by Judy Astley
‘Delilah!’ Ned warned.
Delilah shrugged. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound rude, I just thought, well you know . . . I suppose they’ve got bigger bodies than dragonflies though.’
‘Conceded generously.’ Michael was laughing at her, something that Beth felt she should warn him was like playing chase-the-string with a tiger.
‘We’re going down into Teignmouth for a snorkel mask,’ Ned told him. ‘Would you like to share our cab, if you’re going that way?’
‘Oh. Are you sure? How kind – yes I would. No point in taking two, is there?’
The cab was a minibus, which was just as well, as at the last minute they were joined by Angela.
‘You won’t mind me tagging along,’ she announced, hauling herself awkwardly into the seat beside the driver just as they’d all got settled. ‘Sadie wants me to get her some Dream Curl lotion and then I thought I’d go to meet my brother at the airport. I know they’ve got transfers included but it might be a coach and they go all round the houses, don’t they? He and his wife are arriving for Sadie’s wedding.’ She beamed round at Beth and Ned in the row behind her, her smile fading to something close to a snarl as she looked at Michael, who sat with Delilah in the back seats.
‘And Mark’s,’ Michael added.
‘What?’
‘Mark’s wedding. Chap our daughter’s marrying. Remember him?’
‘I know who he is,’ Angela said.
‘I could have got the hair stuff for Sadie,’ Michael told her.
‘No you couldn’t,’ Angela snapped. ‘You’ve never come back from the shops with the right thing before, why should I trust you to start now?’
Delilah caught Michael’s eye and the two of them started giggling like small infants, covering their mouths in fear of being heard.
‘Naughty me,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Never get anything right. Just as well I’m already sitting at the back of the class or she’d stop the cab and send me there.’
‘I can hear you, you know,’ Angela said.
‘And we can all hear you too, my one true ex-love,’ Michael said. Delilah shook with squashed-down laughter and a sense of having learned something new: grown-ups could be the most absurdly childish beings. Peculiar, that. How come they were the ones always telling you to grow up?
Much later, Ned wasn’t quite sure how it came about that he was on his way to the airport, alone in another eight-seater taxi with the fearsome Angela. It had happened entirely by chance. There he was having a beer outside a gallery on the road beside the marina after pottering contentedly by himself in the town. Beth and Delilah had stayed only until the snorkel mask (Delilah) and a pair of bead-trimmed espadrilles (Beth) had been bought, and then they’d returned to the Mango for their various appointments with sport. Ned had stayed on alone to go to the bank and mooch around the harbour, having a look on the board outside the chandlery at the photos and details of boats for sale. Who knew? One day when (if ever) the kids had flown the coop he might cash in the pension fund, buy a yacht and spend a few years sailing around the Windward Islands with Beth, joining the ever-growing throng of middle-aged ocean-dwelling dropouts. Michael had gone for a wander round the town and said he’d take a local bus back later, after a look at the museum and cathedral.
‘You make sure you get to see all the island while you’re here,’ he’d said to Delilah just before setting off in his battered old hat. ‘Make the most of the trip, get to know how the place works.’
‘You sound like my geography teacher,’ she’d teased. Ned had been surprised, she’d said it almost fondly – quite unusual when mentioning anything to do with school.
‘Good,’ Michael had replied. ‘That means I can set you a test on what you’ve learned.’
If he, Ned, her own father, had said that, how would she have reacted, he wondered as the cab containing himself and Angela sped eastward to the airport; would she have thought it just about the funniest thing she’d ever heard? No. Of course she wouldn’t. It took a stranger to drag hilarity out of a teenager. He’d be willing to bet that Michael’s daughter Sadie would have given her father the classic teenage ‘you think you’re so funny’ look that Delilah would have given him. Perhaps all parents of the young should swap round now and then, get themselves a quick fix of that feeling they can still amuse.
Angela had pounced while Ned had been dreaming away, watching a couple of about the same age as him and Beth, loading supplies onto their catamaran. They had cases of Carib beer, a box of bananas, basics like loo rolls and groceries. He found himself envying the string of pennants hanging from the mast – small flags of countries they must have visited. He recognized Grenada, Barbados and Antigua among them. This was a lot more than one up, it seemed, on being a caravanner, trundling down the A30, your stickered back window boasting trips to Woolacombe and Bridlington.
And then suddenly Angela had landed, bang-flop in the seat opposite him, as if she’d been there all the time, waiting till his thinking was done to accost him with her suggestion.
‘I mean it makes sense, doesn’t it,’ Angela was now saying, as she’d already said twice during this journey. ‘No point forking out for two taxis when you’re both going in roughly the same direction.’
He nodded vaguely. There really wasn’t anything to add to the last time he’d replied to the same comment, apart from something obviously rather impolite such as that actually, it was only in the direction of the Mango Sport ’n’ Spa if you didn’t mind a six-mile detour to the east. Still, what was to race back for? He’d only feel obliged to join in the 5 p.m. beach-volleyball game. Len would insist on him being in his team and then trample all over him. Bulky sort, Len, bigger than ever this year but still a swift, if clumsy, demon on the sand.
‘Nearly there now,’ Angela said. ‘Can’t wait to see them. And Mark of course.’
Ned had gathered from the earlier ride into town that this was the bridegroom, a young man who might well have been happier to travel to the hotel in the tour company’s minibus rather than, exhausted by a long flight in the back of the plane, have to make polite chit-chat with his scary future mother-in-law.
‘Oooh look, the plane’s in! They’ve landed!’ Angela was practically bouncing in her seat now as the cab drew in alongside the runway where a British Airways 777 was parked, all doors and hatches gaping open like a huge gutted fish.
They pulled up outside the arrivals terminal and Ned climbed quickly out of the cab, just to savour the humid air after the taxi’s fierce air conditioning. He’d never felt cold before on the island. For much of the time on these holidays he was close to gasping in the damp heat. Presumably drivers here considered motoring in a near-frost something of a treat.
‘Oh look! Here they are! Over here!’ Angela was on the pavement, shrieking in the direction of the open-air arrivals hall, causing at least thirty bemused-looking newly landed passengers to turn and stare at her.
And so here they were. Ned stared at Angela’s approaching brother and his wife and blinked, then blinked again, hoping and hoping they’d change into someone, anyone else. Posh and Becks, Tony and Cherie Blair, the late Kray twins, anybody. But now Angela was hugging her sister-in-law fondly, while Ned stood beside her digging his nails into his messily sweating palms, wishing he was back home – even working would be better than this, possibly even searching the Horsham B&Q for Rawlplugs would be, on a frantic Bank Holiday morning.
‘Cyn!’ Angela’s voice, who would have thought it possible, notched up yet another decibel. ‘Lovely to see you! Good flight?’
Ned remembered his manners and shook Bradley’s hand. ‘Great to see you!’ Brad said. ‘Are you still up for the diving? Cyn was saying on the way over that she hoped you and Beth would be back this year.’
Like she didn’t know. Ned wished he had. What kind of trick was this to pull? Whatever happened to ‘somewhere out east’?
And then there she was with her body against his and her arms around his neck, s
till deliciously scented with that slight vanilla tang, giving him a social little hug and whispering close into his ear, ‘Ned darling! How sweet of you to come and meet me! It was going to be a surprise!’
Oh it was, Cynthia, it was.
7
Black Velvet
3 measures Guinness
3 measures champagne
Beth very much admired the colour of the paint on the walls of the Haven’s treatment room no. 6 (Rosemary). The pale reddish-oxide was, and she filed this away for future useful reference, almost exactly the shade of a newly ploughed field she’d noticed the summer before on the borders of Devon and Cornwall while driving Nick down to look at Falmouth art college. Of course it wasn’t quite the same now that Petallia had turned off the overhead lamps and lit the three chunky scented candles in their individual cube alcoves high on the wall, but even in the half-gloom Beth could appreciate its earthy, restful quality.
The colour was definitely a contender for the spare bedroom back home that was so dismal and dated (hydrangea pattern curtains, walls painted a chilly Diamond Blue) that it would qualify perfectly as a ‘before’ room for any extreme makeover show. Perhaps she could ring Nick and have him pop down to Homebase for sample pots of Farrow and Ball’s range of historic russets. The old silver-grey carpet in there could go as well; it was decidedly moth-eaten around the edges and beneath it lurked an old but possibly decent quality woodblock floor. Or would that, combined with the terracotta walls, result in too much of a cardboard-box effect, colour-wise? Decisions, decisions. And they shouldn’t be made now; Beth was in the middle of her Sensuous Aromatherapy Experience and was supposed to be paying attention to her inner serenity, not to the interior décor of her guest room. By this stage – front almost done – her brain should be barely functioning. In mind and body alike, she should be as floppy and malleable as a jelly.
Beth tried hard to clear her head of all mundane thoughts, the better to absorb the benefits of an hour and a half of being deliciously slathered with aromatherapeutic gunk (the Tranquillity Option: lavender, camomile, melissa, geranium – to soothe and relax). Petallia was doing her highly competent best, working her way limb by limb round Beth’s supine body. Every now and then, sensing tension, Petallia would smile and murmur, ‘Relax,’ in a soft, soothing tone.
This was, after all, a key element of a stay at the Mango Sport ’n’ Spa. You were supposed to leave all domestic dross behind and forget all the niggling concerns of day-to-day home routine. If there were problems to return to, you were supposed to face them mentally and physically equipped, invigorated and empowered. At least, that was what Louella, the hotel’s yoga guru, had informed her class while Beth, Delilah, Lesley, Gina and Cyn had been crouched and hunched like a row of Sainsbury’s chickens down in Child’s Pose in the Wellness Pavilion that morning, trying not to giggle.
And what a surprise that had been, Cyn and Bradley arriving. Ned hadn’t seemed particularly thrilled about it when he’d got back from the town the day before and told her. In fact he’d been downright abrupt, catching up with her as she and Lesley had a glass of fizz at sunset with a grumpy ‘Cyn and Bradley have turned up.’ But then who would be in a good mood after sharing a long cab ride (plus airport detour) with the dreadful Angela?
Beth now tried deep, even breathing and concentrated instead on trying to shut out the background soundtrack of communicating marine life. Why, she then found herself wondering as Petallia deftly smoothed scented oil up and down her right arm, why (and how) exactly had someone first concluded that this whale-song stuff was calming and gentle? Suppose the whales were not actually wallowing joyously in the ocean, beatifically cooing sweet notes of love to each other, but shouting furious things to their young, a sort of sea-life equivalent of ‘You’re not going out dressed like that!’ Maybe the one that was now going ‘Wwhooo wwhooop’ in this scented darkened room was actually bellowing to its teenage whale calf, ‘If you don’t eat that plankton, you’ll get it served up at every mealtime ’til it’s gone.’ And why whales? Sensitively recorded and with a bit of suitable accompanying harpsichord perhaps, the sound of cats purring could be just as rhythmically soothing as this.
Slip slap went Petallia’s expert fingers on Beth’s right thigh, denting deeply into all the places that Beth would identify as chubby. She imagined the honeycombed pockets of fat beneath the skin, constructed like one of those cross-sections of a quality mattress that appear in ads in the Saturday newspapers. She was depressingly convinced that whatever creams and lotions were rubbed in, however many volts of electronic toning were applied, these pockets were constructed with a semi-permeable membrane allowing flab to percolate in but never out. Except with Cynthia – something in her had obviously unstoppered and let any last trace of surplus fat out of her. Far too thin, that’s how she was looking this year. Lovely as it was to see her, it had been a shock to realize how very slender Cyn had become when she’d appeared in the yoga class that morning. Losing a bit of weight was one thing; having successfully stuck to a diet called for congratulations to be offered in an obligatory, sisterly woman-to-woman gesture, albeit through envious, gritted teeth. But Cyn looked somehow shrunken and drawn, so that her head seemed a bit too big for her body. Her fine-boned face was etched with the tiniest creases, and the overbright glitter in her eyes told Beth (and Lesley, who had made a comment when Cyn went off to the loo) that something was deeply amiss. Perhaps she was ill.
‘I expect she’ll tell you,’ Lesley had teased as they poured freshly juiced mango at the breakfast buffet that morning. ‘You’ve got that Agony Aunt appeal.’
‘People do tell me stuff,’ Beth had sighed, thinking of Worldwide Wendy and her intimate discussions of internal secretions. ‘I must have been given a confiding face.’
‘Oh you have,’ Lesley had agreed. ‘And you always seem to be so calm and relaxed. I envy you. I might look like a big, fat good-time sort but I’m all a bundle of worry inside.’
Petallia held up a big ochre towel to screen her eyes from the dire sight of exposed flesh as Beth turned herself over with extreme care (for how easy but how undignified it would be to crash to the floor from this plank-narrow bench) and settled herself on her front. Perhaps, Beth thought, she’d have more chance of escaping her own thoughts in this face-down position. Perhaps at last she’d start to feel nothing about anything, think nothing about anyone and actually feel the benefit of all this me-me-me attention at last. Beth sighed as she lay beneath the firmly kneading hands of Petallia, annoyed at herself for wasting the benefits of this session, intended to smooth away her own inner troubles, by worrying about someone else’s. Cut it out, she told her brain, just leave it. Enjoy the moment; don’t waste it. But it was too late. Just as she was beginning to sink into a near stupor as Petallia kneaded her back, she felt the masseuse’s fingers doing the pit-pat raindrop thing up and down her spine. A few moments of utter silence followed and then a tiny bell tinkled. All over.
Delilah padded along the shore, knee-deep in the sea, feeding chunks of breakfast bread to the shoals of minute greedy fishes that flowed around her ankles like a silky drift of patterned fabric. She could see Michael further up the beach, mooching along by himself past the early morning t’ai chi group. He had a look of that artist, the blond gay one who lived in California, Delilah thought as she watched him coming nearer. David Hockney, that was the dude, all floppy yellow hair and quite cool glasses. They’d studied him in art at school and in one of the photos she’d seen of him he’d been wearing a cream outfit and a beaten-up straw hat like Michael’s.
She liked Michael, she decided, as she watched him stop to pick up a shell from the sand and stand looking at it for a few moments, turning it over and then putting it in his pocket. He was really brave to have come here with that horrible always-cross ex-wife and his selfish Sadie daughter who’d wanted to cut her whole family right out of her wedding. How mean was that? Michael was all right. He’d definitely be OK at a wedding; he was the sort y
ou could have a laugh with about the bridesmaids’ dresses and he was also someone who, like Delilah, had tagged along on this trip without being properly attached to anyone.
What had gone wrong with him and the wife, she wondered? He’d certainly pissed off the Angela woman big-time for her to be so horrible to him. Perhaps there’d been an issue over sense-of-humour failure with her. Not a woman you could ever rip the piss out of and then say ‘Joke!’ She’d probably hit you with a brick.
‘Good morning, Delilah!’ Michael called as he approached her. ‘Tell me why you’re paddling around throwing food into the sea. Is this a variant on anorexia? Have you also chucked in a plateful of bacon and eggs that you’ll swear to your mother you’ve eaten?’
Delilah laughed. ‘No! How rude is that! If I was anorexic that would be a terrible thing to say – it could set my recovery back by months!’
‘Oh I know, I know.’ Michael shrugged. ‘It’s one of the many subjects you’re not allowed to mention to teenage girls, isn’t it? Even the porky ones.’
‘Especially the porky ones. They might have bulimia or binge-eating issues,’ Delilah agreed. ‘What I’m doing is I’m feeding the fish. You only have to wade in a few inches and they’re all round your legs. Look! Aren’t they brilliant?’ She pointed down at the sparkling clear sea.
Michael peered into the shallows. ‘Ugh, slimy swimming things. The teeming life of the ocean is best viewed from a safe dry vantage point, I think. Do you fancy a trip out in one of those glass-bottomed-boat things later? I’d ask Sadie, but now Mark’s arrived she’s all wrapped up with him. Literally, I should think at this early-morning moment. Or is that something else I shouldn’t mention to a teenage girl?’
‘No you shouldn’t,’ Delilah advised him solemnly. ‘A teenage girl could decide you’re being gross and disgusting.’
‘Apologies. Yet again,’ Michael offered, then delved into his pocket. ‘Here, have this very pretty shell as a token of my contrition. Or are you now going to tell me I’m upsetting nature’s balance by picking it up from the sand?’
