I asked Mother again, and Clive asked her, but she would not tell us what she was going to do. She closed the windows, drew the curtains and locked the shutters, so no light escaped, or sound. She walked ahead of us all the way back to the hotel, and when we got there, went straight to her room. Clive and I stood in reception, and he asked me if I wanted a drink. We went to the bar and sat at a corner table.
Estelle’s father ignored us for five minutes, then, as he passed us on his way back from another table, said ‘What would you like?’ out of the corner of his mouth, as if he was doing us a favour.
‘Duncan?’ said Clive.
‘Whiskey,’ I said.
‘Two whiskies,’ said Clive.
‘Ice?’ said Estelle’s father.
‘Don’t even show it any,’ said Clive, and I nodded in agreement. The man looked at us as if we were mad, then shuffled back to the bar. He rummaged noisily for some glasses, huffed and puffed as he fiddled with an optic, and scratched his head while he calculated the cost. When he brought them over, he banged them down on the table, crossed his arms and said, ‘Two seventy.’
‘Put them on my bill,’ said Clive, ‘would you?’
Estelle’s father looked at him, huffed again, said, ‘As you will,’ and went back to the bar.
‘What an unfortunate man,’ said Clive, and he swilled his whiskey in the glass, then drank half of it in one.
‘If he was made of chocolate, he’d eat himself,’ I said.
‘Ha!’
I picked up my glass and said, ‘Surf’s up.’
‘Cheers,’ he said, and then we sat in silence for five minutes.
Other guests in the bar burbled around us; some had maps and guidebooks opened out on tables in front of them, others were sitting back with their legs crossed, in conversation about the National Trust, the hotel food, the day’s storm and a television programme about Hungarian fire-fighters in the Kuwaiti desert. Through the window, I watched sheets of drizzle as they blew across the car park and out to sea. Clive examined his fingernails, found some loose skin and began to pick at it. I said, ‘As a doctor, what’s the prognosis?’
‘You only know the prognosis when you’ve diagnosed,’ he said, ‘and every time I think I’ve done that, I’m proved wrong.’ He had another sip of whiskey. ‘Your mother’s not the sort of woman to take advice, however well meant. She has to work these things out for herself. She’s a very strong woman, but weak too, a classic dichotomy. From a clinical point of view, she’s endlessly fascinating...’
‘Is that why you like her?’
‘Love her,’ he said.
‘Love her...’ I said, rolling the words.
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not the reason.’
‘Why then?’
He finished his whiskey and waved Estelle’s father over. He said to me, ‘I don’t know,’ and to Estelle’s father he said, ‘Two more, please.’ I finished mine in a gulp, and passed my glass to him. I smiled at him, my smile reaching from ear to ear and all over my body, so I imagined that I was one big smile, and I was pleased.
I lay lightly in my bed, the aches in my body whispered to each other through my veins. My back swore at me, but the bruises on my face defended me. They said that my back didn’t have to go surfing, it could have objected, it should have said something. My buttocks agreed. I poured myself a beer and drank it slowly. I thought about loss; my father, my childhood, my surfboard, clean seas at every beach, Gershwin, killed by a brain tumour that should have been caught. I thought about gain; a decent can of beer, my mother, Estelle, an area of low pressure that was so close I could touch it.
Estelle came at half past ten, and made me lie on my stomach while she dabbed my back with antiseptic. I’d told her that I didn’t need it, but she insisted. She told me that I could catch a nasty infection. Sennen is a Blue Flag Beach, though macerated sewage is discharged one hundred and thirty metres from the sea wall. Then she told me that I was an idiot to go out in a storm, but I told her that what I did was my own business, and to shut it. She smacked my arse for that, and I yelped in pain. ‘Serves you right,’ she said, ‘you deserve more.’
‘More?’ I said. ‘And what about you? What have you done to deserve more?’
‘What haven’t I done?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’ I sat up and held her chin in my hand. It was soft and when it caught the light, you could see hundreds of minute blonde hairs on it. ‘Why do you work here?’
‘They’re my parents. When I left school, they gave me the job.’
‘That was nice of them...’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ she said.
‘Are you a beggar?’
‘I’d be out of here in a flash, but do you want to know how difficult it is to get work round here?’
‘Is that a question?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s difficult everywhere,’ I said.
She nodded, wiped some antiseptic cream off her fingers and said, ‘I got English and Biology, Design and Technology; didn’t do me any good.’
‘You’ve got them?’
‘Yeah. And History.’
‘And you left school?’
‘And Geography,’ she said.
‘Geography?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You like Geography?’
‘Hate it.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m doing Geography at university.’
‘You’re at university?’ She put her hand to her mouth and laughed. ‘You?’
‘Yeah. Start next week, at Exeter.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked deeply into my eyes, as if searching for a lie, then shook her head and said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘a whole lot of nothing,’ and I grabbed her around the waist. She yelped, wriggled away and ran to the window, opened it and stood on the balcony. She was really beautiful; you should have seen her there. I got up from the bed and joined her, and we looked at the night together. The drizzle had passed and the clouds were beginning to thin. A single star shone through, and a glimmer of the moon. The Pendeen light swept its regular beam across the sea, glittering the waves. I saw the swell and I sensed it building, the feeling came to me and then it went, then it came again and went again, the sea in me and the smell in the air. Estelle planted kisses on my shoulder and I pinched her waist. ‘Given the choice,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t you like to live here?’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘it’s magic.’
‘If there was anything else going, I’d be out of here in a shot, but I’d have to come back. You can leave the place but the place never leaves you.’
‘I know what you mean.’
She laid her hand on my back. ‘When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nurse. Barry used to be my patient, and on a good day he’d let me perform operations on him.’
‘Barry?’
‘My brother. He’s in the navy now; he was a useless patient, but I was a brilliant nurse.’
‘I bet you were.’
‘You think so?’
‘I never say what I don’t mean. I bet you were and I bet you could be. You’re wasted here.’
‘Not wasted,’ she said, ‘bored maybe. Irritated sometimes, too...’
‘By me?’
‘Not by you,’ she said, ‘never by you. You’re weird, but that makes a change. This place can be like God’s waiting room; Mum and Dad like to run a tight ship. You’re the youngest guest we’ve had for months.’ She pointed down to the car park. The Beetle was dwarfed by a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a pair of Volvos. ‘I think they’d like you to park round the back.’
‘Would they?’
‘But they’ll be impressed when I tell them you’re going to university.’
‘Maybe I’m lying.’
‘Are you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’m cold.’
We went back inside, closed the windows, poured some wine, dimmed the light and lay on the bed. Standing outside hadn’t cooled Estelle’s body, which was hot. Hot as a smoking gun or the fat barrels of Supertubes. She said, ‘Do I surprise you?’
‘Why should you do that?’
‘The first time I saw you I thought yeah; I’ll eat him alive.’
‘I’m waiting.’
She took a mouthful of wine, swilled it around before swallowing, and leaned towards me. ‘Anytime, slim.’
My body dipped and then drowned its aches and bruises in her. As soon as we stopped talking and slipped our arms around each other, I felt as though June was taking November and strangling it, that all the hot weather in the world was being bottled and sent to my head at wholesale prices. The bottle was glowing, I took its lid off and felt some of the heat escape. It clouded over us, and began to drip on our heads. We began to slobber each other’s necks, she tugged at my trousers, I unbuttoned her blouse and eased it off her shoulders. The bra was unhooked, her skirt was around her ankles; she kicked it off and we watched it arc through the room to land on the television. ‘Good goal,’ I said, and she said, ‘Oh God, you’re not into football, are you?’
‘Hate it,’ I said. ‘I hate all sports.’
‘What’s surfing?’
‘Surfing’s surfing.’
‘Sure,’ she laughed.
‘Sport’s for people in clichés with shorts on the brain.’
‘Shouldn’t that be the other way round?’
‘Should it? ‘I said.
‘My old man used to play tennis for England. He wore shorts.’
‘What happened?’
Estelle shrugged. ‘He says it was his back, but I heard he didn’t have the bottle.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
‘He can’t help it,’ she said. ‘He tries his best...’
‘... But his best wasn’t good enough!’ I said, as my shirt sailed across the room. ‘Whoops,’ I said.
‘Whoops what?’
‘Whoops I think I love you,’ and I nestled into her breasts.
‘Love now, is it?’
‘You’re not going to tell me not to fall in love with you, are you?’ I said.
‘Why would I say that?’
‘It’s something some women say.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Daft fuckers,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘You can do anything you like with me,’ she said, and she pushed me off her and crawled to the foot of the bed. She took the legs of my jeans and wrenched them off. As she did, she pulled me down the bed and rubbed my back down the sheet. I yelled.
She approached me backwards, moving on her hands and knees, wriggling over my legs, my stomach and then sat on my chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and grabbed my prick. It was pulsing like a nervous throat. If it could have sung, it would have. ‘Is that better?’ and she started to rub.
‘Yeah,’ I said, and I took her around the waist, pulled her towards me, parted her lips with my tongue, and began to suck.
The Communist Master of Disease could not have covered me more completely, its flesh never had the power that Estelle stored in her fleshy rolls. People say that the cathedral waves of Hawaii’s Waimea Bay contain enough energy that, if harnessed, could light all the towns of the island’s north shore. Waves of water, waves of salt and waves of flesh. She ground into my face. My eyes were open, it was dark, but all around me little folds of skin trilled against my mouth, and her hair whispered. There was a whistling and a singing, and a deep feeling in my head. Everything was full of fish and swimming in flesh, exactly like Portugal. It was sour and molten, raging and quiet, all these things at once and all these things again and again. The whistling was an old tune and it was a new tune, and there were sixteen different ways of singing it. Each way wore a different hat but the same shoes, and the shoes were polished with lust. Estelle leant forward and began to nip my stomach. After each nip she licked the spot, and kissed it; I reached forward, took her breasts in my hands and weighed them. I held her nipples between my forefingers and my index-fingers and squeezed. She sat down hard, I gasped and blew for air, she shifted down the bed and looked over her shoulder at me. I wiped my face, took some hairs out of my mouth and said, ‘What a sunny day.’
‘Bet your arse.’
I slapped hers.
She lifted one leg so she was kneeling beside me, flipped me over and smacked mine with both her hands. Tears shot into my eyes, I yelled into the pillow, turned over again and grabbed her wrists. ‘Yeah,’ we were saying, and I was in her, she was grinding over me, fast and faster, moving, heaving, our flesh going slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. I was completely covered by her, I was a hot-blooded singer, I was pigeons flying up and fluttering around, I was a Gregory Peck film I’d never seen but always promised to, and I was a barrel of maple syrup. I was every track The Waterboys recorded between December 1981 and July 1985, from ‘December’ through ‘All the things she gave me’ and ‘Be my enemy’ to ‘This is the sea’. I was some rare piano improvisations that Jack Gibbons transcribed from Gershwin’s original piano rolls, too late for my Dad to hear. Two hands becoming six, six turning to twelve. I was not bitter at all, and I was exactly the right age to be doing the things I was doing. I cried that I loved her, and she wailed that she wanted me every night, and that she didn’t want to leave that room, ever. We made extreme flopping and juiced noises, we raged and sweated, we laughed and laughed, and all my pain was gone. The bed was going like a thousand dogs barking and tapping spoons on metal trays, it was loud but the quieter sounds were noisier to our ears, the knock on the door, the rattling of a pane of glass in the window, the person in the next room smoking a last cigarette, then cleaning his teeth. She was tighter than ever or I was bigger than I have ever been, and her fleshy folds hung all around me like tiny curtains. Her eyes were open and huge, and her lips folded over her teeth, her tongue came out and wiggled. The person in the next room finished cleaning his teeth, and there was another knock on the door.
I began to seek and find Estelle’s moles. She had them on many parts of her body. Cheek, neck, shoulders, a little clump on the rise of her right breast, and a hive of them under the left. I touched each one with the pointy tip of my tongue, and felt how they were raised from the surface of her skin. I listened to them but they made no sound. I heard the door knock again and found a mole on her stomach, just below her navel. It was in the shape of a tear, and bearded with downy brown hairs, and when I touched it, Estelle let out a long, loud moan, as if I had given her a clitoris. I took it between my thumb and finger and rolled it around, and I lowered my mouth. I thought I heard it squeak, I thought I was holding a mouse in the palm of my hand. I thought I could smell a rock-pool. Sea urchins. Whelks. Starfish. Limpets. The peeling varnish on an old wooden board, the rust on some car door and the taste of candy floss. Estelle’s skin was as smooth as butter, glass, ice. Whoever was outside in the corridor thumped on the door, and now I said ‘Your old man?’ to Estelle.
She brushed her hair back, pulling it away from her forehead with a raised arm, stretching back above me. I planted a kiss in the middle of her stomach, she held her head in her arms and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, ‘and don’t know if I care.’ She leant over and pulled the duvet off the floor and covered herself. I got up, wrapped a towel around my waist, opened the door a foot and poked my head out.
It was her old man. He had this huge expression on his face, all boiling oil, midnight confessions and the Communist Master of Disease. He opened his mouth, and I saw the words sitting inside it, waiting to jump out. ‘What the hell’s going on in here?’
I said, ‘What the fuck’s it to you?’
‘We’re trying to run a decent hotel here,’ he said.
‘It’s pretty decent,’ I said. ‘The food’s great, the view’s wonderful and the room service is brilliant.’
‘Room service?’ he said, and he tried to see through the crack in the door.
‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t used room service.’
‘I had some sandwiches the night before last. They were very good. Yeah.’ I let my grip go on the door; he saw me relax and, before I had the chance to stop him, had barged past me and was in the room.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said Estelle.
Her old man’s face was like a cartoon face; it began to turn purple from the chin up, his eyes bulged with fury and little puffs of steam blew from his nostrils. Her breasts were sitting in front of her and her hair was all over the place. One of her feet was sticking out of the duvet. She looked at it and wiggled her toes. He opened his mouth and tried to force something out, but it was trapped.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
‘Yeah?’ I said.
‘It’s late,’ she said.
‘Very,’ I whispered.
For a moment he looked awkward, completely at sea while we sailed safely around him. I watched his hands. He made fists with them and then opened them, then fists again, open again, then fists again. His knuckles were white, he tried to take a step towards the bed, but his legs would not move. He opened his mouth and his lips started to quiver. I thought he was about to go down on his knees and cry. His eyes fluttered, the purple colour did not leave his face. He closed his mouth and opened it again, like a fish. He pointed at Estelle and hissed, ‘Go to your room.’
‘I’m happy here,’ she said.
‘Estelle!’
‘What?’
‘GO!’ The word cracked like a shot, and his pointing finger shook. He took a step towards the bed, I stepped between him and her, he looked at me as if I wasn’t there, and then he touched me.
‘Hey!’ I yelled, ‘Don’t you touch me!’ I slapped his hand away. ‘And get out of my room!’
‘Your room?’ He tried an ironic laugh, but it came out like a hiccup.
‘Yeah!’
‘You,’ he said, and now he focused on me, ‘get out of my way.’ He pushed past me, I stumbled back and fell on to the bed. Estelle suddenly leapt over me, avoided her father’s lunge, and shot out of the door. She ran naked down the corridor, I watched her go, heard a door open and slam shut, a lock turned, her father stared down at me, I glared back at him, he said, ‘You’re out of here in the morning.’
‘I was leaving anyway.’
‘You good-for-nothing...’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘so you have got some imagination,’ and I laughed at him.
‘What?’
‘And someone told me about your second service.’
The purple began to drain from his face. I imagined it filling his shoes and staining his socks.
‘What was it?’ I said. This was better than using a fist. ‘No balls?’
For a moment, as a pale, slack colour filled his cheeks, I thought he was going to hit me, but then he turned and left the room. I got off the bed and slammed the door at his back, and listened to his footsteps in the corridor. They were quick and heavy, and all his memories were in them like lead.