by Judy Astley
‘You into diving? Scuba?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t tried it. I like snorkelling, I thought I’d do some of that.’
‘You come to see me at the dive shop later on the morning, down right along the beach there. I run all the water sports for the hotel,’ he said, and then held out a hand. ‘And welcome to St George.’ He bowed slightly as she shook his hand. ‘Come to the shop, ask for me, I’m Henry.’
‘Lucy,’ she told him. He grinned again and then strolled off, barefoot and whistling, along the sand.
‘And you went out and spoke to him?’ Over breakfast at the big table Theresa was wide-eyed with outraged incredulity. ‘But anything could have … he might have …’ She seemed at a loss to select the direst possible fate for Lucy that could result from talking to a dark stranger on a pre-dawn beach.
‘He was fine, really friendly.’ Lucy shrugged. She picked up a slice of pawpaw and sucked the flesh away from its skin. Juice dripped down her chin and she scooped it away with her fist then licked it. Theresa frowned, cutting up her own fruit (grapefruit, mango and melon) neatly with a knife and fork. Lucy smiled: Theresa looked so exactly as if she was at a dinner party, doing her very best etiquette-eating with scrupulously correct cutlery. She’d been the same the day before on the plane, carefully inspecting the plastic knives and forks and lining them up in size order between the hot foil carton containing the surprisingly tasty turkey and rice in mushroom sauce and the miniature starter of prawn and tomato salad.
‘Right. What are we all doing today? Everyone sleep OK?’ Simon bustled into the dining area and stood by the table rubbing his hands like a jolly scoutmaster. ‘Terrific arrangement this,’ he said, approving of the way the hotel had put together a table large enough to accommodate all fourteen of them. Theresa gave him a dubious look. ‘I didn’t think communal eating was going to be compulsory,’ she commented. She glanced across to where Marisa was coaxing bits of banana and croissant into the twins. The girls were pulling the bread into tiny pieces to share with the bold greedy black birds that swooped in from the trees below the balcony. Sebastian was eating Rice Crispies with the kind of pondering expression that Theresa could tell would soon result in the conclusion that the milk wasn’t exactly the same as he got at home, after which it would be judged untouchable. A separate table, possibly even a room, for small messy children and their minders would have been a bonus.
‘Nice for Mum and Dad though, Tess.’
‘Well, I’m sure it would be, Simon, but they’re poshing it up having breakfast in that natty little villa along the beach that they’ve got all to themselves, and besides, half of us don’t seem to have actually got up yet.’
‘Colette’s had hers, she’s out on the sand.’ Lucy hoped Theresa wasn’t going to keep her waspish tone going for the entire fortnight – how hard could it be to enjoy herself in such a beautiful place? Mark’s absence from the table might have something to do with it, she thought, wondering which of them had had to get up at three a.m. and entertain the jet-lagged infants.
‘Plum’s swimming before the pool fills with kids. And Becky and Luke, well, they’ll be along when they’re hungry. Talking of which …’ Simon wandered off to help himself to food from the vast buffet area in the centre of the room. Long tables held huge steel dishes of bacon, hash browns, grilled tomatoes and sausages as well as selections of hams and cheeses. Staff were cooking eggs to order and there were trays of grapefruit, pawpaw, pineapple, watermelon, figs, bananas and dried fruits – everything a far bigger and more lush version of the puny, underripe average greengrocery produce back home. He joined a line for fried eggs and wondered if it would be pushing his luck, cholesterol-wise, to have two. He also wondered what Shirley and Perry were having, across at the end of the little bay, tucked away in one of the hotel’s five top-of-the-range villas. As his own eggs fizzled and spat in the pan, he imagined his father indulging in a full-scale fry-up, complete with brown sauce and an array of ulcer pills, indigestion potions and any other medication he might keep out of sight of anyone who was still suspicious about the reason for this sudden holiday.
‘It’s not like Mum and Dad, admit it, Lucy, splashing out on this trip. They’ve always been pretty careful with their cash,’ Simon said as he sat down. Theresa had finished her food and gone and he was glad. She’d say he was imagining things. She’d always said that, as if the possession of imagination was a nasty, undesirable complaint best got rid of as quickly as possible, like acne or a streaming cold. Plum, in a rare moment of cattiness, had once said that explained why Theresa managed to be happy with Mark – only a woman who simply couldn’t imagine meeting anyone more interesting would have settled for him.
Lucy considered what Simon was saying. ‘But that’s why they can splash out, isn’t it? Because they saved all their lives, always had the money waiting for the insurance man every Friday, ran their own business and sold it for megabucks. You know, Simon, if one of them was ill or something, I’m sure they’d have said something before now. I mean, if it was anything …’
‘Terminal?’ Simon supplied through a mouthful of toast.
‘Yes I suppose so, well they’d have known for a while. It wouldn’t be this sudden. Dad said it was finally offloading the last of the car dealerships that really brought in the cash and if he didn’t spend it it would all end up as tax. He’s always been pretty canny, making sure he owned the freeholds of the showrooms’ land. All those odd midtown acres in the smart bits of Cheshire must have been worth a bomb by the time he offloaded them.’
‘Yes, but even though he’s been long retired he’s enjoyed keeping his hand in. Why has he suddenly sold the last one now? Ask yourself that.’
‘No, Simon, if you really want to know, you ask him.’ Lucy got up, eager to get to the beach, and left Simon alone and thinking.
It sounded simple enough, but suppose he did ask and they told him the worst? Then he’d be anxious and miserable and Theresa would get him on his own and drag it out of him and then accuse him of spoiling things. She used to do that in Devon, just over small incidents. It was a holiday speciality of hers, when she wasn’t at home with her friends or her schoolwork to keep her occupied and out of his way. She’d catch him trying to hide a sulk and then nag at him quietly and with a great big persuasive show of sympathy till he told her what was wrong. It would always be something that didn’t matter (he could see that, now he was grown-up and rational) like wishing he’d chosen a strawberry ice cream like hers when he was halfway through a vanilla one. She’d ask him why he was being slow, ask him if there was something wrong with it and when, trusting her, he’d tell her the flavour was over-sweet and sickly, she’d turn on him and flare up about being ungrateful and tell Mum not to waste money on treats for him because he didn’t appreciate them, he was spoilt and he spoilt things. He wouldn’t ask either parent about being ill. He’d wait, but he’d watch – someone had to.
Becky stretched out on a sunlounger that she’d dragged into the shallow edge of the sea. On her flat bare tummy rested her breakfast – three croissants, a thick slab of pineapple and a banana. Further along the beach, beneath a palm-thatched sunshade, she could see a German couple setting up camp for a serious day’s sun-worship. The woman (far too old and saggy to be topless, in Becky’s opinion) unfolded a Union flag beach towel and laid it carefully on her sunbed and the man (far better condition, clearly the father of a tennis star) unfurled a gigantic Stars and Stripes. Becky could hardly wait to point out this pair to her dad: Simon so boringly believed in every possible stereotype when it came to Abroad, but here was clear evidence of a German sense of humour. They could play a version of I-Spy, looking for a Swede who was not tall, sexy and blond, an Italian woman who did not pamper her grown-up son and a family of quiet, modest Americans. Most of the hotel guests that she’d had a look at so far hadn’t been of much interest – it was probably the wrong season for the marauding groups of sex-seeking younger people that she’d been hoping for. Every
one under thirty seemed to be in pairs, joined in unsplittable lovey-dovey coupledom that could only mean honeymoon or beachfront wedding very soon. There were some families, women who looked like Theresa, stylish but harassed, with piercing telling-off voices for use on their hyperactive pre-school children, and husbands who looked as if they were desperate to disappear and play golf. Lucy, over breakfast, had already christened these women the Putney Mothers.
Becky picked up the pineapple and bit it hard, letting the juice drip down her chin and into the shallow channel between her breasts. She thought she probably looked pretty sexy (though who for?) lying there in her scarlet bikini, covered in juice, stretched out with her fine taut teenage skin just crying out to be stroked. She lacked, she felt (apart from many adoring god-like males), only a silver navel stud, or a tattoo of a leaping dolphin, anything to make her dad go ape. Her mum wouldn’t – it was a waste of time trying. She’d just smile in her isn’t-life-wonderful way and say something like ‘Oh that’s so pretty, darling’ and give her a big hug just like she had when she’d accidentally dyed her hair blue. Her body still had some colour from the trip to Majorca with ex-best friend Sybilla’s family back in early August, and her long hair was no longer streaked with blue but with sun-blonding and a touch of help from L’Oreal. ‘Because I’m worrth it,’ Becky purred to herself through a mouthful of fruit.
‘You’re talking to yourself. If Theresa hears you she’ll tell Dad you’re nuts and he’ll believe her because she’s his big scary sister.’ Luke came and plonked himself down beside her, sitting cross-legged in the sea. Small waves swooshed up and down his body and he swayed with them.
‘She should mellow out. Do her good. She’s got Marisa to take care of the brood and Mark to take care of the money so why can’t she just let herself have a good time? She’s got a face on her like she thinks she’s about to be arrested.’
Luke shrugged and then lay down in the water, letting it wash over his face. He hadn’t taken off his T-shirt and baggy blue surf shorts. Either he couldn’t be bothered, or he’d gone funny about his body. He was fourteen; Becky hoped for his sake this wasn’t the week he turned into the type of agonized boy she saw at school who walked round practically folded in half in the effort to disappear.
‘She’s probably still in shock from nine hours at the back end of a charter flight,’ Becky went on. ‘She’s such a snob: I heard her telling Gran she thought the passengers were just the sort to clap when the plane landed.’
‘More likely what’s bugging her is a lack of sex,’ was Luke’s suggestion. He sat up and pushed his soaking hair back out of his eyes.
Becky laughed. ‘Yeah, well you would say that, you’re at that age. All wet dreams and wanking. Hey!’ She screamed as Luke tipped the lounger over and she fell into the sea. She rolled over in the warm surf and shrieked, ‘Sod you, I’ve lost my banana!’
Up on the pool terrace, Theresa was instructing Marisa on the proper way to anoint the children with factor 50 suntan lotion. She looked down at the beach and frowned. ‘That’s your two making that racket, Plum. Are they always this loud? I mean, this isn’t Ibiza.’
Penelope, comfortable on a lounger with a pleasingly complex Ruth Rendell, smiled lazily. ‘That’s the sound of teenagers being happy. It’s a rare noise, one to be savoured and ignored.’
‘If you say so.’ Theresa sniffed, rubbing the lotion hard into Amy’s tender shoulders. ‘Mummee!’ the child wailed, protesting.
‘Hush!’ Theresa was sharp with her, pulling at her wrist to keep her still.
‘Shall I do Ella for you?’ Penelope offered, putting her book down.
‘No she’s done, it’s OK. Marisa, the armbands are in the purple bag. No, that’s the blue one, the purple one, over there.’ Amy slithered out of her grasp and skipped away towards the pool steps where her twin, oiled and sun-hatted, sat kicking her non-slip Barbie-pink jelly shoes in the water. ‘Hat, Amy!’ Theresa called after her. ‘You must wear it all the time!’ Penelope didn’t know who to be more sorry for, the nagged children or their frantically cautious mother. She remembered what it was like, constantly keeping watch on small children. You couldn’t relax, or at least back when Luke and Becky were little she couldn’t, because she hadn’t had anyone like Marisa to help. Surely the whole point of bringing the girl all this way was so that Theresa could put her feet up, close her eyes and trust that her offspring would be alive, present, well-fed and healthy when she opened them again. Around the children’s paddling area, Plum could see that other parents were managing to combine relaxation with guard duty, rather in the way of birds that slept with an eye open. None of them looked quite as fraught as poor Theresa.
‘Where’s Mark?’ Penelope asked as Marisa finally hauled herself to her feet and ambled across to a seat in the sun from where she could keep an eye on her charges.
‘Oh, he’s gone for a lie-down on our balcony. He didn’t get much sleep.’
‘Children keep waking up?’
Theresa looked away and started sorting and folding the heap of clothes the children had flung off. ‘No, not really. Seb was whacked out from the flight and the girls are in with Marisa so she’s dealing with them. No, he’s, well, he gets up in the night a lot, to pee.’ She looked behind her swiftly, checking Mark wasn’t creeping up to hear himself being discussed.
‘Prostate, do you think?’ Plum suggested.
‘Doubt it. I’m pretty sure you have to be a lot older for that. He thought he might have a bit of cystitis so he got his golf friend Richie to prescribe some antibiotics. He said he didn’t think there was any point queuing up at the surgery, just for that.’
Penelope pulled a corner of her pink sarong across a scorching bit of ankle. It wasn’t even nine in the morning and already the sun was burning hot. Her skin would wither and flake before it got going with a tan. ‘I didn’t think men got cystitis,’ she said.
‘Well, of course they do!’ Theresa gave her a scornful look. ‘It’s just they don’t go on about it on the radio and in the Guardian all the time or go round setting up support groups the way women do.’ She was frowning again, and Plum could tell she now regretted mentioning it. People always told her things, though, because she looked comfortable and solid and settled. A sitting Plum looked so Buddha-like and fixed that it seemed unlikely she would ever move from her chosen resting spot. She made people feel secure, that they could take their time because she wasn’t about to rush and bustle off to do something else. Skinny wiry people might run around being gossip-spreading traitors; round, sedentary people wouldn’t waste the energy. She sighed and reached over to the table for her old blue linen hat, one she’d worn on every holiday for the past ten years. Even her hair was calm – cut in a neat safe bob, the dull brown colour of drearily wholesome lentils. When the hat came off again her hair would fall straight back into place as if it had never been disturbed. Plum suspected that part of looking restful was to do with being big and getting bigger. Six weeks regular weighing-in at Shape Sorters, with a diet that should have bored her taste buds into defeat, had given her only a confused and panicky metabolism which had her body clinging to every calorie consumed and packing it defensively away into flab to thwart the direst famine. Simon called her Plum – always had, in fact only her students now called her Penelope. But once, just once a few months ago, he’d squeezed her bum and called her Plump and been surprised she hadn’t found it amusing. Well, who would? Why didn’t he think?
‘And of course he can’t drink, which doesn’t help,’ Theresa went on.
‘What? Oh, Mark. No alcohol? Why not?’
‘Antibiotics. I told you.’ Theresa was snappy now, impatiently cramming T-shirts and suntan-lotion bottles back into the children’s bags.
Penelope picked up her book again, tactfully leaving Theresa to seethe silently to herself about her indiscretion. Down on the shore she could see Becky paddling with Colette, pointing out something in the water. On an English beach any number of horrors – syrin
ges, sewage, sanitary towels – might wash their way into the beach-surf for the curious to inspect. How completely wonderful it was that it would be fish they were looking at, stunning, multicoloured, exotic, pretty little fish.
‘You’d think they’d be out and about by now.’ Simon checked his watch as he and Lucy walked along the path above the beach. He looked anxious and was moving too fast, as if he was late for something. Lucy, who wanted to stroll and savour and smile at the blissful warmth of the day, had left her own watch in the drawer by her bed with her passport and ticket, and didn’t intend to get it out again till she packed to go back to Gatwick.
‘Chill, Simon. The day’s only just started. Perhaps older people don’t feel the jet-lag thing like we do. I can’t imagine Mum and Dad pacing about at 4 a.m. and flicking through crappy TV channels till daylight the way kids do – or pigging out on all the Snickers bars from the minibar. They probably got their reading glasses out, read a couple of chapters and then went back to sleep like sensible souls.’
The beach ended in a raised headland which held five detached villas, each with its own fenced garden and a broad hibiscus-fronded terrace overlooking the sea. According to the brochure, beyond the headland and past a dense thicket of trees was a beach for nudists with a bar and barbecue.
‘Smart up this end, isn’t it?’ Lucy commented.
‘Very smart. And big – they could have parties up here,’ Simon remarked as he opened the gate.
The door to the villa was open and Perry could be seen across the sitting room, out in the sun on the wall above the sea, drinking coffee. Lucy, who had been trying not to give Simon’s anxieties any serious thinking-room, was relieved to see him looking so relaxed, summer-familiar in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved green checked shirt.
‘Hi, Dad! We’ve come visiting!’