Free Just For the Summer by Judy Astley

he finished limply.
    Jack didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know what Clare wanted from him. He only knew, depressingly, that it wasn’t the moment to tell her that he never wanted to see another art student in his life.
    Miranda, returning in time for the rather grey roast lamb, was surprised and scornful of Clare’s tears. Clarewas eating steadily and sulkily like a child who had to eat up all her meat before she was allowed pudding. Her make-up was smudged and her hair wild. Tears from an adult, tears especially in public, seemed to Miranda an appalling weakness. They should keep them private, except perhaps just a small glistening round the eyes for funerals, smiling through tears at weddings, that kind of thing. They should have it all under control. Tears were the protests of a child. Miranda was hard on her mother, but unused to her emotion. Clare had always hidden her tears away in the bathroom, where she could be locked in to cry in peace, convinced from the start that Miranda had enough disadvantages being born to a teenage student (unmarried – in the days when these things mattered) without the burden of Clare’s occasional bouts of misery as well. Silently enduring the pudding, Clare wished she was upon the headland lying in the damp ferns, the reassuring hulk of Eliot next to her. If she’d been pathetic and cried with him he’d probably have spanked her. Instead, later she’d probably have to have sex with Jack and would then, irritatingly, find that it had been just what she needed.
    While Clare loaded everyone into the Volvo and Jack waited for his receipt, the lady who had so shamelessly eavesdropped approached him. He smiled tentatively and she gathered up her handbag in front of her as if for protection.
    ‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ she began, in a way that made Jack feel he was about to mind a lot, ‘I think you were most unsympathetic to your wife. If a daughter of mine had been behaving like a little tramp I’d expect my husband to give her a good hiding, not make a lot of excuses. If the head of a household can’t make a stand what hope is there for Future Generations?’ She stared at Jack smugly as if daring him to disagree.
    ‘Quite right,’ came the voice of one of the listening legion of hotel residents, still cluttering up the hallway. Jack looked round, where was Clare when he needed her? Surely this would restore her sense of humour?
    ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I am sure no-one would dare offer a daughter of yours the opportunity to behave like a tramp.’ The woman looked as if this might do by way of an apology, till he added, ‘which is unfortunate for her.’
    ‘Disgraceful,’ came another voice from the sofas.
    I’m going, thought Jack, before it gets any worse. As he leapt for the door his too-hasty foot sent a pot full of geraniums crashing from its pedestal. It was quite satisfying to see just how much carpet could be covered by one medium-sized pot of earth.
    Well that was a good start to the holiday, Jack thought as he climbed into the driving seat of the Volvo. He wanted to tell Clare about the woman, but thought perhaps it would keep till bedtime, put her in a goodmood. Humour was the only novel form of foreplay he had left after so many years.
    The afternoon shone with fresh sunlight and in the back of the car the children were full and happy peering into the broken clouds for signs of rainbows.
    Clare looked calmer now as the car delved into the deep maze of hedgerows, the rich greenness renewed by the rain. Miranda sat quietly in the corner of the back seat, her head resting against the window, not, as her mother imagined, thinking about Steve, for she rarely gave him a thought. For her, with a hardheartedness that would have shocked Clare, he was an experience and an incident, no longer a person at all.
    Back at the house, Jack, solicitous, irritated Clare further by treating her like an invalid, tucking her into a deckchair with tea and