‘You shouldn’t take it,’ she says. ‘A hundred euros?’
‘Yes.’
‘I tell you what we’re going to do,’ she says, looking around for the waiter. ‘When we’ve finished here, we’re going to go over there and get your money back.’
Bérnard laughs quietly.
‘I’m not joking,’ Sandra says. ‘We’re going to go over there and get your money back. You can’t let them get away with that, Bernard.’
Bérnard sighs. ‘They won’t give it back,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ Sandra says, ‘they will. When we tell them we’re going to the police they’ll give it back. Remember what happened to us that time in Turkey?’ she asks Charmian, who nods. Charmian has hardly said a word all evening, has only eaten half-heartedly four or five stuffed vine leaves. She seems out of sorts. Turning to Bérnard again, Sandra starts on the Turkish story. ‘This man tried to rip us off changing money in the street. Well, he shouldn’t have picked on us, should he…’
Then the main course arrives.
There is enough food, Bérnard thinks, for eight or ten people.
Platters of grilled lamb, chicken, fish. A huge dish of rice. Portions of fries for everyone and a heap of Greek salad which would on its own have fed a whole family. Also another jug of the wine, even though the first one is still half-full.
With some help from Bérnard the ladies obliterate the spread in under half an hour.
Sandra pours out the last of the wine.
Bérnard is drunk. Quite how drunk, he didn’t understand until he went to the toilet — his shiny face in the mirror stared back at him with eerie impassivity, then suddenly put out its tongue.
The others, however, seem unaffected, except that Sandra looks even redder than usual.
The place has filled up a bit and a band has started playing.
Sandra and the waiter have some sort of dispute over the bill — the manager is summoned — and when that is finally sorted out, she pays and they leave.
Bérnard had tried to offer some money, and on the pavement outside, he tries again. He says, with his wallet once more in his hand, ‘So…?’
‘I think I’m just going to use the lav,’ Sandra says, apparently not having heard him, and leaves him there with Charmian.
He pockets his wallet.
Charmian isn’t looking at him. She is facing the other way, as if she does not want to be associated with him. He wonders whether he has offended her somehow.
He stands there, drunk, looking at her, the slabs of her arms protruding from the frilly sleeves of her blouse, the grotesque inflations of her jeans.
When Sandra rejoins them, he is still just standing there, and Charmian is still staring off down the street.
—
In the end, he is unable to find the hostess bar. They spend about half an hour looking for it, on the fringes of Protaras’s nightlife, in the streets where the neon stops. They drop into a snack bar for pizza slices, sit eating them in a plastic booth. Then a place with live music — some zithering ‘traditional’ band and older couples swaying under a turning glitter ball. Bérnard, badly drunk now, gives Sandra a spin on the dance floor, treading on her feet, feeling the immense swell of her side hot and damp under his hand. He offers to do the same for Charmian but she just shakes her head.
‘Oh, go on!’ Sandra says to her, sweating dangerously, her vast red cleavage shining as if with varnish.
Charmian shakes her head again.
‘You are sure?’ Bérnard asks, out of breath.
When Charmian just ignores him, Sandra says, ‘Don’t be so rude!’
She gives Bérnard an apologetic, exasperated look.
Then they sit down to finish the red wine.
—
Their final stop of the evening is Porkies, for a kebab. Bérnard does not have one. He just watches the others eat. In his state of extreme drunkenness, Charmian has taken on a strange, fascinating quality. Sitting opposite her, he watches her eating the kebab with what seem to be modest flickers of desire. They surprise him. Her face, admittedly, is nice enough and there is nothing wrong with the pale blue of her long-lashed eyes…
He looks away, wondering what to make of this. What, if anything, to do about it.
He is still wondering in the taxi that takes them back to the Hotel Poseidon. He is sitting in the front, next to the driver. The surprising question presses itself on him: Should he make some sort of move?
Awkward, with her mother there.
The taxi stops at the crumbling concrete steps of the Poseidon.
With difficulty, with Bérnard helping, heaving heavy flesh, the ladies extract themselves from its low seats.
And then they are in the lobby.
And he almost says to Charmian something about whether she wants to see his room.
And then it is too late.
Sandra has kissed him goodnight.
He is alone in his room, which starts to turn if he shuts his eyes.
—
He tries a wank, but he is too drunk.
6
In the morning he lies there on the single bed, imprisoned in his hangover, trying to piece together the fragments of the evening and feeling that he nearly did something very, very silly.
—
He opens his eyes.
—
The heat of the sun throbs from the closed curtains and the sounds of the street intrude into the painful stillness of the dim, narrow room. He lies there for most of the morning, instantly feeling sick if he moves at all.
At some point he falls asleep again, and when he wakes up he feels okay.
He is able to move.
To sit.
To stand.
To peel back the edge of the curtain and squint at the white, fiery day — the glare of the vacant lot next door.
The sky’s merciless scream of blue.
It is eleven fifty, nearly time for lunch, and he is hungry now.
He feels strange, as if in a dream, as he descends the cool stairs.
Descending the cool stairs, he really feels as if he is still in bed, and dreaming this.
The dining room.
Murmur of voices — Russian, Bulgarian.
The buffet of congealed brown food.
The microwave queue.
And there they are, Sandra and Charmian, at their usual table, which is where he sits now too.
As he approaches — feeling weightless, as if he is floating over the filthy carpet — Sandra says, ‘We didn’t see you at breakfast, Bernard.’
She seems more or less unaffected by the night’s drinking — her ruddiness only slightly attenuated, her voice only marginally hoarser than normal.
Charmian, sitting next to her, looks quite pale.
‘No, I, er…’ Bérnard mumbles, taking a seat. ‘I was sleeping.’
‘Last night too much for you, was it?’
Bérnard laughs weakly. Then there is a short pause. The thought of eating has lost most of its appeal. ‘It was good,’ he says finally.
‘It was, wasn’t it,’ Sandra says.
She has already eaten — the emptied plate is on the table in front of her. Charmian too is just finishing up.
Bérnard opens his can of Fanta and pours most of it into a greasy glass.
‘You not having anything?’ Sandra asks him, moving her faint blonde eyebrows in the direction of the buffet.
‘Later, maybe,’ Bérnard says. He is starting to think that this was a mistake, making an appearance here. He feels less normal than he thought he did. The taste of the Fanta — a tiny sip, the first thing to have passed his lips today — makes him feel slightly more grounded.
Charmian stands abruptly.
He finds it hard to believe, now, that he considered making some sort of move on her last night.
He is pretty sure he didn’t actually say anything, or do anything. Still, even just having had the idea embarrasses him.