‘Let me use your microphone.’
Argos’s shout brought me back to the present. I blinked back tears and stood up.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I really should go . . .’
‘No, wait!’ he cried, making his way out of the water. I turned my face away, realising I was about to get a full frontal. ‘Just one song for you, Binnie. Please.’
‘B . . .b . . . but it’s broken,’ I stammered, covering my eyes with my handbag. ‘And I really have to get back now, I promised to phone my sister tonight.’
As I peeped out from behind my bag, I saw his pubic area began to appear above the water. Lowering my bag now, my mouth fell open and I fiddled furiously with the zip. ‘Alright, alright! Just stay there and you can have it!’
Laughing, he sank his lower body back down into the sea, keeping his manhood covered. He held out his hand for the probe.
‘Take it! Take it!’ I said, thrusting it at him.
He grasped the bulb to his mouth and, seeing me still holding the unit asked, ‘are you recording me?’
‘Argos, I told you, it’s broken,’ I said, pretending to press the buttons to demonstrate the machines inefficiency. At least – I thought I was pretending. Until he opened his mouth to sing, swung his head and yanked the unit out of my hands – knocking it into the water – where it fizzled in front of his pelvic region.
‘Arghyaggghhhyaaaaggghhh!’
He did a quick, violent judder at the waist which astonished me. He was a way better dancer the other night. ‘Waaarrrrggggghhhh hah hahaaa haaaaaa!’ he cried out. He was a way better singer a second ago too.
‘Okay, it’s not quite The Lady in Red-style serenade I was expecting,’ I said, trying my best to be tactful. All at once, he dropped the bulb into the water. It sank like a stone.
‘Oh, no!’ I yelped. ‘My Kegel . . . er . . . Karaoke thingy!’ It was only then that I realised he had fallen to his knees, looking like he was about to pass out.
‘Oh, Argos, are you alright?’
As he began to flop forward, I waded in just in time to stop him dropping face first into the sea.
‘Oh, help!’ I cried.
I tried to heave him up out of the water, made easier as he began to find his legs again.
‘Upsadaisy, there you go,’ I said, guiding him to the beach and forgetting he was naked. Which was just as well, because I sounded like I was his mum and about to put a plaster on his ickle knee. Then it hit me. Well, not hit me exactly. Just boinged off my leg.
‘Argos! Oh my . . .’ I started, peering down at what was a very impressive erection.
Still dazed, Argos scratched his head in wonderment, and with a weird, stupefied smile on his face. I grabbed his towel from a rock to cloak him in, just as a very drunk young guy appeared from nowhere, wearing nothing but a pair of shoes and a cap.
‘Hey, man,’ he said, staggering and hiccupping all the way. ‘Which way to the rope ladder? I need to get out of here.’
Argos turned towards him, still stunned and fully erect, and opened his mouth to speak. But no words would come. Before I could offer a response myself, the man donned his cap, said ‘Thanks man!’ and staggered off in the direction Argos’s very prominent member was pointing to.
Chapter Fourteen
Late night – wine and skinny-dipping. Sun’s down, bottoms up!
As I posted a photo of a sun-kissed, pert bottom that everyone would know wasn’t mine to Facebook, my face flushed pink at the memory of Argos’s electric-shock induced erection, which had poked me in the back as I had driven him home on his moped the night before. My wet clothes lay strewn on the floor somewhere, after I’d dived onto the bed, shattered from my calamitous day. Still, it wasn’t all bad. It was ages since anyone had poked me in the back with their erection.
‘I love you today, Mr Dando.’
‘I love you every day, Mrs Dando.’
‘I’m going to love you every day, I just haven’t had them all yet.’
It was the morning after our wedding and we were lying, arms and legs entwined, under a thin, cotton sheet on the hotel room floor. My idea that we should try a very quiet quickie on the private balcony for a bit of ‘al fresco’ variety that morning had only served to make David more anxious and unable to perform. I’d reassured him everything was fine, the euphoria of waking up as his wife filling and comforting me like warm, mulled wine. We had the rest of our lives to get it right.
‘Hey, honey,’ he’d said, touching me under my chin, which I immediately dipped to stop him brushing the early morning she-beardiness. ‘Why don’t you go get us a paper while I jump in the shower?’
‘Sure,’ I said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘It’s the least a wife can do for her husband.’
Oh the memories. That morning after marriage romance. That morning after marriage euphoria. That morning after marriage stroll to the newsagents while he has a wank in the shower . . .
With some satisfaction, I wondered if David was reading my updates, perhaps wondering who I was skinny-dipping with. He might know there was no other man I could love right now, but he couldn’t know I was being faithful and I wasn’t going to help him to this conclusion.
I remembered an email counselling session I’d taken two years earlier without telling David. I’d written: ‘It isn’t just when I’m out with David that I feel so bad. I’ve been avoiding going out with friends too. My last night out was a couple of weeks ago with two colleagues and all I did was spend the entire time staring at the pretty, slim young things on the dance floor, feeling like a fat, old hag. I couldn’t wait to get back home and hide. The truth is, I’ve begun to wonder where I’ve gone.’
My head had been swimming in David’s problems; I knew that now. That was where I had gone. The therapist had advised me to do one thing a day that made me feel better about myself – something I’d only begun to try now – on my honeymoon, with the five steps to a new me. Sure, I’d strayed from this new path of righteousness a couple of times, but I badly wanted to feel as free as a woman should feel of all these doubts and, for heaven’s sake, have some fun. I knew my battered heart wasn’t ready to stop loving David yet. Even knowing that at least some of the bad thoughts and feelings I had about myself had been fostered from memories of how he – and Michael – had treated me. When would I ever feel good enough?
‘Michael, are you planning on bringing that girl to your cousin’s wedding?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Oh. Wonderful.’
Michael seemed not to notice the sarcasm in his mother’s tone as he pushed his bedroom door closed and bounced gleefully back into bed beside me, laughing.
‘At least we know she doesn’t realise you stayed last night,’ he said.
‘That girl?’ I said, aghast and hurt. ‘What does she mean, “that girl”?’
‘Oh, you know Mother,’ he replied. ‘She’s just a terrible snob.’
I wondered why he hadn’t defended me. Why he hadn’t said, ‘Actually, that girl is here and I love her and we’re going to have a baby.’ I wondered why, two months into my pregnancy and as delighted as a child with a new toy that he seemed to be, he hadn’t told either of his parents yet.
‘I’ll tell them when the time is right,’ he’d said coyly. ‘Just not now. We’ve only been going out a couple of months so it’s going to be a shock. Besides, it’s their silver wedding anniversary this month and I don’t want to spoil it for them by giving them something to worry about.’
‘Worry about?’ I roared. ‘I’m nineteen and you’re twenty one next month. We’re grown-ups for heaven’s sake! Why are we hiding our relationship? Our sleeping together? Our baby?’
I thought I was ready to tackle the world at nineteen, that my unanticipated new family would be much better than my old one. That Michael was going to be the loving, supportive parent I never had. That my child would never have to feel like he or she was a perpetual disappointment to him.
‘You’re WHAT?’
My father stared back at me, open-mouthed. Smother had rushed to put an arm around his shoulder to soothe him.
‘What did I tell you about using contraception?’ she scolded. My father visibly shrank at the mention of the word ‘contraception’. He always looked as though he needed to leave the room whenever any references to sex were made in his company.
‘It wasn’t planned, of course, but Michael and I couldn’t be happier,’ I’d said, unable to comprehend why everyone wasn’t as over the moon as Michael was.
As Michael was.
Only as an older, wiser woman had I acknowledged that the proud, smiling teenager telling everyone, including Michael, that this was the beginning of the rest of her life and that she couldn’t be happier, had been cloaking her fear and bewilderment in false joy. All the while my tummy had felt weird. Like there was something there, questioning the reason for the new life inside it.
‘Hey, you up there! How the hell did this happen? Do you even love this guy?’
My father had died from a stroke just two months before Sal was born. I felt sure the disappointment had killed him, a belief my mother helped exacerbate in a series of heavily cloaked digs. As I’d walked down the aisle with her giving me away later that year, I looked to the heavens and silently asked him if he was proud of me now. I was to have a new husband, rich in-laws and already had a beautiful baby girl.
‘How do I look, Mum?’
‘You’ll do. Don’t be getting too attached to that dress though, you’ll want to sell it on afterwards. What do you think of my hat?’
‘You are a very pretty lady, Binnie.’
Argos had said this last night, before the electrocution by pelvic toner thing. Sinking further into my bed, I allowed the words of this gorgeous, young twenty-whatever-he-was to marinate. Somebody desired me! How long had I had to wait for that wonderful feeling? But then, all he saw was the covered up, Spanx wearing version of me. What if, heaven forbid, he actually saw my body? Would we need to try pelvic toner intervention again?
‘Wait, wait, wait . . .’
ZAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!
‘Okay, GO!’
As the memory of his enormous erection boinging off my leg came back to mind, all at once it occurred to me that every single intimate encounter I’d ever had with David had been lukewarm rather than sizzling hot. I’d accepted his faults and his awkwardness in bed. I’d listened to the counsellor, doing everything she advised to make things better for him. But in the process, I’d lost what was important to me. I needed to feel desired. I needed intimacy. And David had given me neither of those things.
I started to let myself imagine what sex with Argos would be like. He was a gorgeous distraction from all my problems right now, and of course I wanted him. But the truth was it was an attraction based entirely on lust. There was no connection, like that first moment I’d met my husband. And it was hardly surprising, given that I hadn’t had sex in such a long time, that I was pretty much desperate for some. But I wasn’t ready to put a ‘finished’ stamp on my marriage by sleeping with someone else. I couldn’t do that, even knowing how easy it would be to ensure David never found out.
The clock on the bedside table buzzed a wake up alarm. Come on Bernice, don’t you have enough complications to worry about? So you fancy this guy a little, fine! But you’re not going to mourn the loss of your youth by getting yourself another one.
A text alert flashed up on my phone.
Weren’t you going to call me? Is everything okay?
Suzy. I still hadn’t phoned her, because I was dreading the conversation. I really needed to confide in her, but I still felt so, so embarrassed.
Today was scuba day. Cancelled scuba day, which was why the alarm had been set. Putting aside my mobile I resolved to call her later (again) and turned over to flick the button on the clock off, when my hands touched something cold, wet and slimy.
‘Ew!’
I looked to see what it was. And if God had needed an alarm call too, he was getting one today.
‘YARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’
A black, slimy monster of a giant spider was covering the clock on the bedside table. In seconds, Chris was hammering at my door.
‘Binnie! Are you okay? Let me in!’
I jumped up and fiddled with the key in the door which sprung open, almost knocking me backwards as Chris burst in wielding a small trowel.
‘Oh, thank God,’ I said. ‘It’s Supergardener!’
‘What is it? Where?’ he gasped, puffing from what must have been an effortful burst of running from one of the oleander patches.
As the day’s light filled the room through the open door, I turned and pointed to the monster alarm-clock-eating spi . . .
Bunch of seaweed.
‘What? What is it?’ Chris stabbed the air with his trowel, poised to weed the monster to death.
Awakening is a wonderful thing. No sooner had I realised my assassin was more ‘kelp’ than ‘help!’ I realised I was standing in nothing but my knickers and made a quick grab for the sheet to cover my modesty. Chris, thank God, turned from the ‘monster’ to looking back at my face.
‘Sorry, it was the . . . er . . .’ I pointed. ‘Seaweed,’ I said, feeling like a prat and not for the third time this week.
A moment ago, Chris had been a dashing hero racing to help a damsel in distress. Now, he was alone in a bedroom with a crazy half-naked woman. There was a horrible, gaping, great awkward silence. And we all know what I do whenever there’s one of those.
‘Did you see my tits?’
BLURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.
Chris began backing out of the room. ‘Have you, erm . . . lost them?’ he asked.
At last, I’d found my blurting twin.
I half-laughed and another, momentary awkward silence fell before Chris bumbled on for me.
Ignoring the ‘did you see my tits’ thing, he said, ‘You can’t beat the old phikeia in the dark monster trick. Fallen for that myself a few times. I’ve . . . er . . . left coffee on upstairs. Got to go.’
As my ears heard ‘phikea’ and my brain processed it as ‘thick,’ (had he just called me thick?) he bolted out of the door faster than a sheet-stealing goat; before I even had chance to ask him where he stood on the big, natural boobs are best/not-best debate.
‘Oh Godddddd!’ I fell back onto the bed with an almighty moan and clasped my hands to my head. My boobs hid under my armpits – I would say in embarrassment, but the truth is they always do this when I’m horizontal.
Chapter Fifteen
My mobile phone keeps telling me it’s unable to perform operations. What a relief! I wouldn’t want it to start one on me when I’m not expecting it.
After cheering myself up with a silly Facebook status, I threw on a swimming costume and sarong and headed upstairs to see Chris. This was too bad. I needed to get our next meeting over with now so that I didn’t spend the last few days avoiding him.
He smiled as I walked towards him and handed me a cup of coffee.
‘Going swimming today then?’ he asked. I couldn’t be happier to follow his lead by not referring to the flashing incident at all.
‘It’s a free day today, nothing planned,’ I said. ‘So after breakfast I thought I’d check out the little private cove down the lane you told me about, for a spot of sunbathing.’ Like I hadn’t been there last night with all the naked folk.
‘Well, that’s a fine idea,’ he remarked. ‘I have a free day too. Well, there may be a client later this evening, but all day I’m free, so I was going to go out in my kayak before lunchtime.’
‘So what exactly is a kayak?’
‘It’s a lot like a canoe. Very easy to steer,’ he explained. ‘I try to go out every day. Exercise for the body and soul.’
Being alone all day didn’t appeal too much. Linda was still loved-up with Eydis, who in turn was busy in rehearsals with Gelle. A day with Chris would be nice
. Maybe we could start to be friends again, just like old times.
‘Well, okay then. I’m not doing anything else. Why not?’ I said.
He looked confused. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Oh! You weren’t inviting me to come watch you on your kayak thingy then?’ I said, knowing full well he hadn’t meant to invite me.
He paused, scratching his chin. I could see he was trying to think of an excuse not to spend any more time with me than he had to and it hurt.
‘I really hate being by myself,’ I said, trying my best to look pathetic.
‘Well, I suppose it might be fun,’ he said at last. ‘There’s room for two. I could take you out on it if you like? Oh, but you hate deep water, don’t you?’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope,’ I said. ‘Divide and conquer as they say. Although, I was always rubbish at maths, so I’ll just try the conquering thing for today.’
Chris’s kayak was stored at one of the many pretty, secluded coves only a stone’s throw from the villa. There was a small taverna at its heart, which Chris told me was run by Stefano. Stefano greeted his old friend warmly.
‘Cristos, you want Mythos?’
‘Oh good God, no,’ Chris laughed, ‘save that shit for the tourists.’
Stefano threw back his head and gave a hearty laugh, before taking his Mythos loaded tray to a table, with I assumed, two waiting tourists, not far from where we were. David loved Mythos; maybe now was not the time to mention this.
As we dragged the kayak and oars over to the beachside, my eyes took in the gorgeous, twinkling turquoise expanse before me. Every time I came to Greece, the prospect of staying forever in this Aegean paradise of hot sunshine and clear blue seas seemed even more inviting. No wonder Chris stayed here for six months a year. Lucky him.
The New Mrs D Page 12