‘Want some help?’ shouted Lucille.
He laughed and walked over to us. I could see the water leaking from his black and red wetsuit as he approached us. I kept thinking how awfully uncomfortable that must feel. Lucille got up and positioned herself behind him, jerking at the long piece of fabric attached to the zip.
‘You’ve got a bit of this lead thing caught in the zip.’ she said. ‘That’s why it’s not coming down.’
She fiddled with it for a few seconds, and while she did so, I suddenly found myself making eye contact with this guy. He met my gaze with a bemused, quizzical expression. I felt as if my whole body had turned to water. I felt faint and dizzy, even though I was just sitting on the sand.
This, in case you hadn’t guessed, was Kirstan. I’m not sure if my mouth was hanging open or not, but I’m sure the expression on my face must have given an excellent impression of extreme stupidity. He must have known the effect he was having on me, the bastard, as I could see the amusement in his eyes and the slight smile passing over his lips.
It sounds like an awful cliché, but I’m pretty sure it was love at first sight. He was one of the most handsome guys I’d ever laid eyes on; black, wavy hair, piercing blue eyes, and a kissable mouth – you know – all the usual stuff. He gave off such a vibe, too, if you get my meaning. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I didn’t know who I was or where I was.
When Lucille had successfully tugged the wetsuit zip down to his waist and he’d thanked her, he walked up to me, crouched in front of me and gently touched the side of my mouth. I could smell the sea on him and I could feel my heart beating like a hammer in my chest.
‘Bit of doughnut there on the side of your mouth. It’s OK, it’s gone now. Chocolate, were they?’
‘What were? What were chocolate?’
‘The doughnuts you were eating?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I prefer the ones with the coffee icing, myself. Thanks, ladies. You can get back to eating now.’
And then he was gone. Lucille was laughing quietly to herself.
‘What? What is it? What are you sniggering about?’
‘You! God almighty, Sask. You’re so bloody transparent. You should have seen your bloody face! His too! Why didn’t the both of you just get a room?’ She shakes her head.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Sure.’
‘What do you mean by his too?’
‘His face, too!’
‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘How old are you? Fourteen? Finish your bloody coffee.’
That evening, when Lucille and I made our late afternoon supermarket visit, I bought some doughnuts with coffee icing on them, surreptitiously slipping them among the others so that Lucille wouldn’t notice. She sniggered all the way home.
*
The waiter returns with a fresh cafetière and waits while Franklin pours some of the contents into a cup, adds sugar and milk and takes a cautious sip.
‘Good. That’s better. Much better. Thank you. Obrigado.’
‘You are most welcome, Mr Franklin, sir.’
Franklin smiles at me and places a hand over mine. ‘So what did you think of Tybalt and his good lady? He’s a very lively chap, I’ve always thought. Very good fun. Good company. What did you and Estelle talk about?’
‘Oh, this and that. Girl stuff. Nothing you’d be interested in.’
‘I think she may have overdone it with the breast implants this time. There’s a point where it becomes obvious, don’t you think? Still, they were very striking. A magnet for the eyes, as they say.’
‘I didn’t really notice that they were false until she mentioned it.’
Well, that’s a big fib.
‘How long have you had yours for now, my dear?’
‘I can’t remember, to be honest. Possibly eighteen months?’
‘Yes. I think it was something like that. Maybe longer than that.’
There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation. I know what’s going through his head. Men are so predictable.
‘Have you ever had any thought about, um, upgrading, as it were?’
*
When Lucille and I sat on the beach the next morning, I began to feel like a bit of an idiot. What were the chances of that guy surfing the same spot at the same time? And what were the chances of him walking past us again. And even if he did, what was I going to say to him? ‘Hello. You mentioned that you liked coffee icing on your doughnuts yesterday, so I went out of my way to buy some in the supermarket, on the off chance I’d see you again. Would you care for one? Please don’t view this as a massive come-on.’
He’d probably think I was demented. Lucille grabs the doughnut bag, spilling some of her coffee over her jeans in the process.
‘Mm. These look nice. What are they? Coffee flavour? Can I have one?’
‘No you can’t.’
‘I won’t have a whole one. I’ll just take one bite. You can have what’s left.’
‘Shouldn’t you be taking poignant photographs of seagulls, or pieces of driftwood or something?’
She grins evilly, ‘or maybe a shot of a heart with an arrow through it that some loving couple have scraped in the sand…’
Just as she starts laughing, I can see a wet suited figure carrying an orange surfboard in the distance. My heart takes a leap. I mustn’t get my hopes up. He might go to wherever he’s going by a different route.
But no. He’s heading straight towards us. Lucille jabs me in the side.
‘Doughnuts at the ready?’
‘I’ll kill you.’
In a few minutes he’s a couple of feet away. My mouth is dry. I take a gulp of coffee so that I’ll be able to speak, if the opportunity arises.
He smiles as he approaches us. ‘Still here from yesterday morning?’
We both shrug and laugh. I feel sick. For a second, I actually think that I’m going to be sick. What a good impression that would make! Lucille speaks first.
‘Well, the view is so nice we couldn’t drag ourselves away.’
‘I’m Kirstan, by the way. I didn’t introduce myself yesterday. A terrible oversight. What must you think of me?’
He and Lucille shake hands.
‘Hi. I’m Lucille. This is, er…’ She looks puzzled, ‘This is awful. I had it yesterday. Begins with an S.’
I sigh, well used to Lucille’s sense of humour. ‘I’m Saskia. I’m her sister.’
We shake hands. His grip is light. No macho hand-throttling, which is a nice change. Lucille clears her throat. I hand him the doughnut bag.
‘It’s your surprise breakfast. Doughnuts with coffee icing. From both of us.’
‘From her,’ says Lucille, pointedly.
He laughs, ‘You remembered!’
He rests his surfboard on the sand and sits down next to us. Next to me, to be more accurate. I feel like someone’s plugged me into the mains. Lucille looks the other way to hide the grin that’s certainly all over her face.
*
I try to disguise a yawn by placing a hand over my mouth, but Franklin notices anyway.
‘Tired today, my beauty?’
‘Mm. I didn’t sleep very well last night. Kept having weird dreams. Perhaps it was the Champagne.’
‘Hm. I’m surprised Tybalt isn’t here yet. Maybe he overslept.’
‘Yes. That might be it.’
Maybe Estelle’s boobs exploded. Sorry – that was unkind. Funny, but unkind.
Franklin sips at his coffee and looks rather miffed that his buddy hasn’t turned up for breakfast. He stares out of the window.
‘What’s going on over there?’
‘Where?’
‘Down on the beach. About half a mile away. Looks like a big yellow flower or something. Lots of people.’
I can tell what it is immediately. There’s a surfing lesson in progress. There are about eight or nine yellow surfboards placed in a circle around a wet suited i
ndividual who’s undoubtedly the instructor. The learners sit next to their boards with their legs crossed.
He or she will be giving them a pep talk about the dangers and risks of surfing before they all go in the water and spend an hour or so falling off and hitting themselves in the head with their own boards. They’ll practice jumping up onto the board on the sand first, and then get used to attempting the same thing in the shallows, usually with hilarious consequences.
Still, the water’s very warm here, so I’m sure they’ll all have a fun time. Most of the hotels here run little surf schools since it became more of a tourist sport in the early nineties. Next to golf, it’s one of the most popular activities, which is really weird. It used to be such a cool thing and now look.
Here, there are great, regular waves, warm water and there are even competitions, sponsored by the big surfboard manufacturers. I can make out the instructor more clearly now. It’s a girl. Blonde, curvy – I’ll bet anything she’s Scandinavian.
Franklin peers down at the beach and snorts. ‘Some kids thing, probably.’
‘It’s a surfing lesson. Those yellow things are surfboards. It’s hard to see from here.’
‘Bloody stupid waste of time.’
Unlike golf, of course.
I know a lot about surfing, but I never learnt. When I met Kirstan, I couldn’t even swim, which he thought was both hilarious and baffling. It was just one of those skills that seemed to pass me by when I was in school. Later, in university, a girlfriend, Julie, wanted me to go on holiday with her to France.
Julie planned to spend most of the time on the beach, sunning herself or splashing around in the sea. When she found out I couldn’t swim, she was astounded, and made me go and have lessons at a local pool. I got it by the second lesson. I couldn’t believe it. It was so damned easy and I felt really foolish for not getting it sorted out sooner.
‘Well,’ says Franklin, pouring himself another coffee, ‘What are you going to do today?’
‘I don’t know. I may wait for my breakfast to go down and then have a swim.’
‘Good idea. I’ll sit by the pool and watch you. Will you be wearing that black get up?’
‘The bikini? Yes, if you want me to.’
‘I do.’
I’ll always be grateful to Lucille for not going down to the beach for breakfast on that third day. She pretended to have a hangover and said she’d get something in one of the surfer cafés later on that morning. One thing that I knew about Lucille was that she could drink like a fish and never, ever get a hangover.
Of course, her deception may have been a waste of time if Kirstan hadn’t turned up. I found out later that that stretch of beach had been having a really good (if dangerous) couple of days surf, and had attracted a lot of the risk takers among the surfing fraternity. The incredible thing was that it stopped on the fourth day. As flat as Frankenstein’s forehead, as I heard one of the pissed-off surfers say. Talk about luck. I could have been sitting there with a bag of coffee icing doughnuts with no one to give them to.
Kirstan helped run a surf shop with another guy. The other guy (I did know his name at one point, but it’s gone now) was older, married and lived quite far away, in Sennen. Kirstan lived in the back of the shop. His room smelt of salt, surf wax and neoprene. There was no furniture apart from a ragged futon on the floor. On the evening of that third day he took me for a Thai meal at a local pub. Afterwards, when we got back to the surf shop, neither of us hesitated for a second. I was nineteen, he was twenty-three.
*
I feel two hands grasp my shoulders and almost choke on a cloud of expensive perfume.
‘Good morning, babe. Missed you.’
‘Hi, Estelle.’
Three
I had actually been hoping that Estelle and Tybalt had severely overslept, maybe rising at three or four in the afternoon. Maybe later. Ideally in a few days. Possibly never.
It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that I don’t like them. I’d been eating my breakfast a little faster than usual, so we could leave before they appeared, though not so conspicuously that Franklin would notice.
The fuss about the coffee slowed everything down, of course, which sabotaged my subtle plan. There was nothing wrong with the coffee, either. That was just Franklin doing that because he could. In some weird way he likes having any sort of staff fawn over him and if there aren’t any problems he’ll make one up.
I’m still reeling from having to talk to Estelle last night. Among other things, she couldn’t stop talking about all the holidays that she and Tybalt had been on. I’m surprised Tybalt has any time for work, if he still actually does anything himself. They usually go on ‘major holidays’ about four times a year. One of those holidays is always spent here, in the Algarve, because of the golf. She also mentioned Spain, Greece, Italy and France, too. Like Franklin, I suspect Tybalt wants to stay within quick flying distance from the UK, presumably in case any exciting business developments arise and he has to get back to the office in a hurry.
Tybalt, by the way, is another OBE. Maybe everyone’s an OBE now. I think he mentioned this about a dozen times last night, and that’s a conservative estimate. Estelle kept mentioning it, too, but in a way that suggested to me that she’d been told by Tybalt to bring it up in conversation as often as possible, or she’d get her clothing allowance cut. I wonder what their ‘minor holidays’ are like. Long weekends in Paris or Milan, I expect.
Estelle sits next to me, takes a look at my dress and starts being gushingly complimentary and over familiar. It’s as if we’ve mysteriously become best friends and old buddies overnight while we were both asleep. This familiarity, whilst I’m sure it’s meant to be nice and friendly, is rather needy, slightly creepy and somewhat aggressive. I’ll bet you anything she doesn’t have any real women friends, though if it comes to that, neither do I. Not anymore.
I’m still in touch with Lucille, of course. Her photographic career has gone from strength to strength and we went to see her exhibition in Barcelona early last year, when Franklin was there on business of some sort. She’s still funny and down-to-earth, and has been living with this chap called Paul, who (typical of her) is a florist. They’ve been together for almost five years. When Franklin learned what Paul did for a living, he could barely disguise his contempt. I was fuming.
‘It’s that pale blue, babe. It simply goes so well with your hair. I was going to ask you where you went when you were in London.’
‘Sorry? Where I went…what?’
For a moment, I thought she was going to suggest we meet up back in the UK. I somehow can’t imagine that ever happening, unless I was drugged, lobotomised and hypnotised.
‘Where you have your hair coloured.’ she says in a voice so loud that everyone in the room can hear. The two French women at the next table turn to look at me. I smile sweetly at them. They look away, whisper something in French and laugh. I may be a little naïve, but I suspect that that was an intentionally bitchy thing to do. I must keep an eye on Estelle.
Tybalt, standing behind me, briefly runs his hand across my hair. Ugh! What a creepy thing to do.
‘Wherever you have it done, it looks marvellous,’ says Tybalt, ‘As far as I’m concerned, blonde is the colour for a woman’s hair, isn’t that right, Estelle?’
Estelle nods her head. I wonder what her real hair colour is. Probably not blonde.
Tybalt sits next to Franklin, stares at me, grins and stares at my boobs. The dress I’m wearing is a light cotton summer one and naturally I’m not wearing a bra. Tybalt, I’m afraid, is a major prick. I noticed last night that he has a small facial tic under his left eye, so it looks like he’s winking at you all the time. This only serves to add to his sleaze factor.
Franklin smiles to himself, flattered at the attention his woman is getting from everyone. Estelle is still unnecessarily fascinated with my dress and pinches the material. Does she think before she speaks?
‘It really is a lov
ely dress, Saskia! I used to have one just like that in yellow.’
Estelle is dressed in the sort of clothes that a normal person would go out for dinner in. She’s wearing beautiful, flower-patterned; asymmetric-shoulder dress which I think is made of silk, accompanied by a shitload of gold jewellery. I, however, am just wearing a white cotton summery thing with thin straps over the shoulders.
‘No,’ she continues, ‘it wasn’t yellow; it was more a sort of light orange. Or a very rich yellow. Oxlip, perhaps.’ Her jewellery rattles as she waves her hands around. ‘You’re probably laughing at me – oxlip is so nineties.’
Tybalt snaps at her. ‘Not now, my sweet.’
Ooh. Estelle has obviously just broken one of the rules, whichever one it was. ‘Don’t talk about girl things for more than five seconds’, perhaps. ‘Don’t mention the colour yellow at breakfast.’
Tybalt has a last leer at me, then turns to Franklin and slaps him on the shoulder. ‘Have I got news for you, old chap!’
A waiter appears. Tybalt turns to him impatiently. ‘One cafetière of your strongest coffee and…’ he turns to Estelle ‘…what’s that rubbish you drink?’
‘Masala Chai.’
‘Yes, and a glass of that or whatever as well.’
The waiter nods and escapes. I always wonder what hotel staff think when they serve people like us in hotels like this. Do they talk about us? I’m sure they do. What do they say? I’m sure it can’t be good.
‘Now listen here. You know the course here? Pretty good. One of the best that’s attached to a hotel. No argument with that. But how d’you fancy a couple of days at the San Lorenzo!’
I’ve no idea what the San Lorenzo is, but for the first time this morning, Franklin’s expression lightens.
‘San Lorenzo? This time of year? You’ve got to be kidding, my man. I suspect they’ll be fully booked. You can never get in there at short notice. You know what it’s like.’
Summer Loving Page 3