Chapter Thirty-Six
‘You big slut!’ Jamie-Lee shrieked, so loudly they could probably hear her on the mainland. ‘You massive whore! You fucking disgusting, dirty slag!’
‘Lord,’ Veronica commented to Caroline. ‘Whoever does the bleeping on this show is going to have a very tired index finger pressing that button constantly, don’t you think?’
Caroline giggled.
‘I’m just enjoying the entertainment,’ she said.
Of course she was already calculating how she could insert herself into this scene, snag some extra camera time. This was why Jamie-Lee was kicking off like this: of all the contestants, she was by far the most expert at drawing attention to herself. In Caroline’s opinion, Jamie-Lee had already emerged as one of the front-runners to win.
‘You fucking took your top off?’ Jamie-Lee was shrieking. ‘And got Joe to help soap you? You are fucking rank!’
Jamie-Lee was on a roll. Wearing a cream crochet bikini that was comprehensively failing to contain her pneumatic curves, her lush dark hair piled on top of her head, her hands planted on her substantial hips, she was confronting Debbi, whose crime was to have lured Joe into the freshwater shower set up in a glade a short walk from the beach camp. This shower had been the source of a considerable amount of gripping footage on Celebrity Island Survivor over the years; the female and male contestants who were in optimal physical shape would strip down and wash themselves as seductively as possible in order to ensure plenty of coveted camera time.
Debbi had been very canny with the shower gambit; it had been guaranteed to stir up trouble. From the moment the teams merged, Joe had been thoroughly entranced by Jamie-Lee, who was delighted by this, as couples forming on the show always drew plenty of attention. They flirted, kissed, cuddled; after a couple of days, Joe had pulled their campbeds next to each other, just as Santino and Caroline had done. Jamie was even calling Joe her ‘island husband’.
So Debbi asking him to accompany her to the shower to ‘help her wash her weave’ had been guaranteed to set off a furore when Jamie-Lee found out about it an hour or so later. Debbi’s ‘accidental’ loosening of her bikini top during the weave washing, carefully rehearsed in advance, was definitely the icing on the cake; Joe had not been aware of what she was planning, and his expression as her bosoms popped free had been priceless.
‘You’re a dirty, dirty slag!’ Jamie-Lee continued, pointing accusingly at Debbi, just in case anyone had any doubt to whom she was referring. Her own bosoms, even more lavish than Debbi’s, wobbled superbly as she did this, hypnotizing every single one of the male members of camp. Even Caroline couldn’t look away. Jamie-Lee was a plus-size model, a term which, when she had introduced herself and explained her profession, had drawn surprised comments from many of the campmates at what counted as large in fashion: although she was built on an Amazonian scale, she was a size fourteen, her curves sculpted and toned.
Debbi and Jamie-Lee had chosen the timing of their confrontation very well. All the contestants were in camp, rather than away doing trials or challenges, and they had been hanging out on their beds and hammocks, which were arranged in a loose semi-circle in a shady area of the beach. This functioned like arena seating, with the curve of the beach serving as the stage: Jamie-Lee had positioned herself centre stage, with Debbi cowering downstage left.
‘I didn’t mean—’ Debbi whined.
‘Don’t even start, Debbi!’ Jamie-Lee interrupted. ‘Don’t even front like you’re not going after Joe!’
What Debbi had been doing, of course, was trying to ensure that photographs of her half-naked, bosoms blurred, water pouring down her body, would be on the cover of as many red-top papers and weekly gossip magazines as possible, with blaring headlines like Debbi Does Down Under or Soap Me, Joe! But this fact could never be mentioned. Every contestant had been thoroughly coached before the start of the show, made aware that they were never allowed to look directly at the camera, break the fourth wall, talk about the machinery that drove the show. They were supposed to create drama, but not to say why.
Judging from his panicked expression, however, poor Joe was the only one who did not fully realize that his role was to be the innocent pawn over which Jamie-Lee and Debbi were enthusiastically pretending to fight.
‘You bastard!’ Jamie-Lee yelled, turning her attention to him. ‘What the fuck were you thinking, going off to the shower with her? You thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’t you? Well, you’re busted! Veronica told me all about what you got up to behind my back!’
Veronica smiled complacently, knowing that this meant her scene with Jamie-Lee fifteen minutes ago was almost guaranteed to be used for that night’s show. All eyes were on Joe now as he strode out of the ocean, a couple of gleaming silver fish in the net bag slung over his shoulder, a spear in his hand. He cut a magnificent figure, his muscles honed by the physical labour, his body leaner because of the restricted diet, his skin tanned to a burnished deep gold by the Australian sun.
‘Babes,’ he said, baffled, ‘what’s up? I could hear you screaming from underwater! Look, I got two fish for camp, yeah?’
Taking the bag from his shoulder, he held it up in an attempt to pacify Jamie-Lee, which was pretty much his default setting nowadays. Joe was magnetically drawn not only to Jamie-Lee’s beauty but to her demanding and possessive nature. Nice, accommodating Debbi, who had been hoping to pair up with him, had been left in the dust – or the sand – as Joe gave all his attention to the fickle goddess who was Jamie-Lee. She accepted his attentions one day and spurned them the next; this capriciousness only made him keener.
‘I don’t want bloody fish!’ she screamed, striking the bag from his hand violently.
It flew through the air in Debbi’s direction. Debbi, seeing her cue, screeched theatrically and made a big show of jumping back to avoid being struck.
‘Madonna, no, not in the sand!’ Santino protested; in true Italian style, he cared principally about the food. Jumping up, he retrieved the bag and marched swiftly to the sea to wash the fish as thoroughly as possible.
‘You could have hit me with that!’ Debbi complained, as Joe looked at her and then back to Jamie-Lee again, realization slowly dawning on his handsome face why exactly his paramour was throwing a scene worthy of a drag queen whose rival has sprinkled itching powder on the lining of her wigs.
‘Now, babes,’ he said warily to Jamie-Lee, ‘If this is about this morning, I was just helping Debbi wash her weave . . .’
Jamie-Lee embarked upon a tirade that made everything she had yelled before seem PG-rated.
‘That bleeping finger you mentioned’s going to get RSI from this,’ Caroline commented to Veronica, who smiled at this observation. When even Jamie-Lee’s capacious lungs started to run out of breath, Veronica began to applaud, clapping her hands loudly.
‘Excellent speech!’ she commented loudly. ‘Worthy of a Billingsgate fishwife!’
‘You can fuck off, you old bag!’ Jamie-Lee screeched at her.
Veronica looked complacent, knowing that she had secured a nice little moment on camera. Caroline put her arm supportively round Veronica’s wide shoulders – Veronica shooting her a look of frank surprise at the idea that she would need any comforting – and said:
‘Come on, Jamie-Lee! Veronica’s got a point – you’re making a massive scene and it’s really unnecessary. Everyone knows Joe can’t take his eyes off you.’
‘He did it fast enough when that slag asked him to wash her tits in the shower, didn’t he?’ Jamie-Lee yelled. ‘And who the fuck do you think you are shoving your nose into my business, you bitch? You’re only fucking here because you were shagging a married guy whose wife you used to work for! And it wasn’t five minutes before you were making googly eyes at Santino!’
Santino, squatting in the waves washing off the fish, caught his name and raised a hand in acknowledgement, calling ‘Ciao!’ cheerfully, a moment with which Dan and Pip would have great fun when they did their recap the next day. It would become a regular skit for the duration of the show; one of them would throw a massive strop while the other, in the distance, recreated the friendly ‘Ciao!’ and wave.
This was Caroline’s cue, of course. Jumping to her feet, fitting her hands to her waist in imitation of Jamie-Lee, she said furiously:
‘Stop picking on everyone just because you’re pissed off that Joe went to shower with Debbi! Maybe if you were nicer to him he wouldn’t have done that!’
Joe writhed in embarrassment at this as Jamie-Lee retorted:
‘Yeah, I’ll fucking copy you, shall I, Caroline? Cop off with a married man as soon as I see the opportunity, then dump him just because Santino smiles at you sideways? At least he’s not married, eh? At least this time you picked a guy whose wife isn’t alive!’
There was a loud indrawing of breath from every single watching campmate as these last words exploded from Jamie-Lee’s mouth.
‘What?’ she said angrily, throwing her arms wide. ‘What! It’s not like he can hear me!’
She turned to point at Santino, who was standing up, examining the fish. Seeing her out of the corner of his eye, he waved at her once more, flashing his dazzling smile, quite unaware, as she had said, that she had just been screeching about his beloved dead wife.
It was a gift to the producers, naturally. The daily online viewer question read: ‘Was Jamie-Lee Too Hard On Caroline’? To their mild surprise, the results of the poll were 45% for Yes and 55% for No, when they had expected a huge majority for the Yes answer. Caroline’s romance with Santino was proving very unpopular with the female viewers, who strongly felt that a ‘homewrecker’ like Caroline did not deserve a man as handsome, good-natured and devoted as Santino.
Caroline’s face, as those words hung in the air, was a picture of distress. Everyone fell silent: Debbi clapped her hands to her mouth, that very female gesture of shock when the unsayable has been uttered.
Eventually Joe muttered:
‘Babes, come on. That was too far,’ to Jamie-Lee.
Even Veronica said: ‘Oh, I say. That’s rather harsh,’ and squeezed Caroline’s hand.
Caroline had been prepared, however. Jamie-Lee’s temper was explosive: she could neither tolerate being challenged without lashing out, nor could she control what came out of her mouth when she did. Nothing good could come of prolonging a slanging match with Jamie-Lee; even nastier things would be said, and Caroline, given her situation with Frank, was bound to come off worse.
So, playing the victim, Caroline responded in the most dignified way she could manage, her voice catching in her throat:
‘I can’t believe you’d talk about someone’s dead wife like that!’
She turned and walked away. Unfortunately, it was not the most effective exit, as she had to pick her way round several camp beds and then circle the fire pit before finally reaching the woods. A cameraman tracked her steps all the way, and she desperately wished she could cry, but the tears weren’t coming, and she knew better than to fake them. Contestants on reality shows always got busted if they covered their face and made sobbing noises to gain sympathy, only for the close-up shot to reveal dry eyes, reddened by strategic rubbing.
So, ducking her head, she put her fist over her mouth as if she were doing her level best to fight the tears away, and, once in the woods, she collapsed onto a big log which the contestants often used for strategic ‘private’ conversations. Hand still pressed to her mouth, she breathed heavily, chest rising and falling, trying to maintain the pretence that she was struggling not to cry. Caroline was fairly sure that one of the contestants would follow her, and sure enough, in short order Debbi appeared at the head of the path to the beach, looking agitated.
‘Caroline? You all right?’ she said. ‘God, that cow’s so bloody vicious! It’s not like I took my top off on purpose! I’ve never seen anyone go off on people like she does!’
This was not who Caroline had been hoping for; nice as Debbi was, she was bound to make the conversation principally about herself. To Caroline’s great relief, Santino bounded up the path behind Debbi, took her shoulders and set her gently aside, and then sped towards Caroline, sitting down next to her on the log.
‘Debbi, grazie, I will look after Carolina now,’ he said firmly as he put his arm around Caroline and pulled her close, hugging her.
Debbi stood there for a few seconds, visibly trying to think of a way to insert herself, even briefly, into this scene. Not being the brightest lightbulb in the chandelier, however, she could come up with nothing, and after a short while she realized that to stand there any longer would make her look like a voyeur, as the embrace was very swiftly transforming itself into a makeout session.
Having cupped Caroline’s face in his hands, Santino was kissing her by now with increasing fervour, while Caroline’s hands were roaming all over his naked back. He was only wearing a tattered old pair of shorts, and by now, with his dark Calabrian skin, he was tanned a deep glossy brown, his skin deliciously warm to the touch. Debbi opened her mouth to say something about being pleased that Caroline was feeling better, but, lacking the wit to come up with a snappy line, closed it again and trudged away.
By this time, Santino had swung a leg over the log to straddle it and was guiding Caroline to do the same. This enabled them to face each other fully, pressing their upper bodies together, her breasts to his bare, wet chest. Caroline lifted her legs to wrap around his waist, bringing their crotches into direct contact. Santino’s big tanned hands closed over her thighs, pulling her into him, letting her feel his cock rising against her pelvis.
Caroline moaned. This was more intimate than they had ever been before; they had been sneaking off now and then to kiss in the woods, but this was faster, stronger, much more intense. It was the first time that, if they had genuinely been in private, there was no question that they would be scrambling to pull off their clothes, finding somewhere that they could couple like animals in the woods. Another cameraman had followed Santino, naturally, and the two of them were scrambling eagerly, making eye contact with each other, positioning themselves to film the scene without crossing the shot, moving carefully to avoid making any sound that would distract from the pants and moans and groans that were issuing from the happy couple.
Santino’s hands tangled in Caroline’s hair, pushing back her head so he could kiss her throat; she let him eagerly, feeling incredibly sexy, as if she were starring in a passionately romantic scene in an Italian film. He smelt of sweat and sun and salt water, and yes, of fresh fish, but over the last week and a half this had become completely unremarkable. His lips were even dryer now with salt and sunburn, but the sensation was deliciously intense, making her want him to kiss her everywhere, unfasten her shirt, kiss even further down, cover her breasts with his callused hands, kiss them with his sunburnt lips . . .
She ran her hands down his chest, glorying in the feel of his hot, leathered skin, to his waist, toying with slipping her fingers under the waistband of his shorts, hearing him groan at her touch on skin that was concealed and therefore more sensitive, closer to where he really wanted her hand. But this, Caroline knew, was as far as she could go. She was already tarred with the label of husband-stealer: whenever the British public was allowed to vote to nominate candidates for the trials, it inevitably selected Caroline for the nastiest ones. She was the immediate choice for anything that involved eating kangaroo testicles or having stinking cockroaches poured on her. She smiled through them, knowing she couldn’t afford to be seen as a bad sport. Besides, the public’s appetite for torturing her would, with any luck, keep her on the show when the eliminations started.
But while performing all the nastiest trials might keep her in, acting sluttily was guaranteed to get her chucked out. It had to look as if she and Santino had genuine feelings for each other, rather than just scratching a physical itch. Caroline needed her image to be enhanced by her appearance on the show, not further damaged. Other contestants would be able to get away with sticking their hands down one another’s shorts: Caroline the Homewrecker most certainly couldn’t.
So she summoned up all the willpower she had and pulled back, gasping, her mouth red and swollen from kisses. Dragging her hands up from the temptation to delve into his low-riding shorts, she pushed him away, mumbling: ‘We mustn’t! Think of your boys, they shouldn’t see this!’ – a line she hoped would make her sympathetic to the viewers. Santino nodded in wordless agreement, tilting his head forward to rest again hers, their breath coming harsh and ragged in the quiet forest as they struggled to gain control of themselves.
Meanwhile, back at the beach, Debbi had returned to report breathlessly that Caroline was being very effectively consoled by Santino. On receipt of this news, Jamie-Lee, not to be outdone, had promptly taken Joe’s hand and dragged him off to the sea, where she allowed him much more access to her pneumatic curves than she had previously permitted. They cavorted for a while with the water at waist height, putting on a show that would be played in slow motion for the recap: Jamie-Lee theatrically tossing back her mass of hair, water flying from the ends, as Joe buried his face between her bosoms. The producers had great fun with the sound effects.
And then, in a Celebrity Island Survivor first, the happy couple moved into deeper water. Able to support Jamie-Lee’s magnificent figure in a way even he would not have managed on dry land, Joe lifted her, settled her legs around his waist, and began to start a rhythm that was entirely unmistakeable.
‘No way,’ Debbi breathed, staring at the two of them. ‘They’re actually doing it! In front of all of us!’
‘We can’t actually see anything, though,’ Veronica said, sounding rather disappointed. ‘Wish I’d thought to bring binoculars as my special item, don’t you?’
‘Veronica!’ Debbi said, shocked. ‘I didn’t know you were a voyeur!’
‘Oh come on, Debbi,’ Veronica said, eyes fixed to the spectacle of Joe and Jamie-Lee, head and shoulders above water, rocking backwards and forwards, Jamie-Lee’s arms wrapped around Joe’s neck, kissing him passionately as he worked away. ‘It’s bloody boring here ninety-five per cent of the time, and we’re not even getting any of those ghastly trials because Caroline’s being put up for all of them! Let me at least have the fun of watching two healthy young animals make the beast with two backs!’
‘You what?’ Debbi said blankly, as Caroline and Santino, unnoticed by anyone, came slowly down the beach path, hand in hand.
‘It’s Shakespeare, dear,’ Veronica said, eyes still glued to the spectacle. ‘Othello. It means sex.’
‘Oh!’ Debbi, having thought about the expression, executed a comic look of surprise, eyes opening wide, as she worked it out. ‘I get it! I didn’t know Shakespeare wrote, you know, that kind of thing? Like, sex stuff?’
Out in the sparkling blue waves, the sun beating down on their heads, Jamie-Lee and Joe were speeding up their rocking movements, Jamie-Lee emitting a surely exaggerated screech of ecstasy which was shrill enough to reach the assembled audience on the beach.
‘Never heard anyone sound like a seagull when she comes before,’ remarked a comedian who had been part of the Yellow Team, garnering some sniggers.
‘Ma guarda,’ said Santino, stopping in shock as he saw what was going on. ‘Stanno trombando!’
‘This was one of the best days ever on Celebrity Island Survivor!’ Pip announced happily in the live recap the next day. ‘Seriously, Dan and I could talk about everything that happened for weeks on end, couldn’t we, Dan?’
Dan held up his fingers and started to count off the memorable moments.
‘Ow!’ he said, as he pulled down the first one. ‘That’s my bleeping finger! What Veronica doesn’t know is that we take our jobs so seriously that we do all the bleeping ourselves. I was up till the early hours taking out every second word that came out of Jamie-Lee’s mouth, and I think I sprained my finger . . .’
‘“Worthy of a Billingsgate fishwife!”’ Pip quoted blissfully, as a crew member wearing a white coat and stethoscope dashed in to splint Dan’s finger in a carefully rehearsed comedy moment.
‘Veronica teaching Debbi the sexy bits from Shakespeare!’ Dan continued as he held up his hand to be bandaged.
‘I asked Martyn to make the beast with two backs with me last night,’ Pip said, referring to his husband, ‘and he slapped me round the face and told me he wasn’t that sort of boy.’
‘Well, you are married now!’ Dan said. ‘Everyone knows you don’t do that sort of thing once you’re married! Right, what’s next? Caroline and Santino’s hot log action!’
‘Steady on,’ Pip said. ‘I didn’t know we were allowed to say “hot log” on live TV.’
‘But hard as they tried, ahem, they were totally beaten for the sauce factor by Jamie-Lee and Joe getting friendly in the sea!’ Dan said. ‘A Celebrity Island Survivor first, with extra seagull imitations thrown in at no extra cost! Which brings us to our top moment of today’s action,’ Dan said gleefully. ‘We all learned how to say “Look, they’re having sex!” in Italian. All together now, let’s practise it!’
The crew member who had played the doctor now returned to the shot, his white coat and stethoscope gone, carrying a big blackboard which he propped on the desk. On it were written the words Santino had exclaimed on seeing Jamie-Lee and Joe in the sea. Dan picked up a pointer and indicated the first word, as he, Pip and the entire crew chorused:
‘Ma guarda! Stanno trombando!’