Drowning

by Jassy Mackenzie

  Or perhaps that wasn’t what was troubling him. Suddenly, I thought of the reason why he might have come to tell me this.

  “Listen, if you’d rather I didn’t go with you, I’ll be totally fine staying here.”

  Two deep furrows appeared in his brow. “How do you mean?”

  “Well…” Damn. I’d misunderstood him and now I was fumbling to get my point across. “We hardly know each other, and these are your neighbors. You might want to socialize with them without having a—well, without me around.”

  “I see what you were trying to say.” He was silent for a moment. “Erin, can I tell you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I really enjoy your company. I want you to come along with me. If you’re wondering whether the neighbors know what I’m like, and whose company I’ve enjoyed in the past, and what they’ll be thinking about you, all I can tell you is that they don’t know. And it’s not as if I’ve had multiple liaisons recently in any case. The last time I slept with anybody was with Angela.”

  “With Angela?” But that had been nearly six months ago.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” I was quiet for a minute. “You’ve been misrepresenting yourself to me then. Here I was thinking you had a different partner every two weeks.”

  The shadow of a smile warmed his face. “A decade ago, you would have been about right with that guess. Nowadays, I’m more selective. I apologize for the misrepresentation.”

  “Accepted.” Despite all my efforts not to, I was smiling, too. “I’ll go to the party with you. What time do we have to be ready, and is there anything we need to bring?”

  “Bring?” He stared at me, nonplussed. “Damn it. I forgot to ask. I’d better call Thandiwe back.”

  “Ask her if she needs a salad. Or…” What else had I seen in the fridge? “Or a fruit salad. We could take both. And we should bring drinks, of course.”

  “Drinks, yes.” Still frowning, he took his phone out of his pocket and dialed her number.

  By six-thirty p.m. we were ready to go. I was wearing the only dress in my collection of borrowed clothes—a silken sundress—and over it, to cover the bruises on my arm, a light, white lace jersey that was a size too big. The green salad, which I had made, and a fruit salad made by Miriam were packed in the cooler box, together with a six-pack of beer, wine, and a bottle of champagne. Behind us, Joshua and Miriam, who had also been invited, were climbing into the beige estate vehicle.

  The evening was finally starting to cool down and clouds were boiling on the eastern horizon. Wind tugged at the tree branches.

  “More rain on the way,” Nicholas observed. “I hope this doesn’t wash away the sandbags Joshua spent all day packing in.”

  “I hope it doesn’t take the power box out again, otherwise they’ll have to cancel the party,” I added, causing Nicholas to raise his eyebrows.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”

  When we arrived at the estate, five other large vehicles were already parked in the driveway. Music was blaring from loudspeakers set up in the covered outdoor entertainment area. A string of colored lights had been threaded along the top of the patio roof.

  “Good evening!” Thandiwe, resplendent in a brightly patterned gown, bustled over to greet us all, and gave me a hug. “Thank you for coming, and for bringing the salads. Erin, they’ve made good progress with the river banks today. I’m sure it won’t be long before you’re back with your hubby, but in the meantime we’re so glad to have you here.”

  I didn’t dare look at Nicholas as she spoke. Then she turned to him. “Evening, Doctor! Lovely to see you. David’s chin is much better. He’s playing upstairs now.” She kissed him on the cheek, then gestured toward the party lights. “Please go and enjoy yourselves. I apologize for the loud music. When you have fourteen-year-old and twelve-year-old girls, these things just happen!”

  Nicholas and I walked toward the entertainment area, but Thandiwe tugged at my arm and held me back.

  “I thought I’d just let you know,” she said in a stage whisper. “The Groenewalds, who live on the farm to the north of us, have their niece visiting. She’s twenty-three and gorgeous! They want to set her up with Nicholas. Isn’t that exciting? I’m going to introduce him to her now. There may be some matchmaking happening here tonight.” She gave me a conspiratorial grin before hurrying off in pursuit of Nicholas.

  Suddenly, it was as if all the fun and expectation had been sucked out of the evening. I did my best to smile back at her, to hide the surge of jealousy and disappointment that swept through me. Thandiwe could not possibly have known the hurtful effect that her words would have. She had seen my wedding ring. I had told her about my husband. She had obviously assumed, given what I had told her, that I was a happily married woman who couldn’t wait to get out of here and back home.

  And I had been, only seventy-two hours ago. Where had it all gone wrong?

  On feet that were suddenly leaden, I trailed toward the party area, to find Miriam standing next to Mrs. Groenewald, a well-groomed matriarch who was now in conversation with Nicholas.

  “Lovely to see you, Mr. de Lanoy,” the matriarch said. “Hasn’t this bridge been an inconvenience? Poor Colette, my niece, was supposed to attend her honors degree celebration at Wits yesterday and she has not been able to get out of here. It is so disappointing for her. Colette, do come here and meet Mr. de Lanoy.”

  A slender young woman with sparkling green eyes and thick, wavy auburn hair stepped forward and shook Nicholas’s hand. She was taller than I—in her high heels she stood nearly eye to eye with him.

  Nicholas glanced over his right shoulder and I thought he might be checking to see where I was. Well, I didn’t want to rain on their parade. I ducked to the left, rounded a pillar, and found myself standing in a paved barbecue area where a fire was blazing. A rotund grey-haired man in a white short-sleeved collared shirt was poking at the coals with a stick. We made our introductions—he was Kobus Bosnik from the farm on the other side of the hill.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked me.

  “I’d love some white wine.” I wasn’t in a champagne mood any more. While Kobus was organizing me a glass, I peeked round the pillar again to see, with a bitter stab of jealousy, that Nicholas had his back to me and had been drawn into a tight little group on the far side of the room with Mrs. Groenewald on his left and Colette on his right.

  While I watched, Colette laughed at something Nicholas had said to her, her full, red-lipsticked mouth parting. She placed her left hand on his shoulder and he leaned toward her. I turned away, unable to watch any more, grateful when a minute later, Kobus brought me a brimming glass of white wine.

  “My wife’s stuck in town,” he told me. “She’s been there for three days now—couldn’t get back because of the flood. I’ve been living on TV dinners cooked outside on the barbecue. After the first time, I realized you need to take them out of the plastic container before you heat them up on the coals. And, worst of all, my wife took my credit card with her when she left. She’s been phoning me to say that every place in town is booked up apart from the brand new five-star Hyatt. No other accommodation to be had, apparently. So that’s where she’s staying, and I’m paying!”

  He roared with laughter and I joined in. Mr. Bosnik was a natural comedian. Half an hour later we were the center of a group including Miriam and Joshua, and a couple of other locals. He had a fresh beer in his hand and I was halfway through my second glass of wine.

  “So we’ve driven this road for twenty years now,” he said, “and I swear, until this time last week, I’d never seen the pothole just before the intersection that was so deep we actually expected somebody to come along and ask about mining rights. I mean, you’ve never seen anything like it. My tire was shredded. Shredded. So there I am, with no truck, and a whole load of macadamias in the back, to deliver to the Spar by that afternoon, except by then I thought I was the one who was nuts.”

  “You are nuts,” o
ne of the other men commented, to general laughter.

  “So then I start looking for my car jack. You know, to change the tire. And I didn’t have one in the vehicle, so I walk all the way down to the main road, and along comes a minibus full of tourists. So I step into the middle of the road and flag it down. My luck, the damn driver is half German and mostly deaf. He leans out of the window and asks if he can help. So I say, ‘Car jack. I need a car jack.’”

  “And then?”

  “And then he sticks his head back in again and they close all the windows. I start phoning my wife to ask her for a set of tools, but a minute later I hear sirens over the hill, coming my way, and there’s a helicopter circling overhead. And the flippin’ cops from over in Nelspruit pitch up with the chopper and three emergency vehicles—oh, and an ambulance, because the German bus driver thought I’d been car-jacked. Because I’d said to him, ‘car jack.’ And by the time the story got through to the police, they thought the whole tour bus had been car-jacked!”

  Amid the laughter that followed, Joshua leaned over to me and asked in a low voice, “Where is Mr. Nicholas?”

  I shrugged, then gestured in the direction of the entertainment area. “Last seen in there, being introduced to a young redhead and clearly getting along very well with her.”

  Joshua had seen Nicholas and me in the swimming pool together—he knew how things were between us. Now he stared at me, frowning in concern, clearly not knowing what an appropriate response to this might be.

  Nor did I. I sipped my wine and tried not to think about how angry I felt and how confused I was. Tried instead to laugh at my entertaining companions, and not to imagine Nicholas in the room next door, turning all his charm on to the gorgeous Colette. I stood in miserable silence while Joshua offered me silent sympathy and Miriam, poised and smiling, squeezed my arm briefly.

  CHAPTER 14

  My second glass of wine was almost finished when two warm, strong hands clasped me around my waist. My heart accelerated instantly. Mr. Bosnik paused mid-sentence in yet another of his funny stories.

  “Well, hello, Nick!” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Doing the rounds inside,” he said. “I’ve come to say hello, and check up on how my guest is faring.” I arched away from his touch but his grasp followed me, warm and sure. “Good to see you, Kobus. Mrs. B. not home yet?”

  “No. I’ve been making emergency arrangements with the bank. I should get the card paid off in another fifty years or so.”

  Nicholas laughed. “Is everyone okay for a drink?” he asked. “My glass needs a refill. So does yours,” he said, removing mine from my grasp.

  “No, I’m fine, honestly,” I told him, but he took my hand and led me away from the laughing group and back into the entertainment area, where rock music was pulsing from the speakers and, I could see, the two Groenewald women were craning their necks to keep track of him.

  I tugged my hand out of his.

  “Really, I’m good,” I told him, shouting to be heard over the beat. “I’m having a lovely time. You must… Go on, enjoy yourself.” I gestured to the group he’d recently left—discreetly, I hoped.

  “Glad you’re having a lovely time. I’d be having more fun with you.” He removed the champagne bottle from the large ice-filled tub where it had been chilling. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere quieter.”

  My ears were ringing from the music as we walked out of the entertainment area and through the treed garden into the darkening evening.

  “I saw they built a bonfire on the other side of the garden,” Nicholas said, and ahead I could see the flicker of flames in the center of a large sandy clearing.

  He sat on a wooden bench on the far side of the bonfire and patted the seat beside him.

  “Sit.”

  The hiss of the champagne cork sounded very loud in the silence. I sat next to him. Our knees brushed, then pressed together.

  “We only have one glass,” I said.

  “We’ll share.” He filled it slowly and carefully before handing it to me. The bubbles sparkled on the surface, bursting on my lips as I sipped.

  “I feel bad for leaving you alone,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t leave me. I left you. I saw you were otherwise occupied. I didn’t want to interfere.”

  “Otherwise monopolized,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “She looks like a lovely girl.”

  “I’m sure she is.”

  “Isn’t she your type?”

  “Erin, I don’t have a type.”

  “Well, ’scuse me for assuming that a sexy young redhead might be your type,” I said, letting my voice drip with sarcasm. “Or do you prefer blondes?”

  I knew that if I’d spoken like that to Vince it would have enraged him. But Nicholas only smiled. “How much wine have you had?” he asked, sounding amused.

  “Only two glasses. Poured for me by your friendly neighbor Kobus.”

  “Ah. So more like four glasses, then, if he was pouring.” “Do I appear drunk?”

  “No. You appear honest and outspoken. I’m liking it.”

  He passed me the champagne and I took a large gulp.

  “Go back to your redhead,” I told him. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s not my redhead.”

  “She could be. She wants to be.”

  “And I don’t.”

  “What does she have an honors degree in?”

  “Um. She did tell me… or her aunt did. Er… fine arts, I think. Art of some kind, definitely.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, hating her all the more.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because art’s what I wanted to study. I would have studied it if I hadn’t fucked up my life beforehand.”

  “Tell me why that happened.” He put his arm round me and I leaned against him.

  “No. I’m not going to tell you.”

  “And I’m not going to stop asking.”

  I watched him pour more champagne, while my resentful thoughts toward Colette bubbled.

  “I can see your future mapped out now, Nicholas,” I told him. “In a few years you’ll be married. Probably, you’ll have had a big wedding ceremony at the lodge. You’ll have a couple of beautiful kids running round. Maybe you’ll be faithful to your wife. Maybe you won’t. But that’s your life. That’s the way it will go. I can predict it. And I’m sure you’ll be very complacent with your happy ending.”

  He was silent for a moment while the crackle of the flaming logs snapped in my ears.

  Then he let out a sigh.

  “If only happy endings were so easy,” he said. “You know, that’s what I was thinking earlier on, when I was standing with the Groenewalds. That is exactly what was going through my mind. Here I am, being set up with a very suitable, attractive, single young woman, and everybody’s hope and expectation would be that, best case, in a few years we’d be where you’ve just described. Even I tried to go along with it—for the first thirty seconds, anyway.”

  “Well, I agree life is not always simple,” I said.

  “For a number of important reasons, Erin, my life is not going to go that route.” He sipped from the glass, then handed it to me.

  “What are those reasons?”

  “There are some I won’t tell you.”

  “I’ll keep asking.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll tell you one. You’re a reason,” he said, and his words surprised me so much I almost fell off the bench and onto the carefully raked, pale sand below.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean—you don’t want to fool around with anybody else while I’m still here?” I was clutching at possible explanations, not understanding him at all.

  “Well, that’s true, actually. I’m a faithful type, in my own way. I only commit adultery with one married woman at a time,” he said, offering a mischievous grin. “But it’s not that. It’s… hell, I don’t know. All I know is I can’t stop thinking ab
out you. When I was standing with the Groenewalds, I didn’t want to be with them. I wanted to be with you, Erin.”

  Suddenly I felt as if I could not breathe.

  He put the bottle and the glass carefully down on the sandy ground.

  My head was whirling now, partly from a fair amount of alcohol on an empty stomach, and partly from his words, his closeness. Nicholas must never know that I felt the same way about him, too, I told myself. I should not even take what he’d said too seriously. Clearly, he had a marvelous line in smooth talk, which I was sure he gave all the girls. Coming from me, though, those same words would show vulnerability.

  Then I forgot my stern self-talk as he leaned close to me and with eagerness I met his kiss. The touch of his lips had the same instant effect on me as it had done before, melting my insides, making me lustful, needy, reckless. His hands smoothed up my legs, pushing the silken skirt of my dress higher, catching his breath as his fingers traveled all the way up my thighs to encounter only bare and naked skin.

  “No panties… you have no idea what a turn-on that is,” he murmured. “What it does to me.”

  “That isn’t exactly by choice. I only have one pair with me. I can’t wear them all the time,” I protested. My voice was complaining—rather breathlessly, I had to admit—but my body was not. I could not contain my desire for him. I was pushing my hips toward him, silently begging for him to touch me more intimately, to fulfill my limitless craving for him.

  “You are so sexy. With or without underwear.” He stroked his fingertips lightly over my cleft, and I caught my breath at the sensuality of that gossamer touch. “It’s just that without… you offer me far too much temptation. You can’t imagine how badly I’ve been needing you. And I can’t sit here knowing that you are here… uncovered, open, waiting… not without doing something about it.”

  The movements of his hand and my body had caused my dress to ruche up around my thighs, and now he encouraged me to lean back before lifting the front of the skirt higher and bending to kiss the soft, sensitive skin of my inner thigh.