Читать книгу Being Shelley - Qarnita Loxton - Страница 14

Saturday, 17 February

‘Kids loved it – you should come in next time. Show them Mom is more than a pretty seashell on the sand,’ he said with a little wink, coming up to stand to the side of me as I sat in my low plastic beach chair. He was two metres of lean muscle and cheeky grin in a black-and-grey wetsuit. Have I already said cheeky? ‘Surprised no-one’s tried to pick you up.’ At the punchline, he dropped his tongue out like a Rolling Stone, smiling, eyes on me. I had to laugh along, a bad joke if ever there was one, but, looking at him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d had more than his fair share of success with the worst jokes. It was hot on the beach, make no mistake. And it was only partly due to the heatwave sun that was too strong for my skin, burning my shoulders and roasting the V of décolletage above my swimsuit top. Without the umbrella, my legs were also long ago turned into boiled sausages. I did my best to stay cool under my hat.

‘Well, they could try, but I’m a bit of a handful, you know,’ I cheeked him back with my own smile, peering over the top of my Pradas at him. ‘They’d need to have big,’ I paused, ‘muscles.’ What fun! I felt like I was twenty. I’d been master of this kind of rubbish talk; it was how I’d got those massive tips when I was a waitress. I was pleased to see I still had some of it left in me; I couldn’t remember when last I’d traded this kind of chat with a man. Fine, Wayde was a boy, but it was still a rush. Jerry used to love the crazy talk, but we knew all each other’s lines so there was no point with him. Wayde laughed more, a half-chuckle at my comeback.

‘I’m sure you are,’ he said, showing no embarrassment as I watched the seawater stream in tiny rivers down his neoprened body onto his bare feet. I stopped short of letting my eyes follow the water into the region of his groin, though from my low beach chair it was straight in my line of vision, lying there slightly to the left in the rubber. I choked down a laugh at myself and twisted towards the shivery body of Stacey. Pull yourself together, old lady. It’s not as if groinage is something any woman is ever desperate to see – it’s why we laugh at it. But I’m not that weird. Everyone likes to look at what we’re not supposed to, especially if it’s there and we don’t have anything better to occupy ourselves with. I picked a hooded towel out of my beach bag for Stacey, glad to have something to pretend to fuss over. I could feel small drops of cold water land on my bare legs as Wayde peeled and snapped the wetsuit sleeves off his arms. I ignored it, but it was as welcome as rain in the oven of the twelve-thirty sun.

‘Yes, Mommy, you must come,’ the traitorous Stacey chimed in in her baby voice that I loved from under the towel I was drying her hair with. ‘You can jump the scissor waves with us.’ I pretended I was thinking while I tucked the towel around her body, over her wetsuit. I was going to leave the kids in their wetsuits and stuff them straight into the Range Rover for the short drive home. Jerry would moan about the sand and puddles of water, but he was the only one who could get them out of the rubber straitjackets.

‘That would be so nice, but,’ I let out a big sigh, as if it were the greatest sacrifice ever, ‘it wouldn’t be fair. Wayde is here especially to help you with your bodyboards and maybe you’ll even learn to surf. And you know, Stacey, my girl, I want him to have all his attention on you and Harley. I don’t want to distract him and spoil it for you.’ I gave her body a little squeeze. Ignored the frown on her face. ‘Harleyyy,’ I called out to the other little body that belonged to me. He was crouched down, head bowed, hands digging in the wet sand a little way in front of us. I’d shouted too loudly, judging from the way that the mom three umbrellas down looked at me. Harley didn’t flinch, didn’t look up. You’d think he was deaf. ‘Come,’ I waved, ‘we’re going home now.’

‘Nooo!’ Stacey shouted right in my bloody ear, her grump come to life. ‘Wayde said we could build a castle. You want to go to the shop with Aunty Di again.’

Harley’s hearing returned miraculously and he turned his head towards me to nod, tears filling his eyes.

‘It’s cool, you don’t have to rush – I did say that. I only let them in the water for an hour because I wanted them to enjoy it and not get miserable tired. The full lesson is usually an hour and a half, but they are too little, so I do owe you some time,’ Wayde said from my side.

‘Oh, okay, thanks … I do need to get home, though. I’ve still got to get them lunch and then I’ve got to get to the shop.’ I shrugged, feeling the skin on my shoulders tight with the sunburn. ‘But if you can do a ten-minute sandcastle that will give me time to get all my stuff back in the car.’ I turned to look up at him. Hell’s bells. Even zoomed in, that profile pic hadn’t done Wayde justice. With the top half of the wetsuit off, he only needed to be eating ice cream for the whole thing to be pornographic, or an ice cream ad at least. His hair dripped water onto his bare chest, and the wetsuit was stretched down so far from his waist I could almost be sure there were no swim pants under there. Fluffs of dark hair between his pecs. And abs. A bunch. A clutch? I’m not sure what you call a set of abs that you’re trying not to look at long enough to count. But I saw enough to notice that it all ended in a V shape that pointed into his pants. Dr Lily once told me it’s where the abdominal muscles meet hip flexors. Whatever – I’ve heard them called fuck-me lines. Seems right. Even Kari would have to agree that no ways anyone could call those ‘flower-me’ lines.

Maybe ‘deflower-me’ lines would be an appropriate name.

‘Yes, sure,’ he said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘I’m not in a hurry to leave the beach.’ I wouldn’t be either if I had abs like those to show off. I’d have to steal a photo for ABS – surely that would get them to reply instantly. I felt Stacey tug at me, reminding me I am a mother, not a woman who is allowed to stare at anyone’s abs.

‘Mooommm …’ she got ready to start again.

‘We can’t stay long, lovey, remember I told Dad we would go somewhere for lunch before I go to the shop,’ I said to her, trying to sneak a warning into my voice the way mothers do. We hope the kid will be cowed miraculously into behaving by the sharpness hidden in our smiles. It never works. ‘Ten minutes, that’s all, then we have to go,’ I shouted out at Harley. He’d gone predictably deaf again, unlike the mom three umbrellas down.

‘Why’d he get ten minutes and not me?’ said Stacey, flinging the towel into the sand. ‘I want twenty ten minutes.’ Out came her three-year-old understanding of time, plus the tilt of the head and the cute pout that floors Jerry.

‘Fine, ten minutes, both of you. Starting now.’ Stacey bolted to the sand next to Harley, and Wayde turned to follow her. Somehow, despite their genes, my children had turned out to be of those people, I thought as I lugged my overstuffed Seafolly beach bag up to my car in the Small Bay parking lot. They were among those people who love the beach. They jump in the waves, build sandcastles, enjoy every minute of it. At least kids don’t talk about it. All they do is nag to go to the beach. The adult versions, they go on about the sound of the sea. Or the feel of sand under their feet, or the experience of how being in the ocean fixes everything. Some get spiritual. Once, on our way to Langebaan, we drove through Melkbosstrand and saw a group of people in white clothes walk into the water for some kind of sea baptism. I simply don’t get it. Not the spiritual part (Jerry says I have a hole in my soul that I fill with shopping), or the sea part. I can look at the waves and all that, but mostly it’s just a wet and scary wild thing. I’m not from Cape Town; I didn’t grow up with it – that’s my excuse. It is beautiful, and I love it here; it is, after all, the place I chose to live when I couldn’t be in Joburg any more. I just don’t get the obsession with the sea (or the mountain, or the weather for that matter). I’ll surely be lynched for saying it, but Cape Town is like a baby – if it’s not windy, it’s wet – and then when you’re ready to chuck it, out comes a stunning day and all is forgiven. I can’t remember where I heard that, but it has stuck with me. Fine, it’s less wet now with the drought, but it’s still like a baby. Something is always up. Give me the predictability of a good mall, the surprise of a sale, the drama of a Highveld storm and the adventure of a bush game drive over a sandy beach any day.

As for the sea, you can keep the sea. I know people think that living so close to the beach means that I love it, that I am automatically an expert at this whole sand thing and that we are at the beach all the time. Theoretically, that could be true, but even after all these years, I still forget my umbrella. I pack too many things we don’t need and I bring food that no-one wants to eat. Before the twins, you could say Jerry and I were at the beach all the time – if sitting in Pakalolo Cocktail Bar at the Table View Marine Circle across from the beach and watching the kite surfers counted. We liked to enjoy the beach from a safe distance rather than being at the beach, like I am today, bum hovering over the sand in my beach chair. I suppose I could’ve gone home to get an umbrella instead of just sitting frying in the sun while I watched Wayde and the twins in the water. It would’ve been a quick trip. Beach View Estates is literally the estate security station and a small traffic circle from Eden on the Bay, Big Bay and Small Bay beaches.

But I couldn’t leave. Since the kids, I’ve got worse; it seems that my safe distance from the beach has increased in direct proportion to the number of times we’ve been to the beach with them. Jerry doesn’t get it, though he should because he is a shite swimmer, but I panic when Harley and Stacey are in the water. It freaks me out properly. I am so not a person who panics, but on those days when I give in and bring them to the beach, I have a tiny meltdown. Jerry thinks I am putting it on, but I worry – flowering flowers, I worry about the kids. What if they go into the water too deep? What if a wave throws them off balance? Sucks them in. What if it happens so fast that I can’t get to them? What if it happens to both at the same time? What if I can’t get to either? Or to both? They’ve been going to BabySwim since they were six months old, for God’s sake, so they swim like little fish. But the sea? I’m not ready for them to swim with the fishies.

Today was different. Today was as close to relaxed as I’ve ever been at the beach with the kids. I wasn’t ankle deep in freezing water, clutching a little hand in each of mine, or sitting on the sand shouting because Jerry wasn’t holding their hands tightly enough. Today, even my black Seafolly boyleg one-piece sucked and lifted in the places I wanted it to. The whole morning felt like a miracle. I’d known that Wayde would be good – I didn’t check his references for Coffee & Cream, but I sure as hell did before I let him take Harley and Stacey into the sea. I found out that he used to be a lifesaver at Big Bay, and every mother I messaged said she and her kids loved him. The more I watched from the beach, the more I zoomed in on photos I took, the more I realised he was better than good. He was flippin’ great. He let Harley ride on his back like a sea monkey. Pulled the bodyboard by its leash in the shallows as Stacey hung on. Played with them so much until even I felt free enough for him to push them on the bodyboard for a ride on the white water all the way to the sand. Wayde had done the impossible and made it a happy morning at the beach, my personal anomaly.

‘I can carry the last things,’ Wayde called to me as I arrived back at our spot on the sand, pointing at my beach chair and bag full of snacks that neither of the kids wanted. Eventually, thirty minutes after my first ten-minute sandcastle allowance, we all made our way across the hot sand and the sharp shells to the parking lot. What a great morning, I thought as I felt my swimsuit bottom munch into my bum. I couldn’t do anything about it as I walked up to the car, holding onto Stacey with one hand and Harley with the other, Wayde behind us with the chair and the bag. To let the kids go would be to lose them back to the sand. Maybe it was sunstroke, or the thrill of our little nudge-nudge, wink-wink chat, but I might have swayed an extra sway as a thought jumped in my head, thankfully not out my mouth.

Go on, get yourself an eyeful, Wayde, my boy; you would be so lucky to see my bum on this beach. See how you like them apples.

Thank God Di couldn’t see into my head. I didn’t know what this thing with Wayde was, but it was possibly not the ‘good for business’ thing I promised her.