Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  ‘No thank you.’ He was trying to get her drunk!

  ‘Medicinal purposes. You'll catch your death otherwise.’

  Rachel hesitated. She was cold and very hungry. A tiny drop wouldn't hurt. She hesitated, then reached out and took the bottle from him. She sniffed at it. It smelled foul. She brought the bottle to her lips and tipped it back. She gasped and tried to spit it out but the vile stuff was already burning its way down her throat. She stood up, gasping for air. ‘Oh . . . oh!’

  ‘Careful!’ Corrigan said. He made a grab for the bottle, before she dropped it in the sand. He waited till Rachel's coughing fit subsided and then gave her a rough slap on the shoulder. ‘Bit better than Communion wine, eh?’

  *****

  The wet calico dress clung to her skin, and the small warmth of the fire had done nothing to dry her out. Sadly, the effects of the gin were wearing off. She had not meant to have any more after that first dreadful mouthful. It had tasted vile, but it had also warmed her a little and Corrigan had persuaded her to have several more - what did he call them - ‘nips’.

  Corrigan was watching her, but she couldn't fathom his expression in the dull glow of the fire. The gin bottle was cradled in his arms like a baby.

  ‘I think I'll find a place to sleep,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Kip down here,’ Corrigan said. ‘It's as good a place as any. You can get under a blanket with me, if you like. I'll warm you up.’

  Her fingers tightened on the thin blanket he had given her. She tried to speak but her voice caught in her throat. She had to show him she wasn't afraid. ‘No thank you,’ she managed at last.

  She got to her feet and staggered against into a palm tree. She realized with horror that she was a little drunk.

  Corrigan got up to steady her. ‘I can manage, thank you Mister Corrigan.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  She made her way unsteadily along the beach. The surf raced up the strand towards her, swallowing her footprints. She tottered perhaps fifty paces before looking back. This was probably far enough. Even her uncle would have approved. She huddled against the bole of a coconut palm, and drew the blanket over her shoulders.

  She began to pray.

  In the moonlight she could see Corrigan quite clearly, sitting by the fire, the gin bottle nestled in the sand next to him. He was rolling a cigarette. Occasionally he would look up and shake his head, then stir the coals of the fire with a stick. His mumbling sounded like the chanting of a pagan rite.

  She resolved to stay awake the whole night. That way, if he came for her, she could get up and run.

  She remembered that morning outside the church when her brother found him with Mary. She had been standing behind her uncle, saw the look on Mary’s face over Corrigan’s shoulder. It was horrible, of course, terrible, obscene, but ... she closed her eyes and tried to chase the image from her mind.

  She heard a noise. Corrigan got to his feet and started walking down the beach towards her, staggering slightly. Her breath caught in her chest.

  Oh Lord help me. It was really happening.

  She remembered the strength of him when he had lifted her out of the boat at Marmari, and those thick cords of muscle on his arms and chest when he had stripped off his shirt. She would never be able to fight him off. What was she going to do?

  She wanted to run, but now that the moment had come her legs felt paralyzed. She began to rehearse the litany she would recite to her uncle when she reached Vancoro.

  ‘He crept up on me while I was asleep. There was nothing I could do. I tried to fight him off but he was too strong ... ‘

  Corrigan stood over her, his silhouette blocking the moon. ‘Are you cold?’ he said.

  ‘No, I'm all right.’

  He squatted down next to her in the sand. ‘You don't want to sleep here all alone. Here, snuggle up next to me.’

  Rachel couldn’t speak and didn't move.

  He reached out a hand towards her. ‘It's not right for a beautiful girl like you to hide yourself away all the time. It's that bloody uncle of yours, isn't it? Well you don't have to worry about him here. He'll never find out, I won’t tell a soul. How about a little kiss?’

  ‘Mister Corrigan . . .’

  She felt his hand squeeze her breast and she gasped with shock and then she heard a sharp slap.

  Oh, my God. She had hit him. She hadn't meant to, it was a reflex action. She gasped at her own audacity and shrank away from him, utterly terrified.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘Please go away,’ she heard herself say.

  Corrigan sighed. ‘Well, suit yourself. I've never forced myself on any woman that didn't want to,’ he said. He stood up, swaying. ‘You're a bloody strange one, and no mistake.’

  He turned and went back up the beach. The sand squeaked under his bare feet. Rachel stared after him, her whole body shaking.

  The fire had burned down to a few embers. He kicked sand over the ashes, then picked up his blanket. He hesitated, looked over his shoulder, then started back up the beach.

  What now? The blanket trailed behind him in the sand. Of course! After he raped her he would smother her with the blanket so she could never tell anyone what he had done.

  Her right hand closed around a large rock half buried in the sand. It felt re-assuringly heavy. She clutched it to her chest, ready. If he tried to force her, she would not give in without a good fight.

  He stood there for what seemed to her like an eternity. Finally he leaned forward and threw the blanket at her. ‘Don't get cold,’ he said and then walked off again.

  The rock slipped out of her fingers and dropped into the sand. She reached gratefully for the blanket. But that meant he didn’t have one.

  He lay down next to the remains of the fire.

  Rachel let her head fall back on to the sand. She let out a long, broken sigh. Her breast still tingled from his touch. Uncle Matthew would have a seizure if he ever found out what Corrigan had done. He had touched her, so intimately, yet so casually, too. Almost as if he thought she might enjoy it. Her uncle was right. He was beyond redemption.

  She looked up at the canopy of stars above her, her heart still beating wildly in her chest. Her relief was quickly replaced by outrage. The man had no shame. To have the temerity to suggest that she should want to . . .

  But she could not even sustain her sense of outrage until sleep. It ebbed away, to be replaced by an emotion as overpowering as it was unexpected.

  Disappointment.

  *****

  Manning sat in his office and dabbed at his face with the hand towel he wore at his neck. Beads of perspiration shone like small gems on his upper lip. He listened to Father Goode's plaintive appeals with increasing frustration, his fingers drumming irritably on the desk top.

  For the last two days and nights he had sat on the Tulagi in Kia lagoon writing tax receipts by lamplight, sometimes until two o'clock in the morning, the decks of the sloop littered with scraps of paper and cloth and the lengths of fiber and fish twine with which the coin was packed away. Some of the natives had traveled huge distances to pay the tax money so he had received them at whatever time they had arrived, paddling alongside the government schooner in their canoes.

  Now, after the long trip back to Vancoro, he was wet, tired and sunburned. His nose had begun to peel. ‘Wait a minute, old boy,’ he said at last, rubbing his forehead with his fist. ‘There's no basis for these allegations you know. It's possible his launch has just broken down.’

  Father Goode fixed his pulpit eyes on Manning. ‘Then why haven't they sent a native in a kedi for help?’ He sat back in his chair with the air of an attorney who has produced the final damning piece of evidence. ‘No, I tell you he has raped her. Raped her and fed her body to the sharks!’

  ‘Steady on, old chap.’

  ‘Mister Manning, we all know the sort of man that Corrigan is.’

  ‘I'm aware of his proclivities, but that doe
sn't make the chap a criminal.’

  The priest tapped out the rhythm of his reply on the desktop with his fist. ‘A man who will rape a defenceless woman will not stop at murder.’

  ‘If this rape victim you're referring to is Mary, I don't think she was an entirely unwilling partner in the act.’

  A fleck of spittle appeared at the corner of the priest's mouth. ‘I gave that girl Holy Communion. I received her into the Holy Spirit myself. I tell you it was rape!’

  ‘Well, if you can show me how a woman can be taken against her will on six separate occasions, old boy, I'll agree with you.’

  ‘I expect you to do your duty, Mister Manning.’

  There, it was doing it again. Manning raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘You must go to Marmari straight away on the Tulagi. There may still be time.’

  Manning sucked thoughtfully on his teeth. He was surprised to find his hand balled into a fist on the arm of his chair. He unclenched it and placed it carefully on the table in front of him as if he was unloading a gun. ‘Well, I shall certainly do that, old boy. As soon as the weather improves.’

  ‘The weather's perfect!’

  Manning waved his hand lazily in the direction of the veranda. ‘Have a look, old boy.’

  The priest got up and went to the door. A line of ink-black clouds was moving in from the north-west, towering black anvils of the thunderheads ominous against the blue sky.

  Manning joined him in the doorway. ‘Looks like we're in for a drop more rain, don't you think?’

  *****

  When Rachel opened her eyes it was morning. She started awake. Thgen she groaned and lay back on the sand.

  Her head was splitting. She felt suddenly nauseous and tiny droplets of sweat erupted on her forehead. There was a drumming inside her skull. Then she remembered with a flush of guilt: the gin!

  She looked down the beach. Deserted. Where was Corrigan?

  A few minutes later he stumbled out of the forest carrying a large bunch of bananas.

  Rachel's breath caught in her throat when she saw him. It was not just the memory of last night; he was still stripped to the waist, and he had been swimming, and a comma of wet hair hung rakishly over one eye. He grinned at her. For a satyr and a moral reprobate, he was an uncommonly fine specimen of a man. ‘You all right?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘I think I have a touch of fever.’

  Corrigan laughed. ‘Hangover more like.’

  ‘A hangover?’

  ‘Your sainted uncle would have a fit, wouldn't he? Here - want a banana?’

  Rachel shook her head, feeling her gorge rise at the thought of food. Corrigan tore a banana off the bunch and peeled it. He seemed cheerful and relaxed; as if he had forgotten about last night already.

  But of course; a man like Corrigan would not think of it as anything more than a minor hiccough in a long sequence of sin.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  She held up one of the blankets. ‘Thank you for this.’

  ‘I didn't need it. It was a hot night,’ he lied. ‘Want a drink? There's fresh water in the boat.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He trudged down to the waterline. She felt a pang of regret. Such a waste! Despite what her uncle said, Mister Corrigan did have some very fine qualities.

  *****

  They had been at sea less than an hour when Corrigan went to the bow, squinting against the glare of the sun. ‘See that?’ he said. There was an ominous black border around the blue morning sky.

  ‘A storm?’

  ‘Looks a long way off now but it could be on us in half an hour. Komburu. The wild wind from the north-west. I don't want to be out on the open sea when it comes. We'd better get moving.’

  Corrigan was right; it came on rapidly, the towering anvils of the storm clouds passing over the sun while it was still rising in the sky. Its shadow raced towards them over the open sea, and the ocean turned the colour of molten lead.

  Whitecaps whipped salt spray on to the windshield of the cockpit.

  A sudden gust of wind whined in the radio mast, rattling the wires, and a king wave struck the bow, sending a fierce shudder through the boat.

  ‘Better hang on to that fancy hat of yours,’ Corrigan said.

  ‘Shouldn't we radio a mayday call?’

  ‘We could if the radio worked,’ Corrigan said. ‘Not that it would do any good anyway.’

  Another wave crashed over the bows, and the Shamrock lurched in the water. There was a growl of thunder overhead. They staggered on through the mounting waves, and the first spots of rain splattered on the crusted salt on the windshield.

  ‘Tie this round your waist,’ Corrigan said, grabbing two coils of thick rope from the deck and throwing one at Rachel. He looped the other rope around himself, and then lashed them both of them to the wheel.

  Another huge wave broke on to the bows and the Shamrock shuddered in dismay, before staggering on to meet the next onrushing wave. In less than an hour the howling wind had transformed the calm blue ocean into a grey and churning monster. The bows drove under the swell in a boiling spray of foam, blanketing out the sky, but then the tiny launch gamely picked up her nose to climb the next crest.

  ‘You still reckon this God of yours is any good?’ Corrigan shouted.

  ‘Do you want me to say a prayer, Mister Corrigan?’

  ‘Yeah, you'd better,’ Corrigan shouted back, ‘and you'd better make it a bloody good one.’

  It was quite dark now, the sun blotted out by the clouds, yet the whitecaps glowed like phosphorous.

  They measured time by the instants between each wave; those few precious seconds in the troughs of the breakers as Corrigan fought to turn the bows back into the wind before the sea could smash over them again and turn the Shamrock onto its keel. Rachel was sure the next wave would surely be their doom, but somehow she came straining out of the sea each time with foam spuming from the bow, creaking under the weight of the water pouring over the gunwales.

  The deck was ankle deep in water. Rachel gripped the rail in terror. Thery were so close to land and safety; but Corrigan told her they could not steer closer or they would be smashed to pieces on the reefs. The mountains of Santa Maria loomed from the storm.

  ‘Where's that God of yours now, Miss Goode?’ Corrigan roared and threw back his head and laughed like a madman.

  The pumps were useless now. Corrigan had Rachel baling with an old treacle tin, a futile gesture, but it helped take her mind off the fear. She worked feverishly with trembling hands.

  *****

  Corrigan looked anxiously for the Admiralty Rocks; he sensed they were close. So far his plucky little launch had weathered the storm, but the worst was still to come as they made their dash for Vancoro harbor. The tell-tale spray that marked out the rocks in good weather was lost in the angry lather of the sea.

  Another swell slid under them.

  Finally, under the howling of the wind, he made out another sound, like distant cannon fire. He peered through the driving rain. The sea towered around them like a massive grey wall, limiting vision to no more than fifty yards. Christ, Corrigan thought. We must be almost on top of them!

  The Shamrock was thrust high on the top of a swell; a jagged fork of lightning speared across the horizon, and in that moment he saw them, and the high fountain of surf around them. Then they were gone, hidden once more behind the sweeping rain and the boiling sea.

  Corrigan turned the Shamrock hard to starboard. The long swell passed under them and then they were cascading down the lee into a huge trough.

  ‘Dear Jesus!’ Rachel yelled, and sprawled headlong onto the deck.

  Corrigan saw the grey jaws of the reef slide by their port side almost close enough to touch. He fought the wheel again to turn into the next wave and the Shamrock shuddered up the face of it. Jesus, those rocks will tear the hull out like it was a watermelon.

  He held his breath.

  They slid down the next swell a
nd Corrigan saw the rocks slide behind them.

  They'd made it. They were through.

  Now if he could find passage through the harbor mouth.

  He brought the Shamrock about again, into the lee of the island, and for a few moments they rocked dangerously on the swell. Then the surf picked them up again and they were hurled forwards by the following seas, the bows singing up through the spray.

  They swept past the southernmost tip of the island. Corrigan waited for a moment's lull then took her around again. They just might make it.

  But the Shamrock was heavy with water now. She responded sluggishly. The surf rushed over them, flooding the cockpit and foredeck, turning her on her beam. He heard Rachel scream. His own cramped fingers hooked around the wheel as the Shamrock was swamped and listed onto her port beam.

  This is it, Corrigan thought. We're going over. We've had it.

  But somehow she struggled upright again, like a boxer who wouldn’t go down. ‘That's a girl!’ Corrigan shouted. ‘Never knew a woman yet who wasn't a feisty little bitch at heart!’

  He laughed in triumph and looked around for Rachel.

  But the cockpit was empty.

  She was gone.

  *****

  Rachel hit the water belly first. It hammered the breath out of her. She went under and thought she was about to drown, then surfaced suddenly, gagging. She saw the Shamrock, its stern wallowing in the foaming seas, turn to face the next onrushing wave.

  She tried to swim towards her but it was useless. The current dragged her under again, sucking at her wet calico dress. She couldn’t fight it, didn't have the strength in her arms.

  She thought of Lake Windermere. Was this what it was like for her father and mother? ‘God have mercy on my soul,’ she prayed and gave herself up to the raging sea.

  Chapter 9

  Rachel felt the strain at the rope at her waist, dragging her up through the water. As she broke the surface she gulped a lungful of air and through the mist of pain she saw Corrigan, with one hand still on the wheel, the other dragging at the lifeline, hauling her back towards the boat. She slapped ineffectually at the water with her hands as Corrigan reeled her in, his right foot braced against the cockpit.