‘What?’
‘Nothing. We’re here now. Look.’ Lily pointed to the sun-faded blue sign across the entrance that read Aqua World.
Paul pulled the Nissan to a halt and studied the posters. ‘God, it’s thirty-two euros each, that’s steep.’
Lily checked her watch. ‘And it’s only an hour and a half before they shut. Maybe we shouldn’t bother.’
‘It still gives us enough time to go on every ride.’
‘Everything? Even the really tall ones?’
‘Sure—you have to do them all if we go in, I told you, that’s the deal.’ Paul noticed her hand. ‘You didn’t take your ring off when we went in the sea.’
‘You only just gave it to me, Paul. I’m superstitious. If I took it off and lost it, you might tell me we’re not engaged anymore.’
‘Why would you even think something like that?’ Paul placed his arm along the seat and backed the car into a parking space. Switching off the ignition, he turned to her with questions in his eyes.
‘I told you. I’ve not had much luck with guys in the past. I was always optimistic, though. I thought I’d meet someone decent, but it turned out a good attitude wasn’t enough to protect me.’
‘Well, you don’t have to worry any more, do you?’ he said. ‘Everyone gets hurt by bad romance at some point. You have to develop a thick skin.’
‘I never want to do that,’ Lily explained. ‘I want to keep the feeling of unconditionally being in love, I want everyone to see it in my face, shining out like a suntan.’
He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I can see it in everything you do. You wouldn’t be able to hide it if you tried. Come on.’
They studied the great map at the entrance. When they saw that it displayed twenty different vertiginous water slides, they became as excited as children. Passing through the turnstiles, they placed their shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts in a locker and headed into the park.
Inside, chlorinated cyan water sluiced through white plastic channels that snaked across sculpted emerald meadows. The park was themed around characters from Greek mythology, and was dotted with risible statuary. Ahead of them, a vast trident-wielding Poseidon rose from plaster waves, looking more like a sinister nude Santa Claus than the god of all the stormy oceans.
It was the third week of the summer season, and the grounds were still only half full. A strong wind had risen, and two of the more extreme rides had been closed for safety reasons. Each slide was flanked by a stone statue and an only slightly more human lifeguard. The humans were bronzed, toned and bored. As they directed the screaming children who emerged from the flumes, guiding them out of the pools as quickly as possible, they tried to maintain their Grecian poses.
Lily watched a group of young girls climbing the tower of the Aphrodite Drop, higher and higher up the staircase until the wind whipped their hair about their faces. Listening to their delighted screams, she took pleasure in their happiness. Soon they would become women, and face the thousand tests that adulthood would bring. She hoped they would always remember the moments when they had no cares in the world, as she did right now. Being aware of her own happiness made her feel strangely guilty, as if she would somehow have to pay for it later.
A sudden cool breeze buffeted her bare back, making her shiver.
—
Nick dragged his chair across the narrow third-floor balcony and sat down beside Anna. Ahead, the cool grey-green sea faded into night mist. There was so little air that the waves below sounded like someone gently unwrapping a sweet. ‘I’m glad you decided to come with me,’ he said, setting two bottles of KEO beer on the balcony table. ‘I hate not seeing the sun in London. I thought you were going to change your mind.’
‘I was probably looking for reasons to say no,’ said Anna. ‘I mean, we haven’t known each other very long, and when you go on holiday with someone, well, you’re kind of stuck with them, aren’t you?’ She had surprised herself by coming, after three years of steadfastly refusing every offer to enjoy herself. Finally she had realised it was time to let go of the bad experiences of the past, and start trusting again, although it took longer to do so now.
‘So, do you feel better about it? I could tell you were having second thoughts.’
‘Of course I was, trotting off to Cyprus with a stranger. I hardly know you.’
‘That sounds really old.’
‘I can’t help it; that’s how I am. Look, I guess I was more stressed than I realised in London. I hate my job. My office doesn’t have any windows, and the people in my scheduling department are all married with kids, out in the suburbs. I have nothing to say to them.’
‘Then you need to get out of that place and do something you enjoy.’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘You never just take a chance, throw everything away, start again?’
‘God, no!’ Anna took a swig of beer. ‘I’m a planner. Charts and achievement lists, all my life. I worry too much about what might happen.’
‘Maybe that’s why your boyfriends never worked out.’ He saw her stiffen slightly. ‘I mean, maybe you just need to relax more into yourself.’
‘I’m quite relaxed enough, thank you.’ He could hear the tension in her voice, and decided to change the subject. She sounded prim and even older, and he could suddenly imagine the kind of woman she would become. They were only on Day Three of the holiday and she was already starting to irrationally annoy him.
—
The screams echoed up to the mouth of the blue plastic channel. Paul stood at the top of the tower next to Lily, waiting for the signal to jump in. The lifeguard was balancing between the two tubes, waiting for the last riders to clear. Although he wore shorts and was bare-footed, he was wrapped in a heavy red plastic windcheater, protecting himself against the late afternoon winds that swept in from the sea and blew across the fields surrounding the water park.
‘Hold on to the bar until I say,’ he recited mechanically. ‘When you let go, cross your arms and your ankles, and leave the pool at the bottom as quickly as possible.’
Lily looked across at her lover and smiled nervously.
‘It’s all right,’ Paul mouthed at her. ‘I’ll see you at the bottom.’
The guard turned back to them. ‘Okay—go.’
Lily stepped into the tube, seated herself and was catapulted down the terrifying, stomach-dropping shaft.
—
‘I can’t hear what you’re saying,’ Anna shouted into Nick’s ear. An Alicia Keys track was playing so loudly that she was drowned out by bass distortion.
‘I said my brother Tony is the manager here,’ Nick shouted back.
They were in a shoreline nightclub in Limassol where tattooed Russians in sleeveless vests sat slumped at the bar slugging watered cocktails. The moment they had stepped through the tacky steel doors, Nick knew it had been a bad idea suggesting they should come to the club. He hadn’t been here since the makeover.
‘It’s awful,’ Anna called back as two bleached blonds with burned shoulders and corkscrew chimney-cuts tottered past them on sky-high heels. ‘Can we get out of here?’
‘Don’t you want to stay for one drink, just to meet my brother? Tony will be here in a few minutes. We always hang out together.’
‘No! I can’t hear myself think. I’m going outside. You don’t have to come with me.’
‘Of course I do.’ He cleared the crowds ahead of her and pushed open the doors. Outside, the full chaos of Limassol on a Saturday night hit them. A dozen different club tracks created arrhythmic heartbeats, providing the street with a mutant soundscape. Young men were screaming up the promenade on the rear wheels of their motorbikes, restaurants buffered the night sky with red and blue neon, fat tourists waddled past with sunburned arms and bitten legs.
‘Could we go somewhere quiet, where we can just be together?’ She gave an anxious smile, always ready to think the worst. Nick was so beautiful and uncomplicated, the world seemed
simple to him. She fretted and panicked and over-analysed—it was just that she wanted to be confident. She would give herself unconditionally if she could just be completely sure that she trusted him.
Nick flicked back a smile, and led her to a quiet bar overlooking the sea where just a couple of elderly Cypriot women sat with coffee. It was colder here, but calmer. He went to the bar and returned with a bottle of wine, marvelling at how little it took to make her happy. They sat and drank in silence. The streets behind them shed too much light to unsheath the stars, so they watched the stately passage of tankers, lit like grand hotels.
Tony found them, eyed Anna with a leery laugh and ordered himself a beer. He had lived on the island all his life, and looked nothing like his brother. Tony was squat and sweaty, but the biggest difference was in his behaviour: where Nick was attentive, Tony ignored her and only addressed his brother. Anna had been dismissed from the conversation. She had met his type before, and already hated him. Pushing back her chair and folding her arms, she longed for this part of the evening to be over.
After a while she rose and walked to the edge of the beach, leaving the brothers to talk together. Looking back at Nick and hearing his laughter, she considered the possibility that she might have fallen in love, and once that happened she would be little more than a fish writhing on a hook.
—
‘How was that for you?’ Paul burst out of the pool and hauled Anna to the edge of the pool, laughing.
‘A nightmare!’ Lily shouted back. ‘I don’t understand how kids do it without flinching. I’ve got water up my nose.’ She shook herself like a spaniel.
He found it hard to take his eyes from her slender pale body. She was so beautiful it made his eyes hurt. No matter what anyone said about beauty being skin deep, physical attraction was important to him. He wanted to feel proud with her. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s do the big one. Up there. Mount Olympus. Looks like they’re reopening it.’
He pointed to the immense slide, a white wooden tower consisting of ten spindly staircases. From its peak protruded a covered plastic pipeline descending in a series of terrifyingly tight loops. On its highest landing a lone lifeguard stood motionless between fluttering flags, looking out across the sun-bleached fields.
Lily shielded her eyes against the searing light and studied the lone figure, the empty ride. ‘I don’t think it’s open,’ she said, willing it to be shut.
‘The wind’s dropped a little. Let’s go and see if we can get on it. I said all of the rides, didn’t I?’
‘Do we have to? It’s higher than all the others.’
‘Don’t be a baby.’
‘I’m not—it’s just—’ The darkness, she wanted to add. The thought of being trapped inside that crushing pitch-black tunnel, falling down to an unknown fate. The darkness pressing in all around like death. It’s the unknown that frightens me.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’re not scared, are you?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘of course not,’ and followed him up the staircase.
—
Nick’s apartment was above a rowdy nightclub called Glam, a misnomer if ever there was one. Below, the English were cheering the football on a vast screen with the colour turned up too high. Leaning on the balcony wall, Anna looked back at the flat. It had three perfectly square white rooms filled with books, and you could see a sliver of sea if you went to the bathroom window and stood on tiptoe, but it was clean and caught the cool night breeze from the shore.
Nick lit fat red candles and set them in saucers on the floor, and they drank more white wine, thick, sharp-tasting local stuff that made Anna’s stomach burn. She talked too much and then felt unbearably hot, and stood at the balcony with her shirt loosened, feeling the sea air on her collarbone. Nick listened and waited, as if expecting to hear some signal in her voice, and when he realised she was talking for the sake of it, led her to bed.
—
As Paul and Lily climbed the stairs, the wind began to pick up again. They reached the fourth landing, and Lily stopped to look out over the parched fields dotted with tubular hay bales, the distant black sand beach, the tankers passing endlessly beyond.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked Paul.
‘When we’re married,’ she replied, ‘can we travel? I mean really travel, not like those couples who say they’ll do things and then start working and just lapse back into behaving like their parents.’
Paul’s laughter contained puzzlement. ‘Yeah, of course, we’ll go around the world.’
‘You won’t go off me when I lose my looks, like my dad did with my mum?’
‘You can’t foretell the future. Nobody knows that, not politicians, not priests, nobody, because nobody’s been there.’ He reached down and seized her hand, hauling her up the next flight of stairs, and she knew she would go anywhere with him. She knew that from the top of the tower, the whole world would be able to see their love.
Above them, the stoic lifeguard looked down from the railing, a black silhouette against the deep blue of the sky.
—
Nick had kissed and caressed her, and put her into bed. Then he left the room. Now Anna waited for him in the darkness. The cool night air from the shutterless windows ruffled her hair and chilled her shoulders, so she rose and closed the glass. As her head was swimming, she lay down on the pillow and thought about what would happen in the next few minutes. She had kept him at bay for long enough. She didn’t want him to know that she was just as anxious to sleep with him. But by doing so now, would she spoil the holiday? She tried not to evaluate her options, as she did in everything else. Her mother said she was not normal. It was time to be normal.
She looked up and saw a tiny, whiny bug perpetually hitting itself against the ceiling. Presumably Nick was still in the bathroom. She tried to hear him brushing his teeth, but there was no sound. She had almost fallen asleep by the time the door opened once more.
‘You were a long time. I think I drank too much.’
‘Shhh.’ He climbed into bed beside her. His hands felt cold and rougher than she had imagined. He ran his fingers lightly over her nipples. She froze. As he fondled her breast with practiced ease, she could sense that he was manoeuvring himself into place, ready to hoist himself on top of her without wasting a moment, without so much as a kiss or caress. It all felt so wrong. She hardened against him, and the more he pushed at her, the more she resisted.
She felt his stubby penis, wet at the tip, jabbing into the top of her leg, and shoved him away in shock. Climbing out to the edge of the bed in panic, she fumbled for the light and flicked it on. Tony, Nick’s brother, raised himself on one arm and squinted at her. ‘What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ he asked. ‘Nick said you’d be cool with it.’
—
Lily and Paul reached the top platform of Mount Olympus. The wind was snatching plumes of water from the open mouth of the chute. Lily could see the drop of the water tunnel, the way it wrapped itself around the stanchions, the final open section of torrenting water. She could hardly see anyone else in the park. The sun was dropping low now.
Paul turned to the lifeguard, a frozen-looking girl who glared blankly at them from beneath her plastic Aquapark hood. ‘Can we go down together?’ he asked. ‘My girlfriend’s a bit scared. I should look after her. We just got engaged.’
The lifeguard remained motionless while she assessed them. Then she indicated the left tunnel and unclipped the rope that had been placed across it. ‘The lighter one in front, the heavier one behind, place your legs under her arms. Keep your hands and feet tucked in.’ She sounded English, distant and odd.
Paul turned to Lily and kissed her. ‘You heard the young lady. In you go.’
Lily peered into the darkened tunnel mouth, then climbed into the red plastic step and lowered herself into the water. Paul enclosed her from behind.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ve got you. I’ll always be here for you.’
The lifeguard wa
s holding them back from the edge of the tunnel with her bare foot. After a few seconds, she raised it and let the pumping water shoot them out into the tunnel. A moment later, they were gone.
Anna lowered the Aquapark hood from her face and stepped to the railing, searching below. She felt nothing but hatred, for men, for the world, for lovers. She had long since blotted out the memory of the fight with Tony, and Nick’s clawed face, the accusations and the police—it had all happened so long ago. But sometimes she still wondered why she had decided to remain on the island, lost and invisible, unable to speak to another human being. It had crossed her mind on several occasions that she might not be well. Her mother was probably beside herself with worry. Her mother, who had never felt she was normal anyway.
Was it normal to ignore everyone who spoke to you? To seal yourself away from the world, to go to work and come home to a box-room behind the motorway where no-one would ever find you? To long for some closure to the consuming hatred you felt?
Last night she had gone to the supermarket in Limassol and bought ten packets of old-fashioned razorblades. This morning she had carefully cut them in half, and gone to work two hours early. Then she had taken the blades from their packet and embedded them longways in the mastic joints that held the tunnel sections of the Mount Olympus ride together, working from the top of the tube, going all the way down to the bottom.
So much for the mystery of love.
She leaned over the railing and listened out for the screams.
Halloween Dog
Few people know this, but Halloween doesn’t just remove the boundaries between the living and the dead. The Druids skinned animals for their heads and pelts before sacrificing them to Celtic deities on huge bonfires, and as a karmic consequence, all lowly creatures gain human sentience once a year. Most of them waste the opportunity. Some are in cages. Some have brains so small that it makes no difference whether they can think or not. Jellyfish and canaries get a particularly raw deal. Dogs and monkeys tend to have the best time, provided they’re not being experimented on.
Red Gloves, Volumes I & II Page 25