Excess Baggage (21 page)

‘Sorry man, but it’s no competition with homegrown!’ Carol called as she opened the door and
hauled
Tula out after her. Just for good measure, she left the door wide open. Simon could hear voices in the corridor: Carol and Tula saying polite, professional good mornings to a group of guests as they passed his room. He closed his eyes, as if that made him invisible, and so missed seeing Colette and the gold lady’s son Tom passing by his open doorway. With his hands now over his mortified eyes, he also missed Colette looking in and taking in the sight of his rumpled bed and sad, exposed penis. It was a good thing he missed this because, instead of delicately pretending she’d seen nothing and averting her shocked young gaze, she ran off down the corridor, convulsed with laughter that was even louder than Carol’s.

Out by the pool at lunchtime everyone was talking about the hurricane. Plum tried to read her book but the sound of all this chatty semi-panic was making it hard to concentrate. There wasn’t anything any of them could do about it, and it was still a couple of days away so they might just as well all carry on enjoying their holiday. That daft girl Cathy wouldn’t stop crying about her wedding, an event that could surely go ahead as planned, so long as any fallen leaves and coconuts and bits of branch could be kept out of the photos.

Lucy, back from diving, had some news for everyone. ‘Henry says that a hotel on one of the other islands is closing till after the storm and transferring some of its guests over here. One of them is a major celebrity apparently.’

‘Ooh, Henry
says
. We are getting pally,’ Theresa commented. Lucy ignored her.

‘Leave it, Tess, he’s a very nice young man,’ Shirley said.

‘I hope he or she won’t expect celebrity treatment,’ Perry grunted. ‘Who is it anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it’s someone who travels with their own staff, cook and driver and stuff, so they won’t be in the restaurant bagging the best table and having us all pretending not to stare.’

‘It’ll be Madonna,’ one of the Steves suggested, from a nearby lounger. ‘I’d put a tenner on it. Dollars that is.’

‘Shall we run a sweep?’ Lucy suggested. ‘I’ll make a list.’ She reached into her basket for a notebook.

‘OK, go on then, I’ll go for Barbra Streisand,’ Plum said.

‘I’ll have Elton John,’ Mark decided.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Luke quipped. ‘Not for a million quid.’

‘I bet you would,’ Becky said. ‘I would.’

‘He wouldn’t want
you
.’

‘So who do you think it’ll be then?’ Shirley challenged him.

Luke thought for a moment. ‘A sportsman, someone with picky food needs. Gotta be a rich one, so I’ll go for Pete Sampras.’

‘And put me down for Shirley Bassey,’ Shirley said. ‘Then I won’t forget who I’ve picked.’

Two of the Steves argued over Madeleine Albright and settled it with the toss of a coin, the loser getting Leonardo DiCaprio. Cathy and Paul wasted twenty dollars putting themselves down for Lord Lucan and Elvis, the gold lady chose Luciano Pavarotti. Plum quietly opted for Julia Roberts on behalf of Simon, who seemed to have gone off for a wander. Thank goodness, she thought, as she handed over her twenty dollars to Lucy, they’d now all got something else to think about.

THERE WAS AN
oppressive sense of waiting. The atmosphere in the hotel complex veered between apprehension and overexcitement, reminding Lucy of those dreadful weeks of pre-Christmas inertia when the whole of life seems to be on hold till the dreaded event is over. Hotel guests, in a pointless panic far too soon, cancelled excursions they’d planned, as if while they were out across the island, looking round a batik workshop or sugar plantation, or birdwatching in the rainforest, the hurricane would swoop down from nowhere and slam mercilessly into action, destroying everything in its path. As rooms were cleaned that morning, staff had left large black bin liners on everyone’s pillows, along with instructions to seal their packed suitcases inside them to keep them waterproof during the storm. Guests picked the bags up, opened their doors and wandered into the corridors with them, looking for someone to share comment and speculation with. Some grumbled that the bags weren’t big enough, others that they needed at least six. Plum said nothing, for she was privately amazed that fully grown humans could make such a fuss about a bit of black plastic, as if they’d never seen anything like it before.

‘Do we get tidal waves then? Because if we do, it’ll
be
such a comfort to know that Theresa’s frocks are bin-bag safe,’ Mark said to Simon. Simon didn’t trust Mark’s sardonic amusement. He wanted to haul him into line, tell him he should take all this more seriously, but there wasn’t much chance that Mark would listen to him. He would just shrug and grin, and wander off with his hands in his pockets to spread himself out on a sunlounger with his eyes closed. It was something Simon had noticed about him, that he was very much on the edge of them all, as if they could reasonably expect no more input than his mere presence. Simon hoped he would be more use during the storm. After all, who knew what might need to be done: it could be anything from bailing seawater out of rooms to keeping a game of cards going to distract the children (and here Simon’s brain sneakily extended the phrase to women-and-children, as in
first
) through the worst of the wind. The way Mark was being just now, he’d probably just huddle in a corner under a damp towel, reading his Len Deighton as if things were no worse than a wet weekend in Torquay.

‘We should get the Jeeps back to the town today,’ Simon said to Lucy as soon as they’d finished breakfast, two days before the storm was due. ‘After all, you never know.’

Lucy had planned to drive herself and Colette to the eastern, wilder side of the island to see the pelicans that Henry had told her lived on the high jagged rocks below which the fish were big and plentiful. She did not intend to have her day spoiled by Simon’s overcaution. ‘But we do know, don’t we Simon? Meteorology isn’t just a matter of hanging a bit of seaweed out of the window.’ She led him to the noticeboard by the reception desk where the manager had placed a map of the surrounding islands with the
course
of the hurricane clearly marked by a blue line. Every few hours another cross would be added and the blue line extended as information was updated from the local radio news station.

‘See? There’s a hurricane report every fifteen minutes and it’s still forty-eight hours away, and might even miss us if it goes a bit to the north. Unless you know better.’

She could see him flinch from her sarcasm, which made her feel bad. Simon was still too easy to tease. When she’d been small she’d been horrid enough to take advantage of his sheer niceness to her, secure as she was in her role as his cute and much-indulged little sister. It was as if she was practising bits of joky spite in case she needed the skill later. It was certainly useful for defence against the sniping girls at school who jibed at her for being driven to school each day in a series of her father’s showroom cars, gleaming vehicles so upmarket that their parents disguised their envy with sneering remarks, which never failed to be passed on to her. With Simon, she’d specialized in blurting out statements guaranteed to embarrass him in front of his friends. She felt ashamed now to recall what a little monster she’d been at the age of eight, asking his gawky adolescent friends, in a tone of calculated faux innocence, if they had stinky feet like Simon’s and sprayed Body Mist in their shoes every day like he did, and if they did, had they, like him, ever got it wrong and accidentally used oven cleaner? Their laughter and his blushes had been such a horribly satisfying reward.

She squeezed his tanned arm. ‘Come out with us to see the pelicans, Simon. I’ll drive, it’ll be fun, just you and me and Colette.’

‘No, no, you two go on your own,’ he said, frowning
out
at the benevolent sunlight beating down on the deceptively placid turquoise sea. Lucy couldn’t help smiling. He looked so much as if he was puzzling out a way to get all this complicated weather back under control, make it do what it was supposed to do and be kind to his holiday. She could hardly blame him for his anxiety, whenever it happened the storm could be catastrophic. But, however much Simon fretted, it wasn’t going to happen today.

Out by the pool, the timid tourists who’d decided to stay put for the duration drifted around aimlessly, already wondering if they’d been overcautious. They’d spend an hour on a lounger staring into the distance but not really focusing. They ordered mid-morning rum punches instead of their usual fruit ones (well, as they weren’t going anywhere, what did it matter?), flicked through paperbacks, too twitchy to read properly, and then got up and stretched and went off to wander a hundred yards along the beach before scurrying back in case Armageddon should strike while they were out of sight of the beach bar. The Steves had taken to wearing their watches again, and to hell with the stripey tan, just so they could keep an eye on the progress of the hours. Perry told Shirley they looked as if they were doing a collective countdown for NASA.

‘You’d think the Grim Reaper was waiting behind the big tamarind tree,’ Henry commented as he and Lucy and Oliver banged nails into the boards that would protect the dive shop’s door and windows.

‘Too right. You should have seen them all after supper last night, drinking themselves into oblivion in the Sugar Mill bar as if they were about to be called up to fight World War Three. There was a wonderful gospel choir out on the verandah and some idiot with
a
sort of drunk-reverence voice said it was so much, more appropriate than reggae.’

‘Well that’s kinda natural and pagan, don’t you think? Having a crack at appeasing the gods.’

Lucy laughed. ‘I think it would take more than a few hymns.’

‘Yeah, and you know I never thought it was right, the way in churches having a good voice for singing meant like you were somehow closer to being holy. The time we lived in England, my dad used to take me to the local church and I always wondered what it was about the choirboys that made them saintly enough to dress up in angel frocks. I ended up scared that if you couldn’t sing, you were gonna go straight to hell.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t forget I’ve heard you sing!’ That first morning, with Henry up the tree, seemed months ago.

Oliver cut in, ‘He can’t even do happy birthday right!’

‘I’ll be able to see if you’re right on Tuesday, Oliver. It’s Becky’s birthday. She’ll be seventeen.’

‘And I get to be there for the cake and the singing?’ Henry asked. Lucy hesitated. Somehow Henry had become her friend, one she could now hardly imagine being without. Perhaps she’d gone too far, casually inviting him to join in with a family event. She bit her lip and bent to hammer a low nail so he couldn’t see her face.

‘You could come if you like, you and Oliver,’ she said. ‘Glenda too if she’s around. It’s just a cake and a quick drink before dinner.’ She looked up and smiled at him. ‘After all, it’s not as if you don’t know Becky.’

‘Sure I do, the little rum punch girl with too much thirst and dangerous taste in men.’ Henry grinned. ‘OK, I’ll be there, see if being one year older is making
her
a year wiser about men and alcohol.’

Lucy laughed. ‘At seventeen? I doubt it.’ Or even at twenty-seven, or not far off thirty-seven, for some of us, she thought.

As she worked, Lucy could hear from the sea’s edge the shrill, tense sound of Theresa taking care of her own children. Marisa had now negotiated for herself a good number of hours off to coincide with those of her smart nanny friend. Lucy had noticed that the two girls seemed to be getting a wicked thrill out of sprawling on loungers within sight of their employers, watching them making a hash of child-care, for the small children seemed gloriously inclined to play up far more to a parent than to a professional. The Norland girl’s family consisted of a pair of serious-faced chartered accountants who tended their baby with meticulous over-concern. It seemed to require both of them to have hands-on (or fingers-on, for they handled this child and its accoutrements with nervous delicacy) input for even the simple task of changing a nappy. Marisa and her friend sat with sly smiles as they peeped over the tops of the hotel’s old copies of the
National Enquirer
at these two struggling with tissues and lotions, wet-wipes and the wriggling, uncooperative child, and solemnly debating the tightness or otherwise of the nappy’s fasteners.

Lucy, the boarding-up of the windows finished, sat on the sand next to Henry and sipped at a can of orange juice. She watched Theresa skipping about in the waves with her three giggling infants and wondered if Colette ever felt she’d missed out by being an only child. She’d always seemed to be such an independent girl, content to read or draw by herself rather than slop about being bored and pouty and whining for perpetual entertainment in the classic only-child manner.
In
school holidays, she’d never complained about being hauled out of bed early in the morning to accompany Lucy to whichever house was being painted, often to spend the day in a draughty unheated room, huddled cosily beneath dust sheets with a pile of apples and a book. It crossed Lucy’s mind, too, that Colette hardly ever watched television at home, partly because of the mountainous quantity of homework the school liked to set, but also because if the TV was off, it simply didn’t occur to her to switch it on when she was absorbed in a book.

‘Oliver, do you watch television a lot?’ she asked him. He looked puzzled for a moment, as if she’d asked him something weird like did he spend time looking for aliens in the sky.

‘Cartoons and stuff, sometimes, not much, movies I like. Oh and cricket when it’s us.’ He shrugged. ‘Glenda thinks it’s, what does she say Dad? Oh yeah, “a sorry waste of youth”.’ He exaggerated Glenda’s English accent and he and Henry laughed.

‘Just do it in the sea, Ella!’ Theresa’s voice cut through the laughter. Ella wailed something incomprehensible.

‘No, just where you are, just sit in the sea, Ella sweetie. No, really, we don’t need to go all the way back to the room.’ An even louder wail from Ella told those on the sand that she didn’t agree. The naked child, palely tanned all over now in spite of the Factor 25, splashed away from her mother to the edge of the sea. ‘Sweetie, just sit down and do it there, do a wee-wee now, darling, it’s all right, no-one will know.’