by Judy Astley
‘And now honey,’ Gina turned to Michael and treated him to a sexy pout, at the same time stroking his bare arm with a soft finger. ‘This two-together sensual massage I was telling you about, shall we see if they’ve got a slot this afternoon?’
6
Headless Horseman
56 ml vodka
3 dashes Angostura bitters
ginger ale
Bloody hell. Sod it. So that was why the radiators were stone cold. Nick had woken up alone and shivering with an arctic gale blowing outside and the wind doing its best to get inside the house through every rattling window and door frame. Exactly what had he done, he’d asked any available deities, to deserve parents so mean and so uncaring about his comfort and welfare that they’d deprive their first-born child of heating when they weren’t in residence? Bad enough, he’d considered as he’d lain with the duvet huddled round his ears, that Felicity was now enjoying the free-spending favours of some suck-up tosser who smarmed his way through nice dinners in order to get into her underwear; the well and truly last crumb in the biscuit tin was existing in a house where you had to bribe the cats into your bed with KiteKat Munchies to keep warm.
Now, out by the shed, Nick stared hopelessly at the gauge beside the oil tank, willing it to register more than zero. He tapped at it with a stick, but with no expectation of results. Why hadn’t anyone (i.e. parents) checked it before they went away? How was he supposed to know the oil was going to run out and screw up the boiler and that it was down to him to order some more? Did they really think he would actually read every last word of the instructions they’d left? There were pages of them. Well, two – but very close-typed. Most of it was blah-di-blah about not smoking in bed, making sure it was diesel he put in Beth’s car and clearing enough floor space for Mrs Padgham to get the Dyson round. He was nineteen not nine, for buggery’s sake. He could survive alone in his own home for a couple of weeks. Except it turned out he couldn’t.
He stomped back into the house, chilled right through to his bones from the sleety rain that had joined forces with the ice-cold wind.
‘Bit of a rush on. That’ll be due to the inclement weather,’ the oil-supplier receptionist told him down the phone, in a manner that suggested a bit of a chill was highly unusual in late November. She didn’t seem to get the idea about the word ‘urgent’ and couldn’t promise anything before Thursday – three glacial days away. He should have lied – said there were small babies in the house, that the boiler ran the only means of cooking. That would have been the smart thing to do. Why wasn’t he smart?
Nick found Beth’s pashmina hanging on the hook by the back door. He wrapped the soft pink fabric Lawrence of Arabia-style round his head and wandered out to the log pile under the lean-to at the back of the garage. This was more promising; he’d keep a blazing fire going with this lot and sleep on a sofa in the sitting room. Pity Felicity wouldn’t be around – she’d have looked perfect lying on the blue rug, her creamy naked body softly lit by the flickering flames. They could have toasted marshmallows, drunk hot chocolate with a tot of warming brandy in it and cuddled up together snugly. But it didn’t do to think of her – that way lay regret and a sense of failure.
On closer inspection, the logs seemed on the big side: huge slabs of tree trunk, in fact. Come to think of it, there’d been a heading on page two of his mum’s instructions. He’d only read as far as ‘Logs’, assuming he wouldn’t need any further information. He could now, looking at these hefty boles, guess what followed. The gist of it would be: ‘Cut logs with useless blunt axe provided and stack into a pile artistically worthy of a long-ago North-West Frontier cabin-dweller.’ While she was at it, his mum would have taken the opportunity to add: ‘Chop big enough supply for entire winter, seeing as you’re young and fit and your dad’s knocking on a bit and has better things to do like earn enough to feed, clothe and educate you lot.’ Depressing. Plus the way things were going at the moment, he’d probably hack his foot off.
Nick went into the house and switched on the kettle and the immersion heater. At least he could have a good long soak and a hot cup of tea. There’d be a hot-water bottle somewhere that he could take to bed that night and he’d let the cats get under the duvet. Hardly up to the standard of Felicity, but hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers. What he’d give to be like the rest of his so-lucky, holidaying family, lazing around in a climate where the only tricky thing was how to stay cool enough. What he’d give . . . A small wild thought crossed his mind. Maybe it wouldn’t cost that much, not a massive dent in his Australia fund. It was the cheap pre-Christmas season and according to the ads, airlines could barely give the seats away. He wasn’t busy at work – even hardened horse-fanciers were putting their cash into their kids’ Christmas presents rather than gambling it all on slow nags. Maybe (when he’d thawed out) he’d make a few phone calls, check out the cost of a cheap ticket to St George and a room with a brick-wall view at the Mango and then just turn up. Wouldn’t they all be surprised?
The Mango Experience wasn’t so vast as to be coldly impersonal. Beth and Ned had once stayed at a complex on Lanzarote that had catered – frenziedly but inadequately – for a thousand guests. Here, with no more than a hundred guest rooms, you would never have to share beach space with a party of sixty Swiss hi-fi dealers having their annual sales conference, or watch them yodel their way through nightly limbo contests. On the other hand, it wasn’t so small that you couldn’t avoid those guests that you’d prefer to keep at a comfortable distance. At the other extreme, in a sleek, minimal boutique hotel with only a dozen rooms, it could be tricky avoiding getting trapped in the Thai-theme ocean-view bar with someone who wanted to show you photos of their daughter’s graduation, or tell you how world peace could easily be achieved by a spot of nuclear zapping in strategic areas. Here at the Mango, Beth considered, was just about the perfect balance. Ned, on the other hand, was more wary.
‘Not sure I want to spend too much time around Gina’s mad mother, but I wouldn’t mind having a chat with her, see what all this death stuff is about,’ he murmured to Beth as they approached the Sundown bar for a pre-lunch drink.
‘Why?’ Beth was curious. ‘Do you honestly think she’s likely to have inside knowledge about the great hereafter?’
‘No idea. I just wonder what makes her think it’s imminent. Suppose she’s right? Suppose she can give us all a clue what to look out for?’
He was joking, wasn’t he? Oh please, she prayed, don’t let his next midlife hobby be a morbid obsession with death. Even a never-ending parade of other women might be better than that. At least they’d keep him cheerful.
‘What, the sort of clue like “look out for a hooded skeletal chap who carries a big scythe”? Not sure I’d want to know.’ Beth shuddered. ‘Especially if I still felt well enough to prop up a bar and hold court.’
Ned gave her a look, one that smacked of ‘you cynical cow’. Perhaps she was being a bit harsh, Beth conceded, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. He squeezed hers back and kept hold of it, as if trusting her to save him from the pursuing Grim Reaper. Tough one, that: a far more formidable enemy than some silly slapper sending Tiffany trinkets.
Gina’s mother could be seen sitting bolt upright on a high stool beneath the fringed shade of the bar’s overhanging palm-thatched roof, gazing around her through very dark, gold-rimmed sunglasses. Her hair was wrapped in sombre black cloth, turban-style a toque – Beth remembered her grandmother had been keen on them – secured at the front with a jet comb. She was wearing a loose black silky kaftan that flapped lightly in the wind like big wings and reminded Beth, in view of the circumstances of her visit, of a vulture waiting to pick at a corpse. Not a comfortable thought, really, given that the woman was the one apparently about to be the corpse.
‘She’s very certain of her imminent demise, according to Gina. She’s quite determined that she won’t need a return ticket, so she didn’t even buy one. What if she’s wrong? Or worse, what if she’s right?�
� Ned asked, glancing nervously at the woman by the bar as if suspecting she might be looking to take someone along with her on the ultimate mystery trip.
‘I expect Gina will throttle her if she’s still here by going-home time,’ Beth said. ‘She seems quite keen for her mother to have her own way on this one. If I get Gina by herself in the sauna I know she’ll tell me all about it.’
‘Whether you want her to or not?’
‘Oh, I want her to! Well, I do as long as she doesn’t confide that she’s planning murder. We only see each other once a year, what would be the point of holding back on the gossip?’
Oooh – possibly something that would have been better unsaid, that one. Beth was pretty sure she saw Ned actually wince. Or perhaps a passing mosquito had flicked against his face. The one thing the Mango Experience didn’t provide in terms of ‘wellness’ was a full-on counselling service. Maybe she’d put it forward on one of the Visitors’ Suggestion forms that the management were confident enough to risk placing in every room. Maybe there was a potential niche market here, providing away-from-home therapy complete with after-session stress-relief class and meditation. Tattered marriages could be patched up, work anxieties soothed, perspectives redrawn. And on the guests’ return, the luggage carousels of Gatwick (or Frankfurt, New York, Montreal) would be surrounded by beatific, patient, smiling folks who couldn’t give a flying one if their matching Louis Vuitton bags had disappeared for ever to the world’s lost-luggage cave.
‘Don’t panic,’ she laughed, ‘I won’t be telling her anything about you and your fancy piece! We women have better things to talk about than midlife men and their meanderings, you know.’
This time he definitely did flinch. How sensitive he was, she thought. Anyone would imagine he was the one who had been cheated on. At what point, exactly, had this infidelity business changed from something he’d got himself into quite deliberately, to something deeply traumatic that had happened to him by accident, purely at random?
Beth sat down at a vacant table beneath a sunshade and privately admitted that what she’d said hadn’t been strictly true. She and her women friends joked about midlife men quite often in casual passing, although generally in an abstract rather than a personal kind of way: discussing yet another ageing star being caught by the tabloids leaning on a gloriously fine-skinned twenty-something babe for ego support. She’d always assumed it must be quite disappointing for the traded-in wife, this lack of imagination on the husband’s part. Bad enough that he’d left her, worse to find he was merely another of life’s clichés, resorting to the predictable leeching-from-the-young approach to reassuring himself that he could just be immortal after all. For all that she didn’t know about Ned’s extramarital activity, she’d at least gathered it had been with a grown-up.
‘Where’s your beautiful daughter? She gone out and met some hunky guy already?’ Gina joined Beth at the table and plonked her drink down in front of her. It was the burstingly exuberant Caribbean caboodle: fruit-filled, sparkly, bright pink and complete with three paper umbrellas and a couple of swizzlers. Beth thought of Cyn and the midday rum punches she used to have, with their extra coconut chunks crammed onto the cherry stick. It helped strengthen the gums, Cyn had claimed, though for what Cyn would need Olympic-power jaws, Beth could only speculate.
Gina pulled her chair round closer to Beth in the shade and lit up a cigarette which she placed in a long onyx holder.
‘She’s gone to book in for some sailing with a girl she’s met,’ Beth told her. ‘I’ve hardly seen her since breakfast.’
‘Aha, so she’s making friends already. That’s great!’
‘Very Princess Margaret!’ Ned commented, indicating the cigarette holder as he returned from the bar with a beer and Beth’s fruit punch.
‘You kidding? Isn’t she dead?’ Gina looked alarmed.
‘Oh yes, very dead,’ Beth agreed.
‘Unlike my mom,’ Gina muttered, shooting a daggered glance at her mother, who was now sipping a glass of sparkling wine and informing the bartender that she could drink all she liked, whenever she liked, now she knew how long she’d got. Or hadn’t got. ‘No call to hold back!’ Beth heard her bellow to anyone in range, followed by a harsh cackle and a volley of barking coughs.
‘We haven’t been introduced yet, and Ned’s dying to meet her, if you’ll excuse the pun.’ Beth nudged Gina. ‘Are you so ashamed of your holiday pals that we can’t meet your mama?’
‘You really wanna meet her? She’s one scary lady – are you sure?’ Gina gave Ned a warning look.
‘Oh absolutely, ’ Ned agreed. ‘Of course we do.’
‘OK then, but remember it was your choice. Don’t you go blaming me for any consequences.’ Gina sighed and pushed back her chair and went and firmly manhandled her mother off her bar stool. The barman seemed relieved: he’d begun to look close to tearfully defeated under the non-stop monologue, and an impatient queue was building up.
‘Mom! Come sit with us. I want you to meet my friends.’ Gina led her mother across to the table and pushed her gently into a shaded seat. ‘Mom, these are Ned and Beth – they come here at the same time each year, just like me. Ned and Beth, this is my mother, Dolly.’
‘Hi Dolly, good to meet you.’ Beth shook an emaciated brown-speckled hand and was surprised that the returning grip was as hard and fast as a parrot claw.
‘Is it good?’ Dolly asked her with a grin that dazzled with incongruously bleached-white teeth. ‘Not that it matters nohow if it isn’t. It won’t be for long, you know. I have a date to keep with the next world.’
‘Oh Mom, please don’t keep on . . .’
‘Don’t keep on what? I don’t want to get these folks thinking I’m their new best friend and then have them spoil their holiday with mourning.’ Dolly glared at her daughter. ‘In fact you better just stop with the introducing and friend-making, Gina, it isn’t fair on anyone. Hand me a cigarette, girl, and you can put yours out right now. Are you trying to be the only American in the world who still smokes?’ She turned away and leaned confidingly towards Ned. ‘It’s only when you got no health left that you can risk playing chicken with it. Isn’t that right Ned?’
Beth remembered questions like this from Latin at school: questions framed in such a way that the expected answer had to be ‘yes’. Of course it would have been impossible to disagree, however mad a proposition Dolly had come up with. With an air of nothing-to-lose lack of inhibition she wasn’t likely to let day-to-day conversational etiquette get in the way of her opinions.
‘I’m not sure it’s OK to tempt fate about your health at any age,’ Ned told her, bravely, in Beth’s view, for this was one autocratic, opinionated lady: very Bette Davis at her peak. Then Ned added, ‘I always try not to, anyway.’ Beth felt her eyebrows raising themselves at this: from where, exactly, had come this po-faced factor?
‘Piffle,’ Dolly snorted, pointing to his beer. ‘You’re doing it right now. You drink alcohol, don’t you? You drive and you cross roads and travel by plane? You do as you choose and to hell with the consequences. The difference is that at my time of life – or death – you can take risks that are as crazy as you like. I wish I’d taken more over the last year or two.’ She inhaled deeply on her cigarette and coughed. ‘I should have slept around and tried heroin and pulled off a bank heist just for the hell of it.’
Beside Beth, Gina groaned quietly and drummed her fingers up and down on the table. Something told Beth that Gina had heard her mother performing this particular party piece many, many times before. Possibly this ‘I’m going to die, any minute’ scenario had been going on for years, a sure-fire emotional blackmail into getting your own way. Poor old Gina if that was the case – no wonder she went over the top, putting it about a bit on holiday. She tried to imagine Dolly disguised in a joke-shop George Dubya mask and wielding a sawn-off shotgun, ordering the customers of the Guildford Barclays to lie on the floor and freeze. Not easy, but not impossible. Dolly would make a formidable
bank robber; keen as she was on a risk-filled life, you wouldn’t want to argue with her, armed or not.
‘It’s called “doing things as a family”,’ Ned explained to Delilah as the three of them waited beneath the reception archway for their taxi, ‘and besides, you’re the one who wants the new snorkel mask. You’ll need to try it on.’
‘Yes but . . . Carlos told me he’d take me and Sadie out on a boat this afternoon,’ Delilah complained.
‘We won’t be out long,’ Beth told her. ‘I need to be back by three – Lesley and I want to give the t’ai chi class a go.’
‘Ugh, how can you? It’s right on the beach in front of everyone! You’ve never done it before – everyone will laugh!’ Delilah put her hands over her face as if she was already being forced to be a spectator at the world’s most mortifying event: her mother in gym kit, making slow, strange body shapes and looking mad in front of a crowd.
‘Of course they won’t!’ Beth laughed. ‘Why would anyone be watching us? They’ve better things to do; you for one, you’ll be sailing.’
Lordy it was hot. Beth fanned herself with her hand as she waited. A tiny hummingbird flitted past, then hovered beside them as it sucked nectar from the pink hibiscus flowers.
‘Amazing little things, aren’t they?’ Beth turned round at the sound of a non-family voice. It was Michael, father of the bride, ex-husband of the feisty, fraught Angela. Amazing how much you could know about people in this place, she thought, in only twenty-four hours. He was dressed for town rather than beach, in cream linen and carrying a beaten-up panama hat.
‘The speed of those tiny wings,’ he went on. ‘You wonder how they get enough food going in to turn it into so much power.’
‘Doesn’t take much to keep a titchy bird in the air,’ Delilah chipped in. ‘I mean it’s only like a big dragonfly, no-one thinks that’s much of a miracle.’
