Summer Loving (4 page)

‘His face, too!’

‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘How old are you? Fourteen? Finish your bloody coffee.’

That evening, when Lucille and I made our late afternoon supermarket visit, I bought some doughnuts with coffee icing on them, surreptitiously slipping them among the others so that Lucille wouldn’t notice. She sniggered all the way home.

*

The waiter returns with a fresh cafetière and waits while Franklin pours some of the contents into a cup, adds sugar and milk and takes a cautious sip.

‘Good. That’s better. Much better. Thank you.
Obrigado
.’

‘You are most welcome, Mr Franklin, sir.’

Franklin smiles at me and places a hand over mine. ‘So what did you think of Tybalt and his good lady? He’s a very lively chap, I’ve always thought. Very good fun. Good company. What did you and Estelle talk about?’

‘Oh, this and that. Girl stuff. Nothing you’d be interested in.’

‘I think she may have overdone it with the breast implants this time. There’s a point where it becomes obvious, don’t you think? Still, they were very striking. A magnet for the eyes, as they say.’

‘I didn’t really notice that they were false until she mentioned it.’

Well,
that’s
a big fib.

‘How long have you had yours for now, my dear?’

‘I can’t remember, to be honest. Possibly eighteen months?’

‘Yes. I think it was something like that. Maybe longer than that.’

There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation. I know what’s going through his head. Men are so predictable.

‘Have
you
ever had any thought about, um,
upgrading
, as it were?’

*

When Lucille and I sat on the beach the next morning, I began to feel like a bit of an idiot. What were the chances of that guy surfing the same spot at the same time? And what were the chances of him walking past us again. And even if he did, what was I going to say to him? ‘Hello. You mentioned that you liked coffee icing on your doughnuts yesterday, so I went out of my way to buy some in the supermarket, on the off chance I’d see you again. Would you care for one? Please don’t view this as a massive come-on.’

He’d probably think I was demented. Lucille grabs the doughnut bag, spilling some of her coffee over her jeans in the process.

‘Mm. These look nice. What are they? Coffee flavour? Can I have one?’

‘No you can’t.’

‘I won’t have a whole one. I’ll just take one bite. You can have what’s left.’

‘Shouldn’t you be taking poignant photographs of seagulls, or pieces of driftwood or something?’

She grins evilly, ‘or maybe a shot of a heart with an arrow through it that some loving couple have scraped in the sand…’

Just as she starts laughing, I can see a
wet suited figure carrying an orange surfboard in the distance. My heart takes a leap. I mustn’t get my hopes up. He might go to wherever he’s going by a different route.

But no. He’s heading straight towards us. Lucille jabs me in the side.

‘Doughnuts at the ready?’

‘I’ll kill you.’

In a few minutes he’s a couple of feet away. My mouth is dry. I take a gulp of coffee so that I’ll be able to speak, if the opportunity arises.

He smiles as he approaches us. ‘Still here from yesterday morning?’

We both shrug and laugh. I feel sick. For a second, I actually think that I’m
going
to be sick. What a good impression
that
would make! Lucille speaks first.

‘Well, the view is so nice we couldn’t drag ourselves away.’

‘I’m Kirstan, by the way. I didn’t introduce myself yesterday. A terrible oversight. What must you think of me?’

He and Lucille shake hands.

‘Hi. I’m Lucille. This is, er…’ She looks puzzled, ‘This is awful. I had it yesterday. Begins with an S.’

I sigh, well used to Lucille’s sense of humour. ‘I’m Saskia. I’m her sister.’

We shake hands. His grip is light. No macho hand-throttling, which is a nice change. Lucille clears her throat. I hand him the doughnut bag.

‘It’s your surprise breakfast. Doughnuts with coffee icing. From both of us.’

‘From her,’ says Lucille, pointedly.

He laughs, ‘You remembered!’

He rests his surfboard on the sand and sits down next to us. Next to me, to be more accurate. I feel like someone’s plugged me into the mains. Lucille looks the other way to hide the grin that’s certainly all over her face.

*

I try to disguise a yawn by placing a hand over my mouth, but Franklin notices anyway.

‘Tired today, my beauty?’

‘Mm. I didn’t sleep very well last night. Kept having weird dreams. Perhaps it was the Champagne.’

‘Hm. I’m surprised Tybalt isn’t here yet. Maybe he overslept.’

‘Yes. That might be it.’

Maybe Estelle’s boobs exploded. Sorry – that was unkind. Funny, but unkind.

Franklin sips at his coffee and looks rather miffed that his buddy hasn’t turned up for breakfast. He stares out of the window.

‘What’s going on over there?’

‘Where?’

‘Down on the beach. About half a mile away. Looks like a big yellow flower or something. Lots of people.’

I can tell what it is immediately. There’s a surfing lesson in progress. There are about eight or nine yellow surfboards placed in a circle around a wet suited individual who’s undoubtedly the instructor. The learners sit next to their boards with their legs crossed.

He or she will be giving them a pep talk about the dangers and risks of surfing before they all go in the water and spend an hour or so falling off and hitting themselves in the head with their own boards. They’ll practice jumping up onto the board on the sand first, and then get used to attempting the same thing in the shallows, usually with hilarious consequences.

Still, the water’s very warm here, so I’m sure they’ll all have a fun time. Most of the hotels here run little surf schools since it became more of a tourist sport in the early nineties. Next to golf, it’s one of the most popular activities, which is really weird. It used to be such a cool thing and now look.

Here, there are great, regular waves, warm water and there are even competitions, sponsored by the big surfboard manufacturers. I can make out the instructor more clearly now. It’s a girl. Blonde, curvy – I’ll bet anything she’s Scandinavian.

Franklin peers down at the beach and snorts. ‘Some kids thing, probably.’

‘It’s a surfing lesson. Those yellow things are surfboards. It’s hard to see from here.’

‘Bloody stupid waste of time.’

Unlike golf, of course.

I know a lot about surfing, but I never learnt. When I met Kirstan, I couldn’t even swim, which he thought was both hilarious and baffling. It was just one of those skills that seemed to pass me by when I was in school. Later, in university, a girlfriend, Julie, wanted me to go on holiday with her to France.              

Julie planned to spend most of the time on the beach, sunning herself or splashing around in the sea. When she found out I couldn’t swim, she was astounded, and made me go and have lessons at a local pool. I got it by the second lesson. I couldn’t believe it. It was so damned easy and I felt really foolish for not getting it sorted out sooner.

‘Well,’ says Franklin, pouring himself another coffee, ‘What are you going to do today?’

‘I don’t know. I may wait for my breakfast to go down and then have a swim.’

‘Good idea. I’ll sit by the pool and watch you. Will you be wearing that black get up?’

‘The bikini? Yes, if you want me to.’

‘I do.’

I’ll always be grateful to Lucille for not going down to the beach for breakfast on that third day. She pretended to have a hangover and said she’d get something in one of the surfer cafés later on that morning. One thing that I knew about Lucille was that she could drink like a fish and never, ever get a hangover.

Of course, her deception may have been a waste of time if Kirstan hadn’t turned up. I found out later that that stretch of beach had been having a really good (if dangerous) couple of days surf, and had attracted a lot of the risk takers among the surfing fraternity. The incredible thing was that it stopped on the fourth day. As flat as Frankenstein’s forehead, as I heard one of the pissed-off surfers say. Talk about luck. I could have been sitting there with a bag of coffee icing doughnuts with no one to give them to.

Kirstan helped run a surf shop with another guy. The other guy (I did know his name at one point, but it’s gone now) was older, married and lived quite far away, in Sennen. Kirstan lived in the back of the shop. His room smelt of salt, surf wax and neoprene. There was no furniture apart from a ragged futon on the floor. On the evening of that third day he took me for a Thai meal at a local pub. Afterwards, when we got back to the surf shop, neither of us hesitated for a second. I was nineteen, he was twenty-three.

*

I feel two hands grasp my shoulders and almost choke on a cloud of expensive perfume.

‘Good morning, babe. Missed you.’

‘Hi, Estelle.’

Three

I had actually been hoping that Estelle and Tybalt had severely overslept, maybe rising at three or four in the afternoon. Maybe later. Ideally in a few days. Possibly never.

It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that I don’t like them. I’d been eating my breakfast a little faster than usual, so we could leave before they appeared, though not so conspicuously that Franklin would notice.

The fuss about the coffee slowed everything down, of course, which sabotaged my subtle plan. There was nothing wrong with the coffee, either. That was just Franklin doing that because he could. In some weird way he likes having any sort of staff fawn over him and if there aren’t any problems he’ll make one up.

I’m still reeling from having to talk to Estelle last night. Among other things, she couldn’t stop talking about all the holidays that she and Tybalt had been on. I’m surprised Tybalt has any time for work, if he still actually does anything himself. They usually go on ‘major holidays’ about four times a year. One of those holiday
s is always spent here, in the Algarve, because of the golf. She also mentioned Spain, Greece, Italy and France, too. Like Franklin, I suspect Tybalt wants to stay within quick flying distance from the UK, presumably in case any exciting business developments arise and he has to get back to the office in a hurry.

Tybalt, by the way, is another OBE. Maybe everyone’s an OBE now. I think he mentioned this about a dozen times last night, and that’s a conservative estimate. Estelle kept mentioning it, too, but in a way that suggested to me that she’d been told by Tybalt to bring it up in conversation as often as possible, or she’d get her clothing allowance cut. I wonder what their ‘minor holidays’ are like. Long weekends in Paris or Milan, I expect.

Estelle sits next to me, takes a look at my dress and starts being gushingly complimentary and over familiar. It’s as if we’ve mysteriously become best friends and old buddies overnight while we were both asleep. This familiarity, whilst I’m sure it’s meant to be nice and friendly, is rather needy, slightly creepy and somewhat aggressive. I’ll bet you anything she doesn’t have any real women friends, though if it comes to that, neither do I. Not anymore.

I’m still in touch with Lucille, of course. Her photographic career has gone from strength to strength and we went to see her exhibition in Barcelona early last year, when Franklin was
there on business of some sort. She’s still funny and down-to-earth, and has been living with this chap called Paul, who (typical of her) is a florist. They’ve been together for almost five years. When Franklin learned what Paul did for a living, he could barely disguise his contempt. I was fuming.

‘It’s that pale blue, babe. It simply goes so well with your hair. I was going to ask you where you went when you were in London.’

‘Sorry? Where I went…what?’

For a moment, I thought she was going to suggest we meet up back in the UK. I somehow can’t imagine that ever happening, unless I was drugged, lobotomised and hypnotised.

‘Where you have your hair coloured.’ she says in a voice so loud that everyone in the room can hear. The two French women at the next table turn to look at me. I smile sweetly at them. They look away, whisper something in French and laugh. I may be a little naïve, but I suspect that that was an intentionally bitchy thing to do. I must keep an eye on Estelle.

Tybalt, standing behind me, briefly runs his hand across my hair. Ugh! What a creepy thing to do.

‘Wherever you have it done, it looks marvellous,’ says Tybalt, ‘As far as I’m concerned, blonde is
the
colour for a woman’s hair, isn’t that right, Estelle?’

Estelle nods her head. I wonder what her real hair colour is. Probably not blonde.

Tybalt sits next to Franklin, stares at me, grins and stares at my boobs. The dress I’m wearing is a light cotton summer one and naturally I’m not wearing a bra. Tybalt, I’m afraid, is a major prick. I noticed last night that he has a small facial tic under his left eye, so it looks like he’s winking at you all the time. This only serves to add to his sleaze factor.