d want to go anyway.’

  ‘Is she still angry with you?’ It was just something to say, really. Of course Theresa would be angry; who wouldn’t be? Though few women would be able to sustain an atmosphere of deep fury as well as, or for as long as, her sister could.

  ‘Barely speaking. Just yes and no and who’s-had-the-gin when she’s peering into the mini-bar. I’m starting to wonder if she’ll ever be normal with me again.’ He looked helplessly miserable and Lucy almost, but not quite, pitied him. Theresa might well keep up the grievance for eternity. She might even be on the phone to divorce lawyers the minute the plane had touched down.

  ‘Hmm. Well, I don’t want to make you feel worse, but she can sulk for Britain. I should just hang around, be patient and try to be perfect then she won’t have anything else to hate you for. You can’t blame her for not trusting you.’

  Mark sighed. ‘I know, I know. But if we get back home and she’s still like this, well …’

  Lucy remembered when she was little and teenage Theresa had gone on a school geography field trip, leaving Simon in charge of her guinea pig, a scruffy-looking dirty white rosette-furred creature called Albert. Simon hadn’t shut the cage door properly and Albert had got out and shuffled his way down their cul-de-sac on to the main road, where a car had run over him. It was Lucy, on her way to the sweet shop, who had discovered him. Flattened, he’d resembled a shag-pile carpet from a doll’s house and she’d almost, but not quite, been fascinated enough to lift the matted fur to see if any of his organs were still there or if they’d been pressed flat into the road like petals between heavy books. Her father had scooped the poor animal up onto a garden spade and buried him under a Rambling Rector rose. Theresa hadn’t spoken to Simon for almost three months, carefully keeping the thought of his mistake right at the front of her mind through mornings and mealtimes, his birthday (no present or card) and even the annual Easter egg hunt. Lucy didn’t hold out much hope for Mark’s chances.

  ‘Henry’s here!’ Colette came running back in and grabbed Lucy.

  ‘Sorry Mark, I’ve got to go. Just hang in.’ Inadequate advice, but what else could he do, three thousand miles from home.

  Henry’s Jeep headed up above Teignmouth into the hills. Lucy watched the silhouettes of the tallest palms being buffeted by the wind. Already the air was full of extra movement, the trees bent and swayed against the blue night sky.

  ‘Is this the storm beginning?’ Colette asked from the back seat.

  ‘Not yet sweetie. This is just like a warm-up match. This time tomorrow though, watch out!’ Henry told her.

  ‘You scared?’ Oliver asked Colette.

  ‘No. Well, a bit. Are you?’

  Oliver laughed. ‘Sure I’m scared! I’m scared I’ll get hit by a coconut crashing through the roof!’ He waved his arms around and thumped himself on the head. ‘Like that!’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ Henry grinned at Lucy. ‘All the kids here get excited because they get time off school. After tomorrow they might have no school.’ He swung the car through a gateway. ‘OK, we’re here.’

  Lucy felt strangely nervous about visiting Henry’s home. For someone she’d never see again (probably) after three more days, it seemed to matter disproportionately that his taste didn’t appal her. It had happened before with men who’d been a potential love interest (and of course Henry wasn’t. He couldn’t be. There was no time. He didn’t even fancy her …). One of them, whom she’d met when he’d visited a house she was painting to check on the terms of a planning application, had confessed, as he drove her to his flat after a cinema visit, that he didn’t much see the point of changing one’s decor: if things like lamps and kitchen units were functioning, why bother to pretty them up or swop them for new ones? The words should have clanged out a warning so clear that she should have leapt out of the car there and then and gone looking for a cab: the man had no interest whatever in the delights of colour or design. The word ‘serviceable’ could have been invented for him, and for his bare light bulbs, clean but dull beige wallpaper, orange and green checked carpet, stained bro
wn fake-leather sofa (‘From my grandmother, last for ever!’ He’d thumped it proudly) and no paintings, ornaments, nothing actually selected for its aesthetic appeal, no character. By contrast, Lucy now wondered if she’d only stayed with the treacherous Ross for so long because his apartment had resembled something out of Elle Decoration and she’d mistaken the taste bestowed by an anonymous interior designer for his own.

  Henry’s home gave her no immediate qualms. It was a low-built solid house with the usual broad verandah and a couple of dozing tabby cats by the door. Inside wasn’t a riot of Caribbean colour, but a calmer version of the island’s brightness. Immediately in from the main door, the sitting-room walls were a gentle buttery yellow, with the window frames and doors in a blue that reminded Lucy of love-in-a-mist. There were a couple of oversized navy-blue sofas, and a deep pink rug. On the biggest wall were three large paintings. They were portraits of island women working: one in a cotton field, one with fish and another bent over a box of spices. They were muted in colour as if the artist was catching the subjects at the twilight end of the day, but with confident broad bold brush strokes. Whoever had done these hadn’t hesitated and dithered over the job.

  ‘Glenda did those. What do you think?’ Henry opened a bottle of cool white wine and handed her a glass.

  ‘They’re wonderful. The woman with the fish looks pretty angry.’

  ‘She does?’ Henry peered at her. ‘You’re right. Maybe the fish were off.’ Lucy laughed and wandered to the window. Unlike most of the islanders, Henry didn’t go in for lace curtains. Out across the trees on the hillside she could see the lights of the town below and the silvery glint of the sea beyond.

  ‘This must be some view in daylight.’

  ‘You could see it.’ Henry was close beside her, looking out into the darkness. Lucy could feel her adrenalin level beginning to rise. ‘Hardly,’ she laughed, ‘I think the hotel manager would like us all in before midnight. When I left I felt like a naughty teenager.’

  ‘Well, not tomorrow, but before you go home. Come again.’ The adrenalin lurched a little more but then abruptly, as if thinking better of being so close, he moved away from her. ‘Hey, let’s eat. Chicken’s just about done.’

  Lucy sat at Henry’s kitchen table between Oliver and Colette, savouring the rich scents coming from the oven. The children were giggling together as Oliver described another Caribbean speciality called mountain chicken and Colette tried to guess what meat it actually involved.

  ‘Tiger!’ she yelled.

  ‘No, not even close.’

  ‘Kangaroo!’

  ‘Have you seen kangaroos hopping about over here?’ Henry asked, putting a hot casserole dish on the table.

  ‘OK, monkey then.’

  ‘No, give up?’

  ‘Yeah. Tell me.’

  ‘It’s frog. A special type of big frog.’

  Colette went quiet and eyed the steaming contents of the dish. Henry and Lucy laughed. ‘It’s OK, honey, this is your regular chook-chook type bird in this pot. We don’t get those frogs here, it’s just Montserrat and a couple of other places.’

  The food was delicious; besides the chicken there were spicy sweet potatoes, salad and bread. Afterwards, Lucy stayed with Henry in the kitchen, washing dishes and feeling comfortable. She’d drunk most of the wine, she realized, which was making her feel mellow and sleepy. She could hear the sound of Oliver and Colette arguing amicably over a computer game in Oliver’s room across the hallway. It felt like home, she thought. The kind of home, with the kind of people, that she should have had. Appalled at herself, her eyes filled with tears. It was something to do with earlier in the evening, catching sight of Colette’s budding chest. Time was passing too fast, too quickly for her to get life right. She sniffed and mopped her eyes with a corner of the tea towel.

  ‘Hey, what is it?’ Henry had his arms round her, pulling her tenderly against his shoulder. She drew back a little, embarrassed, praying he wouldn’t think this was some kind of pathetic girly way of getting him close to her.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s nothing. I … it’s just today I realized I’ve spent the whole of Colette’s childhood thinking things like this time next year everything will be OK, or next time we move or even if I stick with this man. Even Colette’s school isn’t right. It’s like, oh I don’t know, spending your entire life camping.’ The blatant confusion on Henry’s face made her giggle. ‘You know, living in tents kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh, right. That kind.’ He smiled and pulled her close to him again.

  ‘So stop doing it,’ he whispered.

  ‘If it was only that easy.’

  ‘It’s that easy. You like being here so stay here. I got space till you find your own. After this storm there’ll be more of your kind of work than you can even begin to handle. Do it. Tell London to go screw itself. Tell England.’

  Lucy laughed again, he made it sound so simple. Perhaps it was, oh apart from one thing. ‘And who tells my family?’

  ‘You do. You’re a grown-up too – the choices are yours. Isn’t that what you’ve just worked out?’

  Thirteen

  IT WAS LIKE being under house arrest. Each guest’s possessions had been cleared from surfaces and drawers, packed away and shoved up on the highest shelves, leaving ghost-rooms that looked as if they’d never been occupied. Those who had a belt to spare had gone further and tethered their baggage to the hanging rail in their wardrobe, a tip suggested by a resourceful Italian guest and eagerly passed round, for no-one by now doubted that the wind could pick up and fling into the ocean the entire baggage allowance of even a first-class voyager.

  No-one wanted to risk going out either (‘We don’t advise it’ said the management when asked), in case the hurricane unexpectedly speeded up its progress and hit the island early. Not that there was anywhere to go; Teignmouth, it was reported, was as deserted as central Manchester on Cup Final day. Even the shops in the precinct across the main road from the hotel were now closed. The small supermarket was boarded up and the pizza café had its metal shutters down. The cab drivers who usually touted vociferously for trade outside the hotel had decamped, and even those who had baulked at the idea of handing back their hire cars had changed their minds for fear of ending up liable for new bodywork if a tree should happen to fall across the bonnet.

  Eerily, there was no clue in the weather that this day would be different from any other: the sky was almost brazenly clear and blue and the only wind came in small sharp provocative bursts, rustling through the leaves and making everyone look up nervously as if they might need suddenly to leap off the sunloungers and race for cover.

  Becky was bored and tetchy by mid-morning. If she sat still she felt sticky and hot, even in the shade, and was sure she was becoming a carefully selected target for bugs to bite. Simon offered to play tennis with her but just the thought of hurtling around the court made her feel her breath was running short. And if she felt like that, how much more of a risk was it for her father, whose blue linen shirt was patterned with abstract splodges of sweat? He could end up dead. She wandered along the beach to the furthest headland and thought about swimming out into the ocean beyond the point where she could hear voices wittering on about whether they were all destined to drown, be killed by falling trees or starve to death in the storm’s aftermath. If they’d only all stop going on. It was only going to be for a few hours and then they could all get back to normal. She could hardly bloody wait. Glenda wouldn’t let anyone take jet skis or sailing boats out either, because she’d got them all safely stowed away under the big awning next to the dive shop. Luke and Tom had been to see if they could sneak out a couple of pedalos, but Glenda had showed them how securely they were all tied down and told them quite sharply that if anyone was going to be allowed special dispensation, it certainly wouldn’t be them, not with their track record.

  ‘Bored, sweetie?’ Ethan appeared very close to Becky, silently and unexpectedly as if beamed down from space. She moved away a
bit and took a good cool look at him. His eyes were only just above the level of her own but his shoulders were broad enough to block out the sun. She still couldn’t decide if he was really fanciable, though he was decidedly more fanciable than anyone else in the immediate vicinity. And there was nothing to do.

  ‘You been to that beach round there?’ He indicated the strip of land just beyond the hotel’s boundaries. ‘It’s for nudists.’ He grinned at her. ‘All the Germans like it, and the Swedes and Danes. Never seen no Brits there though.’

  It sounded like a challenge. Becky felt confused. Why would he want to see her with her clothes off now? He’d had a chance to see her body that other night. The night of the boring, stupid, tedious blow job. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry, been so selfish and greedy, he could have had a good look at her all spread out on the sand in the moonlight. He could have flipped her over and back, played around with her, done almost anything he wanted. Perhaps he just wanted the chance to take his own clothes off and do some boastful displaying, especially in front of pasty, under-endowed Europeans.

  ‘Yeah, all right then, let’s go.’ Even to her own ears, she sounded bored. She wondered vaguely how long it would take for the white bands of her body, where her bikini had guarded her skin, to catch up with the tanned bits, and if the contrast would look silly exposed to the sun.

  He grinned even more broadly. ‘OK!’ he shouted, punching the air as if he’d won something special.

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ She was suspicious. Perhaps he’d only asked her for some kind of bet, or a dare. She glanced round to see if he’d got a sniggering posse of mates hanging about in the background. She couldn’t see anyone.

  Ethan shimmied up close to her and nuzzled her neck. ‘The big deal, baby, is that you’re gorgeous.’

  Becky shrugged him off and started to stroll towards the far beach.

  ‘You mean you’ve got nothing else to do,’ she told him. ‘You should bring more of your stock with you. There’s all these potential buyers hanging around who’d be desperate to part with their cash for your jewellery. You’re wasting a great marketing opportunity.’