Larry had grown deeply attached to Gillian, whom she had come to love as much as if she had been her own daughter, with an affection that was more possessive even than that of her mother. Groves, under Larry’s supervision, had been allotted the task of Nanny, progressing to that of governess, and she kept strictly to the itinerary which her employer had laid down.
Hibbersley, who had been an ex-Staff-Sergeant in the W.A.A.F.s was the mechanic of the launch, was responsible for the electric light plant, and also piloted the helicopter. Hulze and Springfield, tall and athletic types, looked after the livestock; and Paulot, the personification of gentleness, combined her secretarial duties with those of a doctor, for which she had studied. Dumby, who was a South African, occupied herself with the overseeing of the colored labor, three of whom worked in the house. The colored women were signed on for five year contracts, but many of them stayed for ten, for the conditions and pay were excellent. It all worked out very well.
With the exception of Larry they had no contact with the outside world, and wished for none. The mail, which was collected weekly from Saint Lucia, was taken direct to Larry’s office. There was a radio, but Gillian was not permitted to listen to it, nor was she shown any newspapers or magazines. Books she was allowed, but they were carefully chosen and vetted by Hermione and their range was not extensive.
It was understood that Gillian would be Larry’s heir and that Saint Dominique would eventually pass into her keeping, and with this end in view it had been decided that a time was approaching when suitable friends for her should be asked on visits, Larry having gone so far as to announce that shortly she must take a trip to New York, or even to London, to seek out worthy companions.
Gillian was now nineteen, and it was agreed that she should meet a hand-picked selection of her contemporaries. Gillian was perfectly content. She had known no other life save that on Saint Dominique, she had kept no other company than that of the bluff camaraderie in which she had grown up, and the women among whom she had lived were kindly and amusing, although she sensed obscurely that in some way they were members of a club, and that their community was a closed and secret one which had been cut off deliberately from their fellow human beings.
The male world had no existence for her. When she had been small and had inquired about men she had been made to feel that her interest was lewd and indelicate. Larry had told her briefly that men were necessary for the procreation of children. They fulfilled the roles of farm animals, and were equally boring and disgusting. They created all the sadness and trouble in the world, they were dirty and selfish and predatory and could be dispensed with very well.
Larry had crossed her slim legs in the flawlessly cut linen trousers, twisted the massive gold signet ring on the little finger of her left hand, and had given her a short dissertation on typical masculine behavior in such places as concentration camps and prisons generally, and in such historical occupations as witch burnings and the Inquisition. She touched on the activities of noted murderers of the genre of Heath and Christie. Venereal disease was also mentioned, but she forbore to enlarge upon the topic. She wound up her discourse with a wryly amused smile: “And so you will realize, darling, why we are so lucky here. We have managed to keep Saint Dominique as an oasis, unique—maybe it is the only one of its kind in the world, completely uncontaminated by men. And we most strongly hope that when it belongs to you it will be the same.”
Hermione nodded her agreement and rested her hand on Larry’s knee, her pekingese prettiness only just beginning to fade. “I am quite certain, Larry, that it will,” she said. “I hardly think it necessary to extract a promise on that score!”
They had never again spoken together of men.
Gillian lay in utter contentment on the soft white sand. Her naked body was the burnt ivory of an almond shell. It was the habit of those on the island to dispense with bathing suits. She spent a lot of her time in the water and was so at home in it that Hermione had once told her that she was amphibious. Gillian kept, however, to the lagoon, for beyond the reef, which was pierced by a single narrow opening, always carefully netted, there were many barracuda, those voracious wolves of the sea that are as dangerous as any killer shark.
She sighed with sheer and lazy voluptuousness before she scrambled to her feet, her young figure as smooth and firm as tinted alabaster. There was still some time before luncheon and she thought that she would go back to the house and take a shower to wash off the salt, and then she would relax on the verandah and listen to the new records which had arrived on the previous day, and of which they had built up an extensive library. Light or classical, they were all either played or sung by women.
A path zigzagged through the sentinel coconut palms and crossed a ridge which separated the lagoon from the rock-peppered bay whose far boundary was the jutting headland behind which the house was situated. Gillian walked slowly through the cushion of the caressing sand, pausing now and again to pick up a shell which she would examine with interest and then discard.
It was when she was nearing the rock spur, where the stream ran into the sea, that she found the man. He lay by the water’s edge, the wavelets lapping timidly round the lower part of his body. He was young and fair and was clad in a pair of tattered white cotton undershorts. A faint blur of beard shadowed his face and thicker hairs clung to his muscular legs and wide chest. On one arm a snake had been tattooed and on the other were the initials H.F. A deep gash ran from one corner of his mouth to his jaw line, and from it a red trickle still oozed. There was a second and more savage one at the side of his neck and he was weak from loss of blood. He eyes were closed and he was unconscious from exertion and fatigue, but from the rise and fall of his chest she could see that he was breathing. An upturned rubber dinghy floated at a little distance from the shore.
Gillian stood in the hot sand staring down at him. He was the first male that she had seen since she was a baby, and she regarded him with an apprehensive fascination. She knew nothing of such matters, but she thought that he must be of an age with herself, perhaps a year or two older. She remembered the tales and warnings that Larry and her mother had told her. As she studied the boy’s strained and exhausted face it was hard for her to believe that all the stories could have been true. She had imagined that a man would have been very different, far more coarse and primitive. She had had a vague idea that men resembled gorillas. But this boy, in his way, was beautiful.
She knelt down beside him. Round his neck hung a plastic medallion. As she lifted it the worn cord, to which it had been attached, broke, and when she had risen to her feet the medallion was clutched unnoticed in her hand. He muttered to himself, but she could not catch what he said.
She wondered what she should do. It was quite obvious that this boy had nearly drowned, and that he had paddled and struggled to the shore after many weary hours in the leaking dinghy. She must run back and tell Larry and her mother, for he would be too heavy for her to try to move by herself. As she turned away she glanced back. The young man’s eyelids fluttered and for a fleeting instant his blue eyes opened, to shut again at once in protest against the glare of the sun.
Gillian ran back to the house, spurred by urgency, the bleached page boy cut that reached halfway to her shoulders bobbing as she jumped across the ditch which irrigated the garden.
She found the two women in Larry’s office. They were intent on checking the accounts which Paulot had brought to them and raised their heads in good-humored surprise at Gillian’s sudden entrance. “Hello, kid,” Larry greeted her, “what’s all the panic?”
Gillian told them of the young man whom she had encountered on the beach and of the critical condition in which he had been, and when she had finished her story her mother glanced at Larry and their eyes seemed to hold one another’s for at least a minute before either of them spoke.
It was Larry who finally broke the silence. “You we
re perfectly right to come to us, Gilly,” she said gently. “We will see to him. You stay here in the house. I do not wish you to go down to the bay again while he is there. You understand? It is most important that you should not do so.”
“Very well,” said Gillian. “But he will be all right, won’t he? I mean you don’t think that Paulot should go, too? After all, she is a trained doctor; and he doesn’t speak English. The few words he murmured seemed to be in German. Let me go and find her.”
“No,” said Larry shortly. “I intend to handle this. We can manage perfectly well, your mother and I. From what you have told us our uninvited visitor seems to be in a bad way. Should he be alive when we reach him you can rest assured that I will know what to do.”
“He’s not an ordinary man, Larry.” Gillian spoke breathlessly. “He’s not at all the sort of man you described. He can’t be. He’s . . . he’s most attractive.”
“Gillian!” said her mother. “Have you taken leave of your senses? How can you possibly say such a repellent thing!” She looked across at Larry apologetically. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying!”
Larry’s face might have been carved from marble as she pushed back her chair. “You will stay here until we return,” she repeated, “and you will say nothing of this miserable happening to any of the others. Not one word.” She was rigid with restrained emotion as, followed by Hermione, she went out of the room.
When they had gone and she was alone Gillian stepped out on to the veranda which commanded a vista of both the headland and the harbor where the launch was moored, and she stood there in a haze of worry, grasping at the smooth wooden rail. For a while nothing happened to disturb the quiet scene, and then she saw her mother and Larry passing through the garden together and separating at the gate, Hermione taking the path to the bay and Larry going on down towards the jetty. Presently there came the chugging of the engine.
Gillian was uneasy and bewildered by the reception of her news and rebellious at the terseness with which she had been ordered to remain in the house, and the memory of the young man who lay helpless in the tideless shallows disturbed her strangely. She waited until her mother had disappeared into the cover of the coconut palms, and until the launch had moved away from the sharp side of the quay before she hurried along to her own room and snatched at a linen dress. On her way back through the office she took up a pair of binoculars that had been left on Larry’s desk and started off through the landscaped clumps of flowering shrubs and over the piece of waste land in the direction of the peninsula to a point on it where she would be able to see what would happen without herself being seen. She was facilitated in this by the chaotic rock formations, and she concealed herself in an eroded tunnel that she knew well, and which at one end had a low natural parapet that overlooked the bay.
Her mother had reached the spot where the young man was sprawled, and she was kneeling down beside him half facing Gillian’s hiding place, which was about twenty yards away. Hermione’s expression was a curious blend of hostility and unaccustomed pity. The boy’s head was twisted sideways and the cut on his cheek showed up like a livid scar against the pallor of his skin.
As Gillian watched, the launch nosed its way around the point and stopped a short distance from the shore. Larry climbed out and stood thigh deep in the water, a vivid and piratical figure in her scarlet shorts and white shirt with a spotted azure handkerchief knotted round her neck. The closely cropped dark hair that was now starting to go grey showed off the fine shape of her head and emphasized her clear-cut features.
She waded ashore to where Hermione was waiting for her. Gillian could not hear what they were saying, but the murmur of their voices came to her over the water. Larry seemed to be insistent on some course that her mother was being reluctant to pursue, and Larry’s face was angry and Gillian had never before seen her in a fury that was the more frightening since it was tightly controlled.
Finally they bent down and hoisted the young man to his feet, his arms hanging limply over their shoulders as between them they supported him out to the launch. His weight was making them stagger. They had difficulty in getting him aboard but after a lengthy struggle they eventually succeeded in so doing.
The engine sprang to life and the boat speared its way towards the middle of the bay, to where it shelved to a considerable depth. Larry was steering, and Hermione had the young man’s head resting in her lap. When they were a quarter of a mile from the shore the phutting of the engine ceased and the boat stopped. Larry was curved over where the boy lay. She moved her arm violently several times, and the sunlight caught the flash of the knife which was kept in the launch for the gutting of fish. Larry straightened up. She must have been leaning directly over the young man’s body. Hermione did not move and her hands were clamped over her eyes. Gillian watched them, hypnotized.
Then, to her horror, and at a word from Larry, her mother got up and, by a concerted effort, the corpse of the young man was eased overboard. In the basking stillness of the morning Gillian could hear the splash as it hit the water. Larry tossed something into the sea with a contemptuous gesture and wiped her hands on the red shorts. The launch remained where it was, quietly rocking, and the sparkling surface of the bay was unruffled as the occupants of the boat waited for what might happen, for the net at the entrance had been removed. After a minute the calm of the sea was broken by the ploughing approach of gigantic fish. The barracuda were gathering and barracuda, as Gillian knew full well, were attracted by the presence of blood.
As the barracuda converged, there came the throb of the engine and the launch made out to sea, leaving in its wake a widening trail of wash as it circled to circumnavigate the tongue of rocks to reach the quay.
Gillian could not believe what she had seen. It had seemed like a scene from a nightmare; the flash of steel as Larry had slashed at the young man, the callousness with which he had been thrown into the water to certain death at the evil jaws of the man-eating fish. She was gripped by a nauseous fear that she would not have thought to exist.
She went blindly back to the house in a stumbling run, trembling with terror and hardly conscious of what she was doing. She must have turned on the gramophone, for she was sitting near to it when her mother and Larry returned, the glorious voice of Maria Callas insulating her from all reality. Gillian refused to dwell upon what she had witnessed. It had been the cold-blooded murder of a defenseless human being. She jumped up from her chair as the two women came out of the office, but she could not force herself to look at them directly.
Larry was as confident and unruffled as she had always been, coolly arrogant and armored by her charm. Hermione was shivering, and when she began to talk she did so too fast and in too high a voice, and she smiled too often. “Gilly,” she said, “I’m afraid that we were too late. He was dead, so we buried him at sea. He was a sailor and he would have liked that.” Gillian might not have heard what she was saying so uncomprehending was her regard, and Hermione rattled on: “Larry thought that it was the best thing to do . . . for all concerned. And she was right. You see, had we buried him on the island there might have been talk and endless tiresome inquiries as to who he was and how and why he had come here, and we don’t want that, do we? We don’t want officials—men—coming here to ask us questions. He must have been a victim of a yachting disaster, although there was no mention of one on the radio.” She was looking anxiously at her daughter for some sign of approval. “There was nothing that we could have done for him, Gilly, really there wasn’t. And under the circumstances only the three of us will ever know that he landed on Saint Dominique, only Larry and you and myself. And it must remain our secret. We have no desire to court trouble, and it isn’t as if any of us even knew who he was.”
“Some deckhand or steward,” said Larry.
Gillian saw that the palm of her right hand was stained carmine. She threw the identity disc on to the table,
and Hermione reached over and switched off the gramophone. “I can tell you who he was,” Gillian said, and her voice was strident in the silence. “His name is stamped on that.”
Larry leaned forward and incuriously picked up the drab plastic circle. For a moment she did not speak. “Hans Fallada,” she read out. “Fontainebleau, 22 April, 1943.” She stood gazing down at it, her face inscrutable, until Hermione snatched the disc away.
“Larry!” she said, and Gillian might no longer have been present. “He must have been on his way to find you when . . . when he was wrecked.” Her plump fretful face crumpled in distress. “Who could have told him? . . . Who could possibly have known?”
“It would not have been difficult.” Larry looked at her friend coldly. “At one time I had a certain . . . notoriety! But why should he have crossed the world to find me?” She was challenging Hermione to answer her. “The idea is absurd.”
Gillian felt the sudden tortured crisis which had sprung up between them. Under her tan Larry was taut, a bitter tormented ghost. Hermione’s fingers were clutching at the back of a wicker chair and her nervous laugh came out more of a sob. “I don’t know, Larry,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
Larry Mason was driving herself on, and in spite of the smile that curved her beautiful mouth her listeners were aware of it. “Even if your wild theory were true, Hermione,” she said, “I have only finished what I should have done in that farmhouse all those years ago. It is no more than payment deferred.” Her stricken glance passed from Hermione and rested upon Gillian, and as it did so it softened. “You have been protected here, Gilly,” she said, “and as I have told you many times I hope that you will always be so protected. You have not seen death before or any unpleasantness and death can be very unnerving; and so far as I am concerned, so far as it may lie in my power, you shall never see it again. That unfortunate boy was dead. Your mother has already explained to you why we had to do what we did.” She turned back to Hermione. “I would like you,” she said, “to throw his identity disc into the bay. It can be his . . . memorial.” She took a cigarette from her exquisite Fabergé case. “It has been a great shock to Gilly. It has been a great shock to us all.” She clicked at her gold lighter before she went on: “We must now turn our thoughts to pleasanter things. I think that I will not delay any longer but will go next week to New York in search of some congenial friendships for her. It would not do for Saint Dominique to became claustrophobic.”
The Smell of Evil Page 22