for Ian
The tide was going out, blackly, sinisterly, in the occasional light of a cloudy moon. That night, it was chilly away from the driftwood fire on the beach and we were lying together in a group, in the dervish-dancing light of the flames. The evening was quiet, save for the ceaseless background hiss of breakers and the whispering of recumbent couples in the shadows, looking like sea-shaped rocks. The gramophone was still playing but no one was dancing; the music wandered among the couples and finally drowned at sea.
Earlier, at the beginning of the beach party, Elvis had been thrusting the quietness from the night, and dark wraith-like figures had converged furtively on the cluster of rocks. Voices broke the night, a fire was soon started and with the flames, a babble of talking and laughing arose. In the background, you could just hear Elvis singing Doan be crool over and over again.
Baby, if Ah made yew mayd
Over sumthin thet Ah may hev sayd,
Please jist fergit the payst
The future looks braght ahaid …
In the flickering a few bopped laboriously in sand; and wine circulated in half-gallon flagons, red wine with fire in its depths. The noise grew and grew and an island of light formed on the beach. I watched for a while sitting near a very fat and a very tall girl who giggled and pointed at the dancers then I stood up and wandered round taking gulps of wine from friends. There was a sudden savage screaming but no on seemed to notice or care but I looked round nervously. A guy was lying on the sand, crying, close to him a kneeling shape of another oke. I stood and watched and the kneeling figure said contemptuously to everyone, "He's like this every so often - falls for a chick, then when she drops him, gets motherless on cane."
"Shut up, you twerp," he said brutally to the whimpering shape.
"She doesn't love … ah-ah-ah-ah!" Then the sound - "Shit, Jesus Christ man!" - and the oke got up and walked off.
I stepped out of the light of the fire and stared to sea. I saw with surprise two gleaming, abandoned figures, leaping like dolphins in the foam at the edge of the surf, splashing and playing like entranced creatures. Then they stopped and with mingled fingers walked slowly out, their curving naked lines etched beautifully when a wave broke in a flurry of flashing foam behind them. "That must be what love is," I thought, feeling like a foreigner. I turned back, not wanting the guy to think I was checking out his girl's tits, and went back to the party.
Elvis had gone. Now they were singing folk songs next to the fire while meat braaied. I walked closer and stumbled over two shapes. The oval face of my small sister stared up at me dazed from an embrace, then turned away.
Against the fire, paired figures looked like bulky two-headed sea-creatures. Then I was sitting talking to her. Joan, Joanne, or something. Her face was starkly attractive and she was someone to be with. We got through the polite crap ("So where are you at school?" "So what standard are you in?" "So what are you going to do after school?") fairly quickly.
"Let's go have a pot at the BI," I suggested.
The Beacon Island hotel loomed a couple of hundred yards away brightly lit like a huge liner. It was obsequiously and irritatingly quiet so we walked irreverently and noisily through the entrance hall past the sour receptionist to the courtyard. We sat down, I with my feet on the table, kindly inviting her to do the same. 1t was early but old toppies were strolling stifflly arm-in-arm round the courtyard before going to bed, making time-wasting remarks about their dinner and the stars. They had just eaten their dinner and were looking at the stars, craning their old bones painfully.
We outstared them as they glanced disapprovingly at our jeans and the insolent cigarettes in our mouths. Then when the old waiter came, glowering, we gave him orders loudly: "Double brandy and coke and one Ginger Square, OK?"
"I beg your pardon? Sir."
"I said: a double brandy and coke and one Ginger Square - or would you like two? Joan."
"Joanne. Oh, I think one to start with then perhaps I'll have something to warm me up later - like vodka maybe."
"I scheme that's a good idea."
"Lord, that girl looks too young to be drinking spirits," said a portly, military gentleman.
"Are you fourteen or fifteen?" I asked her deadpan.
"Well, because I love you, I'll tell you: I'm actually 13," she said in a stage whisper.
"Good heavens," exclaimed the man to his wife and walked off to have his coronary privately.
Then Joan wanted to wear my Chelsea boots and tottered round the table trying to imitate a man's walk. By then, I was exhausted from laughing at our cleverness. She was still giggling when we stood up and weaved back to the beach, arms around each other, synthetically, drunkenly in love. Silently we walked past the light to near some rocks where it was quiet.
We lay down, not talking. I gave her my jersey to rest her head on. "Comfortable?" "Mmm." "N'you?" "Ja."
We say close together, both wanting affection, seeking it in each other, total strangers, and we found something like it, I suppose. We clung together, as if despairingly, and soon I moved my hand under her jersey, under the small tight bra and found the mild round, soft shape of a breast. I squeezed it because that's what chicks liked; she wriggled. "Not so hard." I kissed her at the same time putting my tongue into her mouth. Slowly, gradually, she put her tongue into my mouth and moved it against my teeth experimentally.
So I extricated my hand from her bra and slid it beneath her belt. She wriggled more. "I can't move," I whispered. She unfastened her pants. I slid down to crisp pubic hair and moved between her legs, fumbling for wetness that didn't seem to be there. She lay back, eyes closed. I rubbed her down there a lot but nothing happened. I wanted her to touch me, so I took her hand and put it on my crotch. She squeezed; it hurt. "Not my balls, OK." "Shall I take off my trousers?" "If you like," she said doubtfully. So I did. Then I slowly pulled hers off too. And her panties. She lifted her hips so I could get them down. She wore plain white underpants. Her bra was also white. She lay with her jersey and bra hitched up under her neck. Her breasts were tiny, with pink pointed nipples, close to the rib cage. Maybe she was 14. I felt like a rapist.
Her eyes were closed as if she didn't want to see. I put her hand back on my cock because she had moved it and she pulled experimentally.
"Can I go into you?" I asked.
"No, man, you mustn't," she said fiercely. "I don't want you to."
I wondered if she was a virgin.
So we prodded and pulled for a long time and kissed with our mouths open and I got aching balls and I told her and she pulled and pulled some more and on and on and I was scared it'ld get soft so I thought about Bridget Bardot and I put my finger into her, only one would fit though I tried two, and she suddenly got all wet and soft and I ejaculated like an jet fighter taking off unstoppably, all over her, sis, so I took a towel and scrubbed it off ashamed. I heard the sea again, her harsh breath gradually smoothed in her chest and I lay my head on her breasts, her jersey still up beneath her chin. I could smelt sea on my finger.
Out of some hopeless isolation and maybe guilt I asked, surprising myself: "Do you like me?"
"No, man, I love you," she said. Then: "You know: it's only my second time."
There was a pause and I said, "I also love you, hey." Then "It was my third." I lied. It was only my third if you counted the time with my second cousin who had chickened out changing her mind halfway through and made me take my fingers out in case she got pregnant and told me to put my pants back on and go and wash.
The sea was still murmuring but we lay in a guilty silence. There was nothing to say really.
I turned and lay beside her, staring at the sky. She pulled her jersey down. Clouds were coming it. I wondered what the surfing would be like tomorrow. She sat up, reached for her pants and put them on. I noticed for the first time that her forearms were matted with hair. Were her legs, her thighs, her stomach? Like Queen Kong.
I wanted to walk away from her and this place and this part of my life, get away from crystallizing falseness. And forget it all, begin the night again. Decide not to go to the beach party. Stay at home and read. Go drinking with buddies. Take a walk. Have a fight. Watch a flick. I thought of the shadowed, naked couple I'd seen playing in the surf that night.
It was too late: things were past, irretrievably. I was 16 and she was 16 for all I knew and we were lying together on a beach, spent juices crusting in a slight breeze, while party fires died and people started walking to where their parents had beds waiting.
We lay apart, the only people left on a simple planet of sky, sand and swelling sea. I reckoned the waves might be good at Lookout if the wind swung.
I looked at her. Star-splinters of tears were at the corners of her eyes. I pretended not to see them: Jesus, why? How could I have?
Her hair blew finely across her eyes. The moment passed. I wondered if she was 16 after all. How long, silently, we lay there, I don't know – maybe another 10 minutes, maybe more. We held hands in an exploratory way. It was the only tender thing that had happened all night and I don't really know why but it felt like we were saying goodbye and sorry for something.
Soon she said: "I gotta go. My old folks …"
"Ja, me too."
"See you tomorrow - on the beach? BI beach?"
I never went there. That's where the Jo'burg people went. I lived in Jo'burg so I wanted to get away from them, their beach balls, the men with boeps talking of money, the women with grating voices and gold jewellery.
"I may go surfing. Depends on the wind. But I'll come and look for you. Want me to take you home?"
"No, I know those girls: I'll go with them. Bye, darling." She put her arms out and I saw again the glisten of thick hair coating them. I kissed her on the cheek.
That was the last kiss dragging us further down; and then she was gone, walking along the beach with her two friends, one fat and one very tall who hadn't been with boys that night and were unlikely to be any night here but would come to beach parties and dances and watch or giggle a lot, and talk together. Her feet impressed brief vanishing circles in the wet sand.
I watched her go a bit, not all the way.
I didn't mean to see her again. I never did.
