There was a kind of fruit punch served and very nice and refreshing it was too; and we were all quite thirsty what with the heat and the traveling and everything. And the almost-naked courier girls told us of all the interesting things to do, which was mainly a list of clubs that opened at midnight and were lively, and cool, and full of action. And then I began to feel a bit odd and as if the swimming pool had started to slide away, so I lay down for a while and closed my eyes.
When I woke up it was much darker and the others seemed to be dancing beside the swimming pool. There was very loud music.
Todd was lying on one of those slatted wooden deck chairs beside mine.
"They put a fair whack of vodka in that punch all right," he said appreciatively.
Vodka?
I had been drinking vodka in the afternoon, in this heat?
"You're a great old stayer, Vera, I'll give you that," said Glenn, who was holding his head. "I like a woman who can hold her drink. Personally I think I'm going to have to pace myself a bit. See you at dinner . . ."
Dinner? I thought I had slept through it. I thought it was bedtime. But maybe food was what I needed.
The dining room was decorated with paper flowers and you could sit where you liked. I sat beside Sharon, who was depressed and didn't want to eat. She told me that she fancied Glenn. But in the way of things, he didn't seem to see her. Only that noisy Todd came on to her and then he had passed out at the cocktails. Life was very hard, wasn't it?
I said it was, but that it was early days yet, maybe she was better off not to be fancied too soon. She brightened up at this and ate a huge dinner.
Just after midnight they all headed off to one of the interesting clubs down the road and I went to bed and passed out again.
Next morning I went down and swam three lengths of the pool and felt much better. I looked around for my new friends but none of them showed up. So I went back to the pool and read. I would normally have taken a walk and found an old church or museum but I didn't want the singles people to think I was being aloof. So I waited and waited and nobody turned up at all.
Then I thought there must have been Something Interesting arranged and I had missed it when I had sort of passed out from the vodka fruit punch the night before. One of the near-naked courier girls had given us her card in case of any problems, so I phoned her and wondered had I missed anything Interesting.
The near-naked girl sounded upset, annoyed almost, to be woken so early. Early? It was past midday, I had been up since eight. No, of course nothing was planned for the morning, she said. People didn't want anything in the
morning.
There would be a seafood buffet lunch anytime after two-thirty, which would be followed by water polo. It was all written up on the hotel notice board. And now if I would excuse her, she had to get back to sleep.
So I read my book and waited for the seafood buffet lunch. About 3 p.m. everyone started to appear, very tired still and hung over. They all had about three cups of black coffee and an occasional orange juice, which must have been breakfast, then they moved on to cold beers and ate mountains of prawns, squid and mussels. And then, amazingly, they all had the energy to play water polo. I don't think there were many real rules, it had a lot to do with removing the tops of other people's bikinis.
I watched it and said that I didn't usually take exercise for two hours after a meal. It used to be the way in the olden days. And they listened, interested, as if I were telling them news from the planet Mars.
And Sharon said that Glenn did fancy her a bit now, which was terrific, and I had been right to tell her to hang in there. And Todd told me that Sharon was a proper little slapper. And Alma said she thought that Todd was divine. And Glenn said to me that he thought this was a fantastic holiday and wondered, was I enjoying it? And because I was brought up to be polite and always to say that things were great even when they weren't, I said that I was loving it.
But the truth was that I didn't think there were all that many interesting things to do, and I was a bit too old for their kind of fun. Still there was the sea and the sun and nice people to have meals with, so while they were playing what they called water polo I went off and got postcards and sent them back to my friends in the Active Retirement Association, and to my cousins in Rossmore, to the Gardening in Later Years Group and the cardiac exercise class, saying it was all delightful. Which it mainly was.
I watched the fruit punch carefully the second evening and at
dinner Sharon confided that Glenn wanted to be with her even when they got back home. Todd said that Sharon was a tease, Alma said that Todd was only loud because no one had understood him. They all went to another cool club this time and I went off to bed.
I realized, of course, that I had the whole morning to do my kind of interesting things. Just as long as I was back for the seafood buffet lunch at three, no one would miss me. I went to the museum in the Old Town, which was delightful, and I saw a really old-fashioned hotel, completely unlike the rest of Bella Aurora. It was so different to all the very noisy places along the seafront, full of near-naked people, that I decided to go in and have a cup of coffee.
They served it in a big shady garden. This was much more my sort of place really, except that it would have been lonely here. And nobody's lives to get involved in as I had on my singles holiday.
In the hotel garden there was an older man in a sun hat doing a sketch. He nodded at me graciously and I nodded back, hoping that I was being gracious in return. Forty-eight hours with these wild young people had made me speak differently, think differently, almost. Eventually he came over and showed me the drawing.
"What do you think?" he asked.
I said it was excellent and that he had a great sense of detail.
He said that he was called Nick and he had been here for two days. It was a lovely hotel but quiet, and then of course everyone else was a couple. I sighed with him and said it was always a problem. He told me he was a widower with no children, he quite liked his own company but was not entirely happy as a retired person. I told him I had never married, and that because of discrimination against solo travelers, I had signed up for a singles holiday.
He was astounded.
"Aren't they for much younger people than us?" he said.
"It didn't say in the advertisement," I explained and this seemed to please him. He laughed and said I was a fine person.
I explained that of course they didn't get up until 3 p.m.
"And what are they doing?" Nick wondered.
I said that I honestly didn't know. I couldn't believe that they would
all
be having sex all morning, I assumed that they must stay up so late all night at these clubs that they were all exhausted.
Then Nick said I was a very interesting person and he wondered if I would have a late lunch with him. I explained that I had to be back for the seafood buffet lunch at three.
And he patted my hand as if I were an old friend.
"Well, please say you'll come back here tomorrow morning and we'll explore somewhere while the singles all sleep on?" he asked.
I said that would be great.
At the seafood buffet lunch, Alma said she and Todd had got together last night and it was great. I didn't inquire exactly what "got together" might mean. I just nodded enthusiastically. Sharon didn't know whether she should be easy or hard to get with Glenn. It was so difficult to know. I advised them as best I could. There was a wet T-shirt contest instead of water polo but it seemed more or less the same. At dinner Todd said that Alma was a slapper and Glenn seemed to have eyes only for one of the near-naked courier girls. They went off to another club and I went to bed and listened to the music coming from all over Bella Aurora.
I was looking forward to meeting Nick the next day. And then the days got into a very nice, easy rhythm.
Nick and I went out every day together. Sometimes we took a bus to various inland villages and on two occasions I skipped the 3 p.m. buffet lunch but I never missed the dinner.
"Could I come to the dinner one night?" he asked.
Nobody had ever brought a guest in so I said I'd have to inquire.
"I'd pay, of course, and bring some wine," he said.
"I'll tell them that," I reassured him.
One of the near-naked courier girls said it was not normally allowed but that it was no problem in my case. So I invited Nick.
"I'm a bit nervous, as if I were meeting your family," he said. I had told him about Todd and Glenn and Sharon and Alma and their complicated lives. I had told them nothing about Nick.
The night he came to dinner Glenn was kissing the near-naked courier girl instead of eating his dinner, Sharon was crying, Alma was telling everyone that Todd was a toe-rag.
"What is that exactly?" I asked.
"A scut," Alma said, which didn't make things any clearer.
Nick took it all in.
"It's the climate and the drink," he told Sharon. "Get Glenn away from the booze and the heat for a day, up to a nice shady village where you can talk without all this flesh around. You'll be fine."
And he told Todd to stop behaving like a horse's ass or he'd end up going home a total loser, and that nice girl was only calling him a toe-rag because she fancied him. And Nick came to dinner all the nights except the last one, where we went out by ourselves and discussed all the things we had in common.
He lived in Dublin and had a little car but he was nervous of motorways and only liked driving on back roads. Maybe he could drive me down to Rossmore and I could show him these famous woods that everyone was getting excited about.
"And I could meet your cousins," he said tentatively.
"They will disapprove of you, they disapprove of everyone and everything," I told him.
He thought this was great.
"What will I talk about to them?" he asked.
"They will interrogate you," I explained. "And then when they have found out enough, they will blind you with their views about a new bypass being a National Disgrace, and they will ask you to write letters to the papers about it."
"And is it a National Disgrace?" Nick asked.
"No, it's totally necessary, Rossmore is like a parking lot except you can't get in or out of it. Should have been done years ago."
"But this holy well?"
"It's a pagan shrine. The whitethorn is meant to have some kind of magic about it—farmers never want to cut it down. The whole thing is hysterical rubbish of the highest order."
Nick said he found me very entertaining. And wasn't it great that he only lived a short bus ride away from me, and how he had always wanted to learn about gardening but thought it might be too late and how I had always wanted to sketch but didn't know how to begin, and how liking your own company was good but liking someone else's was better.
The next day, when we were leaving, Glenn and Sharon were arm in arm, and Todd was carrying Alma's suitcase for her.
When the near-naked courier girl was checking us back into the bus she asked me would I be coming back on another singles holiday. I looked at her from under my flowery sun hat and said that next year I might well not qualify for a singles holiday at all.
Chez Sharon
Well, I just hated coming home from that holiday. Hated it, I tell you. When we were pushing the trolleys through Dublin airport I had a big knot in my stomach. I was dead sure it was all over now, a summer romance kind of thing. He'd say, "See you around," or he'd call me and then it would be finished. No lovely places to go like in Bella Aurora. Only desperate work and rain, and I'd never liked anyone as much as Glenn, not in my whole life, and I'm twenty-three now, so that's been a fair old life.
Anyway they were all shouting good-byes and kissing one another and swearing that they'd see one another in this club or that, and Glenn just stood there looking at me. I wished to God I could think of something to say instead of what was racing through my head, things like D
on't dump me, please, Glenn,
or
We
will be all right even back home when we have to go to work and
all . . .
I could only think of awful tying-down things—the things fellows dread to hear.
So I said eventually, "Here we are, then," which wasn't very bright. I mean, of course we were here. Where else would we be?
Glenn just smiled. "Indeed we are," he said.
"So it was great fun." I hoped I didn't sound too intense, too tying down.
"Yeah, but it's not over, is it?" Glenn asked anxiously.
"No way," I said and I knew I had this big silly grin all over my face.
Just then Vera came up to say good-bye.
"Nick will be coming back next week, he had a week longer than we all did, and I was going to have a few people round for a get-together in my house—a sort of reunion. You will come? Todd and Alma are coming. You have my address so it's Chez Vera, Friday of next week, then? About eight o'clock?"
"Shay Vera?" I asked foolishly.
She's dead nice, Vera, she'd never make a fool of you.
"It's a silly expression. It means . . . at the house of someone, Chez Moi at my house, Chez Vous at your house . . . It's just something we used to say a hundred years ago." She was apologetic under her ridiculous hat and with her faded jeans.
She waved as she went off to catch her bus. Funny little figure, yet everyone was mad about her—
and
she'd found herself a fellow.
Glenn said that his brother and some mates were coming in from Santa Ponsa in an hour's time and he was going to meet them in the bar. They'd give him a lift back to Chez Glenn. Would I like to wait and they'd drive me to Chez Sharon too?