by Ruby Soames
Daddy. I try to imagine him playing football in the park with his boys or making breakfast in bed for mummy to surprise her on Mother’s Day.
‘Uuurgh!’ said Yuleka standing up and shaking herself, ‘Just thinking about her makes me sick. The “Cockroach” we call her. A toast. Let’s have a toast to freedom from the cockroach!’ cries Yuleka, raising her champagne flute into the air before Bunny interrupts.
‘Yuleka darling,’ says Bunny enunciating every syllable either because she’s very drunk or she wants to make the point as sharp as possible. ‘We only met you last night so you might not know this, but some of us here actually went to Henry’s first wedding and know the “Cockroach” rather well.’
‘So!’ snaps Yuleka, ‘then you know what I mean.’
‘Just be careful – Caroline is still a very old and good friend of mine.’
‘Darling,’ sings Roy, ‘holiday! Let’s not f-f-fight on holiday.’
Bunny throws him a hard look.
Yuleka drops back down against my father who sits under her saying nothing. She’s aware that she went too far and that Bunny’s growl has marked the line. She looks to Henry to defend her but he says nothing, just raises his eyebrows at his cigar. The rest of the group have gone quiet. Then Roy thrusts his wheelchair back and forward and rolls it into a spin while singing, ‘La Cu-ca-ra-cha! La-Cu-ra-cha, twirrrrrling rrrrrround and rrrrround we g-g-g-go – La Cu-ca-ra-cha! La Cu-ca-ra-cha, gayest dance in Me-xi-c-c-c-o!’ He does a wheelie and lands with a thud spilling his drink into his lap. ‘Olé!’
The crowd applaud. Even Bunny can’t resist a smirk.
‘Everyone deserves a chance, m’dear,’ muses Templeton-Crest to Bunny in a soft voice out of Henry and Yuleka’s earshot.
‘I know,’ says Bunny, ‘I just don’t think she should be rude about Caroline – isn’t it enough that she’s got Henry and the house!’
‘So, my dears!’ exclaims Yuleka, ‘Yes! This is my first marriage and it’s going to last for eterrrnity!’ Yuleka spits out an olive stone and throws it at Peter. ‘Peter, you’re so clever, tell us the secret of eternal love. You know, Sarah,’ she turns to me before Peter’s had a chance to think of an answer, ‘Peter has travelled to every country in the whole world, and not just for buying things in the gift shops – no! he goes to watch wars! Peter writes for the papers when all the time, rat-tat-tat – guns and …’ She makes explosive sounds with her mouth which I imagine are meant to be an imitation of missiles bursting, ‘bombs are going off. All over the place! Bang! but Peter is as cool as … this cigar humidor! You watch out for him, won’t you, darling? So, Peter, man of the world – why do so many marriages end in divorce?’
Peter looks out to the sea. ‘The reason for divorce is –’ he lights a cigarette and twirls it between his fingers like a cheerleader’s baton. ‘Actually, this isn’t in my area of expertise. I think I’d like to pass that question to Sarah who’s much smarter than I am – go on, what do you think?’
They turn to me, waiting for an answer. There’s an excitable silence as the band stops for a break. All we can hear are jet skis tearing through the water and a German family negotiating with their tyrannical four-year old. Everyone is waiting for me to say something. I clear my throat and take a chance.
‘Maybe the reason for the breakdown in marriages is all down to … er … down to … home decoration!’
There’s silence before a few people start chuckling.
‘I’ll drink to that. My marriage was on the scrap heap the day our Cotswold’s home was in Interiors,’ says a man sitting alone at the bar.
‘Home improvement – what you Brits call DIY, y’mean?’ asks Susie. ‘The girl’s got a point. Couples have lost the ability to talk, so they stencil their nurseries, build guest apartments in their lofts, put up conservatories and order furniture from those hateful warehouses.’
The man called Mike pipes up, ‘Too bloody right! Even if you survive a trip to Ikea, how can any romance last while you’re fitting the bloody things together!’
‘Let me tell you that my husband ran off with the trollop who called herself a “curtain consultant”!’ laments another.
‘Mine – the landscape gardener!’ moaned a man wearing Hawaiian shorts on his head.
‘Absolutely bloody right!’ nods the Viscount.
‘Bravo!’ Yuleka shrieks while slapping her husband’s back. ‘Did you hear what she said darling! “Home Decoration!” Well we won’t ever do that – and Northridge Hall – Henry’s country home – is perfect the way it is!’
‘Steady on – you haven’t seen it yet!’ said Henry, looking at his friends warily.
‘I know I’ll love it – I’ve heard all about it – it has an armoury, a poltergeist and back passages! Anyway, darling,’ says Yuleka, cupping her husband’s cheeks in her palms, ‘if it’s too cold and we get bored, we’ll just go from hotel to hotel – like wandering juice!’
Bunny squeezes some sun cream on her hand and says, ‘I do hope Northridge Hall with its twenty-five bedrooms will be grand enough for you.’
‘Yeah, but I want a home cinema!’
‘I told you, darling, I’ve got people working on that now, and the wet bar,’ says Henry, his neck looking red and slippery.
‘But hey!’ she says, clapping her hands to make an announcement, ‘I don’t need to be grand you know, that’s so boring, I like … people, and colour, and music! That’s why we’re having our wedding dinner in an old shack!’ she said opening out her arms and shimmying. ‘You are all coming, aren’t you? It’s going to be very hot and steamy!’
‘And expensive,’ mutters my father under his breath.
Yuleka nudges him and shouts out, ‘Full of exotic delights!’ And with that she lifts her arms in the air as though reaching the climactic finale of a flamenco dance. ‘Come on Sarah, let’s cool down.’
14
While the party orders yet another round of drinks, I dive in – the pool is so much better than the health club that Joe and I used to belong to. When I reach the other end, a few people are clapping, including Yuleka.
‘What a dive! I can tell you’re a really good swimmer. Me? I can’t go in the water, my hair,’ she says.
‘Oh, right.’ I lift myself out and we dangle our feet in the water.
‘So, another wedding?’ I ask her.
‘Yes! I said to Henry, I said, “it’s too much!” but he’s like, “I would marry you ten times over, one ring for each finger!” See, Henry has never loved anyone before – maybe little crushes when he was younger – but not real love – and now – and now, I have him eating out the palm of my hand. Gobble gobble. Come on, let’s get our drinks.’
We walk to the gazebo where she hands me a large rum punch.
Bunny rolls her eyes and asks, ‘Are we going to have lunch or what?’
‘Where’s the snack menu?’ asks Susie.
‘I have it!’ announces Yuleka relieved to get back in the game. ‘Listen, first: starters: Prawn cocktail, crab …’ Henry watches us all, proud to be the centre of attention while his bride sits on his knee like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
I put my drink to my forehead but it doesn’t take the heat out of my face. Peter rests his hands on my shoulders and says, ‘Let’s get you inside.’
I sense I’m falling back into his arms, and he tells the others, ‘I’m gonna take Sarah back to her room, she’s as white as a ghost.’
‘Are ghosts always white? I mean, what about these chaps on the island?’ mutters a man massaging Lady Templeton-Crest’s neck.
Peter lifts me up and takes my weight against him.
Bunny calls out, ‘But Peter, aren’t you going to order lunch now?’
‘No, not yet. You guys go on without me.’
‘Fine,’ she says, and it sounds like ‘fire’.
I stand giddily with Peter’s arm perched across my back.
As we stop by my lounger to pick up my things, Susie is already there, folding my t
owel for me. ‘Peter, I’d like to have a word with Sarah a moment …’
‘Sure.’ Peter edges around the pool, leaving us a discreet distance but keeping within earshot.
‘Listen, I just wanted to get a few things straight, OK?’ She raises her thin, drawn-on eyebrows at me. I shrug to let her go on. ‘You’ve probably worked out that there are a lot of single girls at the hotel and very few guys. So, we could work together or, if you want to fly solo, let me know which ones you’re interested in so that way we don’t tread on each other’s toes. Got it?’
It takes me a few moments. ‘Yes, I get it.’
‘Good, I thought you’d understand and hey, we should hang out.’ Susie puts a hand on my shoulder, turns away wiggling her hips as she passes Peter then jogs back to the group.
Yuleka yells from across the pool. ‘Sarah, Sarah! Before you go …’
She totters towards us beckoning me over again. ‘Henry and I insist you come to our little wedding ceremony tomorrow.’
‘Oh, that’s very … but, it’s your wedding, I mean …’ I stutter as Peter slides his hand over my other arm.
‘Exactly! That’s why we want all our best friends! Of course you’re invited! Actually, my dear,’ Yuleka perks up, ‘because you and I are going to be really great pals, I’d like you to be our bridesmaid.’
‘Really?’
‘Henry, don’t we? Want her to be our bridesmaid? Henry! This one? She’d look good, huh?’ She shakes my arm, her bangles rattling. ‘Say yes – Henry darling, make her say yes!’
‘By all means, if she’d like to …’ he says, indifferently.
‘Yes, of course she wants to! She’d be perfect, wouldn’t she? I mean, she’s the only young person here, apart from me, of course,’ she laughs.
‘Thanks!’ says Susie.
‘So it’s tomorrow?’ I ask.
‘You’ll come? She said yes! Whoa!’ Yuleka spins on her heels. ‘And you’ll be our bridesmaid! It’s the Wedding of a Thousand Dreams - tomorrow. At three. On the beach. Over there …’ She waves her hand in the general direction of the sea. ‘Peter, you’ll bring her, huh?’ She skips over to Henry and then calls back to us, ‘Go and grab yourself an outfit in the arcade. It’s on us! And Peter, you must bring her – you can’t hog her all to yourself! Sarah’s like a sister to me now, aren’t you, darling?’
‘Catch you later,’ says Peter leading me away.
Roy waves, glistening like a roasted quail. As Peter and I turn from the crowd I hear him say, ‘Shame they don’t make English roses like that anymore, eh? G–g-g-g-girls who faint. Splendid, absolutely splendid.’
‘I can’t imagine she’s ever been in the sun before – that gorgeous white skin,’ says one of the men. ‘Let’s just hope she’s got enough protection.’
‘With Peter Lyle buzzing around her, the sun’s the least of her problems!’ Susie says.
‘Yes, he got in there quick!’ chuckles Roy.
‘For God’s sake, what is happening about lunch?’ asks Bunny exasperated.
As we cross to the other side of the pool, I look back to see if my father is watching me but he’s too far inside the hut to be seen. All I can make out is the red glow of his cigar.
15
Peter takes my room card from me as I scrunch up my toes on the cold, rubbery, recently-sprinkled grass. The sun is strong on my back and I long for shade and a fan.
‘Thanks,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t know what happened. You’ve been through war-zones and here’s me, collapsing from a little sun and … you must think I’m …’
‘I don’t think anything. It’s not the sun, it’s the company. They’re awful. Anyone unused to poisonous gases would react.’
‘But they’re your friends, aren’t they?’
‘No, I’m only polite to them because they know my parents. Bunny and Roy have a house on Long Island which is fun, but the rest – I’d rather have a grenade in my pants than spend a day with people like that. That Yuleka, Jesus!’
‘And yet you told them we’d swum naked together.’
‘Ah, I did. I’m sorry. I was indiscreet.’
We tip-toe over a line of hot tiles, toward the terrace.
‘Before I got here, I’d been in Peshawar, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan – I’ve got too used to the company of men, and travelling around in steel armour-plated vans. Seeing a beautiful woman in front of me – it just went to my head. Still mad?’
I shake my head. At the door to my room, Ferdi arrives out of nowhere with a pot of tea, thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches and a little cake.
I laugh at his extraordinary care. ‘Ferdi, that’s exactly what I wanted.’
He inclines his head toward Peter. ‘Do you wish me to stay with you or will Sir …?’
Peter smiles at me, ‘Do you want Sir to stay a while?’
‘I just need to rest, thanks.’
‘I could …’
‘I’ll be fine, I’m in very capable hands.’
‘Do you want to go to this stupid wedding tomorrow?’ he asks.
‘I don’t think I have much choice.’ For a second, I wonder what it would be like to tell him about my connection to Henry.
‘OK, so, tomorrow … but if you change your mind about doing something together this afternoon, tonight, whenever … just give me a call. Look after her, Ferdi.’
Peter hops over our communal fence to his terrace. He gives me another wave goodbye.
‘He’s sweet, isn’t he?’ I say.
Ferdi raises his eyebrows and says, ‘I suppose he can be.’
I sit on the bed, wiping my filmy hands with a tissue while Ferdi sets the speed on the overhead fan.
‘I don’t think you like Mr Peter, Ferdi. Am I right?’
Satisfied with the speed of the fan, he pours my tea. ‘We don’t have too much wildlife in the Caribbean, you know. No safaris or riots, no sharks in the waters or erupting volcanoes, but, ma’am, one must always be on one’s guard. Don’t you think?’
‘I guess …’
‘If there’s anything else, let me know.’ He stands so upright I want to say ‘at ease’.
He walks to the door, then stops. ‘Mr Lyle asked to be moved to the room next to yours yesterday. He made his request after he saw you step out of the taxi from the airport.’ He nods his head at me, ‘Sleep well. Call me if you need anything.’
16
Dear Daddy,
Please come and get me! Mum is going mad. I hate her shouting she does it all the time. The other night I woke up and she was gone. She didn’t come back till the next night. I finished the Coco pops and watched TV. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t have the keys or money. The phone was disconnected weeks ago. A man kept ringing at the door. When she came back and I asked her where she’d been, she said she was doing things that people her age do ‘for bloody once’. And she was going to go out a lot more because she’d made new friends. I don’t like her new friends. All they do is go to raves and sleep all day, they are loud and wear loads of makeup.
She doesn’t want me anymore so I think maybe I will come and live with you for a bit. Because I’m fritened when she says scarey things.
Please please please please come to my school gates in my playtime and we can talk about the arrangments for me staying over. I’ll be waiting for you, I do everyday anyway.
Lots of love Sarah, xxxxxxxxx
17
It’s my third day in Barbados and I wake to see a long pink dress lying across a chair. A note reads: Darling Sarah, what a beautiful bridesmaid you’ll look in this! Pink is your color!!! Drinks @ 12 by the pool then wedding!!!! Yuleka and Henry xx.
She’d made some attempt to suggest that Henry had signed the card by changing the writing, but I knew he hadn’t. I wonder if he’s even spent a fleeting moment thinking about me since we met.
Ferdi arrives with my breakfast tray, and congratulates me on being a bridesmaid.
‘What do you know about the couple?’ I ask.
‘She’s very lively,’ he offers. ‘They were up until five in the morning, dancing in the billiards’ hall.’
‘D’you think they’re really in love?’
‘I think she really likes dancing.’
‘Do you think she cares for Henry?’
‘What we say here, “De higha de monkey climb, de more he show he tail.” ‘
I laugh at how, for a moment, he transformed into a Bajan sage.
‘It mean, give dat skettel time and we’ll see more than just her tail bits, Ma’am.’
‘Are his children coming?’
‘I rather doubt it, judging by the nature of the..ahemevent.’
‘Hum,’ I put a camellia flower from the tea tray in my hair.
Ferdi sets out my breakfast on the veranda where two little birds chase each other behind his back. ‘I believe he has two children,’ he says.
‘Three,’ I say. ‘He has three children.’
I spend the morning walking far away from the Paradise Beach Club so as not to run into anybody from the wedding party. I find a tiny deserted beach just the other side of a cove where I swim, sun myself and try to concentrate on the novel I’m not reading. But it’s difficult to think about anything other than being a bridesmaid in a few hours.
On my return, Ferdi brings a small lunch from the pre-wedding meal. He tells me that Kamilla called twice. I decide to call her after the wedding so I can give her big news – maybe even a photo or two.
I eat a little and see that I have enough time to telephone Mum.
‘Sarah, where are you?’ She asks.
‘I told you, I’m on holiday.’
‘Holiday!’
‘I’m in Barbados. I’m having a great time!’ I shout in what I hope sounds like exuberance, but probably comes across as hysterical. ‘Are you OK?’
