by J G Alva
The trees stopped in a line and that was where Nick found them. To his untrained eye they looked like a giant’s footprints, but on closer inspection they were a little more complex than that. Mottled rock seemed to have grown out of the ground into strange mushroom shapes, and in between them were big pools of stagnant water. He had only a vain hope that this water wouldn’t be salt water, but he climbed down to the edge of one of these pools of the off chance that it wouldn’t be and tasting it was surprised to find that it wasn’t.
He had found coconut shells just beyond the beach that had fallen on the hard rocks, split open and dried out, and washing them in the sea, he had picked up two of them to use as vessels for carrying any water he found back to the beach. Leaving Rebekah strict instructions to not let the fire burn out, he had set off, half a coconut shell in each hand.
The pools of water were tinged brown and didn’t look particularly sanitary and thinking that maybe they could boil it somehow, he bent down and submerged the coconut shells. He bought one to his lips, letting a small amount slip down his throat, the taste strange, a little bit of salt in there but mainly it tasted of earth…before his control got the better of him and he downed the entire contents of both shells. He paused, waiting to see if his body would reject it; there were a few muted rumblings, but nothing more than that, so he submerged the coconut shells again and started back to the beach.
Thirty seconds later, on the edge of the area with the strange mushroom-like rock formations, he lost his footing and went down, scraping his leg from knee to ankle, and spilling the contents of both coconut shells in to the dirt.
For a moment he was so angry he could have happily smashed both coconut shells in to the ground before something broke in him and he began crying. He was so disgusted with himself and his own weakness that he fought mercilessly to control his sobbing, but the more he tried to reign himself in the more the sobbing seemed to dominate him, until he gave up altogether and sat in the sand with his back against one of the mushroom rocks and, cupping his bleeding leg, let himself cry it all out, all of it, the anguish, his fears for Jessica, for all his friends, for the uncertainty of it all, and for the powerlessness, he couldn’t do anything, for Christ’s sake, he couldn’t do a fucking thing, until he felt he had been squeezed of all moisture, like a sponge, but not so much moisture as emotion. Favouring his injured leg, he stood up and went back to get more water, feeling empty and numb inside, but no longer in danger of crying in front of the girl.
◆◆◆
“You look funny,” Rebekah said, after she had drunk from the coconut shells he had offered her.
Embarrassed in that moment, he couldn’t meet her eyes, and instead looked down and indicated his leg. He had ripped his trousers up to the knee and the wound was clearly visible. He said, “I fell. On my ass.”
“It looks like you fell on your leg.”
“Well. You know what I mean.”
There was silence a moment between them.
“Does it hurt? It looks bad.”
“It’s okay. It’s not bleeding anymore.”
Nick scanned the horizon.
“Any ships?”
“No.”
Despondent, he hung his head.
“Where’s your wife?” Rebekah asked him.
His head came up.
“What?”
“Your wife.” She indicated the ring on his hand.
He fingered it, turning it slowly on his finger.
“I don’t know,” he said simply, honestly.
“Was she...?”
“Yes, she was on the St. Anne,” Nick said. “I can’t...I can’t think about it. I just...I’m having enough trouble dealing with this.” He indicated his leg but he meant the island. “But thinking about Jessica, worrying about her...I haven’t got the strength.”
“Jessica? That’s her name?”
“Yes.”
“What does she look like?”
“Beautiful,” Nick said, and was alarmed to feel tears behind his eyes again. He was falling apart; it was pathetic. He blinked them back, cleared his throat. “She’s beautiful.”
“How long have you two been married?”
“Six years.”
“Are you in love?”
Nick looked at her for a moment, studied her.
“Very much so. Why all the questions?”
Rebekah shrugged, uncomfortable or uneasy under his gaze, he couldn’t tell which.
“My parents split up when I was very young. I lived with my mother until she...died. My father...he moved away. I never knew him. I suppose I...just wanted to know what a marriage was like. From the other side.”
There was a pause between them, comfortable in some strange way Nick couldn’t identify.
“Do you want me to tell you how we met?”
Rebekah nodded, eager.
“Yes, please.”
“Okay...”
◆◆◆
Nick’s cousin, Mathew Farrow, was a tall, laid back man with long blonde hair that had a wave in it, and it was this, along with eyes that never seemed to open beyond half-mast, that made Nick think that he looked like a very well-to-do session musician who had perhaps taken too many drugs in his youth. Ironically, he did actually play the guitar, but incredibly badly, and any evening where he had drunk too much seemed to culminate in Mat finding a guitar from somewhere and serenading his wife – and anybody unfortunate enough to be within earshot – with an eye watering rendition of a Bon Jovi number or two.
The party where Nick had first met Jessica had been Mat’s thirty first, and had begun in a Chinese restaurant down the street from where he lived and had finished back at Mat and Janine’s sprawling three bedroom flat on the river. Mat worked as a salesman for a company that sold road maintenance equipment, and most of his work colleagues had been at the party, including two good looking women, Jessica Taylor and her friend Mia Copeland.
Nick had seen Jessica a couple of times amongst the crowd, a tall slender brunette in a long black dress, gold earrings and high heels. She had a Mediterranean look about her, with flawless olive skin, the dark slanted eyes of a cat, and the strong cheekbones of an Egyptian queen. The only thing that seemed to be English about her was her heart shaped mouth, soft and delicate like a rose.
When she strode up to him he felt more than a little alarmed. This was more girl than he might be able to handle.
“Listen to me,” she said in a business like voice, and Nick’s smile died on his lips. “I don’t know who you are, but you look good. In a minute, you are going to dance with me, and then we’re going to kiss, very hot and very heavy. But I don’t want you to get any ideas. There’s an ex of mine here tonight, and I just want to show him what he’s lost out on, and that I don’t miss him in the slightest.”
And then she dragged Nick, too stunned to reply, into the centre of the lounge where a couple of people were dancing to music coming from a stereo over the fireplace. Dimly, he heard Mat shout, “go, Nicky!” Jessica pressed her body against him and moved it in such a way as to rob any illusion of willpower from him, and then she put her delicate face up to his for the kiss she had demanded, and he had not been able to do anything but acquiesce. Afterward, he would wonder if she hadn’t put some sort of spell over him; indeed, at the time, he felt as if he had been hit on the back of the head with a hammer. He had no doubt that she was going to be a good kisser, but those heart shaped lips, and that hot tongue, were something else, and made every part of him tingle. When she finally broke away Nick felt like he was coming back from another planet.
The Ex appeared as if by magic, staring at Nick with obvious hate but also with the bleariness of too much alcohol. He was a good looking man just a little shorter than Nick, but stockier, with blonde hair, designer stubble, and a dimple in his chin so deep it might have been put there with an axe.
“Rex,” Jessica said, delighted. “I’d like you to meet my fiancé.”
Rex stared at Nick, blin
king slowly, and Nick thought of a lizard on a rock. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a fork tongue pop out from between his teeth and taste the air.
“Nick Mitchell,” he heard himself say, putting his hand out. “We hope you can come to the wedding.”
Rex turned and left without a word, much to Nick’s relief.
Jessica laughed at that moment, putting a hand on Nick’s chest.
“Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. A class A performance. Thank you.”
And she reached up to peck him on the cheek, an absurdly chaste gesture after the kiss of only a minute ago.
She turned to leave but Nick caught her arm.
“If you really want to thank me,” Nick said, “you can give me your phone number.”
After a speculative moment, she produced her mobile phone, as did he, and they exchanged numbers.
◆◆◆
“She sounds like a...real piece of work,” Rebekah said.
Nick looked at her sharply, but she was staring off in to the distance; he couldn’t read her expression.
◆◆◆
Rebekah managed to gain her feet later that day.
Nick had watched her move down the beach until she stumbled; he got up to help her, taking her left arm in his and looping a hand around her back.
“Hey,” he said,
She clutched his hand tightly.
“Feel dizzy,” she said.
“You better sit down – "
“No, no,” she said. She straightened up with some effort. His hand was still on her arm and she looked down at it; a strange expression came over her face.
“I’ve got to have a wash,” she said. “I just feel so grubby.”
“Alright,” Nick said, releasing her. “But take it slowly.”
He watched her walk tentatively down the beach to the sea and felt very paternal in that moment. She splashed water over her face, waded in up to her knees, and then splashed water over her arms and around her neck. He kept waiting for her to lose her balance again, but when she was done – and came out of the water and back up the beach – she seemed steadier.
“There,” she said, pleased with herself and smiling. “That feels better.”
“Hungry?” He asked, smiling himself.
“Hm. What’s on the menu?”
“Well. There’s a choice. Coconut, coconut, or coconut.”
“I’m allergic to coconuts.”
Nick stared at her.
“Joke,” she said again, smiling slightly. “Coconut sounds great.”
“Jesus,” Nick said, shaking his head, but couldn’t help smiling himself.
◆◆◆
Nick quickly became convinced that tanks the world over should be armoured with coconut shells. There seemed like no way anybody could get through them.
After ten minutes of trying to smash one on a sharp rock some way back from the beach, all he had to show for it was a large ugly blister on the palm of his hand. To go with all the other blisters.
What wasn’t helping was the fact that he was so hungry he felt weak and insubstantial, like a ghost. A low grade tremor seemed to be running through all of his limbs. He silently debated whether he could get away with eating the coconut whole.
“Having trouble, Crusoe?” Rebekah asked, amused.
Nick humphed.
He examined the coconut, with its score of pathetic pock marks from his blows on it against the sharp rock, looked around, found what he thought might work, walked to a place where a cleft in the rock might hold a coconut steady, wedged the coconut in it tightly, scouted around for a good heavy rock, found one, picked it up and giving it some power brought the rock down on the exposed side of the coconut. There was a crunch, and as the rock rolled away, the split coconut was revealed in all its glory.
“Aha!” Nick exclaimed proudly.
He bent down, picked up the two halves of the coconut, handed one to her and said, “enjoy.”
◆◆◆
“You’re sure you’ll be alright,” Nick said again.
Rebekah was sitting down again at the base of her tree, leaning back against it, her eyes closed. She looked tired, as if she had exerted herself too much. He studied her a moment. She was a short girl that only came up to his chest; her arms were like twigs, and her hands and feet were tiny, like doll’s hands. But aside from that she held herself well, and her features were open and engaging; he decided she’d grow up to be a pretty young woman.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, without opening her eyes. “Just hurry up and bring that boat back that I just know is anchored in a little cove on the other side of this island.”
“Expect me back in a couple of hours,” Nick said. His stomach rumbled; he was still hungry. The two coconuts he had managed to crack open had done little to sate his appetite. “If I haven’t circled the island in a couple of hours, I’ll head back.”
“Good luck, Crusoe.”
“Sure thing, Friday.”
She opened her eyes and they smiled at each other, but there was something in her look that unsettled him. Maybe the same expression was on his face too, that all pretences to mirth aside they were both scared to death.
“Well. Okay. Don’t forget to keep the fire going.”
◆◆◆
He stopped at the pools in between the mushroom rocks and cupped his hands and drank. The sun was coasting down the other side of the sky now toward the horizon, but it was still unbelievably hot. On the beach there was always a good breeze blowing in off the water to keep the temperature down, but further inland there was no breeze at all, only the uninterrupted onslaught of the sun. He was still a little burnt. Looking at his hands, they were red and dry, but underneath was the suggestion of a deeper brownness. An acclimation.
He climbed up on to one of the mushrooms and wandered over to the line of trees; a bit of shade in which to cool off and decide which way to head. He supposed his best bet to ascertain the dimensions of the island was to climb the hill, then he could look down on all creation like God himself, but it would be tough going cutting his way through all that growth, and he doubted if he could make it up there before dark. He wasn’t ashamed to admit, even at the grand old age of thirty six, that he’d rather not spend a night alone in the dark in an unfamiliar part of the island.
So he decided to keep to the coast, and with this in mind started walking, passed the mushroom rocks and the fresh water pools, and down a slope with strange rigid grass to another beach, smaller than the one they were staying on, but nice in its own way, with trees leaning out over the water, and a long rock quay going out in to the sea. There was a little more current here, because the sea was hitting the finger of rock stuck out in the bay with some force, sending up big spurts of spray.
Nick went down to the beach, strolling unhurriedly along it, scanning the horizon for an unlikely ship, when he absentmindedly reached down to scratch his leg. He scratched a little too hard, winced, and stopped to look down at himself; he had started it bleeding again. He sat down on the cool sand – the trees having grown out over the water meant that the whole beach was in shade – and examined the wound. It looked red and angry, but it was itching, and he had always been told that was a good sign. While he was there he examined his stomach, and the familiar feeling of awe overcame him again; I was stabbed, he thought, I was honest to God stabbed but I survived, I’m still here. He prodded it. It still hurt a little, but nowhere near as much as it had done. It too looked red and angry, and he supposed that was just his body, hard at work repairing itself.
Oh well, he thought, onward and upward, and slowly he got to his feet. Maybe he should have a stick, he thought, like ramblers do, but wondered if he wasn’t being pretentious. He didn’t need it, it would just look good.
But then, who was there to admire it? He and the girl were alone.
◆◆◆
The island turned out to be a lot bigger than he had guessed.
Just when he was sure that he was coming bac
k on their beach from the other side, he would come over a lip, or a rise, or edge past the line of a cliff and find that, actually, he didn’t recognise anything at all, and that everything he could see in his line of vision looked nothing like what he had expected to find.
On the far side of the hill from the beach a sheer rock face rose up to its summit; it was as if a giant's axe had cut a section out of the hill like a slice of cake. This sheer rock face seemed to be home to thousands upon thousands of birds. It was dotted with nests, and stained with a millennia of bird shit.
It took a while, but eventually the unwelcome thought that had been swirling around in the back of his head wouldn’t go unnoticed any longer, and so reluctantly he faced it, and it turned out to be this: that the reason there was nobody on this island, or even visiting it, was that it was some sort of bird sanctuary…and Nick felt despair dragging at all his limbs, not willing to admit to himself that this meant a long time before anybody might come to the island, a long long time, and then only a handful of people, scientists and conservationists, if they came at all.
By the time he had given up trying to circle the island it had become quite late, and in something like panic he turned around and began to retrace his steps.
When the sun slipped behind the horizon and the darkness was complete, he estimated he was still a good two hours from the beach and the girl. It was official: he was an idiot. He was an idiot for setting off too late in the day, he was an idiot for leaving it too late before turning back, he was an idiot for not being a smoker and having a lighter on him when he was thrown off the boat. Hell, he was an idiot for accepting Mike’s idea to have a company party in the Seychelles in the first place.
Rather than attempting to cross the mushroom rock area in the dark and breaking his idiotic neck, Nick stuck to the coastline instead, tracing what he could see of the landscape by the light of the half moon. He negotiated the foreign landscape in the near-dark for an hour and had just resigned himself to a night in an unfamiliar part of the island, alone, when he saw the pale glow of the signal fire in the distance.