Where will we be when the summer’s gone......
“Are you awake Georgie?”
His eyelids flicker beneath the dark glasses as Cilla leans over him to block the bright sunlight out for a moment, then the heat of the sun and the sweat on his body kicks in.
“Hey Georgie wake up you lazy bastard we’re going swimming. Race you to the raft”
Nick’s voice now laughing and shouting. Must have fallen asleep in the sun. My mouth is dry. Taste of Fanta in the back of my throat and what was that weird dream, something about hospital and …..
“Are you OK?”
Cilla’s voice again. He can smell her perfume and the salt on her body. Opening his eyes to squint through the shades up at her face with that long blonde hair outlined against the bright afternoon sun.
Tigné beach. For a moment he tried to remember the details of the dream but Cilla has grabbed his hand and is pulling him up off the towel.
“Come on let’s go”
“Yeah, yeah, sure I’m fine. Just fell asleep for a moment or two”
Looking down at his bright red swimming trunks as she pulls him to his feet and then around to see the limestone rocks, the raffia sun shades, people lying, sitting, standing, talking, laughing, drinking from bottles and glasses around him. A few steps away from where he has been sleeping the calm blue sea with traces of foam where swimmers are cutting through the water, throwing beach balls, diving with flippers and snorkels. In the distance two wooden rafts bob up and down in the gentle swell rolling in from Sicily.
Trying to grasp something. This is so familiar and yet a few moments ago he was somewhere else. Cilla’s body close to him wakes him up even more. Slightly aroused by her as she puts her hand up and removes his dark glasses.
“Can’t go swimming in those Georgie.”
She drops them onto the towel where he had been sleeping.
The brightness of the light almost overpowers him. Flaring from the white rock, Cilla’s hair and smiling lips so close to him. Maybe he should grab her now and kiss her but something tells him that wouldn’t be right.
“Come on lets go”
A voice from behind him, so he turns and it’s Jackie.
Oh Jesus God she’s so beautiful. I’d forgotten how……I’m going crazy here it was only a few moments of a nap in the sun but my head feels kind of…
“Show us how good that backstroke of yours is Georgie. I can beat you there if I do the crawl”
Jackie smiles at him as she throws her blue beach towel on the ground.
Then they are all running towards the sea, jumping over the sunbathers stretched out on their towels and mats. Laughing and shouting at each other. Teenage pleasure in bodies, sun and water in full flow.
Nick, Jackie, Cilla, Richard, Mike and George.
He wonders for a moment where Cheryl and Jo are then remembers they’ve been away in Gozo for the last few days on some kind of family holiday, realises that he is hot, needs to cool off but any moment now he’ll hit the water as he dives into the embrace of the sea, turns on his back and moving his arms and legs powerfully together heads out across the two hundred yards or so towards the nearest raft with Jackie close beside him moving fast through the water with her arms and legs in synch as she executes a perfect crawl and he knows that however good his backstroke is she was right and she will beat him to the raft.
The automatic movement of his swimming gives him a chance to reflect on the day and recall with a shock that the events that have already unfolded have been momentous, from the moments of his early morning taxi ride to Luqa airport with Paula to say their tearful farewells.
“I don’t want to go”
“Don’t want you to go. I love you. I love you so much”
“You could come with me”
The departure lounge of Luqa airport around them full of travellers, suitcases and sounds across the tanoy announcing departures to Rome, Athens, Cyprus and London. Her plane leaving soon for London.
“Flight BE 249 will be departing in 55 minutes for London Heathrow via Naples and Paris. Can all passengers who have already checked in please go to Departure gate 4 for embarkation”
The almost perfect pronunciation of the female Maltese voice with only the slightest trace of an accent.
“You know I can’t come with you now. Maybe in a few weeks Paula. Shit I’ll miss you”
He looks at her face with faint tear lines running down it. Oval like the Madonna at Mdina Peter had said, her pale blonde red hair falling down her back and her slim tall body close to his with her arms wrapped round him and her small breasts pressed against him.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“It’ll be OK. We’re going to be together again soon. But you have to go. That place at Art College is waiting for you, you’ve worked so hard to get there. You have to go.”
“ I know. I know. Jesus you don’t have to tell me again !”
Suddenly she’s almost screaming at him. Pulling away and turning from him.
He grabs her by the shoulders, pulls her round towards him and kisses her passionately on the mouth.
For a moment the whole airport departure scene dissolves and there is just the 2 of them lost in their embrace. Lips together, arms round each other, bodies fused. They could start to make love right now and maybe nobody would notice.
Paula breaks first, breathless, her arms unwinding from his body as she steps slowly away from him without losing eye contact.
“You’re right darling I have to go”
She’s stopped crying now and her face is almost radiant.
“I don’t want you to go Paula”
She laughs and puts her hand up to stroke the sun bleached hair that falls to his shoulders
“A moment ago you were telling me that I had to go and… don’t say anything”
She moves her hand to cover his mouth.
“I’m going to go now, walk through the departure gate and wait in that awful lounge. I bet the air conditioning has broken down again. Remember when we were waiting to fly to Tripoli all those dreadful wobbly fans on the ceiling”
She laughs again then suddenly takes her hand off his mouth, moves quickly towards him and kisses him again deeply. A sweet moment on his lips. But only for an instant.
She takes her leather bag out of his right hand and slings it over her shoulder. The one he’d given her for her birthday, brightly coloured with blue and white Greek patterns and dancing figures on a dark brown background containing her passport, tickets, make up, cigarettes, lighter and a small sketchpad with a box of pastels and pencils.
“I love you Georgie. Always will”
“I’ll come with you to the departure gate.”
“No. Don’t do that. You can wave to me from the balcony. Though I might not look at you, I don’t want to cry anymore. But I’ll know you’re there. Remember what you promised me my darling. Goodbye Georgie”
Tell her now. Before she goes. About you and Helene on Ios. You have to tell her man, that she wasn’t the first…. it’s only fair and if you don’t……Shit. Too late
She turns and walks quickly away from him across the open space with it’s vaulted concrete ceiling, the sunlight pouring in through the high windows set all round the hall. He watches her cross the last few yards and then she disappears through the door with a large sign above in English and Maltese
Up the short flight of stairs at the other end of the hall, through the swing doors, the heat and light hit him as he puts on his dark glasses to look out across the balcony with its long metal railings facing the tarmac. A number of planes scattered across its dark grey surface already shimmering in the morning sun. He glances across at them and sees the BEA Argonaut that she will shortly depart on, still re-fuelling with the usual insect activity of baggage carts, food trolleys & technicians around it and a couple of stewardesses in their dark blue and gold uniforms mounting the steps at the front end and disappearing through the doorway into the cool interior.
He looks at his watch. Quarter past eight. Probably another 20 minutes before embarkation. Time for a cigarette. Reaches in the pocket of his denim shorts to retrieve a crumpled packet of Gauloise, the last of the 200 that Nick had brought back after his brief trip to Paris 10 days ago. Only 1 left in the packet. Maybe he should save it till later. What the hell might as well smoke it now.
He turns his back to the tarmac to shield the cigarette from the warm breeze blowing off the runway. He lights the Zippo then the cigarette catching a reflection of himself in the long plate glass window on either side of the swing doors through which he had entered a few moments earlier. Tall and skinny with shoulder length sun bleached blonde hair wearing a white T Shirt with John Lennon’s brightly coloured sunglassed psychedelic image already fading from too many immersions in the sea with a pair of cut off faded blue levi jeans frayed and tattered above the knees and a simple pair of standard issue red maltese flip flops.
Good looking bastard aren’t you - no wonder she’s in love with you - Oh for Christ sake George give it a rest and why didn’t you tell her before she left. You’ve been meaning to do it for weeks - but I am handsome and the hair looks great and….
“Excuse me but could I have a light ?”
The voice is familiar. He turns to see Mrs Palmer standing next to him, a cigarette between her fingers and that so sexy smile on her lips. Dressed in a pale blue top and a short matching skirt with her jet black hair pulled off her face, tied back with a bright yellow silk scarf revealing the almost aristocratic bone structure and startling beauty of her face.
A good friend of his mother’s who he’d occasionally partnered in mixed doubles against his mother and Dr Zammut, though he had to admit it really wasn’t the tennis playing that interested him, something deeply animal and sexual about her, the way she touched him when she passed him the tennis balls, the long looks she gave him at the bar afterwards and how sometimes he got so turned on by her he had to make his excuses and leave them there in the cool and shade of the Union Club bar to stride out into the sunshine down to the sea’s edge.
“Mrs Palmer. What are you….”
“Seeing my sister off. She’s been visiting us. She’s flying back to England on the morning plane. Was that Paula I saw going through departures?”
“Oh Yeah. She’s got a place at Ravensbourne Arts College and needs to be back there for early next week so I came with her and….
“Sad to see her go?”
“Definitely…..well I mean …yes of course”
He feels unsettled by the way she looks straight into his eyes, still holding her cigarette up to her lips.
Shit I need to light her cigarette and why is she looking at me like that kind of smiling at me.
He tries to nonchalantly flip the zippo open and light it all in one motion. Almost succeeding without dropping it and setting fire to his shorts. She holds his hand to steady it as she lights her cigarette, inhales on it then removes it from her mouth to blow the smoke past him.
“Well I’m sure you’ll get over it. Somebody as young and beautiful as you must have lots of other young women chasing him”
Beautiful….Jesus is that how she sees me. Was that a question. Do I need to reply. She’s still looking at me like that.
He laughs in what he hopes is a cool and unconcerned manner.
“I’m very fond of her actually and really I don’t think there are lots of young women lusting after me”
“Or even older women?”
He laughs again.
Fond of her….for christ’s sake ….. Fond of her is that what I feel…and she didn’t say lusting after me and what does she mean by older women… stay cool don’t get distracted by…jesus I’m getting a hard on….
“Well I better go, Rupert is waiting for me with the car”
“Rupert?”
“My husband. I’ll see you tomorrow at 2 then”
“Tomorrow at 2 ?”
“You hadn’t forgotten we’re playing tennis this afternoon. Your mum and I and Dr Zammut”
“Of course. Sorry I had kind of forgotten but thanks for reminding me. I’ll be there.”
“Good. I look forward to it. Oh and I really wish that you'd stop calling me Mrs Palmer. Patti would be lovely”
“Ok Mrs Palmer. I mean Patti”
He laughs again this time with a genuine sense of pleasure and release.
“See you later Georgie”
She moves suddenly towards him and kisses him lightly on the lips. He smells the cigarette smoke mixed with her perfume. The strong sweet scent of Eau de Cologne. Then she turns, walks through the swing doors and disappears from sight.
Shit…what an idiot…she was definitely coming on to me…and now I’m so turned on I hope nobody notices…..and Paula hasn’t even left the island yet.
His head almost hits the raft. Drawing him back to the warmth of the sea as he turns to see Jackie in front of him pulling herself up the steps onto the coconut matting on top of the raft, water dripping from her dark blue costume and down her long black hair.
He pulls himself up the steps behind her and for a moment there are just the two of them standing close on the raft, swaying slightly to keep their balance against it’s movement in the light swell. She laughs at him, gently rests one hand on his wet shoulder while the other hand runs through her hair pulling it back over her shoulders.
“Told you I’d beat you. But at least you came second”
She turns away from him and adopts a mock race course commentators voice.
“But here comes Cilla closely followed by Richard and its neck and neck between Nick and Mike and it looks like Mike will make it and no its Nick by a fingertip!”
Then they’re all crowding together out of the water and onto the raft laughing and talking. A gabble of jokes, questions and narratives as if they’d only a short time left and needed to cram as much information into the moment rather than having a whole summer together by the Mediterranean.
Cut to close up of Jackie’s face as she licks the salt off her lips.
Slow pan round and zoom out to include Georgie looking at her then track out and up to high long shot of the raft with them all on it & swimmers around it.
Shot widens & pulls up to include more of the sea and Tigne beach.
Scene widens more towards aerial shot of whole island then fade to dark blue……
Fade up from dark blue to mid shot of the older Georgie sitting at a table reading with café background.
Pan round over his shoulder to reveal he's reading a hand written notebook.
Zoom in as he's about to turn the page to words
Zoom into the word ‘Mediterranean’ and fade to black.