BY THE TIME SHE got down to the hotel beach most of the mattresses were deserted. A few had the blemish of water where a wet body had recently lain, but mostly they looked like row upon row of dry, white, hospital beds. Beyond a railing was another beach and the mattresses there were striped. In the white sand all the footprints had effaced one another. She moved very cautiously and slunk on to a mattress when she thought the beach boy was not looking. Not meanness – she simply did not know how to ask for one. He was busy folding umbrellas and carrying them in bundles to a shed. He carried them like spears, their points forward, and stacked in the shed they looked like armour too. When he crossed over to talk to her she felt it an attack.
‘Anglais,’ she said, and started changing money in her head, setting herself quick sums so that she would be prepared no matter what amount he asked for. All he did was say the name of the hotel and then go off again. He was a dark, rich tan like everybody else in that place except herself and the English group a few mattresses away.
‘Look at Arthur, he’s turning,’ a woman was saying, while her friends joined her in looking at an unfortunate specimen of a man who was raging pink.
‘You’ll have to wear shorts in the garden when you go home,’ his wife said as she helped him to dress under a robe. She opened each leg of his underpants while he stepped into it and then she drew it up above his stomach and smoothed the cotton legs so that they did not bulge.
‘All right, Arthur?’ she said. He looked grumpy. Then he sat down while she put on his canvas shoes, worming each one over his swollen ankles with the help of a shoehorn.
‘Give him vinegar,’ another woman said. She’d discovered its soothing properties the previous summer. She waved a bottle that seemed to contain a chocolate-coloured lotion.
‘In a fancy bottle like that – vinegar?’ Arthur’s wife said. The woman had changed it into one of those sun-lotion bottles so that she wouldn’t look foolish.
‘Got it in Hull, on a beach. We went to Hull for our anniversary,’ she said, proud of the bottle.
‘Gladys is nothing if she’s not economical,’ a second man said and looked at her with bitterness. Once or twice they tried to engage Ellen by a word, or a mention of sunburn or what it said in the English paper that day but she pretended not to notice. She sat upright and had her first view of the Mediterranean and thought it odd that it should mean nothing to her, nothing at all. She had more interest in looking at the beach boy as he swept the mattresses with the long, soft twig, but every time she looked in her direction the woman with the lorgnette had the eyeglass fixed on her. She was dressed in black and had a thick white snood over her hair. Between trying to avoid this woman and having to ignore the English group she found she had to keep looking in the direction of the sea. It was hazed over and she could not see to the far side. Then a young girl came and temporarily everything was changed.
They all stared because she moved so perfectly. She was in bare feet and her toes painted silver had the effect of having just had candle grease poured over them. They were so light compared with the rich, polished hues of her body. Like mahogany. The beach boy saluted her with the broom as she went by but she did not smile, her presence was its own reward. She came and sat two mattresses away from Ellen and lay right back trailing her hands in the warm sand: The woman with the lorgnette left Ellen abruptly and began staring at the new arrival. And then the man appeared. Almost on cue he stood on the balcony and looked down at the three people who were left. The English crowd had gone. He was like an advertisement for vigour. Gold-skinned with blond hair, and the spots of sand on his body gave him the glisten of stone. She thought he might be the one who propositioned her, naked, in the corridor but she could not be sure. In strange surroundings she could never identify faces and already the lift boy, the beach boy and the porter looked indistinguishable. He talked idly to another man but mainly he looked towards the beach. He looked at her and her heart machined as she saw his companion come down the steps and walk towards her. He was a fat man and he walked over daintily, treating the ground as a tightrope.
‘Mademoiselle?’ he said as he stood over her. She pretended to be puzzled. Then a sharp whistle from the balcony alerted them both and the golden sultan up above indicated to the fat man that he had made a mistake. Excusing himself, the fat man crossed over the bridge of mattresses to where the young girl lay.
‘Mademoiselle’ he said. She must have been dozing because he had to say it twice and then she sat up somewhat startled.
‘I hope you will forgive my intrusion but my friend would like to invite you to a party.’
‘Your friend ‘she said coldly. He pointed to the balcony and her eyes followed his finger. The man up above did not look at her for confirmation, but stared out to sea in the direction of a white fortress that was across the water. His castle.
‘This evening, we are having a beach party,’ the man said, over-humbly.
‘I have another engagement,’ the girl said. Ellen wished she could give answers like that instead of rushing to assignations with open arms.
‘Je suis désolé,’ the man said, and in English the girl asked why he had come.
‘We are having a party on the beach, our biggest party,’ he said.
‘What time?’
‘At nine, but we could have it later if you wish that.’
She said nothing for a minute and in the interval he took the opportunity to kneel on the sand. What tactics.
‘You have another appointment?’ he said again. She thought about it and said very realistically, ‘I am going to the beauty parlour at eight.’ Her hair was obscured by a green kerchief and she wore dark glasses that had rhinestones on their horn frames. There was no telling what effect the invitation had on her.
‘Perhaps you could come after,’ he said. She looked again at the man who was to be her escort and then she said that she would try to change her hair appointment. The fat man gave a slight nod towards the balcony and the sultan walked away, over-slowly. He walked well. He and the girl would make a perfect couple. Ellen felt the humiliation one feels in the presence of perfectly formed people and she had a moment’s apprehension about having come at all. A child was laughing and saying ‘Encore, encore,’ and she thought of her son.
‘You are Swedish?’ the man said, relaxing now with the girl and asking what she did for a living. She translated textbooks, which was why she spoke English, and then he asked how long she had been there.
‘Three weeks,’ she said.
‘A beautiful girl like you and I haven’t seen you before now.’ His tone was flirtatious, but the girl retained her distance.
‘Perhaps you have been on another beach?’
‘No, this beach.’ She was quite brisk. The sun, the opponent of dreams, had no place for subtlety, deceit, and the countless little looks that denote a passing attraction. A cauldron of honesty. Only the perfection people triumphed. The fat, the lame, the slobs, even the slightly blemished like Ellen would find it hard to pass as eligible. Unless of course she settled for the people in her own category. But who is willing to?
‘I must be blind,’ he said. The girl picked up her beach bag and rose to leave. She would see him later. He kissed her hand in an elaborate and theatrical way. Then he watched her walk away and when she had gone out of sight he caught Ellen’s eye. He did not smile.
Soon there were only two people left, herself and the Lesbian. She was certain now that the woman in black was a Lesbian because of the way she kept holding the lorgnette and looking intense. Rather than have to talk to her Ellen left.
It was too early for dinner so she went back to her room and ordered tea. The same waiter as had brought the Perrier came and after she had tipped him he still stood there, beaming.
‘Parlez-vous français?’ he said.
‘English,’ she said.
‘Anglaise…?’ he said: She nodded.
‘Ah Anglaise…’ he said triumphant.‘ I fear I have mislaid my bus ticket.’ He said it excitedly and laughed. They both laughed. The foolish laughter of strangers. She had to make it clear when she wanted him to leave.