Once I’d fixed my hair for the second time that morning. I chose a bikini … nothing skimpy, mind, a nice blue one with a halter top … with a pair of cut-off denim shorts worn over.
The kids were ready to go when I got downstairs, with my towels, lotions and change clothes in my beach bag. Tom had dragooned them into shape, although wee Jonathan looked less than ecstatic about the whole venture. For a moment I thought about letting him stay with Conrad, but decided against it. The boy needed taking out of himself, dammit.
‘You got the tent?’ I asked my son. It’s a pop-up windbreak really, but it has a zip-up front that gives privacy for changing. We were going to a beach with a nudie option, but I was taking it with Janet in mind.
‘Yes, Mum,’ he said, wearily. ‘It’s in the hall with the rest of our stuff. Now can we go? Vaive will be busy today and we want to get a table.’
I let him lead the way. He wasn’t wrong about it being busy. As we passed the car park, I saw that it was jammed full, and opportunists were squeezed into anything that looked like a space. We arrived at the beach bar ten minutes late but Liam was there already, in swim shorts and a white V-necked T, waiting for us at a table which otherwise we wouldn’t have had. They don’t do reservations.
‘Hi,’ he said, rising.
I sensed that he was unsure how to greet us, so I put him at his ease by kissing him on the cheek as I’d parted from him the night before. ‘You didn’t meet wee Jonathan yesterday,’ I remarked. ‘This is him, Oz and Susie’s younger. We only call him wee Jonathan to distinguish him from his cousin, Jonny.’
‘The golfer?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s doing very well for himself. Rookie of the Year in Europe in his first season.’
‘He lived with us for a while,’ Tom told him. ‘Now he has a house of his own, quite near here. Mum,’ he continued, ‘I want a chicken pig.’
Chicken pig? That’s Vaive’s most celebrated sandwich, half a baguette stuffed with chicken, bacon, salsa and lots of other stuff.
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Mine’s a sobrasada. See what everyone else wants then go and order.’
Liam seemed to give the specialty some serious thought, but stuck to his principles and settled for a salad in a bowl. He looked around as Tom went up to the counter. The beach was crowded, but not as much as the one by the Greek wall would have been. There was a light wind coming off the sea, enough for novice windsurfers but boring for the experts. ‘This is terrific,’ he said. ‘Do you guys come here a lot?’
‘In the holidays, yes. Weekends when school’s in.’
‘Does Tom windsurf?’ he asked.
‘He does, but he prefers free surfing. He’s pretty good. That’s not Mum getting carried away either. His Uncle Miles says so too, and he should know. He was a lifeguard when he was young, in Australia and California. Have you ever done any?’
‘A little, but only the kind with the sail. We don’t have big waves where I live.’
‘Where do you live, Liam?’ We’d got through the whole of the previous day without me asking that or him volunteering.
‘I have an apartment in Dublin,’ he replied, ‘but my main base is in Toronto. It’s the city I liked best when I was on the road with the crew, so I made it home. Ever been there?’
‘Yes, I have, but very briefly, only for one night, in fact. Not long enough to form a view about the place.’
‘Then you must give it another try.’ For a moment I thought a definite invitation was coming, but he left it at that.
‘Hey,’ I said quietly, as Tom returned with bottles of still water for all of us, ‘about last night. I enjoyed it very much. We’ll do it again before you leave, but on me next time.’
He peered at me over the glasses (someone told me once, firmly, ‘One drinks from glasses, one wears spectacles,’ but she doesn’t speak Scottish, so I disregarded her advice) and murmured, ‘Likewise and okay.’
As we waited for lunch he asked me about the history of the region … ‘Preliminary research for the book,’ he said … and I gave him a quick rundown, the standard stuff about the Greeks arriving first and establishing a colony, then being succeeded by the Romans, and in the modern era by just about every other nation in Europe and a few beyond, most recently the Chinese who probably do a bigger retail turnover than anyone else in L’Escala these days.
‘Sounds just like Toronto,’ he laughed. ‘We’ve got everyone and everything there.’
‘I’ll bet you don’t have chicken pigs,’ Tom chipped in, with a smile. He seemed to be losing his initial wariness of Liam, and that pleased me.
‘You may well be right, young man,’ he replied, ‘but we’ve got loads of other stuff. And our own wine too. Ontario’s becoming a pretty big producer; they’re quite proud of some of it too.’
‘Why don’t we see more of it in Europe?’ I asked.
‘Because the Canadians drink it all. They have a strange attitude to alcohol, but they’re pretty damn good at brewing and now wine-making. Not that I would know any more,’ he added.
‘Mum makes wine,’ Tom said.
‘I don’t,’ I protested. ‘I’m a director of a company that does, that’s all.’
‘So you make wine.’
I sighed. ‘If you insist. When it comes to arguing a point, you’re as determined as your father … even when you’re wrong.’
He looked at our companion. ‘Is that true, Mr Matthews?’
‘First, chum,’ he replied, ‘you call me Liam. Second, yes, your old man was a pretty determined guy … but I don’t recall him ever being wrong, not in his eyes anyway. Once he made up his mind about something, he wasn’t for changing it.’
I realised that Tom was pleased to be able to talk about his father with someone other than Susie and me, with an impartial witness as he probably saw it; the flaw in that was that Oz was never a guy to inspire objectivity. You either loved him or the opposite; at times I did both.
The discussion was ended by the arrival of lunch, Liam’s salad, bikini toasties for Janet and wee Jonathan and massive sandwiches for Tom and me. We ate in silence, for they demanded concentration. When we were finished, we were full and it was definitely time for the beach.
I gave my son a fifty to pay for what we’d had then led the way over the iron bridge that crosses the little river from which the beach beyond takes its name. As soon as we were on the other side, Janet, who’d been leading Charlie, let him loose, and he went scampering down to the water, riding the small waves that were breaking on the shore. The rest of us walked on, for fifty metres or so, until Tom decreed that there was enough free space for him to pitch the windbreak.
‘Who wants to swim now?’ he asked, after he’d erected the structure. The question was directed at his younger brother more than anyone else. I’m not sure the kid wanted to go into the water, but Tom had become an authority figure, so he took it as a command. He and his little bag disappeared into the tent-ette, and he zipped the front up while he changed.
The rest of us weren’t so fussy. I unbuttoned my shorts, letting them fall to the ground, then spread my beach mat and sat on it, cross-legged, reaching for my sun lotion.
Janet did the same, then popped her bikini top off, in an instant, as always, regardless of our new companion. She might have been stepping into womanhood, but her mind and attitudes hadn’t quite caught up with her body. Liam wasn’t a man, he was an adult, and she hadn’t been brought up to be prudishly modest.
So what could I do but follow her example, as I would have done on any other day?
I tossed my top into my beach bag and stretched out beside her, oiling myself from top to ankles. When I was done, I rolled over and looked around for the nearest man. Tom was busy rubbing his sister’s back with her high factor cream, so I tossed my bottle to Liam, who had spread his beach towel beside my mat.