so ordinary

The beach is so ordinary. This was a mistake. A terrible mistake. Jacob pulls his jacket in tighter and bites his lip. Tastes blood. Carole is lying beside him, spreadeagled on the pink beach towel, belly down, in a dreadful navy and white polka dot bikini. Jacob checks his phone. It is ten degrees. Admittedly there is sun, but still. She’d insisted. It will be good for us, she’d said. After all that. A day out. Somewhere new. You know. She hadn’t finished the sentence. She didn’t need to. Neither of them spoke about it. She couldn’t and he wouldn’t. But he can’t let it go.

That poor woman and her poor child.

The beach is the most ordinary beach Jacob has ever seen. It is full of dull ordinary people walking their dull ordinary dogs with their dull ordinary children and their listless loveless lives. Jacob is not ordinary. He’s known that since he was around fifteen. Dragged himself out of the bungalows and up up until he forced his way past middle management and into the board room of a company gambling on sub-orbital space tourism. Not on the Board, but as Director of HR. God he’d been proud that day. His first board meeting. The way they all looked at him when Michael, the Chair, introduced him. The way they paid attention as he stood up and walked around to the full wall LCD screen. The way they studied his charts. His models of organisational behaviour. His commitment to the team. The way Michael stayed behind after the meeting and mentioned his club.

But Carole, Carole hadn’t managed to keep up. Carole had said she wouldn’t like to go in a rocket it wasn’t really her thing but well done darling anyway. Then Carole had announced she was pregnant in a bawdy voice and had gone out and bought a peach onsy. Carole had demanded a pink nursery for baby Jemima before the baby was even born, and had ordered an oversized satin violet SUV with personalised plates and a matching child seat. Carole didn’t know how to do money. Carole was ordinary and he should have realised and now he was stuck with her.

That poor woman and her poor child.

Rub my back will you, darling? Jacob doesn’t want to rub her back. Or even touch her. He shifts his buttocks across the sand until he’s just out of her reach. His eyes follow a young couple striding across the beach in matching denim cut-off shorts and thick down navy jackets and bobbing yellow bobble hats. The couple pause to stare at a fat family crouched behind a windbreaker over a disposable barbecue, smile at each other, kiss briefly, and stride on. His hand is on her arse. Probably counting their steps, Jacob thinks. Before they head for home and have frantic sex in their red Mini Cooper in a layby overlooking an artificial lake.

Carole chose the beach because they needed to get away. Not far, she said. I can’t you know. The road. She’d tailed off and Jacob hadn’t helped her. Hadn’t filled in the blanks. Carole said the train, we could get the train, it’s years since I’ve been on a train. Jacob had poured himself a drink and walked out to the balcony. Leant on the wooden railings and looked up at the clouds. A cuckoo was calling in the valley below.

Devon, she’d said, just you and me for the weekend. My mother’ll take Jemima. This house is driving me mad. And no one is answering my calls.

That poor woman and her poor child.

A small boy toddles up to them, just in a disposable nappy and a red baseball cap. He stands in front of Jacob, sways, puts his fat arms out and says ball.

Ball. Ball.

Jacob studies the child. The child totters. His blue eyes swivel, one in towards his nose, the other one out to the left. The boy’s parents must have been disappointed by that. But there are operations aren’t there? They could fix it right now. What’s wrong with people? The boy totters and twirls and turns away. Stomps barefoot off through the sand towards a beckoning father. Arthur! Sorry about that, the man shouts to Jacob, he thinks every man is me.

Jacob nods and shifts his eyes to the sea.

After the whole Carole thing came the first real twinges of doubt. Not about her, but him. He knew who she was alright. But him? Jacob? Director of HR. With her. There was Carole’s picture on all the front pages, her hand across her face. Their was their lifestyle bigged up in supersize red font. There was their million pound ‘mansion’ with its five bedrooms and its tennis court. There was a photograph of her ridiculous car and that dreadful number plate, the pixelated image plundered from facebook. There was the text, word for word, of Carole’s pleading in court.

She was sorry, terribly sorry.

Before, he wasn’t ordinary. And now he is even less so. The subtlest of shifts in the office. Not copied in to social emails. Everyone hurrying out after meetings. Newspapers left open casually with all the finger pointing and blame. Tony, his best mate, patting him on the arm. Such a tragedy, he said. And never calling him again. It wasn’t me, he wanted to scream. It was Carole. For fuck’s sake it was Carole.

He tilts his head back, follows the contrails of a jet as it eases over the horizon. He would have been one of the first up there. Michael had said as much that second night in the club. Get this right, Jacob, he’d said, leaning back and crossing his legs, and you’ll have earned your seat and more. Him, Jacob, out of the bungalows and up up, spinning around the earth.

That poor woman and her poor child.

He stands up. Brushes the sand from his legs. Am just going down to the water, he says to Carole. To see how cold it is. He takes his shoes and socks off. And his jacket. Folds the jacket neatly and places it on his shoes. He looks around. The little boy with the red baseball hat is now dressed in blue dungarees and eating ice-cream with his father. The young couple in the matching shorts have disappeared. The fat family are pushing towels into plastic bags for life. Carole mutters something and remains face down.

He scans the beach for a quiet section. There’s no one over by the by the rocks that tumble out through the waves on the other side of the safety flag. That will do. He gives the sky one more long stare. The contrails have melted. Clouds are pulling in across the sun. He sets off.

In the pictures the little girl is wearing a green sweatshirt and a blue corduroy skirt. Her ginger hair is tied back in two fluffy bunches. She is clutching a wooden rainbow in one hand and a balloon that says FIVE in the other. She has the most wonderful smile.

He will remove his sweater. And his shirt. And his trousers. He will think about this as he walks down the gentle slope towards the sea. To the grey green waves that are now pounding up the shore with the incoming tide. But not his pants.

To remove his pants would not be ordinary.