The Holiday Friend

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

Genres: Literary Fiction; 20th Century Romance; Holiday Romance; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

'A powerful tragedy' Independent Described by the New York Times upon her death as 'one of Britain's best-known novelists', plunge yourself into the wry world of Pamela Hansford Johnson in this story of seduction and marriage, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Jane Howard and Barbara Pym. ****************** Gavin and Hannah Eastwood are a happy couple, holidaying with their overprotected eleven-year-old son Giles in a beautiful village on the coast of Belgium. Melissa is a student of Gavin's, also in the village, having followed Gavin there. A hopeless romantic living in a fantasy, she obsessively follows the family, going out of her way to bump into the couple repeatedly - soon becoming inescapable. While Gavin pities her, Hannah finds her presence alarming; and while they're distracted by her appearances, they miss Giles secretly pursuing his own sinister friendship. . . 'Teases your curiosity and plays on your sympathy' Kirkus ****************** Praise for Pamela Hansford Johnson: 'Witty, satirical and deftly malicious' Anthony Burgess 'A remarkable craftswoman' A.S. Byatt 'Hansford Johnson at her wittiest is Waugh mingled with Malcolm Bradbury Ruth Rendell 'A writer whose memory fully deserves to be kept alive' Jonathan Coe

Release date: October 4, 2018

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 272

Sample

Chapter 1

Visitors to Belgium will know the tram that runs, with a few inland incursions, along the coast from Ostend to Knokke near the Dutch border. It clangs along, past resort after resort: it is very convenient, and always crowded. About a third of the way along the line is the small town of Les Roseaux (Het Riet), where the tracks run through the market place past a cluster of sandy, wooded hills for the children to play in some sort of shelter when the weather is inclement. There are four hotels in Les Roseaux itself and three ten minutes away, down a straight road past the miniature golf-course which leads to the beach and the dunes. The hotels here are greatly subject to the visiting season, for they are exposed to the weather and after the peak months trade drops off rapidly.

The Hotel Albert, in the town, is different. This is a modest place, but it is expanding. It has only a brief closed period in the year, since it is the chief haunt of the local people as well as the holiday-makers. There is a glassed-in terrace and an open one with infra-red heating, so it is possible to drink there, or in the bar, for many months. It is kept by Armand Croisset, a widower, and his elderly mother, who has by now found the cooking too much for her but nevertheless keeps a Napoleonic supervision over the kitchens. The food, Belgian, plentiful, very good, is inspired by her. She sits most of the day just inside the bar, where she can keep an eye on the two terraces. She is tall and stately, with beautiful grey hair elaborately coiled: she wears dark dresses and many beads. Armand is still quite young; she had him late in life.

He works very hard. He is always up by a quarter to six, and never goes to bed till midnight. He is a burly man, fair-haired, with round blue eyes and a heavy chin. Walloon by birth, his familiar language and his sympathies are French. He speaks good English, and some German.

To Les Roseaux, in the last week of July, came Gavin Eastwood with his wife and son, for a fortnight’s holiday. They had been to the Albert for the previous two years, and liked it because it was comfortable and cheap enough not to be a strain on a lecturer’s salary. It also pleased them to be near to the pictures in Bruges and Ghent, and to play golf on the miniature course. They had come by the tram, and the walk from it across the tracks and into the town was an arduous one. Hannah carried her big case and Giles’s small one, and Gavin his own case and another of hers. They were panting a little as they walked up the steps of the hotel into the hall lined with mackintoshes, spades, pails, beach-balls. They were met with cries of delight.

‘Welcome back again!’ Armand cried, opening his arms as if to embrace them all. ‘It is so good to see you.’

‘It’s good to see you, M. Croisset,’ said Gavin, ‘we’re beginning to feel like old habitués. Have we got the same bedroom?’ This was a fairly large one, painted a somewhat violent pink, with a balcony and a bathroom.

‘The same, and the same one for the little gentleman, on the floor above. How are you, Giles?’

‘I’m fine,’ said the boy. ‘Thank you.’

‘Pierre! Carry the bags up. Did you have a good crossing? The weather is magnificent.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Giles, ‘I was sick. But I feel better now.’

The feeling of comfort, of familiarity, descended on them all. Soon they would creep, somewhat shamefacedly, to the frame in the hall where the dinner menu was put up round about half-past five, and their mouths would water at delights to come. But now they wanted tea, to give them the energy to unpack. Giles was for going to a pastrycook’s on the front, which sold chocolate éclairs with confectioner’s custard inside which he much preferred to cream, but they were firm with him. There would be time for that. So they went towards the glassed terrace, meeting Madame on the way. Both Gavin and Hannah spoke to her in French, since she knew no English, and Giles said ‘Bonjour,’ looking pleased with himself afterwards as though he had had a triumph and need never exert himself again. Greeting Madame was always rather awe-inspiring, like greeting an empress of uncertain temper, though Madame had never been seen to be put out. Gavin was always rather in fear that one or the other of them would do something to offend her; he was in some ways a timid man, given to irrational unease.

They sat at a table in the window, watching the sunlit crowds barging along towards golf-course or beach, children on bicycles threading a precarious way along, seemingly with small concern for life or limb, middle-aged women in trousers or even bikinis, men in flowered beach-shirts. There was a light wind, which had been enough to make the Channel choppy, but the sky was starch-blue with a few bright clouds.

‘Oh, it is nice to be here again!’ said Hannah, putting out a hand to pat Giles. She was forty-two, tall and well-rounded, as yet not going grey, with a girlish face. She had a great capacity for enjoyment.

Gavin did not at once reply. He was looking about him with an air of content, the comfortably shabby bar, so much in contrast with the newness of the terrace, at Madame in her chair, at the new barmaid smoking as she dispensed beer. Gavin Eastwood was just forty-eight, but looked less. He was tall and graceful, a dressy man with an inclination to identify with youth; but he went no further in this than to wear his hair rather long over his forehead, though short at back and sides, and to indulge in a broad orange tie, bought specially for this holiday. He was greyish-fair and distinctly good-looking; it had always been a miracle to Hannah that she had never lost him to another woman, for she was humble and thought little of herself.

Giles was not quite twelve, small for his age, dreamy and bad at school. He was dreading his report.

That was the worst of coming away the moment school broke up; the beastly thing would follow you, sent on by your aunt who was looking after the flat, and then there would be the usual sorrowing row. Taking another piece of cake, he strove to put the thought behind him.

‘Can I go down to the beach while you unpack?’

‘May you, not can you. You can, obviously. But do you want to go alone?’

‘I’m old enough, if that’s what you mean. And nobody could drown in that sea, it goes on for miles before it reaches your knees.’

‘But you’re not going to bathe, of course,’ said Hannah. ‘You just go down there and look around, and don’t be too long. We’ll expect you back by’ – she consulted her watch – ‘half-past six at the latest. Maybe Daddy’ll stroll down soon and pick you up. And don’t go beyond the wind-breaks right at the bottom of the steps.’

They watched him go off.

‘Another milestone,’ said Gavin. ‘A year ago he wouldn’t have gone off on his own. And I admit I hate to see him do it.’

‘So do I. But he’s growing up. We can’t keep him tied to us.’

They were uneasy all the while they were emptying their cases, and hurried down to the plage, to the row of Disney-like shops and cafés, earlier than they had intended. They spotted Giles at once. He had certainly strayed further than they had told him to, but was harmlessly paddling in one of the three narrow strips of water that preceded the sea.

‘Oh good,’ said Hannah, relieved. ‘Let’s not go and fetch him right away, or he’ll think we don’t trust him. Let’s go to the Star Café and see M. Van Damm. We can keep an eye on him from there.’

They sat down on the terrace, and soon M. Van Damm was there, greeting them as Armand had greeted them, with arms flung wide. A small spruce man, in his high-necked, red-braided, white jacket, he was something of a polyglot, though he would only with reluctance speak French. He had been a prisoner-of-war God knew where, and had learned many languages, most of them well. He had a little Russian. He was a fervent Flemish Nationalist, though this he kept hidden from his foreign customers, most of whom would not have understood his principles.

Aimé Van Damm, in his blinding white jacket, with military upturned collar, with his black trousers tapered towards his small feet. With outstretched arms.

‘Welcome back! May I say, welcome home?’

They were charmed.

‘And the boy, where is he? Have you brought him with you?’

‘He’s playing down there,’ said Hannah, ‘he’ll be up soon. As you see, he’s old enough to play on his own.’

‘Well, he’ll be growing up now. Quite a big young gentleman, I expect?’

‘Well, not so big,’ said Gavin, ‘but getting on in years.’

They ordered beer, Stella Artois. M. Van Damm sat down a moment to chat with them, but was soon called away again by a press of custom.

Yes, it was a beautiful evening, despite the wind. The breeze blew in the canvas wind-breaks against which the deck-chairs stood in their ordered lines, and the sun flushed the sand and glittered on the sea. To the left, the dunes were white as ivory, and the reeds, from which the town got its name, shivered and whistled.

Gavin put his hand out over the table. She took it in her own and pressed it strongly. They still retained a certain passion, and were looking forward to the night.

Hannah stood up. ‘He’s coming!’ She started towards the door, but he pulled her back.

‘No, don’t. He’ll only think we’re over-anxious. Wait till he gets to the top, and then we’ll emerge, all nonchalance.’

She sat down again. ‘Yes, you’re right. How difficult it is to grow him!’

‘I wish he would actually grow a bit.’ He was watching the small figure as it came, head lowered, scuffling slowly up the beach. ‘But his feet are big, so I expect he’ll make a sudden spurt.’

They had hopes of all kinds for their son, that he should become tall, handsome, and perhaps even be clever. They felt he was a late developer, but that sooner or later develop he would. They had sent him to a private day-school, which was a strain on Gavin’s earnings, because they could not bear for him to be lost in a class of thirty or forty boys, unprodded, unguided. They had had experience of this when they had sent him, from political and social principles, to a state primary school: it had been a disaster. At eight, he had barely been able to read.

They hoped he was happy. Sometimes they felt that, in his dreaminess, he was; that he might dwell in a magical inner world of his own. They knew that at this moment the question of his report was on his mind; how were they to deal with it when it came? They always tried to talk it over with him calmly, but he grew more and more frantic till the matter had to be dropped. Would it be there tomorrow? At Les Roseaux the post arrived about half-past eleven. They would come in to lunch to find the thing waiting for them.

Giles reached the top of the steps. They came out of the café without haste.

‘Hullo! What have you been doing?’

‘Oh, just mucking around.’

‘We’ve seen M. Van Damm. He was asking about you.’

‘Was he? I’m hungry.’

‘Well,’ said Hannah, ‘if we stroll slowly back we shall just be in time for dinner. Darling, let me wipe those sandy feet.’ She took out her handkerchief.

‘Don’t. It’ll dry soon, and then it’ll fall off.’

They went back to the hotel, Giles’s hand in his mother’s. Now and then he raised hers up and rubbed it against his cheek.

‘Shall we play golf tomorrow?’ The course was full, people queueing at each hole to play. They watched for a minute over the privet hedge, then went on. Giles had brightened.

The dinner menu, the main course at least, was something of a disappointment: oiseaux sans têtes, which none of them much liked. But after the soup were fondus au parmesan, which they did; Giles could have made a whole meal of them.

The dining-room was crowded with English, French and Germans, but their favourite table by the window had been kept for them. In the lower frame was a strip of emerald-coloured glass, beyond which a row of geraniums strained in the breeze. It was a pleasant, unpretentious room, with wheel-like wooden chandeliers and brass ornaments on the walls. ‘We’ll have a bottle of wine tonight,’ Gavin said to Giles, ‘and you shall have a glass.’

‘I’d like a bit of water in it,’ the boy said. He did not really like wine at all, but it made him feel important.

The soup, a great metal bowl of it, was left on the table. It was excellent soup, and Hannah always wondered how they made it. Somehow her own soups were always rather thin and lacking in flavour. The steam arising from it whetted their appetites still further; Giles had two helpings. They ate hungrily, while watching the holiday crowds stream back from the beach.

‘It’s good to be here,’ said Hannah, with a great, replete sigh.

Armand came over to them, resting his big hand on Giles’s thin shoulder. He supervised every meal, and afterwards supervised the bar. He was Argus-eyed.

‘Is everything all right? It is good, yes?’

‘Splendid,’ said Hannah, ‘it always is. We’re so glad to be here.’

‘That was an excellent bottle of wine,’ said Gavin. ‘You keep a good cellar.’

Armand tapped the label. ‘I’ve had a new consignment of that. I’m glad you like it. Well.’ His gaze searched the table-cloth as if there might be something missing, something yet needed for their pleasure. ‘Would the little boy like another pastry?’

Giles, whose brow had darkened for a moment at this description, cheered up. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Oh, darling, you haven’t room for another bite!’

‘Please, mummy.’

When dinner was over, they sat smoking and drinking beer (Giles had Coca-cola) on the terrace. It was still warm enough to sit outside and watch the sun go down in a lemon glow behind the trees opposite. These trees were weather-indicators; when they rose in the morning they always looked to see if they were rattling too much. In fact, the weather seen from their bedroom was otherwise deceptive, for there was yellow glass in the top panes that gave an impression of permanent sunlight.

A German boy, well-grown, about Giles’s age, detached himself from his parents and came over to them. He said, in careful, precise English, ‘Would your son like to come and play?’

But Giles, full-up and feeling sophisticated after his wine, replied politely, ‘Not just now, thank you. Perhaps tomorrow.’

‘My name is Hans Fischer.’

‘Mine’s Giles Eastwood.’

‘We have never been here before.’

‘We have. We’ve been here for years and years. Everyone knows us.’

‘So. Well, till tomorrow then.’

‘Couldn’t you have played for a little while -’ Hannah began.

‘Not now.’

‘– just to be polite?’

‘Oh, Mummy.’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Gavin, ‘he’s pretty tired after a long day.’

‘Yes, and it’s getting near his bedtime. Hurry up and finish that coke.’

But Giles would not budge until the sun had gone down, and the lights shot up all over the town.

Chapter 2

In the Pension des Colombes, in Byronlaan, a sandy, poplared road running off the main route to the beach, Melissa Hirst sat on the edge of the bed, her heart heavy with love and guilt. All the way across the Channel she had hidden from him, and at Ostend had sat about in a café for an hour in order to take a later tram. She longed to see him, and dreaded the questions he might ask her.

She was a fairly tall girl of twenty-one, very thin, a little stooped. Her features were pretty and regular, but by no means striking, and she wore her thin, light-brown hair in a long tail down her back, fastened at the back of her head by a slide with a prong in it. She was reading English at the university, but for the past year had attended Gavin’s lectures on the history of art, sitting at the back of the room, taking no notes, her large and mournful eyes raised to him.

She was poor. She had only the small sum left to her by her father, who had died last summer; three hundred pounds, that and her student grant was all she had. To take this holiday she had sold some Victorian jewellery left her by her mother; she had only twice been out of England before, once with a school party to Austria, once with her parents to Boulogne, and she felt very strange.

She had fallen deeply in love with Gavin the moment she saw him; his image obsessed her. She lived when she was near him, and at other times she merely existed. She had spoken only a few words with him on one or two occasions after his lectures, when she had found questions to ask him. She knew he had a wife and a son and hoped he did not love them.

She was still a virgin. She had once tried, fashionably, to lose her virginity after a student party, but, unused to drinking and having had far too much of a sour red wine that came in great bottles, had no sooner got on the bed than she had to get off it to be sick. It was a shameful memory, and though she could not remember it very well, it seemed to her that the man had stood and laughed at her.

Three months ago, she had overheard Gavin talking to a colleague on the main staircase. There were many people going up and down, and she had found herself just behind them. She remembered the smell of his tweed suit, heated by his body. They were discussing holidays. ‘Oh, we always go to the same place,’ Gavin was saying, ‘the Hotel Albert at Les Roseaux on the Belgian coast, not far from Ostend. It’s fairly cheap and it’s very good. They know us there.’ Asked when he was going, he replied that they were taking their holiday early, leaving the day after the school term had finished.

From then on she plotted and schemed. She was going to follow him, if only to look at him from afar (but it would not be from afar, not in a small place, which she had discovered that Les Roseaux was). She could not bear the weary months of the long vacation, in the small flat she shared with two other girls, without a sight of him. But, when he saw her, when he came to speak to her (which of course he would) how was she to explain her presence? She could say she had come to Belgium to study the art there, and had hit on Les Roseaux by the purest accident. After all, why should he not believe her? He had no idea that she loved him, could have the slightest motive for going deliberately where he was. She would cry, ‘Oh, this is a coincidence! Fancy seeing you here!’

There were moments when certain intimations of common sense came over her, but she fought them down. She had no hopes whatsoever except of being allowed to love him, and after all, who could allow her save herself? She could not live with common sense; it would be like being enclosed in a box of yellow cardboard, with her head touching the lid.

She did not believe she had anything to give him. Never very successful with men, she had no great conceit of herself. When she was fourteen, she had been pleased by her romantic name, believing that when she was grown up she would only have to speak it for a man to love her. Sometimes she had other names, she was Undine, she was Isolde, thin frail names in keeping with her body, but she was better pleased to be really Melissa. Now, however, she knew that the charm did not work. She was not really neglected; she went out a good deal with other students, and occasionally a man would take her out for coffee or a drink. But nothing had ever come of it, and now she wished that nothing should. She was all Gavin’s. She had no heart for anyone else. She wished desperately that at night she could dream of him, but she never did.

She had eaten a pleasant, unfamiliar meal, and now she was wondering what to do until bedtime. She was afraid to go along the plage in case she met him; she could not face that tonight. It was for tomorrow, this adventure, this peril. So she read a book on art that she had brought with her, hoping that it would please him to see her with it. The lamp in the bulb over the bed was a dim one, and soon her eyes began to ache. But one could not go to bed at nine!

She decided to take a risk and walk in the lane itself, perhaps to have coffee in a obscure-looking little place just on the corner, within sound. . .