by Nesta Tuomey
At home that night, Graham picked up a book and flicked over the pages. Abandoning it, he turned the knob on the radio, the blurred ranging from station to station in keeping with his restless spirit. It was difficult to settle to anything.
His thoughts kept returning to the afternoon and the surprise he had felt at Kay’s desperation. It reminded him of something he had long forgotten, the intensity of youth, of painful longings, of hope denied. He remembered the warm salty tear on the back of his hand and was profoundly moved. She was young and bedazzled by the airline, he told himself uneasily, by his rank and pilot’s uniform.
He tried but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
TWENTY FOUR
The girls stayed at Los Calvados Apartamentos in the little seaside resort of Torremolinos. Sally had got the name from another hostess who stayed there the previous month. The apartment was cheap and clean and even more important, placed in the centre of the town beside shops and restaurants.
‘Hey, down there! Got a loan of some coffee?’ the request resounded in the cooking shaft the morning after they arrived.
The girls recoiled in alarm at hearing a male voice so close. What had they been talking about the minute before and, Oh Lord, the previous night when in the euphoria of being away in a foreign country they had uninhibitedly talked and sung at the top of their voices.
They shouted back their regrets. ‘No, sorry, we’ve only just arrived.’ ‘Well, hi there... You’re English, I reckon.’
‘Irish.’ called Sally.
‘Welcome to sunny Spain, girls,’ continued the disembodied American voice, adding cheerfully. ‘Heck, I guess it’ll have to be Bourbon again for breakfast.’
Every morning after that he obligingly shouted down the shaft to waken them but it was the end of the week before any of them actually met. With Kay still in a sad state over her pilot and Sally downcast at not hearing from her Dutchman before coming away, it wasn’t surprising they were all a little bruised and apathetic about making new friendships with the opposite sex.
As for Bunny, she had suddenly developed a conscience over her blonde lieutenant, who was in fact engaged to her best friend. In an excess of remorse, she vowed that in future there would be no more unorthodox visits to her flat, no more heartrending discussions, no more Teddy Canavan in fact, except legitimately under the eyes of Carrie, his fiancée.
The other two listened with dubious expressions not really believing her. But Bunny insisted she was serious and to compensate for a world devoid for evermore of love, spent most of her holiday peeling, chopping and frying large quantities of potatoes to make chips, when she wasn’t hanging over the atmospherical radio in the hopes of hearing the Beatles singing ‘Yesterday’. It was her theme song.
To be honest, Sally and Kay could have given the chips a miss and happily eaten out at night. Apart from the fact that food was so cheap, there was the added attraction of maybe picking up a bit of local colour in the shape of a Pepe or an Antonio. But for Bunny’s sake, they unselfishly set aside their own preferences, not wanting to deprive her of the one thing which gave her pleasure and perhaps lightened the burden of loving - if it really was love - one who belonged to another.
On their first night they went to a disco arcade and many Cuba Libres later, linked arms and danced down the main street singing from the depths of their disillusion, ‘Feck ‘em all, Feck ‘em all, Feck ‘em all. The long and the short and the tall...’ getting particular pleasure out of, ‘So we’re saying goodbye to them all’ and ending up satisfyingly breathless and vindicated at the entrance to their apartment block.
The next night saw a repeat performance but this time as they unsteadily climbed the steps to the street they had a sizable following of Spanish youths, cooing endearments and gesturing suggestively.
‘Just ignore them,’ Sally urged, being more used to this kind of situation than Kay or Bunny. She had been abroad on holidays twice before and she had learned to fend off the Mediterranean male without offending.
But she had reckoned without the potent rum which had gone to Bunny’s head.
‘Nice boys,’ called Bunny in the foolhardy way one might say ‘nice doggie’ to a hopeful stray. ‘Kiss, kiss,’ she pursed her lips and giggled invitingly.
At once, the youths surrounded them, driven wild by this excitingly forward Irlandesa. ‘Oh, get lost,’ Sally growled exasperatedly. ‘Vamoose! Avanti! Oh damn!’ she sighed,
‘They probably think I’m encouraging them.’
Judging by their smiling, excited faces the Spaniards didn’t understand much English, if any. One of the pressing, circling youths boldly pinched Kay’s cheek. ‘Guapa,’ he said admiringly. ‘Te quiero.’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ she said crossly.
Losing patience, Sally caught hold of Bunny and they pushed and pulled her up the street. Behind them, the uproariously laughing youths gradually fell back, highly amused at their flight.
‘Black coffee,’ Sally planned as they headed back to the apartment. ‘Lots of it.’
Next morning, she and Kay were awakened rather later than usual by the mournful strains of ‘Yesterday’. They grinned sleepily at each other. It wasn’t up to Bunny’s usual performance - a bad hangover saw to that - but despite her bursting head she refused to let it interfere with what she obviously considered an indispensable and valuable service to the community - her only concession being to slice, instead of pound the unfortunate potatoes.
On the third night at the disco, Kay and Sally met two young Spanish lawyers and happily went about with them for the rest of the week. Bunny insisted she was just as content spending her evenings in the apartment (no doubt dreaming of Teddy), and they took her at her word and left her to it.
True, Bunny had no bother dispensing with the nightlife but she would have dearly loved to have gone, even once, to the beach. The trouble was the other two kept such late hours that by the time they surfaced each day, they were in no mood for anything energetic. It was almost the end of their holiday when Bunny made one last determined effort to get the sluggardly pair to experience the joys of sand and sea, if only from a distant rock.
‘It’s a cwying shame coming all this way just to sleep,’ she addressed their closed lids. ‘We’re going home tomorrow and we haven’t even been near a beach.’
With a mumbled, ‘I’m dead tired,’ Kay turned over and drifted back to sleep.
Sally lay like a log, one smooth leg relaxed outside the sheet, her blonde hair tousled on the pillow.
Only the night before their Spanish boyfriends, Eulogio and Jose, had brought the pair of them to the shrimps and champagne party in the back room of a friend’s bar. Afterwards, they had all returned to Alex’s flat where they witnessed a rather painful exhibition of male chauvinism.
Inspired by fatherly pride, Alex insisted on waking up his peacefully sleeping eleven month old son and heir and launching him into the most hearty (and to the girls, cruelly unnecessary) antics which ranged from swinging the baby upside down by the heels till his little bald head touched the floor, and tossing him up to the ceiling to catch him (just about) as he hurtled back down again. It quite put them off marriage (Spanish style) to see the submissive way his wife allowed her insensitive husband disturb the child’s rest.
‘He doesn’t often get to see his beibe,’ Sally’s admirer, Eulogio Sanchez Blanco, explained with a beaming smile as though it was a very normal, even touching display of fatherly pride.
Just as well, thought the girls. Judging by the bump under her robe, his wife wasn’t as fortunate. As an insight into the workings of a Spanish marriage it was instructive. Sally, however, while abhorring the lot of an over compliant wife, didn’t think it was necessarily typical of all Spanish marriages. As with the supposed wife of the erring pilot, it was the female counterpart that she again blamed for allowing herself become so downtrodden.
By the time Alex’s poor, docile spouse had been prevailed upon to go and make coffee for them all
, the night had worn further away and the girls were even later than usual getting to bed. Unsurprisingly Bunny who had retired long before them was bursting with energy.
‘Well, I’m going to the beach anyway,’ she coldly informed their snoozing figures. ‘You stay if you want.’ Her usual quota of chipped potatoes already steeping, she rammed a straw hat on her head and prepared to leave.
‘Wait!’ Sally with more social conscience than Kay struggled sleepily up, ‘Give us a minute, Bunny, we’ll be along with you.’ She grabbed a towel and headed for the shower.
Kay considered that Bunny was using emotional blackmail to get her way but later, sauntering with the others to breakfast at their usual cafe before heading for the beach, she reluctantly conceded that they did have a duty to the restroom doyennes to return with some kind of tan, however light.
‘Look out,’ Sally murmured warningly.
The others glanced ahead and saw the Pens coming sailing towards them like two busty erect figureheads on the prow of some fifteenth century fleet. Within seconds the girls were being extravagantly greeted and answering just as enthusiastically and insincerely back.
‘Having a marvellous time,’ gushed Penelope, sounding like the wording on a postcard, her fair skin tanned an even copped colour, her blonde hair caught up in Spanish comb.
Beside her, Paula nodded her head up and down in a detached smiling fashion as though too full for words. Like Penelope, she carried a rolled-up beach mat under her arm, sun- worshipping obviously over for the day. Both were clad in low-cut cotton sweaters, belted over the skimpiest of white shorts from which their legs flowed lithe and tanned into high-heeled sandals.
‘Come to our apartment for drinks,’ Sally invited.
‘No, ours,’ the Pens urged, ‘Well, it’s a villa actually. Oh yes, you must...’ The girls allowed distance to accumulate before speaking.
‘They would have to be staying in a villa,’ Sally exploded disgustedly. ‘We’ve been coming to it for years,’ she mimicked with a scornful laugh, ‘Fancy drinking Bacardi and white for breakfast... and we thought we were bad.’
Kay suddenly understood the reason for Paula’s dreamy nodding. Up to the gills in rum!
‘Did you ever see anything like their tan,’ Bunny said wistfully. ‘And they’re only here the same time as us. Gosh, how will we ever be able to face back to the restroom looking like this.’ She stared glumly at her pale chest and even whiter arms.
‘You can always fake it out of a bottle,’ Sally said curtly, irritated by Bunny’s obsession with the sun, all the more since she had seen the justice of it in the Pen’s bronzed skins. No one could deny they had looked rather striking.
‘Weally, Sally,’ Bunny said crossly. ‘Sometimes you say the silliest things.’
‘Well, we’re doing something about it now,’ Kay quickly interjected. ‘In ten minutes we’ll be on the beach.’
In silence, the three trudged along in the hot sun, conversation for the moment suspended. Kay glanced anxiously at Sally’s averted face, painfully conscious of how peevish her friend became if anyone else was looking better, or having more success with men. Not something to show itself before the holiday, except perhaps at dances if Kay happened to get asked up before her, it was now doubly disconcerting away from home. Holidays, she reflected wisely, exacted much in the way of patience and understanding.
On coming away, she had imagined she would be too busy having fun to give even a thought to Captain Pender but it hadn’t turned out that way. If anything her love seemed to have magnified as the week progressed. Every word and gesture of his on their last meeting (last, she sighed, oh, please not) was enshrined in her memory and she spent fruitless hours dreaming of how it might have been if only she hadn’t let her drippy emotions overcome her to the extent of weeping all over the man.
Whenever she thought of those shameful tears, she burned afresh. From a newfound maturity, she made a vow that never, ever again would she let him know the true extent of her feelings for him and henceforth would take a leaf from Orla O’Neill’s book and engage casually and cynically in affairs of the heart.
Early in the week, Kay had posted off her cards although it was more than likely she would be home long before them. She sent one to Molly, including a remembrance for Bill and Florrie. A somewhat similar scrawl went winging off to the restroom, signed by all three of them. After a little hesitation, she had scribbled a card to Dave.
‘Having a great time. Enjoying the sun and the sea.’ she had added, feeling the lie seemed called for. ‘Natives very friendly. Nightlife... fantastic, marvellous?
In the end, she put ‘interesting’ and signed her name. Nothing to give Mrs. Mason or Breda too much to gloat over, she mused, remembering how nice Dave had been when she came home miserable and upset from her meeting with Graham.
He had called round with tickets for a Hunt Ball. Not realising he was in the sitting- room with Molly, Kay had rushed upstairs to throw herself sobbing on her bed. With all the noise she was making, she had never heard him tapping on her door, and the first she had known he was in the room and when she felt the bed-springs creak as he sat on the end of the divan.
‘A bad headache can be awful,’ he sympathised with more tact than she would have given him credit for.
‘It’s quite bad,’ Kay had grabbed at the face-saver, aware as she eased aside the pillow from her tear-stained face how strange it must look.
‘Poor old Kay,’ Dave had said then.
Remembering another voice in similar circumstances tenderly saying, ‘Darling! Don’t... please don’t cry!. Kay could have wept afresh.
‘Look, if you don’t feel up to it, don’t give it another thought,’ Dave addressed her lightly from behind, ‘but I’ve got these tickets and it might be fun to go,’ pausing to say comically, ‘Of course, if you don’t my dress suit will go to waste and the mood your aunt is in, I’ll be lucky to get away without having her for a partner.’
As always Dave succeeded in making Kay laugh and, despite her distress, she found herself agreeing to go. What the heck! Maybe it would take her mind off her troubles. By the time he called back for her there wasn’t a trace of all the tears she had shed and she looked stunning in a low-cut cream silk dress with her aunt’s diamonds sparkling in her ears and about her slender neck.
Dave’s eyes had lit appreciatively at the sight of her and he remarked quite warmly how well she looked. Not bad, Kay felt, coming from one who rarely paid compliments. As it turned out, she had quite enjoyed herself and when, during the night, a photographer snapped the pair of them holding hands, no one would have guessed from Kay’s expression that she wasn’t the happiest, most lighthearted girl in the world.
Now, walking towards the beach with Sally and Bunny, she was glad that she had bought Dave a bottle of Paco Rabanne in the airport duty-free shop, as a small thank-you present for that lovely night. True, she had been unable to resist opening it in flight and every so often took a little sniff to help her over the worst of her longing for Captain Pender, but she hoped Dave wouldn’t notice when she gave it to him - if she gave it to him.
By the time the girls finally came anywhere the beach, it was nearer thirty minutes than ten. A fact which Sally laughingly (though with an edge to her amusement) pointed out, as though Kay were personally responsible for the extra mileage. Spurred on by a glimpse of the sea, they took a shortcut down through the sloping back gardens of some private houses, despite enraged roars from the owner - who not unnaturally expected them to retreat when challenged, and understandably grew angry when they did not - and eventually arrived, hot and dusty, on to a stretch of shingly, deserted strand. All round, half-finished apartment blocks sprang up almost at the water’s edge. It was obviously an area in the process of being developed, and so there were none of the usual little tourist tables sprouting umbrellas to afford respite from the heat and bother of the sun.
‘Don’t look now,’ Kay said in a resigned voice, as they plonked thems
elves down where they stood to begin the work of untying straps and applying sun oils.
‘Oh no!’ Sally looked up, clutching her bikini to her chest.
‘Guapa, guapa,’ came the admiring cries from a gang of labourers emerging from their siesta. Almost at once the air resounded with the sound of insistent hammering and was in turn overridden by the bone-shaking roar of a pneumatic drill. So much for golden beaches.
Kay drew her sun dress philosophically over her head and wisely deferred christening her new swimsuit till another day.
TWENTY FIVE
Dave received Kay’s postcard and read with some amusement that the natives were friendly. ‘I’ll bet,’ he grinned, surprised to have got a card from her at all.
She was so wrapped up in her own life these days, he thought. Her job as an air hostess seemed to have taken her over completely. And she was clearly infatuated with some pilot or other. That much was evident the night he took her to the Hunt Ball. It pained Dave to think about it so he did so as little as he could.
He gave a last glance at the card and threw it carelessly on the hall table. Dave prided himself on not being sentimental, never collecting theatre programmes or setting any great store on keepsakes or letters. Now as he went into his tea, it didn’t even cross his mind to hold on to this one.
It was mid-week before Captain Pender discovered Kay’s uniform in the back of his car. He was about to drive to the airport when his eye was caught by the corner of the plastic carrier- bag protruding from behind the passenger seat. He pulled it out with a puzzled frown, unable to understand how the hostess uniform could have got there. Then he remembered.
It must have been lying there all week, he thought, feeling bothered and irritable at the sight of Kay’s property, yet disposed to handle it lingeringly. Absently, he rubbed a fold of the skirt between his fingers, a ruminative expression in his dark eyes. Then abruptly he pushed it back and sternly took himself in hand. This will never do, he thought, annoyed with himself for getting soft over a piece of tweed. It would have to be returned at once, he decided. Now, while she was still away in Spain and there was no possibility of bumping into her.