by Judy Astley
‘Ha! And what he got was how to cook curried kangaroo tail and emu carpaccio!’ Beth laughed. ‘Poor Len, how very disappointing for him!’
‘And you actually had to cook that, the kangaroo thing?’ Lesley sat up and swung her legs down from the lounger to the ground. ‘Wasn’t it just gross?’
‘It was a bit – the tails arrived frozen but they were still whole and furry. The viewing public didn’t get to see that bit. The producer deemed it a preparation stage too far.’
‘Yuck! I couldn’t even touch it.’ Lesley shuddered. ‘I like my meat skinned and plucked and cling-filmed, me.’
‘Wendy prefers to get to grips with the essential animal aspect. Like a sort of international Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. We had at least twelve goes at it ’til she was happy. To be honest it tasted like any other strong red meat; venison’s about the closest. You just try not to think about Skippy. Roo steak is on every bar-food menu in Oz, apparently.’
Beth wished they hadn’t started on this track. Work, domestic routine, these were the things she’d come here to escape. Now her head was full of wondering about Nick, about how he was getting on all by himself back at home. She pictured him slumped on the sofa, the crumpled, slightly greasy, nineteen-year-old length of him, fast asleep in the middle of the afternoon in front of the Disney Channel and surrounded by beer cans and pizza boxes. One could also, she thought as she crossed her fingers, if masochistically inclined, pull the mental camera back from the sofa scenario to include thirty hung-over, post-party teenagers, many broken windows, something stinking and indelible drying all over the stair carpet and the police forcing an entry. Do not, she told herself, go there. As long as Nick fed the cats and remembered to get up for work, that was the main thing. She should not worry about him, for in that direction lay mollycoddling and the formation of one of those helpless, bleating men who ask where their clean socks are. He was past voting age, for heaven’s sake, and only a few final saving-up weeks from flying off to spend months fending for himself in Australia. He’d have to survive well enough there without someone reminding him that tee shirts didn’t wash themselves.
‘Mum! Mum, I need money!’ The long skinny shadow of Delilah fell across Beth’s face and she opened her eyes.
‘What do you need money for? You don’t have to pay for anything here, it’s all included.’
‘For on the beach. There’s someone selling sarongs and I really need a blue one. She’s got the exact right thing to go with my spotty bikini. I’ve got money, but it’s English. And it’s miles away up in my room.’ Those two clinchers should do it. Beth could almost see her brain ticking along on a mother-manipulation track, holding out the promise that: a) it was only a loan and b) Delilah was being careful not to overtire herself.
‘OK, how much? A tenner’s-worth?’
Delilah’s lip curled up sideways in her best ‘I think not’ expression.
‘Muuum! Twenty, at least! She’s got lots of stuff, shell bracelets and coral necklaces and that.’
‘Twenty then, but I want it back and there’ll be loads of chances to buy things . . .’ But Delilah had gone, flip-flopping fast down the short path towards the shopping opportunity, stopping only for a second to stroke one of the hotel’s many cats.
Lesley watched her go. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she? What I’d give to be sixteen again.’
‘Would you really though?’ Beth settled herself back on the lounger. The sun was now blazing under the parasol at chest level, and she’d have to put something over that stretch of thin, delicate skin or it would burn and shrivel. ‘Would you really want all those exams and the worry about which university and all that peer-pressure competitiveness?’
‘Well since you put it that way . . . no. And I wouldn’t want to lose my virginity again either.’ Lesley shuddered. ‘Or if I did, I’d want something classier than the school thug and the back of his dad’s Ford Escort in the Arndale multi-storey. Somewhere like here would be just perfect, sixteen or whenever.’
That was another train of thought Beth wasn’t over-keen to pursue. If Nick’s sex life was something she was forced, by way of his bedroom sound effects, to know about, it was quite the opposite with Delilah, who kept her fancies and fantasies firmly between her mobile phone and her circle of mates, and thank goodness for that, in Beth’s opinion. There were times when she understood exactly what teens meant when they put their hands over their ears and yelled ‘Too much information!’
The sun had sneaked further under the parasol and was now searing her legs. What next for maximum enjoyment of the moment? Another dollop of lotion? An icy lime cordial? Or a spot of exercise?
‘Have you been into the Haven and booked any treatments yet?’ Beth asked Lesley.
‘Not yet. Shall we go now? The early rush will be over. I’m trying to persuade Len to go for the Lovers’ Massage. Dead romantic, I reckon. You and Ned should try it.’
Beth tried to imagine herself and Ned under the tutelage of big Dolores, the chief masseuse, learning how to smooth each other’s sinews with oils, by the light of scented candles and with the inevitable Enya soundtrack wafting from the crackly old speakers.
‘I dunno, I think we’re a bit too English to get the most out of it. We’d probably giggle,’ she said.
Lesley looked stern. ‘You’ve got to keep that fire stoked,’ she warned. ‘Or you’ll find it hard to get it restarted. That’s what my mum always told me. And she wasn’t talking about the one in the sitting room.’ Then she laughed. ‘Though of course she might have been. She always kept a very warm house.’
Delilah sat cross-legged in the sand, carefully folded her lovely new sarong, placed it down in front of her and put the pair of bracelets side by side on top of it. Which one to keep, which one to give to Kelly? Perhaps she’d wear both of them during the holiday and make a decision when she got home. Kelly wouldn’t know, and she’d only have been trying it out. She picked up the one with the tiny blue spiral shells and held it up towards the sun. You could almost see through the shells and the light glinted off the pearly insides. Was it Kelly’s sort of thing? Or, back in wintry Surrey, would she just give her that sneery look and say it reminded her of garden snails?
‘That’s pretty. Did you get it off the woman with the sarongs?’ The sand beside Delilah scuffed up as the pale bride-girl sat down beside her. ‘You don’t mind if I sit here, do you? I thought, like, I could see you’re on your own with just your family and I’m on my own with mine.’ The girl grinned at her. ‘I’m Sadie.’
‘Um, I’m Delilah. And no, I don’t mind.’ Don’t mind, she thought, understatement or what? She’d assumed she’d be condemned to talk only to people with eyebags and elephant skin for the entire fortnight. ‘I thought you were getting married though,’ she added, as if this made Sadie the enemy. ‘Wasn’t it you carrying a big dress off the plane?’
The girl’s grin disappeared. ‘Oh, well yeah. I am. Well that’s the plan, but it’s been going a bit pear-shaped. We shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Huh? Like you’ve come to the wrong place?’
Sadie laughed. ‘No! Well yeah actually, but not like that. It was going to be in the Seychelles. And it was supposed to be just me and Mark on this sort of deserted island, no-one else, dead romantic. We had it all planned ages ago. We’d made all the arrangements.’ She stabbed a stick in the sand and impaled a bit of palm leaf on top of it.
‘So, like how did you end up here?’ No-one could be that bad at geography, Delilah thought, that they’d go the wrong way across the world for their own wedding. And wouldn’t someone point it out at the airport when they checked in?
‘The hotel we were going to suddenly closed. “Refurbishing” they told us, which really means they’ve gone bust. The tour operator was all apologies and offered us this instead. My uncle said he’d been here a few times and that it was OK so we went for it. But then,’ Sadie sighed, ‘Mum decided she wanted to come. And then Dad found out about that which meant he did
n’t want to be left out so he’s here as well, even though they’re divorced and hate each other and barely even speak.’
Delilah hardly dared ask but out it came. ‘And Mark?’
‘Couldn’t get on the same flight. Don’t even ask how that cock-up happened. He’s supposed to get here tonight. He’d bloody better, that’s all I can say.’
‘Yeah. Um, right.’
Close up, under the harsh sun, Sadie didn’t look much older than Delilah. Young to be in charge of a whole wedding, anyway. Delilah gazed out to sea, past the reef towards the yachts moored over on Dragon Island, and tried to imagine the hassle of planning her own wedding. It would be all right if it was to Prince William, because presumably the royal flunkeys would take care of all the arrangements and she’d just have to roll up to the Abbey (the gold coach? Like Princess Di or Cinderella?) in a fabulous frock with her hair (Nicky Clarke) and make-up (Jemma Kidd) looking brilliant. She somehow doubted William would be allowed to sneak off alone with her for a quick Caribbean beachfront ceremony with a steel band and rum punch. But suppose she met someone in the next couple of years who she couldn’t imagine living without? So far in her short life she hadn’t had to plan anything more complicated than Suki’s surprise sixteenth a few months ago. It had been a vodka and Red Bull extravaganza down the local rec, that had had very messy consequences all over the see-saw and some old Neighbourhood Watch colonel-type threatening to set his fat Labrador on them. Her own wedding, without serious and responsible grown-ups in charge, would probably be the same sort of fiasco.
‘Aren’t you a bit young?’ Delilah asked bluntly.
‘Twenny-one.’ Sadie sounded gloomy again. ‘And me and Mark, we’re solid. Well we would be if they’d just effin’ leave us alone to get on with it. My uncle and aunt are coming on the same plane as him, so that’s even more people. We’ve got nearly two weeks ’til the wedding, plus a week after for, like, the honeymoon, so they thought, well hey, might as well turn up for a holiday. They’d even planned to tag along to the Seychelles, can you believe? To “surprise us”!’ She held up her fingers in little quote signs and looked furious, then she delved into her straw beach bag and pulled out some cigarettes. ‘Want one?’ Delilah shook her head.
‘Why are they coming then if they’re not invited?’ Funny people, Delilah thought, gatecrashing a wedding thousands of miles from home.
‘Because they think of us like we’re their extra kids. They’ve got a son of their own but he’s gone to live in Sydney with his friend, if you get my drift.’ Sadie nudged her in the side and grinned.
‘Huh?’ Delilah felt confused. ‘Oh, you mean he’s gay.’ She hadn’t come across many gay boys yet – at least she didn’t think so. The ones at school used to call each other ‘gay’ all the time, whenever someone knew the answer to a question in Eng. Lit. or actually did their maths coursework, or admitted to liking cricket. They’d calmed down a bit since GCSEs – now it was more like a term of affection. Pretty hard going for them if they really were gay though, and statistically some of them not only must be, but should know it perfectly well by now. Oliver Willis wasn’t, she knew that for sure. Delilah was at least the fourth girl in their year that he’d managed to persuade out of her pants. Unless . . . well he might just have been trying out what it was like with girls, so he could make what her mother would call an informed choice. She hoped she hadn’t been so crap at sex that she’d been the one to sway the balance. By next term he might be going out with Pink Paul in year eleven and it could all be down to her.
‘Yeah – he was a trolley dolly on Quantas for a while,’ Sadie went on, sounding, to Delilah, impressively breezy. ‘But now he and his mate run a bar in Darling Harbour.’
‘Right.’ Delilah was lost, though flattered to be assumed to be following Sadie’s worldly-wise trail. What the buggery was Darling Harbour? Was that an exclusively gay hang-out? She’d have to e-mail Nick and find out.
‘We’re getting married over there.’ Sadie pointed her cigarette out to sea, towards Dragon Island. ‘Classic innit? So even though we’re here and not in the Seychelles we still get our little desert island, all palm trees and white sand.’
‘And snorkellers. They go out there by the boatload, from the water-sports hut. I’ve just seen them.’
‘Not on my wedding day they won’t, not on that afternoon anyway. We’ve been promised,’ Sadie growled, then turned to Delilah with a big bright smile. ‘You can come if you want! Why don’t you? Be my best woman! You’ll look really pretty in the photos.’
Glad to be of use, Delilah thought. And what exactly, she wondered, was a best woman supposed to do? She hoped it wasn’t the same as being a bridesmaid. She’d been one of those twice before, and if you did it three times it meant you weren’t ever going to be a bride. Glad as she was to have made a new friend, there was no way she was going to muck up her chance of being Princess Delilah.
They’d picked the wrong moment. As Beth and Lesley walked into the air-cooled, jojoba-scented reception area of the Haven spa, a piercingly raised voice was splintering the calm.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my blood pressure!’ The mother of the bride was slapping her hand on the desk. Miriam, cool and calm and in charge of taking the bookings, continued to smile at her, refusing to fuel the fury.
‘For Christ’s sake, look, it says “Seaweed and Scented Oil Head Wrap”. It’s only a hair-conditioning treatment! There’s nothing to get my blood boiling about! I’ve never heard of anything so absurd!’
Bride’s mother stabbed her finger hard against the spa treatment brochure she was waving at the still unruffled and smiling Miriam, who must have been through this a hundred times.
‘Lordy, how that woman rants and raves!’ Lesley murmured to Beth. ‘Shall we come back later?’
‘No way,’ Beth hissed back, ‘I want to see the outcome.’ She pulled Lesley over to the big squashy sofa and the two of them sat down, watching the action from comparative safety through a conveniently placed arrangement of bird of paradise flowers on the table beside them.
‘I’m afraid it’s in the rules,’ Miriam explained quietly as she gently tapped the end of her pen on the desk. ‘Where any heat treatments are involved, we have to exclude all risks. That is why all guests have a health check with the nurse first, if there are any “yes” answers on the medical questionnaire. It’s for your safety, Mrs Morrison, your blood pressure was slightly on the high side.’
‘My safety! It’s to cover your arses, you mean.’ The voice of Mrs Morrison went up another decibel. Automatically, Lesley and Beth leaned further back against the sofa. ‘In the brochure it gives a list of treatments included, and the hair wrap is one of them. It doesn’t say anywhere, does it . . .’ And here she looked round at Beth and Lesley, inviting some back-up. ‘It doesn’t say you can have anything you want as long as you haven’t got a broken nail or a slight headache.’
‘Do you have headaches? Because we don’t recommend . . .’ Miriam interrupted.
‘Nowhere does it say anything about bloody . . . blood pressure!’ Mrs Morrison stamped her foot like a toddler having a supermarket tantrum.
‘If she doesn’t calm down we’ll be seeing exactly where blood pressure gets you,’ Beth whispered.
‘You’re right. Let’s go.’ Lesley and Beth left the sofa, inching slowly and stealthily past the flower vase in case of anger fallout, and backed silently towards the door, but it opened suddenly, almost sending the two of them crashing forward into Mrs Morrison. Beth, off balance, clutched Lesley, fearful that tripping against the furious woman might result in a smack in the mouth.
‘Hey you guys, what’s the fight about? We can hear the racket from out there on the deck!’ Gina, accompanied by the presumed father of the bride, Michael, joined Beth and Lesley, staring at the source of the din.
‘Oh I should have guessed! It’s Angela picking a fight!’ Michael laughed loudly. ‘Now there’s a surprise. Nice to see you being so consistent, darl
ing!’
‘Get lost, Michael,’ Angela hissed at him. ‘And what the hell are you doing in here? Are you following me?’
‘I’d imagine he’s doing the same thing as you are, honey; just booking some nice, relaxing massages.’ Gina placed herself squarely between Angela and Michael as if, Beth thought, she was preventing a full-blown punch-up breaking out. Perhaps she was. Brave woman, standing in the line of fire like that.
‘I’d be booking a nice simple hair-conditioning treatment if they didn’t insist on a note from your GP before they’ll even file your nails in this place.’
We don’t actually . . .’ Miriam cut in.
‘Hey listen, Angela is it?’ Gina pointed to the treatment list. ‘Forget the hair stuff, it’ll only turn your highlights green. Let me recommend the Muscle-Melt Stress-Away Massage with soothing frangipani. It’s to die for, isn’t it Beth?’
‘Definitely. It’s bliss – you’ll come out feeling just so calm,’ Beth agreed.
‘Are you saying I’m stressed?’ Angela glowered at them both. Beth held her breath as Michael let out a sudden barking laugh.
‘Is Angela stressed? Is a banana yellow?’
‘We’re only saying you might seem to be a little stressed, Angela honey.’ Gina spoke quietly, holding the woman’s wrist lightly like a nurse checking a pulse. ‘But you don’t have to be. You can let it go. That is what this place is for. Trust me,’ she smiled. ‘Start your vacation with the Muscle-Melt, like I said,’ and Beth saw her wink at Angela. ‘And ask for Fabian. He has the touch.’
Calmed at last, Angela booked herself enough treatments to cover the first week of her stay, while the others waited patiently on the cream sofas.
‘Thank you so much,’ Angela eventually said to Gina and Beth as she was about to leave. ‘That was sweet of you, I do get a teensy bit overanxious at times, especially now. We’re here for our daughter’s wedding you see, so you can imagine . . .’
‘Oh sure! I so hope it goes well.’ Gina gave her her best, broadest smile and Angela left the spa, heading back to catch some sun before lunch.
