The Wedding At Bueno-Vista by Shonagh Koea

Author:Shonagh Koea [Shonagh Koea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869798888
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

‘AND WHAT HAVE YOU been doing with yourself, Elaine,’ Adrian said when he finally sat down and began dispersing the tray’s contents. ‘Your coffee, Elaine.’ He placed this in front of her and she did not say, ‘Oh how nice. Thank you very much’, as she would once have done. She gazed at him through the sunglasses, a silent and thankless basilisk. ‘Your box, madam. And do be assured I won’t mention Marsden again as you seem to have taken such a remarkable dislike to Helen’s dear old school.’ He had always had a slight tendency to irony, which she had once found faintly endearing. He placed the box beside her ringed hand, the small diamond still doing its best in the glare of the restaurant. The bent bangle was on the other wrist, resting beneath the table. You cannot tax and extend things too much, she had thought. You cannot give them too much work to do, tasks beyond their capabilities. The bangle was only rolled gold, the scrubby diamond in her runty ring could do no more, she was exhausted from theft, mayhem and lifting packing cases so they all needed to pause, to rest. She turned the ring around on her finger so the stone pricked her palm, left the other hand with the bangle under the table and gazed at him silently, still thankless, through the sunglasses.

‘Have you been to the beach lately, Elaine? I seem to remember you were keen on the sea?’ Adrian, she thought, was grasping wildly at conversational topics that might please her.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t me. You must be confusing me with someone else. I never go near the sea, not now’ And I am a liar as well, she thought, stirring the coffee. The black silk bathing suit lay, screwed up, in a plastic bag at the back of her new wardrobe, slightly salty and sandy, still faintly holding the tang of the sea. Will you be all right, the men had said when they reached their berth at the marina and the lights of the city were bright and golden on her left as she stepped on to the jetty. It seems peculiar to let you go off like this, just dressed in your togs and wrapped in a towel, and it’s after midnight, did you realise that? It’s nearly one in the morning. Oh, it’s quite all right. I’ll just telephone friends. They’ll come and get me. It’s absolutely fine. Think no more about it. We don’t even know your name, one said as she wrote down their address so she could send the towel back. I’ll wash it and send it back to you, she had said. I will really. Do, please, trust me. And my name? Oh, haven’t I told you my name? How silly of me. Louise Robinson.

Adrian had aged badly, she thought, his complexion reddened and uneven, his hair cruelly cut. More suitable for a boy, she thought. A straight fall of

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