Rings

She was wallowing on her front half-in half-out of the tide. My husband couldn’t take his eyes off her. I struggled to understand what he saw in her. She could best be described as plain, not particularly dull or attractive, and her beach dress sense was to say the least, an odd match. Fussy frilled turquoise bikini tops don’t exactly go with plain white bottoms where I come from.

She was younger than me with lightly tanned unblemished skin and split ends in her wispy brown hair. She raised her head and scanned the hot, sandy beach through her sunglasses.

‘Time for a dip, I think,’ she mouthed to herself, fixing her eyes on my beguiled husband.

I pinched his flabby upper arm in disgust.

‘Ouch!’ he winced, ‘What was that for, Mel?’

‘Stop ogling that strange girl in the odd bikini,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t ogling. I was staring out to sea.’

‘Oh, come off it, darling. You can’t take your eyes off her.’

He rolled over onto his stiffer side in a huff, showing off his hairy back: my lovable gorilla man, ‘There, happy now?’

I said I was. It was with considerable relief that I noticed the rings: a diamond engagement ring and a chunky eternity ring on her ring finger. She hauled herself up off the wet sand, re-tied her bikini bottoms then waded into the warm Indian sea. I waited until she splashed her shoulders and immersed herself, crawling athletically towards a line of red buoys on the horizon, before I fell asleep.

I was awoken by a deafening scream minutes later, ‘No! No!’

It was her: his brown-haired beauty, thrashing around in the shallows, searching the swell, delving through the spume and froth, throwing up whorls of sand, funnels into the water. Bryan sat erect on his beach mat, readying himself to join her in her frantic search. I held him back. I noticed her bikini bottoms had become untied, hung loose, and slipped as far as the tops of her thighs.

‘No, darling, I’ll do it,’ I insisted, shouting at him, really, ‘Stay where you are. I’ll go.’

I teased the straps of my swimsuit over my sunburnt shoulders, stood, and tiptoed across the hot sand to the waters edge. By now the poor woman was in hysterics, ‘No! No! No!’

‘What is it?’ I cried,’ What’s the matter?’

‘I’ve lost all of my rings! My husband will go mad when he finds out. He’s always telling me off for leaving them lying around.

She disappeared underwater briefly, carving momentary furrows in the ever filling sand.

I cast my mind back to the rings adorning her fingers, stared at her hands: her bare fingers.

Her miserable head bobbed up out of the swell.

‘You were wearing them only a few minutes ago. What did you do with them?’ I asked.

She looked down sadly at her plain white bikini bottoms – the ones that didn’t match.

‘I put them somewhere safe,’ she mourned, ‘I put them in my…’

The penny dropped, ‘Oh, you poor, dear girl.’

‘Just a minute…’ she said.

I held my breath as she fiddled around inside her bikini: a smile of unexpected discovery lit her face from ear to ear, and there they all were: in the palm of her hand, for me to see: her diamond engagement ring, her chunky eternity ring, a simple wedding band, her thin gold drop earrings, the fat, big bullring she wore in her pierced navel, her pearl nasal stud.

Remind me never to wear a bikini.