That Was Then Read online

Page 2


  I now faced another hard decision. Mel was coming back for a swim, and it would be nice to accompany her when she did. On the other hand I was rapidly melting and needed to cool off. So it would make sense to go into the pool now, at once, in order to have built up a good head of steam by the time she reappeared in about half an hour. I longed to be in the water, but could scarcely face the thirty seconds of physical activity involved in getting there.

  I eventually managed by using a strategy described to me by Ben when he was doing karate as a teenager: don’t think of the plank/brick/concrete slab – think of the other side and move straight towards it.

  So I thought hard of swimming, removed my shades, and hurtled in, taking only one stride on the red-hot tiles between lounger and pool.

  And oh, the bliss of being weightless …! How lissom, how supple, how youthful a body felt when supported by thousands of gallons of water … I could almost imagine there was still a space between my thighs. If all social intercourse could be conducted in deep water what a grand thing that would have been …

  Unfortunately, in deep water was where I was, in more ways that one. While talking to Mel I’d stopped tracking the sharks, but as I surfaced and started on a first length of breaststroke I heard a plop, and felt the nudging series of small waves that indicated someone else was taking a dip.

  He, of course, was doing the crawl, and pretty soon lapped me going in the same direction. Determined not to be put off my stroke I swam on. It was the Alan Clarke, who looked the sort to regard anything under fifty lengths as a waste of time. He said ‘Hi,’ as he came up for air alongside, cutting through the water like a U-boat: a turbo-charged shark. The greeting was reassuringly curt, on the other hand he didn’t have to give one at all – he was establishing contact between us tough early-afternoon types. Bobbing in his wake, I struck off at a tangent towards the bar. There was time, I calculated, for a quick drink before he even realised I was gone. I sat with my back to the pool nursing a second glass of Pimms, and picking at cashew nuts.

  Ingrate that I was, I thought fondly of my flat on the seafront in Littelsea. Even as I sat here Ben would be embarking on the series of cosmetic measures designed to wipe out all trace of what he’d been up to during my fortnight’s absence. Sheets would be changed, windows flung open, floors imperfectly mopped and lavatories scrubbed to the droning accompaniment of the washing machine and dishwasher. An inordinate number of bulging black binbags would be heaped by the front door for transportation down to the wheelie-bin, and at least one trip to the municipal tip undertaken. By the time I got back it would be perfectly possible for us to resume the usual no-questions-asked collusion which left our happy relationship undisturbed.

  ‘Hello again.’

  I’d been miles away and I jumped slightly, so that my teeth banged on the edge of my glass. It was the Alan Clarke. He was American, so he deserved at least a few brownie points for reading the diary of an eccentric, classbound English politician.

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Not many of us around, are there?’

  ‘No, not in this …’

  ‘Nice to have the pool empty though. Great for lengths.’ Late forties, solidly built, hair pepper and salt and receding but cut sensibly short.

  ‘Yes, not that I … I’m just a fun swimmer.’

  He signalled the barman. ‘ Beer please.’ Looked back at me. ‘As opposed to a—?’

  ‘I don’t know. A fitness swimmer.’

  ‘You look pretty fit to me.’ He said it nicely, with only the smallest and most acceptable hint of ingratiation, so I let it pass. ‘How long are you over here for?’ he added, taking delivery of the beer and taking a swig directly from the bottle.

  ‘I go back the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘You do? What, to England?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  I suppose it was unwise to essay even the slightest levity, because this prompted far more of a laugh than it warranted.

  ‘Right …’ he chuckled. ‘Right.’

  I slurped on my Pimms. Where was Mel when I needed her?

  ‘Can I buy you a bite to eat?’ he asked. He pronounced it ‘bite ter eat’ like a character in a film or a popular song. It seemed to invite a scripted response, a ‘why not?’ or a ‘sure’, but I was now on red alert.

  ‘No thanks, I’ve had lunch.’ My ‘lunch’ sounded prim and pompous after his ‘bite ter eat’, but then I wasn’t out to impress. Just the opposite. I drained my glass and put it down on the bar.

  He nodded at it. ‘ Would you care for another of those?’

  ‘No thank you. Actually—’ I glanced foolishly at my empty wrist – ‘I must be gone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Shopping, you know …’ What was I saying? But he lifted a hand and turned his head aside, allowing the perfect reasonableness of my excuse.

  ‘Those folks back home – they cast a long shadow.’

  ‘They do. So if you don’t mind—’

  I slid off my stool, and he – with almost comical politeness since we were both up to our armpits in water, did the same, and held out his hand. ‘ Charles McNally. It was nice meeting you.’

  ‘And you.’

  I left him at a disadvantage and swam off.

  Up in our room on the twentieth floor I peeled off my swimsuit and threw it in the basin before wrapping myself in a towelling robe. Then I sat on the window seat and gazed wistfully down at the pool, which I only had a short time left to enjoy, and which I’d effectively denied myself till further notice.

  I supposed it was a function of middle age that I’d had to find an excuse which removed me utterly from the scene of the perceived threat. I couldn’t just say ‘I won’t, thanks anyway’ and continue with what I was doing. I had to be away, elsewhere. Out of harm’s reach.

  All the same I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. What if lunch had led to dinner …? It was all too much of an effort, too tricky and unpredictable. I was no longer in the market for the hassle.

  I could just see Charles McNally’s head and shoulders at the bar. There were no more than six other people round the pool now. On the lounger next to where I’d been lay Mel’s towel. I tried to remember if she’d left a purse or a handbag for me to keep an eye on.

  Fortunately, at that moment I saw her come out of the fitness centre and walk round the edge of the pool. She’d changed into her severe black bikini, which was more like a crop-top and pants. On reaching her towel she stopped, but not for long. She put her sports bag under the lounger, slipped out of her sandals and dived in, storming through the water to the far end with an enviably powerful freestyle action. There was no indication that she even wondered where I was.

  Mildly miffed, I had a shower, got changed and tidied the room. This was something else that exasperated Mel.

  ‘Mother,’ she’d lectured me, ‘you’re in a five-star international hotel. There are battalions of workers paid to do that for you. Take advantage. Enjoy.’

  ‘It’s just habit.’

  ‘Come on, you and Ben don’t exactly qualify for a Hello! feature back home.’

  I had tried to explain that there was something satisfying about re-ordering the micro-environment of a hotel room, that it responded to one’s efforts in a way that the family home never could. Mel banged her fist against her brow.

  ‘But why would you even want to to try? Look at it this way, if there’s not enough for the cleaners to do the hotel might decide to cut down and you’ll have deprived people of their jobs and contributed to the erosion of the local economy.’

  Anyway, I tidied the room.

  Remembering Mel’s comment about Ben and me made me realise how much I was looking forward to seeing him. This fortnight had been wonderful, a complete change, the sort of holiday I should never in a million years have arranged for myself, even had I been able to afford it. I was a little ashamed that when Mel had organised and paid for so much I’d been mildly homesick the whole time.
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  The thing was, Ben and I were pals. Mel herself had often remarked that over the past couple of years he and I had formed an unholy alliance. She also said that I ought to be a bit less accommodating or he’d never leave home, but this advice was predicated on the false assumption that I wanted him to go. Mel, with her steely ambition and self-imposed work ethic, seemed to have achieved full independence almost the moment she started sixth-form college (and two weekend jobs) at the age of sixteen. Ben was equally bright, but nothing like as motivated. ‘You and Dad always said you just wanted us to be happy,’ he would remind me winningly, ‘Well, I am.’ Since Ian and I had separated he’d become an essential part of what home meant, as indispensable to my wellbeing as Radio Four and chocolate digestives.

  But as my daughter clearly wasn’t missing me, I went down to the Palm Court for my customary pot of Earl Grey. The air-conditioning in the lift was so intense that my bare arms broke out in goose pimples. As I got out on the ground floor there was Charles McNally in shorts and T-shirt, with a towel round his neck, waiting to get in.

  ‘Off to hit the mall?’ he enquired pleasantly.

  ‘Pretty soon,’ I replied.

  He clicked his tongue in an ‘Attagirl’ sort of way. ‘ Go get ’em.’

  I went over to the desk. The people who worked here were the nicest imaginable, and the receptionist greeted me as she did everyone, as if I were her favourite guest. I knew, rationally, that this was because of my connection with Ankatex, who were putting up a team of twelve, Mel included, for an indefinite period, but that didn’t stop it being gratifying.

  ‘Mrs Piercy, how are you? Did you have a nice day by the pool?’

  ‘I did thank you.’

  ‘I see you go back to the UK the day after tomorrow. We shall miss you.’

  ‘I shall be sorry to go,’ I lied.

  ‘You must come and see us again.’

  ‘That depends on whether my daughter’s still here.’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Piercy,’ said the girl admiringly, ‘she’s always so smart.’

  I didn’t know whether she meant in appearance or ability – both probably, since both were deserved – but I acknowledged the compliment on Mel’s behalf.

  ‘She’s having a swim,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you see her in the next half an hour or so, would you tell her I’m in the Palm Court?’

  ‘Certainly.’ The girl made a note and flashed me the sweet, lustrous smile that said it was her pleasure to be of service. ‘Enjoy your tea.’

  The Palm Court was an Arab millionaire’s no-expense-spared recreation of the Ritz in Piccadilly. Sheikh Hassad – whose lizard-eyed portrait sneered down from innumerable walls – was entranced with a notional Englishness which had never existed outside the works of P G Wodehouse or Noël Coward. In the Palm Court a balding man in a tailcoat played Ivor Novello selections at a white piano. Improbably voluptuous ‘nippies’ in black, with starched white headdresses served tiny cakes and crustless sandwiches on platters which at the Ritz would have been Sheffield plate but here were very probably solid silver. Plants with thick, green leaves stood about in jardinières decorated with stags and pheasants. Each rose-upholstered armchair was big enough for two people, and bore pristine lace armrests and antimacassars. The tables were walnut. Only the faint stirring of the pages of two-day-old English newspapers in the air-conditioning betrayed the Palm Court’s location.

  I picked up a copy of the Telegraph and sat down in the corner – my usual corner – from which I could keep the hotel foyer under observation, and ordered tea for one. The pianist surged into ‘We’ll gather lilacs’. He looked unmistakably middle eastern: neither tailcoat nor music suited him, but he was earning his daily derum like a true pro. I sensed a Lloyd Webber medley waiting in the wings. On my first day this would have annoyed me. On my last it was strangely pleasing, like a wave from someone waiting on the quayside.…

  I was about halfway through the crossword, the Earl Grey and a slice of coffee cake when Mel sat down next to me. She was back in her plain shift, but with flat sandals, and her newly-showered hair was scraped back off her bare face. She grimaced at my teapot and ordered lime juice with ice.

  ‘Good swim?’

  ‘Yes thanks, just the job. What happened to you?’

  ‘Sorry, I got unbearably hot.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Sitting in the shade, in the water, at the pool bar?’

  ‘Well, you know—’

  She laughed silently, fiercely. ‘ Yes, yes, I do know Ma. I saw you scuttle for cover the moment a personable man spoke to you.’

  ‘You were spying on me, you rotten thing!’

  ‘Didn’t have to, the treadmill overlooks the pool.’

  ‘And anyway that’s not how it was at all,’ I protested, aggrieved at having been so thoroughly sussed. ‘I suddenly felt I wanted to freshen up and get changed.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, swirling her ice cubes into a green whirlpool, glaring accusingly at me over the top. ‘ I was amazed how suddenly. You scuttled, Mother. I saw the whole thing.’

  ‘There was no whole thing to see.’

  ‘Your trouble,’ she went on as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘ is that you treat every man like a potential ravisher. It dates you that, you know.’

  This was really too much. ‘I’m sure it does, but then I’ve never tried to falsify my date.’

  ‘Not your age, no. But your attitude. Your conditioning.’

  ‘I can’t help that. You’d be the first to say I should be “comfortable” with what I do.’

  ‘I would.’ Mel put her glass down firmly and folded her arms. ‘And you’re not comfortable, are you? You’re absolutely determined to cut off your nose to spite your face.’

  ‘That’s not true! I’m having a wonderful time.’

  ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper – OK,’ she said, suddenly bored with taking issue with me. ‘OK. Anyway … the others were saying we should all go out to dinner together tonight. They booked the dhow for seven-thirty, on Ankatex. Are you up for that?’

  ‘Definitely – how sweet of them. What a treat.’ I gushed because in truth I was rattled. The invitation had come too close on the heels of her criticism. It was hard to show a proper appreciation of the one while still rocking in the wake of the other.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Look, in that case. If we’re going to party this evening, and you’re perfectly happy I’m going to nip up and deal with a bit of paperwork. The suggestion is that we meet in the foyer at six-thirty, how does that sound?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Oh, and by the way …’ Mel opened her bag. ‘ This came for you earlier, I’ve been carrying it about all day.’

  She handed me a postcard and rose, pointing at my half-eaten cake. ‘Leave some space for dinner.’

  The postcard was from Ben. Who else? Only Ben would think of sending a postcard from England to the United Arab Emirates saying: Riotous parties every night, case comes up next month. Hope you’re having a good one, give my love to the Melon and see you and the Sheikh at Terminal Four Friday a. m. Ben XX

  The picture was one of the Ernest Shepard illustrations from The House at Pooh Corner – Pooh, of course, accompanied by Kanga and Rabbit. I was sure no parody was intended.

  I hoped Mel hadn’t read the postcard and so hadn’t seen that ‘Melon’. As an adolescent she had for a short while been plump. The nickname, whose origins were not in her weight problem, had been immediately banned. Its occasional use these days was regarded by her father and brother as a kind of oblique compliment to her slimness, but I knew Mel didn’t see it that way.

  I re-read the few words a couple of times and put the card in my bag. Knowing how long mail – even airletters – took to get here from the UK, he must have posted it on the day I left. Bless him.

  By nine p.m. the dhow was furthest from the shore, way out by the harbour wall. We’d finished eating: a mediocre meal for which the Ankatex crowd had picked up an extortionate tab, but the food wasn’t wh
at we were paying for. A huge paper lantern of a moon, casting an endless net of stars, hung over a sea smooth as silk. The dhow didn’t seem to move so much as simply to breathe, and that so gently that it was barely perceptible. The crew had lit sandalwood burners, but the sweet warm smell was edged with something sharper where sand and salt met. To our left, at the end of the pale, curving arm of the harbour wall was this city’s only remaining ancient building, a turreted fort whose crumbling towers and minarets were like something from Edmund Dulac. Even the rebarbative skyscrapers of the city itself were transformed by the hour and the distance into twinkling piles of lights like fallen stars on the shoreline.

  We’d all gone a bit quiet. The younger ones sat around in that relaxed, touch-happy way that the young had these days – touch without commitment, closeness without the taint of intimacy: an enviable ease.

  I’d moved my chair slightly apart, and facing out across the bay. Mel threw down a tasselled cushion on the deck and sat cross-legged next to me. After a moment she said: ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’

  ‘Who …?’

  ‘Charles McNally. The great white shark?’

  How did she know that’s how I thought of them? ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a troubleshooter. Not office politics. Disasters – like Red Adair.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  I had an idea she gave me one of her despairing, sidelong smiles. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you would, he doesn’t go swimming in a yellow crash-hat and a flak jacket.’

  Back at the hotel they were all going for more drinks in the American Bar, but I cried off for an early night. Mel came with me as far as my room and outside the door I gave her a big hug. Though her arms went round me and her hands patted my shoulders, her body felt stiff and unyielding.

  ‘It’s been so lovely, darling,’ I said. ‘I can never thank you enough.’

  She stood back. ‘You already have.’

  ‘I can’t wait to get all my photos developed and show Ben.’