‘At least it’s sandy here. It makes getting in a bit easier, not having to balance on the stones. But Christ it’s cold.’ Sal considered returning to the beach, wishing that it was not a blue and white striped bikini she was wearing but a wetsuit. Had it got colder than before? After a few seconds, she saw Gioia fling herself in, her schoolgirl breaststroke taking her to the area of darker water on the left. She looked away, in the opposite direction, to where the beach was more populated. People were paddling on the edges, playing games on the sand. Now she was warming up, she thought she might try and swim out so that she could see what was on the other side of the rocks.
Annie had watched the two walk towards the sea, laughing to herself about the contrast between them – little and large. Little? Even though Sal was small, somehow ‘little’ was never a word anyone would use about her. She could see that Gioia was splitting off in one direction, while Sal had the determined movements of someone embarking on a proper swim rather than a paddle. Now that the sun had broken through, it was hard to use watercolour, as the paint dried so quickly. She tipped the dirty water out of a plastic mug, fascinated by the ants that emerged from the sand and scurried from where it sank in. What was it they said about ants? How there were billions of them and they were going to take over the world one day? That must have been something Kendra had told her.
She saw Gioia wave and waved back automatically, even though the swimmer wouldn’t be able to see her as she was facing out to sea. Then Gioia’s arm rose up again. That was odd. Why did she keep waving? At the same time, she saw Sal – she was pretty sure it
was Sal, although it was hard to be certain in this light – turning towards Gioia. But where was Gioia now? She wasn’t where she had been only moments before. Annie stood up sharply, tugging at her bikini bottom as she walked quickly towards the water’s edge. Now Sal was waving too. She started to run.
Sal could see Gioia was struggling as soon as she turned towards her to check out where she was going. The more Gioia tried to swim, the more she seemed to be stuck. She’d occasionally disappear under the swell only to emerge, but she clearly was not in control. Sal immediately struck out to help, but there was a different, stronger pull of the water the nearer she came to Gioia, and her powerful crawl became more futile as she started to feel the drag from underneath. She was being pulled in different directions and it was almost impossible to get anywhere. But she focused on the splash around Gioia – not that far from her now but, all the same, in these conditions, too far. She was desperate to reach her but she simply wasn’t fast enough. It was like a dream where you can’t move, no matter how hard you try. She remembered what she had heard about currents. Rip tides, that was it. She had to stop battling to swim towards the beach and start swimming parallel to the shore. That was the way you dealt with them. They’d never make it if they kept heading for the beach. She finally reached Gioia, hooked her arms around her and dragged her like a bag of coals, unwieldy, unhelpful. All her instincts made her want to turn towards the land. Gioia was an incredible weight, and she wasn’t moving. Sal couldn’t keep this up for much longer. It would be so lovely just to stop. So much easier. Her legs were being pulled by the strong undertow. She was going to have to let go of Gioia if she was to stand any chance herself. Then she was sunk under a large wave that washed over them, filling her mouth with water, and her nose. It was impossible to keep hanging on.
If the boat had arrived a minute later, Gioia would tell anybody who might be listening, ‘It would have been curtains. Total curtains.
’Course I would have been a goner ages back, if it hadn’t been for Sal.’
The boat – a tiny motorized dinghy – had been commandeered from further along the beach by Kendra. Returning from the car, she had been tempted to go for a short stroll but, without her flip-flops, the hot sand was hard work. Turning back to where they had picnicked, she looked towards the rocks to see if Sal and Gioia were still in the sea. She hadn’t been sure, but she thought that a figure to the far left might be Gioia. It was almost impossible to tell, but whoever it was was waving. It would be strange if it was Gioia, as she never normally swam out that far. She wasn’t that confident yet. Maybe Sal had encouraged her. It would be good if they were bonding in the water. But then she realized that that wasn’t what was happening. She ran. ‘Not waving but drowning’ – it was a cliché, but the words were insistent, drumming through her as she bolted down the beach towards two boys who were pushing their boat from the shallows on to the sand.
‘I need you!’ she screamed. ‘I need that boat. We have to go out. My friend’s in trouble.’ Although the boys could not understand English, they grasped the urgency of the message as she crashed into the water, grabbing the boat herself, and gestured crazily in the direction of the figure she thought was Gioia. The dinghy bounced out, Kendra urging them to go faster, faster, and as they got closer it was obvious that she had been right. On the surface the sea looked unusually flat compared to the usual crashing waves, but Kendra could tell from the boys’ faces as they got nearer to where Sal was trying to drag Gioia towards the rocks that they were frightened too. It was taking for ever to get there. Jesus, now Annie was in the water as well, swimming out in the direction of Sal and Gioia. She shrieked, ‘Go back! Go back! The tide.
Don’t swim there!
’
Annie appeared to have got Kendra’s screamed message and stopped where she stood, waist high in the sea.
This couldn’t be happening, Kendra thought briefly. It couldn’t be. It happened to other people, hapless people that you read about
in the paper. Drowning wasn’t what happened to people you knew. Her hair kept blowing in front of her eyes as she tried to focus on the figures in the water ahead. As they drew up beside them, the smallness of the dinghy made the business of leaning over to try to grab them both precarious and slow. Gioia first, eventually hauled over the sides like a porpoise by all three of them, then Sal. They were all piled on top of each other, Gioia motionless and Sal gasping and spluttering, as the boat headed back to the beach, where the shore was now lined with observers. The ball games ceased, parents hugged their children to them and the shallows were completely empty as everyone stood to watch the drama. Kendra leant over her girlfriend, her lips on Gioia’s unresponsive mouth, in the most important kiss of her life.
‘She would have died without you, Sal.’ Kendra poured out small glasses of syrupy Portuguese sherry to compensate for the lack of warmth of the basic furnishings and plastic blinds of the flat. ‘I suppose I’d better not offer you this, but nobody could say you don’t deserve a drink. The doctor in the hospital said we got to her just in time.’ If she started to cry now, she might not stop.
She craved somewhere comfortable, a deep bath even. She hadn’t had a bath since the day they arrived. How good would it feel to soak and then emerge to a big soft towel instead of standing under the trickle from their shower next to the sticky shower curtain? It was trivial, after what had happened, but that was what she really wanted. Annie was hugging her knees under a huge sweater while Sal sat with Kendra at a fold-up table, the wooden slats more suited to a garden than inside.
‘Well, she’s all right now,’ Sal replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified as when I realized what was happening. Thank God I remembered about the tides. The Algarve’s renowned for them, rip tides. They occur at different times of year. They should have warnings. It’s ridiculous not to, on a public beach like that.’
‘They probably do on the bigger beaches round the main tourist parts – nearer Albufeira maybe – but we were at more of a locals’
hang-out. It’s still unsupervised. Of course, thinking back, maybe everyone knew the water might be dangerous. Nobody was swimming out further down the beach – they were just paddling around in the shallows. Fucking lethal. Literally.’ Kendra rubbed her eyes. ‘That was one freaky experience. Gioia might have died. It’s only just sinking in.’
‘If we hadn’t been here, you probably wouldn’t have gone for that picnic, would you?’ asked Annie, as she sipped the sherry, its treacly texture almost medicinal.
‘Who knows?’ Kendra asked. ‘What does it matter? Maybe.’
‘I’m just thinking about it. That’s all. No reason. Gioia will be out of hospital tomorrow, won’t she, Ken?’
‘So they say. Imagine if it had happened without you two here. I’d be having to deal with tonight alone, and all the what-ifs that keep going around in my head. It makes me think how vulnerable I am with no one other than Gioia here.’ Kendra considered her surroundings, the table more suited to the garden, the chairs tinny and uncomfortable. It wasn’t really like a home, more like a campsite. Perhaps that’s what she and Gioia were doing after all. Camping.
‘Well, we
are
here, and Gioia’s going to be fine. I know she is,’ said Annie. ‘Things like this make you think, don’t they? About everything. Even before today I’ve been trying to work out Charlie and me. When you get away from the day to day, you see things differently. It’s easy on holiday to think you want to change your life, but this is more than that. Charlie and me haven’t been right for ages now. I don’t need some spooky Tarot reader, I can see the future all by myself. Something’s got to give. I hate to hear myself say this to you, before saying it to him. It feels so disloyal – he is my husband – but events like today … I know it’s a cliché … but it makes you realize how precarious life is and how you have to get it right. Maybe I’ll change my mind again tomorrow, but I think I have to leave him.’
Both Sal and Kendra were silenced by Annie’s admission of the failure of her marriage. It was the first time she’d said it. Neither thought it would be helpful to agree. Experience had shown them
all that, when it came to the question of friends’ lovers, it was always a better idea to wait and see what happened before jumping in and saying that you’d never liked them anyway.
‘And it’s not like we’ve got kids or anything to keep us together.’ Annie’s laugh was more of a snort. ‘I guess Tania was right when she said “Everybody’s got to get a first marriage under their belt” when I told her I was getting married. It sounded horribly unromantic at the time.’
‘Do you really think you’ll leave him?’ Sal probed. She’d been warned against making hasty decisions when she came out of rehab, but she supposed this was not exactly hasty and, of course, it wasn’t Annie who had been in rehab. It had probably been a long time coming. ‘Are you sure it’s not just a holiday thing?’
‘I’ve changed since I met Charlie. Before, I thought having a husband would make me happy. Now I’ve got one I realize it doesn’t work like that. Or it hasn’t in my case. They’re not a solution, and I feel foolish having thought that way. You can’t expect a husband to make things right for you, and poor Charlie is just making things wrong. I suppose that means I don’t love him.’ There didn’t seem to be much to add.
‘Christ, this is getting heavy. Gioia nearly drowns and now you’re about to leave your husband.’ Sal jumped up. ‘Any chance of dinner? Some of us can’t rely on the booze to lighten the mood.’ Kendra didn’t speak as she cleared the glasses and screwed the cork back into the bottle.
Kendra pulled cutlery from the drawer disguised in the marble counter in her parents’ kitchen, laying knives and forks on a tray to carry into the dining room next door. She’d always craved a kitchen table as a child, somewhere she could sit and have tea and do homework, but Marisa and Art had favoured the counter, with its high stools and view into the garden.
‘Can you let them in?’ she shouted to Gioia at the sound of the doorbell. The rhythm of Gioia’s tread, now so familiar, sounded on the stone floor of the house. Kendra knew exactly how long it would take her to walk from the snug to the door. First Sal and then Annie came into the kitchen, followed by the cold air that descended with the arrival of December.
‘Wow,’ Sal said, her boots scattering dirt from the pavement on to the clean kitchen floor. ‘It’s weird you being here, isn’t it?’
‘It’s good timing. They went to Dad’s brother for Thanksgiving, so we’ve got the place to ourselves.’
Sal flicked through a copy of the Bruno Bettelheim paperback Kendra had left on the counter, commenting on her obvious note-taking on the pages. ‘So you’ve already started on the reading list.’
‘Sort of. It’s going to take ages to qualify, but I’ll be able to do a bit of initial counselling work with children after a year.’
Sal flicked her cigarette ash into the steel sink. ‘You could fit my whole flat into this room.’ Nobody could dispute Sal’s statement.
‘But that flat’s yours.’ Annie had perched herself on one of the stools after removing her long coat. ‘And that’s what counts.’
‘Who would have thought it – me, a fully signed-up member of the property-owning class? And even getting a thrill from buying a set of saucepans. Tragic really.’ Taking on the mortgage was the
first time Sal had committed to any form of long-term planning, but she had surprised herself with the discovery that, having spent her whole life trying to escape her Cheltenham childhood, she now wanted to create a home of her own. The oddest things gave her satisfaction. She had got a kick the first time she had seen a utility bill in her own name. And she liked the fact that, tiny as the basement flat was, it was new, streamlined, functional, a fresh canvas. It was easier for her to live somewhere without any resemblance to the flats she had hung out in before, in her nocturnal existence. No rooms permanently curtained against potential daylight, no strangers around coffee tables strewn with silver foil and whiskey bottles when dawn broke, no more front-door intercoms that buzzed through the night.
‘Mum and Dad were so keen to have us when I told them we were coming back, and it made sense. Just for a while. And it’s only till we get ourselves sorted out.’ Kendra looked at Gioia, who was removing the lids from cartons of takeaway, vaguely wondering whether Marisa would be so enthusiastic if she could see the red colouring from the curry dripping on the counter. ‘We’ve got the top floor, and there’s another bedroom up there stuffed with the furniture that Gioia had in the old flat. It pleases Mum to think she’s got a commune here. She’s decided to ditch the Thursday-evening parties, but now she’s saying it’s all about soirées – “Smaller, darling. More of a cultural exchange. Your father and I are so privileged, we feel it’s incumbent on us to provide a forum and, God knows, we rattle around in this place.”’ Kendra mimicked Marisa’s deep drawl, but the bitterness she had felt towards her mother previously was now replaced by amusement.