by J G Alva
Until that night, almost six months after her eighteenth birthday, in what they had both agreed must be late August, when the culmination of the change between them came to a head.
It was hot. There was a full moon balancing over the sea, bright enough so that their world was aglow in silver. Rebekah had arisen some time before, presumably to relieve herself, and when she came back she lay down beside Nick and, without invitation, put her arms around him.
“What are you doing?” He asked her.
“Mm. Just cuddling.”
“Right.”
Her head came up.
“You don’t want me to?”
“No It’s just...no. It’s fine.”
She was staring at him, but the moon was behind her, and he couldn’t see her expression.
“What?” He said eventually.
“Is something the matter?” She asked.
“No. Why?”
“You seem a little...funny.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
There was a pause between them. Rebekah continued to stare at him. He couldn’t see her expression, and for some reason he began to feel uneasy.
“Nick, can you...?” She sighed, her head dipping down despondently.
“What?”
“Nick, I...I want you to kiss me.”
“What?”
He struggled out of her embrace.
“Please. I just want to know what it’s like. Please?”
“Rebekah, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Nick made a sound, a half laugh, slightly derisive.
“You know why.”
“Jessica?”
“Among other things.”
“It’s only a kiss, Nick. She’s never going to know.”
“But I’d know.”
The atmosphere between them now was strained. Rebekah’s voice was heavy with disappointment.
“I hardly think she’d divorce you for it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re a good dog, aren’t you. You never slip off your leash.”
Nick had started to sweat. Why was he so nervous? He didn’t know.
You do know, the toad voice said, in the back of his head.
“That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?”
“One kiss, Nick. One tiny little kiss.”
Go on, the toad said. She’s right, it’s harmless. And then when the kiss gets going, and she’s a little hot under the collar, why, you can peel her right out of her rags and fuck her, because it’s been years for you, you’re a man, you need it on a regular basis, without it there’s a kind of insanity, yes, take her because you want her, yes, you do, you want her, you can’t lie to me, and she wants it, hasn’t she made that clear enough? And there’s only the two of you on this island, and no one will ever know.
“Rebekah, you’re eighteen, for fuck’s sake,” Nick said, angry, not with her, but with himself, his weakness. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
She sat up then, turned slightly away from him, her head down, the hair obscuring her face. His eyes followed the lines of her body, greedily eating her up, and he could feel himself responding to her, growing erect, and in a panic he thought no stop it if she sees that my God – and he made himself think of Jessica, and this cooled his ardour somewhat, but he could still feel it, the heat, under the surface, a steaming pot ready to boil over.
In a small voice she said, “I know what you do when you go into the jungle.”
Shame and alarm gripped him in equal measure, how did she, when did she, and he stumbled over his words, saying, “what? What?”
She turned to him, her face still in shadow.
“Why don’t you let me do it for you. I want to do it for you. I’ll do anything you want me to.”
My God, my God, he didn’t think he’d ever been this aroused in his entire life, and the only way to control it was with the anger, so he got up, away from her, walked out on to the beach, leaving her in the camp, until he could control himself, until he could pull himself together.
It took him a long ten minutes before he felt that he could face her again.
She was as he had left her, sitting up, her body twisted slightly. She looked up at him as he approached, and the moon picked out the features he knew so well, and the lips, her lips, they were dark, and swollen, and they called to him, and it would be so easy just to bend to them, just to bend down and –
“Let’s get some things straight, shall we. One: I’m married. I love my wife. That may not mean a lot to you, but it does to me. Two: you are an eighteen year old girl. That’s not illegal, but it’s not exactly the done thing. Three: when we get off this island, a lot of eyebrows are going to be raised about a man and a woman on an island alone together. I’d rather not have to lie to anyone. And that’s not just Jessica, that includes your aunt, as well as God knows how many papers and TV people that will be interviewing us. So that means that nothing like this can happen. Ever. Do you understand? Nothing. I don’t...I don’t think of you in that way anyway. Maybe I gave you the wrong impression at some point, I don’t know. You are a lovely girl, and some day you’re going to make some guy very happy. But nothing is ever going to happen between us. Understand?”
Her head bent forward like a wilting flower and she sniffed once, sobbed quietly, and Nick lost some of his resolve but he thought no no I’ve got to be hard, if I don’t come down on her now this is just going to go on and on.
He cleared his throat.
“As for my...going in to the jungle...I’m a man. I’m only human. And I’d appreciate it, in future, if you didn’t follow me.”
He waited while that sunk in. He looked up at the stars and thought am I really this virtuous? Who the hell am I protecting, her? She wants it. Jessica? She could be remarried by now for all I know. But all he really knew was that this was the right thing to do, the proper thing. The only thing.
“I think, for tonight, I’ll sleep a little further down the beach. Probably be better for both of us.”
And without waiting for a reply he set off, the sand warm on the soles of his feet, the slight breeze off the sea warm on his skin.
At each step he felt lonelier, and wondered if she did too, and wondered how a man who had tried to do the right thing all his life could end up feeling so fucking miserable.
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 8
In December they saw the boat.
Nick had been off the beach, collecting firewood so they’d have something to cook with and, as he had been coming back, his arms laden with branches, each branch intent on escaping his grasp, his eyes had automatically flicked to the sea, as they had done perhaps a million times since he had been on the island. It took a moment for him to register the small white speck of a boat on the horizon.
When he did, he dropped the firewood on his feet but didn’t feel it. He studied it, and then looked at Rebekah, sitting at the base of one of the trees about ten feet away.
He was about to exclaim on the boat when something happened; their eyes met, and there was some sort of challenge in hers, and then they moved away sullenly; she already knew it was there.
Nick, unable to process all this at the time, instead dropped to his hands and knees and began making the fire. After a couple of false starts, it was true what they said, more speed less haste, he got the fire going. He looked up and the boat was still there, same size, same position. He began piling leaves on it, watching the column of smoke begin, light at first and then growing thicker, darkening, spiralling upward. There was still another couple of hours of daylight in the sky, they were bound to see it, and so what if it got dark, they’d see the fire.
He heard somebody talking close by and didn’t recognise the voice until he realised it was his own, “a boat, a boat, a fucking boat...”
He paced the beach, his eye constantly on the boat. He couldn’t make out any details on it, it was too far away, just a white speck, but there could be n
o denying it was a boat. He continued to pace until the sky began to darken, and he continued to feed the fire, his eyes hungrily on the vessel. As night finally descended, he tore a branch from one of the trees along the beach, held it over the fire until it caught, and then went running up and down the beach with it, hoping that the movement would catch their attention, instead of just a static light that could be anything and might be ignored.
At one point, Nick asked Rebekah to go and find more wood, they were running low, and when she did not reply or move even he turned and found only that sullen look still on her face.
“Rebekah, for fuck’s sake, there’s a boat out there. We need wood to keep the fire going.”
Still she did not move, until with a noise of disgust Nick went himself, returning with an armful of branches that he had broken from trees up and down the beach’s edge.
Early in the evening, he had been able to discern a light on the horizon which he had assumed must be from the boat, but later it had disappeared, but it was okay, he told himself calmly, it didn’t necessarily mean the boat had gone, just that some of the lights on its deck had been turned out, so he continued to keep the fire going, long into the night, while wild hopes tumbled through his mind, he imagined the boat moving towards them, the captain having seen the fire and ordering the crew to turn the boat around to investigate, he imagined seeing a deck light from the ship come on just at the edge of the bay, and then voices hello? anybody there? and Nick hollering back help, we’ve been marooned on this island for almost two years, we’d almost given up hope, thank God, thank God.
In the early hours of the morning, while it was still dark, that hope began to seem like a vain one. Suddenly consumed by a tremulous anger, he paced up and down the beach, trying to walk off the excess energy, his eyes probing the dark horizon for the light, until he could contain his anger no longer.
He strode to where Rebekah sat and stood facing her.
Controlling his voice lest it get away from him, he said, “why didn’t you start the fire?”
She did not respond. Half of her face was orange from the glow of the flames, the other half in shadow.
“You saw it, didn’t you,” he said, stepping closer. The rage was on him, so that every muscle in his body felt strained to breaking point. “You saw it and you did nothing. Why? Why didn’t you start the fire?” Nothing. “Or come get me?”
Still nothing from her. My God, she was infuriating.
“Fucking answer me,” he shouted, bending down and grabbing her by her arms, lifting her off the floor to stand in front of him.
She struggled.
“Get off me,” she moaned.
“Answer me,” he roared. “Why didn’t you start the fire?”
“You’re hurting me,” she wailed.
“Good. And I’ll keep on hurting you until you tell me why you didn’t start the fucking fire.” He shook her. “Rebekah.”
“I don’t know,” she said, and now she was crying.
“You don’t know,” Nick said, in shock and wonder, and then the anger on him again, shaking her, “you don’t know? Are you trying to kill us? Do you want us both to die on this island? Huh? Do you want us both to die here?”
“Yes!” She screamed, and her face was a mask of hate and anger, her anger so protracted it shocked Nick. She began fighting back against him, her nails raking his arms and chest. “I don’t care! I don’t care about your fucking boat! Get off me!”
Before he knew what he was doing, Nick had slapped her. She popped out of his grip and collapsed to the sand, sobbing. Nick stared at them both as if from outside himself, marvelling at the absurdity of the situation. What the hell was going on? Or more importantly, how had two reasonably normal people managed to get so fucked up in so short a space of time?
He knelt down in front of her.
“Why?” He demanded softly. “You can’t really want to stay on this island forever. There’s a whole world out there you haven’t seen, so many incredible things...why do you want to deny yourself that?” Nothing. “Rebekah.” Silence. “Talk to me.”
Rebekah looked at him, her cheeks sparkling with tears, a red welt visible on the left one. She shook her head. Nick didn’t understand her. He wondered if anyone would. It had all started the night she had let him know she wanted to be kissed. Ever since then she had been distant, uncommunicative. He had hoped it would pass but it had been four months now, and after all that time this had happened, their one chance to escape and because of this...this attitude, she had more than likely prevented them from being rescued. No, he didn’t understand her. And in that moment he wasn’t even sure he even wanted to.
He stood, looking down on her bowed head, and for the first time since he had arrived on the island wished he had been cast upon the shore alone. He didn’t like her anymore, if he ever had.
In fact, he thought he might actively hate her.
◆◆◆
He kept the fire going for two days, even though in the morning light he could clearly see that the boat had gone.
Rebekah avoided his angry eyes on her, slinking from place to place like a dog that has ruined a prized rug, and can’t atone for it.
That suited Nick fine.
◆◆◆
An idea began to dawn within him, and it was so awful that at first he resisted it.
Until he could deny the possibility no longer.
The idea was: Jessica had been involved with Mike and Arthur in the plot to kill him.
There were arguments for and against such a proposition. Jessica’s over the top enthusiasm for the trip, for one. The way she had seemed unafraid on the boat when they had been boarded, as if she had already known it was going to happen. These were hardly grounds to convict her, but they sewed the seeds of doubt in him.
The arguments against her having any involvement were equally as insubstantial. He was almost sure he would have known had something been going on between her and Mike. Her enthusiasm for the trip could be nothing more than what it appeared to be. Her calmness on deck might even have been only a blank mask of shock.
But most of all, he simply did not believe she had the will to carry something like this through.
But still the idea was there, and it worried him. Little inconsistencies in her behaviour in the six months before they had come to the Seychelles came to his mind’s eye, and he wasn’t sure if the memories were correct or whether he was inventing ominous silences, secretive expressions, and speculative looks.
Was she involved? And assuming he actually got off this island, would he be able to prove anything, either way?
He did not know. But it kept him up nights thinking about it.
◆◆◆
It was February. The air was thick with heat and humidity, and even the nights were no escape, the temperature only dropping a couple of degrees, if that.
Nick awoke out of a fitful sleep to the sounds of footsteps, and in alarm turned and sat up, but it was only Rebekah, staring down at him from what seemed a great height in his position on the ground. The silhouette was woman, and Nick found himself wishing that Rebekah had stayed a tomboy forever. This hourglass shape in front of him was something he didn’t recognise, a mystery, somebody had replaced his Rebekah with an unfathomable copy; he did not know her, and at times he ached to, and at other times he was afraid of her…or was that afraid of himself? Afraid of what he might do when the need was on him, how many times had he gone in to the jungle recently, masturbating fitfully to try and put an end to it, as if he was a sponge he could wring moisture from, but of course he wasn’t, and he couldn’t, his desire was of infinite length apparently, and if anything the masturbating seemed to enforce his need for her rather than detract from it, his aloneness a reminder that this wasn’t meant to be a solitary act, and all he thought about was taking her, he tried to fit his mind around the ways he could do it, could do it without comprising who he was, but there was no way; in every variable, in every different circumstance h
e could imagine it was always the wrong choice, so he avoided her by day and masturbated by night, and it went on and on and on, seemingly with no end in sight, a purgatory of his own making, an elected hell.
“What is it?” Nick asked her, alarmed. “Is it a boat?”
She sat down beside him, but a comfortable distance beyond his personal space.
“Nick, I...I want to tell you...I’m going away.”
Nick, his mind fuzzy from sleep, tried to understand what she was saying. He sat up straighter.
“What?”
Rebekah sighed.
“I’m going to live on another part of the island. I think I can take care of myself now. I know how to fish, and how to make a fire. And, you know...with two fires we might get rescued sooner.”
“What – why?”
“Oh, Nick.” Her voice was thick with misery.
“This doesn’t make sense, Rebekah.”
She sighed, a long, heavy sigh, of tiredness, but also of resignation.
“I love you, Nick. I have for a long time. Look at you. Your face...I know it by heart. I would give everything I have just to make you happy. And to know that you won’t ever return my love...do you know how that makes me feel?”
Nick shifted uncomfortably.
“Rebekah – "
“I’m nothing without you, Nick. Without you I can’t live. But I can’t live with you either. It’s...it’s unbearable.”
“I’m married, Rebekah – "
“For God’s sake, stop saying that,” she said irritably. “You sound like a broken record. You don’t even know if she’s alive. You don’t even know if – "
“She’s alive,” Nick said, angry because she had touched on his fears. “I know she is.”