Sleep, if and when it ever came, was kept busy with feverish dreams, most of them featuring Mrs Mostyn in a very small Fawcett-blue bikini.
There were still nearly two weeks to go of the holiday and the Bakers had got into a routine at the hotel: same table, same sunbeds, drinks poured before they’d even ordered them (local beer for Dad, rum and coke for Spam, coke for Amanda).
Spam, who’d helped herself to prawn cocktail and sauteed squid at the buffet, hastily scrambled off her lilo to make an emergency sprint for the powder room, leaving her untouched Cuba Libre on the pool’s edge. Baker manoeuvred herself onto the vacant plastic mattress and picked up the abandoned glass (shame to waste it).
Dad’s German bint had been dragged away to the ping-pong table by a rather proprietorial countryman (Bob Baker despised table tennis). She had pulled a zebra-print T-shirt over her tiny bikini in case of spillage and Baker saw both men’s eyes home in on her breasts the instant her head disappeared. Bintless Bob grumbled over to check up on his daughter.
‘You all right? Pam having a siesta?’ He noticed the now empty glass and clicked his fingers at a passing barman: ‘Same again over here, Paco, and a cerveza, por favor.’ Like a native.
‘Cheers,’ said Baker when her highball arrived. You couldn’t even taste the rum when you drank it through a straw.
Dad opened his throat to receive the contents of his beer glass, like a snake inhaling a rat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he looked around him to see if the coast was clear.
‘Had your tabs?’ Not a whisper exactly, but a sort of chuntering undertone like he was telling her that her flies were undone.
Spam finally returned from the loo and he ordered yet another round.
‘I might take mine up with me, Bob. It’s about time to get ready.’
They met again by the lift an hour later, Bob in a short-sleeved golf shirt, Spam in a khaki-coloured catsuit thingy with gold chains down the front. Baker was wearing a mortifyingly drippy cheesecloth dress Spam had probably bought for a joke but there hadn’t been time to take back to the shop.
Before dinner, guests – guests who weren’t downing thrifty tooth mugs of schnapps on their balconies – could sit in the piano bar overlooking the empty pool, drinking gins and tonics. The white artex-y walls of the terrace were all festooned with bougainvillea, the impossibly pink blossom looking like some primary school noticeboard display made out of scrunched-up tissue paper and thick dabs of map glue. ‘They’re leaves, not petals,’ said Dad, in greenhouse mode.
Dad ordered ‘the usual’ and Paco winked at Baker as he placed her glass on its white paper daisy – her third rum in an hour. She thought again of the small print on the chemist’s label. Did a piano count as machinery? Just as Baker was wondering whether to trip across to the white baby grand in her flowery flip-flops and vamp her way through ‘Imagine’ or ‘The Entertainer’ or the school song, the real entertainer arrived in his toothpaste-bright dinner jacket and began adjusting the stool and flicking through the handful of request cards that Paco had left on the lid underneath his water glass.
Baker sipped her drink as her parents chatted, uncomfortable to be eavesdropping on them being happy. A normal conversation because for once she was not the subject of it.
‘“Moon River”?’ suggested Mr Baker, eyeing the pianist.
‘“Born Free”?’ giggled Spam.
Both wrong: “Strangers in the Night” (what were the chances?).
‘Lousy crisps,’ said Dad, grinning, as he swiped a second bowl from the unoccupied next table. ‘Want some?’
No sooner had he stolen the crisps than a guest took the table, an English doctor (‘lady doctor’ as Spam insisted on calling her) who was staying in the hotel by herself. She had ordered a whisky and soda. Very sophisticated, Baker thought, as she slurped up her Cuba Libre: a proper drink, a bloke’s drink.
Dad kept looking towards the entrance to the bar – was he hoping for another sight of his German conquest? – Baker saw Spam checking over their neighbour, pricing her silk top and trousers.
‘Patatas fritas, por favor?’ Spanish accent and everything. Spam was cringing with embarrassment, hoping the woman hadn’t spotted the two empty bowls on their table’s glass top. Paco almost ran back with the crisps plus a sugar bowl full of olives and a saucer of diced cheese.
‘Didn’t bring us olives,’ huffed Bob, then turned to his daughter in a show of conversation. Barbie’s dad on holiday.
‘So, Amanda, how’s the revision coming along?’
Baker sucked up the last of her drink (as noisily as she could – always drove him mad) then made to lean back against the cushions, but the chair was deeper than she’d realised and she ended up almost reclining, sugary ice cubes slithering over her cheesecloth smocking. The fan on the ceiling of the bar had a small piece of paper streamer attached to it from the previous Saturday’s going home party and Baker watched, fascinated, as the long purple shred fluttered in the artificial breeze.
‘Amanda?’
Spam sounded very far away.
‘Come on, sausage, let’s get to the table.’
Evening meals were served by the open windows of the main dining room where the tablecloths were made of damask so stiff and starchy you could do origami with the matching napkins. Sydney Opera House yesterday, water lilies today. The linen changed colour every meal, same colours as the Mildred Fawcett china: green, blue, lemon, ointment.
There was a bamboo dresser affair by the pillar in the middle of the dining room where the waiters kept the re-corked bottles of Banda Azul and the half-empty litres of Tre Naranjas and flat Fanta, table numbers carved in Biro on the labels. The Bakers always had a bottle of wine with their dinner and as usual Amanda was given a glass, topped up with rubbish jokes about not getting tiddly.
‘Drop of beano tinto?’
Bob Baker nodded to the waiter who filled all three glasses with the vinegary wine.
The hotel menu was full of disgusting things – especially the starters which usually meant ‘ensalata’: parboiled vegetables decanted from jars and doused in oil and lemon juice. Floppy cocks of albino asparagus, palm hearts, tinned sweetcorn and grated carrot. (What kind of person served grated carrot as an hors d’oeuvre? Spam finally got her answer.) Even the carrots came in a bloody jar.
‘Are you not eating that?’ Her father’s fork spearing a sweaty great heart of palm. What had they done with the rest of the tree?
Baker drank most of her wine in one gulp, staring in horror at her main course: something rectangular and grey with a side order of beans and yet more carrots: diced. Goody.
‘Wossis?’
Dad tweaked the menu card from the swan-shaped gadget in the middle of the table and tilted his head back, narrowing his eyes so he could read the typed list.
‘Lemon sole in a girdle.’
Would have been funny if Bunty had said it. Or Julia? Maybe.
The smell of fish was wafting up from the plate like the stink of the Upper Shell cloakroom at low tide. Baker lurched forward and as she reached to steady herself, sent the wine bottle flying, a great whoosh of red liquid shooting across Dad’s yellow shirt. In the rush to limit the damage and hurl salt at the spreading purple stains no one spotted that Baker had lost consciousness.
When she came to, she was lying back in an armchair in the deserted piano bar, the cool, slim fingertips of the lady doctor clamped against the inside of her wrist.
‘Lie still. You’re going to be fine. My name’s Jenny. I’m a doctor.’
‘Lay-dee doc-tor,’ drawled Baker.
The woman’s superfine mousey eyebrows met for a kiss.
‘Swot Spam always calls you,’ explained Baker.
‘Pam?’
‘Spam-my-stepmother.’
‘I’ve told your parents to carry on with their dinner, nothing to be alarmed about. I was watching you by the pool this afternoon: exactly how many of those drinks did you have?’
&nb
sp; ‘Dunno. Dad kept saying “the usual” and Paki-whatsisface just kept bringing more rum and coke. Four?’
‘And when did you last eat?’
‘Lunch?’ Baker couldn’t meet those clever little brown eyes.
‘Really? Could have fooled me.’
The fingers at Baker’s wrist formed a ring with the tip of the thumb, a bony bangle round Baker’s tiny forearm. Dr Jenny remained crouching by the armchair but raised her head and looked bossily behind her until a waiter appeared and let her show off in Spanish for a bit.
‘He’s bringing you a nice ham and cheese sandwich and some Coca-Cola – plain Coca-Cola.’ Then she played doctors and nurses some more, pulling at Baker’s eyelids and looking hard at her face.
‘Your stepmother muttered something about tablets?’
‘All sorts.’ Baker sensed herself drifting off once more. ‘Spam keeps them.’
When she woke up again Dr Jennifer was sitting next to her on an armchair she had moored alongside, reading the labels on the trio of medicine bottles kept in her parents’ bathroom.
‘And you’ve been taking this little lot every day for three weeks?’
‘Probbly. Date’s on the label.’
The doctor rolled her eyes but said nothing more, just handed Baker the glass of coke.
‘Drink this and have a bit of your sandwich.’
‘Aren’t you a bit young for a doctor?’
‘Nope.’
‘How’s the patient?’ Bob Baker’s hearty party voice, laid on for the new stranger.
‘She’ll be fine once she’s had a bite to eat, but I think I should have a little chat with you and your wife if you don’t mind.’
Little chat? Mr Baker winced at the familiar phrase. Never anything little about it.
‘Goodnight, Amanda,’ called Jennifer as she led him away. ‘Try to eat up your sarnie. I’ll pop by in the morning.’ Pop. Doctor-y word ‘pop’: pop up onto the couch, pop your things off, pop this under your tongue, pop these pills.
Baker remained on the armchair, sipping at her coke, pretending not to notice the nosy glances of the other guests as they filed out of the dining salon and up in the lift to their schnapps bottles and backgammon boards. After about ten minutes Spam came back.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Gone to bed.’ A strained breath. ‘Amanda? I was wondering . . .’
‘What did she want?’
Spam abandoned whatever she had been planning to say and explained, almost apologetically, that Dr Cooke seemed to think that Amanda’s tablets were too strong.
‘Something about body mass – she did try explaining. She says you should only be taking about half the amount Dr Sexton prescribed because of your being so . . . petite. Says you’ll feel much better – sleep better.’ She unwrapped a smile and warmed it through. ‘Might as well have an early night. Just half a tablet, Dr Cooke says.’
Baker struggled free of the spongy embrace of the chair and followed Spam to the lobby, leaving the mangled sandwich on the table, and assuring her that she felt fine, absolutely fine. She concentrated on taking deep breaths all the way up in the lift and managed a quick goodnight grimace before locking the door of her room and dashing to the bathroom. She was barely in time and some of it got down the front of her cheesecloth smock. She pulled the sodden cotton over her head, forgetting about the full-length mirror behind the door. As she dropped the dress on the floor and smeared it across the wet tiles with her sandalled foot she caught sight of her reflection. She ran a finger experimentally under the strap of her gaping brassiere, tracing the outline of each rib. She put a hand either side of her chest and pushed the whole lot together, remembering Helga’s nutty cleavage. G-ross.
Baker spent the next day in her room writing unpostable postcards to Bunty, reading Sons and Lovers and trying to finish her novel.
The dreaded Miriam’s snapdragons had withered in the vase and the penultimate chapter found her crying over the news that Paul was about to be posted to a new job at an animal hospital in Melbourne. A deep pain took hold of her and she knew that she must lose him and she lay on her bed like a beast awaiting the forgiving blade of slaughter. The memory of his loss came each time like a red-hot brand on her soul. It seemed that even her joy had been like the flame coming off of sadness. Her heavy head tilted at the sound of a taxi engine quivering on the darkling pavement below and she felt her whole soul coil into knots of flame.
What she really wanted to do, Baker realised, was bump off all of her characters, but that would be copying Bunty, wouldn’t it? (‘I’m killing everybody.’) And then she remembered that Miss Gleet would not be seeing 13 for Croquet at all, now that Bunty was ten thousand miles away, and Baker curled up on her bed, the memory of Bunty’s loss like a red-hot brand on her soul and cried as if she would never ever stop.
Spam, dial set to prison warder, brought up melon chunks and some rolls for breakfast (and half a tablet), then some scrambled eggs for lunch (with half another tablet), and Dad finally appeared with a ham roll and half a Mandrax on his way down to dinner and asked, almost shyly, if she wanted to go and look at some gardens tomorrow? Gardens? Not really, Dad, no. But the weird thing was that he and Spam went anyway: Baker flip-flopped down to breakfast at the usual time the next morning to find a note from Spam (two half tablets sellotaped under the signature) saying they’d hired a car and headed off and would see her at teatime.
Baker ordered tea and toast and was fiddling with the butter dish in grown-up solitary splendour when Dr Jenny Cooke skipped in, still in her girly white running shorts – like Julia, only thinner and without that gorgeous hair. Was Amanda on her tod? And, without waiting for an invitation, she had nipped over to the buffet, filled her plate with slices of fruit and sat down in Dad’s chair. Pure chance? Baker didn’t think so (there was no place laid at her usual table). Dr Jenny ate her banana with a knife and fork, cutting each slice into peculiarly small mouthfuls, and when she had finished she pushed back her chair, rolled back the bottoms of her Bermuda shorts and the capped sleeves of her blouse and began rubbing sun cream into her calves and forearms with a strange, unsensuous action, like Spam waxing the sideboard. Did Baker play much tennis? Baker began a muttered explanation about school tennis being a bit of a lottery with only three courts between thirty and the Drumlin only being interested in girls who had learned to play elsewhere, and besides Baker loathed and despised games of any sort, but Jennifer Cooke cut her short.
‘I could show you a few strokes if you like, but you’re probably heaps better than I am.’
Baker once again felt as if she were watching her own body as it got up from the breakfast table and led this funny new tennis partner up to its room to change its shoes and then back down to the court where Dr Cooke proceeded to show Baker’s body what it had been missing. It seemed that the secret was to carry on swinging the bat after it had made contact with the ball – a secret Miss Drumlin had never divulged.
They swam afterwards.
Baker’s shirt billowed up around her as she stepped down into the warm water, like pyjama floats in a personal survival exam.
‘You keeping that on?’ More hard, rude, diagnostic looks at Baker’s figure.
‘I hate this bikini. Spam bought it.’
Dr Jenny dived straight in and swam two lengths under water (as Baker knew she bloody would). She was wearing a schoolgirl swimsuit with a racing back, a red one.
‘What house were you in? Did you have houses?’ said Baker’s voice.
‘Brontë.’
‘No badges?’
‘The old suit fell to bits. I just like them this shape – they stay on in the water.’
‘Bet you did have badges though. You’re the type: good prefect material.’
‘Cheek. Race you to the end.’
She was out and on the side before Baker had gone ten yards.
‘I’m useless.’
‘You’ll get faster, promise. I’ve got a stop watch upstairs. I coul
d teach you the Australian crawl if you like.’
The rest of the morning was spent by the pool playing Travel Scrabble. And when lunchtime came the meal was actually edible for a change, because Jenny chatted up the hotel chef and got him to make special round omelettes with juicy bits of potato in, so they were spared the usual fight for the running buffet. The other guests were denied omelettes. Miffed or what.
‘Warum konnen wir nicht omeletten haben?’
‘Sie muss ein spezielle diät befolgen,’ said Jenny, unanswerably, then turned to Baker to translate: ‘I told them you were in training.’
And she was – in a way. The rest of the holiday carried on like that. Spam and Dad would go off to the other side of the island and look at a parrot sanctuary or some interesting rock formations (‘oxymoron’ Jenny said), and over the next fortnight Baker’s swimming got quite fast. Even her German improved. The nightmares had stopped – she had no dreams at all now – but she couldn’t lose the weird, out-of-body feeling, like it was all happening to someone else.
‘It’s a pity you weren’t well and all that, but it’s quite nice to have made some friends at last,’ confided Dr Jenny. ‘The other English families have got the idea that I’m stuck up. I requested a bit of Chopin on my first night – I was talking to the pianist in the bar and he’s actually classically trained, would you believe it – but it didn’t go down especially well. Silly of me, I suppose.’
Baker heard the click of a cigarette lighter and instinctively sniffed for the toasty aroma of the first pristine puff. They played a bit more Scrabble, Baker taught the doctor a few choice two-letter words until her opponent got quixotic across two triple word scores.
‘So how come you’re on so many drugs? And who is this Dr Sexton? Did he prescribe them over the phone? Jolly heavy doses.’
‘Dunno. School made me go. It was that or get expelled. He’s a psychiatrist, but I only saw him once for about half a minute.’ Dr Cooke’s bony face had that obsessive alert look Miss Carson used to get when she was taking notes in her head. ‘Did my Dad put you up to all this?’
The Following Girls Page 22