Whale Rock was joined to Barrington’s Isle by an underwater ridge fifteen feet beneath the surface. Drew swam above the ridge, fighting the current which threatened to pull him out to sea. Below him the ridge lay clothed in coral grown in the shape of fans, stubby trees, and human brains laid bare by surgery. Black sea eggs clustered in the sheltered crevices and gently waved their poison spines. Zebra fish flitted through the branch coral; a hundred-pound stingray rippled its wings and glided along the bottom. On each side of the ridge the sea dropped into deep purple depths. He seemed to be floating in space above a strange twilight forest where everything glided and waved and rippled, a slow-motion world which made him feel lithe and powerful. In the water he was a better man than most. Perhaps, if this went well, he would find another place near the sea and become an aquatic animal, returning to land only to reproduce.
At Whale Rock he paused to catch his breath on the boulders which lay at its foot, then started crawling up the gentle slope. When he reached the top he froze and looked down, rigid and trembling.
She lay naked on the black sand below.
She lay stomach-down, her head toward the sea, her feet toward him. She had curled her toes under her feet and was moving her heels slowly from side to side, as though marking time to a song inside her head. Her body curved to fit the rounded shape of the beach, throwing her buttocks into high, white relief. They filled his vision, shutting out the rest of her. He’d grown accustomed to Leta’s dusky body, and the vulnerable look of the woman’s white skin shocked his senses. There was no clothing to break the monotony of flesh, no swimsuit, skirt and blouse, panties and bra, to divide her body into neat categories of arms, legs and torso. She was a sprawled expanse of whiteness, without beginning or end. For an instant his eyes darted here and there in confusion, trying to see it all at once, unable to find a point from which to begin his inspection.
Between his rock and the sand on which she lay was a fifteen foot expanse of frothing, gurgling water. The sun blazed at his back and highlighted her copper hair—
Copper? But Edith’s hair had been black, black as a raven’s wing, black as a brush-stroke of charcoal. Of course she could dye it; women often did, and there was a good chance that Edith would have wanted to change her appearance after what happened ten years ago. Still, there may have been another woman on the yacht besides Edith, a guest—
Voicelessly, he cursed his uncertainty. He had thought he remembered every pore of her body; now he realized that his memories included only a broad, hazy shape of the woman, a blend of sound, sight, smell and little electric tingles of emotion, a series of impressions which now began to flit through his mind like swallows at twilight….
She was slightly drunk, the hair spilled loosely over her forehead, faint pouches appearing under her eyes, and her voice became a little too clear, a little too precise, a fraction of a decibel too loud. He could smell the hallway outside the secret apartment they shared, an odor of carpets and rich walnut paneling. She leaned against him while he fumbled with the key; her body moved inside the dress, her breath was warm in his ear as she whispered, “Hurry, Drew, you shouldn’t have started it in the cab …”
He could smell her clothing after she had taken it off, scattered over the carpet, still warm from her body…. He saw the quick turning away of her head when she laughed, the afterglow of laughter still in her eyes when she looked back at him….
She stood before the three-panel mirror, cupped a breast in each palm, lifted them high until they trembled like cones of frozen white custard, stroking the pale tips with her thumbs until a darker nodule grew out of the pebbled surface. She regarded her image with an intent, curious, doubting expression: Mirror, mirror, am I really the fairest? She turned and saw him watching in admiration, and the doubt faded from her eyes. “Come here, Drew, let’s see how we look together.” And he, in the residual shyness of a 23-year-old, mixed with a small-town prudishness, had looked into that clothing-store mirror, at the dozens of nude, posturing Ediths receding into the distance, and said: “I’d feel like I was performing in front of a mob.”
… She lay in bed, her arms behind her head, one knee raised, and on her face the quiet, confident serenity of a lovely woman who awaits the attention of an ardent man, storing energy for the athletic contest to come. And her voice, low and throaty, “Will you give me a rub, Drew?” And then the smell of baby oil, the satin sliding of her skin under his hands, the spreading ripples in her flesh, the deep voiceless grunting in her throat as he thumped and probed and anointed the secret recesses of her body…. He had a feeling of creation, as though he were shaping her flesh with his own hands, and when it was finished he would enjoy it—
Drew lowered himself on his stomach, rested his chin in his hands, and studied the woman on the sand. She lay without moving, like an ivory figurehead torn from some ship’s prow and carried by the sea to this shore. Keep thinking of her that way, he told himself; she’s only a woman.
He began at her feet—pink-soled, wrinkled at the instep, with the small toes bent beneath their nearest neighbor. She was a civilized woman, having submitted her feet to the deforming pinch of styled shoes. That ruled out one remote possibility, that she might be one of the poor-white girls who lived around the Cap in the village of Hope. Those girls grew splay-toed from going barefoot.
Her calves were full, her thighs heavy. They looked strong, but a little soft, like an athlete who had let himself get out of condition. She was new to the tropics; her skin had the transparent whiteness of polished ivory. And there, where the straight line of her thigh was interrupted by the abrupt white swell of her buttocks, he saw the faint, pebbled shadow of wrinkled skin which is often the first sign of departed youth. She was no teenager, and Edith would have been twenty-nine this year. She had put on flesh; the dimples on each side of her lower spine went deep into her flesh, like the impressions you make when you push your fingers into bread dough. The deep valley of her spine gentled and widened as it climbed, spreading out into a broad, smooth back. She had shaven armpits, another stigma of the civilized woman. Her hair turned under in back and cupped her ears. It glowed with evidence of a beautician’s care; Drew could almost feel it lying heavy and alive in his palm.
Still, certainty was denied him; her face was hidden in the curve of her shoulder, so he shifted his gaze to the articles on the sand beside her. White shorts, red halter, sponge-rubber sandals with a rubber throng which passed, Japanese-style, between the first two toes. A leather bag with a drawstring, open. A round can of Player’s cigarettes, also open. A wristwatch lay beside her, its diamonds glittering like sugar frosting. A diamond-studded circlet enveloped her third finger, left hand. She was a rich man’s wife, whoever she was—
Suddenly she pushed herself up on her hands. He lay still and watched as she picked up her watch, squinted at it, then put it aside. Supporting herself on one elbow, she probed the drawstring bag and drew out two oval pads. She rolled over onto her back, pressed the pads against her eyes, and stretched her arms out from her shoulders, palms up.
He’d glimpsed her face in the instant before the pads covered her eyes; he’d seen the familiar wide forehead, the gray eyes, the upturned nose and the same sensuous curve of full red lips. In all the years he’d waited, picturing her in his mind, he had never considered how the sight of her would affect him. It was like a sudden, crushing blow on the head; it was like a kick aimed from the ground and smashing into his groin. Nausea twisted his stomach; his muscles went weak and he lay like a limp, boneless sack, feeling his sweat dampen the rock. He pressed his face against the rock and felt his teeth grate against the rough basalt surface; his body shuddered with the sudden, ecstatic agony which comes at the beginning of an orgasm.
He lay quietly until the emotion passed; he brought himself slowly under control. He felt her name start deep in his chest and swell upward; he clenched his teeth to keep from shouting it.
“Edith.”
It was only a whisper, lost
in the rush of the water. He swallowed to relieve the ringing in his ears, found his throat dry as dust. He raised his head and looked at her again. This time her body arched backward, stretching the stomach taut between rib-cage and pelvis. Hipbones rose up like two ends of a cradle, padded and softly rounded. Ten years ago they had stood out sharply. Her breasts had once thrust tauntingly upward; now slack-muscled and full, they rolled back and cuddled her chin like two soft white pillows. Her pubic mound was a salient, a pale-forested hillock, a fertile heap of compost sprouting a rich curling foliage. As she braced her heels and shifted her position, he saw the pebbled stress of the muscles in her buttocks; his breath caught in his throat as he viewed the trap which had ensnared him long ago. It was visible for no more than a split-second, like the sly wink of a conspiratorial eye. His breath rasped in his throat, and his heartbeat seemed deafening.
Go, he told himself, go down and swim around and give her time to get her clothes on. Even Edith would not like to be caught naked, and after ten years you don’t want her to die of a heart attack …
He pushed himself up and started to slide backward off the rock. At that moment she sat up. He froze, waited, watched her lift the hair off her shoulders and turn her head from side to side, letting the air circulate around her neck. She stretched her legs before her, inspecting them. She caught her stomach in her hands and squeezed out a whitened roll of flesh. A frown creased her broad forehead; it deepened as she cupped her breasts in her hands, lifting them in her palms as though estimating their weight. She must have known what was happening; she’d passed the peak of beauty and started downhill. Gone was the arching, satisfied smile which these daily appraisals had once evoked. Soon the full-length mirror would disappear from her bedroom; she would start choosing the darkened corners of cocktail bars, avoiding the sunny side of the street, wearing high-collared dresses to hide the sagging throat—
Suddenly, as though angry at her body and wanting to cover it quickly, she grabbed her shorts and shoved her feet into them. Still seated, she worked them up above her knees, then climbed to her feet. Her eyes roved absently over the horizon as she reached down to pull them up; her gaze slid past him and then darted back. A gasp burst from her lips; her eyes went wide, showing white all around her irises.
“Oh!”
It was no more than a sound in her throat, the cry of a lost and frightened little girl. She recovered quickly, anger replaced surprise, and her cheeks flamed red. She jerked up her shorts and held them together with one hand. Her other forearm she pressed across her breasts.
“Get out of here, whoever you are.”
Her tone was an imperious command; this tone he knew, but in the past it had held a strain of urgency, shrill and uncertain. Now it held only a quiet menace; Edith had learned to live with power.
He didn’t move; he didn’t speak. His stomach was tight, and his muscles trembled with a dozen movements formulated and then aborted. None of them were exactly what he wanted to do; so he did nothing.
He watched the color of her face deepen to an angry red. Now comes one of those screaming tantrums, he thought. In a moment she’ll pick up the nearest object and throw it, shouting gutter abuse from those full red lips.
But her hands were full. To zip up her shorts would require both hands, and this meant exposing her breasts. To put on the halter she’d have to release her shorts. Getting off the beach would have meant even greater exposure, and it would also be leaving the field in defeat. Edith would never do that.
He felt his mouth spread in a grin.
Edith felt a chill of alarm. The smile was wrong, out of context; it didn’t fit the bearded, salt-crusted face, it didn’t warm the cold blue eyes that pierced her skin like needles—
She darted a look at her dinghy, pulled up onto the sand ten yards away and moored to a jutting boulder. She longed to escape, but she saw herself sprinting across the sand, struggling to hold up her shorts from falling to her knees, dropping articles of clothing, losing a shoe….
Slowly her initial shock gave way to an icy contempt. She reached down and pulled up the zipper of her shorts, making no effort to conceal her breasts. I will show him that he is totally unimportant to me, a species of vermin beneath notice. She picked up her halter, slipped the straps over her arms, and cradled her breasts with a smooth, rolling shrug. She tied the halter and spoke with regal contempt.
“Now that there’s nothing more to see, why don’t you leave?”
His smile seemed to grow thinner, but she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t look at him with the sun blazing in her eyes. The scene was becoming weird and unreal. She sat down on the sand, drew her knees up into the circle of her arms, and looked out to sea. I’ll ignore him and maybe he’ll go away.
A gull shrieked overhead; a pelican made a crumpled dive into a breaking wave. This man was adding a final sordid touch to an already unpleasant homecoming. She thought of Doctor Kohlmetz in Geneva, with his ponderous German way of intoning clichés: “I have every confidence in your recovery, Mrs. Barrington, but you require rest and quiet. Your husband told me about your private island, and I must say it sounds ideal.” Inside her mind Edith had screamed: Ideal! For God’s sake, didn’t he also tell you it was the island that did this to me? If I go back—But she had looked at Ian, and he had smiled his velvet smile, and she had remembered that there were worse places than the island….
So she’d returned, and all would become as it had been before: Ian back in the bush, ruling like a feudal lord behind the walls of Diamond Estate; Doxie performing his labor of love, watching with eyes which never raised themselves above her breasts. She’d come here for the sun, but now this man had come to gaze as Doxie gazed. But he was bold where Doxie was shy; he was arrogant where Doxie was sly. He made her feel awkward and lumpy. Seeking something to busy her hands, she picked a cigarette out of the can, tapped it against her thumbnail, and lit it. She pulled too deeply and coughed.
He chuckled.
Sudden anger made her forget her decision to ignore him. She whirled and bit off the words: “I see you can laugh. Can you talk too, or are you a complete fool?”
She didn’t see his lips move; his words seemed to come out of the air surrounding him, flat and hard and crackling across the space between them.
“I can talk, Edith. Don’t you know me?”
She shaded her eyes against the sun and squinted up at him. She remembered Doxie’s words in the salon just before they’d reached the island: “There’s a squatter here who calls himself a painter. If you’ll watch through the port, you can see him leave.” And Doxie had strode off like St. George in search of a dragon, only to return and report in disgust that the man had fled.
“How could I know you?” she asked. “I’ve been away two years.”
“We met a long time ago, Edie. Remember?”
With his use of her nickname, the pieces fell into a pattern so familiar that she felt a weary sense of Déjà-vu. Would they never stop coming back, these old lovers from the past?
“No,” she said coldly. “And if you know my name, you must also know that my husband owns this island, including that rock you’re lying on. If you leave now, I’ll say nothing to him. But if you persist in sitting up there like a gawking baboon—!”
She bit her lip and turned away. Her words had only brought a sleepy smile to his lips. She felt the blood pound against her temples. She started counting: One … two … three … A manta ray broke from the water two hundred yards away, so huge that her breath caught in her throat. It arched up into the air, its twelve-foot wings glistening with rubbery wetness, then struck the water flat with a resounding plop!
Ten. The counting had helped. She turned, ready to face the man in calm, imperious dignity.
But he was gone.
“Coward,” she said aloud. It had been too easy; she had only to throw up the shield of the Barrington name, and that rugged man had retreated.
She lay back and turned her body up to the sun. How well
did he know me? she wondered. What use did he make of me? Did he love me? She teased her memory, but the door to her past remained closed. She gave up trying to remember him; it was a nagging frustration, like a sneeze which never quite matures, but forever rises up in the throat.
The sand felt good on her back. Impulsively she untied her halter and pulled it off, then unzipped her shorts and kicked them off her feet. She rolled onto her stomach and wriggled her body against the sand. She opened her legs, then closed them. The sand lumped up between her thighs, warm and intimately caressing. The sun pressed gently against her back, the breeze drew soft fingers up and down her legs, the world held her in a soft, loving embrace….
A metallic scraping penetrated her half-sleep. She lifted her head and saw the bearded man bending over her dinghy. “What are you doing?”
He straightened and dropped something into the pocket of his shorts. He turned, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Putting your boat out of action.”
Her lips went dry. “What’s … the point of that?”
“So we can talk in peace. Don’t you want to talk?”
He came toward her with one hand braced against the rock, hopping along on his right leg. In the back of her mind, behind the chill of fear which paralyzed her muscles, she thought: he must have stepped on a spiny sea urchin. Then she saw the long red scar on his leg and the way he held it stiff, as though the bones were fused together. He’s crippled, she thought, and there’s another vicious scar on his side and another on his face and …
Oh God, I don’t like this at all!
She rolled over and sat up, not even trying to cover her body. She had an impulse to run, but the man was lowering himself onto the sand five feet away, between her and the dinghy. Just sit and wait, she told herself; don’t do anything to upset him. He wants something from you and it’s more than a chat, otherwise there’d have been no need to sabotage the boat.
Color Him Dead Page 5