Becoming Strangers Read online

  Burns looked aside, rolling his closed lips together to stop himself from saying anything. When they were close to the door, he allowed himself to call out, 'Don't forget the disco-beach party tonight, Sir, eight o'clock,' and he added, like the sad bastard he surely was, 'clothing optional!' He groaned and kicked the swing doors of the kitchen as he went through and left a shoe polish stain there. If he didn't wipe it off, no one else would.

  'Where are those lunches for the Moloney party?'

  'Nearly done,' said Brian, the Rastafarian who was cooking that morning. The man's dreadlocks were tied together up above his head. He looked like a leek. He was leaning over a counter top reading the paper's headlines. It was always a football or a cricket headline. This particular issue was devoted, cover-to-cover, to the fact that the English cricket team had been caught smoking dope. 'Shit, man! I never knew your people was into the stuff,' he said, prodding the paper. 'But Adam, he likes a puff. He come hit me up every other day, he likes to take it easy.'

  'Just as long as he, you, whoever, doesn't smoke it here, on the premises, I don't give a monkey's, mate. Now what have we got to get rid of? We need to put some stuff together for a group of Yanks. What's going to go off?'

  'Got some chicken is high.'

  'How high?'

  'Not as high as your cricket team.'

  'All right, sort that out and some seafood. Lots of it. The rough stuff. And the leftover salads, chuck loads of mayo in, and any old crappy bits hanging about. Let's give our friend Salmonella a run for his money on this one, mate. Make it look good. You know they'll waste most of it anyway.'

  'Sure, when we gots Americans staying I know it, them bins is filled from their plates.' The chef shook his head. 'Make me mother cry real tears to see it.' He put an arm on Steve's shoulder. 'Don't worry, man, I'll see to it.'

  'By eleven, if you can, mate,' said Steve, softly, 'and have a beer on me.'

  'T'anks, man.'

  Well, he said to himself as he went back into the reception area, there was one thing, at least. He, Steve Burns, was not a complete and utter cunt.

  34

  DOROTHY AND GEORGE HAD BREAKFASTED as soon as the dining room opened, at seven, dawdled down at the beach for half an hour, then killed time by walking the perimeter of the hotels buildings. They exclaimed over the garbage skips, watched a cat make its way along the top of a wall, waved to the security cameras and then returned to reception to find they had an hour to wait. They'd gone back to their room so that George could use the toilet again and Dorothy had leafed through the hotel details and checked their homeward bound tickets. Happily, their increasing desire to examine the details of their life coincided with having the time to do it. They had started out liking the big things, schemes and plans, talking in spans of years, and they had ended up content to pore over the minutiae of day-to-day retirement.

  Jan came through reception at nine, on his way to breakfast with Annemieke, having taken an early-morning dip in the sea. The elderly couple stood up, then sat down as Jan looked at his watch, patted his stomach and made his excuses.

  'I don't often feel hungry, so I'm going to take advantage of it. Maybe an egg,' he said.

  They went back to the leaflets they were reading.

  'I say,' said Dorothy, 'it's that Chinese lady.'

  George looked up, over the rim of his glasses. She was standing by the reception desk, looking through the few papers there, which George knew to be notes on the protection of valuables and warnings about the sea.

  'Shes dressed up nice,' he said.

  Dorothy looked at her husband and then at the woman. She was wearing a skirt and top, with finely beaded straps, and open-toed mules; all coordinated in pale mauve. Her thick dark hair was tied behind her head and she had large-rimmed ornate sunglasses on her little head. When she turned round she waved and came towards them. George laid his brochures on the side table and took off his glasses. He stood up.

  'Morning.'

  'I'm coming along too,' she smiled, 'Bill talked me into it. I hope you don't mind. Hope it won't make it too uncomfortable.'

  'I shouldn't think you'll take up much room,' said Dorothy with a bucket of a grin and a laugh.

  'Jolly good,' added George.

  'Do you think I need a bathing costume?' she asked, addressing Dorothy.

  'I've no idea. Should hope not. I haven't got one myself.'

  The woman nodded gravely and they fell silent.

  'Hot,' said George eventually, 'hot, today.' The women seized upon this observation and agreed with it.

  When Bill Moloney arrived, he was greeted with the familiarity a man of his proportions and generosity accrues so quickly, particularly when he has turned acquaintances into his guests. He was slapped on the back by George, upbraided by Dorothy for being late, then, on saying that he was early, was upbraided for being too early. Laurie smiled at him all the while, holding the handle of her small bag with two hands.

  Jan and Annemieke walked in shortly after Bill had shown the others the route he proposed on his driving map. Dorothy recalled what Annemieke had told them about Bills religion and was relieved to see that he had brought just the map and his keys; there was no ominous briefcase. It was hard to imagine he was a man of God; he was such a character, larger than life. If Jesus was around these days, we'd never notice him, she'd told George more than once, there was too much else to look at. He might have stood by her at the bus stop and she'd have been distracted by the ad there.

  'I'm not coming,' Annemieke said quickly, waving a hand at them, 'just dropping off my husband.'

  Jan kissed her on the cheek. 'She's been invited out with the Americans, on their friend's boat.'

  'Ooh, wear a life jacket,' said Dorothy quickly, as if she'd just remembered it.

  Annemieke gave a half-smile and left them. She was going back to the room to put on her Caroline Herrera shift dress.

  'I hope you don't mind if I come along,' said Laurie, once more, looking serious.

  Jan looked at her directly, then looked down at the floor, removing his spectacles, and shaking his head.

  'No,' he said, shortly, his mouth taut, 'no.'

  Dorothy saw Laurie's expression falter as if she thought she might have made a mistake. Laurie looked over to Bill, who was at the reception desk, smoothing the map out before the girl there to double-check a direction. He turned about and gave her a small wave.

  'Be right with youse' he said, then he gestured at the basket on the floor by the side of reception. 'That's the lunch,' he grinned, blowing air into his cheeks.

  His guests shared exclamations of surprise and pleasure.

  'Too hot to eat,' said George, who found himself salivating at the idea of the wrapped barbecued chicken legs.

  'You'll manage,' said Dorothy. The others laughed. George had already proved something of a prodigy at the buffet. ('I don't waste it, I eat what I take,' he'd said in his defence.)

  Jan stepped away from the group, his glasses back on his nose, interested in the brochures that they had all read before.

  35

  THEY WERE ALL GLAD to get out of the car after an hour's drive, each adding his or her own reason, building a polite consensus of pleasure.

  Bill had procured a Bob Marley greatest hits tape for the ride. The rental car bumped along tarmac road and dirt track, reared up behind the yellow or blue buses and slowed down in harmony with Bill's remarks. From a confident sixty miles per hour they could be at a snail's pace within seconds if something crossed his mind, with Bill pointing something out to them, shouting so that he could be heard.

  To lean forward would have meant rubbing legs with Laurie who sat in the middle between himself and Dorothy, so Jan merely inclined his head towards the centre so that Bill could see he had his attention. Bill had his sunglasses off and on, jabbing a pork sausage finger at the map that George held like a copilot, and flailing around at the controls when he laughed, causing George to call out, 'Watch it!' and put both hands on the d
ashboard.

  The comedy of the driving, the impeccable sunshine and the appeal of the music with its simple pleas, stirred Jan. He had an overwhelming sense that this entire scene had been directed for his benefit; action, music and message. He wondered whether it was because Annemieke was not there, and he wondered also, slightly ashamedly, whether it was because the Chinese woman was there, next to him.

  Bill pulled the car up alongside a lay-by and told them they'd struck lucky. This beach was without any doubt the best kept little secret in the world.

  'We'll have ourselves a wee luncheon here, so we will,' he said, hamming up the Irishness and walking around the car with a comic gait, each knee lifted high and to the side.

  The women started to murmur together about bathing suits, and Bill hushed them from the boot of the car.

  'Now will you stop your blathering on about that little formality, the good Lord gave us what we need to swim with, and for those who feel he didn't give them enough or he gave them too much, there's my own home-grown remedy.'

  'I'm not wearing a pair of your underpants,' said Dorothy.

  The others laughed. Realizing then that she had made a joke, she went on hurriedly as though she had a lozenge in her mouth that she would never taste again. 'Well, I'm not, even if they are clean.'

  'No chance of any of our underpants being clean after that drive,' said George. Jan recalled his grandfather saying that the English liked to joke about underpants. He'd not believed him. He smiled now at Laurie, thinking of his grandfather, at the kitchen table, shaking his head, tears of laughter in his eyes, telling one of the jokes he had to tell about the First World War. A man who'd emerged with his humour intact, who had only good things to say about his fellows. Jan had thought once that it was his experience that had taught him such endurance and dignity, but now he knew it had been a choice. The hull of his character had been hewn from strong materials, and steered with a knowing eye.

  'So what's the remedy, Bill?' he asked.

  'About five bottles of wine and two cases of beer.'

  'It'll need more than that to get me in the nude,' said Dorothy.

  'It didn't use to take more than a half of shandy,' said George.

  'Who's going to drive back?' asked Laurie.

  They looked at each other.

  'Now, by my reckoning,' said Bill, squinting up at the sky, 'seeing's how the sun is overhead and the temperature is up in the nineties and I'm sweating like a bastard, I'll be passing the beer through my system at a rate of one point seven five pints an hour. That allows me three bottles an hour, say six in total before we go on.'

  'It can only be an improvement,' George said in a stage whisper to the others as they followed their host down on to the beach.

  'Perhaps we ought to ask him to drink nine,' said Jan and was surprised when the others laughed loudly. He adjusted his earnest expression.

  When they had made a mess of the several drumsticks of chicken, forked through the white wet salads, used each other's napkins and plastic beer mugs indiscriminately, they lay on blankets and towels underneath a tree and started to talk about paradise.

  'It's England for me; in the summer you can't beat it. Fresh and lovely,' George said.

  'I like to have a breeze,' said Laurie, 'that is paradise for me. It's something we have to make for ourselves in Hong Kong, it's one of the reasons I like to travel.'

  'Now, myself, it's good company that makes a paradise. Good chat,' said Bill.

  'Didn't Sartre describe that as hell?' said Jan, and blushed as soon as he'd said it.

  'Cynical bugger,' said George, shifting one leg with a moan.

  'Your man didn't drink enough,' said Bill, 'for sure. I say that with conviction, given that I know absolutely nothing about the poor fellow.'

  'Paradise for me is being with family,' said Dorothy, 'nothing's quite right without them.' She was happy fleetingly, as she sat up and looked across the Atlantic Ocean, but her smile went as she said, 'It wouldn't matter where I was or what I had, if I couldn't see them. I think this holiday is very nice, I can see why people take to them, and we've met such lovely people,' she paused, blowing out, her face red from the heat, 'lovely, but I miss my family, and we've been blessed that they seem to feel the same way about us, haven't we, George?'

  He nodded and turned his mug upside down. 'Dry,' he said, 'dry.'

  Bill leapt to his task and took the top off a fresh bottle. He held out a beer to Jan, and said, with his head moving from side to side, 'Paradise. What is paradise? Somewhere to make us feel good or to make us better people?'

  There was an uncomfortable silence and Bill nudged his arm with the beer, saying, 'Here you go, man, while you're thinking it through.'

  With three bottles of wine upended and a stack of empty beer bottles, the group lay back and George was nearly asleep when Bill stood up unevenly, shaking sand about him, and rubbing his hands together proclaimed his intention to try the waters. Walking down to the seashore, he removed an article of clothing every few paces until all four of the others sat upright, one after the other,

  'He's not...'

  'He is...'

  He wriggled out of his Y-fronts and tossed them high in the air behind him before taking to the water with a fine belly flop.

  When he came up for air, further out, they applauded him. He raised his hands to acknowledge them and shouted like a boy, 'Whooh-hooh! Bloody fantastic!'

  With a grin splitting his face, George stood up and unbuttoned his shirt.

  'Not in front of us,' said Dorothy, 'do it like he did, down by the water. Spare us the details.'

  George hopped off, grimacing at the heat of the sand on his bare feet, moving like a man half his age until with painful side-to-side movements he managed to get both his shorts and his underpants down to his ankles. His white arse with its red cleft was like the St George cross waving at them and they fell about laughing, hands over their mouths, hands over their eyes, and Bill all the while protesting.

  'Not you, mate, the ladies!' And then, 'If you lot think the view back there is bad...'

  George looked backwards to shout out, 'Bombs away!' and careened into the water, his great legs making much of the waves, kicking up the white of it, crashing through the waves, breaking the barriers between him and Bill. Soon the two of them were bobbing in the water, like brothers, ear-to-ear grins, attempting to salute each other with their toes.

  'How is it that the sea can do this to grown men?' said Laurie.

  She saw that Dorothy was wiping her face with a napkin.

  'Bloody fool of a man,' she was saying, her mouth trembling.

  'Shall we join them?' said Laurie. 'I've never skinny-dipped.'

  'No?' said Jan, struggling to remember an occasion on which he had.

  'I'm not much of a swimmer.'

  'Well, I can't swim and I'm a terrible sight,' said Dorothy, 'but if everyone will look the other way while I get in, I'll bloody well do it.'

  So Jan went down to the shoreline and organized the men to look away, George protesting he had rights, and they all looked out to sea or up to the road, counting up to twenty, loudly, giving Dorothy time to take to the sea.

  'All done!' she said, breathlessly, her head and shoulders wobbling above the water as she tried to steady herself on the shingle.

  'Good job, duck,' said George, making his way over to her.

  With the majority regarding them from the sea, Jan and Laurie looked at each other.

  'I don't think we have a choice,' said Laurie.

  'No.' Jan stood up and walked, fully clothed, to the seashore. To the slow hand-clapping of the others he removed his clothes and laid them neatly on the beach until he was wearing merely a pair of boxer shorts. He started to walk into the water. The others began to protest, so he returned and quickly took the shorts off, holding them in front of his genitals until he was submerged, then jettisoning them. Watching his Ralph Lauren polka-dot undershorts travel through the sky and land raggle-taggle on some
driftwood, he felt a rush of joy.

  'Fuck! This is good,' he said, feeling the water around his penis, and between his cheeks. Tickled, he laughed out loud.

  Then Laurie came down the beach with her dress in front of her, her glasses still high on her head, her hair back and her expression stealthy. She dropped the dress and crouched down to take to the water modestly, splashing herself as she went as if to accustom herself to it.

  'I've never done this before,' she said as soon as she was in. She bounced up and down on her feet, her hair jumping behind her, her hands dipping in and out of the water sprinkling it like fairy dust at her sides, her mouth open all the while.

  Jan stood still, looking at the four of them, to take a photograph of what he saw with his eyes. Strangers, more or less.

  'This is crazy,' said Laurie, splashing him suddenly, 'crazy. I feel so lucky! Don't you feel lucky?'

  36

  THERE WAS NO REASON why she should not have a new life, why she should not have all the things she could appreciate. There were wealthy men who had ugly wives. An American man would suit her. It would be a fresh start.

  She sat at the side of the yacht; chin out to the horizon, feeling the tensile strength in her collarbones and her nipples hard against the flimsy dress. She could reinvent herself. Her boys would fit into the scheme, whatever it was.

  The owner of the yacht, Jason's friend, was a hardened man, firmly into his middle age, firm with his opinions. He insisted on this, insisted on that, and as he was the host, the others garrulously concurred with whatever he expressed.

  The captain took them out to a place to fish and the men gathered around the toys at the rear at the boat, each pressing the other to take part, keen to see fun happen. She was not used to being relegated to a women's section and was angry that parts of this day were for men only. She was not offered beer after beer as the men were but allowed to help herself from the crate of cold sodas.

  The women bored her, discussing some of the more shocking crimes of the times. At lunch they ate the fish the men had caught and the women praised the men. Missy proclaimed Jason's the biggest and they all fell about, taking it in turns to ensure the innuendo had not gone unremarked. Annemieke felt excluded. She sat silent until the owner himself, between mouthfuls, asked her about herself. She intended to set out towards the terrain of her impending widowhood but she prevaricated, with sophisticate modesty, describing herself as nothing more than a bourgeois, but was shanghaied by Missy.