Homesickness Read Online Free

right,’ Mrs Cathcart turned to Borelli. ‘You’ll get the trots.’
    â€˜Never mind. We’re not living long.’
    â€˜Don’t you get constipated travelling?’ Sheila asked, leaning forward. ‘I find I do.’
    â€˜Thanks, chief,’ said Doug to the waiter. Plates were now being served.
    â€˜I simply love the French language,’ Louisa Hofmann was saying. ‘I could just sit and listen to it all day.’
    Her husband turned to her. ‘You don’t know a word of French.’
    She was about to protest when the film crew trooped in and sat at the other long table, talking loudly.
    For Borelli’s benefit Garry Atlas pointed with his forehead, ‘That’s the crew there.’
    It was the last mention of the film.
    â€˜I can’t eat this,’ Cathcart pushed his plate away. It’s yams or something. How are you people finding it?’ he called down the table.
    â€˜Right!’ Atlas nodded with his mouth full. ‘A T-bone anyday. But I’m wading through. When in Rome, you know…’
    â€˜I’ll eat anything,’ Sasha murmured to Violet. ‘A horse or anything. Gosh, I’m hungry.’
    â€˜But you always are,’ said her friend looking away.
    Garry was going on, ‘The beer’s pissy too. It’s not within a bull’s roar of ours. Have you had any yet?’
    â€˜You’re a vegetarian?’ Mrs Kaddok asked.
    North nodded.
    â€˜We too,’ she smiled.
    North cleared his throat. ‘Yes, the diet of harmless beasts with slow reactions.’
    â€˜I hadn’t thought of it that way.’ And again Gwen showed her teeth. She turned, ‘Did you hear that, Leon?’
    North frowned. He hadn’t exactly meant it like that.
    â€˜Elephants,’ Kaddok confirmed, ‘eat eight hundred to a thousand pounds of grass a day. They weigh up to seven and a half tons. Both sexes of the African elephant have tusks.’
    â€˜Eight and a half tons,’ Dr North corrected gently.
    â€˜Our waiters,’ Mrs Cathcart announced to the rest, ‘if you look, have got bare feet.’ And she made a clicking noise with her tongue.
    The waiters too could understand English.
    â€˜Oh dear,’ said Sheila, perplexed.
    She’d asked for tea, they’d given her coffee. Sheila looked around and decided to drink it.
    â€˜Say, guess what?’
    This was Garry Atlas again leaning forward with a quiz question; veins on his neck bulging. ‘Guess what I saw on the end of the diving board?’ He turned to everybody at the table. ‘Someone had scratched on it with a knife, or something. “ REMEMBER-DAWN-FRASER ”. It’s there. And in brackets they’ve put A-U-S-T .’
    â€˜Austria?’ Borelli suggested.
    â€˜She’s our swimmer!‘ Cathcart cried out down the end.
    â€˜Right!’ Garry nodded.
    â€˜Someone’s been here before us,’ giggled Sasha to Violet.
    Sshhh.
    â€˜One of the best,’ said Doug. ‘The 1960 Rome Olympics, remember?’
    â€˜The first woman to break sixty secs for the one hundred metres,’ Kaddok said. ‘Freestyle.’
    The stranger they’d seen at the pool passed but didn’t stop at the table. He gave them the thumbs up.
    North lit a small cigar and glanced at his watch.
    There was a lull as they realised where they were; or how far they had gone away.
    â€˜Have you been overseas before?’
    Sasha shook her head. ‘This is the first time.’
    Directly below lay the pool illuminated by Dutch underwater lamps, ultramarine slab sloping to dark cold at the deep end. The surface tilted with the shifting dining room fixtures and candles, fluid lights, and the board floated, an interesting twisted rectangle. The board and the surrounding tiles were still riddled with pools. Further out, the bordering lawn was soaked in shadow and suggestion, black but not completely,