Clare awoke in Louisa's guest bed next to Rory. The sun was streaming through the curtains, turning the room into a box of light. Louisa's bed-linen was as crisp as new money. Against this unsullied backdrop, for once without the chaos of the children, Clare felt she and Rory could start over.
Rory was snoring like a man underwater,
submerged by the alcoholic deluge of the previous evening.
“To business and pleasure,” Louisa had
toasted, after Philip had poured them all the first of many glasses of wine.
“To more pleasure than business,” Rory amended.
They all chinked their glasses.
By the end of the evening Rory had been
too drunk to stand. Philip helped Clare drag him upstairs, where he collapsed
on the bed, hogging most of the mattress. As she squeezed in beside him, she
couldn’t help overhearing the rhythmic creak of the bed in the next room and
Louisa and Philip’s stifled grunts of pleasure. Thankfully, Rory was too
comatose to notice.
When she returned to the bedroom after
her shower, Clare found Rory had woken and disappeared. She was roughing her
fingers through her hair and wondering whether she’d packed her comb when
Louisa trilled “Coffee’s ready”.
“Coming.” She made her way downstairs, ducking beneath a low
beam upon which hung one of Philip’s photographs of Louisa: on a beach in a
silk dress, her nipples jutting like pebbles.
Rory and Philip were lounging at the kitchen table with the
Saturday papers while Louisa ministered to them like a geisha, as immaculate as
ever, her black hair caught up in a chignon and her zesty perfume mingling with
the smell of coffee.
“It’s such a gorgeous day I thought we should go to the beach.
How does that sound, Clare?”
“Sounds great.”
She placed a cup of coffee in front of Clare along with the
milk jug and a bowl of sugar crystals that looked like coloured sand. All her
movements had a choreographed elegance as if she was performing for an
invisible camera. Clare wondered if this was a hangover from her modelling
days. Five years ago Louisa had graced the covers of all the top magazines,
many of them shot by Philip. Since then she had swapped the catwalk for an art
gallery on Cork Street. She had invited Clare and Rory to her cottage in
Norfolk as Clare was one of the artists she represented. Clare had envisaged,
rightly, that her holiday home would be too much of an exquisitely tasteful
domain for two boisterous little boys and had left Josh and Alfie with her
parents. The weekend would be a rare adult treat for her and Rory, a chance to
give each other some undivided attention.
“Amazing how she finds the time to make everything so
beautiful, isn’t it?” said Clare, as they gathered together their beach stuff
in the bedroom. “I suppose, the thing is, she doesn’t have kids messing
everything up.”
“Mmm.” Rory pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and surveyed
himself in the mirror. He was a tall, handsome man and his legs were one of his
best features.
“I think, in a way, her homes are where she exercises her
creativity.”
“Mmm.”
The tide was out so the sand stretched for miles beneath the
huge empty sky. The sea was like a strip of torn grey paper in the far
distance.
Louisa kicked off her flip-flops. “Don’t you just love the
feel of sand beneath your feet?”
“Absolutely.” Rory kicked off his. “Shall we see if we can
find somewhere really private further up the beach?”
The four of them walked along the dunes to a hollow where no
one else could be seen.
“Sea air’s just what I need to blow the cobwebs away.” Rory
stretched and pulled off his shirt. “We should have brought the cricket set.”
“Thank God we didn’t. I’m so glad you won’t be able to rope
me into playing,” said Clare. She began to undress under her towel, wobbling on
the hot sand as she placed one foot into her swimsuit and then the other. She wished
she’d been as prescient as Louisa who was wearing her bikini under a sarong,
which could be whipped off with ease.
“Excuse me. Nature calls.” Rory bounded up the dunes and
stood with his back to them and his calves braced. When he returned Louisa was
unpacking a hamper of delicacies. “God, Louisa, you are a bit of a domestic
goddess…Clare, have you checked out this picnic?”
“Looks delicious.” Clare was smearing factor 25 onto her
nose.
Louisa arranged first the food on a red and white cloth, then
herself under a straw sun-hat on a pink towel with a copy of the latest Booker
Prize winner.
“Don’t you want some of this, Louisa?” Rory was smacking his
lips over ciabatta stuffed with Serrano ham.
“No, I’m not hungry yet.” While the others demolished the ham,
the pâté, the herb-infused olives and the smoked salmon quiche, Louisa ate four
cherry tomatoes and three segments from a white peach, which Philip sliced into
twelve with his Swiss Army knife. Clare felt like an over-ripe Brie, creamy and
burgeoning in her M&S swimsuit with its matronly stomach control panel,
compared to the thin Gruyère sliver of Louisa in her cheese-wire bikini.
After lunch, she took out her watercolours and began painting
the horizon. Rory fell asleep underneath the sports section of the paper and
Philip wandered off. Louisa peered over Clare’s shoulder. “You’re so lucky to
have your talent,” she murmured, before closing her book and lying on her front
with her bikini unclasped at the back. Clare’s brushstrokes became tight with
the anxiety that she might turn over at any moment. She remembered Louisa once
telling her wistfully that she would “always have her art”, that it was “the
only eternal thing”.
Philip returned with an armful of driftwood and began
building a fire.
“Darling, have we got anything I can use as kindling?”
Louisa, who also appeared to be asleep, did not reply.
“How about the sports section?” said Clare.
“Oh yes.” Philip crept over and, as he carefully removed it
from Rory’s face, Rory awoke with a snort.
“What’s going on?”
“Making a fire.”
“Oh. Good idea.” Rory sat up and rubbed his face. “Tell you
what I fancy, though.”
Louisa opened one eye.
“What?” said Clare.
“A swim. Anyone else up for a dip?”
“Once I’ve got the fire going,” said Philip.
“How about you go in and tell us how cold it is,” said Clare.
Rory looked hopefully at Louisa. “Louisa? Coming?”
Louisa remained lying face down. “No. I never swim in
England.”
Rory harrumphed off to look in his bag. “I’ve forgotten my
trunks,” he announced, after half a minute of rummaging
“Really?” said Clare. “Shall I have a look? You know you can
never find anything.”
“No, honestly, I’ve searched the whole bag. What a complete
bummer.”
“How about swimming in your shorts?” said Philip.
Rory looked down at his shorts.
“Or you could even swim in your pants,” murmured Louisa,
still from her prone position.
“Oh no, not his pants,” said Clare. “They’ll go all
see-through.”
“You know what?”
“What?” Clare frowned. Rory was wearing a light-bulb
smile.
“I might go skinny-dipping.”
“Oh no…Rory…please…don’t be silly.” Clare’s frown grew
beseeching.
“Oh come on…there’s no one around…”
“…there’s us…” said Clare.
Rory gazed about the empty beach. “Sometimes one wants to
cast everything off and be free…”
“Don’t let us stop you,” said Philip. “We’ve seen it all
before, haven’t we, Lou?”
Louisa did not open her eyes so her expression was unreadable
and before Clare could protest any more, Rory had whipped off his shorts and
his pants and was standing in front of them, entirely naked, his penis swinging
like a large squid between his thighs. He was, she had to admit, almost as fine
a figure of a man as the day she married him. Ten years of their shared history
were hardly written on his body, whereas she couldn’t say the same for herself:
two children, good food, too much drink, not enough exercise were scrawled
indelibly all over her. She and Philip watched as he charged across the sand
into the waves and roared with exhilaration. Louisa fastened the back of her
bikini top, turned over and sat up. “Rory’s got a lot of joie de vivre, hasn’t he?” she said.
When he returned,
dripping and panting, his penis had turned into a shrivelled prawn and he was
cupping his hands over it. “Christ, my bits have shrunk completely.”
That evening, after they had half-drowned themselves in
another deluge of alcohol and staggered upstairs, Clare unpacked their beach
bags and hung her swimsuit on the windowsill to dry. When she unrolled Rory’s
towel, a scrap of black nylon fell on the bed.
“Rory! Here are your trunks! You had them with you, after
all.”
Rory, reclining against the lavender-scented pillows with his
hands behind his head, simply shrugged and smiled.
