Virgin Cay

by Basil Heatter

  He took the lashings off the Fiberglass dinghy that was secured to the cabin top and heaved the little boat over the side. The oars had been lashed underneath and, carrying them in one hand, he stepped carefully down into the nervous dink.

  As the keel touched the shelving sand that formed the reef Gwen rushed forward to hold the bow for him. Together they dragged the little boat up on the beach and then she threw her arms around him and said, “My God, I’ve never been so glad to see anybody in my whole life. I had just about given you up for lost. You said you’d be here yesterday.”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that. I was almost here and then I had to turn back.” He told her how he had picked up the Cubans and had taken them back to Key West.

  “And she really had a baby on board your boat?”

  “Cross my heart. And I can tell you I never want to go through anything like that again.”

  “But I think it’s marvelous,” Gwen said. “And I’m very proud of you. Doesn’t that make you the godfather or something?”

  “I suppose it might have if I’d been willing to wait around for it but I was in a hurry to get back here to take you off your desert island. Here, let me look at you. How was the storm?”

  “Did you get it too?”

  “And how. Was it kind of rugged for you, Gwen?”

  “A little.”

  “Come on now, don’t kid old Captain Gus. I’ll bet it scared the pants off you.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I was in the raw when you came sneaking up on me.”

  “I don’t call it sneaking exactly. It’s just that sailboats don’t make much noise.”

  “Why didn’t you blow a horn or a whistle or something?”

  “And spoil the view? Don’t be silly.”

  “You’re a terrible man.”

  “There’s nothing new about that. You’ve known it right along. Anyway, you seem to have thrived on your isolation. You’re as brown as a fig newton and twice as pretty. And unless those binoculars are out of whack you’ve even gained a little weight.”

  “Wretch.” Suddenly she dropped the bantering tone and asked softly, “Are you still angry at me, Gus?”

  “Why should I be angry?”

  “You were pretty mad when you left here. You wouldn’t even say good-bye to me. It was hardly the gentlemanly thing to do, marooning a gal on a desert island and then going off without so much as a good-bye kiss. I’m sure that Captain Kidd and Blackbeard always kissed their victims good-bye before making them walk the plank.”

  “If they were pretty enough to kiss, there were no planks for them to walk.”

  “So that’s it. I’m not pretty enough. Well this is a fine time to tell me.”

  She was standing very close to him and he was almost painfully aware of her. In another moment his awareness would be obvious. He wanted desperately to reach out and take hold of her and he had even taken a step toward her before he remembered Dino. She was still bent on marrying Dino or she would have said something about it. Then to hell with her. Much as he wanted her he would not expose himself to the same hurt again. He looked directly at her unbuttoned shirt and at the honey-colored softness of her half revealed breasts and said coldly, “Button your shirt.”

  A touch of red tinged her cheekbones. She looked down at herself and said, “I’m sorry.” Her slender brown lingers fumbled at the buttons and she added, “Did you have to use quite that tone of voice?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned away from him to look across the water and said, “That’s a very beautiful boat. What do you call her?”

  “Senegal.”

  “Now you’ve got everything you wanted, haven’t you?”

  “Just about.”

  “Oh you really are impossible, Gus. I’ve been sitting here day and night counting the minutes until I saw you again and now you’re behaving like such a clod.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “I’ve never been noted for fancy manners. I leave that to your gigolo friends.”

  She turned away from him and stamped angrily off across the beach and sat down under the tarp with her face averted. After a while Robinson walked after her and said, “Well? Are you coming or do you want to stay here?”

  Without looking at him she answered coldly, “I couldn’t care less.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before I sailed such a bloody long way to get here?”

  “And why didn’t you tell me that you were going to behave like such an absolute… bastard? Anyway, you might just remember that this whole thing was your idea. I’m here by your invitation. I can assure you it was hardly my notion of a weekend at the Ritz.”

  “All right. It was my idea and you cooperated beautifully and I appreciate it very much and now I’ve come back to get you as I said I would, so will you please, for the love of heaven, get your butt into the bloody boat?”

  Tears were making little rivulets on her cheeks. She brushed them angrily away and said, “I’ll thank you not to yell at me, Mr. Robinson. I’m not your wife.”

  “That’s a break for both of us.”

  “What do you want of me? All you ever really wanted was your damned boat and your freedom. Well now you’ve got them both so why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “Because I’ve got to get you out of here and so I’m inviting you politely to step into the goddamned bloody dink!”

  “Well I’m not going. I wouldn’t go across the street with you.”

  “I’m not in the mood for games,” he said bending down and picking her up in his arms. She kicked and twisted and tried to sink her teeth in his shoulder.

  “Go ahead. Bite. It’s what I would have expected from a bitch like you,” he said.

  She stopped struggling and lay quiet in his arms. He carried her down and dumped her in the stem of the dink. Then he went back and dismantled the tarp and picked up the rest of the gear and carried it all down to the boat. He had to make two trips.

  When he came back the second time she said softly, “Gus.”

  “What?”

  “Come here.”

  He did not answer and she said, “Please.”

  He waded through the shallow water to the stem of the boat and she reached up and put her arms around his neck and her lips against his.

  “Are we really in such a terrible hurry? Can’t we stay a little longer?”

  “For what? Batting practice?”

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “I don’t like being a warm-up pitcher for brother Dino.”

  She turned her face away and said nothing more. He got into the dink and shipped the oars and rowed back to the yawl. When they came alongside the yacht he tried to help her aboard but she pushed his hand away and immediately went below and lay down on the bunk with her face to the bulkhead.

  Robinson hauled the dink aboard and lashed it down. Then he started the engine and worked the yawl slowly forward on a shortened anchor line until he had broken the hook loose from the bottom. He stowed the anchor in its chocks and hoisted the sails and put Senegal on a course for Spanish Cay.

  When they touched the pier Gwen came on deck for the first time. She stepped ashore even before he had the lines secured and said curtly, “Good-bye, Gus,” and walked away.

  When she was out of sight behind the old frame hotel he finished securing the boat and then went ashore to buy liquor and ice. He felt a hundred years old. In a few hours he would be at sea in the boat he had always wanted, but suddenly there was damned little joy in the prospect.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A cat exploded under her feet and went squalling down the alley behind the straw market. Gwen leaped sideways. Her nerves felt tight as bowstrings. She wanted desperately to run away but she controlled the impulse. She had to have it out with Clare. More powerful than her fear was the desire to see Clare’s face when she knew the truth.

  She passed through the darkened village and continued on toward Clare’s house. The road, outlined by moonligh
t, had the dead, cold look of bone. The huge banyan tree at the crossroads cast shadows that looked like hanged men. Somewhere a dog howled. Gwen put her hand over her breast and felt the pounding of her heart. Not since the night of the great storm when she had been alone on the sandspit had she felt so vulnerable.

  Did she really need this brief victory? She hesitated in the patch of black shadow cast by the banyan but then went on. It had to be done this way, and now. It would be the last time she and Clare would ever see each other.

  She went on along the road and then stood hesitating outside the house. The place was dark. Her palms were moist and she was breathing as hard as if she had run all the way. Why was she so petrified? Clare’s sting had been drawn and all she could do now was to buzz harmlessly.

  There was gravel on the drive. Her feet made a crunching sound like walking on dry snow. The night was clear and the stars raged overhead in icy splendor. She screwed up her courage and moved toward the door.

  At that moment a light flashed on in the bedroom. It startled her. She backed away and stood waiting. When nothing further happened she tiptoed forward.

  The bedroom window was half obscured by the terrace wing and she crept around the concrete structure and took up a position just outside the window. Even there, however, it was impossible to see through the heavy drapes. But she could hear a voice, a man’s voice. She moved closer until her face was almost pressed against the glass.

  Suddenly, like a stroke of lightning, the curtains were drawn apart and the face of her cousin appeared at the window.

  The confrontation shocked them both. Gwen felt as though her heart had stopped. Clare screamed.

  In the brief moment before Gwen turned away the scene in the room was photographed indelibly on her brain. Clare in a nightgown, her hair rumpled and some sort of grease on her face. She was smoking a cigarette and her eyes were narrowed from the smoke. She looked older than Gwen had ever seen her and the nightgown revealed bulges of excess flesh.

  At the sight of Gwen Clare’s eyes blazed with such an expression of fury that they seemed to glow with an inner light of their own. And when she screamed her face was contorted with rage. In that ghastly instant of revelation she appeared to have aged ten years at one stroke.

  But the real shock was not Clare; it was Dino naked on the bed and jerked upright by Clare’s scream. As he looked past Clare into Gwen’s eyes an expression of sadness, of hopeless self-knowledge—something like that of a two-dollar bettor who has played a long shot and torn up his ticket only to find that a photo finish has called his horse the winner—flickered across his face. Then he leaped out of bed and snatched up a robe and ran toward the door.

  Gwen ran wildly down the path toward the beach. She heard voices, half muffled by the wind, calling after her, but she did not stop. She ran without knowing why she was running. All she knew was that she had to get away from both of them. Her heart seemed to be bursting. When she heard Dino’s voice coming closer she threw herself off the path and rolled down the side of one of the dunes and lay hidden while he rushed by.

  She lay still with her face pillowed on her arm and her body racked by sobs. She was torn by a sense of loss. Loss of what? she asked herself. Loss of Dino? No, she never really had cared about Dino or she could not have given herself to Gus. It was more the loss of innocence and youth. She had seen, blazing out at her through the window, the consummate face of evil and, like the sailors who looked on the face of Medusa, she felt turned to stone.

  She could hear Dino still calling after her down on the beach. She got up and ran back the other way to the road. One of her sneakers came off in the sand. She ran on without it.

  A few minutes later a car came blazing down the road, lights bouncing. When it was almost upon her she flattened herself on the sand. As the car went by she thought she recognized Dino at the wheel. When it was gone she ran on. At first she had only fled blindly, running in any direction to get away from Clare and Dino. But now she knew where she was running.

  The car was coming back. Because the land was so flat she could see it coming a long way off and she had plenty of time to find a hiding place. The car moved slowly; he was searching carefully. She lay flat behind a low bush. She heard him calling out to her, “Gwen. Where are you, Gwen?” She lay face down until it was gone and then she got up and limped along through the soft sand by the side of the road.

  Now that her need to reach Gus was crystallized she realized that she might be too late. More than likely he had taken the yawl straight out to sea again. If she missed him now she might never find him again. Something sharp pierced her bare foot and she cried out. She bent down and pulled a long thorn from her instep and saw blood run black in the moonlight.

  A full hour had gone by before she reached the pier. She was gasping for breath and soaked with perspiration. All the while she had been telling herself that the yawl would still be there but now, as she came around the corner of the hotel, her heart sank. Senegal’s tall mast was gone. Only the stubby fishing cruisers squatted in the nest.

  Too tired to cry any more and overwhelmed by hopelessness she let herself sink down on the pier’s damp wooden slats.

  The small voice said, “Are you all right, lady?”

  She looked up and saw a boy of nine or ten. His round, dark face offered her a tentative smile. His ragged trousers were held at the waist by rope. He shuffled his bare feet uneasily as he stared down at her.

  She felt pathetically glad to have someone to talk to. She said, “Hello. What are you doing out at this time of night? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “I bring ice for the boat, lady.”

  “What boat?”

  “The sailboat.”

  “The big sailboat with one man aboard?”

  The boy nodded.

  She sat up abruptly. “Where is he?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “When? When did he go?”

  The boy shrugged. “Before you come, lady.”

  “Did you see him go? Do you know which way he went?”

  The child pointed toward the velvet darkness of the sea and said, “He went out there.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In the first light of dawn Senegal drifted on a windless sea. Robinson had set his course for the island of New Providence but in the past three hours he had not made good more than five miles. The sails hung slack and the air was lifeless. Spanish Cay was still dimly visible on the horizon.

  He went below to fix his breakfast and then lay down on the bunk. It might be an hour or two before the wind came up and in the meantime he might as well sleep. He closed his eyes but sleep eluded him. The image of Gwen in Dino’s arms, that had tortured him all night, continued to plague him. Jealousy gnawed at his guts. He felt as if he were being eaten alive. How long would the pain last? He supposed if you got drunk and stayed drunk long enough it might help.

  The boat, the sea, all the things he had savored for so many years, had turned to ashes in his hands. Without her they were meaningless. He had built a trap for Clare and ended up in it himself.

  The damnable part of it was that if he had not been such a stubborn bastard he might have found a way to have both Gwen and the sea. He could, for instance, have worked something out with Caldwell that would have enabled him to work on the auxiliaries without confining himself to shore. When consultations were necessary he could have flown in for them but apart from that there would have been no reason to stay in Miami.

  He could have taken Gwen to the Mediterranean or down to the Aegean and the isles of Greece. They could have made the best of both worlds. All it had needed was a gesture on his part, and he had been too goddamned bullheaded to make it.

  Dino’s hands were on her now. His lips on hers. Head thrown back, eyes closed, nipples erect under his touch. Christ!

  The distant hum of a motor brought him up on one elbow. He had thought at first that it was a light plane but now he recognized it as the unmistakable high-pitched whine of
an outboard. What bloody lunatic would be this far at sea in an outboard?

  He picked the binoculars out of their rack and went out on deck. The sky was red and there was a fierce glare off the water. He adjusted the glasses and brought the little skiff into focus. A dark-haired girl sat on the stern thwart and was waving furiously. Now, even above the whine of the motor, he could hear her calling. His heart seemed to flip over in his chest.

  The skiff came alongside and she switched off the motor. He reached down and swooped her up on deck and held her tight against him.

  When he finally let her go he said, “You’re absolutely nuts.”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “There’s only one lousy can of gas in that skiff. Suppose you hadn’t found me? How would you have gotten back?”

  “I didn’t stop to think about it. There was no time.”

  “What do we do with the skiff? Do we take it back?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I never want to see Spanish Cay again. Can’t we just take it along to wherever the next port is and then send them a check for it?”

  “Of course. Stop trembling.”

  “I can’t. It may take me years.”

  “We’ve got years,” he said.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE