I mention the sauce, since it may be significant. Cartwright had not bought tamarind pulp at the market, but he had accepted a delivery. He had made no request by any electronic means: of that we can be sure. Following our weeks of observations, there was nothing to suggest regular visits to the island by traders. But yet, that day, a large slow boat approached. It was the same, water taxi design of Cartwright’s own, but significantly larger, and laden with goods, arranged in what looked like random heaps, everything packed into various plain plastic bags. Even from the angle provided by the outward-facing camera on the balcony, I could see a large, stacked load of black bags that clearly contained rectangular flat packs, no doubt part of the illicit trade in alcohol from the island. This was bulk beer en route to become euphemistic special tea in a place that dare not refer to it by name. But there were other piles of goods on this passing boat, whose wider draught reduced its tendency to roll, when compared with Cartwright’s roller-coaster craft.
But where was this boat going? Given its cargo, we can be sure where it came from. And why was it passing by Cartwright’s island? With no evidence of regular visits, perhaps it was an arrangement that Cartwright had made in town the day before. Perhaps it was merely an opportunistic trader, but would such a person sail off towards an island off his route when it was well known to have just one customer? Would Cartwright greet the man, indicating previous contact?
As the boat approached I was able to zoom in on the scene and record several images of the man at the tiller. These I have forwarded for matching. He was an older man, a small, wiry, wizened, dark-skinned and wrinkled Malay, a Haji because he wore a small, through dirty white cap. He was surely so small he was unable to see over the prow as he sat at the rear, leaning on the outboard’s tiller. The boat was severely under-powered, its considerable size, tare and load being driven by kit rated at just eighty horsepower, less than Cartwright used on his boat unladen. Thus, when he cut the engine to idle as he approached Cartwright’s silent craft, his vessel settled into the water and slowed quickly. A swift and skilled flick of the tiller presented its motion side on to the tranquil swell, a manoeuvre that effectively brought it to a near immediate, if rocking halt.
Cartwright greeted the man. I enhanced the gain on all the microphones, but the boats were too far away and the ambience too loud for them to pick up anything discernible. They seemed to converse for a few minutes before either stirred from their seated positions. There was some gesticulation, but there was clearly no disagreement. Then, after a couple of minutes, the little old man began to make his way forward, treading carefully over and between the piles of bags. He reached the point on the gunwale that was closest to Cartwright’s drift and reached across to hand over one of the bulging plastic bags. The contents were clearly not very heavy, a kilo or two at most, easily tossed with accuracy across the metre or two that separated the two craft. And then, after what were clearly polite goodbyes, the larger boat went plodding on its way, its course a frustratingly ambiguous line that led directly towards the mangrove-clad islands that filled the joint river estuaries. A move to the left and he was probably just an illicit booze trader. A deviation to the right, and he may have been a personal contact of Cartwright’s, possibly a messenger from his wife’s family. But his changes of course would be behind the islands, and out of my view.
Whatever the case, the plastic bag contained another bottle of gin, a large handful of fresh tamarind pods and, crucially, a couple of letters in sealed envelopes. These he opened and read while still adrift in his boat, well out of range of my cameras. The papers, whatever they contained, stayed in his pocked until they were later stowed unbound in another office folder. Our mission has involved the most sophisticated electronic surveillance and communications systems, a cover of the production of television programmes for potential international broadcast, the placing of an operator at risk after intercontinental travel and a procession of meetings, plus worldwide governmental and private sector cooperation on data transfer logging, reporting and trawling. It’s ironic, therefore, that all this might have been undermined when an old man in a boat passed over a single piece of paper in a tossed plastic bag, attached by elastic band to a bottle of illegal gin.
Christine was still sleepy at seven, but then full of energy by eight after eating and gulping at a couple of drinks. They chatted, but sparingly, appearing to prefer reflection on their shared past above this wave-lapping present. Apart from their voices and the water, the only other noises came from insects, which were few, even countable there, surrounded by salt water.
“The programme was fine, I think.”
“A bit anodyne...”
“They often are... and you wouldn’t have cooperated if it was anything else...”
They had already finished their food, but the plates, complete with seafood debris and spoons, were still on the balcony floor by their now institutionalised chairs. An occasional fly, attracted more by the people than the food remnants, gave intermittent interruption, demanding occasional waves of the hand to seek momentary relief.
“Why did you become a Muslim, Tom?”
There was a long pause. “We’ve already been through that.”
“But I still don’t understand why...”
“Chris...” There was no hesitation this time, but a new condescension flavoured the tone. “It was fifteen years ago. I was in my mid-forties and a twenty-three-tear-old stunner lays it on a plate. She had a body straight out of heaven and it took me directly there with an invitation to stay. I might have lost a leg, but nothing else. There are some things in life...”
“But the consequences...”
“Status, wealth - even before all of this...” He made the slightest of gestures with his left arm. By way of ironic comment, Christine waved her arm in an exaggeratedly wide arc to indicate the opulence of a rickety bamboo shack, loosely attached to a rock in the middle of the ocean.
Cartwright was humoured. “Chris, I married Noraya for one reason and one reason alone. Sex. Pure and simple. It hardly makes me a special case... And, let’s be clear about this, the sex was wonderful, and remains so, though I have no documentary records to illustrate my position on this. Noraya was, and remains, quite stunningly beautiful, and still has the kind of body that most men can only dream about. There, I declare my hand.”
“But you don’t live together...”
“Who says? Of course we live together. I don’t know where your idea comes from. Was it a position delivered in your briefing?”
Christine neither reacted nor answered.
“We do live together. But like many marriages that have lasted as long as ours, especially in this part of the world, we have our own houses and increasingly our own lives. The sex, if you are at all interested, is still as good as ever. She’s not even forty...” Cartwright’s silence was full of satisfaction and not a little pride. “I reckon I did rather well for myself,” he concluded, at mumble.
“She’s better than I was, then?”
Cartwright laughed and then turned to look to his right. “I was not trying to compare, Christine. What we did was a long time ago and basically was only playing around.”
“You certainly took it seriously.”
“Sex is always serious, as is almost all play. Serious pleasure. And what we did as teenagers was wonderful, in its own way. It was all so new to us. We were discovering life, even grasping at it, because we were afraid it was rejecting us. It was certainly as close to heaven as I had been at the age of eighteen.”
Christine seemed to be letting the words flow like a breeze around her. I knew, however, that in her own way she was pursuing a tactic we had discussed, and thus that every nuance of every word was registering. It perhaps was already proving to be a rather naïve position, but we had collectively concluded in one briefing that Cartwright had been tricked into his conversion and that its convenience
had begun to wear thin. It was possible that we might offer him a new identity if there was any chance he was looking for a way out and if, of course, he might be willing to work for us. What we needed, however, was to identify a chink in the armour through which we might introduce the idea.
“You said before that it might have kept both of us alive...”
“In that case, our private heaven kept us both out of the public one, didn’t it?”
Christine laughed. “I doubt I would have got near that place, even then.”
Cartwright leaned across and tapped her forearm gently with his right hand. “Chris, at seventeen, you were as pure as driven snow. You had hardly a volt of lust in your body.”
“Well, thank you for the assessment... So all the electricity came from you, did it, by any chance? I was merely the receptacle, the bloody eponymous female, for what the experience of Cartwright, the potent male, did to fill it...”
“No, not at all...” It’s amazing how long it takes us to realise we have stuck our foot in a bucket.
“But that’s what you just said!”
“All I imply is that I doubt you’d had your hand in anyone’s trousers before mine... maybe even your own...” He was laughing.
Christine did smile before she took another long-lasting sip of her drink. She was making this one last. “You’re probably half correct. I had not got that close to a boy... I’d been fairly close much earlier, at fourteen, or maybe earlier. It didn’t come to anything, but I did get to within touching distance, though I’m sure I didn’t stay within range.” There was a smile.
“I had the distinct impression that you had kept all forms of sex at a distance, even your own personal pleasure. After all, you were middle class...”
Christine laughed out loud, long and hard. “Brilliant! You never miss an opportunity, do you?” Cartwright smiled and nodded. “The reality was that for two years before then I’d been in pain, sick as a dog, or both at the same time. I didn’t have much time for anything else.”
“But I had the distinct impression that you liked to keep bodily things at arm’s length, so to speak...”
“So if you were the one with all the experience, how come I had to show you what to do? You didn’t seem to know one end of a woman from the other!”
“Like you, I had been preoccupied with pain during my formative years. Do you remember things that clearly?”
“Of course. Don’t you? You were the first person with whom I shared an orgasm, Tom. How could I forget?”
“I have to admit that I do remember every detail, Chris. Life passes by, but sex sticks.”
“I’ve had some that wasn’t particularly memorable...”
“You were so beautiful, Chris, so tall and slender... How your body used to twist and turn...”
“And you just seemed to grow, blow up like a balloon, before you went off.”
They both laughed.
“You never had any children...” Cartwright’s comment was incongruous, but the short silence that preceded it was effectively a new start.
“I couldn’t, Tom. You’ll remember that they did their best when we had treatment, putting those heavy blankets with lead in them over our hips. But in my case I must have had some exposure. I had some tests a few years later when we were trying for a baby and nothing happened. I was sterile.”
“Saved your life but took your ovaries. I’m sorry.”
“But, Tom, I was alive. It’s been no big deal. A family would have been nice, but then I wouldn’t have lived this life, the life I have had, which has been a spectacular ride. And there wouldn’t have been the professional fulfilment.”
“I thought the same way for a couple of decades, but I hadn’t tried to have children, of course.”
“But you weren’t sterile. When you tried you had them.” She thought for a moment. “They are your children, aren’t they?”
“Christine... Of course they are mine and clearly I wasn’t sterile. But in my case for twenty-four years or so the opportunity never really arose.”
“But other things did...”
“Quite regularly, in fact, but the participants weren’t interested in anything other than the whereabouts and contents of my wallet.”
Christine was silent for some time, two minutes or more. She was clearly convinced he had more to say. Her patience was lasting well, but she decided to prompt. “You were never tempted to marry, to settle down?”
“Monopedal mathematicians weren’t too high on the sexual preference lists.”
There was another long silence.
“Until you pulled a stunner, an air hostess, twenty-odd years your junior.”
Cartwright laughed.
“But then it’s gratifying to know that now her soul is saved, no matter what happens in the future.”
“Indeed, she has knocked one over for the faith.”
“But you were a willing victim... and you are not complaining...” There was a hinted question embedded in Christine’s statement.
“Chris, there are Malay women and there are Malay women.” Cartwright nodded directly away from the house, across the water. “It’s an affluent place and people eat with their wallets, which are often full. But there are some Malay women who never put on weight... They seem to stay slender, retain their gentility, whose bodies - especially the skin - don’t seem to age...”
“Stop it, Tom. She’s not even forty yet. What do you expect? And it’s not done to talk like that these days...”
“Rather like you, Chris. I’m serious. You have hardly changed.” He sounded impatient with himself. “Sorry... I know you’re not Malay...”
“I’m not an object of desire either...”
“That is a matter of opinion.” There was a long silence. Christine looked distinctly embarrassed and was uncharacteristically speechless. She found his compliment hard to absorb, and it lay on the skin of her understanding for some time. He continued. “What I was trying to say...”
“Tom... just be quiet. Let’s leave it at that.”
“All I was trying to say... Just delete the rest... What I was trying to say was merely that some women age quickly, whereas others, like you, seem to mature, but actually change very little...”
“And men are above all this?”
“Absolutely not... The same things apply to all people... Some change a lot, others don’t... And you haven’t changed.”
Christine gave a loud laugh. “If only you knew... If only...”
She finished her drink and then started to get up so she could seek another.
“I’ll get it,” said Cartwright, taking the glass with almost a snatch.
“No you won’t,” said Christine, as she began to rise from the chair by turning in the seat so she could place both palms on the arm-rests, a manoeuvre that required her almost to reach directly behind her back with her left arm. “I am going to get it,” she said with stressed determination as she pushed herself upright and, with an exaggerated loop of the arm, playfully snatched back her glass.
“There’s always more where that came from, if needed,” said Cartwright as she began to clatter her shuffling way at snail-footed hop by the balustrade. It was some minutes before anything else was said.
“Where’s the ice?” came a full-voiced shout from the back of the house. The sound seemed to echo, and thus to appear twice, arriving once through the interior of the house whose doors and windows were, of course, all open, and a second time on the bounce off the rock at the back. The sound’s imprecision seemed to blend into the constant waves, and carry a sense of being spoken into a wind.
“There isn’t any,” Cartwright shouted back. “I forgot to put any in. I hardly ever use it. You’ll have to drink it warm. I’m sure it won’t be the first time... The tonic should be cold.”
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She was back in her seat a few minutes later. “I just don’t know what things are coming to... The service in this place...” She sat down in one fall, whilst expertly maintaining the stability of her drink by holding it level on a loose arm.
“Evidence of practice, I see,” said Cartwright. “You have done that before...”
She took two long sips, closer to gulps if the volume taken were considered, before setting the glass down on the low table on her right. “So you can get your booze quite easily?”
Christine was genuinely surprised when he laughed loud and hard. “Here?” His voice was booming. “In this place?” He gesticulated to his left with a broad swing of the arm. “There is no shortage in that town.” He turned to face her, his expression changed. “But of course I don’t myself. I bought this for you.”
She thought for a moment before asking the obvious question. “But how did you know I liked an occasional g’n’t?”
“I guessed,” he said without hesitation.
Christine wanted to probe. “But I would have thought... Sorry if this is naïve...that you in particular would have to be careful. You are something of a public figure, even a local celebrity. I’m sure you must have enemies... If someone were to photograph you buying the stuff, couldn’t it damage you, if someone were really out to get you?”
“Of course,” he replied without hesitation. “But if someone wanted to smear me, there are far simpler ways to do it. You forget that money is no object. A few extra ringgit here or there and some Chinese shopkeeper or other is quite happy to deliver. And have you ever heard of mobile phones? I don’t actually visit the shop. I just call ahead and ask for a couple of plastic bags to appear at the main harbour wall. This place specialises in plain plastic bags.”
“But mobile phone calls can be traced.”
“Can they now, Christine?” He turned to face her. “And you would know everything that needs to be known on that score, wouldn’t you? Something of an expert, maybe. It’s your... let’s say... stock in trade, isn’t it?”
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