by Mason, Carol
I like how he looks at me as I walk back down the sand. It’s a grateful, pleased, predatory-beast face. An intoxicating combination for a girl who’s a bit attention-starved at home. He grins as I approach.
‘Sit,’ he says, patting the sand.
I do. My leg touches his and I pull it away and clutch my knees. He asks me how my mother is, which impresses me right off the bat. Then he says my dad doesn’t like him and we have a chuckle and his eyes do a little dance with mine. ‘So you work here in the summer… what happens for the rest of the year?’ He has stubble on his Adam’s Apple.
‘Rest of year, Jill, I am personal trainer, in a gym. I have private clients, mostly women who I put through their pace.’ He runs his hazel gaze the length of my bare arm. ‘But in summer, I love the smell and the sounds of the sea, so I take a break and I do this.’
He remembered my name. He looks off into clouds like white oak trees painted on royal blue china. I wonder if he has sex with his women clients. If they’re all rich and unhappy at home. ‘What would you do with me?’ I ask him. ‘If I were your client.’
He smiles. I smile. His eyes roam over my face. ‘I would give you maintenance programme, rather than to change anything about you.’
I like this answer. I dig in my bag for my water and feel his eyes on my throat as I tilt my head back and have a guzzle and miss my mouth and essentially salivate all over the place. ‘What sort of exercise do you do to keep in shape Jill?’ he asks.
‘Belly-dancing,’ I tell him, thinking, and if only you could see what a pretty sight that isn’t!
A yellow Lab puppy gambols over to us, sticks its head in Andrey’s crotch, has a good sniff, then walks around to me and lifts its leg on my foot. The lady owner comes over and apologises—to Andrey. Freezes me right out.
‘So what is Russia like?’ I ask him. ‘What was it like living there?’
‘Ra-sha? Ahrgh,’ He seems to think about this for a moment or two. ‘I had good life, of course, growing up. Yes there was hardship. But when it is all you know, you just get on living. You find joy because you have to. Because we all have to, somewhere.’ Then Andrey talks about Russia in a way I wish my history teachers had. All the while, his attention roams around the beach, doing his job. I didn’t really imagine that he could wax this lyrical. And I’m thinking, it’s a pity he’s a forty-something lifeguard and I’m a bit of a jumped-up snob, and I should fantasize about him for five more minutes then get on my way home.
‘Did you manage to get a proper school education then?’ His English is excellent.
‘Education? Of course. I had education. I had good job.’
He has nice hands. Big hands with pronounced veins that would waggle if you touched them. Then he says the thing I’m not expecting. ‘I was a lawyer.’
He must see my shock.
He laughs. ‘Don’t look so surprise.’
‘Sorry. Just… you were a lawyer and now you’re a lifeguard!’
He squints at me in the yellow sunlight, charming crinkles etching around his eyes. ‘Well, is not so strange as is sounding. Before I was lawyer I was actually swimmer. I was on the Ra-shint Olympic team when Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.’
‘You were an Olympic swimmer!’ Peel me off the floor.
‘I would have been. If my country had allowed for me to go. Twelve weeks before Olympics, Soviet Union pull out.’
‘Oh no! That’s terrible!’ I scour his face, his hair, his very credible swimmer’s chest. ‘You must have been devastated. You must have trained so hard.’
‘All my life.’
‘How old were you at the time of the Olympics?’
‘I was eighteen. I am thirty-nine now.’
He knew I was fishing for his age. He looks older. ‘So then you became a lawyer?’
‘Well everybody in my family had. It was natural step to me.’ He shrugs. ‘Then I came to England, where, of course, I cannot be lawyer unless more training and qualify. So now I coach swimmers. Kids. Hopefully next Olympic Gold Medal winner. And to get by, there is my personal training.’
‘But couldn’t you just have got qualified here?’
He shakes his head. ‘Too many wrong starts. And my heart was never in law. I did it, I think, because I was clever and I could. But what I do now has bigger reward for me. Those kids, I relive my youth again every time I see the dreams on those young faces.’
‘Wow,’ I say. I knew there was more to him than met the eye. Well, I didn’t. But I’m glad. I can’t wait to tell Leigh.
He runs his eyes over my face, my throat. ‘What dreams did you have Jill?’
I don’t want to tell him I don’t think I ever had any. Or that I’ve only just realised that now. Or that I wouldn’t have thought he’d have had any either. I feel rotten for having judged him. He knows his work doesn’t define him so he needn’t be ashamed of it. ‘I don’t know. I danced as a teenager. Ballet and tap. I was good but I don’t think I was the best in the class. I suppose I never really had one thing I was burning to do. For me it was more about earning a paycheque, having a life outside my job, meeting a good man.’
‘Which you did…’
‘Which I did.’ I skirt around that one. ‘So how on earth did you wind up in the North East?’
He smiles. ‘It was a woman.’
‘Oh, I might have guessed! God, I bet you’ve got them all over the place.’
He beams like a man flattered. ‘Yes, of course. There is one under that rock. And two, well, over there.’ He shoots his chin in the direction of two old biddies sitting on deckchairs. ‘The one on the left is a real nympho.’ I chortle, and he laughs quietly at my laughing, his gaze roaming haphazardly over my face. He has a lovely laugh. It burrs musically in the back of his throat. ‘No seriously, she was journalist from Yorkshire who was writing book on the former Soviet Union. We met in St. Petersburg; she needed a lawyer. We became involve. Then she came back to England, so I come. But it did not work out in long term. So I come here.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ he says, and then with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I am not.’
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘I was. Almost. Once. When I was twenty. But I am not so sure I belief that two people are meant to pledge themselves to each other, take vows that at the time of taking them they can’t possibly know if they will keep.’ He looks at his hands, at his fingernails. ‘I have seen many marriages where the couples haven’t grow together, where after so many years they aren’t the people that either would choose again.’
My guess is he’d have no problem having an affair with a married woman. Because he doesn’t view people as possessions. ‘You wouldn’t go back there then, to Russia?’
‘To Ra-sha? Nyet.’ He shakes his head. Some of his top teeth are rakishly uneven. ‘No, Ra-sha changed—you follow in newspaper?’
Oh dear. It rarely makes the pages of Hello!
‘It changed. I change. And I believe you burn your bridges in life Jill, when you make big decisions. But here is beautiful.’ He flourishes a hand around the beach as a wave breaks noisily near the shoreline and giggly kids scamper over it and dogs bark at it. ‘Every day I come here I remember how lucky I am to have choice to appreciate. Whereas at the age I am now, my father had embolism and died. He loved law, yes. But in end, law killed him.’
He looks at me again. ‘Being competitive, in sport, in career, is not always a healthy path to happiness. Besides Jill, life is not all about where you were and how far you have fallen. It’s about joy you find in having some inner satisfaction in yourself, and this often come from having nothing to prove. And it is people you meet. And look, I have met you.’ He holds my eyes, says it candidly, squarely, and I feel it in my stomach.
We talk for ages, easily. He asks all kinds of questions. Where I grew up, if I have kids, siblings, where I live, work, my mam’s illness. He listens closely, all the while his eyes roam around the beach
at dogs and children in the water. I adjust to the ebb and flow of his accent and don’t find it hard to follow anymore. I tell him crazy things, about my strange boss with the tassel shoes, my maniac dog and how he’s wrecking my shoulder when he takes me for walks.
‘May I?’ His fingers trail the curve of my neck to my shoulder. ‘Too much tension here, will create headache here, like gnawing sensation. Yes?’ His hand goes under my hair, cups the base of my skull, and gives a gentle knead, more like a doctor than someone wanting to have sex with a married woman. And I have to look away, close my eyes, blow a small unravelling sigh.
‘So d’you have a girlfriend now Andrey?’ I ask when I recover.
He looks at me for a moment, as though it’s an odd question. ‘No Jill. No more than you have a husband. Probably less so.’
Oh! Every light in me goes out like a power-cut across the board. Why did he say that?
‘What?’ he studies my profile, absorbing the change in me. I clamber to my feet, every inch of me flooding with Rob and his bright happy trust in me. It has taken this to remind me that he exists. Andrey, I’ve just gone off you. I start hurriedly getting my belongings together. He’s still observing me then he stands up too. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe was wrong thing to say. I didn’t mean for to send you running.’
‘I’m not running.’ How dare he imply that I am? I glance at him. He genuinely looks like he didn’t. I have gone off him less.
‘Then will you come back, and when?’
‘I don’t know.’ I hate his presumption. I’m critically aware that Rob will be home now. Waiting for me. Trusting me. And I’m here. And I shouldn’t be. Damn him, and what he had to say about vows. I made vows I knew I could keep.
He smiles. ‘I am sorry, really. I am sorry for how these things come out. And…’ he cocks his head kindly, sincerely, duly-humbled. ‘I am sorry, Jill, that you are married.’
Oh, I wish he hadn’t said that. I stare at my painted toenails. Right this minute I am so damned sad. But I’m sad for all the wrong reasons. I’m sad because I am married. And I like this man and it’s wrong. And I hate myself for feeling like this. And I hate that my marriage has fallen to this. But what I hate most is that I’ll never be wooed again, I’ll never fall in love again, all that’s ahead for me is fixing what’s broken. I give a sad, thin, grief-stricken little laugh.
He is studying me with curious disappointment, as though he knows the girl isn’t going to forgive him. ‘Jill,’ his serious voice makes me look at him. ‘I don’t have right to say this, but that you will come back is my hope.’
I shrug, sigh, shake my head. I walk off across the sand, conscious of him watching me. I climb the steps to the promenade, feeling wobbly. Jill, you sad little attention-seeker. I exhale one long breath, forgetting that the rule is you breathe in and then you breathe out again.
It’s called living.
Chapter Eight
I lie in bed and pretend to read my novel, ablaze with thoughts of him, playing over what he said, what I said, trying to remember every sentence and the exact order it came in, the way he touched my shoulder, the tickle of his finger, and his eyes.
A dishevelled, un-hair-combed Rob is sorting through the No Go Zone that is his top drawer, where he keeps a life’s work of receipts, old visa cards, the odd smelly sports sock, empty condom packets from eons ago, old anniversary cards, etc. He’s looking for the bill to an automatic shut-off iron he bought me that he now claims doesn’t work.
A sobering incident met me when I came in the door, high on my Russian. Rob was sniffing a wad of tangy-looking kitchen roll, with the dog’s head cocked in fascinated curiosity, looking very cute and puppy-like. ‘I found this on the carpet.’ He brandished the wet handful at me. ‘Thing is, I don’t know if it’s vomit or the other. You’d think it’d be obvious but it’s completely got me beat. Here,’ he shoved it under my nose. ‘Smell it.’
‘Ergh!’ I plastered myself to the kitchen wall. ‘Get that away from me!’
‘It’s got bits of fresh food in it, which makes me think it’s vomit, but it’s more the consistency of the other.’
‘Does it matter, Poirot?’
‘Of course it matters. Vomit is forgivable. The other means we’re one step forward and two back.’
‘Rob,’ I said. ‘You know something, I’m a bit puzzled.’
‘’bout?’ He was still gazing at the paper. ‘Cor, it’s one of life’s mysteries this…’
‘Stop it!’ He can be such a lout. ‘What I’m puzzled about is… well, I’m wondering why we have a yellow dog.’
Rob looked at the dog whose tail started thrashing excitedly on the floor. He seemed puzzled for a moment then said, ‘Oh! We went to the beach this afternoon, didn’t we lad?’ He gazed at Kiefer again.
I froze. ‘The beach?’
‘Yeah. We went for a little drive after work, didn’t we angel?’ Was I imagining it, or was he looking at me strangely? ‘And who d’you suppose we saw there Jill? Hmn?’ He tapped the end of his nose.
I lost the ability to breathe.
He mussed the dog’s ears. ‘Shall we tell her who we saw?’ he said to Kiefer, then he looked at me again. ‘Or shall we keep her in suspense?’
I died. ‘Who did you see, Rob?’ I said, flatly.
‘We saw Bill from across the street, didn’t we. With Sharon and the girls.’
‘Bill,’ I repeated, thinking thank you Bill.
‘We had an ice-cream, didn’t we angel?’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘Yeah we went to Tynemouth.’
‘Tynemouth.’ Thank you Tynemouth. For existing. ‘So what flavour did he have?’
He tutted. ‘No. I had the ice-cream. He just ate somebody’s snotty paper hankie off the ground.’
I mussed the dog’s head. Then I mussed Rob’s. Mussed it really hard, until he said, ‘pack in doing that.’ ‘I love you,’ I practically sang. ‘I love both of you. I do. With my whole heart.’ The relief I felt at my lucky escape only barely outweighed the guilt of having something to have a lucky escape from.
‘Thanks,’ Rob said. ‘Seriously though, can you leave my head alone?’ He ducked out of reach of my hand.
~ * * * ~
‘You sure you don’t have the receipt Jill?’ he asks me now, in a tone that implies that the mess of his drawer is somehow my doing.
I do an inner eye-roll. ‘You paid for the thing. It’ll either be in your wallet or in the carrier bag that probably got thrown out.’ I go back to my book and re-read the same sentence I’ve began thirty times. I can’t believe he was a lawyer. And an Olympic swimmer. S-vimmer.
‘Well I didn’t chuck it,’ Rob says. ‘Unless you did.’
I sigh. Pretend to ignore him. Hope he’ll go away.
‘Did you?’
‘Did I WHAT?’
‘Chuck it.’
I’ll chuck him in a minute. ‘No. I didn’t chuck it. I didn’t even open the bag.’ Get a life.
‘You didn’t even open the bag?’ he turns around and looks at me, exasperated. ‘Don’t you think there’s something a bit strange about that Jill? Why d’you think I bought you an automatic shut-off iron if I didn’t want you to use it? Or is the opportunity to one day burn our house down so tantalizing for you, eh?’
Rob is always on at me about forgetting to turn the iron off. But I’ll say, well, that’s what happens when you try to do seventeen things at once. But he seems to think his failure to do more than one thing at a time is a lovable handicap all men were born with, whereas mine is a genetic disorder. I give him that face. ‘Maybe I was leaving it for you. You know, to acquire the ironing skill before you die.’
He narrows his eyes at me, goes back to raking through the drawer.
I watch him in his unclean T-shirt and think. God, Rob, you’re scintillating aren’t you? For a Saturday night this is real Rock Your World stuff, isn’t it? The iron receipt. Pass me the Vodka bottle. ‘I think Frank Sinatra bought one of them for Ava Gardner for an anniversary prese
nt you know?’ I tell him.
‘One of what?’ He freezes in that I-know-you’re-being-sarcastic posture.
‘A shut off iron.’
He looks at me over his shoulder. ‘I bet his bloody worked though.’
I try to get on with reading my book. Where was I? Ah, yes. The hand on my neck. His fingers under my hair. A shiver goes down my spine and all my arm hairs stand up. I bet he’d be a considerate lover. Just the right touch, at the right moment, in the right place, just long enough to make waves of sensation… in Australia. Now I’m hot under all these bedcovers. I thrash the duvet off.
Then I hear Rob say, ‘Argh!’
Oh come on! What next?
He has stopped raking through his drawer. He is holding something. His entire body is poised in quiet fascination. ‘Remember this?’ He comes closer, his face a picture of warmth and tenderness. ‘Look at this face.’
I take the little laminated card off him. ‘It’s my old gym membership! God I look so young. And that perm!’ I chuckle. ‘I didn’t know you kept this!’
He holds his hand. ‘Give it back, it’s mine.’ He gazes at it again, his face lit up with nostalgia. ‘I’ve always loved this picture. Your hair like somebody rolled you in the clippings bin at the Poodle Grooming Parlour.’ He looks from my face to the picture. ‘Argh!’ he says. ‘And then he cheeps three kisses on the little card. Sincere, hearty, beefed-up-with-adoration kisses. I watch him deliberately put it in a safe place among the mess of his drawer, his love for me seeping like some quiet reminder into the air.
I feel like the worst cad.
I put my book face down on the night table. It’s time to bury the Russian. Cheating might not be wrong for everybody, but it’s wrong for me. ‘You sure the iron’s broken Rob?’ I ask my big soft-hearted hubby of nearly ten years. I clamber over the top of the duvet and go to dig it out of its box, a sudden chastened participant in the trivia of our life. ‘It’s not a lose wire in the plug?’