A Minute Flourish of Underwear

by Pil Lee

The ship’s pool had been empty of water the entire trip. Each day Charlotte walked past on her way to breakfast and saw the same man lying on his towel in the centre of the dry tiles. The first couple of days it was slightly overcast and the man lay motionless under a blanket and wrap. The next day was gusting fiercely and Charlotte breakfasted in her cabin with Mrs Tully, but on the Friday it was fine and fair and Charlotte saw him in the pool again, right in the very middle of the fast lane under a light shirt.

On Saturday it dawned bright and much warmer, so terribly close now to the tropics as Mrs Tully remarked, and Charlotte left the cabin a little earlier than her companion and made her way to the pool deck. The same man lay on his towel alone in the pool, this time his back bare to the sun. Charlotte watched him from the shadows of the promenade until she saw Mrs Tully wheezing down the stairs, then joined her companion under her light umbrella and accompanied her in to breakfast. She glanced in the pool as they returned to their cabin before quoits, but it was empty.

On Sunday the day dawned so hot that Charlotte was awake and up at first light. Having dressed quietly she made her way to the pool. The sunbaker was already there, face turned away from her as always, but the same bare back, the same towel. There was no-one else to be seen and Charlotte stood at the rim of the pool, her body throwing a wedge of shadow across his neck and head. He didn’t turn his head, though she moved gently to and fro so that the cool beam played across him, so she stopped and stayed as still as him, watching as first one bead of sweat and then another groped slowly down his glistening back and into the narrow band of his bathing trunks. As she stood on the edge she could feel sweat rolling down her own back under the light blue linen, each droplet in time with his, the reflection of the tiles around him almost blinding her to everything but the dark line of his skin next to cloth. Gradually she became aware of the bustle of eager sun worshippers settling themselves down in deck chairs behind her. No-one else climbed down into the baking walls of the pool and the man lay inviolate like a brown island within the white tiled sea as she hurried away to the breakfast room.

The next morning Charlotte looked out of her porthole at the blazing early morning sun, smoothed her best dress and went up to the pool deck tightly clutching her towel. She climbed down into the dry pool and spread her towel out carefully in the slow lane, then took off her shoes and lay down on her stomach. As usual the man in the centre was facing away, so after a moment’s contemplation of his naked back she faced away from him as well, her face turned towards the shadow of the corner. In the shelter of the pool walls all sounds of the ship and the sea curved away and disappeared and her ear pressed close to the ground seemed to hear the hissing of air along the hot surfaces, then the trickle of sweat on her skin as it squeezed through her dress onto the towel, followed by the faintest dull thuds as the sound of his sweat dripping reached her and then finally, the sound of hair rustling against rough towel as his head turned and looked in her direction.

Charlotte felt herself suspended in a white void, hardly able to breathe, as she suppressed the urge to turn and look back at him. Then, with the slightest motion, she lifted and shrugged her shoulders, letting a little breeze flutter across her back as her dress bloused, then she settled back down, her breasts pressing against the towel and the back straps of her slip exposed. Her ear straining against the ground, she knew that he was motionless, still turned towards her, then she heard the rustle and felt the shadow across her back as he got to his feet and stood near her for a minute. The shadow moved and she turned to find him gone, the pool empty and Mrs Tully peering at her myopically from the edge.

The next morning Charlotte was up with the sun. She crept out through Mrs Tully’s snores and raced to the pool. She was so intent on being quiet that she was half way down the steps when she realised that it was full of water. She backed out, pulling her soaking skirts behind her, as the two stewards filling it from the other end finished and stowed the hose. In confusion, Charlotte looked around but there was no-one else to be seen. She sat on a nearby deck chair for the rest of the morning and peered at every browned, oiled back that splashed and floated in front of her, but recognised none. She stayed there until she was quite faint from the sun, but still he didn’t appear.

Each morning for the rest of the voyage she took up the same position, inspecting every man that swam until Mrs Tully started to whisper, embarrassed and annoyed, that perhaps she was better off with an invigorating walk to start the day or maybe a bracing game of shuttlecock.

On the last day, just short of Sula Harbour, Charlotte stopped the steward on the recreation deck. When would the pool be drained again, did he know? It wouldn’t be till the ship returned to colder waters again, Ma’am, when no-one wanted to swim, not until the 15th of August, around about, he said.

Charlotte spent the next two weeks in Sula as if in a fevered dream. She walked around so many beaches and markets that Mrs Tully tired out completely and was forced to stay behind and rest in the hotel room for the whole second week. But Charlotte’s searching was fruitless and she counted off the days until at last it was August and they were back on the ship. She didn’t bother going to the pool until the ship had left the equator and the days were starting to cool, then she checked with the same steward again. When will they empty the pool she asked him. Tomorrow, he told her, I’ll do it myself tomorrow morning. Would you like to come and watch?

She could hardly sleep that night and was back at the pool’s edge at dawn. The steward gave her a little half wave then he lowered the hose into the pool and pumped the water out and over the side of the ship. The bottom of the pool was slick against Charlotte’s feet as she walked across to the centre and there she stopped and laid her towel down on the still wet surface.