Jan had picked up his book again.
'Good, good,' he said, 'it sounds your sort of place.'
She had seen a young couple in swimsuits kissing in the doorway to their room. They could quite easily have kissed in their room, but they needed to kiss there and then. The Spanish-looking girl had long ringlets of
dark hair and the man was young enough to be smooth-skinned, hairless. How soft their skin must have felt as they pressed together. So young, so clean from the pool, clean all over. She wondered whether they were able to forgive each other when they argued. Perhaps they didn't argue. Perhaps the need to touch each other overwhelmed every discontent.
Jan was nodding at the book. It was not mute to him, it spoke, he listened and responded even as she stood there before him, hot behind the eyes, breathing little shallow breaths and looking at herself in the mirror. She did not look her age—forty-nine—but soon she would and then it would all be over for her. She had said her goodbyes in many different ways, tenderly and angrily. He hadn't heard them, either way.
She left the room and made for reception where she waited a long time for the young girl there to answer her questions regarding the horse riding.
She had spotted the Bible at home, among his books. 'I will not be alive like a dead person,' she said to herself, waiting to live in the afterlife!' She could not stop herself from thinking such things. She lay awake at night reasoning the resentment into righteousness.
She gathered some leaflets now, he could look through them if he wanted to go off and do any of his tourism things. He could help himself. She was going to have a holiday that suited her. She would make the most of the spa. Her own health deserved some attention. Hadn't the doctors said that it's so often the carer's
well-being that gets completely neglected? She held the spa brochure at arm's length. Usually she borrowed Jan's glasses.
A revolting man was checking in, hot and bothered. She glanced at the signet ring on his right pinkie, the sweaty tendrils beneath his Panama hat and the shield of sweat emblazoned on his back. He said he was from South Africa but his accent was Irish with a self-assured rolling comedy of inflection. She waited for him to notice her, which he did.
'Well, hello,' he said to her with a grin. 'Nice weather isn't it? I think I've single-handedly raised the temperature in this wee room about five degrees.'
When she got back to the room, she gave Jan the pamphlets that were of 'cultural interest.' She had chosen those she considered the most ridiculous, a historical tour of the plantations and an afternoon of beadwork.
'These look like your sort of thing,' she said. There was a vulgar South African checking in downstairs. He made a pass at me. Perhaps he thinks he is at Club Med.'
Jan looked at his wife now that she was opposite him, perched on the side of a chair, studying her reflection in the long mirror. He could picture the scene at reception. She would have used her left elbow to prop herself as she leaned against the counter, leaving a delicate deliberate space between the counter and her breast. Her long fingers would have played with her
necklace and when the man turned towards her she would have given him that same slow smile which she was giving the mirror now, a look that causes a man to look twice.
T
HE NEXT MORNING
Annemieke called reception to ascertain whether there were any vacancies for a full body massage that day. Just one. She could come now. Jan was already awake, reading, making some notes in a small jotter he'd bought, sitting on the balcony with a coffee and a cigarette. She had to smile, looking at Jan out there with his book of grievances. She had looked at it once or twice when he was absent. It was full of semi-philosophical notes and remarks, occasioned by his readings, a few of which dealt with human virtue, some were quotations neatly referenced, some seemed to be his own reflections. She could read into them plenty of criticism of herself, she was more than likely the 'middle class,' the 'bourgeois,' the hedonist, the materialist to whom he referred. When we die, everything dies, she said to herself, even the blame. The children wouldn't want his books and notes and jottings.
'I thought we might make an excursion,' he said pleasantly. 'We could hire a car. Have a look round the island.'
'I'm not a sightseer, Jan,' she said, 'as you know.'
She gave herself a good wash; she wanted to feel just
right when she lay down on that massage couch. These indulgences were fraught in so many ways. Money and time ticking away while you tried to feel good. An indifferent masseur or beautician, an unpleasant manner, a painfully deep rub or treatment, thin towels, or the sight of herself, under bright lights in a full-length mirror—any of these could ruin it.
He was standing when she left.
'We might have lunch together,' he said.
'You look after yourself, I shouldn't want to hold you up.'
Naked under a robe, waiting with a cup of lemon tea outside the massage room, she became increasingly nervous at the selection of music being piped over the speakers. It was young music, all pulse and beat and gravel and urgency. She would not be able to relax to it.
With the usual command given, to undress and lie under the single white sheet while the masseuse stepped out of the room, she felt more at ease. The lights were dimmed, the music lowered. When the masseuse returned, she asked Annemieke questions in a monotonous voice of Eastern European accent, interspersing them with notes about the oils she was using, varying neither the cadence nor the metre of her speech.
'So you have come here with husband. This is a neroli, orange and bergamot oil very good to stimulate the senses and invigorate your spirits. They are older, your children, then. They have left home.'
'How old do you think I am?' said Annemieke.
'Forty something,' she said, 'early forties.'
Annemieke was reminded of the option to tip the masseuse. This gave her an anxiety like heartburn. She started to wonder how much time had passed and how much remained. Opening her eyes and turning her neck slightly to find the clock, she cricked her neck and exclaimed. The masseuse spoke gently.
'You hurt your neck. You have very stressful life.'
Already twenty minutes had passed.
'Yes,' Annemieke said and snapped her jaws and eye-lids shut.
The masseuse put her fingertips to Annemieke's temples and rubbed in small circles, softly but with growing pressure. In her mind's eye, Annemieke saw Jan's face, protuberant with his own sorrow. The masseuse finished with deep strokes of her thumbs against the sole of one of Annemieke's soft feet, clasping the foot like a prize, pressing the toes to her collarbone.
Standing in her robe, at the spa reception, Annemieke signed the chit quickly, looking at the counter, not at the girl. She did not leave a tip.
Only a homosexual or a has-been wears
short
shorts, thought Annemieke, standing still in front of the man. The South African pulled his short shorts back up from around his ankles and positioned his genitals gamely inside the fishnet interior. They were dark blue nylon with a white-bordered slit up either side.
Annemieke had gone into the wrong changing room after her massage, deliberately. She had observed that it was the mens room and loosened her robe slightly to affect a deeper V before she entered. The day before, as she waited for the elevator back to their room, she had heard the South African arrange a midday massage—or a 'rub-down', as he called it—and as chance would have it, there they both were, in a small stark white changing room, her robe slipping.
A man such as he was not going to refuse.
'I must be in the wrong place,' she said, a shoulder exposed, and she could see by his expression that he remembered her and from the goofy turning of his mouth that he was rapidly putting two and two together and coming up with an erection.
She locked the door behind them with the simple depression of a round button on the handle. She approached him and put her hand inside the short shorts, unleashing her catch from the net. And all the time he smiled like a son of a bitch. Expressionless, she gave the hot and hairy handful a few pulls in order to make sense of the mess. Humbly and warily he placed his hands on her breasts, as if waiting for the next steps to be communicated.
She drew the line at giving such a man a blow job. She guided his apish right hand between her legs.
'Okay,' he said with a friendly smile, a thumb either side of his waist, levering the shorts over his plumpness. With a gamin flourish of his hips, he let them drop down to his knees. One further shake and they
were about his ankles and that seemed as far as he was able to dismiss them. She sat down, robe about her hips, her hands behind her, her back arched, then she slowly began to walk her hands backwards.
He knelt down above her, steadying himself with one hand, giving his old friend a stroke and seeing to the task of fucking a middle-aged woman in a grandiose lavatory just before lunch on a Monday.
S
EEING SUCH A BITTER-LOOKING OLD MAN
, all jowls, flushed from the heat, Jan took his seat at the bar well outside what he presumed was the old boy's limited range of hearing. In the last six years he had spent a great deal of time at a great many bars, even though he was not a heavy drinker. He liked public privacy. He liked to take an occasional modest respite from his life, to enjoy civilized refreshment and an altered perspective.
The old man scowled when Jan was brought a large bottle of San Pellegrino with a long thin glass and a lime wedge. He leaned sideways; making a great and ungainly effort to see better what Jan was wearing.
Catching each other's look, they smiled slightly.
'Bit hot,' the old man said loudly, shaking his collar.
Jan looked noncommittal, raising his eyebrows and steering his lack of opinion with his ears, left and right.
'Oh, so-so.'
The old fellow nodded and said nothing, then, apparently reconsidering, moved a seat closer to Jan. 'Can't hear you, mate. What did you say?'
'Yes, it is. Hot.'
'Been here before, then?'
'No, this is my first time.'
'On your own?' asked the man, showing his canines.
'No, no. With my wife. I'm waiting for her now,' Jan returned, looking down at his glass so that the man would not see his thoughts. He resented the intrusion. He had a lot to think about and not much time. Was it possible for such an old man to be a practising homosexual? It was possible, he had a moustache, but usually they were writers or artists. This man did not look like either. He was English or perhaps Australian, the accent was coarse.
'
Same here
.'
Jan hoped that the conversation would end here. He was ready to stand up and make a polite farewell, to dash off a signature, to leave the two-thirds of his bottle that remained.
'I say,' said the man, aspirating his words as if speaking to an officer and leaning over the bar with his eyebrows pumping up and down, 'did you happen to remark that the ladies go topless here?' His blue eyes flashed.
Jan smiled stiffly. 'No, I haven't been to the pool yet. I'm not much of a swimmer.'
'Nah,' he said, 'blow the swimming. But from where I'm sitting, you can get what they call a bird's-eye view. An eyeful.'
Jan closed his eyes and took a breath through his nose. He had made a deal with himself, when the illness first struck, to be plain with people. He didn't have enough time to indulge them. He turned on his stool to face the man and opened his eyes slowly ready to reveal a stern expression. The old man was putting his eyebrows through a series of elevations and the back of his head was jostling his forehead. He remembered the English films of the 1950s and 1960s, the Carry On films. He laughed.
'What are you drinking?' Jan said, pushing his glass of water aside.
'Well, if you insist, a lager top,' the man said with pleasure, sitting back in his seat and taking a good look at his new friend. 'Are you buying?'
'Certainly.'
He winked, cocking his head. 'Then I'll have a whisky chaser with mine.'
G
EORGE
D
AVIS HAD BEEN SITTING
out by the pool with his trousers rolled up, thinking. He and his wife, Dorothy, had been up since six. He had never slept much, now he slept hardly at all. He'd had plenty of time to think about the past since he retired at seventy, but it seemed a bottomless well. There were so many different ways of looking at the same thing. By eleven o'clock, George was standing at the Hibiscus Bar, taking swigs from a ginger ale in a short glass. He was dissatisfied, on account of his normal preference for a drop of whisky along with the ginger ale. His eyes were fixed on the clock opposite. It was an old railway clock, oak rimmed, and he could discern the year on it—1856. He was waiting for midday, for decency's sake.
He'd not had many holidays to speak of. His first had been with Tubby Haynes down at Brighton. They'd gone there on motorbikes, kipped the night on a bench. Glorious days, plenty of girls. It was exciting just to walk past a group of them—arm in arm they always were, keeping what they had to themselves, and he and Tubby raised their hats like real gentlemen. With his oiled red hair and twirly moustache, a tall man, he cut quite a figure. He and Tubby would take a couple of girls, and sometimes their mothers, for an ice cream on the front. Sixpence a cone and Tubby going through his pockets at a slight remove, looking for coins. George always came up with the brass. He worked hard and he was careful. And his old man gave him what he could, when he could.
Shielding his eyes he looked straight out at the ocean, then he turned and looked back at the hotel. Between its two main buildings, the Caribbean sun was hand on hips, staring back at him, square and brazen.
'He loved me, the old boy did. No questions asked.'
The British Telecom phone directory had had no listing for Thomas Haynes in the London region. He'd gone to call him a few weeks ago. He thought about Tubby Haynes and the others in their old gang of
mates nearly every day. All dead, he supposed, since he couldn't track down Tubby. The lot of them. And he was the last, still alive, with the memories to himself.