He says he went to the beach.
‘Was that nice?’ Sandra asks.
He says it was.
‘We don’t really like the sea, do we?’
Charmian says, trying to force some last strings of meat from a scrawny, bleeding chicken leg, ‘It’s okay.’
‘I’m scared of sharks,’ Sandra says.
‘That is not a problem here, I think,’ Bérnard tells her.
Sandra is adamant — ‘Oh, there are sharks here. And anyway I always end up with my knickers full of sand. Sand everywhere. You know what I mean? Still finding it when we get home. Still finding it weeks later.’
‘Okay,’ Bérnard says.
‘They sorted out your shower yet?’ she asks him.
‘No.’
‘No? It’s just disgraceful. You need to be more assertive, Bernard.’
‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘I think so…’
‘You’ve been here nearly a week now and they still haven’t sorted it out. It’s just not acceptable.’
‘No.’
Bérnard looks shyly at Charmian again. She seems to be avoiding his eye.
‘We’re going horse-riding this afternoon,’ Sandra announces, improbably.
‘Horse-riding?’
‘Yes. Our rep sorted it out for us.’
‘There is horse-riding?’ Bérnard asks.
‘Apparently.’
—
After lunch, while they wait in the lobby, Bérnard says to Charmian, ‘I will see you later? You will come to my room?’
Despite the exhaustiveness of yesterday’s session he finds, slightly to his own surprise, that he wants more.
She is eating a pack of toffee popcorn, the sort of thing she always has on her, in her handbag. She looks at him for a moment as if she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then she says, ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘Okay,’ Bérnard says, feeling pleased with himself. ‘I will see you later.’
He looks quickly at Sandra — it was awkward, somehow, to speak out with her there. She doesn’t seem to have heard, though. She is just fanning herself with a brochure, and looking towards the brown glass door.
—
The afternoon passes slowly. Bérnard sprawls on the pummelled, stained mattress on the floor of his room. He looks out the window. Nothing interests him. The only thing he is able to think about is what will happen later, when Charmian shows up.
Finally, at about five there is a knock on the door.
He opens it, wearing only his pants.
It is not Charmian.
It is her mother — feathery blonde pudding-bowl, red face, even redder cleavage.
‘Hello, Bernard,’ she says.
He swings the door mostly shut, leaving only his shocked face visible to her. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t even manage hello.
‘Can I come in then?’ Sandra asks.
‘I need…I need to get dressed.’
‘Don’t bother about that,’ Sandra says authoritatively. ‘Come on — let me in.’
He opens the door and stands aside and Sandra advances, with obvious interest, into the narrow stale-smelling room.
The thin sundress drapes her distended physique.
Her face is papery, parched, especially around the eyes.
‘Our room’s just like this,’ she says.
Bérnard is standing there in his pants.
‘You look worried, Bernard,’ she says. She looks at the mattress in its odd position on the floor. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Her eyes stay on the mattress for a few seconds, as if inspecting it, and then she says, ‘I’ve heard good things about you, Bernard.’
He looks puzzled.
‘Oh, yes, very good things.’
‘What things?’ he asks worriedly.
She laughs at the expression on his face. ‘Well, what d’you think? You know why I’m here, don’t you?’ she says, looking him in the eye.
It takes him a few seconds.
Then he understands.
‘That’s more like it,’ she says, immediately noticing. She smiles, showing her small yellow teeth. ‘She said you were insatiable, and you are as well.’ She puts her hand on his smooth chest and says, ‘Charmian’ll be back tomorrow, don’t worry. She’s a bit sore today. Didn’t think she was up to it. So I asked her if it was alright if I had a go. I’ve never had a Frenchman before,’ she says, almost tremulously. ‘I want you to show me what all the fuss is about — alright?’ She is looking up at him, her hand on his face now. ‘Will you do that for me, Bernard?’ Her sea-green eyes are full of imploration. ‘Will you?’
—
She leaves after dark — she was more eager, more humble than the younger woman — and he sleeps until eight in the morning, without waking once.
When he does wake, still lying on the mattress on the floor, the room is full of sunlight.
He walks to Porkies and has an egg roll, a Greek coffee.
And then, already in his trunks, and equipped with one of the Poseidon’s small, scratchy towels, he makes his way to the sea.
As he had the previous day, he woke with a desire to swim in the sea.
It is still too early for the beach to be full. The Russians are there, of course, with their pungent cigarettes, their Thermoses of peat-coloured tea.
He walks down to the low surf — it is quite far from the road, the tide is out — and takes off his shirt and shoes. He puts his wallet in one of the shoes, and puts his shirt on top of them, weighing it down with an empty bottle he finds. The sand feels cold between his toes. The wind is quite strong and also feels cold when it blows. The waves, flopping onto the shore, are greenish. He lets the foaming surf wash the powdery sand from his white feet.
He wades out into the waves until they wet his long trunks, lifting his arms as the cloudy water rises around him, and lowering them as it sinks away. His skin puckers in the water, the windy air. An oncoming wave pours over him. For a moment, pouring over him, it obliterates everything in noise and push of water.
He feels its strength, feels it move away, and then he is in the smoother water on the far side of the falling waves. He is lying on the shining surface, the sea holding him, sun on his face and whispering salt water filling his ears. With his eyes shut, it seems to him that he can hear every grain of sand moving on the sea floor.
—
The tumbling surf feels warm now. It slides up the shore, stretching as far as its energy will take it, laying a lace of popping foam on the smoothed, shining sand.
Further up the sand is hot.
Tingling, he lies on it, lungs filling and emptying.
Arm over eyes, mouth open. Heart working.
Mind empty.
He is aware of nothing except the heat of the sun. The heat of the sun. Life.
3
1
It is ten o’clock in the morning and the kitchen is full of standing smoke and the smell of stuffed cabbages. ‘So you’re off to London?’ Emma’s mother says. Though she is not an old woman, probably not even fifty, she has the sour demeanour of someone disappointedly older. She looks older too as she moves ponderously around the kitchen in a shapeless tracksuit, or leans heavily on the grim, antiquated gas cooker.
Gábor says, ‘We’ll bring you something back. What do you want?’
‘You don’t need to bring me anything,’ she says. Her hair is dyed a maximal black. White roots show. Outside the window, its sill crammed with dusty cacti, an arterial road growls. She lights a cigarette. ‘I don’t need anything,’ she says.
‘It’s not about needing,’ Gábor tells her. ‘What do you want?’ he asks.
She shrugs and lifts the cigarette to her seamed mouth, to rudimentary dentures. ‘What have they got in London?’