by Judy Astley
‘Thanks. I don’t know much about the nature-balance thing. We haven’t done seashore. For GCSE it was mostly oilfields and hill farms and the traffic system in Swanage.’ Delilah looped up a corner of her sarong into a pocket and tied the shell safely into place. ‘And yes, I would like to go out on a boat with you, as long as . . .’
‘As long as I promise to keep off forbidden topics?’
‘No!’ she laughed, ‘I like forbidden topics. It makes a change from people who are always so careful to talk to me as if I might explode any minute. All I get here is safe, dull suck-up stuff like, “That Rachel Stevens song’s really good isn’t it?” and, “I expect you’ve got that new Busted album” when they haven’t a clue, I mean like I’d care about crap pop? What I meant was, I’d like to come as long as the boat doesn’t fill up with people you’ve already picked fights with.’ Delilah bit her lip. ‘That’s probably something I shouldn’t have said too.’
Michael laughed. ‘No you’re all right, and you’re dead right. We’ll sneak off when none of them are looking. About mid-morning suit you when they’re kippering on the loungers or doing beginners’ snake-charming or whatever?’
‘Snake-charming! I wish! Yeah I’ll come. I hope we see turtles.’
‘Me too, and a big shark. I shall tow it back and set it on my beloved ex-wife. They’d be pretty evenly matched. See you later.’
This was where it could all start to go horribly wrong, Ned thought as he checked his regulator and picked up the air tank ready to walk down the beach to the dive-boat. There was a good-sized crowd going out on the first dive today – sixteen or so. They had three instructors among them, but there was still potential for accidents if anyone was determined to get careless.
‘I’ve been really looking forward to this,’ Bradley said, hauling up the zip at the back of his wetsuit. ‘You can’t beat a good wreck dive.’
Well, you could interpret that in one of two ways. Ned prayed silently that Bradley was referring to the magic of underwater sea-life. He could, on the other hand, be looking forward to a cuckold’s watery revenge – making sure that Ned got the ultimate punishment for messing with his wife and somehow got ‘lost’ inside the rusted cargo hold of the old sunken Marylla ferry boat. He could just see him, surfacing in a pretend panic, devastated to have let down his dive-buddy, swearing he’d never dive again, how was he to face Beth, all that. The perfect murder. They’d never even find his body; he’d be shark meat by the time they sent a search boat out.
‘Do you think that big old grouper is still living in the hole in the hull?’ Bradley went on as he adjusted his mask strap. ‘You wonder if it’s the same one, don’t you? Year after year, it’s there. I wouldn’t have thought they’d live that long. Maybe it’s a thriving fishy family business: the senior member gets to occupy that hole and pop its head out every hour to entertain the daily divers.’
What a good bloke Bradley was, Ned thought, feeling sly and unworthy. Bradley wasn’t going to kill him – he couldn’t be that good an actor; he was too damn nice. He obviously knew nothing about his wife and her latest extra-marital adventure (if Ned was her latest; possibly there’d already been time since spring for another brief dalliance or two). If he – Ned – had expected to meet up with Brad again this year, would he have taken it as far as it went with Cynthia? Impossible to come up with an answer. He liked to think it would be a resounding ‘no’. If it wasn’t, if it was even a shady ‘maybe’, then what kind of bastard did that make him? And did it make any difference? Surely he was a bastard anyway for cheating on Beth, a woman he saw every day and completely loved. Why was he getting all chewed up about behaving dishonestly to Brad? It was because he felt the dishonesty was still going on, that was why. It was because they weren’t being equal here: Brad took it for granted that Ned was a Good Bloke. Beth, of course, knew different. But by not bagging up all his possessions for Oxfam, scratching ‘Bastard’ on the car roof or blowing their joint savings on a slow racehorse, she was choosing to believe that the better side to him was redeemable.
Ned knew only two things for certain at this moment. One was that he wished he’d persuaded Beth that Mexico might be fun this year, and the second was that he very much hoped he’d return from his dive without Bradley having stuck his diving knife through his windpipe.
Beth lay on her lounger in the gently wafting shadow of the big date palm, some way along the beach from the main pool, the bar, the jacuzzi and all busy activity. In keeping with the earth theme of the massage room, she’d had an urge to lie in the sand at the sea’s edge, immersing herself in the elements, but had resisted. With sand gluing itself to all the oils on her body she would end up looking like a fish finger. At least, and at last, she was now relaxed completely, and emptying her head of all thought. Her eyes were closed, her breathing calm and even, and her book lay abandoned on the sand. A bit late, but Petallia would approve. The sea was all she could hear, plus now and then the faint buzz of light chatter as a group of people nearby bobbed idly in the water, discussing their mosquito bites and the many muscles that ached from the power yoga class they’d over-ambitiously joined the evening before.
Petallia had given Beth a list of what not to do in the couple of hours following her aromatherapy session, and Beth was busily and obediently not indulging in sex, cigarettes, food, alcohol, caffeine, sun exposure or sporting activity. Nor, at last, was she thinking about paint colours, Nick and his domestic arrangements, whether Wendy would fire her for refusing to pluck a puffin, what was quietly bugging Lesley or why Cynthia had become so skinny. Perhaps it was this final non-thought that had a talk-of-the-devil effect for, while Beth was drifting to a geranium-scented nirvana, along came Cynthia herself, noisily dragging a lounger to the spot beside Beth and plonking herself down on it with a gusty sigh.
‘So what’s new with you this year, Beth?’ Cyn tapped Beth’s left knee with a sharp silver fingernail, jolting her out of her perfect blankness. ‘Beth? Wake up and tell me who’s still here and who’s not. I gather Valerie and Aubrey aren’t, but I’m not surprised, not after what happened with the arrow. And why’s Lesley’s old man looking so red and porky? If that man was a car, you’d say he was long overdue for a service. And I don’t mean,’ and here Cyn giggled and nudged Beth hard in the side, ‘that kind of servicing. I mean the full-on BUPA check-up. He looks like a walking heart attack if you ask me. Mind you, Lesley’s no Kate Moss herself. Perhaps it’s something in the Guernsey water.’
‘Beth sat up and put her sunglasses on, sad that this glorious moment of peace had passed. Cyn couldn’t have got any closer – the loungers were almost touching. Had the woman never heard of the concept of personal space?
‘Perhaps the walking-heart-attack thing is more true than we know,’ Beth told her. ‘Lesley’s not as jolly as she usually is. Something’s worrying her, perhaps it’s Len’s health.’
‘If something’s worrying women there’s usually a man at the bottom of it. You’ll get it out of her,’ Cyn laughed. ‘She’ll tell you.’
‘Funny, that’s almost exactly . . .’ Beth began, then stopped. Not really fair, that, she thought, letting Cyn know that she and Lesley had been discussing her in a similar way.
‘Anyway, talking of weight,’ Beth then said, glancing at Cynthia’s tiny, shrunken body. The fast loss of weight had left the skin on her arms and legs looking as if it needed ironing. Cyn seemed a couple of sizes too small for what Beth recognized as one of her last year’s bikinis, a velvety black one, printed with tiny white birds. Where her breasts used to sit pert above the low-cut cup, the bikini top sagged emptily. The matching sarong was edged with white marabou and Beth found herself imagining that Cyn only needed a sequinned and beaked mast to complete a fancy-dress magpie effect. ‘Have you been on a diet?’ she asked, in the way that women who wished to compliment each other did. ‘You’re looking very trim yourself. Which one was it? South Beach, GI, Atkins or Hay?’
Cyn didn’t answer immediately, b
ut bent down to fish about in her bag and pulled out a silver cigarette case. Eventually she said, ‘Oh, you know, it’s partly the gym, a spot of highly fashionable wheat intolerance, this and that.’ She busied herself with her lighter and the fierce, fast inhalation of hot nicotine. How, Beth wondered, could she do that in this heat? She waved the smoke away from her own face, mentally apologizing to Petallia for inadvertently breaching one of the post-massage instructions. Perhaps it didn’t count if breathing in the fumes was accidental.
‘Sorry!’ Cyn noticed Beth’s gesture and immediately hurled the barely touched cigarette into the sand. ‘Horrible habit! I had given up. Just been a bit uptight lately, that’s all.’ She smiled, but looked tense. Then she stood up abruptly as if sitting still for more than a few seconds was painful, her bag falling to the ground and tipping sun lotion, keys and a clutch of make-up items into the sand. ‘Hey, why don’t we go for an early drink?’ I’ve been looking forward to one of Jim’s rum punches.’ Cyn nervously scrabbled around in the sand, collecting her belongings together. Her bony fingers were spread out like a child’s drawing of a crab, all skinny long sinew. Beth watched, wanting to tell her to calm down, that it was all all right.
‘OK, I quite fancy one of the fruit cocktails,’ she agreed instead, stuffing her unread book back into her beach bag. The two women set off along the shore, walking close to the sea’s edge. Cyn at first skipped out of reach of the waves, then took off her spangly sandals and waded up to her thighs in the water.
‘Was it a big disappointment, coming here after all instead of the Seychelles?’ Beth asked. ‘Your niece Sadie told Delilah about the change of venue for the wedding. It was clever of you to suggest they all came here instead. Funny that we’d already met Angela, and her being Brad’s sister! We had no idea!’
‘Ghastly isn’t she? The woman’s a dreadful witch! No, I didn’t mind – I was delighted to be back here in fact. Hanging out with people that we already know means the Angela effect is somewhat diluted!’ Cynthia giggled, splashing along, not bothering to keep the feathered sarong out of the water. The salt water would ruin it. The Cynthia of previous years wouldn’t have risked that, Beth realized. She’d have taken it off, folded it carefully and made someone on the sand look after it for her while she frolicked about in the sea. Frolicking in the sea at all wasn’t like her, either. She had now flung her bag onto the sand and was fully immersed, plunging down into the small waves and bobbing up again like a child who’s just learned to swim and can’t quite believe that it works. Cyn usually did typical lady-swimming: earrings up out of the water, head craned back for minimum submersion of the hair. It was not like her, either, to go in search of a drink at eleven in the morning.
The lure of the turquoise sea was too much. Beth chucked her own bag down on a vacant lounger, picked up Cyn’s belongings and put them beside her own, then joined her in the warm water. The two of them floated together on their backs, relaxing in the gentle up-and-down movement of the waves.
‘Would you look at that? Is that a half woman, half seal?’ Cynthia indicated a woman in a black neoprene hood, the sort surfers wear in winter, fifty yards out by the reef, swimming a fast, competition-level crawl and carving her purposeful way right through a group of casual snorklers.
‘What’s she got on?’ Beth peered through the blazing sunlight, seeing strange black paddle-shaped hands coming out of the water.
‘Special go-faster gloves. And goggles. And a peculiar belt thing, and look . . . one of those weird Olympic-type racing swimsuits! Mad!’
‘Well the Mango is called Sport ’n’ Spa,’ Beth laughed. ‘You’ve got to have some overactive types to balance out the lazy spa bunnies like us!’
‘Why can’t she chill and just swim?’ Cynthia sounded almost angry. ‘Where does she think she is, an Olympic training camp?’
Beth watched as Cyn floated flat and closed her eyes against the sun. ‘This is what it’s all about,’ she murmured, as if consciously offloading a year’s worth of hassle. ‘Just doing nothing. Letting it all wash over you.’
Beth tried not to be conscious of ninety minutes’ worth of diligently applied aromatherapy oils seeping away into the Caribbean sea, and instead willed herself to savour the delight of the moment. Beyond the end of the reef, she could see a pair of boats pass each other. On the incoming one she could just make out Ned, standing among a group of neoprene shapes at the back of the dive-boat and adjusting something on one of the air tanks. And on the other, the purple and pink glass-bottomed boat that plied its trade each morning from the water-sports hut, she could see Delilah’s long hair streaming out behind her in the sea breeze as she leaned over the side of the boat beside Michael, their two blond heads peering down into the water.
Pity Nick isn’t here too, she thought suddenly, with a sharp, regretful sense of missing him; they could all have been together for a proper seaside holiday like they used to be when the children were little. With so much to occupy them on the premises they’d see a lot more of each other than they did on the holidays in summer, when the teenagers vanished along the beach strip to party with their peers in the nearest bars. The whole family could be here, floating in the warm ocean doing absolutely nothing, but doing it together.
Nick was well pleased with the sunglasses. He took them out of the box and put them on, turning this way and that to admire the look. He assumed they were a bargain, being duty free. He bloody hoped they were anyway – there hadn’t been time to do the price research, the way he usually did for a major purchase, but then it had been something of an impulse buy. Anyway they looked cool enough and he’d need them for Australia, if he ever managed to get there.
Nick took the sunglasses off and returned them to their soft pouchy case, pulled back the bolt on the lavatory door and walked down the aisle towards his seat. Time for lunch. The trolley was rattling about just behind him and he could smell the metallic tang of microwaved foil and oversoft vegetables. He unscrewed the top of the travel-issue bottle of champagne and decided he’d be needing another one, possibly two. After all, it was a long way, and thanks to Felicity and her Blockbuster choices, the movie on offer was one he’d already seen.
Felicity. The thought of her made him smile and feel both world-weary and worldly-wise. She could, if she’d played it right, be with him now. If she’d been a girl of more experienced negotiating skills instead of a greedy little two-timing slapper, she could have steered him into taking her along with him for the ride. And what a ride it could have been. He wouldn’t have been on his own trying on sunglasses in that lavatory: he’d have had her hitched up against the titchy basin, one foot (hers, that is, not his) balanced on the loo seat, the other braced against the wall. No problem. Instead, here he was on his own: not a scuzzy backpacker but a grown-up smart-guy world traveller.
And wouldn’t they all be surprised? Oh they would, they would. And it served them right. They should have ordered the fucking heating oil. They were the ones who’d brought him up in a certain amount of lavish comfort – they could only expect him to go in search of alternative means of staying warm, even, and he smiled to himself, if it meant a three-thousand-mile trip and a bit of a dent in the Oz budget.
The trolley clattered alongside, bringing with it a breeze of strong perfume, a spicy mix of aftershave and deodorant, and the super-smooth voice of the steward cooed in Nick’s ear, ‘Now sir, what’s your fancy? Beef or salmon today?’
8
Screwdriver
56 ml vodka
112 ml orange juice
slice of orange
‘I think the ball’s got stuck in one of those trees over there,’ Ned called to Len as he peered across the fairway and waved his club in the direction of a clump of banana plants. Ned hadn’t played golf since the same time the year before, when Aubrey had beaten him soundly in the first round of the Mango’s weekly tournament. Len had gone on to win it, as he always did, and at the manager’s Cocktail Party he had been presented with a pink
Mango Good Sport tee shirt to join his Channel Island hoteliers’ tournament trophies.
Ned was not a natural golfer. He found the finicky precision of the swing and the grip entirely pointless. What did it matter how you clouted the stupid ball as long as you actually hit it? The allure of the many swanky courses surrounding his Surrey home had passed him by, but here at the Mango’s nine-holer he had an annual go at the game, because here you had a go at everything. Later in the day, he foresaw rather dispiritedly as he prodded the banana tree, Len would probably be beating him at badminton just as he was now beating him at golf.
Still, it wasn’t all hopeless. He would thrash Len in the sailing regatta on Thursday, especially now he’d got Nick here to act as crew. (Nick who had so casually swanned in in time for dinner last night, as if St George was just down the road, like Brighton.) He was looking forward to that – Len was always swaggering about in sports kit and trainers, looking for the next opportunity for competition. He was even worse this year, bouncing around doing ostentatious cool-down stretches every time he got back from his morning run, trotting up and down on the spot in front of the early risers who were quietly having cups of tea by the Sundown bar. Who was he being? Bloody Linford Christie sans impressive lunchbox? Who’d think it, though, that was the thing, in someone so bulky and boozy? No wonder Lesley was always nagging him to drink more water and ‘accidentally’ adding plenty of Diet Coke to his rum. He was starting to look like ambulance material. If he didn’t watch it, Gina’s mad mother would have someone to go hand in hand to her maker with.
‘Are you sure it’s there?’ Len was now openly laughing at him. ‘Maybe an iguana’s run off with it!’
It was a possibility, it was that sort of course – nine rather short holes surrounded by brilliant flora, alarming fauna (big blue-black lizards, iguanas the size of small dragons, the odd mongoose, all being stalked by the hotel’s half-feral cats) and wonderfully free of Surrey’s beige leisurewear, antiquated rules and prissily manicured landscape.
