by Judy Astley
The smallest children weren’t coming with them. Sebastian’s unreliable digestion when it came to travelling was given as the reason, but Mark had admitted to Perry that he felt abject terror at the thought of being responsible for making sure three such small children didn’t fall off the catamaran. Marisa was taking them to see a puppet show at a hotel further along the beach and had found a friendly Norland nanny in charge of one small baby to share her gripes about her employers with.
They were all assembled on the pontoon with supplies of bottled water, sunhats and plenty of high-factor suntan lotion. Luke and Colette sat on the edge, dangling their feet into the water and watching the fish. The boat was on its way; Mark had spotted it rounding the furthest headland. Shirley felt apprehensive: she was sure she could hear music coming from the boat’s direction and trusted that it would be switched off once they were on board so they could have a calm, peaceful trip.
‘Theresa! Have you recovered?’
‘Lord, it’s the Gropers,’ Simon muttered to Lucy.
Theresa scuttled quickly away from her family group and tried to head off the young couple further along the pontoon. She almost hurled herself at them in her eagerness to keep them out of the family’s collective sharp earshot, but Plum and Lucy, perhaps slyly suspecting entertainment value, were beside her.
‘After last night – we were worried about leaving you to go back to your room all alone like that.’ The girl’s voice, unfortunately for Theresa, was a vibrant and carrying one. She touched Plum on the arm, a friendly, confiding gesture. ‘State of her, had more than a few, but then don’t we all now and then? Only human! Thought she’d drown though.’
‘Leave it, Cathy,’ the man mumbled at her, ‘you’re being mouthy.’
‘Sorry Paul,’ Cathy said, then turned back to Theresa. ‘But next time you go for a midnight swim, take a friend just for safety. Hope your dress was OK. You going on the boat trip?’
Theresa’s smile was a tight, fraught one and her reply was a clipped ‘Yes’, which Lucy thought rather inadequate and rude in the circumstances, as it seemed serious thanks for the saving of life might be more to the point. Lucy looked at Mark but he was gazing out to sea, studying the approaching boat. So he’d definitely confessed all to Theresa, then. Whatever alcohol-soaked trouble Theresa had been rescued from the night before just had to be a reaction to his news. Unless, of course, Theresa had a secret double life as the night-wandering gin-monster of Esher.
The catamaran was enormous, with decks on each hull, a full-scale bar and small galley below in the centre. Lucy held Shirley’s arm as she climbed aboard and found her somewhere to sit on the deck as far as she could get from the booming effects of the pounding reggae music. Cathy and Paul clambered across the deck and made straight for the bar area and there were several passengers already settled aboard, which didn’t please Perry. He said to Simon, ‘I thought you’d booked a whole boat, not just seats on some kind of disco ferry.’
‘That would have cost a fortune, Dad. These things take up to thirty people.’
‘I keep telling you, Simon, money’s not a problem. If we’d had the boat to ourselves we could have got the bloody music turned down.’
Lucy felt sorry for Simon, who’d simply been doing his best to get things right. He sat near the back of the boat with his shoulders slumped, reminding Lucy of when she was little and he decided that the role of Middle Child was a hard one to have been dealt. He must have been close to fifteen, growing so fast that she, at five, thought he looked like a pale skinny ghost. She remembered him nagging at Shirley to let down the hem on his grey school trousers and how she’d kept saying she’d get round to it. In the end, mortified by the constant sight of the top of his grey school socks, he’d had a go at doing it himself, hacking at the stubborn stitches with Shirley’s stitch-ripper and managing to slice a massive hole in the fabric. ‘I was only trying to help,’ he’d claimed, justifiably, hunching miserably on their big maroon Dralon sofa with the unwearable trousers hanging like the lifeless legs of a ventriloquist’s abandoned dummy across his lap.
The sun was scorching, reflecting off the sea and doubling its damage potential. There was no shade on the boat, but the breeze was cool, deceptive in making the passengers feel that the sun wasn’t doing its worst. Lucy could see Cathy and Paul settling to put away as many bottles of Carib beer as they could manage, and Becky drifted off to chat to them and sneak a couple of bottles for herself at the same time. Shirley sat watching the palm-fringed coastline as they sped past craggy hillside villages, small fields of brown and white goats and curly-horned thin cows that were tethered singly under shade close to brightly painted homesteads.
‘If this was English coastline it would be nothing but horrible off-white bungalows,’ Plum commented, admiring the hot, vivid colours of the houses dotted around on the hillsides. ‘And I’ve never understood the dreary British obsession with net curtains.’
‘You need them for privacy.’ Shirley was a great believer in nets and felt they were a tradition that deserved defending.
‘Even when you put them on the Velux windows when you had the roof space converted, and the only people who could see in would have to be in a passing helicopter?’ Lucy teased.
Shirley gave her one of the Looks. ‘We haven’t come all the way to this beautiful place to argue about net curtains,’ she said. ‘We can do that at home.’
‘What have we come here for, actually?’ Simon asked. Lucy looked at him. He was staring at the sea as if he wished he hadn’t, at least not yet, released this particular bull into the ring for Shirley to fight with.
‘We’ve come to be together, as a family, Simon. To remind ourselves of what that means. That’s all,’ she said. ‘I know you, I know you’ve been angling for a deep dark motive since the day we told you we were making the booking. Just relax, just enjoy yourself.’
It was on the way back later that afternoon that Shirley started to tremble. Amazingly, it wasn’t Simon who first noticed, because he was occupied being seasick over the back of the catamaran. The Atlantic side of the island didn’t have the placid leisurely waves of the western, Caribbean side. Here the sea rolled and heaved and fat rollers crashed to the shore and spumed high off the rocks. Only Plum remained completely unperturbed, absorbed in the final chapter of Ruth Rendell. Cathy and Paul huddled together for warmth in this much cooler wind. Mark and Theresa, sitting silently on separate hulls like a pair of seagulls, focused against nausea on the horizon. Becky, Luke and Perry were in a row holding tightly to the deck ropes, with Colette in front of them and Perry praying she wouldn’t feel sick and be put off boat trips for ever.
Shirley and Lucy were comfortable on proper seats up by the galley. Music was still booming out, but they were too tired now to be anything but oblivious to it. Shirley had done a lot of swimming, during the lunchtime stop on the shore. The beach had been stunning, a stretch of deserted, pale sand that glinted as if diamond shavings had been grated over it. More shelter would have been good – wherever she sat beneath the young and wispy palms she hadn’t managed to get the whole of her in the shade at any one time. She’d taken refuge under the sea. She’d never tried snorkelling before and had enjoyed the strange sensation of being among, not above, fish as they went about doing whatever fish do. She hadn’t seen the dolphin, which she rather regretted, though it was nice that it had let Becky swim along with it, stroke it even, because that seemed to be what the younger ones liked to do. She couldn’t imagine wanting to stroke one herself, sure that it would be a slimy, greasy-skinned thing and also that, really, it wouldn’t like it. They might bite. You couldn’t trust just everything (or everyone) that smiled.
When she started to shiver, Shirley at first thought she was getting chilled. The sea was rougher now, but as she’d never been on any kind of British boat trip that had involved anything less than a force five cross-Channel wind she didn’t feel queasy. She worried mildly about Simon, though, who had once managed to get s
easick in a canoe on Lake Windermere, and who had eaten a vast amount of the barbecued prawns with chilli sauce at lunchtime.
‘Are you all right?’ Lucy asked. She was sitting close beside her but her voice sounded as if it was miles away, like someone down a telephone back in the days of trunk calls. ‘You’re looking a bit pale.’ This was disappointing, Shirley thought, especially as she’d looked in the mirror that morning and seen a tanned face that the younger women of Wilmslow paid a fortune in sunbed fees to acquire every winter. She put her left hand up to move stray hair out of her eyes and found that the hand didn’t quite know where to go. It waved about, lost for a moment, forgetting where it was supposed to be, what it should do. A prickle of confusion warmed the back of Shirley’s neck, then the hand recalled what was asked of it and she pushed the strand of hair behind her ear beneath her hat.
‘You’re cold. You’re shaking.’
‘No, I’m not cold,’ she protested. The hand was back in her lap with the other one now and she raised both sets of fingers a little. They trembled, hard, as if they were seriously afraid of some terror that the rest of her hadn’t yet discovered. Lucy’s hand came down over the two of hers and stilled them.
‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all,’ Shirley told her. Her head ached too, a delicate but persistent throb slightly below the surface of her right temple. She would be all right with a couple of aspirin and a sleep.
Nine
EARLY IN THE evening the bar was noisier than usual, with the guests assembling before dinner to discuss the notices about the approaching hurricane that had been placed on their beds while they were out enjoying the day. The air was buzzing with against-the-elements jokes along with reminiscences about the Last Lot, for everyone British thought they’d seen the worst a hurricane could throw at them, having witnessed the odd BMW crushed by a falling oak, along with a Sussex hillside of struck-down pines. There was talk of battening down hatches and Dunkirk spirit (this last followed by behind-the-hand sniggers, guilty looks round for German guests and hissings about ‘Don’t-mention-the-war’).
Several anxious souls murmured about contacting tour reps with a view to arranging an earlier flight home, but they were witheringly accused either of a ratlike abandoning of ship or of missing out on a potentially thrilling experience, as if it was merely another unmissable local attraction, rating five stars in the guidebook. A frantic Italian couple were avidly questioning the hotel manager, wanting more precise details than he was able to give. However hard he insisted he didn’t yet know if the hurricane was even heading for the island, the couple pressed him to tell them more, as if he had a hotline to the elemental gods and was deliberately keeping the truth from them.
Simon brought his hurricane instructions into the bar with him and perched on a stool next to Lucy. ‘I suppose we’ve all got these,’ he said, waving the sheet of paper.
Lucy grinned at him. ‘Well I expect so, Simon, unless you think God is directing a special storm just at you.’ Simon frowned. ‘You shouldn’t joke about it, Lucy. There could be serious danger.’ He was in his own element now, she realized, getting ready to orchestrate the family’s survival in the face of disaster.
‘Listen to this,’ he said, reading aloud. ‘“Pack all your belongings in a suitcase, put the case inside the plastic bag provided and place high in wardrobe …”’
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Theresa interrupted, arriving just in time to claim the last bar-stool. ‘Surely they don’t really expect us to pack all our stuff up, do they? All the stuff in the drawers, everything off the hangers, I mean if it’s already in the wardrobe …’
‘If that’s what it says …’ The gold lady leaned across and helped herself to cashew nuts from the bowl in front of Lucy.
‘Absolutely.’ Simon was delighted to find an ally. ‘You must do just what it says; after all, the people here have gone through all this before and they know what they’re doing. We’ve got no idea.’
Theresa gave him a look that would have crumpled a non-relative. ‘Thank you Simon, yes I do realize that, but I wonder if it might be a bit over the top, possibly connected with avoiding tricky insurance claims?’
‘We’re all doomed!’ one of the Steves mocked loudly from the far end of the bar. Everyone laughed except Simon and the bar staff, who were too busy dealing with the extra drinks orders that the overexcited guests seemed to need.
‘And what about this bit, about actually getting in the wardrobe?’ Theresa’s perfect cherry-varnished fingernail stabbed at the paper. ‘How are we supposed to get in if it’s full of luggage? Tell me that, Simon.’
‘They’re quite big,’ he ventured.
‘Depends how much luggage you’ve got,’ she countered. ‘And I do have three children and an au pair to cram in as well. It would be like one of those silly student charity stunts they used to do: how many geographers can you cram into a phone box.’
Lucy felt fidgety. The others would be arriving in a few minutes and there was something on her mind that she wanted to share with just Simon and Theresa. ‘Listen, I want to talk to you two. Come outside onto the terrace.’
‘Oh a mystery, I could do with some distraction.’ Theresa picked up her daiquiri and followed, tripping along smartly on her kitten-heeled scarlet mules. She really did look supremely glamorous tonight, Lucy thought, as if this was a special occasion. As well as her nails being wonderfully manicured, her hair had been glossily blow-dried and Lucy knew she must have put in an hour or two in the beauty salon on the top floor. Her dress was spaghetti-strapped, sleek navy blue and fluted a little just below her knees. Lucy guessed it was by Ghost, and probably cost a good percentage of what she herself earned in a week. She tried not to mind, reminding herself that after all what she had was what she earned, not what she’d married. Somehow it didn’t feel quite as comforting as usual.
‘So what’s the big secret?’ Simon settled himself at a small ornate iron table, tracing his fingers over the leaf shapes on the surface.
‘It’s not really a secret. It’s Mum.’ There was no point skirting round it. ‘On the boat she was really shaky, and she sort of, well, she sort of lost it a bit…’
‘Lost what?’ Theresa sipped her drink and looked puzzled.
‘It was rather choppy. She probably felt dodgy,’ Simon contributed, but he was frowning, considering.
‘Not as bad as you did. I saw you chucking up over the side.’ Theresa giggled. ‘What a waste of all those lovely prawns!’
‘Back to Mum.’ Lucy glanced round. Soon the others would be looking for them. ‘She doesn’t get seasick. She’s got a stomach like cast iron. Don’t you remember that time when we went to the Isle of Man in a force nine and she calmly carried on knitting while everyone else was groaning and dying and praying around her? No, this was strange, as if her brain had gone walkabout and she couldn’t quite find it. And she shook so much, really trembling, and when we got off the boat she was wobbly. Dad had to hold her arm. I watched: he was still holding on to her all the way back to the villa. It’s the first time I’ve seen her looking frail.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Theresa had finished her drink and she waved to a waiter across the terrace for a refill.
‘I think she got seriously dizzy, had a bit of what she’d call a “turn”. I think maybe we should ask Pa about it, in case it’s not the first time. Simon might have been right all the time, there might be stuff about her being ill that they aren’t telling us.’
‘I knew it,’ he said, ‘I thought they’d have told us by now too. I was just beginning to relax.’
‘But what if it is?’ Theresa pointed out.
‘Is what?’ Simon asked.
‘Is the first time? And she’s perfectly all right now? Old people do have things like this, very mild strokes that are all right till you scare them witless by giving it a name. What’s the point of making a big fuss and worrying them both when there’s not a lot they can do till she gets home?’
Becky fl
ipped a coin. She’d delved into the bottom of her purse and pulled out a two-pence piece especially. It was important to use English money: the local currency might be biased in favour of Ethan’s requirements. She brushed out of her mind the logical consequence of this train of thought: whichever way the coin fell, she knew deep down that having sex with Ethan was something that she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to do, even though he’d made her feel more randy than a springtime fox. The thing was, it was time she had it with someone; she would be seventeen in a couple of days. Everyone else at school had had sex and mostly with more than one person. Some of them were practically at old-married-couple level, especially drippy Delphine who started every sentence with ‘My Nick says …’ Becky didn’t want that, but she did want to have a clue what sex was like. She listened in on the morning-after discussions, perched on the counter in the girls’ loo, looking as if she knew just what they were all on about, laughing in all the right places when they giggled about squelchy condoms or stuffing their knickers under the sofa when a parent came home too soon. One day, and it was creeping nearer all the time, someone would realize she never actually had anything to contribute to these shrieky tell-all sessions. This must be peer-group pressure, she realized, and she’d always prided herself on refusing to succumb to it. She was still determined it wasn’t just that causing her to stand there with a coin in her hand and a decision to make. It was simply sheer curiosity and the ripe, right time to dispose of her virginity. It was like when she’d been younger and had a wobbly tooth, the moment had always come when she’d known that the one final neat twist was all it needed to get it out.
There was no-one back home she really fancied. They were all pale, clumsy big-footed boys with sick-making acne eruptions and soft stupid-looking fleshy faces and thick necks that reminded her of toys that had been a bit too tightly stuffed. Not one of them had any sense of personal style, even the ones from the university (actually those were worse: they were the dreggy ones who couldn’t pull a fellow student and resorted to easier pickings among the kind of schoolgirls who were pathetic enough to give them some status as Older Men). Ethan was different. He wasn’t that tall, but his whole body swaggered up the beach with effortless sexual confidence. His baggy shorts swung perfectly on his hips, not wilting at half mast as if he needed a Mummy figure to pull them up properly. His shoulders were broad and straight under his T-shirt, not apologetic and shivery like those of boys in England.
