by Lisa Jewell
She had one elbow on the hamper and the other on the window frame, and stared pensively at the windswept landscape as the breeze swept her hair away from her face. Every time Alan performed one of his peculiar swervy negotiations of a speed bump, she gripped the window frame and grimaced slightly.
Chris’s plan had backfired somewhat. In the process of inviting Joy to join them at the beach, he’d inadvertently asked her parents, too.
Stupid bastard.
Holmes Beach was part of a nature reserve encompassing acres of fragrant, shady pine forests, endless tide-stippled beaches and undulating sand dunes. A ruddy man in a balsawood hut charged them 50p per car to take the ginger-dust road down to the beach. Every half a mile or so, Chris got out of the car, swung open a gate and gestured Alan’s car through after theirs with an exaggerated flourish and a bow.
The sky stretched endlessly overhead, sapphire blue and studded with tiny thumbprint clouds. Salty sweat gathered in sticky pools between Vince’s thighs on the green vinyl seats of the Mini. He took a swig from a warm can of Coke and watched Chris’s thumb massaging the back of his mum’s slender, suntanned neck.
And then an image came to mind, an image of he and Joy on the seafront last night, of Joy’s lean fingers threaded through his hair, her breasts pressed up against his chest, her leg wrapped round his thigh. He remembered the alien, thrilling feeling of his tongue as it made its way around hers and how quickly it had felt normal. But most of all he remembered how passionate Joy had been, the little pants and whimpers that escaped from between her lips, the hardness of her mouth against his, the clash of teeth that neither of them acknowledged. She’d set the pace, guided his hand on to her bare breasts under her shirt, pressed her hand against his groin through the gabardine of his trousers, pushed herself closer and closer to him.
They’d kissed like that for nearly three hours.
People had passed them, thrown comments at them – ‘Oy-oy,’ ‘Go on, my son.’ But they’d remained oblivious, tied up together in a knot of frenzied passion.
When they’d finally pulled apart and decided to get back to the caravan site Vince had felt engorged with blood from head to toe – every last bit of him felt taut, swollen and ready to burst. As they walked back to the Seavue, hand in hand and slowly detumescing, he’d considered his first experience of sexual contact and decided that those three hours on a bench with Joy Downer at the age of nearly nineteen had more than compensated for everything he’d missed before. And as he said good night to her outside the door of her caravan and felt her hands running up and down his bare skin underneath his T-shirt, he’d decided that this was it. This was the girl he was going to lose his virginity to.
The car park for the beach was full, and they found themselves stranded a hundred yards from the path to the beach. Alan pulled up beside them, rolled down his window and gestured ahead.
‘Just dropping the ladies off first, with the food. Back in a tick.’
‘Good idea.’ Chris and Kirsty waved him on his way, smiling widely until his car was far enough away to allow their faces to drop.
‘I really don’t like that man,’ said Kirsty, unclipping her seat belt and shuddering slighdy. ‘He gives me the willies. I’ll bet you anything he hits that Barbara. Probably goes to prostitutes, too,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘Blimey,’ said Chris, ‘and you’ve based all that on half an hour of conversation, have you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, defiantly, squinting into the distance at Alan’s car. ‘It’s just the way he looks at me. And the way he talks to his wife. He’s just creepy, that’s all.’
They emptied the Mini’s boot of beach towels, sun cream, carrier bags full of crisps and Tupperware boxes of varying sizes and shapes, and walked towards the path where Joy and Barbara waited in the sun with their ludicrous hamper.
They waited for Alan to catch up with them, then set off towards the beach in a strange convoy of oversized picnic equipment, mismatched beach towels and incongruous people. Vince quickened his pace to meet up with Joy halfway down the wooden slatted path. She was wearing her black combat shorts again, with a khaki cheesecloth shirt that looked like it had originally belonged to a man. Her hair was tied in a messy pony-tail on top of her head. She looked as if she was on her way to scrape monkey faeces off tree trunks in Borneo.
‘What are you listening to?’ he said, gesturing to the Walkman peeping out of her shirt pocket.
‘Oh – just stuff,’ she said. ‘A compilation.’ She smiled at him and tucked her earpieces into her pocket.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said, sliding his sweaty hands into the pockets of his shorts.
‘What?’
‘This whole, you know – Chris dragging you all out to the beach. I told you he could be persuasive.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said lightly. ‘Dad was going on about coming to this beach anyway. And besides – we get to spend the day together.’
Vince glanced down at her to check she’d really just said that and felt pleasure rise through him when he realized that she had. ‘Cool,’ he said, ‘positive thinking. I like it.’
They wandered for a while, searching for the perfect dune that Chris had claimed as his own last summer.
Up and down sand dunes they wandered, the midday sun beating down on their heads, the dune grass tickling at their calves, until finally they found a dune that both Alan and Chris agreed was acceptable.
They laid out hairy blankets and lurid velour beach towels. Alan and Barbara spent ten minutes constructing a yellow-and-green-checked windbreak, completely missing the point of settling in a sand dune, then they all began the slightly uncomfortable process of disrobing in front of total strangers.
Chris pulled off his T-shirt with all the confidence of a hairy-chested, twenty-nine-year-old man with a full set of weights in his garage and thirty sunbed sessions under his belt. Kirsty wriggled self-consciously out of her shorts and halterneck, uncovering a tiny black bikini held together between the breasts with a fake Gucci ‘G’ in gold that caught the sun with her every movement.
Alan pretended not to watch her undressing and held his stomach in so tightly that his ribcage looked as if it might come bursting through his speckled skin. Every time he removed an item of clothing he folded it into a precise square and packed it tightly into a plastic bag. His legs, Vince noticed, were devoid of any kind of hair from mid calf down, and he wore a pair of navy polyester shorts with an elasticated waist.
Barbara clambered awkwardly out of her tight cotton dress to reveal what looked at first glance like yet another tight cotton dress, but was actually a rather bulky, full-figured swimsuit, which could only be described as a bathing costume. The legs of the bathing costume ended a quarter of the way down her thighs in an elasticated bunch, forcing her curdled flesh into florets.
Vince turned to glance at Joy. She had gone as far as removing her DM shoes and unbuttoning her cheesecloth shirt to reveal a grey singlet, but didn’t appear to have any intention of removing any further garments.
Alan scooped off his leather sandals and laid them side by side on the sand. ‘Come on, love,’ he said, glancing at his daughter, ‘strip off. You can’t sit there all day looking like a prisoner of war.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ he muttered, ‘beautiful day, sun’s out, having a lovely holiday, sitting there like a nun in all your clothes. I really don’t understand you. It’s not as if you’ve got anything anyone would want to see.’
‘Oh, Alan,’ said Barbara, ‘leave her alone. She can keep her clothes on if she wants.’
Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Alan,’ she chastised ineffectually.
‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered, ‘mustn’t say anything to upset our precious daughter. I know – I know.’ He started ranting quietly to himself under his breath while he squirted sun cream down the full length of his arms and began rubbing it in vigorously.
Kirsty shot Chris a look as a sour atmosphere descended upon the dune.
Joy watched her mother patiently rubbing cream into Alan’s freckled shoulders with a look of barely disguised disgust, then got to her feet. ‘I’m going for a walk.’ She threw Vince a look. ‘You coming?’
Yeah. Sure.’ He leaped to his feet.
‘Make sure you’re back in an hour for lunch,’ said Alan, tapping his watch.
‘I’m not hungry’
‘Well, make sure you’re back anyway, for politeness sake, if for nothing else. Honestly,’ he murmured under his breath, ‘why does it all have to be such a bloody performance? One o’clock. Sharp. Back here,’ he said, tapping his watch at her.
‘Yes,’ she hissed, ‘whatever.’ And then they clambered over the small hillock at the foot of the dune and headed for the beach.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Joy, adjusting her ponytail.
‘Is he always like that?’
‘No, not always. Just when he forgets to pretend that he’s nice. Which is most of the time.’
As they climbed over the top of the last dune, the beach appeared before them, like a foreign country. It stretched out for miles in every direction, with families scattered across its vast expanse like dropped coins. Sandy-tailed dogs ran in lunatic circles across the hard, damp sand, mad with disbelief at how much space they had to play in. Small children sat with splayed legs and plastic buckets, constructing casdes and cars out of the malleable sand. Further out the paper-flat beach turned to silvery saltwater wrinkles, like glass eels. The sea was nothing more a thin navy line in the very furthest distance.
‘Mmm,’ said Joy, breathing in deeply and wrapping her arms around her chest.
Out of the cauldrons of the dunes, the temperature was at least five degrees cooler and there was a refreshing breeze.
They surveyed the awesome view for a moment, then started walking.
‘So,’ said Joy, ‘what’s it like having cool parents?’
Vince smiled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s good, I suppose.’
You’re so lucky, you know?’
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, they’re not perfect or anything, but – ’
‘I used to think I was adopted,’ she cut in. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I could never quite believe that my parents were really my parents. And it’s not just that I don’t look like them. It’s just… I don’t feel like we’re from the same tribe — do you know what I mean? It’s like, you and Chris and your mum – even though you’re all completely different, there’s this unity about you, as if you all came from the same place originally. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I wasn’t born in England…’
‘You weren’t?’
‘No, I was born in Singapore.’
Vince looked at her in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh. My dad used to work for Jaguar. He was a sales director for the biggest showroom in Singapore. He and my mum were out there for about ten years. They came back when I was a few weeks old.’
‘It’s funny, you know. I thought the first time I saw you that you looked kind of exotic’
‘Exotic?’ she scoffed.
‘Yeah. It’s the eyes,’ he said, framing them with his fingers. ‘Kind of oriental-looking.’
Joy laughed, looking pleased. ‘Do you think?’
‘Yes. Definitely. They’re stunning.’
She put a hand up to touch her eyes, and for a moment they stared at each other.
‘Maybe you were adopted,’ he countered. ‘Maybe that would explain the eyes?’
She smiled, and pushed some hair out of her eyes. ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘I’ve seen my birth certificate. It’s there in black and white. I am the spawn of Alan and Barbara Downer. It’s official. Worse luck.’
Vince shrugged. ‘Maybe it was something in the water,’ he said.
‘So, what about you? Do you look like your dad? I mean, do you know what he looked like?’
‘Yeah. I’ve seen pictures. A couple of pictures anyway. He and my mum hadn’t known each other that long when he died. They weren’t married or anything.’
‘And do you look like him?’
‘Apparendy, yeah. Especially since all this,’ he indicated his scars. ‘I can’t see it myself – he was a bit of a rocker, you know. Long hair, ‘tache, denim waistcoat. Not much like me when it comes to style.’
‘Seriously?’ she laughed.
‘Yeah. My mum likes macho men. I sometimes wonder – ’ he began, then stopped. ‘Go on.’
‘I sometimes wonder what it would have been like for me if he’d been around when I was growing up. I sometimes think it might have been hard, you know? Maybe he’d have been disappointed in me, thought I was bit soft, a bit of a girl. I’m just not into all that “man” stuff – motorbikes, football – maybe he’d have had a problem with that.’
‘Well,’ said Joy, ‘you might not have a ‘tache and a motorbike, but you’re certainly not girlie.’
‘No?’
‘No – you’re incredibly manly’
Vince laughed. ‘Stop taking the piss,’ he said.
‘I’m not taking the piss,’ she laughed. ‘You are.’
Vince threw her a sceptical look.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you must realize?’
‘Realize what?’
‘That you’re a total hunk.’
‘Er… no.’
‘What, you mean to say that no one’s ever told you before?’
‘Like who?’
‘Like girlfriends.’
‘Well,’ Vince shrugged, ran his fingers through his hair, shrugged again. ‘I haven’t had any girlfriends.’ There. He’d said it.
‘What, really?’
‘Well, not proper girlfriends, you know. I mean, I’ve had friends who were girls, but I’ve never… I’ve never actually been out with anyone. Properly. It was just, all the girls I used to know just didn’t see me in that way. I was just, Melonhead, you know? And then I’ve been pretty much out of circulation this past year. And… shit. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Do you think I’m a loser?’
‘No. Of course I don’t. I haven’t exactly been around myself.’
‘No?’
‘No. I’ve only had one boyfriend. Kieran. He was three years older than me. But it was nothing serious. Well,’ she laughed, ‘apart from the fact that he gave me an engagement ring.’
‘You were engaged?’ An image of this older, engagement-ring-bearing man flashed through Vince’s mind. He looked like Bryan Ferry.
She laughed again. ‘No, I was fourteen, for God’s sake. It was just a laugh. And besides, I was never in love with him.’
‘You weren’t?’
‘No. He was a sweet bloke, but it wasn’t as if we were going to get married or anything. It was just a phase, you know, getting stuff out of the way’
Aaah, thought Vince, there it was. The mystical stuff. The stuff that meant that Joy had ‘done it’. The stuff that meant that she’d caressed, undressed, seduced, had and been had.
‘I’ve never really been in love,’ she continued, ‘never really been one of those girls, you know, those sitting-by-the-phone girls. Those normal girls.’
And she laughed again. But Vince wasn’t listening. He was too busy pondering the myriad carnal possibilities conjured up by the word ‘stuff. The positions, the emotions, the emissions. Handjobs, blowjobs, missionary, doggy, oral sex, anal sex, girl on top, boy on top, from behind, spoons, frigging, licking, sucking, fucking – each one an alien, terrifying, thrilling concept.
Vince knew what these things looked like. Of course he did. He’d read the magazines, watched the videos, seen his mates fumbling in corners with dishevelled girls with their skirts ruched up to their waists. He’d seen these things, this stuff, just n
ot felt it.
But Joy had.
Of course she had.
Everyone had.
Everyone except priests and nuns and freaks like him.
‘Do you want to go and hide somewhere for a while?’ Joy was smiling up at him, using a hand as a visor to shield her eyes from the sun.
‘Hide?’
‘Yeah. You know. Somewhere private.’
He smiled. ‘Like where?’
‘Like one of those dunes,’ she said as she indicated behind them with a jerk of her head.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘OK.’
They chatted as they made their way back the way they’d come, and as they chatted and walked Vince felt himself changing, as if he was leaving a whole part of his life behind him, as if his real life was finally about to start.
He was walking along a beach with a girl who was just beautiful enough to make him feel like a character in a film, but not so beautiful that he couldn’t think straight. A beautiful girl whose breasts he’d caressed, who he’d kissed for three hours, who wasn’t a virgin, who thought he was handsome and hunky and great. A beautiful girl who’d never met ‘Melonhead’, who saw him only as he was now. And he was walking along a beach, barefoot, bare-chested, in the sunshine, just chatting in an easy, intimate manner with this beautiful girl as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. And that, in itself, was the most extraordinary thing of all. How normal it felt, how right.
And Vince knew with the cool confidence of a grown man that, once they’d found themselves somewhere ‘to hide’ and stretched themselves out on the sand, they’d kiss again. He knew he’d touch her breasts again; her tongue would reach for his tongue, this beautiful girl. He also knew that his hand would cradle the back of her neck and the soles of his feet would caress the silky skin of her shins and that he could handle all of this, take it in his stride. Because he’d waited so long for this, thought about it for so many years, watched it happening to everyone he knew and now it was happening to him and he was nineteen and he was a man and she was a woman and it was his turn at last and he was ready.
