He flips the brim of my hat. ‘Think of what we’ll save on beach umbrellas,’ he says as we wander around duty-free, me buying SPF 50 sun lotion and squirting myself with perfume samples and him looking for his favourite tobacco.
He signs me into the lounge on his Priority Pass. He travels so much, he sees it as a challenge to get the most value out of it. We debate which is the best breakfast drink, Bucks Fizz or a Bloody Mary, and he brings me ham, cheese and bread rolls and we add more orange juice to our prosecco, then more prosecco to our juice. It’s fun and mega romantic.
It’s quite funny – the Bucks Fizz completely breaks down the reserve between us. We’ve survived our first big argument and now we’re stronger than ever.
On the plane we have another Bucks Fizz because I firmly believe, from personal experience, it’s impossible to get drunk on prosecco. We giggle and test each other on the details of the safety card. We practice the brace position. We lean forward as far as our seatbelts will allow to check out the exits. And I ask him about the resort. ‘Plage Port Nature sounds lovely. Environmentally friendly,’ I say.
Mick strokes his red beard and then looks out of the window at the clouds. ‘Probably, yeah.’
I’m hyper with happiness. ‘You know when they ask you to use your towels twice to save water, do you think it’s just because it’s cheaper?’
‘Not just because it’s cheaper.’
‘No, not just because.’ I stroke the cool sleeve of his shirt. ‘I can’t believe you got all your clothes into a laptop bag,’ I marvel. ‘You look so nice in linen. You look as if you’re the head of some major international criminal organisation, in a good way.’
‘A friendly criminal, you mean?’
‘Yeah, a friendly one.’ He’s so nice that I’ve almost completely forgotten about David Westwood. He’s gone to all this trouble for me, for us, and I’m beginning to think I could love him. And you know something else? I think he could love me.
A couple of hours later, I’m sitting on the bed in our hotel room with the sea view in my lovely buttercup-yellow shift dress hyperventilating.
‘You could have told me that Plage Port Nature is a nudist camp.’
‘Naturist,’ Mick says, as if it makes a difference.
‘And this is supposed to prove a point, is it? Naked people everywhere? It’s disturbing.’
I’m so gullible. How did I not realise what he was up to? How come I didn’t spot that the purpose of the trip was to make a point? The instructions not to pack much should have been the clue.
‘Come on, Fern. Give it a try,’ Mick says, kneeling in front of me and holding my fingers tightly while he looks deep into my eyes and gives me an urgent team talk. ‘It’ll be fun. We can be our true authentic selves. You and me. Look at me!’
Resentfully, I look into his sincere eyes and he looks so handsome, with his milk-white skin and his burnished hair and his mandarin and cedarwood scented beard. I shake my head. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’
‘I want to prove to you that clothes aren’t important; they’re really not. It’s the person inside them that counts. You with me?’
‘No, I’m not!’ Despite what Mick thinks, clothes are nothing to do with vanity. ‘Clothes are everything! It’s all about the look – peacocks, robins, those monkeys with the red arses, lions’ manes – it’s all about sex, Mick! It’s about attracting and being attractive! It’s pollination!’
He grins and slides his hand under my dress. ‘Yeah … fancy a bit of pollination, Fern?’
I push his hands away. ‘What? Are you kidding me?’
‘Relax,’ he says, backing off quickly. ‘Listen to me. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get undressed and then we’re going for a paddle, understand?’
‘I suppose so,’ I say.
And so we undress for the occasion and go naked to the beach.
I say naked; I accessorise with my large round sunglasses, flip-flops, my wide-brimmed hat and a stripy navy-and-white canvas tote bag which is large enough to hide behind.
It’s a big beach. We set our things down on the perfect spot for sunbathing – ten metres from anyone – and work up the nerve to go for a naked swim.
I entirely lose my frame of self-reference, being naked.
Nothing wrong with the human body or anything, it’s just that without my clothes, my armour to define me, I honestly don’t know who I am.
I’m a snail without a shell, lost and unformed; I feel peeled and skinned, vulnerable, as if my internal organs are on display. I’m living the dream, the one that no one ever wants to live, where I find myself naked in public.
I want to cover up and hide my dismayed heart, my twitching liver and my grinding guts, and clothe myself once more in the armour of fashion.
Mick is completely unsympathetic. He crouches beside me, freckling in the sun, and says this is what we came for, this is the whole point of the trip, so that I can see how completely unimportant clothes are.
So reluctantly, after psyching myself up, I follow him on the long walk across hot sand to the sea, meandering around bare bodies starfished everywhere in shades of pink and brown, smooth and freckled, some with pubic hair and some waxed to a shine. It’s impossible not to look, or be looked at.
Hugging myself, I follow him nonchalantly at first and then as the heat of the sand burns my feet, I speed up, swearing and hopping over the searing sand into the icy surf.
Gasping with the shock of the cold, I go deep so that the water’s up to my shoulders. I’m happy now, clothed by the sea. I’ll just stay in the water all day until everyone goes home.
Wow! Against the dazzling blue water Mick is luminously pale. Luminously.
I breaststroke towards him, where he’s still standing in the shallows with the foam lacing around his ankles. ‘You know something, Mick? This is the longest I’ve ever seen you naked without an erection.’
Bad mistake. When I tell him that, he gets self-conscious, turns his back and tries to crouch in the waves. He mistimes it horribly.
‘Look out!’
A wave hits him at the back of the head, knocking him off his feet, and he springs up, choking and blinded by his wet hair. Then the wave ebbs away, leaving him pale and floundering in the shallows.
I’m floating with my hands behind my head, my bare breasts breaking the surface, watching him with a smirk. ‘Come over here.’
He shakes his head, scattering drips like a dog. He flinches as the foam hits his legs. He cups himself miserably. ‘I can’t, Fern. I can’t swim.’
I laugh. ‘Really?’ I stop floating and start to tread water. ‘You’re serious?’
He doesn’t bother to answer.
‘Aww, Mick! How come you’ve never learned how to swim?’
‘I just never have, okay? My mother tried to teach me on an ironing board, but it was no use, I couldn’t get the hang of it.’
You think you know a person and then they come up with a story like this. I tilt my head back in the sea, feeling the cold grip my scalp like a hair band. I’m intrigued about the ironing board. ‘Was the ironing board an improvised surfboard?’
‘No, she was teaching me how to do the crawl in our lounge, you know, the arm movements.’
This is wrong on so many levels. I’m bobbing up and down in the waves, feeling the sun hot on my head, trying to work it out. ‘No one starts with the crawl on an ironing board in the lounge. Why didn’t she take you to the pool with a pair of armbands like everyone else?’
‘She’s scared of the water, too,’ he says.
I breaststroke towards him, feeling a little superior and also more loving, because I’m seeing a vulnerable side of him that I didn’t know he had. ‘I’ll teach you how to swim. Forget the ironing board. I’ll show you how to float.’
‘With my hands behind my head?’
‘Yes, good, isn’t it? It’s like lying on an invisible airbed.’
Mick shies back fearfully at every s
lapping wave. His shoulders are hunched and his dark body hair clings like weed. When he’s chest-deep, he clutches me and I turn him round and put my arms under his armpits then tell him to relax, to let the water take his weight. He’s surprisingly heavy.
‘Can you feel it holding you up?’
‘No! Don’t let me go!’
‘I won’t! Trust me!’
All around us in the turquoise sea, people are swimming, shouting, playing ball, doing naked handstands and generally enjoying themselves while Mick, on the other hand, is flailing around wildly, fighting for his life. I move my hands from his armpits to his shoulders and he sinks like a stone.
‘Relax!’
‘I can float if I keep one foot on the floor,’ he tells me.
‘That’s not floating, that’s standing.’ I’m determined to persevere. The sun is blazing down but the water’s as cold as peppermint and I’m really enjoying myself. ‘Try it on your front. You stay there and then just push off and glide towards me.’
He looks at me fearfully. ‘Come closer. Closer than that. Come to where I can reach you.’
‘Then you’re just basically falling on me, aren’t you? You kind of need to push forward. Push! Just try it. I’ll count to three.’ I hold out my hands and after a couple of false starts he musters his courage and makes as if to glide towards me. He churns his arms and legs and goes straight under. I pull him back up and he coughs and hawks and blows seawater out of his nose, hanging on to me in obvious distress. Our bodies create a warm cushion of air and, clinging to each other, we’re carried up and down in the waves.
‘I think I can feel it holding me up,’ he says after a bit.
‘Yes, you will. Take a deep breath, fill your lungs. See? You’re higher in the water now. Your lungs are your internal floating device. Now breathe out.’
I let him go and he sinks slowly then he breathes in again and rises up.
‘Huh!’ he says, keeping his beard above the water. ‘I’ve got an internal floating device.’
‘Let’s try again. I’ve never met anyone who just sinks,’ I tell him. ‘Feel the water taking your weight. Try to lie flat as if you’re stretching out on a bed of nails. I’ll hold your shoulders. Keep your head back.’
‘Bed of nails. Okay.’ He’s biting his lip, tilting back with his arms outstretched, rocked by the sea.
‘I’m hardly touching you now. I’m going to take my hands away, but if you sink, I’ll catch you.’
I take my hands away. It’s a triumph.
‘I’m doing it!’
‘I know!’
We hold hands and float as happily as jellyfish for a long while, and eventually, immensely pleased with ourselves, we plod back to our towels – unselfconscious now and lightly coated in salt crystals – to lie on the sand by the tote bag and hat.
Away from the cooling turquoise of the sea, I prop myself on my elbow to look at him fondly. His beard is frosted with salt. ‘Mick, you look really red.’ I press my hand firmly on his abs.
‘Ow!’
It leaves an alarming white handprint, so I say helpfully, ‘I think you need to cover up.’
Oh, the irony.
He sits up and looks at his fiery body then compares it with mine, which is pale gold.
I’m fine, of course. I’m wearing my factor fifty. ‘What factor did you use?’
‘I didn’t bring any. I was going to ask if I could borrow yours but then we were going for a paddle so I thought I’d wait until I dried off.’
I’ve never realised the awful, debilitating effects of sunburn before. We go back to the room, where Mick stands under a cold shower until he starts to shiver. Despite it, once he’s out, he radiates more heat than a wood burner. And he’s in pain.
During the next few days I more or less get used to the naturist life: reaching cautiously into the freezer at the supermarket, keeping my knees together in restaurants, avoiding wicker chairs and wooden benches. I even get stronger muscles from holding my stomach in all day.
Mick, on the other hand, is living on paracetamol and sitting miserably under a sun umbrella confined to a small circle of shade layered in wet towels to cool the pain.
He can’t bear to be touched.
So much for our romantic getaway.
Without the sex we discover that our authentic naked selves don’t get on that well at all. We run out of subjects to talk about. In the evenings, anaesthetised by Jack Daniels, Mick’s red skin makes him appear to be in a state of permanent embarrassment. He gets tired of people staring at him and murmuring knowingly: English.
And let’s face it, a naked, peeling man drumming his fingers on the table doesn’t look cool; it just looks insane.
On Monday, we get dressed to go home. It’s a wonderful feeling.
Once we’re in the foyer fully clothed and ready to leave the hotel – Mick in his white linen suit and me in a shift dress – I study him with renewed interest and the kind of ‘Hey! It’s you!’ sense of happy recognition.
On the flight home, I flick through the duty-free magazine, get my bank card ready for our proseccos and take the laminated safety instructions out of the seat pocket. I always read the safety instructions; I’m cautious that way. I nudge Mick with my elbow. ‘Go on, test me.’
He’s looking out of the window. He doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t take it from me.
‘What’s wrong?’
He turns to look at me, the new skin rosy and pink on his peeling nose, his saintly face deadly serious. ‘Fern,’ he says in the deep, solemn voice of a newscaster announcing the death of a royal, ‘we need to talk.’
It’s so unexpected that I don’t understand what he’s saying. ‘What about?’
‘This isn’t working for me. It’s not you, but over the last few days I’ve realised that we’re looking for different things.’
I suddenly feel cold. ‘Like what, for instance?’ The trolley stops next to me and I’m still holding my credit card. I order two proseccos anyway.
When I keep them both myself, he says, ‘Fern, don’t take it the wrong way. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just the relationship, it’s superficial.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ I chip in indignantly. ‘Superficial? You’d know all about that. You’re the guy who nearly broke up with me because I wore pleats. Idiot.’ I proceed to pour one of the drinks and knock it back.
‘That’s what I mean – you take the whole fashion thing too far. You’re really nice, but …’
‘Obviously not nice enough to spend any more time with, that’s the bottom line,’ I say, my voice rising. ‘You’ve made me spend the last four days naked and now you’re breaking up with me?’
‘Shhh …’
‘You tell me clothes aren’t important and when I don’t wear any, you dump me?’ I don’t know why he thinks that flapping his hands at me is going to calm me down. ‘Don’t shush me! So what if people are looking? You should be ashamed!’
I grab the drinks and go and ask the cabin crew for another seat, but the flight is full. There’s no way that anyone survives the break-up speech feeling better about themselves, so I stomp back to sit next to Mick and tell him to shut up. For the rest of the flight I sit there hating him.
I’m devastated. After all I went through for him.
Resentful, too. I was game, wasn’t I? I took up the challenge, I did the naked bit, I gave up wearing clothes for him, didn’t I? I put cream on his sunburn, fed him painkillers, and he does this to me?
It’s a long, silent and very miserable journey home.
LOT 9
Ossie Clark for Radley ‘traffic light’ dress, midi, yellow, green and red skirt, with black bodice, mid-1970s, with yellow-self-covered buttons and yellow trim, deep plunge neckline.
In need of a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, I call in on Lucy when I get back and she makes hot chocolates with marshmallows then sits on the sofa in the lotus position, cupping her mug in her hands, while I tell her about the break-up.
&
nbsp; I leave out the shameful part, the fact it was a naturist resort, for the same reason that I don’t tell anyone I’m afraid of dogs; I always try to hide my weaknesses.
‘I didn’t even realise you and Mick were that serious about each other,’ she says frankly when I come to the end of the story.
My eyes swim with tears. She’s right, of course. I’ve never kidded myself that Mick was The One, but what it feels like is another failure and I’ve got enough of that in my life as it is. ‘I thought we were okay together, you know? That we suited each other. And didn’t ask for too much.’
‘Aw, Fern. Men, eh. Don’t worry, you’ll find someone else,’ she says. ‘Someone better. Smarter.’
‘Smarter,’ I repeat wistfully, my thoughts jumping to David, who’s always smart even in jeans. I’ve never even seen him with his hair ruffled. ‘Maybe I’ll even find someone who wears polished brown shoes.’
She laughs. ‘That’s weirdly specific. Listen, this is the way I see it. Dating is like an audition. You win some, you lose some, but you can’t take it personally – it has to be the right person for the part, do you know what I’m saying? Like Christian Bale in American Psycho. They wanted Leonardo DiCaprio but, in the end, Christian Bale played the role of Patrick Bateman and smashed it, right?’
I’m not sure where this line of reasoning is going, but I nod. ‘That’s true.’
‘So what you have to ask yourself through the pain is, was Mick the right person for the role?’
I think of all the times my heart lifted when I listened to his gorgeous voice, and the times I met him at airports and snuggled up to the lovely warmth of his beard. But now it’s superimposed by the image of shiny brown shoes. God, I realise despairingly, I am superficial. I consider her analogy. ‘What happens if the person who you really want for the part has already got a part in someone else’s production?’
She unfolds herself from the lotus position and sits forward. ‘Fern Banks! I do believe you fancy someone else!’
‘It’s nothing,’ I say quickly. ‘Honestly, it’s just a crush.’
‘Come on, who is he?’
A Random Act of Kindness Page 12