Not Burt and Deborah
It’s not the famous 1953 beach scene in ‘From Here to Eternity.’ Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster aren’t the couple bursting from the surf to roll on warm sand. Actually, seven decades have unfolded since the black and white film was released. But that scene is replaying before my eyes, right now, in full-frontal technicolour. On a secluded beach in northern NSW, I’m delivered a gut-punch of disbelief. From my eyrie at the top of an outcrop of jagged rocks, I witness a wannabe Deborah Kerr relishing an adulterous beach romp with my husband. At least they were clad in swimwear in the black and white movie.
From the window of a public bus, I’d unexpectedly sighted our blue BMW in a beachside carpark. My brow furrowed. Strange. My husband had stressed the importance of his all-day business meeting and insisted he take the car. Alighting at the next stop, I strode back to the carpark. Cresting the pathway through the dunes, I arrived in a quintessential beach scene. Gently crashing waves, kids laughing and chasing screeching gulls, surfers clad in neoprene, the savour of salt laden air. But the ambience was wasted on me. I furtively scanned the beach for my husband. No luck. About 400 metres in the distance, a couple was walking hand-in-hand towards the craggy headland at the northern end of the beach. Being low tide, they’d rounded it and disappeared from view. Surely that wasn’t my husband? In 29 years of marriage, I’d never questioned his fidelity.
Panic overwhelmed reason. I backtracked and struck out through vegetation behind the dunes towards the headland, leaving no telltale footprints on beach sand. Where the headland thrust upwards, I crossed the dune beside the rocky outcrops which the couple had rounded. Small waves rolled onto the rocks but as they receded, a brief patch of wet sand intermittently appeared. I waited for the waves to recede then crossed and found myself on a tiny, secluded beach. Slabs of exposed, jagged rocks protruded through the sand. Failing to sight the couple, I clambered up the incline of a huge outcrop to peer over the narrow beach below. That’s when I was delivered the gut-punch. My husband and the wannabe Deborah Kerr standing in a naked and passionate embrace.
Immediately below me, two piles of clothing lay on a rock close to the water. My husband’s clothes were neatly folded. At his insistence, I’d endured 29 years of ironing and folding his clothes. Wannabe Deborah Kerr’s clothes lay in an urgently discarded pile. In silence and disbelief, I watched the treachery unfold. This blonde starlet was probably half his age. Perky tanned breasts, a neatly waxed bikini line, a pair of firm buttocks. She squirmed playfully and provocatively around my husband’s pudgy stomach, man-boobs and sagging arse. He was the antithesis of Burt Lancaster. I subconsciously tightened my stretch-marked stomach muscles and clenched my third and fourth buttocks. What could she see in him? Power? Money? Bragging rights? Another mounted head on her loungeroom wall? With lips remaining locked, they sank to the warm sand. Their lovemaking began rhythmically, quickly became more urgent, until there was an explosion of guttural noises followed by laughter as a wall of small white waves washed over intertwined, sandy bodies.
Scrambling to their feet they plunged into the surf, swam towards deeper water, and frolicked like playful seals in their sexual afterglow.
Trembling, heart rate elevated, I rapidly backtracked, my heart vainly trying to kick its way out of my chest. Reaching the carpark, I located our BMW through tear-streamed eyes and sped off using my set of keys. I’m not sure where the Burt and Deborah wannabes are now. In retrospect, I’d love to have viewed a video replay of how they were able to slither their naked bodies back into public places. I guess one day in the future, a king tide or east coast low will unearth the two sets of clothing I furiously buried at the back of the dune near the headland. And I hope the wannabe Burt Lancaster would have appreciated how neatly I’d folded his clothes as my farewell gesture to him.
