‘Why’d he sack you then?’ she asks.
‘He sounds like a tosser,’ she says, when he has told her what happened.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What is it, a tosser?’
‘A tosser?’ Sandra laughs, and looks at Charmian. ‘How would you explain?’
‘Sort of like an idiot?’ Charmian suggests.
‘But what’s it mean literally?’
‘Literally?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s like wanker, isn’t it?’
Sandra laughs again. ‘How do we explain that to Bernard?’
‘I don’t know.’
Sandra says, turning to Bérnard, ‘Literally, it means someone who plays with himself.’
‘Okay.’
‘You know what I mean?’ Sandra is smirking.
Charmian seems embarrassed — her face has turned all pink, and she is urgently sucking up cider and looking the other way.
‘I think so,’ Bérnard says, smiling slightly embarrassedly himself.
‘But really it just means an idiot, someone we don’t like.’
‘Then he is a tosser, my uncle.’
‘He sounds like it.’ She turns to Charmian again. ‘Imagine sacking your own nephew, just because he wants to go on holiday!’
Charmian nods. She looks quickly at Bérnard.
Warming to the subject, Bérnard starts to tell them more about his uncle — how he lives in Belgium to pay less tax, how he…
‘Where you from then, Bernard?’ Sandra asks him.
‘Lille.’
‘Where’s that then?’
‘It’s sort of near Belgium, isn’t it?’ Charmian ventures shyly.
Bérnard nods.
‘How’d you know that then?’ Sandra asks her, impressed.
Charmian says, ‘The Eurostar goes through there sometimes, doesn’t it?’ The question is addressed, somewhat awkwardly, to Bérnard.
Who just says, ‘Yeah,’ and turns his head towards the sparkle of the pool.
‘We’re from Northampton,’ Sandra tells him. ‘It’s famous for shoes.’
—
They swim together, later. The ladies, still in their billowing dresses, letting the water lift them, and Bérnard moving more vigorously, doing little displays of front crawl, and then lolling on his back in the water, letting the sun dazzle his chlorine-stung eyes. Sandra encourages him to do a handstand in the shallow end. Not totally sober, he obliges her. He surfaces to ask how it was, and she shouts at him to keep his legs straight next time, while Charmian, still bobbing about nearby, staying where she can find the cool blue tiles with her toes, looks on. He does another handstand, unsteady in his long wet trunks. The ladies applaud. Triumphant, he dives again, into watery silence, blue world, losing all vertical aplomb as his big hands strive for the tiles. His legs thrash to drive him down. His lungs keep lifting his splayed hands from the tiles. His face feels full of blood. Streams of bubbles pass over him, upwards from his nostrils. And then he is in air again, squatting shoulder deep in the tepid water, the water sharp and bright with chemicals streaming from orange slicks of hair that hang over his eyes. He feels queasy for a moment. All those Keo lagers…He fears, just for a moment, that he is going to throw up.
Then he notices a lifeguard looming over them, his shadow on the water. He is talking to Sandra. He has just finished saying something, and he moves away, and takes his seat again, up a sloping ladder, like a tennis umpire.
‘We’ve been told off,’ Sandra says, hanging languidly in the water, only her sunburnt head, with its mannish jawline and feathery blonde pudding-bowl, above the surface.
Bérnard isn’t sure what’s going on. He still feels light-headed, vaguely unwell. ‘What?’
‘We’ve been told off,’ Sandra says again.
Bérnard, from his crouch in the water, which feels chilly now that he has stopped moving, just stares at her. His body is bony. Individual vertebrae show on his white back. Sandra is still saying something to him. Her voice sounds muffled. ‘…told to stop being so immature…’ he hears it say.
She has started to swim away from him — her head moving away on a very slow, lazy breaststroke.
The surface of the pool, which had been all discomposed by his antics, is smoothing itself out again, is slapping the sides with diminishing vigour.
—
After the horseplay they lie on the side, on sunloungers. Sandra just about fits onto one. Charmian, however, needs to push two together. Bérnard helps her. Then, without saying anything, he takes his place on his own lounger and shuts his eyes. It is late afternoon. The sun has a dull heat. In their dripping dresses, Sandra and Charmian are smoking cigarettes and talking about food. Bérnard isn’t really listening.
Then Sandra’s voice says, ‘Bernard,’ and he opens his eyes.
They are both looking at him.
Charmian, however, quickly looks away.
‘We’re going out for a meal tonight,’ Sandra says. ‘Want to come?’
—
They meet in the lobby of the hotel. Bérnard is talking to the smiling man — who is telling him that his shower will definitely be fixed tomorrow — when the ladies appear. There is an awkwardness. Unlike the previous night, Bérnard has made absolutely no effort at all with his preparations. The ladies, on the other hand, have to some extent dressed up. He sees that immediately. They have make-up on — quite a lot of make-up — and though Sandra is wearing a dress similar to the one she swims in, hanging from flimsy shoulder straps, its green-and-white floral pattern straining to hold the enormities of her figure, Charmian, extraordinarily, is in a pair of jeans and a blouse with delicate lacy details.
‘All set then?’ Sandra says, as Bérnard turns to them.
The smiling man watches tactfully as they leave.
They proceed in silence, initially, through the plain half-made streets near the hotel. The evening is no more than pleasantly warm — the nights are still mild sometimes, this early in the season. Even so, and in spite of the fact that they are walking downhill, Charmian, in particular, is soon shedding sheets of watery sweat.
‘It’s not far,’ Sandra says, panting.
‘What…what sort of place is it?’ Bérnard asks.
‘Typical Greek,’ Sandra tells him.
It turns out to be a long single-storey construction on an arid stretch of road, painted deep red, and covered with signage.
In the huge air-conditioned interior they are shown to a table. Music is playing, the latest international hits, and on screens attached to the walls men are playing golf in America. It is still too early for the place to be very full. The waitress brings big laminated menus, which they study in silence. There are pictures of each item — unappealingly documentary images like police evidence photos.
Things loosen up once the wine starts to take effect — a large jug of it that Sandra orders, which tastes faintly of pine trees.
‘I love this stuff,’ she says.
A stainless-steel plate of stuffed vine leaves also appears, leaking olive oil, and dishes of taramasalata and hummus, and a plate of warm pitta bread.
Bérnard pours himself some more of the weird wine, and then tops the others up as well. He is telling them about his experience in the hostess bar, his first night there, when he was intimidated into emptying his wallet on overpriced drinks for a pair of haughty, painted ladies. Sandra had told him how the taxi driver had tried to overcharge them on the way home from the Hotel Vangelis that afternoon, and he is offering his own tale of unscrupulous piracy. Mopping up the last of the tarama with the last piece of pitta, Sandra says, ‘You don’t need to take that, Bernard.’
‘It’s okay,’ Bérnard says mellowly. ‘Shit happens.’ He drinks some more wine.