Love Always

‘Do you have a cigarette, Frank?’ she said, and held out her hand.

Befuddled by wine, but mesmerised by her, Frank gave his hostess a cigarette. She put it to her mouth and watched as he lit it.

‘Don’t worry,’ Frances said, her voice rich with amusement. ‘I won’t bite you.’

‘We’re having such a jol y holiday, Frances,’ he told her. ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ she said, smiling in the darkness. ‘I hope there’s more to come.’

She rol ed her head from side to side, listening to the vertebrae crunch slightly. ‘Ouch,’ she said.

‘You al right?’ Frank asked. ‘Just – it’s been a long day,’ she said. ‘My back’s stiff. You’re lucky, you lot. You’re young. You sleep wel , you eat wel , you have fun . . . And then you become a proper grown-up. And it’s different.’

Frank, holding his glass at an angle, appeared to have realised he was a little too drunk for this conversation. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s not your fault.’ Frances bit her lip, sat down on the terrace and was silent for a moment. ‘But that’s for another day. I don’t want to puncture the golden dreams of youth.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Ah, when I was younger, we used to come to this part of the coast for picnics, to swim.

Pamela and I, and our friends. I’d see this house, up on the hil , and wonder about it.’ She brought her legs up so her chin was resting on her knees.

‘I always wanted to live here. And now I do.’

‘That’s great, isn’t it?’ Frank sat heavily down next to her. ‘Yes,’ Frances said softly. ‘Yes, it is. I’m very lucky. I have to tel myself that. It’s just sometimes I wish I was anywhere . . . anywhere but here.’

He was silent, as was she. Upstairs, a window opened quietly, but otherwise the house was completely stil .

Chapter Seventeen

Over a week passed, but it could have been a year: time seemed to stop, wrapping them in a cocoon. The days were fil ed with warm weather, fresh cold seas, lazing, reading, listening to music. By night they watched each other on the terrace or over dinner, watched as they grew more tanned, more at ease, knew each other, for better and for worse. It felt as if it had always been like this, a kind of heightened reality where everything was more exciting, colours were sharper, people were more beautiful, life was there to be taken. But of course, it wasn’t real y like that.

Perhaps it was the summer wind, blowing off the sea and through the house, sweeping them up in its path. But none of them was un affected by it.

They left Summercove, too. Frances got them tickets to the Minack Theatre and they saw Julius Caesar: sitting out in the refreshing night breeze on the theatre at the edge of the sea. They ate pasties in Marazion, and Cecily and Guy walked across the glittering silver causeway to the beautiful fortress castle of St Michael’s Mount.

Some of them went surfing in Sennen Cove; one morning the others stayed behind while Guy, Louisa and Cecily went with Frances to St Ives to see her dealer and talk about the London show. As they were leaving, Frances stumbled and stepped on Frank, who was kissing Louisa goodbye; she pierced his foot with her stiletto heel, and was horrified as he sank to the ground in agony. They bought him sickly pink sticks of rock from St Ives to say sorry, the sweet candy already stuck to the striped paper bags by the time Frank returned that afternoon from the beach, hobbling and supported by Miranda and Jeremy. One evening, they went into Penzance, to see Doctor in Distress playing at the Savoy. Guy took photos with his old box Brownie: Cecily on the beach, standing on a rock, her bobbed hair blowing about her face like a glossy brown halo; games of cricket, the bal flying into the sea; Frances at her easel (after he’d asked permission, of course); Frank (by now recovered, no more than an angry red stigma on his foot) snoring on the lawn like a slumbering blond god, the view of the path down to the sea blinding white in the midday sun.

It would seem from the outside as if they were in a blissful, untroubled holiday bubble. It would seem, too, as if the Leightons fitted in perfectly with the household, though of course it was their very outsider status which gave the summer its frisson of excitement, of fun, of them – al of them –

feeling as if they were watching themselves in a film, that it was unreal.

The longer their stay the hotter the weather became, night and day. Frank was happiest when he was outside, playing sports with Jeremy and Archie, trying to flirt with Miranda and Frances, and trying also – it would seem unsuccessful y – to seduce his girlfriend. His wandering hands became something of a feature, the fingers creeping across Louisa’s wel -upholstered, neat figure, only to be pushed briskly away, much to his dis appointment. Guy, on the other hand, just seemed to get on with everyone. Everyone except Miranda.

‘He’s so damned pleased with himself,’ she said to Cecily one Friday, a week after the Leightons had arrived.

Cecily had just returned from sitting for her mother upstairs and was in a bad mood; she disliked being stil for so long. She was slumped in one of the worn-out damask armchairs in the cool of the living room, flicking through a recent Country Life. ‘Look at this girl,’ she said, slapping the back of her hand in annoyance onto the page. ‘“Lady Melissa Bligh”. Why do they always have these photos of boring English girls with awful teeth?’ She gazed longingly at Lady Melissa’s black lace dress and swanlike neck. ‘Anyway, Guy’s not pleased with himself,’ she added after a moment.

‘Yes, he is,’ Miranda said, also flicking through a magazine. ‘He thinks he knows it al . What’s wrong and right. He’s very pleased with himself, if you ask me.’ She looked out through the French windows onto the lawn, where Guy was playing cricket with Frank and Jeremy, practising his bowling action. ‘I don’t like the way he acts as if he knows us al so wel .’

‘That’s what I like about him, actual y,’ Cecily said. ‘I feel like I’ve known him for ever.’

Miranda rol ed her eyes. ‘You would say that, because I said the opposite. Of course.’

‘I mean it, honestly,’ Cecily protested. She looked awkwardly at her sister. ‘Please. Don’t let’s row again,’ she begged. ‘Last night was so awful. I said sorry for it. You know I did.’

‘Al right,’ Miranda said crossly. She touched the glowing red scratch on her cheek, and Cecily too; they were almost identical. ‘We’re al right now. Let’s leave it, for heaven’s sake.’