‘It’s hard,’ I muttered.’…It’s like rock.’
‘He’s been bleeding inside. Bleeding badly. I couldn’t be sure until last night. Or I knew…I think I knew, but…’
‘That thing…it’s a haemorrhage?’
‘Uh-huh.’
I nodded respectfully. I’d never seen a haemorrhage before. ‘Who else knows?’
‘Just you and Sal…and Bugs too, probably. I talked to Sal today. She said nobody can find out. Not after we’ve started to get things back to normal. I think she’s mainly worried about Étienne hearing.’
‘Because he wanted to take Karl to Hat Rin.’
‘Yes. And she’s right to worry. Étienne would insist we took Christo to Ko Pha-Ngan, and it would be for nothing.’
‘You know that for sure?’
‘If we’d taken him the day after the attack, maybe two days after, he might have been OK. And I’d have taken that chance, even if it meant losing the beach. I think Sal would have too…But now…what would be the point?’
‘No point…’
Jed sighed and stroked Christo’s shoulder before pulling back the sheet. ‘No point at all.’
We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching Christo’s shallow and irregular breathing. It was strange that, once explained, it was obvious to me he was dying. The smell I’d noticed on entering the tent was the smell of encroaching death, and the waxy appearance of Jed’s flesh was from living in death’s proximity.
This thought jolted me and I broke the silence bluntly. ‘Zeph and Sammy built a raft. It was what they were doing behind the tree-line. They’re on their way.’
Jed didn’t even blink. ‘If they make it to the beach,’ he said. ‘They’ll see Christo die. Everything here will fall apart.’ And that was all.
∨ The Beach ∧
78
Secrets
I walked close to the longhouse entrance, past where Sal sat talking with Bugs and Jean, and continued along to the beach path. At the first corner I stopped, leaning against the fin of a rocket-ship tree, and lit up. Sal appeared when I was about an inch from the filter.
‘Something is up,’ she said immediately. ‘What is it?’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘By the way you walked, by the look in your eye. How do you think I know? So spit it out, Richard. Tell me what’s happened.’
I opened my mouth to reply but she beat me to it.
‘They’re on their way, aren’t they?’
‘…Yes.’
‘Fuck.’ Sal stared into middle distance for a few seconds. Then she snapped back into sharp-focus mode. ‘What’s their ETA?’
‘Sometime tomorrow afternoon, if they don’t get scared off by the dope guards.’
‘Or the waterfall.’
‘Or the waterfall. Yeah.’
‘Their timing is unbelievable,’ Sal muttered. ‘Absolutely unbelievable.’
‘It turns out they were building a raft.’
‘Building a raft. Of course they were. They had to be doing something…’ She clutched her forehead. ‘I’m taking it for granted you know about Christo.’
I thought for a moment, then nodded. I didn’t want to get Jed in trouble, but when Sal was in this mood it was dangerous to lie. ‘You don’t mind me knowing?’ I said nervously.
‘No. The thing about secrets is you can’t keep them unless you tell at least one other person. It’s too much pressure. So I knew he had to tell someone, and I was fairly sure it would be you…’ She shrugged.’…Seeing as you have your own secrets to keep, I figured that this way we’d keep all the secrets together in one little bunch.’
‘…Oh.’
‘Yes. It is clever, isn’t it? Unless…’
I waited.
‘Unless the person you told about our guests wasn’t Jed. After all, Jed already knew, so it was hardly telling him a secret…’
‘…Hardly relieving the pressure.’
‘Quite,’ she said casually, but watching me pretty close. ‘So did you tell anyone apart from Jed? Keaty maybe…Or Françoise? I certainly hope it wasn’t Françoise, Richard. I’ll be extremely upset if you told Françoise.’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t tell a living soul,’ I said firmly, thereby excluding Mister Duck.
‘Good.’ Sal looked away, satisfied. ‘To tell the truth, I was worried you might have told Françoise. She’d tell Étienne, you see…And you haven’t told Françoise about Christo either?’
‘I only found out about Christo twenty minutes ago.’
‘If Étienne finds out about Christo…’
‘I know. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Fine.’ Her gaze lapsed back into middle distance. ‘OK, Richard…It looks like we have a slight problem with these rafters…But you don’t think they can possibly get here until tomorrow?’
‘No way.’
‘Absolutely sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m going to sleep on this. I need time to think. I’ll give you my decision on what we do about them in the morning.’
‘Right…’
I hung around, unsure as to whether I’d been dismissed or not. A full minute later, Sal was still gazing into nothingness, so I slipped away.
∨ The Beach ∧
79
Black Cloud
I felt I could use some time to think myself, so instead of going back to the clearing I headed down to the beach. I had complicated thoughts about the way things had developed over the course of the day, and I wanted to clear them up in my head.
The way I saw it, there was something that both Sal and Jed hadn’t picked up on. Whether the rafters reached the beach or not, there was still the question of Karl.
I’ll put it another way. Sal and Jed were stuck on the worst-case scenario. They were thinking in terms of what would happen if the rafters reached us. Zeph and Sammy would arrive, probably during Tet. Everyone would go crazy and freak out about the secrecy of the beach being compromised, and unless I got to Zeph and Sammy first, I’d be in a lot of trouble too. The morale that had been revived by Sal’s stirring speech would be completely destroyed. Not only that, there’d be the difficulty of explaining to outsiders why we had one insane and one dying Swede with us. It would be a catastrophe.
I, however, was thinking in terms of the rafters not reaching us. In the back of my mind, the reason I’d been half looking forward to Zeph and Sammy’s arrival was the challenge of stopping them. And, I was fairly confident, the challenge would somehow be met. The point was that it had to be met. The consequences of them succeeding were far too serious. I didn’t know how we’d manage it, but with Sal on the case my instincts were that we wouldn’t fail.
So this left not a worst-case scenario to consider, but a medium-case one.
The rafters never reach us. The beach is never aware they even tried. The Tet celebration gives us a fresh start for the new year, and we would cope with Christo’s death the same way we’d coped with Sten’s. But what about Karl? Karl wasn’t about to die. He was going to stick around indefinitely, a constant reminder of our troubles, an albatross around our necks.
This bothered me a great deal.
♦
I bent over, peering at Karl’s yellow face through the palm-tree fronds of his shelter. He was painfully thin. Even though he’d accepted food recently, flesh had fallen off him over the past week. Already his collar-bone stuck out so far it looked like a suitcase handle, as if you could pick him up by it. He’d probably have been light enough if I’d wanted to try.
Lying by the gap in his shelter – the one that gave him a clear view over the lagoon to the caves – was a coconut-shell half-full of water and a banana-leaf parcel of rice. What was left of the rice, I noticed, was browning. From this I guessed it was the parcel Françoise had left him yesterday, dried out from a day in the sun. It suggested Françoise hadn’t replenished the supply. I contemplated the possibility that this was a new therapy tactic – ignoring him so he’d be goaded into signs of life – but I doubted it. It was more likely that, gripped by the camp’s sudden upbeat brand of madness, Françoise had simply forgotten. I remembered my conversation with her the day before. She’d seemed concerned about him back then. It was interesting how quickly Sten’s funeral had turned everything around.