by Dick Francis
The cows had given me supper, and also an early breakfast, and then they moved off in a herd as if of one mind towards the runway, where they put their heads down to the grass, and kept it both fertilized and short.
When the sun rose it was three days since Kris and I had flown out of Grand Cayman Island.
The eye of Hurricane Odin. after traveling northwest for three days at seven miles an hour, might at that moment, I thought, be raising gales and storm surges along the Cayman shores. It wasn’t reasonable, I told myself, to expect anyone in those circumstances to come looking for foolhardy aviators who had most certainly crashed at sea.
I put together a rough low seat of timbers in a place that would afford shadow when the sun was highest, and sat there to give my still bare feet a respite. Cuts, scratches and insect bites round my ankles itched abominably and refused to heal. I went through a long morning of self-pitying depression, unable to believe I would have to spend much more time there and unwilling in consequence to start building a bearable way to live.
I thought of my grandmother, who, apart from any anxiety she might have had if anyone had told her I was missing, would certainly have issued brisk and bracing instructions along the lines of, “Perry, build yourself a house, filter some drinking water, weave some sandals, look for coconuts, keep a log of the days, go for a swim ... don’t mope.”
She had never complained, neither when her legs stopped working, nor ever since. She had taught me always simply to bear as best I could whatever could not possibly be put right; and in that category she had included my lack of father or mother.
She wouldn’t have thought much of my spinelessness on Trox. Her presence sat with me at midday in the patch of shade, sympathetic but unforgiving. It was my grandmother therefore who prodded me that afternoon into walking to the other end of the runway, shoes or no shoes, and I came across a way down to a white-sandy beach there, from which I swam, pitting my diminished strength against still heavy rough surf, but feeling clean and refreshed afterwards.
Down that end of the island there was a veritable forest of snapped-off hardwood trees as well as uprooted coconut palms and the stripped remains of what I guessed were broad-leaved banana trees. By scavenging I found two viable coconuts and, still attached to its stalk, a full-grown ripe mango: a feast.
But the blue sky remained empty, and no one came.
By the next morning even the gray tossing sea had returned to Caribbean blue.
To pass the dragging time, I took the folder of papers out of the safe, and in the sun sat staring at each one separately, trying to make even the smallest sense of languages I couldn’t read. The nearest I came to recognition was a paper I guessed to be in Greek, on account of the symbols W and p, omega and pi.
All of the papers were scattered with numbers, and where numbers occurred they were written in the script known as Latin, or otherwise ordinary English.
Eventually, letting ideas drift, I thought that some of the bunch might be an inventory, a stock-taking, of round-the-world species and quantities, possibly of the mushrooms that had once grown in the now blown-away sheds.
Fine, I thought; but why the Geiger counter?
I replaced the folder and spent an idle hour listening to irregular but fairly frequent clicks as I walked around the dead village raising live evidence of radiation.
I expected the counter to count, as background radiation was all around us all the time, a combination from naturally occurring radioactive material in the earth’s crust and “cosmic rays,” high-energy particles arriving from outer space emitted by the sun about ten minutes and ninety-three million miles ago.
But there seemed to be rather a high count rate. especially near to the bases of the blown-away houses. High count rates were not unusual. Residents of Aberdeen, the Granite City of Scotland, experienced a higher background than normal, as granite contained many radioactive atoms. I looked around me and tried to remember what my pal in Miami had said—“Constructed of bird droppings, guano, coral and limestone rock.” Were bird droppings radioactive? No. I thought not.
Putting the rod near the cracks in the concrete floors raised an endless stream of clicks; clicks so fast that they coalesced into one sound.
I thought of radon. Radon gas could be a problem the world over as it was produced by the decay of naturally occurring uranium in rocks and seeped unseen and unsmelled into people’s homes, giving them cancer. But, I thought, radon needed an enclosed space to congregate and the hurricane had ensured there were no enclosed spaces left. And besides, limestone had little radioactive uranium in it to decay.
So what was causing the count? Was this perhaps why the islanders had left: not because of Nicky, still less because of Odin, but because they feared the radioactivity under their feet?
If the Geiger counter was energized round the houses, it practically took off over the outlined remnants of the foundations of the mushroom sheds. Frowning, I made a long detour down and off the runway to see if the cattle en masse were emitting strong radioactivity too, but to my relief they weren’t. I hadn’t, it seemed, drunk quantities of radioactive milk.
Eventually the Geiger counter lost its attraction as entertainment and I restored it to the safe. The folder lay there also, each sheet familiar but reproaching my lack of scholarship.
I closed the safe and locked it, and again in the idyllic air I added one more piece of wood to a growing line. Each piece of wood represented a day, and at that moment there were four of them. Four long days and longer nights.
Despair was too strong a word for it.
Perhaps despondency was better.
When they came for me, they came with guns.
6
In the late afternoon of my fifth day on the island while I swam in the sea off the small sandy beach at the far end of the landing strip, a twin-engined airplane droned in, dropped down neatly over the distant village and rolled nearly halfway down the strip before pausing, turning and taxiing back to what, before Odin, had been habitation.
Every day I had lain the bright yellow-orange life jacket conspicuously on the runway and weighted it with stones in the hope that it would be visible from any passing low-flying aircraft, and although the cattle had thoroughly dirtied it a couple of times I had washed it well enough for the purpose in one of the filthy cisterns. With absolute joy then, I reckoned that the jacket had successfully delivered its intended message, and I scrambled with haste up the winding rocky path from the little beach, aiming, sore feet or not, to run towards my rescuers so they should see me before believing the island to be deserted and flying off again.
In my anxiety to be seen I gave no thought at all to the possibility that the newcomers might not be friendly. They had come in an aircraft that would take eighteen or so passengers comfortably: the sort of aircraft regularly used for flying people to and from small islands. The sort of aircraft sensibly sent out to survey small islands for hurricane survivors. A workhorse aircraft, unremarkable.
I was surprised but not disturbed that no one emerged from it as I shuffled and ran and struggled up the runway. It was a scorching hot day and I thought only that they would have air-conditioning and glorious cold drinks on board. I was about twenty yards away when the rear door opened and unfolded to enable five figures to walk down a short stairway to the ground.
They all wore the same thing—shiny metallic coveralls with great hoods coming down over their shoulders, with smoked plastic rectangles instead of faces: more like space suits than suitable wear for a stifling Caribbean afternoon. I’d seen those outfits before—radiation protection suits. I’d seen what they were carrying before too—deadly black assault rifles, which they aimed like a firing squad at my chest.
I stopped. I found it less than amusing to be a target again, but at least no one this time read me my “rights.” No one told me I could remain silent but if I said anything it would be held against me in court. No one mentioned a court of any description. Silence, however, agreed w
ith me fine.
One of the suits took a hand off his weapon long enough to beckon to me to walk forward and, seeing no advantage in trying to run, I slowly advanced until signaled to stop.
I must have looked a bit primitive. I wore only what Odin had left me; underpants and torn shirt. My chin was dark with unshaven beard and my feet were bruised and swollen. The television audience back home, used to my well-brushed tidy screen self, would have been affronted and disbelieving.
The five suits talked to each other for a while but were too far away for me to hear what they said. I hopefully guessed in the end that they weren’t so much concerned about their exposure to radioactivity as about preventing me from recognizing them if I saw them anywhere again in future. This helpfully implied that they’d voted against killing me casually and chucking my corpse into the sea—from where it might wash up again inconveniently—and also, I thought, it meant that they hadn’t known I would be on the island at all.
I’d had four long days and nights for thinking, and many things in that time had grown clearer. If they gave me a reasonable chance to act, they could report me to be as ignorant when they found me as I’d been when I got lost.
Three of the suits peeled off and headed for the village area, leaving only two with their unamiable black machinery pointing my way. These two in fact looked nervous more than murderous, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot; but nervous gunmen frightened me more than those who knew their business. I stood very still and didn’t speak, and was glad not to be sweltering inside heavy protective gear.
When eventually the other three returned from their walk-about, they were carrying in plain sight both the Geiger counter and the folder of papers. If they’d found my camera in its new out-of-cow-reach perch near the top of a high tangle of timbers, they weren’t telling.
All five conferred near the aircraft, then a different group of three walked up the entry stairs and pulled the door shut behind them.
My spirits sank to zero when they started both of the engines, but as the two left to guard me continued unemotionally to do so, I waited as patiently as I could manage, even if screaming inside. Food, sleep and shoes, I needed all of those. On that island paradise I’d had a surfeit of hunger, thirst, heat, insects and general deprivation, and I was perilously near to begging.
Turn your mind, I told myself, to something else.
A gentle wind was blowing steadily up the runway towards the village, but the aircraft, though traveling the right way for takeoff, was going far too slowly to achieve lift. Eventually it stopped altogether, disgorging one figure who walked to an edge of the runway to survey the rocky terrain between landing strip and sea. The figure returned and reboarded, and the travel-stop-search procedure was repeated again and again.
They were looking for the cattle, I realized, and although I could have saved them time, I didn’t. I let them stop and search, stop and search, stop and search until they came across the peaceful beasts lying and chewing the cud down at the far end of the island, where there was a patch of more succulent grass.
The airplane turned back after a lengthy herd inspection and stopped where it had been before.
Another general discussion took place, which resulted in two of my longtime guards advancing on me nervously, one with gun held ready, the other to tie first a blindfolding scarf around my head and next a thinner uncomfortable restraint round my wrists, behind my back.
I thought of several protests, both verbal and physical, but saw no point in any of them, and nor did I complain when roughly prodded. blindly stumbling, up the stairs into the body of the aircraft to be pushed into a rear seat. The engines roared immediately as if in a hurry to be gone and the aircraft lifted easily into the blue.
I consequently didn’t see Trox Island or its familiar ruins when I was leaving it; but if three of my captors thought I didn’t know who they were, they were wrong.
By the time we touched down, at a guess thirty-five to forty minutes later, I’d added cramp to my woes, a minor inconvenience compared to not having been flung overboard into the deep Caribbean. The aircraft taxied a good way after it landed, and then waited, with the engines ticking over, until the rear door was lowered and some of the passengers left through it. Then the door closed again and the aircraft taxied lengthily again, and again it stopped with the engines still running. Again I heard the rear door being lowered, and with sweat and rapid heartbeat I thought that if death were on its way to me it would be here at the end of a long taxi ride to nowhere.
Prods and pushes propelled me stumbling down the steps onto stony ground. This exit wasn’t followed immediately by a bullet through the brain, but by a blind walk through a squeaking gate in a rattling fence. Rough hands gave me an overbalancing final thrust forward, and while I tottered to stand upright I heard the squeaky gate slam shut behind me and with immense thankfulness understood I’d been unmistakably shoved free into the living present.
I swallowed, shuddered, felt sick. The aircraft taxied away into limbo. I thought with banality that it’s remarkable how stupid one feels standing half naked and blindfolded with one’s wrists tied, in the middle of God knows where.
After a while, in which I tried unsuccessfully to free my hands, a voice at my shoulder asked in puzzlement, “What you doing out here, mon?” and I answered with husky, out-of-use vocal chords, but endless gratitude, “If you untie me, I’ll tell you.”
He was big, black and laughing at my predicament, and he held the white cotton triangular bandage that had been wrapped round my head.
“You got bandages where you don’t need them, mon,” he said happily. “Who trussed you up like a chicken, eh? Your woman, eh?” He tore and untied with strong fingers the bandages round my wrists. “Where are your shoes, mon?” he asked. “Your feet have been bleeding.” He saw the whole thing as a joke.
I smiled stiffly in return and asked where I was. It was evening, on the edge of night. Lights everywhere in the distance.
“On Crewe Road, of course. Where’ve you been?”
I said neutrally, “On Trox Island.”
A frown replaced the laugh. “The hurricane wiped out that place, they say.”
I was standing on a grass verge of a road beside a wire mesh fence that skirted a medium-sized commercial airport. When I asked my laughing helper if it were Jamaica or Grand Cayman, he told me with more good humor than ever that it was Owen Roberts, mon, Cayman. Of course Hurricane Odin had passed south of here, praise the Lord. He himself, now, he was from Jamaica, mon. but Crewe Road was in George Town, Grand Cayman.
He was naturally and endlessly curious about the state he’d found me in, but accepted that if I’d been set upon and robbed of my clothes and money and everything else I was mainly in need of transport, and cheerfully offered me a ride in his brother-in-law’s Jeep, which he was driving along Crewe Road when he saw me standing there helpless ... and where did I want to go?
To Michael Ford’s house, I said, if he knew it, and he shrugged and drove me there with much less warmth if not with outright disapproval, and he merely nodded when at the Fords’ front gate I thanked him profoundly for his kindness. He thrust the bandages into my hands, said, “Not good people” and drove off as if he were sorry he had stopped for me at all.
Michael and Amy Ford greeted me with extreme astonishment.
“We thought you were dead ... !”
“Kris said ...”
Kris said.
Michael and Amy warmly gestured me to come in, and led the way to the same sitting room as before.
“Kris is ative?” I asked. “Is it true?”
Michael said heartily. “Of course he’s alive.” He looked me up and down in the sitting-room lights. “My dear man, what a state you’re in.”
With a grimace I asked if my clothes and passport were still in their house and was relieved when Amy said she hadn’t yet sent them to England.
“And my grandmother ...” I said. “Can I pay you for a call to her?
”
“My dear man, be our guest.” He pushed a telephone my way. “She’ll be asleep, though. It’s midnight in London.”
I pressed the buttons. “She’ll want to know I’m alive.”
The voice that answered was predictably that of a nurse. Less predictably, it was the voice of Jett van Els, who exclaimed,“We were told you were dead ...”
My grandmother, awakened, remarked toughly that she’d known all along that I was still alive and then rather spoiled the effect by sobbing.
“I said ...” She swallowed and paused. “I told them you could outswim any hurricane. I said it, even if it isn’t true.”
“Who is them?” I asked.
“The BBC. They wanted to put a tribute to you on the weather forecast and I told them to wait.”
I smiled, wished her a peaceful sleep, promised to call the next day and, as I put down the receiver, asked Michael and Amy if they knew where to find Kris.
“There’s no search-and-rescue facility on Cayman,” Amy said. “Robin called and said he felt responsible for letting Kris and you set off on such a risky flight and he organized a helicopter from Florida when you didn’t return and sent it out looking for both of you, after the worst of the storm had passed; and it did find Kris in the life raft, which was pretty amazing considering ...”
“But ...” Michael continued as Amy paused. “Kris told me the airplane had sunk in terrible waves and he saw you being swept away and all you had was a life jacket and he said not even a very good swimmer like you could have lived through waves more than thirty feet high.”
“I was lucky,” I said. “When was he found?”
“Don’t you want to get dressed?” Amy interrupted sympathetically. “And your poor feet ... !”