by Judy Astley
There was no sign of Delilah this morning, which was probably, Beth thought with some dread, because there’d been no sign of Sam all the day before. He hadn’t even shown up in the evening. Poor Delilah’s mood, which had started off so confident and bouncy in the morning, had declined like a water-starved flower in a vase, and she’d trailed off to bed early following a sulky after-dinner session in the bar with her brother, during which he’d tried to jolly her along by teaching her to play poker.
‘You know, we haven’t had a karaoke night this year, have we?’ Lesley said. ‘There’s no time now unless it’s tonight. Remember we were going to do a load of Kinks numbers this year? Len’s been threatening to put one of my dresses on and do “Lola”. Your Delilah would die of embarrassment.’
‘There’s a lot of things I meant to do; always are,’ Beth sighed. ‘I haven’t had a tennis lesson, haven’t been out sailing, haven’t had a go at the archery.’
‘Yes, well you’re not missing much with that one: you might have had Valerie’s kind of luck and shot your husband!’
Hmmm, Beth thought, if this had been three months ago, she might well have aimed at him.
‘I’m only hoping Delilah will get over her Sam passion quickly and take home some happy memories. She only had about half an evening with him. It can hardly have been the big love of her life,’ Beth said.
‘A lot can happen in half an evening,’ Lesley commented wryly, then, seeing the look on Beth’s face, backtracked quickly. ‘Oh she’ll be fine! Don’t you worry about it – give her a week with her mates back home and she’ll have deleted all the bad bits from her head and reworked it into a bloody good time. And there’s the wedding to look forward to this afternoon – we can all go out on a good one with that!’
Ned swam slowly upwards, letting the current drift him towards the underside of Carlos’s boat. Bradley was just ahead of him, holding onto the ladder that hung from the stern, waiting for his dive-buddy. Their two heads broke the water’s surface and Ned pulled his mask up.
‘What’s wrong?’ Bradley asked. ‘You’re looking a bit down. Not looking forward to going back to work’s grindstone? I know I’m not.’
‘OK for you – you’ve got another three days here,’ Ned said, trying to sound cheerful. He would miss his annual diving with Bradley. They’d probably never meet again now and it was all his own fault, his and bloody Cynthia’s. It might have been OK if she’d simply got over it. She’d been the one in the first place who’d been keen on the no-strings element. Why on earth had he believed her and ever thought that dabbling in sexual shenanigans with her (or anybody) would be a painless and uncomplicated event? Why didn’t he think? Just shows, he thought, what a naïve idiot he’d been. He’d have done better, if he really wanted a sexual adventure (and had he really? It hadn’t even crossed his mind before Cynthia showed up in Harrods and started pushing his buttons) to visit a professional and get it over with, swiftly and anonymously. Not a scenario any man would dare to run past a wife as being a sound option, but true all the same when you broke it down to basics. He wouldn’t have done that, of course he wouldn’t. It had only happened with Cyn because it had somehow all fallen into place without him having to make any effort. He realized now that effort had been made. By Cynthia: she’d arranged everything, been the one to travel out of her way to see him, the one to book restaurants, hotel rooms.
No excuses, he told himself as he gazed across the sea’s shimmering surface. He was about thirty-five years too old to plead that he was Easily Led.
‘Going to be a bit stormy, later,’ Bradley commented as they climbed aboard the boat. ‘Carlos says there’s a wind getting up and rain due. Hope it’s all right this afternoon for Sadie and Mark.’
Ned peered at the sky. It all looked the same as usual to him – clear blue but for a couple of tiny puffs of cloud. There was a small whisk of breeze though, and the surface of the sea was rilled up like cat’s fur being stroked the wrong way. It made him nervous, suddenly. As if trouble was quite literally brewing.
Well if Sam didn’t want her, all done up like this, then it was definitely, no question, totally over. Delilah looked in the mirror for the thousandth time and admired her own gorgeous face. It was almost time to go – she wanted to keep how she looked in her head (uncanny resemblance to Kate Moss), so she’d stay feeling confident when she saw him.
‘It didn’t feel like Melina put much make-up on me, and yet I look completely different,’ she said to Sadie, who was twirling the final section of her hair with the heated tongs.
‘I suppose that’s what they mean about all the trouble you have to go to to get the natural look.’ Sadie giggled. ‘You don’t actually look so different, Del, just more . . . well more. Your eyes have got . . . what’s the word, a bit of smoulder to them.’
‘You have scrubbed up quite nice, I’ll give you that,’ Angela said. ‘I still think that dress lacks a bit of pzzazz though.’
That would be the contrast with Sadie’s, Delilah thought, watching Angela begin fastening the fifty buttons down the back of her daughter’s wedding dress. There was enough fabric in it, Delilah calculated, to build a marquee, complete with ruched lining. Sadie was going to look fantastic, in a Cinderella-at-the-ball sort of style, but no way would Delilah ever have chosen a dress like that. Whether she was destined for the Samson-and-Delilah outcome or whether she ended up making do with trusty old Prince William, she would never wear a fat white meringue.
It was now just the three of them. Everyone else had already crossed to the island to wait for the bridal party. Sadie, Michael and Delilah were helped up the gangway into Carlos’s boat (scrubbed clean and strung with ropes of paper flowers for the occasion), and turned to wave to the many hotel guests who, curious and well-wishing, had assembled on the beach to photograph the bride and wave her off to her romantic desert island wedding.
‘It’d better not rain,’ Sadie said, glancing back at the pale grey line of clouds that had gathered over the island’s hills.
‘The island has a rain forest: you get rain.’ Michael shrugged. ‘Even if it does, it’ll only be for the usual few minutes. And you’ll be under that arbour thing.’
‘I’m not worried about the dress, Dad,’ Sadie said as the boat lurched across the water, ‘I just think it’ll be unlucky.’
‘That’ll be nearly every English wedding then!’ Delilah said, sensing it was her job to keep the bride’s mood buoyant.
Delilah felt weak with nerves. She could see Sam as the boat approached the island, waiting beside Mark, the sun glinting off new silver beads in his braided hair. How was he going to be with her? Maybe he’d ignore her, which would be the worst case. Or maybe he’d be ordinary and normal like nothing had happened. None of it. That was how she’d play it too, she told herself; it seemed the grown-up option. All the same, she couldn’t help the way her insides felt – as if she was about to take all her GCSEs all over again, this time with no revision.
Carlos handed a small bag to Michael after he’d run the boat up onto the Dragon Island shore. ‘The blue flag is in here,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready for me to come back and get you, just run it up the pole by the bar and I’ll see it from across the water, OK?’
Mark, all got up in a morning suit, as formal as if this was a country wedding in an Oxfordshire village, stepped forward to claim his bride as Sadie climbed carefully down the plank from the boat. Angela rushed forward, fussing at Sadie’s dress and brushing sand off the hem. Beth stood on the foreshore beside Ned and caught Nick looking at Sadie with a blatantly greedy expression, as if there was something he wished he’d done. She could guess what it was. He’d have to learn, that boy, and he would, in time: you can’t have every chocolate in the box.
‘Ah, doesn’t she look lovely?’ Lesley sighed next to Beth. ‘Weddings always make me want to cry. I’ve brought a box of tissues in case, so if anyone needs one, you know where to come.’
‘Mine always made me cry, that’s fo
r sure,’ Gina agreed as they all began walking, following the bride and groom with Sam and Delilah, across the island to the wedding arbour where the preacher waited.
‘How many have you had?’ Cyn asked. ‘You’ve never said.’
‘She doesn’t like to have her past failures dragged up. That’s why,’ Dolly said, with her cackly laugh. ‘Three times wed, three times divorced and never enough alimony to keep a cat in cream.’
‘I don’t need alimony, Mom,’ Gina said patiently, ‘I make my own way.’
‘That’s what I mean. You shouldn’t need to, all those husbands. I blame myself.’
‘Well that’s good.’ Gina patted her mother’s arm. ‘Lets me off the hook.’
‘I’ll be gone by morning Gina, then you’ll wish you’d spoken good of me.’
‘Mom, you’ve said that every day this trip till we’re all sick of it. You’ll still be saying it this time next year. If you wanna vacation with me next year, I’m telling you now, it’ll be to an African safari. And if you’re still sure you’re gonna die, you can just go walkabout with the lions.’
Sadie promised to love, honour and cherish Mark, and Mark promised to share all his worldly goods with Sadie, and they all waited as the happy couple kissed – for slightly longer than was comfortable for their audience. Beth watched nervously as Sam and Delilah eyed each other speculatively from their respective sides of the bride and groom. She hoped there wouldn’t be either coolness or a row between the two of them; a wedding was no place to fall out and this was a very tiny island.
The first specks of rain started to fall as everyone gathered beside the bar and the first bottles of champagne were uncorked.
‘Oh bring on the drink,’ Cyn demanded, impatiently. ‘It’s the only thing that makes a wedding bearable.’ Beth looked at her sharply – Cyn, she realized, was clearly already on the outside of a couple of lunchtime cocktails.
‘Cyn the cynic,’ Len teased, leaning heavily on the stout stick he’d been given by the Haven nurse. ‘What have you got against weddings? You’ve got a lovely man there.’
‘I know that. Brad’s a darling. He’s just the one though,’ she said with a brittle laugh. ‘Not really enough for a woman of healthy appetite, is it Beth?’ Cynthia downed half a glass of champagne in one.
‘Don’t drag me into it!’ Beth told her. ‘One husband is plenty for me.’
‘Are you sure, darling?’ Cynthia leaned forward. ‘That’s not what you were saying before, was she Ned?’
‘What? Sorry, wasn’t listening.’ He backed away, looking worried. ‘Just going to have a word with Michael.’ And he scurried away, looking, Beth thought, like a fox fleeing a hound.
‘Delilah, I really like you, but . . .’ Sam had at last approached Delilah, edging her away from the party by the bar.
‘But,’ Delilah repeated. ‘That “but” says it all. What did you think I want, Sam? All this?’ She waved her arm to indicate the wedding arbour, where the rain was weighing down the garlands of flowers. She almost overbalanced and steadied herself against the bottle-palm tree. Three glasses of champagne had kicked in fast.
‘What do you think I want from you, Sam? Do you think I want a big white beachfront wedding, with you? Is that why you stood me up yesterday?’
‘Um . . . well. You’re very young and I shouldn’t, maybe, have . . . Anyway, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.’ Sam smiled apologetically at her. She sensed insincerity, a punt for easy forgiveness and permission to start again with the next silly victim, presumably cleared for take-off while Delilah was still on Mango premises.
‘I’m going back home tomorrow, Sam, and you won’t have to deal with me ever again. You had sex with me.’ She almost spat the words, somehow trying to convey that this wasn’t an insignificant event for her.
He looked around, worried who was within hearing range.
Good. Let him worry, Delilah thought, as, gleefully, it occurred to her that he might even suspect, in spite of the hotel’s over-sixteens policy, that she was under age. Why put him right?
‘You could have pretended just for forty-eight hours, you know. That would have been kind, after what you did,’ she went on. ‘You could have just turned up for a while yesterday and, like, said hello, even. How much could it have hurt? God, you’re so conceited!’ A small part of her conscience told her that she wasn’t exactly blameless here. She’d hardly been ravished against her will in the scruffy little hut. Was he going to point that out?
He shrugged. ‘Guess I am. Sorry – and yesterday, well I had things to do, like unexpectedly. You’re really sweet you know.’ He reached out a hand to stroke her hair and she pushed it away.
‘Oh spare me that crap,’ she said furiously. ‘It’s so . . . so patronizing. You just collect girls who are on holiday, like for fun. You do it because you can.’
She felt treacherously – and unexpectedly – close to tears. Now that she definitely didn’t want. She was just starting to enjoy herself, to get into her stride, telling him what she thought. It would be good practice for when she was older or dealing with some hopeless, useless boy from school. Except what she’d told Sam wasn’t what she thought, not really. If, after the wedding ceremony (which she’d found quite moving) and the toasts and the speeches, if he’d come over to her, led her away from the others and put an arm round her, apologized, kissed her a bit, all that, then she’d have let him take her down to the fenced-off nudist end of the island and do whatever he wanted to her, down and dirty in the sand. She’d wanted him to, far more than she’d wanted it the other night. It would – and she knew for sure from how her body felt as she’d watched him during the wedding blessing – be loads better than that pathetic effort in the water-sports hut. She was ready for him this time. But no. What had he done instead? Shuffled about looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here, chatting with the bar staff and joking with Michael. Making out like he was anywhere but on the same deserted half-mile stretch of island as her. She was angry.
Back home, when she told her about telling Sam what she thought of him, Kelly would be so proud of her. She could imagine her, almost see her here, rising from the waves yelling ‘Go girl!’ and punching a fist into the air.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Sam told her, shrugging moodily. ‘I keep saying I’m sorry – you’re great, that’s it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
‘No,’ Delilah said sadly, ‘I don’t suppose you did. I don’t suppose you gave it a thought. But do me a favour will you, please?’ She’d almost run out of steam now.
‘Anything. What is it?’
‘Think about it, next time you pick up some little holiday girl. There aren’t many of my age who come here, so when they do, just, like, leave them alone?’
‘You got it.’
She hadn’t, she knew that. What did it matter? After tomorrow it would be back to school and the likes of Oliver Willis for her. Oh joy, something she could really look forward to. Not.
‘And you know . . .’ Sam was giving her that special smile now, sure he was safely off the hook at last. ‘You know, there’s still tonight back at the hotel? I could make it up to you?’
The clouds closed in, dark grey and purple-tinged and fast-moving. The rain, which had fallen in short sharp bursts, now tumbled hard and persistent from the sky. Thunder rumbled from far away and Beth counted the seconds between lightning and the distant rolls. It was coming closer.
‘I love this kind of weather,’ Lesley said, as all the older ones sheltered on seats beneath the bar’s verandah, clutching glasses of drink and eating chunks of chocolate wedding cake. All the younger ones were smoking and chatting further up the beach, under the trees and the wedding arch.
‘It reminds me of being a child,’ Lesley went on. ‘My mum used to tell me that thunder was God moving the furniture about.’
‘Mine told me he was throwing cabbages,’ Ned said. ‘Funny, I never thought to ask why he’d want to do that.’
‘D
idn’t want to eat them, I expect,’ Michael suggested. ‘Not everyone likes cabbage.’
‘His fault for inventing them then!’ Len said, slapping his leg and roaring with laughter.
‘Not the maddest food he’s come up with though. You’ve cooked some weird stuff for that Wendy woman, haven’t you Beth?’ Lesley said. ‘What’s the worst?’
Beth thought for a minute, wondering if it was the champagne making her brain feel like a wet sponge. Food – cooking – that wasn’t something she much cared to think about right now. It went with the Going Home idea – which she was reluctant to face before she had to.
‘Oogruk flippers,’ she came up with, eventually. There was a silence, as well there might be, Beth thought; then, ‘And what the fuck is an oogruk when it’s at home?’ Cynthia asked. She was slurring now, Beth noticed, but she herself probably wasn’t much better. Much longer on this island and they’d have to be carried off.
‘An oogruk,’ Beth said, standing up as if to deliver a lecture, ‘an oogruk is a bearded seal. So first you take your oogruk. Then you cut off its flippers.’
‘Ugh! I couldn’t!’ Lesley pulled a face and shuddered.
‘No – neither could I,’ Beth said. ‘Neither could Wendy even, if you can believe that. Anyway, then you put them in fresh blubber for two weeks.’
‘Then what?’ Cynthia asked. ‘Is that it? How dull.’
‘More or less. Then you take them out again, take off the loose fur, cut the flippers up and eat the meat. Voilà! An Inuit delicacy.’
‘I’d rather be here, eating Caribbean crayfish,’ Bradley commented, passing round another bottle. Thunder crashed again, closer this time.
