Chapter Nineteen: Past Demons
“If you stay for any length of time you cannot help but keep bumping into the same old familiar faces.”
• • •
Viatape was a ghost town in comparison to the evening of the festival. On the whole, Stuart preferred it that way. The happy crowds and drunken revelry of that carnival night had too many associations for him now. It seemed like that was the day that innocence was lost.
He did not believe Norbert. Jenny’s sudden departure, he could believe that. She had done something similar when she left Tahiti, and there was no reason to believe that she would not do the same thing again here. He was under no illusions that she would hang around on his account. She had already proved herself unreliable - his word - on that score. Even not leaving a message for him, he could believe that. These had been extraordinary days; several times, he had thought himself, how nice it would be to leave behind these fateful islands and cut off all connections with everyone that he had met here. The links were tenuous, after all; just travellers who pass in the night. How often did you swap addresses with people you met on holiday, never having any intention of contacting them again. But there was the money. That was something different. There was no way that she would have forgotten to repay her debt to him. Either Norbert had pocketed the francs for himself, which seemed unlikely since neither him nor Corrie appeared particularly short of money and, in any case, it was hardly a life-changing sum of cash that he was talking about, or there was another reason behind his peculiar story. Whichever way you looked at it, Norbert came out badly. A liar, or worse?
For too long, Stuart had stood by passively, allowing events to dictate his actions. It could be argued that agreeing to join the conspiracy of silence in the first place was the greatest passive act of all. But now was an opportunity for him to act. He would have been the first to admit, that he was no hero, but the simple enquiries that he had in mind were hardly heroic in magnitude. He had the phone number of Jenny’s accommodation, he would start there. If only he could discover what he had done with the scrap of paper she had written it down on. It would turn up, he did not doubt. And if she had left the island, how had she gone? Plane, ship, there would be a record; someone would know. He could also ask around in Viatape if anyone had seen Cedric. He was a fairly conspicuous figure, it should not be too difficult. And if he had not been spotted, perhaps his girlfriend had. What was her name? What had Stefan called her? Valerie? No, more French. Yvette, that was it. She was worth investigating in her own right. Easy tiger, keep your mind on the job in hand.
Three hours of walking in the hot mid-afternoon sun; three hours of repeated questions; three hours of negative responses: three hours was the time it took for Stuart’s perception of his task to change from optimistic activity to futile waste of time. The woman at the Air Tahiti office had been friendly but firm: “I am sorry, Sir. We cannot tell you that information. Yes, there was a flight this morning, but we cannot divulge passenger names.” The port terminal, or boat-ticket shack to be descriptively more accurate, had been chaotic. It was only too apparent that they did not keep a comprehensive record of all the names of passengers travelling. It had been hard enough to ascertain the published information, that two ferries had already departed that day, one to neighbouring Maupiti, and one to the distant Tuamotus archipelago, stopping briefly at Papeete on the way. A third vessel departed that evening, but Stuart was convinced that if Jenny had genuinely intended to leave the island she had already gone. It was the possibility that she was still here which caused him greater anxiety. He had a sudden flashback to his dream of the albino man standing over the two beach-side graves. He hoped his sleeping thoughts would not reveal a third interment. Hell! Why was he so worried about dreaming, his waking thoughts were already way ahead of him.
He had asked at several budget hostels if anyone had seen Jenny; if she had been staying there. He was hampered by not having a photograph that he could hand out, but he thought that his description, even when rendered in his limited French, was accurate enough to pinpoint the individual. Not too many people look like a walking tangerine. Blank looks and shaking heads were the most common response. One pension was closed, its owner apparently taking a lengthy siesta, but by then Stuart was too despondent and too hot to be bothered about returning later, only to receive yet another zero. Enquiries after Cedric and Yvette had proved equally unproductive. If they were still staying on the island, no one had seen them in Viatape.
Stuart’s feet were aching and his mouth felt dry, so it was a happy coincidence that he suddenly found himself standing in a familiar-looking street, outside a familiar-looking bar. He pulled out a straight-backed, wooden-framed chair with a sticky, plastic seat cover of a particularly lurid floral pattern, and took his place at the shaded table. The last time he had sat here, his friends had been all around him. There had been laughter. There had been excitement and anticipation. Stefan had sat there. Ian had sat there. Jenny had sat there. Now there were only empty seats.
The bar owner had been almost telepathically efficient at ensuring that a cold beer was placed within Stuart’s immediate easy reach, and had once again disappeared into the recesses of his establishment. The larger-than-life, crash-bang sounds of a violent martial arts movie could just be heard from behind a colourful screen of beads at the back of the bar, maintaining a limited degree of privacy for its viewer. Stuart closed his eyes and rested his head back on the hard frame of the chair. He tilted the seat backwards so that the front legs hung in mid-air, and rocked gently back and forth. At the limit of his oscillating motion, he felt a flush of warmth on his face and a blaze of light on his closed eyelids, as he emerged from the shade provided by the building and sunlight fell directly onto his face. He reached, instinctively, for the beer on the table, and was glad to feel the cool touch of glass and the wetness running off the bottle, like perspiration.
Or tears.
Even if compassion was not a strong enough emotion to force him to open his eyes, curiosity was. The sound of weeping was not something that he could ignore. It was a surprise, though, to discover that the source of the snivelling that he had heard, was emanating from a familiar figure.
“Courtney?” He sounded unsure, because he had never associated the tough-skinned American with a frailty which would have been able to reduce her to tears, but there was no doubting the identity of the person passing slowly by his table, dabbing her eyes with a white square of material.
Courtney momentarily halted and rubbed her eyes, staring at Stuart although barely registering him. She made no move to draw up a chair and join him at the table, nor did she offer any explanation for her distress.
Stuart persisted, “What’s wrong?”
The young woman waved a dismissive hand in Stuart’s direction, obviously unwilling to stop, trying to indicate that everything was fine, but Stuart grasped her arm and forced her to acknowledge him. “You look like something has upset you. Is there anything I can do?” Male response: action rather than empathy.
Courtney was an inch or so taller than Stuart and substantially more muscular; she shook off his grasp in the same way that she would have brushed away an annoying mosquito. Recognising his physical disadvantage, Stuart fell back on the power of the persuasion of speech. “Come on. It’s me, Stuart. What’s up?” In for a penny, in for a pound, “Is it the albino?”
The word had the magical effect of staying Courtney’s tears. Instead, their watery tracks were replaced by a puzzled frown and a look of bewilderment. “I’m sorry?”
It was the closest to an apology that Stuart had ever heard from the abrasive woman, and not recognising her expression of surprise, carried on with his train of interrogation. “Did he do something to you? You know...” Stuart nodded, knowingly, trying to draw Courtney into his collusion, making her complice in his imaginary scenario. “The albino man, did he hurt you?”
“Who?�
� Courtney’s surprise was genuine.
Now it was Stuart who sounded puzzled, “The man you were with in Tahiti. At the caves. I saw him here,” and then correcting himself when he realised his mistake, “Or at least I think I did. At the carnival. You were here then, weren’t you? Stefan said he saw you.”
“Stefan?” Courtney was clearly distressed. The names were too much for her. “The German guy? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Now that he could see her closer, besides the trails of washed-out blue mascara, which streaked her cheeks like a water-colour sky, there was the fast-developing, greeny-purple hue of a bruise on her temple, barely visible except when she ran her fingers back through her lank hair, revealing her forehead to view. “Did he do that?”
She brought her hand up to the mark, touching it instinctively, before denying, “No. It’s nothing.” She turned the questioning back upon himself, saying aggressively, “What do you want?”
“Just to help,” said Stuart. “You can tell me.”
“Leave me alone.” Courtney started to move away.
“The albino man,” Stuart persisted, “Who is he?”
“I don’t know who you mean. I’ve never seen this man.”
“But...”
Courtney began to cry again and broke into a run, distancing herself from her inquisitor; her memories. “I don’t know who you mean,” she shouted.
Whatever the albino man’s state of being - physical entity or evil spirit? - Stuart felt fairly sure that Courtney had been visited by both.
Big Fish Page 20