She turned out the children’s lights and made her way back into the kitchen. She would have to eat alone; David had left a message on the answering machine that they would be getting something sent in to eat at the meeting; there was a restaurant in town that dispatched Thai food in containers to the office when required, at any time of day or night. She would have something simple – scrambled eggs and toast, or spaghetti bolognese: the adult equivalent of nursery food. Then she would have an early night and be asleep by the time he came back.
She ate her simple meal quickly. The night was hot and in spite of the air conditioning her clothes seemed to be sticking to her. She got up from the table, not bothering to clear her plate away – Margaret could do that in the morning. She went outside, out of the chilled cocoon of the house into the hot embrace of the night. It was like stepping into a warming oven: the heat folded about her, penetrated her clothing, made the stone flags under her feet feel like smouldering coals. She stepped onto the lawn; the grass was cool underfoot, but prickly. She walked across it to the pool and looked into the water. A light came on automatically when it grew dark, and so the pool had already been lit for several hours, although there was nobody there to appreciate the cool dappling effect on the water.
She looked into the water, which was clear of leaves, as the pool-man had come earlier that day. He took an inordinate pride in his work, spending hours ensuring that every last leaf, every blade of grass or twig that blew into the water was carefully removed. “It must look like the empty sky,” he said. “Just blue. Nothing else.”
She sat down at the edge of the pool, immersing the calves of her legs in the water. With the day’s heat behind it, the water was barely cooler than the surrounding atmosphere, and provided little relief. Swimming now would be like bathing in the air itself.
She sat there for twenty minutes or so, before she arose and crossed to the far side of the garden. Beyond the hedge of purple bougainvillea, she could make out the window of Mr Arthur’s study. The lights were blazing out, and she saw Gerry Arthur himself standing with his back to the window. She stood still and watched. He was moving his arms around, as if conducting a piece of music.
She stepped forward. The sound of a choir drifted out into the night. Carmina Burana – she recognised it immediately. O Fortuna! Mr Arthur raised his hands and brought them down decisively, to bring them up again sharply. She smiled as she watched him, and then turned away.
She went back to the pool and took her clothes off, flinging them carelessly onto one of the poolside chairs. The air was soft on her, and now there was the faintest of breezes, touching her skin as a blown feather might, almost imperceptibly. She stepped into the pool and launched herself into the water. She thought again of the Hockney paintings of the boys in the swimming pool, brown under the blue water. She ducked her head below the surface and propelled herself towards the far side of the pool. She thought of George. She imagined that he was here with her, swimming beside her. She turned in the water, half-expecting to see him. He would be naked, as she was. He would be tanned brown, like Hockney’s California boys, and youthful. He would be beautiful.
She surfaced. She had shocked herself. I am swimming by myself. I’m married. I have children. I have a husband.
When David returned she was still in the pool. He saw her from the kitchen and he called out to her from the window before he came out to join her. He had a beer with him that he drank straight from the bottle. He raised it to her in greeting.
“They settled their differences,” he said. “I thought it was going to be acrimonious, but it wasn’t. The lawyers were disappointed, of course. They were hoping that the whole thing would end up in litigation.” He paused. He had suddenly noticed she was naked. “Skinny dipping?”
She moved to the end of the pool, where she could sit, half lie, on one of the lower concrete steps.
“It was so hot.”
He fingered at the collar of his shirt. “Yes. Steaming.”
He took a swig of his beer.
She said, “The kids ate at Margaret’s tonight. She filled them up with pizza. Do you know how many calories there are in an eighteen-inch pizza?”
“A couple of thousand. Too many, anyway. And heaps of sodium. And what do you call those fats? Saturated?”
“I wish she’d give them something healthy,” she said. “Vegetables. Soup. That sort of thing.”
“Oh well,” he began, and then continued, “Why did they eat there?”
“Because I was late back. I took Mrs Rosales to have her leg looked at. I told you, didn’t I? Margaret spoke to me.” She had mentioned something to him, but could not recall exactly what she had said.
He took another swig of beer. “Took her to the hospital?”
“No.” She tried to sound casual. “I took her to see George Collins. He takes people like that. He takes anybody who hasn’t got insurance.”
“When?” he asked.
“When what?”
“When did you take her?”
“Late afternoon.”
He moved his chair forward and slipped out of his shoes and socks. He put his feet into the water, not far from her. “And then?” he asked.
She moved her hands through the water, like little underwater ailerons, playing. The movement made ripples, which in turn cast shadows on the bottom of the pool, little lines, like the contour lines on a chart. She was not sure whether his question was a casual one; whether he was merely expressing polite interest, or whether he really wanted to know. So she said nothing, concentrating on the movement of her hands, feeling the water flow through the separated fingers like a torrent through a sluice. Water could be used in massage; the French went in for that, she thought: they had themselves sprayed with powerful jets of seawater. It was meant to do something for you; provoked sluggish blood into movement, perhaps. Thalassotherapy.
He repeated the question. “And then?”
She looked up at him, and saw that he was not really looking at her, but was staring up at the moving leaves of the large sea-grape tree. The breeze, hardly noticeable below, seemed stronger among the highest branches of the tree.
“And then what?” She needed time to think.
He looked down and met her eyes. His expression was impassive. “And then what did you do? After you’d taken what’s-her-name …”
“Mrs Rosales,” she said quickly, seeing her opportunity. “Bella Rosales. I think she prefers Bella. She’s Honduran – the usual story – children over there being looked after by grandmother. Her leg …”
“Yes,” he said. “But your day – what happened afterwards?”
“I came home,” she said. It was not a lie, she told herself, as she had come home – eventually.
“But you didn’t go to fetch the kids?”
She frowned. Why would he ask that?
“I did. Later. I let them eat at Margaret’s.”
“I see.” He paused. His beer was almost finished now, and he tilted the bottle back to drain the last few drops. “You didn’t go anywhere else?”
She felt her heart beating wildly within her. She had been seen. Somebody had said something.
“No.” This time the lie was unequivocal.
He turned round. “I’m going in. I’m tired.”
There was nothing in his tone of voice to give away what he was thinking.
“David …”
“Yes?”
She looked at him. She would tell him. She would say that she had forgotten. She had been invited by George to have a drink because he had had a wretched day and needed to talk to somebody. But she could not. It was too late. He would never believe her if she said she had forgotten the events of a few hours before. And he did not look suspicious or offended; he did not look like a man who had just established that his wife was lying to him.
“Why don’t you join me in here? The water’s just right. And Tommy did the pool today. It’s perfect.”
He hesitated.
&n
bsp; “Why not?” He always slept better if he had a swim just before going to bed. It was something to do with inner core temperature; if it was lowered, sleep came more easily.
He took off his clothes; she was aware of his familiar body. He joined her. He put his arm about her shoulder, wet flesh against wet flesh.
8
“Why the tennis courts?”
Teddy had wanted to know. It would take twenty minutes to ride there on their bicycles, and the Saturday morning was already heating up.
“You can die of thirst,” he said. “You know that? You can die of thirst if you ride for a long time in the heat. My cousin had a friend who died of de-something …”
“Dehydration,” said Clover. “And don’t be stupid. Nobody dies of dehydration these days. It’s like being eaten by a lion. It’s one of things that used to happen, but don’t happen any more.”
Teddy looked indignant. “He did. He did die from dehydration. You can see it on his gravestone at West Bay. I promise you.”
Clover smiled. “So it says died of dehydration, does it? Gravestones never say things like that. They just say dead. That’s all they say. Then they give the date you were born and the date you died, and maybe something about Jesus and God. That’s all.”
Teddy looked sullen. “I’m not a liar.”
She was conciliatory, and had intercepted a warning look from James. “Maybe he died a bit from dehydration. Maybe there were other things. You can die from two things, you know. Sometimes as many as three things.”
“You get bitten by a snake and then a lion eats you on the way to hospital,” suggested James. “That’s two. You might also get rabies from the lion.”
They thought about this. “Anyway,” said Clover decisively. “I’ll take a water bottle with me and if you get thirsty on the way you can have a drink. We have to go there, you see.”
“Why?”
She explained carefully, enunciating each word for Teddy’s complete understanding. “Because that’s where they all are on Saturday morning. They have this tennis league, you see. All of them.”
“Not my mum and dad.”
“No,” she said. “Not yours. But for the moment we’re only watching my mum, remember. She’s there, and all her friends. We can watch them. There’s a really good place for us to hide – it’s a big hedge and nobody would see us in there. Or we can climb one of those big trees and look down on the tennis club. They wouldn’t see us there either.”
“There might be iguanas,” said Teddy. The island was populated by fecund iguanas that feasted on the leaves of trees.
“That’s another thing that could kill you,” offered James. “If an iguana bites you in the right place, you can die. Not everybody knows it, but it’s true.”
“Nonsense,” said Clover. “You’re frightening Teddy.”
Amanda sat on the veranda of the tennis club. It was cool there under the broad-bladed ceiling fans; there was shade and there were languid currents of air, while outside under the sun the members of a foursome exerted themselves. There were shouts of exasperation, of self-excoriation; somebody’s game was not up to scratch. I’m sorry, partner. I don’t know what’s happened to my game. Never mind, never mind.
She had completed her own game of doubles and had played well, pushing their team a step or two up the club league tables. She was pleased; lessons with the club coach were paying off, as David had said they would. Money well spent, he said.
She was holding a glass of lime soda in which a chunk of ice cracked like a tiny iceberg. She was thinking of the day ahead: Billy was with Margaret on an outing to the dolphin park. She disapproved of the capture of dolphins and did not want to go, but he had set his heart on it. Everybody at school had been; everybody else had been allowed to go, and so Margaret had volunteered. Clover was up to something with James; off on her bicycle somewhere. That, at least, was the benefit of living on a small island; they were safe to wander; they had a degree of freedom that city children could only dream of. In New York there had been Central Park, but it had only been visited under the eyes of parents; there had been skating at the Rockefeller Center; there had been blissful summer weeks at a camp in Vermont. But there had been no individual expeditions to the corner store; no aimless wandering down the street; no outings without watchful adults. At least not until the teenage years, when things changed, even if the world suddenly became less exciting than it had been before.
She would go back to the house and shower before going to the supermarket to stock up with provisions for the weekend. After that … She kept a diary near the telephone and she envisaged the page for today. There was something at six-thirty – one of those invitations that pointedly did not include dinner. She remembered the name of the hosts: the Hills. They were white Jamaicans who had got out when most of their fellow white Jamaicans had left, cold-shouldered out of the only country they knew, fleeing from the growing violence and lawlessness. There had been a diaspora – some had gone to the United States and Britain; others took the shorter step to the Caymans, where the climate was the same and political conditions kinder. They also fitted in better there: the Caymanians understood them and they understood the Caymanians. The other expatriates – the Australians, the Americans, the British – were not sure how to take them. Here were people who seemed to have a lot in common with them but spoke with a West Indian lilt in their voice, who had been in the Caribbean for six or more generations. They were different.
There would be the Hills’ drinks party and then a cooling swim at home, followed by a movie that David would go to sleep in front of; and then the day would end. Another Saturday, like all the other Saturdays.
She watched the players on the court. It was getting too hot to play, really, even in December, and they were all slowing down, hardly bothering to run for the ball. Easy returns were missed because it was just too much effort to exert oneself sufficiently. The score wandered aimlessly.
“Far too hot for tennis, isn’t it?”
She looked round. George was standing behind her. He was dressed in a pair of khaki chinos and a blue T-shirt. She realised that she had never seen him in casual attire and had pictured him only in his more formal working clothes.
She laughed. “I played earlier. I’m glad I did.”
He drew up a chair and sat down. As he did so, she glanced along the veranda to see who else was there. There was a woman she knew she would see at the Hills’ later that day – she was very close to their hosts, a fellow Jamaican exile. There was that teacher from the prep school, the man who taught art, she thought, or was it gymnastics? She did not know the others, although she had seen them at the club before. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to her, or to George.
“I didn’t know you played,” she said. She had never seen him at the tennis club before.
He was holding his car keys and he fiddled with these as he replied. “I don’t. I was driving past. I noticed your car.”
She caught her breath. It was not accidental; he had sought her out.
He waited for a moment before continuing. “So I thought I’d drop by. I was going somewhere else.”
“Yes?”
“I sold the yacht and bought an old powerboat. It’s seen better days, but it goes. I don’t know if you’d heard.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I thought maybe James had mentioned something to Clover. He’s terribly proud of it.” He slipped the keys into his pocket. “They seem to spend a lot of time together, those two.”
“They’re very friendly. There’s a bit of hero-worship going on, I think.”
He smiled broadly. “Oh? Him or her?”
“Girl worships boy, I think.”
“Childhood friendships,” he said. “They might not find it so easy when they hit adolescence. Friendship becomes more complicated then.”
“Your boat …”
“Is nothing special. I can’t afford anything expensive. And it’s not a sailing boat lik
e the one David and I went out in. It’s a knockabout old cruiser with an outboard that’s seen better days. It can get out to the reef and back, but that’s about it.”
She said that she thought that this was all one needed. “Where else is there to go?” she asked.
“Precisely.”
“Those great big monsters …”
“Gin palaces.”
“Yes. Why do people need them?”
He smiled. “They can go to Cuba. Or to Jamaica. But it’s really all about extensions to oneself, to one’s ego. Those are look at me boats.” He paused. “I was just heading over there. To the boat. Why not come and see it? We could go over to Rum Point. Or out to the reef if you liked.”
She had not been prepared for an invitation and it took her some time to answer. She should say no; she should claim, quite rightly, that she had to go to the supermarket. But now, in his presence, she found it impossible to do what she knew she should do.
“How long would it take?”
The Forever Girl Page 5
