Coming Home (128 page)

‘Is that where we're going?’ Toby asked.

‘That's it.’

‘What an idyllic spot.’

‘It was built only a couple of years ago.’

‘I didn't realise Young Christian Women could be so imaginative.’

Another five minutes or so and they were there. It was breathlessly hot, but they could hear the sea. They made their way across the white hot, rather dirty sand, up wooden steps onto the veranda, and so indoors. A long room, open on all sides to get every breath of breeze, was furnished with the simplest of tables and chairs, for dining. A Sinhalese houseboy, wearing a white shirt and a red-checked sarong, was, very slowly, laying these up for lunch. Overhead the wooden fans revolved, and on the seaward side were framed vistas of sky, horizon, sea, and the white-hot beach.

As they stood there, a door at the far end of the dining-room swung open and a woman emerged bearing a pile of freshly ironed white napkins. She saw Judith and Toby standing there, paused for an instant, recognised Judith, beamed with delight, dumped the napkins on a handy table, and came down the length of the room to greet them. ‘Sweetie!’ Arms flung wide. ‘Heavenly surprise. No idea you were coming today. Why didn't you let me know?’ Reaching Judith's side, the arms enclosed her in a breath-taking embrace, and kisses were pressed upon her cheek, leaving large smudges of lipstick. ‘You haven't been ill, have you? Years since you've been to see me…’

‘About a month, and I haven't been ill.’ Released, Judith attempted furtively to wipe the lipstick from her face. ‘Toddy, this is Toby Whitaker.’

‘Toby Whitaker,’ Toddy repeated. Her voice was tremendously husky, which surprised nobody because she smoked continuously. ‘I haven't met you before, have I?’ She peered at him closely.

Toby, slightly taken aback, said, ‘No. I don't think so. I've only just arrived in Trincomalee.’

‘Thought I didn't recognise you. I know most of Judith's boy-friends.’

She was a tall woman, scrawny, slim-hipped and flat-breasted as a man, dressed in slacks and a casual shirt. Her skin was brown and leathery as well-tanned hide and wrinkled as a dried prune, but her make-up made up for this, heavily pencilled eyebrows and glistening blue eye-shadow, and a great deal of very dark red lipstick. Her hair, which could only be described as a shock, would, under natural circumstances, have been snow-white
(snow-white hair makes one look so ancient, Sweetie),
but had been dyed a cheerful and brassy yellow.

‘Have you come for lunch? Heaven! We'll have it together. I'll give you all the latest low-down. Luckily, we're not all that busy today. And it's fish. Bought it off one of the boats this morning. Do you want a drink? You must be dying of thirst. Gin and tonic? Gin and lime?’ Even as she spoke, she was feeling in the breast pocket of her shirt for cigarettes and lighter, shaking the cigarette expertly from the pack. ‘Judith, I can't wait to tell you, there was the most ghastly woman in here the other evening. I think she was a third officer. Far too vulgar to be a rating. But frightfully upper-class. Talked at the top of her voice all the way through dinner. Hoot-hoot. As though she were on a hunting field. Too embarrassing. You don't know her, do you?’

Judith laughed, and shook her head. ‘Not intimately.’

‘But you know who I'm talking about? Never mind, it doesn't matter.’ She flicked her lighter and lit the cigarette. With that safely clamped between her painted lips, she was off once more. ‘Just hope she doesn't turn up again. Now. Drinks. Gin and tonics do for you both? Judith, take…?’ She had already forgotten his name.

Toby said, ‘Toby.’

‘Take Toby out onto the veranda and make yourselves comfortable, and I'll go and find drinks for us all.’

The door swung shut behind her, but her voice could still be distinctly heard, haranguing, giving orders.

Judith looked at Toby. ‘Your expression is shell-shocked,’ she told him.

He quickly rearranged it. ‘I do see exactly what you mean.’

‘Racy?’

‘Racy, all right. Raffish, perhaps.’ And then, as though he had said too much, ‘But I am sure, splendid company.’

They dumped their baskets and went out onto the veranda. This was furnished with long cane chairs and tables, and was clearly the living area of the hostel. Small groups of girls and a few men were already there, scantily dressed for swimming, relishing the cool, enjoying a drink before lunch. On the beach, others sunbathed, brown bodies laid out on the sand like so many kippers. A few swam, or lazily floated on the gentle waves. Judith and Toby went to lean their elbows on the wooden rail, and observe the scene.

The sand was blinding white. At the edge of the sea, bordered in pale pink, the detritus of fragments of shells, washed up by the breakers. Exotic shells, a world away from the homely mussels and banded wedges of Penmarron. Here lay shards of conch and nautilus, scorpion shells and cowries. Ear-shells with their mother-of-pearl linings, and the lethal husks of sea-urchins.

Toby said, ‘I'm not sure how long I can wait before I get into that sea. Can we swim out to those rocks?’

‘You can if you want to, but I never do because they're covered in sea-urchins, and the last thing you want is a spine in your foot. Besides, I don't like going out that far. There's no shark boom because of the fishing boats coming in and out.’

‘Have you seen sharks?’

‘Not here. But once I was sailing out in the outer harbour, and we were shadowed the whole way home by a shark, lurking under our keel. If he'd wanted, he could have capsized us in a second and munched us up for lunch. It was scary.’

A girl was walking up out of the sea. She wore a white bathing-suit, and was slender and long-legged, and as they watched, she put up her hands to wring the water out of her seal-wet hair. Then, stooping to pick up her towel, she strolled up on the beach to join the man who waited for her.

Toby watched her. After a bit, he said, ‘Tell me, is it true that all the girls out here look so much more attractive than they did at home? Or am I already succumbing to the glamour of rarity?’

‘No, I think it is true.’

‘Why?’

‘Circumstances, I suppose. Living out of doors and lots of sunshine and tennis and swimming. It's quite interesting. A new draft of Wrens arrives out from England and they look really awful. Overweight and pudgy and white. Permed hair and faces coated in pancake make-up. And then they start swimming and the perms go all frizzy, so they have their hair cut off. And soon realise that it's too hot and sweaty to wear make-up, and the make-up ends up in the bin. And being so hot all the time takes the edge off everybody's appetite, so they all lose weight. Finally, they sit in the sun and get lovely and brown. A natural progression.’

‘I can't believe you were ever pudgy and white.’

‘I wasn't pudgy, but I was certainly pasty…’

He laughed. He said, ‘I'm glad you brought me here. It's a good place. I'd never have found it on my own.’

Toddy returned with their drinks, which were icy cold and extremely alcoholic. When these were finished, they had a quick swim, and after that, lunch in the dining-room with their hostess. Grilled fish, so fresh that the plump white flesh fell from the bone, and for dessert a fruit salad of mangoes and oranges and pineapple. And all the way through the meal, Toddy talked, regaling them with juicy gobbets of gossip, some of which had a fair chance of being true, for she had spent half her life in Ceylon and was on Christian-name terms with everyone, from the Vice-Admiral in Colombo down to the ex-tea-planter who now ran the Labour Camp in Trincomalee.

Toby Whitaker, listened politely, smiled bravely on, but it was clear to Judith that he was somewhat dismayed by such blatant scandal, and so, probably disapproving. Which prompted a certain irritation. He had no reason to be stuffy, and she found herself wanting to provoke him, and so egged Toddy on to even more outrageous indiscretions.

Because of all this chat, fuelled by a second gin and tonic
(Sweetie, we must have the other half),
lunch took quite a long time, and it was finally concluded by Toddy's stubbing out her cigarette, getting to her feet and announcing that she was going to her room, to get her head down and have a siesta.

‘But you'd like coffee? I'll tell Peter to bring it out onto the veranda for you. I'll probably surface about half past four. We'll have tea together. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves.’

So they spent the next hour supine in long chairs in sybaritic fashion sipping iced coffee, and waiting until the lowering sun drew shadows on the sand, and it was time to swim again. Judith went off to change back into her bathing-suit, and when she emerged, saw that Toby was already in the water. She ran down the beach to join him, plunging into the clear green waves, and the coolness of the sea was like silk against sunburnt skin, and the water turned eyelashes to spikes and broke the light into rainbows.

The conditions were so perfect that an hour had slipped by before they finally turned inshore to make their way back to the beach. Until then, their swim had been both lazy and leisurely, but all at once Toby was visited by a violent spurt of energy, or perhaps some basic masculine impulse to show off. Whatever, ‘I'll race you,’ he announced, and without preamble, or even giving Judith a chance to collect herself, he sped ahead, sleeking through the water away from her in an enviable Australian crawl. Judith, left wallowing, was slightly put out, and decided to make no effort to compete, for what was the point of embarking on such a hopeless contest? And who would have thought a grown man could be so childish? She saw him reach the shore, stride up out of the surf, and stand triumphantly on the beach, arms akimbo, to watch her studiedly unhurried progress. There was a maddening grin upon his face.

‘Slowcoach,’ he taunted.

Judith refused to rise. The gentle waves propelled her forward. ‘You took a very unfair advantage,’ she told him severely.

Another wave, and the sand nudged her knees. She would walk the last few yards. She put down her feet, and stood up.

The stab of pain plunged deep into her left foot, so exquisite, so agonising, that she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The unexpectedness, the spasm of shock caught her off-balance and she stumbled and fell forward and her open mouth was filled with sea-water. Choking, on the edge of panic, she felt the sand beneath her fingers, somehow got her face out of the water, and then, careless of dignity, started to crawl on hands and knees.

It had all happened in less than half a moment, but already Toby was there, beside her.

‘What the hell's happened?’

‘My foot. I trod on something. I can't stand. Don't try and make me stand.’

So he put his hands beneath her shoulders and heaved her, like some awful old beached whale, up onto the sand, where she lay, propped up on her elbows. Hair dripped all over her face, and sea-water was streaming down her nose. She put up a hand and knuckled it away.

‘All right?’

A ridiculous question. ‘No, I'm not all right,’ she snapped and instantly felt remorseful for snapping, for he was kneeling at her side, and the grin was wiped from his face, to be replaced by an expression of acute anxiety and concern.

‘Which foot?’

‘The left.’ Ridiculous tears threatened to flood her eyes, and she found herself clenching her jaw against the pain and the fright and the sheer apprehension of what she had done to herself.

Toby said, ‘Sit quietly.’ He took her left ankle in his hand, holding it in a firm grasp, and lifted her foot to inspect the damage. Judith closed her eyes because she didn't want to watch. She heard him say, ‘Oh, God, it's glass. Broken glass. Still there. I'm going to get it out. Grit your teeth…’

‘Toby, don't…!’ But it was done, and another spasm of excruciating torture leaped like fire into every nerve end of her body. She thought she would faint, but didn't. Then, gradually, reluctantly, the agony ebbed, and she was aware of the slow, sticky flow of blood, emptying out onto the sole of her foot.

‘It's okay. All finished.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Brave girl. Look.’

He held up a wicked-looking triangle of glass, honed into a knife-edge by the sea. The shard of some bottle, thrown overboard, shattered on rocks, washed ashore.

‘Is that all? It is all out?’

‘I think so. Just the one piece.’

‘My foot's bleeding.’

‘That,’ said Toby, ‘is the understatement of the year.’ He stowed the piece of glass carefully in the pocket of his shorts. ‘Now, put your arms around my neck and hang on.’ He lifted her, and she felt strangely weightless as he carried her up the length of the beach, and up onto the cool sanctuary of the veranda, where he laid her down on one of the long, cushioned chairs.

Judith said, ‘I can't…I mean, I'll bleed all over Toddy's cushions…’ but Toby had already gone indoors, to reappear almost at once with a white table-cloth, whisked from a table. This he bundled and folded into a pad and set it gently beneath her foot. In seconds it was, rather frighteningly, stained with red.

She heard him say, rather desperately, ‘We've got to do something.’

‘What's happening?’ It was one of the girls who had been sunbathing on the beach, come to investigate. Brown-faced and with sunbleached hair, she wore the top of her two-piece bathing suit, and had knotted a cotton scarf into a sarong.