The Resort

My name is Tom, I’m a twenty-year-old man, in my last year at university, the summer break was fast approaching, and I was skint, so instead of going home to my parents, I decided to get a job straight away, after all these student loans wouldn’t pay themselves off.

The course I had taken was hotel management/hospitality. I started looking on the internet for job vacancies, most of the jobs advertised were for hotel porters and the like, paying rubbish wages for very long hours.

Just as I was giving up hope, I spotted an advert for an assistant manager at a new resort in France, one of the requirements was being fluent in French. My grandmother was French, so I was bi-lingual, I also spoke a bit of German.

I applied for the job and was asked to attend an interview in London, that week. I took the train to London from my digs in Winchester. After getting lost on the underground, I found my way to the office block on Oxford Street.

The sign on the third-floor offices, read “Elite Resorts”. I knocked and waited, a low husky voice bid me enter. I took a deep breath and opened the door,

Sitting behind an onyx desk was a blonde goddess, she stood up to shake my hand, she was wearing a figure-hugging dress made of some iridescent material, that looked like flowing water. Her blonde hair hung halfway down her back. She looked like a model.

I was captivated, I realised that I was staring and that I still had hold of her hand.

This vision of loveliness asked my name and I managed to blurt out, that my name was Tom Masters.

She asked me to take a seat and that Mr Svenson would be out to see me soon.

As I sat, this beauty glided back behind her desk, and a door that I hadn’t noticed, opened to the left of her desk, and a tall bearded man stepped out.

He introduced himself as Otto Svenson, the owner of Elite Resorts, he led me into his office, as I passed the reception desk, he spoke to the girl, saying “can you bring in two coffees, please, Juni.?”

Mr Svenson started off by explaining that his company had been in the holiday resort business for nineteen years and were expanding all the time, this was their newest venture.

Just then, there was a polite knock at the door and Juni entered carrying a tray, she placed it carefully on the desk, and turned to leave, Mr. Svenson said, “thank you Juni” Juni replied, “that’s Ok, Dad.”

This vision of beauty was his daughter, I knew there and then, I had to get a job with Elite Resorts. Just so I could have a slight chance of seeing her again.

When I returned to earth, Mr Svenson was finishing off his talk about the resort, he asked me if I had any questions, as I hadn’t heard what he had said, I said, “no.”

He said that due to the nature of the resort, the salary was considerably higher than normal.

I had got the job, but I didn’t know the first thing about the place, but I thought that one resort is just like another.

Mr Svenson asked when I could start, I checked my diary, and gave the earliest date I could finish college, he said, “OK, a plane ticket to Limoges for the fifth of June will be posted to your college Digs, by the end of the week.”

He said, “Juni will be your assistant.” It would have taken the juice of twenty lemons, to get the smile off my face.

As I was leaving, Juni shook my hand, winked and said, “I look forward to seeing a lot more of you.” now what could she mean by that.

I traveled back to Winchester and phoned my parents to tell them that I had got a job and would be working in France. I promised to visit before I started work.

The end of term came, I packed my cases and left for the airport, Eastleigh to Paris, Paris to La Rochelle. I was being picked up at the airport.

At Limoges airport, there was a limo waiting for me. A uniformed chauffeur was waiting with a piece of card with my name on it.

The chauffeur was a tall, fit-looking blond-haired German called Helmut.

We shook hands and walked to the luggage carousel, Helmut helped me collect my four pieces of luggage, he looked and said, “You didn’t need to bring so many clothes, the firm provides a uniform.” Then he laughed, a bit like Juni had laughed.

We set off for the long 50-mile trip to Royan, situated on the coast. Helmut insisted that I travel in the back.

I sat in comfort and quickly dozed off, I awoke as we pulled up to a set of high gates, set in an equally high wall.

Helmut wound the window down and spoke into a speaker box situated on the wall. There was a click and the gates opened.

We drove through to find a second wall and gate when the gate behind us had closed and locked, the gate in front opened and we were met by a long driveway, at least 500 meters.

It led up and over a rise, which blocked the sight of the wall and gate from view. The grounds were perfectly manicured.

I was thinking, “Elite Resort’s certainly spare no expense when it comes to looking after their client’s wellbeing.”

We pulled up to the front of a spectacular white building, it was so bright in the afternoon sun that I needed my sunglasses just to look at it.

Helmut told me that my luggage would be taken to my rooms. I entered a vast cool deserted lobby,

There were signs informing that the use of camera’s and recording devices were forbidden.

Behind the reception desk was a door, I knocked on it and heard a voice tell me to enter.

I entered and sitting behind the desk was a shirtless man in his late twenties. He introduced himself as Jose, the manager.

He said, “you must be Tom, my new assistant manager, welcome.”

He looked me up and down, then said, “you are a bit overdressed if you would like to change, your uniform is in your rooms.”

With that, he stood revealing that he was naked when I stepped back in shock, he said, “Didn’t you know that this is a very exclusive naturist resort, rich people pay a lot of money to come here.”

“Now if you would like to go and change, I’ll see you back here in about fifteen minutes, we’ll have a coffee then I’ll show you around.”

He rang a bell on his desk and the door opened, and a pretty young girl walked in, completely naked, she smiled at me, looked at Jose, and he asked her to show me to my rooms, as I was the new assistant manager.

The Girl, Tina, shook my hand and commented: “how it was nice to see a new face.”

She led me to a suite of rooms, my cases were stacked in the corner, laid on the bed were a name badge on a lanyard, bearing my name and photo, I didn’t recognise the photo.

I think it had been taken during my interview. Also, on the bed were a tiny pair of white speedo swimming trunks.

Tina informed me that the shorts were known as “Chicken Shorts” they were for me to wear until I got used to being around naked people 24/7.

The last item was a pair of white flip-flops, when I looked, Tina said, “the sand here gets very hot.”

She showed no sign of leaving, so I entered the en-suite and changed into the white speedos, they left nothing to the imagination.

I’m sure that I was speaking in a much higher pitch when I had them on. I slipped on the flip-flops, and we returned to Jose’s Office. Jose sent Tina for coffee, and we sat talking. Tina returned with the coffee, it was hot and very rich.

As I was drinking my coffee, I became aware of how many drips I spilled. Normally, I wouldn’t notice, but being just dressed in tight speedo’s, it hurt.

Finally, Jose said, “let me show you around.” and led me out of the office, through reception and out to the main resort.

As we walked, he pointed out various buildings, swimming pool, gym. Sauna, bars, restaurants, indoor and outdoor tennis courts. Etc.

Everywhere, were naked people of every age, shape, size, and colour. Most of the guests were in their middle age, where they had spent so long sunbathing under the hot sun, their skin had the texture and colour of an old dark brown leather sofa. Some of the older guests had skin like Rhinos.

Down on the beach, were two teams of young women playing beach volleyball. My speedos started strangling me. I wished I had a clipboard to hide my embarrassment.

We walked through the gym, where a group of larger ladies was being led in Yoga. Suddenly, my speedos, fit me properly again.

I kept the image of a very large German lady bending and touching her toes in my mind, it came in very useful over the coming weeks, to keep myself under control.

We strolled around the resort, Jose introduced me to waiters and waitresses, all of whom were wearing a red bowtie on a white collar. This was so the guests could see who the waiting staff were.

Each section of staff were wearing different colour wristbands, white for cleaners, blue for maintenance, green for the gardeners, and so on.

The only staff members who wore clothes were the cooks and chefs, well you wouldn’t want to cook bacon in the nude would you.?

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, I was getting used to seeing naked people, one elderly lady remarked as she walked by, “Nice budgie smugglers” and laughed.

I asked Jose what she had meant. “he just shrugged his shoulders” I made a mental note to ask Tina when I saw her next.

When I returned to my suite of rooms, I wasn’t decided whether I would be brave enough to leave the speedos off the next day or not, so I rinsed them out in the basin and left them on the window sill to dry.

In the morning, I still wasn’t brave enough to go out without the speedos. So, I pulled them on, they were still a bit damp, but they would soon dry out in the heat.

After a quick breakfast, I walked to Jose’s office, knocked and entered, Jose said, “I want you to have a good look around the resort and look for ways, we can improve things for our clientele.”

He continued, “take Tina with you, take one of the golf buggies, get Tina to write down anything you think we can change.”

As I left the office, Tina was waiting for me in the reception lobby, she greeted me with a large smile and said, “Good Morning”

As we left the lobby, the heat of the morning sun hit me, Tina turned to me and said, “first stop, the shop for a sunhat, and sun cream, we don’t want you getting sunburnt or sunstroke, do we.?”

After the shop, Tina insisted on rubbing suntan lotion on my back. Then we walked to the garages, we picked out a golf buggy and made sure it was fully charged.

Tina said, “do you want to drive.?” I said,” no, you can drive if you want.” Tina looked surprised and said, “my dad won’t let my mum drive him anywhere.”

I said, “I’ve got nothing against women drivers” then grinned and continued, “they are just like any other psychopath.”

Tina looked shocked and then burst out laughing and said,” I’ll get you for that.” And pretended to slap my arm.

I could very soon get used to this job, a beautiful girl by my side, joking with each other, sunshine, blue sky, what wasn’t there to like.

We drove around the extensive grounds, looking at everything, more and more, my eyes were drawn to this beautiful girl sitting beside me.

We started talking about ourselves, Tina asked where I was from, family, etc. I told her that I was from Durdle Door in Dorset, that I had a younger brother called Ben and a younger sister called Gemma.

Ben was twelve and Gemma was fourteen. My dad was a vicar and my mum was a housewife.

I then asked Tina about herself, she said that she was an only child, she’d left home in the east end of London at sixteen, because of her father, he was a bully. She was now twenty and hadn’t been home since.

I could see that Tina was getting a bit upset, so I changed the subject, I remembered the elderly woman’s comment from the night before.

I said to Tina, “what are budgie smugglers?” Tina nearly fell out of the golf buggy, she laughed so much. She promised to tell me when we got back to the main resort.

We drove back to the restaurant, in time for lunch, which was excellent, while we ate, I was feeling very overdressed.

After we had eaten, I asked Tina about Budgie smugglers. She took me by the arm and led me to a full-length mirror behind the reception desk.

she got me to stand in front of it and told me to look at the front of my speedos, at first, I didn’t see anything unusual, then it struck me, it looked like I had a bird hidden down the front of my trunks.

The side view was even worse, so, that is why they are called budgie smugglers. I looked at Tina and she looked at me, and we both burst out laughing.

Jose came out of his office to see what was happening, I asked if I could have a minute of his time.?

I sat and asked Jose, how the guests got to the resort as the airport was 50 miles away, Jose said, “we have three limousines that collect guests from the airport and chauffeur them here.”

I said, “have you thought of using helicopters? It would be quicker, the guests would love the exclusiveness of being flown here by helicopter, the summer is coming, the roads are going to get busier, this is a win-win situation.”

I continued, “we have got plenty of space to mark a landing zone, we could hire a couple of helicopters and pilots and the guests will love it.”

Jose thought for a couple of minutes, then picked up the phone and called London, then handed me the phone, saying, “Your idea, you sell it to Mr Svenson.”

Twenty minutes later, I had been given a raise and Mr Svenson was organising builders to come in and build hangers for the two new helicopters and to level and mark the Heli-pad.

Within a month, there were V.I.P guests being flown in by helicopter, the flight taking approx. 30 minutes, as opposed to upwards of an hour by road.

The limos had also been upgraded to stretch limos with a bar, tinted windows, all the accoutrements that well-off guests expected. The other advantage of the helicopters was that they avoided any photographers, waiting at the gates.

I asked Jose if Tina could be my assistant, sort of a girl Friday. Well, I was the blue-eyed boy for coming up with the helicopter idea, so of course, Tina became my assistant and shared my office, there was one piece of unofficial décor in the office.

When I had felt brave enough to lose the “Budgie Smugglers” after three days, Tina had taken them, washed them, taken them to the maintenance workshop, and got them framed.

I came in and they were hanging on the wall above my desk, with a Label, “The Budgie Smugglers”.

Jose thought it was funny, as he made no objections, the framed Speedos stayed.

Tina moved into my office, I asked Jose if I could get a coffee machine and small refrigerator for my office, this would save time, I could make coffee as and when I wanted. I was still dripping coffee in my lap, though.

Other changes that Tina and I suggested were a boating restriction zone around the resort where it met the Bay of Biscay, to stop photographers with a long lens on their camera’s from taking photos of our guests.

After talks with our lawyers, we managed to get a 150-metre exclusion zone, which was better than nothing.

We closed off one of the swimming pools and built a bar in it, so that, people could have a swim then sit at the bar in waist deep water and have a drink, we also built another pair of toilets near the pool.

This bar was a great success, we also set up a hairdressing salon, nail bar, waxing salon, etc.

Tina and I got closer and closer, and by the time the resort started to close down at the end of the season, we were an item.

At the last night of the season party, during the last dance. I walked over to the D.J and collected a small velvet box from him, I dropped to one knee and asked Tina to marry me, luckily, she said, “yes”.

The room erupted in cheers, and the waiters and waitresses brought in champagne. All of Tina’s friends had to come over and admire the engagement ring.

One of Tina’s friends said with a cheeky grin, “I love naturalist weddings, you can always see who the best man is.!”

The end, copyright Phil Wildish, 06/06/2018.