He contents himself with kicking at it, so that it won’t follow him out through the gate.
Just past the kiosk, he stops and sweeps the beach with his gaze. The parasols are made of straw and make him think of the Hottentot Hoa who bangs away on his drums at night and saves the village from enemy attack. He sidles over to the big tree. She must be somewhere or other on this beach, Ylva, because he’s already checked out the other beach, about a hundred metres further away.
Then he sees her. On her way up from the sea in the bikini with the dark red hearts. She takes hold of her hair, twists it round a few times then tosses it like a tail on to her back. The little fair-haired one is waddling along behind her, like a tubby pet. Jo grins and keeps his eyes on Ylva. She walks up to a parasol on the second row down, picks up a towel, dries her face and her thighs, hangs it out, lies down in the sun.
Go over there now, Jo can hear Jacket saying. Or wait till she goes for another swim. Follow her into the water and get talking to her. Not difficult to find something to talk about with the breakers washing over them and just about tipping her over.
He chooses the first option, can’t be bothered to wait. Makes his way slowly towards the end of the beach where she is. Recognises the grown-ups she was sitting with in the dining room. The man, must be her father, has grey hair. And the mother is completely unlike Ylva, small and with a bigger belly bulge than Mother.
Arne sits two parasols away from them.
Jo freezes. Naturally, Mother is there too. And the couple they were dancing and necking with that first night. Mother is wearing her pink bikini and is lying flat on the sunbed with a straw hat over her face. In the sand next to her are two big green bottles of beer. Arne has his back turned and is talking to the other grown-ups. Hasn’t spotted him yet. Jo turns and runs away, reaches the shelter of a tree. Without stopping he carries on up the hill, past the apartments and down on to the other beach.
Fewer people there. In the middle of a crowd of boys he sees Daniel, heads towards him.
– Ready for football?
– Where?
– In the shade, of course. If you don’t want your legs to burn up under you.
Daniel always seems to have a crowd of friends around him. He’s cool, Jo has to admit it. And good looking. Last night he was sitting by the edge of the swimming pool talking to some girls who looked to be quite a bit older than him.
Others come along and join them as they measure out the pitch and put down towels for goalposts. There are seven of them. The Swedes they hammered at volleyball the other day, and some others whom Daniel speaks to in English.
– Just going to see if Daddy’ll play, then we’ll be four a side.
It makes Jo smirk to hear Daniel still calling his father Daddy, but he keeps the smirk to himself. Daniel sprints across to one of the parasols by the stone staircase. Jo sees the father lay down his newspaper and get up, ambling through the sand. When he arrives, he shakes hands with them all.
– Have to know whom I’m playing with, he says with a broad smile. He’s very tall and looks strong, and with his longish hair he reminds Jo of Obi-Wan in Star Wars.
One of the Swedes is on their team. His name is Pontus. Short and thin and with very quick feet. Typical winger. Jo prefers playing in the middle. He has a good shot, and the trainer is always praising him for his ability to read the game. It’s fine by him that Daniel wants to play up front. His father plays at the back and calls himself a roaming ’keeper.
Daniel of course is good. Frighteningly good. A neat swerve, and fantastic acceleration. Once he takes a shot on the volley. Keeper nowhere near it. Like Marco van Basten. But he’s no egomaniac. He centres, runs, plays one-twos.
– Good ball, he shouts to Jo, who’s threaded a pass through the sand. And after beating a defender and the keeper, he dribbles the ball over the goal line and then gives him the thumbs-up, as though to say it was the pass that was good, and not what he was able to make out of it.
His father is the same, always encouraging.
– Great work, Jo, he shouts when Jo intercepts a long through ball. – Saved me a lot of trouble there.
After the game Daniel says:
– Come on over with us, we’ve got a cooler bag with cold drinks. But no Coke. My mother’s a health freak. Much worse than Daddy, even though he’s a doctor.
Jo hesitates. What does it mean, the way he’s always being invited along? There must be something behind it, something that he doesn’t know about yet. The whole time he’s waiting for Daniel to give some kind of clue. Show that he’s laughing at him. But that’s not what happens. Is it possible that some people here didn’t see Mother legless on the dance floor?
Daniel gives the order: – We need ten litres of juice to put back what we sweated out. Jo ran twice as far as me.
His mother is wearing a white bikini with a big leaf pattern on one of the cheeks. She’s lying on her front reading a book and not wearing a top. She glances up at them.
– Hey there, Jo, she says, in a rather deep voice, and then goes on reading.
This is the first time Jo sees Daniel’s mum up close. She has hardly any wrinkles and looks years younger than Mother.
– Help yourselves, she yawns. – I’m off duty now.
Daniel’s father has wrapped an enormous towel around himself and changed into swimming trunks. Jo can’t stop himself from taking a look between his legs. Fortunately the shorts are as big and wide as the ones he and Daniel are wearing.
They swim out breaststroke. Jo keeps his yellow T-shirt on in the water. He realises that he’s not going to go bare-chested for the duration of the holiday. Could have taken it off that first day. Now it’s too late. But Daniel doesn’t mention it.
– Don’t try to race him, he warns his father with a nod in Jo’s direction. – Especially not underwater.
– Oh really?
– He must have swum fifty metres yesterday. Against the current. Compleeetely craaazy. He repeats the phrase from the day before, in a thick accent, joking, but the respect he has for Jo is obvious.
– Is that right, Jo?
– Roughly.
– You must have a fantastic pair of lungs, Daniel’s father says. – I noticed that anyway when we were playing earlier. You ran the others into the ground, simple as that.
– Where do you get to if you keep on swimming out? Jo asks, to change the subject.
– Out? Daniel’s father peers towards the horizon. – Africa first.
– I mean, whereabouts in Africa?
– Egypt, maybe. Or Libya. If you can keep a steady course, that is. I suggest if we swim out to those buoys that’ll do us.
No more than twenty metres out there, thirty at the most. Jo dives, arrowing downwards until he reaches the sandy bottom. Follows it as it slopes into darkness. He feels a prickling in his ears, because he must be three metres below. Follows the depths outwards. Sees the others’ legs breaking the delicate surface high above him. There’s a throbbing in his head. As if someone’s standing there and keeps hitting it. If I don’t swim up and join them, he feels the thought race through him, if I just keep going along the bottom here until I disappear, then he’ll take over, the one standing in the dark with the sledgehammer.