Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of the Wonder Girls - Sarah May - Страница 9

Still high, Saskia drifted down between the rows of netted redcurrant bushes able to feel every crevice and ridge beneath the thin soles of the sandals she’d bought at a market in the south of France. Mel and Tony were pre-divorce friends of her father’s. Richard Greaves had known Mel since university and the Greaves stayed in their villa at St Julien most Julys. During the first week, before Ruth arrived, Mel drove Saskia to the local market—a girls only trip—and for a whole two hours she’d tried to be Saskia’s mother, then she got bored with the idea and moved onto something else. Before she got bored she bought Saskia the sandals she was now wearing—had worn all summer, in fact—and a bracelet made of bottle tops that African immigrants were selling on blankets, which Ruth had admired when they picked her up from the airport in Montpellier. Saskia had been so pleased to see her she’d almost given it to her before changing her mind and deciding to keep it.

A plane passed overhead. She watched its shadow move solidly over the ground and redcurrant bushes, her eyes following it as it ran over the rows—until she saw Mr Sutton. Was that Mr Sutton from school—picking redcurrants just like her, approximately five rows away? She wasn’t convinced it was. Saskia believed in UFOs; she believed in ghosts, parallel universes and monsters like the Yeti that evolution had stranded, and sometimes she got confused and saw things out of the corner of her eye that never quite materialised when she really concentrated.

No—Mr Sutton was definitely there. He was waving at her.

Saskia didn’t wave back, she just carried on staring.

He hesitated then made his way over to her row.

‘Hey,’ he said, pleased to see her. Saskia was one of a handful of pupils going on to study art at degree level, and he kept this coterie of girls close.

Saskia finally emerged from what her grandmother used to refer to as one of her ‘brown studies’—lapses of attention that had induced her mother to have her tested for epilepsy as a child—and smiled back at Mr Sutton.

He was wearing shorts and a yellow polo shirt. The effect was stodgy and preppy and just not him at all. Her dad wore polo shirts; they’d been bought for him by his ex-wife, who was also Saskia’s mother, because he never knew what to wear when he wasn’t wearing a suit. Now her mother was dressing a different man, and although her dad made an effort—post-divorce—not to wear the polo shirts, he also made the mistake of not throwing them away. He came across them when he was looking for something to decorate in and after that they once more became fixtures in his casual wardrobe even though they were covered in paint stains and smelt of white spirit.

For this reason, although she didn’t know it, Saskia had always associated polo shirts with helplessness, and seeing Mr Sutton wearing a yellow one confused her because he’d never struck her as helpless before. It was like somebody had got to him before he could get to himself, and it made her feel sorry for him.

He must have read something of what she was thinking in her eyes then because he paused, suddenly awkward. ‘What are you picking?’

‘Redcurrants.’

He held up his punnet. ‘Me too.’

She nodded, gesturing to the redcurrant field they were standing in the middle of. ‘Yeah—’

‘I can’t believe I just said that.’

She nodded again. ‘Yeah—’

He laughed. ‘So—how’s it going?’

‘Fine. How’s your summer been?’

He had no idea how his summer had been. ‘I went to South Africa.’

She didn’t ask him who he went with—if anybody. ‘How was it?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Saskia laughed.

He twisted his neck like it might be stiff. ‘What about you? What have you been up to all summer?’

‘I went to the south of France with my dad.’

‘Get any painting done?’

She shook her head. ‘I had some ideas—made a few sketches.’

‘I’d like to see them.’

She nodded, aware that she had no intention of showing him the sketches she made after seeing Tony and Mel in the kitchen that night when she’d got up for some water. ‘We were staying with some friends of dad’s,’ she blurted out, trying to distract herself from the memory of Mel bent over the marble kitchen surface, her breasts pushed into a pile, her hands gripping the edge of it, and Tony behind her. It had looked fierce and ugly with about as much choreography involved as taking a crap, and now she was scared of the whole thing. ‘They had a pool and stuff.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘Yeah—the first couple of weeks were, then my dad and his friend Tony sort of remembered that they never really got on and that my dad’s always fancied his wife.’ Saskia heard herself saying it and couldn’t believe she was saying it, but couldn’t stop herself. ‘And Tony, who’s been holed up in paradise for about two years too long, was like drunk the whole time and then dad got drunk and then they started rowing.’ She paused for breath, horrified. She hadn’t told anybody this—not even Ruth, who’d actually been there—so why was she telling Mr Sutton in the middle of a field of redcurrants?

He was staring at her, about to say something when suddenly there was a woman standing next to him wearing black wraparound sunglasses that made her look like a beetle. She’d appeared from nowhere, had her hand on his arm, and was smiling at them both.

Behind the glasses, Saskia recognised Ms Webster who’d taught her Physics in Year 9. For a moment she wondered what on earth Ms Webster—who also coached the Burwood Girls’ Netball A Team—was doing at Martha’s Farm as well. Then she realised: Ms Webster was here because Mr Sutton was here; Ms Webster was here with Mr Sutton.

He’d been to South Africa with Ms Webster. They’d lain on the beach together, swam in the sea together, and had sex in a hotel—and other places—together. Now the yellow polo shirt—Ms Webster was wearing the same one—made sense.

‘Typical,’ Ms Webster said loudly, triumphantly, holding a basket full of redcurrants up in the air.

Saskia stared at her, her mouth hanging open awkwardly.

‘So much for his contribution to jam making.’

Saskia didn’t know what to say—she’d never had a jam-making conversation before.

‘I just saw Grace as well,’ Ms Webster carried on.

‘Grace works here,’ Saskia said without thinking. It sounded mean—when all she’d meant to do was say something because she couldn’t carry on standing there with her mouth hanging silently open, feeling like she’d just got drunk in high heels.

‘Well—we’d better be going,’ Ms Webster said, her hand still on Mr Sutton’s arm, turning him round, steering him away. ‘Enjoy the rest of your holiday.’

‘I will.’ Saskia was jabbing the front of her sandal repetitively against a ridge of earth and now the crust cracked and crumbled.

Mr Sutton turned back towards her. ‘I’m in and out of school the next couple of weeks—if you’ve got anything you’re working on or want to show me before the beginning of term.’

‘Thanks—’

Another tug on the arm and he was led away again, only to break free a second time.

‘Oh—and I hope that’s not permanent.’

Saskia stared at him. She had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Your neck. The scorpion.’

Her hand went to her neck. ‘No, it’s—no.’

He smiled, paused, then turned and walked away with Ms Webster.

Saskia kept her hand on her neck, covering the temporary tattoo that had come free with one of her music magazines. Her eyes followed Mr Sutton and Ms Webster in their matching polo shirts and South African sun tans all the way to the weighing-in hut.

They were arguing.

By the time Vicky and Ruth reached Saskia, standing inert still in the field of redcurrants, the black Peugeot convertible belonging to Ms Webster had left Martha’s Farm in a loose trail of dust. Neither the driver, Ms Webster, or the passenger, Mr Sutton, looked like they were going home to make jam.

‘Did you speak to him?’ Vicky asked, breathless still from the Valium-induced attack of vertigo.

Saskia nodded vacantly.

‘And?’

‘What?’

‘What did he say?’ Vicky was beginning to lose patience.

Saskia was about to mention his reference to her tattoo when she decided not to. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Sas—’ Vicky insisted.

‘He went to South Africa—on holiday.’

‘South Africa?’

Saskia sighed, her hands dropping to her sides. ‘With Ms Webster.’

‘Webster?’ Vicky screamed, the screams echoing across the fields. ‘No—fucking—way. Are you sure?’

‘She was standing right here in front of me, Vick. They were wearing matching clothes.’

‘Like—how matching?’

‘Yellow polo shirts, shorts and Birkenstocks.’

‘That is so depressing. How come we didn’t know anything about this? How did she get to him?’

‘End of last term,’ Ruth said.

Vicky turned on her. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I don’t know that—I’m just guessing. Staff drinks and stuff.’

‘Staff drinks and stuff? They went to South Africa together, Ruth—they’re practically married.’ She paused. ‘Webster. Why didn’t I see this coming?’

‘Webster’s okay,’ Ruth ventured then paused. ‘Isn’t she?’

‘Webster’s not okay, Ruth. She’s like the wrong side of healthy, like too healthy, like under all that lycra she wears she’s got no genitals or something.’

Nobody said anything.

Saskia’s hand remained over the temporary scorpion tattoo as they trailed slowly over to the weighing-in hut, expecting to find Grace there—only to be told by the boy in the ice cream van that she’d already gone.

‘She had to leave early—something about a puncture. I offered to take her home in the van, but—’ His eyes moved curiously over all three of them as Vicky emptied her raspberries into Ruth’s already full container and stepped away from the hut, crushing the ones that fell beneath her sandals. She stood, bored and dizzy, aware of the ice cream boy’s eyes on her, but too overwhelmed by the thought of Mr Sutton and Ms Webster to react.

The ice cream boy stared at the red spots in the dust and tried hard to think of something to say. He was still trying as the girls walked back up the field towards Tom’s car.

‘Webster’s totally wrong for Sutton,’ Vicky started up again then broke off, staring into Saskia’s punnet. ‘Why did you pick redcurrants?’

Saskia stared at the redcurrants, trying to remember.

‘I wanted to paint them. Remember that triptych I did of the rotting quince?’

‘No.’

‘I was thinking about doing another one with redcurrants.’

‘Morbid.’

‘It’s only fruit.’

They got to the top of the field where Tom was sitting in the sandpit, banging on an old plastic cup with a lolly stick and making a child with blond curls laugh.

‘Looks like I’ve got to go, little man,’ he said when the girls arrived. ‘See you around.’

Vicky glanced at the toddler without interest as Tom handed him the plastic cup and stick and watched him try to reproduce the sound he’d been making.

‘Did you manage to meet up with Grace?’ Tom asked as they got back in the car.

‘No—she already left—had a puncture or something. We’ll probably catch up with her on the road. Can we get some windows down?’