Joseph away as she elbowed the sunlit door open and pushed Anna screaming into the arms of the figure in the hall.
It was Alan. Anna must have screamed from shock, not from fear. Nevertheless Liz's heart was pounding, her vision was darkening; she had to hold onto the doorframe while she calmed down. She smiled reassuringly at Alan, for Anna had run to her. 'It was Joseph,' she told him. 'He was in some kind of peculiar mood, scaring her.' She glanced back in case he was still at the gate, but he had fled. There was only the bright gentle landscape, nothing at all to fear.
Seven
By noon on Friday, Liz was exhausted. Though the sun was so harsh that you could almost see the grass bleaching, it seemed not to slow the children down at all. Anna was pushing two-year-old Faye in the baby's swing, Beryl and Deirdre were racing tricycles around the hotel playground, Julian and Thorn and Esther were splashing one another in the pool beyond the wire fence, and several children were scrambling up the fifteen-foot slide, toddlers included. One of the toddlers began dancing on the top rung of the metal ladder and Liz had to dash over to persuade him to get onto the slide. Then, since the two girls who worked fulltime in the nursery were busy in the dining-room, she had to prevent another toddler from climbing the wire fence that kept unsupervised children away from the pool, and disentangle Beryl and Deirdre, who had collided and were fighting. At least Hilary the Phantom Crapper had gone home, leaving a hotel legend behind him.
It wasn't only the children Liz found exhausting: it was their parents, too. Not all of them, by any means. Some were enjoying themselves as much as, and because, their children were. But Deirdre's mother was a teacher, and wouldn't leave the children alone; the moment she saw a child inactive for a moment, she would pounce. It was all that Liz and the girls could do to dissuade her from organizing games. Julian's mother couldn't find anything right with the hotel. 'Can't you give the children a choice of meals? They managed to where we stayed last year. And they organized outings for the children – surely that shouldn't be too much trouble…'
But the worst of them was Spike's father. Spike was a thin seven-year-old with a long, dull face and pinkish, peeling skin, and everyone could see how much his father disliked him. Yesterday his father had shamed him into braving the pool and had stood looking disgusted while Spike froze calf-deep in water, refusing to venture away from the side. 'Go on, you big baby. Look how everyone's laughing at you.' Eventually he had dragged Spike out and shoved him away as though he couldn't bear to touch him. 'Go on, you useless lump. Nobody wants to know you.'
This morning he'd virtually ignored his son, and seeing Liz trying to cheer Spike up, had shrugged and strolled away to read a magazine. Spike was in the sandpit now, picking up handfuls of sand and letting them trickle away without looking at them. Liz was about to climb down and propose a sandcastle competition for just the two of them, when his father reappeared.
'Don't bother with him. He doesn't like enjoying himself. I'm paying the earth to give him and his mother a holiday, but he doesn't care about that.'
Liz was biting her tongue, when Maggie came out of the nursery to call the children for their meal. She gave Liz a wink that said she would look after Spike, and Liz gladly left her to it.
Now that the slide was free, Anna made for it. 'I'm just going to have a drink before we go home,' Liz called. Nobody else was in sight except a reddish man at the edge of the cliff, a hundred yards beyond the playground wall. If he was as sunburnt as he looked, why on earth wasn't he in the shade? Against the glitter of the waves she couldn't make him out at all. She took refuge in the cool of the bar.
Jimmy was serving, a student teacher who worked in the hotel during the holidays. 'Here you go,' he said, drawing a lager without waiting for her order. 'And where's the little mother? I hope I get a few like her when I start teaching. When I look at some of them I wonder what I've let myself in for. Young Julian was skulking outside the window last night until someone left a drink close enough for him to grab. And how old is Faye – seven? She was saying she'd give me a kiss if I gave her a drink. Lolitas get younger and younger. Still, I'd rather have kids like that than Spike, poor little bugger.' Suddenly he ducked his head and began polishing glasses. 'Enough said. Here comes the fond father.'
Liz turned to see that Anna was still on the slide, and hoped Spike's father wouldn't come into the bar. He was striding past the pool enclosure, swinging his metal-tipped stick and fluffing up his curly black sideboards between finger and thumb. When he pushed open the windows and stepped into the bar she turned away. She didn't trust herself to be polite.
But he came straight to her. 'What's this, drinking alone? We can't have that. A Scotch for me, Jimmy, and give this lady whatever she wants.'
'I don't want anything just now, thanks.'
'Well, give me a shout when you do. I don't like to see ladies drinking alone. Mine's upstairs resting in case you wondered. No wonder, with what she has to put up with. I'm not surprised you came straight in here.'
Liz could only walk away without replying and sit in the window. Eventually he flung his corduroy jacket over a chair next to an old couple and began to hold forth to them. Liz squinted at the cliff-top. The reddened man was still there, but she couldn't make him out from this angle either, couldn't even decide if he was watching the sea or the hotel.
Anna was even less self-conscious now that she was alone, standing on the platform at the top of the slide like a sailor in a crow's nest, then letting herself slide down head-first, before running around to climb the ladder again. Liz watched until she realized she was risking more attention from Spike's father. She was downing the last of her drink when the door from the foyer opened. She'd never be able to slip away now, for here was Alan's mother.
She was a tall pale dry woman in her early sixties. Today she wore a silky blue ankle-length dress. She surveyed the bar as if she found nobody worth greeting, then she strode over to Liz. 'Hello, Elizabeth. Alan told me you were here, so I came to see my grandchild.'
'She's outside. Would you like a drink first?'
'Yes, but let me pay for it. Please, I insist. Yours is a lager, I take it.'
Liz felt as she'd meant Spike's father to feel. She and Isobel had never been friends – they seemed to have nothing in common except Alan – but Liz did her best, for Alan's sake and Anna's. Isobel returned with the drinks and stood waiting for Liz to open the windows Spike's father had closed. 'I think we ought to sit outside so that the child needn't come into the bar.'
A few round metal tables shadowed the lawn outside the bar. A breeze tried to flip over the beermats, like a baby doing its best to imitate its father. Liz meant to remark on the sunburnt man, but Isobel seemed not to notice him. Instead she stared at Anna. 'Surely you aren't letting the child go on the slide unsupervised?'
'She'll be all right, Isobel. She's been used to it for years.'
'Yes, I seem to remember your letting her on it before she was two years old.'
'That's why she's so confident now.' Liz recalled that holiday all too well; for a short time they'd stayed with Isobel, five miles inland, but there had been so much friction between the two women that in the end Alan had had to bring Liz and Anna to the Britannia Hotel instead. Isobel had paid most of the bill – they couldn't have continued their holiday otherwise. Liz hated feeling obliged to people she didn't like.
'Well, I can't bear to watch.' Isobel turned her back on the playground, as if Liz were forcing her to do so. For a few minutes she was silent, sipping her gin and tonic; from her expression it might have been vinegar. Something else had annoyed her. 'Alan didn't seem very glad to see me today,' she said.
'I expect he just didn't want to be interrupted. Did you let him know you were coming?'
Isobel stared affrontedly at her. 'It's a pity if I have to make an appointment to see my own son.'
'Oh, sometimes I virtually have to make an appointment to speak to him, and I'm in the same house.' Liz was trying her hardest, but evidendy Isobel was offended at being compared to a mere wife. 'He's. having problems with his writing just now,' Liz said.
'I wonder why that is? Has he anything to worry him at home?' When Liz shook her head, less angrily than she might have, Isobel stood up. 'Well, I can't wait all day for the child to come to me,' she said, and strode toward the playground.
