Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [16]
This was one of those days.
We arranged to meet our escort on the beach. I was wearing my orange print bikini and a sarong that was carefully draped to cover several bodily sins. The heat and light were dazzling and I could feel my skin burning under the sun’s glare. I’d taken off my sandals and I remember I had to hop-tiptoe inelegantly down to the shore across the hot sand before cooling my feet in the soothing waters of the Pacific. I curled my toes and enjoyed the scrape of the sand between them.
Around my feet the water was so clear you almost couldn’t see it over the sand, but on the horizon the edge of the lagoon was an intense blue, a colour that almost seemed unnatural. I could hear the squeals and laughter of local children jumping off a grey timber pier that stretched far out into the lagoon.
Then, Kane, our escort, grabbed my hand and hoisted me effortlessly on to the canopied runabout. Kane was a finely-boned and elegant local with milk-coffee-coloured skin and a straight narrow nose. Of all the Fijian men I met that week, he was definitely the sexiest. I marvelled at the way he navigated the boat through the channels, one arm rested in apparent casualness on the steering wheel, while he chatted to my about-to-be-betrothed. As I gazed on these two very different looking but equally attractive young men, I reflected how Mother Nature sometimes manages to get it just right.
Now in case any of you are thinking that this is all going to turn rather raunchy, and we were going to indulge in a little threesome on the deserted beach, I am sorry to disappoint you. You’ll have to take your smutty mind off elsewhere and head to the library to get your own copy of Erica Jong or Judith Krantz. This is not that sort of a memoir. Call me terribly middle-class but I think for most of us that sort of stuff safely remains in the realms of fantasy. Tony has a distinctly conservative streak, and whilst I’m not entirely sure he wouldn’t have been a willing participant in all of that I know he would have rethought the idea of marrying me afterwards. Besides, in our chitchat Kane revealed he was happily married to a very lucky woman.
No, Kane just deposited us and our picnic basket on our deserted island as scheduled, and beat a discreet exit for a couple of hours. The sand we crossed over was crunchy from the coral, and as we walked up the bank the lime green undergrowth shimmied seductively in the breeze.
After a swim in the cool green ocean we set up our little champagne picnic on a red checked table cloth. My companion was surprisingly relaxed for someone who was about to pop the question, but of course he had little doubt what my answer was going to be.
He didn’t get down on bended knee, thank goodness. In fact he was lying on his side on the picnic rug, leaning on his elbow and looking at me, when he said, ‘Elle, I was wondering if you’d like to marry me?’ as casually as if he’d asked me to pass the salad. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect delivery and my eyes misted with tears as all my too-dear-to-be-spoken hopes of the previous three and a half years were finally answered.
Tony, being Tony, had a custom-made ring, too. A little part of me couldn’t help feeling that it would have been nice to have been consulted over the design, but Tony was always a take-charge type of guy and I quickly dispensed with this churlish thought when I witnessed the magnificence of his gesture: platinum with one large glittering diamond and several smaller cousins congregating around it. It was a rock that would make any aspiring fiancée green with envy and I looked forward to flashing it around the office in a few days’ time.
When Kane arrived back he asked in a tone of pretend indifference, ‘Did anything exciting happen while I was away?’ Obviously he and Tony had been co-conspirators all along and I was glad not to disappoint them with my level of excitement and happiness. He revved up the engine and the runabout bounced over the swell