Chapter 9 - Poolside
We returned to poolside, appropriating the vacant lounges the errant flight attendants had abandoned. Louisa and I had gone to the bungalow, used the lavatory and brushed our teeth and then, at my urging, liberally coated ourselves with the sun protection crème. After the short lunch exposure I could already feel some affects already, but being from a northern clime, our system s were unaccustomed to the sun's rays at this latitude. Louisa was all for rushing back to the pool but I followed the sunblock instructions, waiting an hour, plus an extra ten minutes, for the ointment to thoroughly be absorbed into our epidermi.
In bungalow number thirteen Louisa was impatient. "Why? Why wait so long?" She had dropped into a padded wicker chair and was furiously bouncing a foot, while she read.
"I wish to ensure that we are completely protected. I had to use verbal abuse on that git of flight attendant into leaving the sun. Do you wish to have little scars all over you from surgery to remove cancerous growths?" I blustered.
"Martin. If I wanted to get NO sun exposure, I'd stay inside. Better yet I'd have stayed home! Honestly! I want to get a little tan so don't give me a lecture on the dangers of skin cancer! I heard enough of that before we left."
I nodded. "All right." I had learned enough when to pick my battles and this was not one I'd win. I looked at my watch. "We can go now. Plus the extra time has ensured that we have little food in our stomachs if we wish to go swimming. Not good to swim on a full stomach."
Louisa sighed and I heard her mutter. "Have I married an old man?"
"What's that?"
"Nothing. Well come on then." Louisa dropped some more items into a string bag, and picked up her E-reader, which I'd bought her last week. "Let's go." She carefully put a large floppy hat on and her sunglasses.
"Got everything?" I scanned the room, seeing the medical journals I had packed. I selected one or two.
"That what you're reading?"
"Yes."
"What will it take to make you leave work behind, Doctor Ellingham?" She struck a pose, exposing a long glistening leg, hand on hip, the other at her shoulder. "Ready for the beach and the pool?"
Beach or pool? In my whole life I had spent almost no time on a beach, although living at the ocean for five years, I avoided the ocean. I made a face. "Pool, perhaps? There's shade there and the beach is…"
"Yeah, sandy. Come on Martin. I doubt I'll make a sun worshipper out of you in an afternoon."
I sighed and settled the new sunglasses on my face. "Thank you for the glasses."
"You're welcome Martin." She took my arm when I walked her to the door. "Don't you look nice?" She pulled a ball cap of some sort from her bag and pushed it onto my head.
In a mirror, I saw it had the word Cornwall stitched on the crown. "A hat?"
She smiled. "Don't want you to be sunburned." I wrinkled my nose but followed her lead and we walked to the nearest pool in the blast furnace heat.
000
Shade was plentiful by the pool from various umbrellas, trees, and shade structures. Clearly whoever designed it had done their homework. There was also a misting spray shower to rapidly cool oneself as well as conventional showers to wash before entering the pool and removing beach sand and sea salt.
Louisa marched ahead and settled onto the two lounges shaded by both a large umbrella and a palm. That was excellent as palm trees give only marginal shade. I put down the pastel towels I'd taken from the rack and covered the plastic straps on the furniture.
We were settling in to read when a young waitress approached and offered us refreshments. The woman was blonde, Caucasian, and spoke English with an eastern European accent. Her name tag read Alex and she looked to be about Morwenna's age. She had started speaking to us in poor Spanish then rapidly switched to passable English after Louisa said hello.
"I think…" started Louisa. "A soft drink? A cola. Plenty of ice."
"For you sir?" the girl asked.
"Ice water. Bottled."
"We have some very nice sangria, or fruit juice, or if you wish one with alcohol?" She smiled down at me with perfect teeth under deep blue eyes and I could not help but notice a touch of puckering along the edge of her mouth and one eye was open far more than the other on that side. I started peering intently at her.
"Sir?"
"Do you feel any tingling or loss of sensation on the right side of your face, compared to the other?" I pointed at the place. "Have you been sick recently? Had the flu or a cold virus? Mononucleosis?"
"Martin!" Louisa hissed. "Sorry. He does this…" she ducked her head.
Alex sniffled. "I have had a cold, yes."
I sat up straighter. "Does your face hurt? You have a problem closing your right eye. You may have…"
Louisa grabbed my arm. "Sorry. He's a doctor, always trying to heal people."
The girl smiled. "That's all right. I'll get your drinks."
The young woman left. "She's barely an adult," I muttered. "Far from home. Who's looking after her?"
"Martin, would you please try to relax? And take off your vest and get into the pool. Maybe that will help you… unwind."
I looked defiantly at her. "Louisa, that girl has something."
"Martin, this is our honeymoon! Do you want to go home? I don't, at least not yet. Go swim some laps. Do you good."
I slipped out of my vest, felling the sun's rays strike with a vengeance, and hopped and skipped in bare feet to poolside. The thing was large, sort of liver shaped with a bit of pancreas attached, and seemed to be adequately cleaned. I saw no floating debris or leaves and through the clear water saw a clean blue bottom. I was bending down to sniff the water when Louisa came by my side.
"Clean enough?" she asked.
"Appears to be."
"Getting in?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Perhaps not… perhaps later…" I started to say when I felt two small female hands, Louisa's I am sure, on the small of back. I was unbalanced, cupping a handful of water to my nose to see if smelled off or was over chlorinated.
"Martin. I love you," she said then pushed me into the pool.
Suddenly I was upside down, underwater, as warm water filled my mouth, eyes, ears, and sinus passages. I made a half drowned underwater scream and surfaced. "Louisa! What's the meaning of that?"
Louisa was laughing; not the sort of chuckling at the telly thing she does, but a side-bursting, bent double, hold your hands to your face sort of laugh.
"Louisa!" I screamed felling my blood pressure rise. This reminded me of school - the boarding school and a dunking I get every time when we did P.E. in the indoor pool.
She dropped her hands from her face. "Sorry Martin." Then she leapt into air, clutched her legs in her arms and crashed into the water in a giant cannonball.
When the white water subsided and the cascade of sluiced from my face, I grabbed her slim figure as she was laughed.
"Oh Martin!" She threw her arms about me in a clinch. "There you were, bending over and I just had to push you in! How else could I get you to relax?"
I grimaced then squeezing her tight submerged us both. She started to struggle but I pushed her completely under and placing my lips on hers kissed her fiercely.
Her eyes widened at my underwater assault, then she cooperated. After a few seconds we surfaced. She clutched my hair in her hands.
"Well, Martin, I didn't expect that!" She kissed me again. "Relaxed?"
I gave her a look that she immediately read.
"No?" she purred. "Maybe we can do something about that later?" She pushed me away and began to swim away. "Race?"
My swimming style is rather like a ferry boat, all bluff browed and thrashing, but I managed to catch up in a few strokes. I prefer the breast stroke rather than the crawl as it keeps more water out of my eyes.
Louisa turned her head. "You can swim."
"Did you doubt it?"
"There are things I don't know about you, Martin. But I have a lot of time to find out." She smiled, swam to the side of the pool and hauled herself out.
Time. Time. I watched her sleek figure, trim in spite of bearing a baby not four months ago, walk to the lounge and start to dry herself. Time. We had wasted so much of it and I vowed not to waste anymore. But heeding her urging I began to make long strokes along the length of the pool, dodging other swimmers, floaters, and even a few children.
Two boys were batting a football sort of thing back and forth. They made me think of children. Not just our own son, but whether we might have any more. Not a subject we had broached given our history. I knew that Louisa liked children, given her choice of profession. Clearly school children liked her, from Peter Cronk the genius near-teen to the smallest Year One.
I continued to swim, thinking very deep thoughts, until someone screamed.
