Goodbye Lucille

by Segun Afolabi

  ‘It’s good we arrive early,’ Angelika announced. ‘You see, we all get seats.’

  ‘Yes, you were right about that,’ I agreed.

  B beamed at her. Now we were here I was determined to get on with Angelika. B had persuaded us to come, almost pleaded. It was too hot to quarrel, in any case.

  ‘What happened to Isabel?’ Lucille asked. Tunde had invited a woman I had never seen before.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he replied. ‘She couldn’t make it. Famke agreed to come instead.’

  Famke smiled, her cheekbones vying for attention with her watery blue eyes and her lips, which were full and moist. I couldn’t decide who was more stunning – Famke or Isabel.

  ‘We’re at the Free University,’ Famke said in perfect English. ‘I’m studying the Classics at the moment,’ she continued, ‘but Tunde’s introduced me to Ngûgî and Achebe – such a revelation. It makes my education so much more – how do you say it – rounded? Complete?’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I kept quiet, but Lucille and B picked up the thread and soon they were discussing authors they enjoyed. I had read a few science fiction novels when I was a teenager, but the length of books easily defeated me. I wondered how Tunde was able to recommend books to Famke, he who had never completed anything in his life.

  ‘There’s Baldwin – both the fiction and the essays,’ Lucille was saying. ‘Toni Morrison’s a must.’

  ‘Baldwin?’ Famke asked.

  ‘James Baldwin,’ Angelika put in. ‘American. Better is Narayan or Coetzee.’ They were skipping continents with alacrity now.

  A man sitting opposite held up his newspaper like a form of defence. All I could see were his pale chicken legs, swallowed up by a pair of enormous red shorts. He flicked each page as if he were annoyed. At one point I caught a glimpse of a headline – Hunt for Henkelmann’s Killer Goes Cold, before he folded the paper and slapped it on his knees.

  I was uncomfortable in my jeans; I could feel the moisture begin to gather between my thighs, inside the crook of my knees. I looked across at Lucille’s legs as she chatted with Famke. They were a perfect smooth almond brown, without blemish, except for the mark – like a small sable moon – where she had scraped her shin against a nail that jutted out from a rowing boat when she was a child.

  We hadn’t yet pulled into Nikolassee when people started stretching and getting up. There was an air of suppressed hysteria, as if there was only one remaining square metre of sand on the beach and we were all going to have to fight for it.

  Two sullen children gripped the door handles as we approached the platform. They looked between seven and nine. I thought they might be brother and sister. A woman I took to be their mother kept warning them to stand away from the exit, but they hung on relentlessly with a look of panic on their faces.

  ‘Leave it!’ the mother shouted at one stage. She appeared embarrassed by her children, who seemed intent on ignoring her. If I were her, I thought, I would have given them each a good wallop, put them straight back on a train to the city. But all she did was turn away, pretending not to care. She stared out of the window, pinch-mouthed, defeated. When the train finally came to a stop, the two children dashed outside. They appeared to be following their own itinerary without giving their mother a second thought.

  ‘Come back here!’ she shouted after them. ‘Gunther! Mina! Come back, right now! You hear me!’ She was already going hoarse.

  We all trooped to the same bus stand; I knew we were going to the same location. Sure enough, the beach at Wannsee was more crowded than the Ku’damm on Christmas Eve. The sight of all that frying, near-naked flesh made me wince.

  ‘There’s hardly any room left,’ Lucille said.

  ‘Always there is somewhere,’ Angelika replied, scanning the area like a border patrol guard at Checkpoint Charlie. ‘Look!’ she pointed. ‘We go towards the front!’ And she was off before anyone had time to think.

  When we reached her clear spot, very near the centre of the beach, Angelika stopped and looked about. ‘Perfect,’ she said. She kicked off her sandals and sank to her knees. ‘Just perfect,’ she repeated. ‘Benoît, come and help me.’

  B ran to assist with the blanket, while the rest of us, city slickers, stood about like lost souls.

  I reached into one of the bags to retrieve a folded blanket, and soon we were all, with the exception of Tunde, spreading out towels and mats. Tunde was gawping at a pair of sizeable bare breasts emerging from the lake.

  ‘Aren’t you hot in those jeans?’ Lucille asked.

  ‘I’m fine, really.’ I lay back on the blanket. I had no intention of removing my clothes. It was enough being fat without having to broadcast it.

  She squinted at me and tutted. Then she shuffled beside me. I smiled to indicate I wasn’t annoyed and closed my eyes. I could sense her hovering.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

  ‘A swim?’

  ‘Brilliant idea!’ Famke announced. She grinned at Tunde. ‘We’ll all go swimming.’

  ‘Here, these are yours.’ Lucille threw my trunks at me.

  ‘Luce!’ I said, sitting up. I looked round at the rest of the beach. People were thin and pink and laughing. ‘I’m not going swimming! I’m not in the mood. You go on. I’ll watch.’

  Before I could think, she stood and unzipped her print dress. I thought I might pass out. Then I realized she was wearing a bikini underneath. Nature girl, I thought. It was the upbringing in the Seychelles that did it; all the aqua-marine and clear skies of her youth.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous,’ she said. ‘We haven’t come all this way just to sit on the sand.’

  I closed my eyes.

  Uncle Raymond always said I was fat. From the start he never minced his words, never called me chubby or big or plump. He would simply announce that I was fat, as if it were a sin, then laugh out loud like a lunatic.

  When I opened my eyes only B and Angelika had remained on the sand. Angelika had commandeered a covered love seat – number 259 – one of hundreds that littered the beach. She had put on a floppy pink sun hat and cloaked herself in something resembling sackcloth. A paperback lay open on her lap, but her eyes were closed.

  B cowered under the parasol, reading a newspaper. ‘You will cook out there,’ he said to me and laughed.

  ‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘I should go for a swim. How about you?’

  ‘Yes, good idea!’ Angelika’s disembodied voice spoke for him from beneath the sun hat.

  ‘Why not,’ he shrugged.

  I wrapped a towel round my waist and pulled on my barely worn Hawaiian trunks. When we were ready, B and I walked slowly down to the shore.

  ‘Look – the blacks!’ a girl screeched, little more than a toddler. What seemed like a sea of faces whipped round to stare, but B and I carried on, regardless.

  When we reached the water’s edge, I ran through the shallows and plunged straight in. The water was cool, but bearably so. Lucille stood knee deep, grimacing in her mauve bikini. I couldn’t understand why she had been so eager to swim in the first place. She was wearing a bright yellow bathing cap bordered with tiny violets – which she had purchased the day before – so as not to ruin her permed curls.

  ‘Where’s Tunde and Famke?’ I called.

  Lucille looked up, shading her eyes with one hand and pointing with the other. ‘Somewhere out there. I can’t see them.’

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ I asked. People were leaping about, playing ball games, trying to manoeuvre plastic floats between bathers. Many simply stood on the shore, like Lucille, trying to decide whether or not to brave the initial cold.

  B sidled up to Lucille in what appeared to be his underwear and grinned sheepishly. I didn’t comment.

  ‘Come on, you two!’ I kicked my legs in their direction. I was eager to swim out towards the centre of the lake.

  ‘Don’t splash!’ Lucill
e screamed, ‘or I won’t come in.’

  ‘Don’t splash!’ I mimicked. ‘I won’t come in.’

  She glared at me.

  I kicked my legs again, and then a group of children beside us decided to kick up a storm, and soon Lucille and B were drenched.

  ‘You fucker!’ she screamed at me and proceeded to march out of the lake.

  B retaliated, splashing the children in return. There was a cacophony of screams and churning water I hadn’t bargained for, a war zone on a pleasant day.

  I pushed further out where it was easier to swim, the temperature dipping as the water deepened. I swam towards the sailing boats and the odd canoe we had seen from the shore. I dived beneath the surface until I could touch the floor of the lake, then bounced back towards the sky light.

  ‘There you are!’ A woman’s voice.

  I swivelled round. Famke, and Tunde beside her.

  ‘It’s too crowded over there.’ Tunde nodded towards the shore.

  ‘I wish we had brought the Lilo,’ Famke said. ‘My legs are exhausted out here.’ She dived beneath the surface, her legs and feet hardly producing ripples. Tunde grinned at me and dived after her. I waited for them to reappear.

  After thirty seconds or so, when they still hadn’t surfaced, I began to have visions of how the day would end. I could see Famke and Tunde laid out on the beach, surrounded by hundreds of onlookers. An ambulance would drive up to the shore and the two corpses would be lugged into the vehicle. Lucille and Angelika would be inconsolable.

  ‘Ooowee! Ooowee!’ a woman’s voice shrilled and when I looked, in the distance, there were Famke and Tunde waving cheerily. I waved back and we swam towards each other.

  ‘I didn’t know you could swim,’ I said to Tunde.

  ‘Oh, well. I’m not too good,’ he puffed. ‘I’m still learning.’

  He seemed beyond the learning stage to me. ‘Let’s race back to the beach then,’ I suggested. I was growing weary of treading water. I couldn’t recall the last time I had exercised.

  I gave the signal and Tunde shot off like a starting gun, with Famke close behind. I thought I would give them a slight advantage and then surprise them near the shore, but halfway to the beach, they had increased their lead by almost five metres. I stood and watched as they raced each other, Tunde in front, Famke gaining on him. Perfect front crawls, the pair of them. Olympians. Their strokes hardly disturbed the water. Some learner, I thought, and drifted to the shore on my back.

  We fell onto the blankets and I could feel the heat of the sun evaporating the moisture on my skin. Lucille was still annoyed; she sat next to Angelika, talking inaudibly. We shared out the chicken Lucille had fried the night before, and I was pressed to accept one of Angelika’s Gouda cheese and lettuce sandwiches. Famke and Tunde had bought spare ribs and spring rolls from a Chinese restaurant, and had filled a large plastic container with fruit salad. They had also brought two bottles of champagne for all of us.

  After lunch I lay down to rest beside Lucille while she flicked through a magazine. I closed my eyes and let the sun toast my eyelids until everything began to dissolve. I could hear the yelps of children as they splashed in the water. Occasionally an aeroplane would roar from above. Lucille would comment on something she was reading and I’d mutter a reply and our words seemed to emerge rather drunkenly.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she said at one stage, but I pretended to be asleep. She nudged me. ‘Do you love me, Vincent?’ she asked again.

  ‘Eh?’ I turned to look at her.

  ‘Do you …’

  ‘I heard you the first time, for goodness’ sake. Of course I do. What a time to ask.’

  We didn’t speak for a while and I must have fallen asleep because when next I opened my eyes everyone apart from Angelika had disappeared. I felt momentarily dazzled and disoriented by the sun. The temperature seemed to have climbed by at least five degrees. I opened a beer, but it had lost its chill. I drank it anyway. Angelika was sitting in the same position in the wicker love seat, absorbed in the paperback. Her eyes swept across the pages, barely lifting to take in the revelry around her. I felt for her then, a large woman in a sackcloth dress, lost in fantasy.

  ‘Where have the others gone?’ I asked.

  She looked up, as if she had heard a voice but could not discern where it had come from.

  ‘They are out there, in the water, I think,’ she replied. ‘I cannot see them, but they went straight this way.’ She pointed with the spine of her open book, which fluttered like an ostrich, unable to take flight. She turned to look at me and I realized she hardly ever smiled.

  ‘Aren’t you going to swim?’ I asked. ‘It’s not as cold as you think. I can look after our things.’

  ‘Well …no. I don’t think so. It is nice to sit here. Just to relax and read.’ She held up the paperback.

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I didn’t feel like swimming myself. Angelika returned to her adventures while I examined Lucille’s magazine.

  I turned and lay on my stomach to assess what was happening behind me. There were so many near-naked women it was impossible to focus on anyone for long. A cloud hid the sun for a spell and I almost shivered with the change in temperature. It felt like foolishness, lying out there without clothes, all of us. But then the sun emerged again and it grew warm.

  Two women were walking towards the water. They both hid behind oversized sunglasses. As they moved closer, I became intrigued. The blonde was perfect: not too tall, ample breasts and soft curves, which she accentuated with a rolling gait. The other one was shorter, dark, her hair tied back in a bunch. She didn’t seem as self-conscious as her friend and as she strolled towards the shore she kept her focus on the lake ahead. She wore a sober navy one-piece swimming costume, while the blonde showed off her figure in a white floral bikini. As she approached I could make out the butternut smudge of her nipples.

  I looked down at the magazine to avoid leering at them.

  ‘Hello again!’

  I glanced up. The woman in the navy swimsuit was gazing down at me.

  ‘Er … hello,’ I replied. I’d been preparing to turn to watch them enter the water.

  ‘You don’t remember us?’ The blonde smiled down. There was a hint of something in the voice. Mischief. Menace.

  ‘I’m exhausted!’ Lucille panted behind me. I turned. Famke, Tunde and B were behind her. ‘We waited for you,’ Lucille said. ‘Have you been asleep all this time?’

  ‘Um …no. I didn’t fancy it.’

  She looked across at the two women, as if she had only just noticed them, although she had probably seen them some time ago. ‘Oh, hello,’ she looked at them and back to me, waiting for introductions.

  ‘Hallo, B,’ the blonde said in English, taking her queue from Lucille.

  Angelika had torn herself away from the book and was watching from beneath the rim of her sun hat.

  ‘Hello.’ B looked from me to them, frowning.

  ‘You do not remember me, is it so?’ The blonde removed her sunglasses. It was odd to see them in the daylight, removed from the effects of excess alcohol and strobe lights.

  ‘Um … that’s right. The Atlantic,’ I said. I noticed the blonde was doing all the talking. I didn’t like her tone or her fixed smiled.

  ‘Yes, Atlantic. You remember.’ She smiled at Tunde and then Famke, but the eyes spoke pure hatred. ‘Hey, big man.’ She placed her fists on her hips and wiggled, glaring at Tunde. She had no finesse, the manners dragging behind her like a string of tin cans.

  I thought of sprinting into the water to be away from this awfulness. I couldn’t tell whether Claudia was staring at me from behind her sunglasses. She kept quiet, allowing her diabolical friend to do all the talking.

  ‘Hallo, I am Sylvie.’ She introduced herself to Lucille. ‘Here is Claudia.’ The women were all forced smiles. All I could think of was our ten-second coitus, Claudia’s disbelieving expression as I left that morning.

  ‘Well, it’s good to meet y
ou again.’ I tried to summon a smile, but it wouldn’t come.

  Sylvie turned to look at me as if she had never seen anyone so ridiculous.

  ‘We should go now,’ Claudia urged at last, in German, tugging at her friend’s arm.

  ‘Oh … well. To meet you has been wonderful.’ Sylvie continued stubbornly in English.

  ‘Bye,’ Lucille replied.

  No one said anything.

  They walked leisurely towards the lake shore. Sylvie; I would never forget her name now.

  ‘Wow, what a head case,’ Famke yawned.

  Tunde burst out laughing, but the rest of us stayed silent. He was still sniggering when Angelika abruptly took off. By the time B had struggled into his clothes, she had sped past the sunbathers and had almost reached the entrance to the beach.

  ‘Who the hell were they?’ Lucille said.

  I shrugged. ‘Just some people we met a while ago. It’s nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean “nothing”? The woman was livid. What the hell did you do to her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘“Oh, hi, I am Sylvie. To meet you has been wonderful,”’ she mimicked, her voice high and piercing. We were racing back to our familiar pattern, Lucille and I. All the old tensions had rushed to the surface in no time. ‘Nothing!’ she scoffed, and began to stuff our rubbish into plastic bags.