Carol’s Column

Bath blues

"I WANNA see your scar," said Jamie's toothless friend as he crowded into the bathroom with his small brother and a third child I'd never seen before.

I surfaced from the bubbles, pushed aside the Maltese poodle I was shampooing and yelled "Get out!"

It was the last straw. "Take me away from here," I begged my husband. "I want to be alone in a bath without being invaded by monsters. I want to be able to hear the water trickling over my flat feet."

"I have a treat for you," he said. "Tonight I am taking you to a bathroom that will be yours and yours alone, but first a scenic drive to get you into the right mood."

A man of action, he whipped me away to the Orange Free State, to steaming Sasolburg in the sun, metropolis of the safari-suited-combs-in-the-sock brigade. In Sasolburg, even the trees grow straight and narrow.

We crossed the swirling waters of the Vaal back into the Transvaal. And voila, there it stood, that well-known hostelry with flashing neon lights.

"Thank you for coming," said the receptionist with the ski-jump nose as she searched unsuccessfully for our booking.

There was frantic discussion while I removed myself, adjusted my new permanent-curl-even-when-wet wig and powdered my nose.

We'd booked a room with a view over the Vaal and instead overlooked a building site with what looked like exposed sewerage pipes.

But, the bathroom was superb.

Small, but mine alone.

I gently closed the sliding door which fell off its coasters. A minor inconvenience.

Respecting my wish to be alone, my man took himself off to an iced beer or three.

I filled the bath, and gently added the bath bubbles with the lemon-scented fragrance. Too late I realised the lemon was pine and the bath champagne was lavatory cleanser. No matter, in I hopped and shut my eyes to the unaccustomed bliss of total peace.

There was a knock on the door. "It's open," I yelled to my husband. Through the crack in the propped-up door, a pair of trousers appeared attached to short legs. They did not belong to me.

"Drinks Madam?" said a strange voice. I disappeared under the foaming lavatory cleanser while he deposited the champagne on the toilet seat.

For five minutes there was the silence of the toilet next door being flushed, the pulsating beat of a broken airconditioner, a telephone ringing consistently and a sawing noise from a hidden water pipe.

"This is living," I said to myself quietly.

The housekeeper brought clean towels, the chambermaid replaced a smashed water glass, the children in the adjoining room opened the unlocked dividing door and played "hit and run" through the bathroom.

I switched on the shower instead of the tap and drenched the drip-dry curls.

Later, dressed and sweet-smelling of fragrant pine, I wafted down to dinner in my natty number with the cutaway skirt.

"Something stinks," said my husband as I sat down beside him.

The following morning we strolled among the willows at the water's edge.

At lunch, while sitting al fresco, a pigeon dropped his personal offering on my super-curl wig and the man at the adjoining table removed his false teeth and sipped beer through a straw.

"Enjoying it honey?" asked my man.

"Fantastic," I replied, thinking longingly of the bath back home, complete with dogs, kids, rubber ducks, jellied soap and other friends.

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