Homesickness (2 page)

‘Have you tried that local brew they've got here yet?'

Before North could answer (‘No') Atlas was on his feet.

‘Jump!' he shouted. ‘Now!' Grinning, nodding he made mock charges towards the girl on the diving board. ‘Excuse me,' he said to North.

He sat down, shaking his head.

‘There's one for you. She's a character.' The girl sat on the end of the board and turned her back on him. ‘Did you see one of her tits fall out before?'

‘No,' said North.

He immediately regretted saying it. He wasn't interested.

‘Only one,' Atlas explained. ‘Her top slipped off. Phew, it almost knocked my eye out. Ver-ee nice! Sasha is her name. Sasha-somebody. She has a friend, an actress if you don't mind! And I thought it was her bloody mother.'

Only one swimmer now travelled the pool. It took a lap to see who this was: Hofmann, Kenneth Hofmann, without the glasses. And he was further altered by the Australian crawl. It requires the mouth to regularly twist sideways for breathing, giving the swimmer the appearance of a sergeant shouting to men behind him. Hofmann's etherised wife still lay facing the sun, her mouth pulled slightly to one side (similar to her swimming husband's).

About then Kaddok came shuffling in, holding onto his wife. A number of people stopped in mid-sentence or lowered their voices. He had one hand slightly outstretched and his black suit was dusty. They'd been outside. As they passed she bowed slightly at North and smiled—energetic teeth! Kaddok's suit was buttoned up and one hand cupped his camera. Alongside the blue transparent pool he looked out of place.

Thud-bang again. Garry Atlas showed them how it was done. Most looked up: a reflex action. And sure enough he held them by staying under for an inordinate length of time, finally standing up ankle-deep with a gasp and swaying, blowing his nose.

In the midst of such activity Sheila Standish had put on her cardigan and dated only one postcard. Doug had said ‘Howdy' and commented briefly on the climate, the exchange rate he had managed to get at the hotel, and their holiday last year, a caravan tour around Tasmania. Nothing of course compared to this trip which he called the Big-Un.

Hello? Louisa Hofmann had sat up and leaned back on her elbows. Other eyes had turned to the glass door.

A man wearing a vivid blue suit and holding a silver microphone had come through giving loud instructions over his shoulder in a language only Phillip North understood. He was stopped short. ‘
Merde! Allons!
' Small as it was the microphone wire had caught under the door. One of the waiters—they were all crowding the door now—silently sprang forward and freed it. Then came four young men each with a neat black moustache and carrying various bits of equipment, some of it heavy. One had the TV camera on his shoulder and trailed cables. A red-haired girl wearing a silk shirt and no brassière held a clipboard. Garry Atlas had been about to do another jack-knife but changed his mind.

For the first time Hofmann murmured something to his wife. Both sat up looking at the door.

The redhead acted all stuck-up. She had her back to them while the man in blue strode over to the edge of the pool. They noticed then he had a pink unnaturally perfect complexion, and beautifully combed hair. His crew stumbled after him. At the chrome steps he stopped with his back to the camera, ran his tongue over his teeth several times, and slipped on a pair of rose-tinted spectacles. Oh là là! As he turned, a red light on the camera lit up. ‘Raymond Canterel,
Antenne Deux, en extérieur
,' he said earnestly, almost worried. The rest of his spiel rose and fell among the chairs and tables: a never-ending sentence to them. Punctuation consisted chiefly of visual effects: a rhythmic shrugging of shoulders interspersed with a kind of hunching-up, look-up of surprise, and like a busker who simultaneously plays the drums, cymbals, bells and a mouth organ, threw in a wide range of calculated eyebrow movements and frowns, his hands describing sweeping arabesques and numerical symbols. ‘
Economie
…Briteesh Empire…
capitalisme
…
cuisine
…
Mélancolie
…
éléphants
…
le
noble
sauvage
…were some of the recognisable words.

In an adroit movement he turned unexpectedly to the nearest nest of chairs.

‘Par-don,' he smiled. ‘What are your
impressions d'Afrique
?'

Poor Sheila. She froze. Her grey eyes which were normally magnified grew even larger staring at the microphone.

‘Beg yours?' said Doug Cathcart, stepping in. A shade too loud.

His wife though understood perfectly.

‘We've only just arrived,' she told them firmly, or rather the camera to the man's right. She gave the skirt of her bathing costume a few tugs.

But this didn't satisfy the Frenchman.

‘First impressions, don't you find them interesting? Interesting, if perhaps dangerous?' Turning to the camera he rolled his eyes, ‘
Ah, ces Anglo-Saxons!
'

‘Interesting! Oh, yes,' said Sheila, nodding.

‘We've been told,' said Cathcart in his nasal voice, ‘not to drink the ice here.'

‘It's not exactly tidy,' agreed his wife. ‘But we've only just arrived.'

The people…smell, she felt like saying. Or they smell different. And they don't talk. They stare or glance at us. Still, it's a holiday and interesting. We're on a holiday.

The TV crew had moved on.

No, not Kaddok! They all squinted as the crew surrounded him on the other side of the pool.

‘My husband is blind,' explained his wife.

Profuse apologies! But Kaddok interrupted.

‘Interesting country. Thorn trees, spoor and so on. The tall animals such as the giraffe. A colourful dark people. The women in their brightly coloured costumes—dyed from berries, I believe. Naked kiddies, Africa. I've always wanted to visit Africa. Livingstone's trek, remember? The Masai—very proud people. Burton and Speke. I've taken already, let me see, a number of subjects. Ektachrome X, I use,' tapping his camera. ‘ASA Speed 64. I wouldn't use anything else.'

Looking straight ahead as he spoke Kaddok sweated. The camera's little light was off, saving valuable film, although the man in blue remained in front still holding out the microphone,
un diplomatiste
.

Garry Atlas who had trailed the crew stood beside the redhead, and dripping water, spoke to her. It was his method usually to crack a small joke. But she turned her head away: hominivorous bitch, look and lighting up yet another Gauloise.

They moved on to Sasha and her friend, the actress; Garry began whistling.

Violet Hopper, recently Mrs: chiefly a taker of bit-parts in film, the distant ageing sister in a period dress. Ibsen? Trollope? Her apparent trouble was: only occasionally could she go outside her own smooth surface, even there being interviewed. She lifted her chin, tilted her head and spoke. As for Sasha she could only hitch up her top and laugh across as her friend offered the answers. Sasha was no help, none. She was on the verge of collapse. North found himself smiling. Not even the Rive Gauche redhead could object. And matters were made even worse by Garry Atlas in the background there standing on his head, supporting the earth, waving his legs whenever Sasha looked up. Everyone had their mouths open, and some began laughing.

‘Africa?' someone else answered. A tall wide-shouldered man in a wash-n-wear suit. ‘Africa's got the ball at her feet. Good healthy climate. Not a bad diet when you look closely at it. Labour and natural resources: I think it's got a bloody good future.'

‘Is he with us?' Louisa whispered. Her husband, Ken, was supposed to never forget a face.

‘Was he on our plane?' asked another.

‘I don't think I've seen that one,' said Ken Hofmann. He smiled. ‘But he should be with us.'

‘Nothing like the Aussie accent,' said Doug, pretty loud, nodding at the bloke. The stranger gave him the thumbs up.

Fancy being on television! Sheila, for one, had found it fascinating. That was always the thing about travel: the unexpected. The proof lay clearly on her lap. In all honesty she could say she hadn't had time ‘till now' to write ‘even a postcard'.

‘I am with an interesting and rather nice group of people,' she quickly began. But by then she saw most were getting up and going inside; and when the Cathcarts followed suit, with Doug yawning, she decided to gather up the postcards and finish them in her room.

Three tables had been pushed together, camouflaged by a loose-fitting cloth, more an iridescent blanket than ‘tablecloth'; but away from their own country, in an unfamiliar dining room, even eating off an unstable surface seemed to be an adventure. They had dressed for dinner. The men appeared in patterned jackets and cotton trousers, their hair combed, and Cathcart and Ken Hofmann both came down in the same click-clicking white shoes. The women had put on special blouses, and skirts, some in long skirts or long dresses, and silk ribbons—Gwen Kaddok wore a shawl—and for some reason the wives entered with folded arms and solemn expressions. Skirts and dresses. Interesting… One is supported by the hips. The skirt is. Its weight must tug and remind that part of the body all day. In Africa: the grass skirt. Resting on the hips it creates a constant swish. Its removal eventually is in parts, two time-delaying motions: woman ‘steps out of skirt'. The sensible floral dress was Mrs Cathcart's. Supported by the shoulders the dress is (eventually) lifted up over the hair, mechanical, elbow-jerking motion: those few seconds of blindness. Violet Hopper's dress had all lines, angles and energy aimed at the waistline: so narrow and brittle. As for the jeans worn by Sasha they traced the soft hourglass shape and other differences: how a woman's knees touch, as underlined in Life Classes. With Violet Hopper this could take place only beneath her dress. And Sasha had barged in ahead of her friend, swinging her leather bag.

At this stage the party kept to its original groups. Sitting with the Cathcarts suited Sheila. She could watch the others and appear to join in. Garry Atlas stuck with the girls. At the other end, Phillip North took his place with the Kaddoks without thinking; Gwen nodded acknowledging the habit. The Hofmanns sat together: he already gazed at a spot on the bare wall, drumming his fingers on his teeth. Behind him was a mural showing (‘depicting') a tribe of wrestlers rolling entwined in the sky above a tiny but widespread European-styled city. They were thick thighed, these coffee-coloured wrestlers—of course—and wore fur coats. Evidently it was the work of a well-known local surrealist. It was reproduced across the menu cover in full colour but unfortunately out of register, so that the menu or the dining room itself seemed to vibrate from the falls of the heavy men.

Two empty chairs: gradually they had an irritating effect. Just about everybody glanced at them and became distracted, some frowning and glancing at them again, as they tried to recall the missing pair, wondering where they were. There was fidgeting of forks. It had grown dark outside. Some who twisted in their seats seemed to think the waiters would arrive only when the group was complete—the anticipatory hunger of travellers.

Gerald Whitehead hurried in, and with him a younger man wearing an old US air-force jacket, tropical style.

They quickly sat down. Gerald nodded at his neighbours, apologetic, and seeing the rest of the table looking at him with interest, put his head down. People naturally thought the two had been together but the younger one put out his hand and introduced himself. James Borelli.
Borelli
. Italian? He waved the fork like one. At the same time Gerald began spearing the bridge of his nose with his forefinger, to poke his glasses back. The odd thing about that hand, as Sheila and Mrs Cathcart observed, was that it had an additional small finger, a burden to that side which is connected to the brain's reasoning, non-creative sector.

But they quickly became accustomed to that and Gerald's nose-spearing (seven, eight times a minute), and turned to Borelli. He was a little over thirty but carried a walking stick. He hooked it over the neck of his chair. He had pleasant keen eyes. As he discussed with Gerald what they had seen outside he saw Louisa Hofmann watching, and gave an open slow smile.

Evidently Gerald Whitehead must have felt it. For then he looked up too.

Garry Atlas here took the opportunity.

‘Say, you missed out being on television. We were all stars'—looking around—‘weren't we?'

‘There was a film here,' nodded Mrs Cathcart down the end.

‘Yep.'

‘Sixteen-mill,' Kaddok told them.

‘French television,' others explained, several talking at once, and all looking at Borelli for his reaction.

‘And I don't suppose we'll ever get to see it ourselves.'

Although he kept listening Gerald Whitehead remained staring at his hands.

‘I went dry inside,' Sheila whispered to Mrs G. ‘You were good. You told them exactly enough.'

‘I wouldn't drink that if I were you,' Doug advised.

‘Doug's right,' Mrs Cathcart turned to Borelli. ‘You'll get the trots.'