Mister Duck’s eyes opened wide, then he ran to his bedroom door and peered nervously out. ‘Richard,’ he hissed, turning back to me with a sternly raised finger. ‘You mustn’t say that!’
‘…Shit?’
His tiny face went bright red and he waved his arms. ‘Shh! Someone will hear you!’
‘But…’
‘No buts!’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Swearing carries a two-pence fine in this house!’
‘Oh…right. I won’t swear any more.’
‘Good,’ he said gravely. ‘I should ask you for some money, but you didn’t know the rule, so we’ll leave it at that.’
‘Thanks…’ I walked over to the pile of books and picked one up – Cigars of the Pharaoh. ‘So you like Tintin, huh?’
‘I love Tintin! Do you? I’ve got every Tintin book except one.’
‘I’ve got every Tintin book except none.’
‘Including The Blue Lotus?’
‘Only in French.’
‘Exactly! That’s why I haven’t got it. It really annoys me.’
‘You should get someone to talk you through it. My mum went through it with me. It’s pretty good.’
Mister Duck shrugged. ‘My mum can’t speak French.’
‘Oh…’
‘So which is your favourite one?’
‘Hmm. Tricky question.’ I thought for a couple of seconds. ‘It isn’t Tintin in America.’
‘No. And it isn’t the Castafiore Emerald.’
‘No way…It might be Tintin in Tibet…or The Crab with the Golden Claws…I can’t decide.’
‘Do you want to know what my favourite is?’
‘Sure.’
‘Prisoners of the Sun.’
I nodded. ‘That’s a good choice.’
‘Yes. Would you like to know another book I like?’
‘OK.’
Mister Duck walked over to his bed and crouched down, feeling around underneath. Then he dragged out a large hardback, coffee-table size. Its cover was plain red and stamped with gold-leaf writing. It read Time. A Decade in Photographs: 1960-1970.
‘This book is my dad’s,’ he said airily, squatting down and beckoning me to sit beside him. ‘I’m not even supposed to have it in my room. You know what?’
‘What?’
‘In this book…’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘There’s a picture of a girl.’
I snorted. ‘Big deal.’
‘A naked girl!’
‘Naked?’
‘Uh-huh. You want to see it?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK…hold on.’ Mister Duck started flicking through the pages. ‘It’s somewhere near the middle…Ah! Here it is!’
I pulled the book on to my lap.
The girl was indeed naked, and aged somewhere between ten and twelve. She was running down a country road.
Mister Duck leant over and put his mouth to my ear. ‘You can see everything! he whispered excitedly.
‘You certainly can,’ I agreed.
‘Everything! All her bits!’ He started giggling and rolled forwards with his hands over his mouth. ‘Everything!’
‘Yes,’ I said, but I was suddenly feeling uncertain. There was something puzzling about the photo.
I noticed the fields that surrounded the country road; they were strangely flat and alien. Then I noticed the collection of indistinct buildings behind the girl, either out of focus or made fuzzy through clouds of smoke. And the girl was upset, holding her arms away from her sides. Other kids ran beside her. A few soldiers, apparently indifferent, watched them as they passed.
I frowned. My gaze flicked quickly from the girl to the soldiers, back to the girl again. It was as if my eyes had become confused, unsure of where to settle. I wasn’t even sure what they were settling on.
‘Fuck,’ I muttered and shut the book with a snap.
Mister Duck sat up. ‘I’m sorry, Rich,’ he said. ‘But I’ve already warned you about swearing once. This time it’s going to cost you.’
∨ The Beach ∧
In Country
∨ The Beach ∧
55
Aspect One
Jed’s eyes were a little wider apart than mine, so it took some adjustment before I was seeing one crisp circle instead of two hazy ones. Then I had to scan slowly across the sea, steadying myself on my elbows as the tiniest movement sent the image a mile off track. It took me several seconds to find the strip of sand and the line of green palms, but once there I located the five familiar figures almost immediately. They were the same place they’d been yesterday morning, and nearly every morning for the past nine days. The only exception had been four days ago when the beach had been completely empty. That had caused us a bit of concern, until they reappeared from the tree-line a couple of hours later.
‘They’re still there,’ I said.
‘Up to anything?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Just lying there.’
‘Looks like one is standing, but he isn’t moving.’
‘And you can count all five.’
I paused. ‘Five, yeah. They’re all there.’
‘Good.’ Jed coughed quietly into his hand. We had to be careful about noise, this close to the dope fields, and we couldn’t smoke either, which didn’t do much for my nerves. ‘Good.’
♦
My first day with Jed had started off badly. I’d woken up in a shit mood, the previous night’s dream still clinging to me, faintly depressed about leaving the fishing detail. But as soon as he’d explained about the people I’d understood. Then I’d been thrown into a panic, saying, ‘It’s the worst-case scenario,’ over and over like a mantra, while Jed waited patiently for me to calm down. It took some time, but eventually I stopped jittering long enough for him to get a word in, and I was able to take in the exact nature of the situation.
The good news was that Sal still didn’t know about my indiscretion with the map. Jed had only told her that someone had turned up on the neighbouring island, but not that they might have a connection with me. As far as Sal was concerned, the reason I was working with Jed was because he’d got fed up with being alone and wanted a partner. The other good news was that the people had been hanging around on the island for two days before Sal had agreed to move me. So, if they were aiming for our beach, they were obviously finding it difficult to reach us.
On the downside, we had to assume that the people were aiming for the beach. We also had to assume that two of them were Zeph and Sammy, and the other three were the Germans Jed had seen on Ko Pha-Ngan. We couldn’t be sure about this because the people were too small to make out clearly, even to see a flash of blond hair, but it seemed likely.
I’d spent the rest of that day in a state of shock, sitting with Jed’s binoculars clamped to my face, convinced – every time one of them appeared to move – that they were about to start swimming towards us. But they didn’t start swimming towards us. In fact, they barely budged from their patch of sand, occasionally taking a brief dip or disappearing into the jungle for a couple of hours. After three or four similar days had passed, my initial level of panic became impossible to sustain. It faded, mellowing into anxiousness, finally settling as a generalized tension. With the tension I was able to think more clearly, and in a manner of speaking, relax. That was when the other aspects of my new detail began to emerge.
The first was getting to know Jed. We spent every hour until nightfall sitting on a rocky outcrop at the highest point of our island, and aside from the spying, all we could do was talk. Mostly we talked about Plan B, which was what we were going to do when they finally got here. The only problem with Plan B was that, like most Plan Bs, it didn’t exist. We had several options but could never agree on which one to take. The option I favoured was that Jed went down to intercept them and told them that they weren’t welcome on the beach, but he didn’t want to do that. Although he was sure he’d be able to make them leave, he was also sure that they’d go straight back to Ko Pha-Ngan and tell everyone what they’d found. Instead, Jed wanted to rely on the natural barriers the island put up. There was the swim, they had to get past the dope fields, find the lagoon, and then find a way of getting down to it. Jed was confident that this obstacle course would put them off, apparently unconcerned that it had failed to deter me, Étienne, Françoise, the Swedes and himself.