IN THE PENGUIN COLONY
It had been a long, hot, irritating drive, with his wife misreading the map and the twins fighting in the back of the car. Finally they arrived, found somewhere to park and hauled their belongings out of the trunk. He carried the cool-box, the beach mats and a towel with a garishly bright sunset-and-palm-tree motif. Rolled up it still looked unpleasantly lurid, but he was past caring.
His family straggled in an untidy line behind him as he led the way down the beach, jostling and elbowing his way towards the sea until they came to the only four -metre-square patch of sand left unoccupied. Here, a stone’s throw from the sea’s edge he drove their umbrella into the sand, whacking it with his shoe, then spread out their towels and beach mats and tried to protect their belongings from the gangs of marauding children and dogs and the feet of wet bathers. His wife sank heavily onto the loose sand, anchoring the beach mat. His nine-year-old son and the twins arranged themselves neatly in a line at her side, just under the shade. He squeezed in at their feet, only partially shaded, aware that his neck was already burning from the sun. Undoing the cool-box, his wife handed each packed lunch over as though it were some prize they had won. She thrust his sandwiches out to him with a pink, rounded arm. Corned beef and beetroot, he guessed, looking at the magenta juice leaking into the cling film. It smelled warm and soggy. He decided he could wait.
"I think I’ll go for a swim," he said. "Save it for me?" She sighed and put it back in the cool-box with the apples, kit-kats, tinned drinks and packets of crisps.
"Watch how you eat that," she called to a twin, ignoring him. " If you drop it in the sand that’ll be the end of it." The twin, a boy, almost dropped it, startled; then stuffed it in his mouth. His sister licked sand off her fingers.
The man kicked off his sandals and picked his way carefully through the sunbathers towards the water.
The sea came to greet him with promises of cool, delightfully weightless pleasure. He submitted gratefully and launched himself through the shallows full of skinny brown children splashing and chasing one another with buckets, to where the water was a little deeper and there were youths playing ball and fooling with their dark eyed girlfriends, who wore tiny bikinis and had water slick hair. On he went, ducking the beach balls, disentangling himself from the legs of a sedate older snorkeller, to where there was no one at all; only the blue horizon, and the hazy dark fin of an island popping up very far away. He inhaled deeply the smell of the clean briny sea. He lay on his back in the water and moved his hands a little and floated effortlessly on the undulating surface of the ocean.
This was more like it. No phone calls, no demands from his wife or his children, no one chasing up a query, sharing information or asking him to go to meetings he didn’t want to attend.
He swam out a little further for the exercise, hung there in the water a while, then turned back, drifting his way slowly towards the beach, doing breast stroke, side stroke and backstroke alternately. After a while he realised he was in his depth. The youths playing ball had gone for lunch. He tiptoed along the ridged sandy bottom until he was waist deep. He looked at the beach, trying to get his bearings.
Their umbrella was red. It should be visible. He moved closer in and crouched, covering his shoulders with the water as he crept forwards. He wasn’t looking forward to getting out of the sea and he put it off as long as he could. Then, stumbling up the beach he felt his full weight return to him. Dripping and self-conscious, he decided to go left, and made his way along the shoreline carefully, searching for his family under their red umbrella. He couldn’t see them anywhere. He wanted to walk higher up the beach, but realised his soft feet would be burned by the sand. He had left his shoes by the red umbrella, anxious in case he should lose them on this crowded beach. After two hundred yards his back was burning and there was no sign of his family. He turned round and went back the other way, trying not to kick over the sandcastles guarded by angry little girls. There was still no sign of his family. There were many red umbrellas.
