“Oh, very poetic.”
“Trying so hard to be pushy and grown up, you gave it all away. Finding something to frizzle your energy away on.”
“Oh, energy,” said Belinda.
“Here, though… I suppose you’re still dashing about. You listen to people better, you know. You give them more time.”
Wendy flicked at an insect crawling on her arm. “When Mam died I realised there were so many things I hadn’t asked her about. I felt stupid. In the end we’d spent hundreds, thousands of hours together. She told me things about her life, but I can’t believe there are so many gaps. There’s just a few funny stories left. That’s all I remember.”
“It’s true,” said Timon. “That’s it. Funny stories and accidents.”
“Like when she weed herself in the magician’s cabinet, and when she kissed the headmaster. When she got us shoving fruit on the waxwork dummies.” Wendy smiled. “But we sat together saying nothing sometimes. Watching silly old films, monster movies. Talking about nothing in the kitchen, eating sausage sandwiches with too much pepper. I think of all the things I could ask her now.”
“It sounds like you had a great time,” said Belinda, staring up at the sky. She was in a sundress, Wendy realised, of the same yellow as the Captain’s coat. Cut from the same cloth.
“So that’s maybe why I listen now. Hoping to hear stuff. I miss too much.”
“Everything effects you,” Timon told her. “You hear enough.”
They lay quietly for some time.
“Timon’s changing, too,” Belinda said. “Since he’s been here, aren’t you, hon?”
“Oh, yes. I’m enjoying my writing, suddenly. Before I didn’t. I made myself cross when I wasn’t writing. Now…”
“We have lovely day,” said Belinda. “He works at the kitchen table and I make him do regular hours. Like a proper job of work. He’s going to be a great success.”
“Belinda’s teaching me to cook. No more fish and chips. Or, only when we want. She’s taught me to wash my colours separate, instead of jamming everything in the machine together.” He grinned.
Across the way, Captain Simon and Astrid were playing travel scrabble. The two of them were hunched over the tiny board. “Jesus God!” burst Astrid. “Zygote! What is ‘zygote’?”
“Is that the beginning of a beautiful relationship?” asked Timon softly.
Belinda looked weary. “My brother doesn’t have beautiful relationships. More’s the pity.” For the first time she sounded like she wanted him off her hands. Wendy saw that it was she who propped the Captain up, not the other way around. Belinda lowered her voice. “The Captain of old… he never knew difficult words. That’s one of the subtle ways in which he gives his game away.”
“Oh…” murmured Wendy, not wanting to go into this now. She stared off at the sea, at the island a little offshore and its lighthouse. She imagined growing up on an island with no one around her. Rab was still throwing the stick for the dog. Neither seemed to be getting bored.
“You make me laugh,” Colin told David. “Coming out all this way, driving us all out. To spend the day with a load of old women, my dad and me.”
David shrugged, his chin resting on his knees, which he hugged to his body. He was staring at his new boots. Colin had helped him choose them in the sales—shiny red patent leather. “I haven’t seen much outside of Edinburgh. This is nice. A bit of seaside.”
“It’s true,” Colin said. “When you live in the middle of town, everything comes to you. You don’t go out much.” He wondered why David was looking so glum. “Go and talk to Wendy. You know you want to. Don’t let that Timon monopolise her.”
“Oh, they’re old friends. They have to catch up.”
“They’ve had plenty of time for that,” said Colin briskly. “They weren’t even together, you know. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
David perked up. “I didn’t know that. I assumed they had been.”
“There you go. Talk to her. It’s the only chance you’ll get at… seeing her again. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want.”
This brought Colin up short. “I thought you’d done all this to impress her.” He tried to temper his native cynicism. “I thought bringing us all out was your gesture.”
“No,” mumbled David. “Not in that way, anyway.”
“It looks like you’ve done Dad a power of good.”
Pat was taking in slow, careful breaths of the sea air, as if he could drink it in. He looked alert and composed, a rug pulled up over his knees. Although he’d come out under protest, claiming that the whole day was a silly exercise—he’d even used the word farrago—the old man had dressed himself up for the occasion. A newish green tweed suit, a checked waistcoat. His shirt loose on his wattled neck. He gave the impression of paying no heed whatsoever to the various people and conversations around him.
David looked at Colin. “You don’t see, do you?”
“Hmm?”
“How many straight male friends have you got, Colin?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know.” Yet he did know. Since getting to know David and Rab he’d been seeing a whole other world. “What are you going on about, anyway?”
“You’ve got none, have you? Apart from us?”
Colin shrugged. “It makes no difference to me where my friends are coming from. Or who they’re coming with. I go around with you and Rab, I suppose, because we get on. That night I went to yours, with Wendy after the club, the night you and her copped off and slept together, we all got on then, straight away. We’ve got stuff to talk about. It’s easy. We have a laugh. I’ve probably got more in common with you than all the other queer blokes I’ve knocked about with.”
David was looking uneasy. “And haven’t you ever wondered—I mean, has it ever been at the back of your mind—that you might get me, um, into
