Excess Baggage Read online

  Theresa got up and went to look out beyond the balcony towards the beach. It was almost dark, night fell so fast out here. You hardly got any time that could be called ‘evening’. Out under the trees people were still strolling around in the warm air, packing up from staying late on the sand or taking the last swim of the day as the massive, surely too big, sun went down fast behind them. This was the time when they were all advised to keep their terrace doors closed against the foraging twilight mosquitoes. Theresa couldn’t be bothered. Let the bastards bite. Her eyes smarted: everyone she could see out there seemed to be in pairs. There was that young couple who were forever groping each other in the pool kissing passionately beneath the gazebo. Everyone looked so happy, as if all the things that were supposed to define a Proper Holiday – no rows, lots of best-ever sex, the forgetting about trivial niggles of home life – were well in place and the whole thing was going right. She and Mark should be together, snuggling their clean, contented children down for a story and sleep, then getting ready for dinner, having an early companiable drink and being two grown-ups leaving any child-hassle to the girl who was paid to see to it. Too much Peter Pan, Theresa thought, briskly dashing a tissue across eyes which now threatened to stream. The bit she’d liked best in that book, reading it aloud recently to the children, had been when Mr and Mrs Darling had kissed their children goodnight and gone off out together (to the theatre, or was it dinner?) all dressed up. That was the treat side of being a parent, having the delights of children and the pleasure of a separate adult life. At the moment, considering Marisa’s uselessness, it occurred to her that she couldn’t have done worse if she too had left her children in the care of a big furry dog.

  Theresa pulled the terrace door shut, closed the curtains then chased a couple of mosquitoes, thwacking them dead against the wall with the Baedeker Caribbean guidebook. Amy and Ella sat on the bed guzzling down room-service pizza, ignoring her mood and engrossed in an all-American version of Family Fortunes. She looked at the over-exuberant contestants and sighed: what kind of a team would her family be able to put together, she wondered.

  ‘So what was tonight’s menu special?’ Henry walked close to Lucy on the sand. Ahead of them, like an oasis in the dark and showing up cartoon-like silhouettes of leaning palm trees, were the lights of the beach bar they were heading for.

  ‘Oh, it was an all-Caribbean barbecue night. Swordfish and spare ribs and spicy chicken, salads and rice and sweet potatoes, that sort of thing. Pretty delicious actually, I ate stacks.’

  Henry laughed. ‘And don’t tell me, a limbo-dancing demonstration with burning torches and the diners invited to join in, though none of them do till they’re really drunk and they don’t care about falling over and making prats of themselves.’

  ‘You’re right. But I refuse to be amazed because I suspect this is the pattern for the whole season. If it’s Thursday, it must be limbo. Tomorrow we get a gospel choir and Saturday it’s steel band.’

  ‘You should get out more,’ Henry teased.

  ‘We’re all-inclusive. The parents don’t mind what we do but Simon says every meal not eaten here is a huge waste of their money. Anyway, I’m out now. Colette’s hanging out with Becky and Luke. I think she hopes they’ll be a bad influence.’

  ‘And will they?’

  ‘Probably.’ Lucy didn’t want to talk about children. This was time off from being a parent, an aunt, a daughter. What was it Simon had said as she was leaving? Oh yes, ‘So you’re sloping off are you, Lucy?’ as if she was a naughty teenager wriggling her way out of some important family bonding session. And there’d been the other thing, the cutting one, this time from Theresa, snidely telling Shirley and Perry, ‘Lucy’s going out for a drink with one of the locals.’ Shirley for once hadn’t sat passively but had replied sharply, ‘Only the “local” who took care of your daughter, Tess. I think we all owe him a debt, especially you.’ Theresa had bitten her lip and looked to Mark for comfort, but he’d been oblivious, studying the wine list.

  The bar was bustling and crowded with a rowdy mixture of holidaymakers and residents, most of whom greeted Henry loudly, eyeing Lucy and grinning in a way that suggested she might well be his several hundredth conquest. She didn’t care, she felt no pressure to do anything but talk to him and spend some time relaxing with a drink or two. It was one advantage of having decided men were no longer worth looking for: you didn’t even bother with the lipstick if you didn’t want to, nor did you get all geed up about what would happen, how far would you take things. If she was dressed more smartly than she had been for the beach – loose black linen trousers, floppy white shirt – it was because she’d made the effort for the hotel restaurant’s dress code, not for Henry.

  ‘This is Dexy’s famous rum punch with a secret ingredient.’ Henry put a massive glass on the table in front of Lucy. She picked up the cocktail stick and dipped the row of cherries in the drink, licking at them.

  ‘I can guess what the secret is: more rum by the taste of this.’ She grinned and took a large sip. It was sticky, sweet and potent, the kind of drink Lucy would never have chosen at home.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Henry was smiling, waiting for her to admire the local poison.

  ‘Wow, strong stuff. A drink for steering clear of if you’re looking at a day’s work tomorrow,’ she told him.

  ‘What would you have had back home?’

  Lucy thought for a moment. There were all those hopeful wine-bar first dates with men who’d had some kind of potential. And there were girls’ nights with shrill don’t-care laughter and some lurid cocktails.

  ‘I go for a white wine spritzer, usually,’ she said. ‘A thin sad shot of sour cheap wine with the built-in safety of too much water.’ Some of the ‘s’s’ were already tangled. She’d have to take care.

  ‘Sparkling water, though.’ Henry laughed.

  ‘Soon flattens out.’

  ‘Not like life, I hope.’

  ‘Well I keep hoping that too, but … heavens, look there’s bloody Becky, what’s she doing here? She’s supposed to be with Colette. Becky!’ Lucy was instantly out of her seat and pushing her way across the bar.

  Becky was half-lying across the table in the corner, her raucous laughter the loudest in the bar. Her face was scarlet with smeared lipstick and too much drink and the boy who’d been selling jewellery on the beach had one arm round her and his other hand somewhere under the table. One of the straps on Becky’s skimpy little top had slid so far down her arm that her left breast was threatening to show itself off to the entire bar. Opposite this pair was one of the many young couples from the hotel, sipping beers and looking as if they weren’t quite sure they were comfortable.

  ‘Becky, what the hell are you doing in here? You promised you’d keep an eye on Colette for me.’

  Becky’s eyes were barely focusing on her. Lucy remembered she’d had a glass of wine with dinner, but then had gone to her room before the end of the meal taking Luke and Colette with her. She must have raided the minibar before coming out. Becky’s face was deep in exaggerated thought for a moment, as if remembering how to put a sentence together. ‘Colette’s with Luke,’ she said carefully. ‘They’re watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on telly. Perfectly OK, see.’

  ‘No it’s not perfectly OK. You definitely aren’t.’ She reached across the jewellery boy, wishing she hadn’t caught sight of his hand extricating itself from beneath Becky’s tiny skirt, and hauled the girl out of her seat. ‘Come on, I’m taking you back to the hotel before you have to be carried there.’

  ‘But it’s nearly my birthday!’ Becky wailed, pulling herself back into the corner.

  ‘Not till next week it isn’t, now get up.’

  ‘I’ll get her.’ Henry’s hand reached across, hauled on the girl’s wrist and hoisted her out of her seat. Before Becky had time to protest she was out of the bar and standing, albeit shakily, on the sand between the two of them.

  ‘God Henry, you must think this family is tota
lly out of control!’ Lucy said, taking Becky’s arm and guiding her in the darkness along the beach towards the hotel’s lights. Behind them was the sound of pounding luscious reggae in the bar, while ahead, Lucy noted with despondency, was the dispiriting din of the hotel entertainment: a lacklustre rendering of ‘Yellow Bird’, on the gentle undemanding upbeat considered suitable for the mass tourist trade. Henry’s hand reached across behind Becky’s lolling head and brushed lightly against her face. ‘Don’t worry, stay happy,’ he said. Well, she’d try.

  Five

  THE RAIN WOKE Plum. It was still dark but that didn’t mean it was the middle of the night as it would on a hot night in England. In half an hour it could be fully light and she would start tormenting herself with the temptation of a mountainous breakfast.

  The torrent of tumbling water was pounding hard on the corrugated verandah roof over the balcony and Plum wished she’d remembered to take the swimsuits off the rail and bring them into the room the night before. They didn’t dry properly out there anyway, not unless you hung them in the scorching noon sunlight; the air was just too humid.

  ‘They said this was the rainy season, but just how much of the stuff can the sky hold?’ Simon, next to her, was already awake with his light on, propped up and reading a gory Patricia Cornwell. ‘It’s been going on for well over an hour. Becky or Luke or both are awake: I can hear their television through the wall.’ He made a face. ‘Cartoons, by the sound of it.’

  Plum laughed. ‘I suppose you think if they’ve got their eyes open they might as well be doing a spot of maths. They’re on holiday, Simon, let them relax.’

  ‘They’ve only just gone back to school after the summer. You know what I think of them having this extra time off.’

  Plum climbed out of bed and went to slide the terrace door open to see for herself the astounding downpour. ‘It’s no good grumbling to me about it. If you didn’t want them to come then you should have made it clear to Shirley and Perry.’

  It was easy for her to say, Simon thought, as he tried to settle back into his book. Plum’s parents had been of the liberal, easy-going Hampstead intellectual sort who had carefully considered and valued the opinions of their children right from the moment they’d begun to put thoughts into words. But, for him, the habit of doing as you were told in the good old-fashioned Northern manner was a hard one to break. Perry had never actually said that children should be seen and not heard, but Simon would be willing to bet that somewhere in the back of his mind that idea still lingered. He remembered when he was about nine, informing one of the Devon landladies, serving dinner, that no thanks, he didn’t want mushroom soup – in fact he really hated it more than any other food in the whole world. His father had taken him out into the hallway with its swirly green and orange carpet and smell of damp umbrellas and given him a lecture on rudeness and manners. It had been the first time he’d realized that his parents weren’t necessarily always right; for he hadn’t been rude, he was sure. You had to have a cross thought in your head for rudeness. He’d just been chatty and truthful. Chatty though was bad, it seemed, even if you were smiling at the time, and even truthful was sometimes a bit more than people really required. This holiday, the way his father had said, ‘I’m booking us all a fortnight away, all the family together,’ had been a statement, not an invitation or a question. He hadn’t left any scope for saying no. It had reminded Simon of Latin lessons, of being taught how to translate a ‘question requiring an affirmative answer’. He’d had a lifetime’s practice.

  Simon’s head was pounding. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, to having caught too much sun, or drinking too much of the Sugar Mill bar’s gluey pina coladas the night before. He’d enjoyed a good three of those after dinner, fooled (easily) by their puddingy sweet taste and almost syllabub-like texture into discounting the sizeable rum content. The young couple, the gropers, who had caught him watching them in the pool had been in the bar too, still kissing and touching, fondling each other when they thought no-one was looking in places that would be better kept for times of more privacy. He and Plum had taken their last drinks down the steps to the beach in the dark, lying flat out side by side on a pair of sunloungers and staring up at the stars that seemed so outrageously close. There’d been no sign then of the deluge to come. The clouds must have been gathering from the Atlantic side of the island.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Plum, coming out of the bathroom, said.

  ‘More rain? Wind?’ Simon suggested.

  ‘No. It sounds like someone throwing up.’

  ‘Probably the plumbing.’ Simon was now engrossed in a particularly gruesome autopsy in his book and not at all interested in plumbing or nausea.

  Plum was standing stone-still in the middle of the room, her head cocked and listening hard. ‘There it is again. It’s Becky, I’m sure. Poor girl, I’ll go and see if she needs anything. First Marisa and now this. Perhaps it really was something they ate …’

  It took a while for Luke to open the door. Plum could hear his bare feet slap-slapping reluctantly across the tiled floor. He looked furious, standing in the doorway in his blue tartan boxer shorts and a torn and faded yellow T-shirt that looked ready for lining the dog’s basket. For the first time, Plum registered that Luke was no longer even the slightest bit child-shaped. His tall, lean, rugby-player frame almost filled the doorway and he wasn’t moving aside.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, as if she was the fifteenth visitor that night and he was thoroughly bored with door-duty.

  ‘What’s wrong with Becky? I could hear through the wall – is she ill?’

  Luke scratched his head and opened his eyes wide. ‘What? Becky? Dunno, no don’t think so.’ He still hadn’t moved. Taking a quick glance beyond him, Plum then swiftly took advantage of him following her gaze and sidestepped him into the room. It was a mirror image of hers and Simon’s, though with a pair of beds instead of the generous king-size double that they had. This room had been trashed into a typical teenage shambles of clothes, magazines, school books and empty Coke cans. The scent of stale cigarette smoke tainted the air. Becky’s bed was empty, the sheet and blanket tumbled onto the floor and the pillow missing. There was a groan from the bathroom.

  ‘Oh, great, the bloody cavalry. Thanks a whole bunch Luke,’ Becky called, catching sight of her mother.

  Becky was slumped on the floor in the classic position of the penitent drunk hugging the lavatory. Her pillow was beside her as if this was the only place she could trust herself to spend the night. Plum tried to haul her gently up but she pulled back, staying where she was as if it was the only possible position for comfort.

  ‘She just got in, OK? Nuffin much I could do. Don’t see why I should cover up for her.’ Luke shrugged and went and got into his bed, pulling a sheet over his head.

  ‘Becky, whatever’s wrong? Have you had too much sun, because if you have, we need to get plenty of water into you.’

  Becky’s reply was to retch again, bringing up a thin weak stream of beige liquid.

  ‘Too much sun! Huh!’ Luke re-emerged from his nest. ‘Too much booze. Ask her where she’s been, go on, ask her, ’cos I wouldn’t mind knowing so I can have my turn bein’ out clubbin’ or whatever.’ He appeared at the bathroom door, his glare of grievance reflected in mirrors on two of the walls.

  ‘Luke, you shithead!’ Becky started to cry, a sad little whimpering sound full of self-pity.

  ‘Well what j’expect? I agree to share a room with you even though we’re too old, way too old for sharin’, just to help out ’cos Dad’s moaning on and saying we can’t sting Grandad for the extra for single rooms, though we all know he wouldn’t mind, and what do I get? I have to look after Colette and watch stuff on telly that won’t give her crap dreams, and then you come in banging on the door ’cos you’ve lost your key and then you start bloody throwin’ up all over the place. You should have been put in with Marisa or with Theresa’s brood.’ He stopped for breath and looked down at his sister wit
h an expression of frank disgust that Plum recognized as being one of his father’s specialities.

  ‘Why were you looking after Colette?’ she asked. ‘Where was Lucy?’

  ‘Out! Like Becky. Everyone’s bloody out having a great time. ’Cept me, of course. Being as how I’m just a kid, and just a mug.’ He turned and stalked away. Plum heard him getting back into bed, thumping his pillow as he turned it over and sighing as loudly as he possibly could. She’d have to deal with him in the morning, talk him through his grievances which might well be justified. For now, though, Becky needed some care and attention.

  ‘What did you drink, Becky? Just tell me the truth and I won’t be cross.’

  Becky wiped her damp hair across her face and tried to focus. ‘Rum stuff. Cocktaily things. Not many though, truly. I wasn’t out that long. Ask Lucy.’

  ‘Oh I’ll ask her, trust me.’ Plum went to the minibar and found it denuded of all soft drinks except water. She poured some into a glass and took it to Becky, who had recovered enough to sit on the side of the bath.

  ‘Thanks Mum. And … Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t tell Gran will you? Please? I don’t want them to think—’

  ‘Think you’re a drunken slag who gets totally off her face?’ Luke’s grumpy voice interrupted.

  ‘Yeah, something like that. And Dad …’

  ‘I’ll deal with your father, don’t worry.’ Plum grinned. ‘If he gets difficult I’ll remind him of something he told me about one of those precious bloody Devon holidays, the key words to which are fairground, rifle range and a bottle of Scotch. Now try and get some sleep, and till you do, just sip at the water a bit from time to time. This will pass.’

  ‘It’d fuckin’ better,’ Luke growled.

  Lucy could see a selection of the Putney Mothers running in stages from their rooms towards breakfast, first to the shelter of the big tamarind tree by the gazebo and then making a fast onward dash with their small children across the open area past the pool, heads low against the stabbing rain. They were doing what Colette called girly-running, awkward in strappy little sandals or flip-flops and with their hair flopping free from slides and into their eyes. At the section where the aromatic turpentine tree and hibiscus overhung the path, the children squealed and giggled as the sodden leaves brushed against their bare arms. Under shelter on the dining terrace the mothers flapped uselessly at their children with tissues, trying to mop the worst of the water from their heads so it wouldn’t drip into their breakfast cereal. The dads, Lucy noticed, simply headed straight for the buffet.