Secret Beach

by Nicolette Collier (South Africa)

A leap into the unknown Thailand

I felt his gaze slacken. Earnest, searching eyes dipping as I gave the habitual shake of the head: no. He turned away. And time ceased its ceaseless march. He would stop trying – I sensed it. And it wouldn’t be this, my first kiss, it wouldn’t be today, under a soaring blue sky and a sumptuous sun, on a bare, palm-dotted secret beach, out here in the Andaman Sea. In an instant, my insides were an empty carapace, hollow – like the shells below my eggbeater legs – with regret; my mind punched through with sockets, with little pockmarks like the ones in the sugar white coral. I could feel that piece of sugar white coral now, pressing against my skin, tucked into my bikini bottoms. I’d tucked it there after he gently placed it in my hand, coming up from the ocean floor and folding an arm around me, a steadying, strong arm wrapping me as the warm ocean wrapped us both. ‘Ok,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get lunch,’ he called back, swimming ever more metres between us, his dark shoulders and darker hair receding further and further away. I wanted to go back, back to the Khao Mai Kaew cave where we’d spent the morning spelunking, our brave headlamps conquering the alien landscape of an enormous underground chamber. We crawled, sometimes on our bellies, through slippery, black-as-night tunnels; down rickety bamboo ladders; our guide – lithe and energetic, with sharp lemur-like features – waving a torch over a tower of rock that quivered creepily with countless bats. We emerged into the muggy jungle heat, our clothes muddied and eyes glistening with adventure, mirroring the droplets on gargantuan delicious monster leaves in the blinding sunshine. The eyes of our guide glistened too, I realised. They were shot through with red, and mischief, as he lit up a spliff and offered one to our group. But we were high on ice-cream and the tropics. I wanted to go back to the waterfall, where we cooled off in shallow, clear water, scratching mosquito-ravaged skin under a canopy of deep green; where we paused our hike, spell-bound, to watch two elephants ushered by young mahouts – sloshing upstream, flinging joyful showers of water down on themselves with their trunks. I wanted to go back to the mangoes in the ocean, biting into the juicy yellow flesh as if into an apple, the sticky juice running down our arms and into the salty sea, on an island beach, here off Thailand’s southwest coast. To drinking piña coladas in a rim-flow pool, the hazy sun turning molten gold and staining the clouded sky a bright flamingo pink. I wanted to go forward too (although I couldn’t have known it yet), to the Four Islands Tour: the day I first snorkelled. To an alternate watery reality, of life, colour, peace – a created masterpiece below the surface. Or to a picnic dinner on the sand, drifting off under starry skies, beside a fire he made us. We awakened to the hilarity of a packet full of crabs devouring our leftovers, and a black, distant horizon lit by shards of lightning, as we lay a little longer, wrapped in a towel to shield us from the gently falling tropical rain. I wanted any hour but this one, where I might miss this perfect gift of a moment. ‘Wait!’ I said. He turned back. I’d waited so many years. Who reaches this age without a first kiss? But I knew he understood. Because of his own long waiting, which had concluded in a moment far less mythical than this. I could not know how it would all end. New Year’s Eve in New York. On a balcony over Times Square. Trembling, as the cold and rain pierced my sequined dress, and his words pierced my heart: ‘I love you. It’s just not what I want.’ But I would take the leap, into unchartered territory. ‘Ok,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ His arm was around my waist once more. A playful wave pummelled us as he tried at first. We laughed. And then he kissed me. Under a soaring blue sky and a sumptuous sun, on a bare, palm-dotted secret beach, out here in the Andaman Sea.