The attempt had been a disaster and Father Goode had sent him on his way before he had even finished his coffee.
Corrigan smiled ruefully.
It was a magnificent day: the sea stretched to a sparkling flat horizon, islets and atolls dotted about. The smell of salt mingled with the diesel fumes, and the wind carried with it the smell of decaying fruit.
A school of dolphins played around the bows. Seabirds glided on the air currents high above.
After a while Rachel got up and came to stand beside Corrigan at the helm.
‘I would like to thank you,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘You helped save a man's life.’
‘If you say so. Don't forget you owe me two quid.’
‘You know, it amazes me why a man such as yourself should insist on debilitating himself with alcohol. I'm sure with a little discipline you could learn to live a good and useful life.’
‘Is that so?’ Corrigan pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes.
‘Yes, I believe it is 'so'. In fact Mister Corrigan …’
Rachel never finished the thought. The engine coughed and the Shamrock veered violently to port. Rachel fell sideways. Corrigan switched off the motor and ran to the stern.
Rachel clambered to her feet. ‘What's wrong?’
‘How the fuck do I know?’
It was as if he had struck her. She couldn't help but feel an almost physical agony whenever he used one of his vile oaths.
He leaned out. ‘Have to go down and have a look I reckon.’ He started to strip off his clothes.
Rachel was startled.
She had seen men naked before, lying quiescent on the operating table or in a hospital bed struggling in the throes of malaria or blackwater fever. The natives anyway seldom wore anything more than a simple lava-lava, the sarong of the islands.
But when Corrigan pulled the cotton shirt over his head she felt shocked and frightened. She had never been alone with a man who was not fully dressed and her cheeks flushed hot.
His body was tanned mahogany brown, his arms and chest covered with a thick mass of black curls. She had imagined the years of drinking had left him flabby and wasted but his body looked hard and was corded with muscle.
A dizzy well-spring of excitement overflowed inside her. She felt a bewildering urge to reach out and touch him. This confused her and she leaned back on the gunwale, tried to swallow. The rush of longing was quickly followed by shame.
Corrigan looked round at her and gave her a slow and knowing smile as if he could read her thoughts. ‘Better keep my trousers on,’ he grinned. ‘Don't want to dazzle you with all my glory.’
He stepped towards the side.
‘Be careful,’ Rachel said. ‘I'll say a quick prayer if you like.’
‘I'd rather you kept a good lookout for sharks.’
He jumped in, took a lungful of air and with a surprising fluidity of movement dived for the bottom, executing a perfect duck dive. Then he was gone.
Rachel stood at the stern, watching his shadow through the clear green of the water, squinting against the glare of the sun reflected on the water. A rash of white bubbles broke on the surface.
After about a minute he came back to the surface, gulping for air. He pushed his hair out of his eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘Piece of vine tangled round the screw.’ He took another breath and dived again.
Rachel rubbed her eyes. They were already sore from squinting into the bright water. When she refocused she saw the shark.
The dark shadow cut swiftly through the water on the port side, fifteen or twenty feet below the surface. At first she thought she had imagined it; but then it re-appeared on the starboard side. Perhaps it was just a dolphin.
But as it circled she glimpsed the prehistoric snout of a hammerhead. She froze. For a few moments all she could do was watch. It looked about twice the size of Corrigan and it was still circling the stern of the boat, sensing Corrigan's movements in the water. It moved closer.
‘Shark!’ Rachel yelled and paddled frantically at the water with both hands. She stumbled to the cockpit searching for something, anything, to fend the creature off. There was a gin bottle wedged in a shelf under the wheel with a rag.
She grabbed it and ran back to the stern, in time to see the shark veer towards the Shamrock, its fin and the sweep of its tail breaking the surface.
‘Mister Corrigan! There's a shark! Mister Corrigan!’ She could see him below her working at the tangled propeller with his knife, unaware of the approaching fish. It was close enough now that she could make out its monstrous head with its extended lobes as it nosed in towards him, veering away at the last moment.
It circled again.
He can’t hear you, she thought. She pulled the cork out of the bottle, filled it with seawater and dropped it into the water, hoping to attract his attention. Perhaps it worked. There was a rash of bubbles on the surface and Corrigan kicked for the surface.
He came up in a boil of foam. Rachel leaned over the stern and grabbed at his arm. Corrigan reached for the gunwale with his other hand and hauled himself half out of the water in one movement. Rachel lost her balance and almost tumbled in after him. But then Corrigan clawed at the stern, hooked one leg over the side, and hauled himself up.
As Rachel fell she saw the shark swimming up fast through the blue, that obscene truncated head, the slit of its jaws gaping open. She heard its jaws snap shut and the Shamrock juddered as its body struck the hull. It splashed back into the sea and then her head hit the deck and she lay on her back, stunned.
She couldn't breathe.
Corrigan lay on top of her. He was shaking and his breath raked into his lungs in agonized gasps. His eyes were just inches away from hers. Blue eyes, she thought. I never noticed that before.
For long moments neither of them moved.
She was shocked by the intimacy of the moment. She had never been this close to another human being and the sudden release of adrenalin into her body left her feeling small and broken. She wanted to hug him.
‘Are you all right?’ she whispered, but no sound came.
It was Corrigan who broke the spell. ‘Bet that's the first time you've had a man on top of you,’ he said.
Rachel struggled out from under him. The front of her dress was dripping wet; she felt humiliated and betrayed. ‘You imbecile,’ she hissed and went to sit in the cockpit, hunched and trembling.
*****
The hammerhead circled the Shamrock for almost two hours. With the vine tangled around the propeller head, they were effectively stranded, drifting south-east with the current. Corrigan faced the situation stoically. He returned from below deck with yet another bottle of gin, propped himself in the stern and started to drink.
The sun had dropped low over the ocean when the shark finally cruised off in search of easier game. Corrigan decided it was safe to venture back into the water; it took him just a few minutes to free the propeller shaft from the remains of the vine.
Then he started up the engines and the Shamrock chopped through the sea towards the mountains of Santa Maria, now many miles to the south.
The first stars were blinking on the eastern horizon when they motored into an empty half-moon bay, fringed with palms.
‘Where are we, Mister Corrigan?’ Rachel said.
Corrigan scratched at the mosquito bites on the back of his neck. ‘About ten miles north of Vancoro. That shark cost us two hours, had us drifting nearly as far as Sara Passage. No way we'll get back to Vancoro tonight.’
‘But we must. My uncle will be worried.’
‘I'm not trying to navigate those reefs in the dark. We'll stay here tonight. If we get an early start you can be back home before breakfast.’
Rachel experienced a flood of unease. ‘But I can't,’ she said weakly.
‘Got no choice. Come on, cheer up. There's no food but we've got another two bottles of gin. You can have a drink
and loosen up a bit.’
A few minutes later the sun dropped below the vast expanse of ocean, dozens of small atolls silhouetted against a lucent mother-of-pearl sky. A few more moments and the sky darkened to molten lead and the sudden night of the tropics engulfed the Shamrock.
Corrigan swung the launch close into shore and dropped the anchor off the bows. He turned off the motors, lit the mantle on the gas lamp and swung around to face her. ‘Well, this is it, Miss Goode. Your first night alone with a man.’
Rachel felt the color drain out of her cheeks. He was grinning at her like a madman. She knew why they weren't going to Vancoro, it was obvious to her now.
Corrigan was inflamed with lust. She shouldn't have allowed him to lie on top of her like that, after the incident with the shark, even though she did not know how she could have stopped it. Her uncle had been right about him all along. He was incorrigible, a man devoid of all moral sensibility.
Now she was totally at his mercy. There was no doubt in her mind about his true intentions. He was going to rape her and murder her. She was helpless to prevent him.
*****
Ian McLaren Manning stood with both hands gripping the teak rail of the schooner Tulagi, staring across the water at the mountains of Santa Maria. The monsoon wind ruffled his thinning hair, stirred the Solomons Protectorate flag that hung at the stern.
The District Officer for Santa Maria was a slightly built man in his late thirties. In England he had suffered constant bronchial problems; a doctor had told him that his posting to the Pacific had probably saved his life; but then his exile had suited his temperament also. He breathed in deeply and searched the dark green coast for the entrance to Vancoro harbour.
The sea appeared flat, docile; but then, without warning, an unseen hand seemed to drive the schooner’s bow to starboard, and spray crashed over the deck from a calm sea. The local skippers said that precipitous cliffs, many fathoms down, produced these unpredictable overflows and whirlpools. To westward gouts of water leaped and crashed back into the sea. Closer on the port side, two flat outcrops of rock caused a sudden sucking, surging tide as the Tulagi’s master tacked to starboard.
These were the Admiralty Rocks; two pinnacles of rock that lay now unseen below the waterline after they had been used for gunnery exercises many years before by one of His Majesty's warships. Scarcely visible even in daylight, they now presented a terrible hazard to all shipping passing in and out of Vancoro.
Jackie Su'a, the schooner's captain, steered to the north-east, tacking into the wind, to reach the southern point of the island, pushed westwards by the current. Jackie was busy shouting orders to his crew, as they tacked hard again, the boom creaking and groaning in the wind.
Just as the oily swell of the tide race seemed to have pushed them onto the teeth of the coral reef and its booming breakers off the point an opposing current caught the Tulagi and pushed them eastwards.
It was the last move in a deadly game of wind and currents that every vessel entering the harbour was now forced to play.
Suddenly they were in calm water again, heading for the natural harbor of Vancoro, the largest settlement on Santa Maria, serving also as the District Station. He saw a familiar strip of white beach, palm fronds gracefully waving a welcome in the rush of the north-west monsoon.
The harbor was surrounded on either side by forested headlands. They passed the rotting hulk of the Bellama, the skeleton of another government schooner wrecked long ago on the reefs.
It was hard to believe this tranquil backwater of the world might matter to anyone. But the news was not good. The Japanese had overrun the Malay Peninsula and stood at the gates of Singapore itself. If Singapore fell … but that was impossible. Churchill himself had said she was impregnable.
Manning stared moodily into the water and mourned for his England. The Germans now held dominion over all Western Europe, their guns were pointed towards the Dover cliffs, Heinkels flew nightly sorties over the English coast. The beaches of Brighton were covered with barbed wire, the lights of London blacked out. It seemed surreal, a nightmare of fantastic proportions.
His hands tightened on the rail. They had told him he was too old to fight. The last time he had been too young. He loathed his weakness; despised his own frailty. At school he was never picked for the football or the athletics teams; now they left him behind yet again while the big boys went off to war.
Look at me. A middle-aged bachelor on a forgotten island. What a joke.
They passed the stone prison, alone on the northern promontory, its bare limestone walls stark against the green backdrop of the jungle; the mariners used it as a leading mark.
Below it, among the casuarina trees, was the red-roofed bungalow of the Protectorate building, the white painted walls in vivid contrast to the lush rainforest around it. On the small patch of lawn a few yards from the front steps stood a white-painted flagstaff. A Union Jack fluttered in the breeze.
As they sailed past the headland he saw the police barracks and the trading store and beyond, almost hidden among the coconut palms, the thatched roofs of the village itself.
A long jetty jutted from the shore, and a corporal and two native constables stood to attention on the landing stage. There was another figure standing beside them, all too horribly familiar in his white collar and black soutane, the crucifix at his neck glinting in the sunlight.
Manning groaned. He had been looking forward to a cold shower and a cold beer. Father Goode would find a way to scupper those plans.
Jackie Su'a brought the Tulagi round in a sweet curve, docking her gently alongside the wharf. At a roar from the corporal the waiting constables brought their rifles clumsily to slope. At another roar they saluted, executing a ragged present arms.
Manning drew himself up to his full height as Goode climb aboard. He took a deep breath and braced himself. It seemed that everyone in the Empire understood the separation of Chruch and State except this damned priest.
‘Manning,’ Goode said, his voice shaky with emotion. ‘Thank God you're back!’
‘Whatever's wrong, old chap? You're as pale as a ghost.’
‘It's my niece,’ the priest said, ‘the most terrible thing's happened. She's been murdered. Raped and murdered.’
Chapter 7
A velvet blackness had fallen over the Pacific. Corrigan clambered over the side of the boat and Rachel heard the splash as he dropped into the water.
‘Are you getting out of the boat or what?’ Corrigan said.
‘I think I shall stay here,’ Rachel said.
Corrigan muttered something she couldn't quite hear and then he waded away towards the beach.
Rachel huddled in the cockpit, drew her knees up to her chest and waited. Perhaps if he drank enough gin he would fall asleep and forget about her. It was her only hope. She looked up at the sky. A full moon, she thought, and trembled.
After a while she saw a small fire glowing on the beach. The fire seemed warm and inviting and the rocking motion of the boat was making her nauseous. She knew if she stayed where she was she would be violently ill.
She wondered what to do. Yes, it was safe - safer - here on the boat, but if she went ashore she would be at Corrigan's mercy. On the other hand her sanctuary was just an illusion. He could come back for her at any time if he wanted to. At least ashore, she could run into the jungle if she needed to.
And besides, being dead seemed better than being seasick.
She hesitated. Finally the decision was made for her. She heard Corrigan wading back to the boat, just as she suspected he might. She crouched further into the shadows of the boat, tried to make herself as small as possible.
‘Lady?’
‘What do you want?’ Her voice sounded shrill and taut. She saw one of Corrigan's hands curl around the gunwale. It seemed unusually hairy. A pair of eyes - cold, evil eyes - peered at her.
‘Pass me the other bottle of grog.’
‘I don't think you ought to drink anymore.’
There was silence. Corrigan's hand slipped off the gunwale and he disappeared. The boat rocked again as he pulled himself back up. ‘I don't want another lecture on the evils of drink. I want the bottle. Are you going to give it to me or do I have to climb back up there and get it myself?’
Rachel decided not to provoke him. God knew what a man would do for liquor. She went to the cockpit and found the other bottle of square-face, resisting an impulse to fling it into the sea. She handed it to him.
‘Are you staying here all night?’
‘No, I think I shall come to the beach now,’ she said.
Gripping her skirt tightly around her knees she balanced herself on the gunwale and tried to swing her legs over the side without parting her ankles. Corrigan offered her his hand.
‘I can manage, thank you.’
‘Suit your bloody self.’
He began to wade back to the beach.
As Rachel tried to lower herself into the shallows the seam of her dress caught on a rough nail and she toppled headlong into the water.
Corrigan threw back his head and guffawed.
*****
‘You ought to take those wet clothes off.’
‘I'm all right,’ Rachel said huddled by the fire. ‘I'm not cold.’
Her teeth made chattering noises in the darkness.
Corrigan muttered darkly to himself. He smelled of sea salt and gin; a strong masculine smell she found somehow terrifying and yet strangely compelling. His entire presence filled her with bewildering emotions. His bulk was terrifying yet also somehow strangely re-assuring.
Her thoughts confused her. She tried not to think.
Corrigan unscrewed the cap from the bottle of square face and put it to his lips. He threw back his head and took a long pull. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, drawing a grubby sleeve across the lip of the bottle.
‘Here, have a belt. This will warm you up.’
Corrigan's Run Page 3