1966. On board the SS Himalaya
‘Heh, Wee Janet, what’s that on your lips? Philip was standing over Janet as she lay back in the blue and white striped deckchair beside the ship’s swimming pool. She was wearing a yellow polka dot swimsuit, and she’d draped a white ship’s towel over her waist and thighs. Her knees, shins and feet were shrimp pink.
‘You’re in my sun,’ she said, without looking up from the book in her lap.
‘Your lips are like blood,’ her brother continued. ‘You’re like a vampire.’ He paused and leaned in to her, inspecting her face. ‘Is that Mum’s lipstick?’ He spoke the two words separately, with a slow mocking emphasis. Lip. Pause. Stick. ‘Is our Wee Jan wearing Lip Stick?’
‘I said you’re in my sun.’ Janet waved a hand at Philip, and held the paperback closer to her face. Philip, just out of the pool, flopped down beside her, dripping water onto the warm wooden decking.
‘You’ve painted your toenails too,’ he said, stroking her foot with a wet hand. ‘That to impress your boyfriend?’
‘Get off, will you?’ Janet tried to kick her brother’s hand off her foot.
‘Anyway, it’s probably too late.’ Philip stroked each of her toes in turn with cool damp fingers.
‘For God’s sake, Philly, I’m trying to read.’ Janet folded in the corner of the page she was at, stood up, and gathered the towel around her. She slipped her feet into the new yellow rubber flip-flops that Angus had bought her in Aden when the ship’s wooden decking had become too hot to walk on. You have to look after your pretty feet, Angus had said laughing as he’d handed her the package. Janet had let him kiss her full on the lips for that, despite the old couple that had been watching them from further along the deck. Angus had winked at them and slipped his hand under Janet’s t-shirt to cup one of her breasts in a small cool hand before he’d skipped off.
Philip wrapped both his arms around her leg and tugged. ‘Let me go, Philly. Go and torment someone your own age.’
Philip didn’t let go. ‘Ed said not to tell you,’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper and looking around at the other passengers lounging by the pool. ‘But I think you should know.’ There was something about his tone and the anxious creases around his mouth that sent a flutter through Janet’s belly. She stood still and looked down at him.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. Philip looked around the deck again, then released Janet’s leg. He stood up and spoke close to her ear.
‘We saw him with someone else.’ Janet’s chest tightened. ‘The waiter. We saw him with another girl.’ Janet turned to walk away from him. She didn’t want to hear. Couldn’t bear to hear.
‘It was in the room with the pool stuff. He had his hand up her skirt. Right up it, Wee Jan. And then we ran.’
To be continued
SANDERLINGS 