The child—a boy of about five, she decided—played at the surf’s edge, shrieking with delight as he ran from each breaking, racing wave. From higher up the sand, his parents watched him. The woman had her arm linked through the man’s. And as India stood at her window, watching, she saw the woman rest her head on her man’s shoulder in a simple gesture of love and contentment that caught at something inside of India. Something that hurt, and left her feeling restless and sad.
Turning away from the window, she jerked the curtains closed against the night. Her gaze fell on her notebook, but she felt oddly disinclined to write more, and decided to retire instead.
By the time she parted the bed’s mosquito netting and put out the oil lamp, the night had quieted. Yet she could still hear the child’s laughter echoing through her memory, still see in her mind’s eye the way the man’s arm had slipped, warm and tender, about his wife’s waist to hold her close.
Fluffing and refluffing her pillows, India shifted, wakeful, restless, in her lonely bed. She reminded herself that she remained unmarried by choice. That she was living the life of freedom and adventure about which she had always dreamed. It was true, all true. Yet as she lay alone in the darkness, her hand crept up to touch her breast, then slipped down to ride, thoughtfully, on her empty womb.
It was a long time before she slept.
She was up early the next morning, dressed in what she called her Expedition Outfit, which she had had especially made to her own design by a tailor in Cairo. She checked for what was probably the third time to make certain that her notebook and pencils were in her waterproof knapsack, also specifically made to her design. Then she slung the knapsack along with a canteen over her shoulder, and sallied forth to await Mr. Ryder’s arrival on the bungalow’s porch.
Dawn was just breaking in the east when she let herself out the hotel’s front door. A rich panoply of pink and gold and orange light spilled in exotic splendor across the smooth silver water of the bay, and she paused, one hand curling around the edge of the half-closed door as the beauty of the moment stole her breath. Around her, the small, orderly German town still slept; the only sounds to come to her were the gentle sloshing of the incoming tide and the chorus of tropical birdsongs that filled the warm, steamy air. She felt both exhilarated and oddly humbled by the magic of the moment. And she thought, This is why I travel, why I have chosen the life I lead.
Smiling to herself, India went to stand expectantly at the top of the steps, her eyes straining to catch sight of Mr. Ryder’s Sea Hawk in the rapidly lightening bay below.
An hour later, the sun was well up in the sky and the village around her stirring. Mr. Ryder had yet to arrive. India was sitting in one of the porch’s tattered wicker chairs, her gaze on the wind-rippled expanse of the bay, the toe of one boot tapping an annoyed tattoo on the plank flooring, when Mr. O’Keefe came whistling up the hibiscus- and fern-shaded path that ran around the side of the hotel.
“Blimey,” said the Irishman, his head falling back as he stumbled to a halt at the base of the steps and stared up at the sight of India in her Expedition Outfit. The long-sleeved, belted blouse was nothing out of the ordinary, constructed as it was of a dark blue cloth woven loosely enough to allow good air circulation, yet sturdy enough to protect her from the fierceness of the tropical sun, as well as from snakes, insects, and savage vegetation.
But it was the rest of India’s outfit that generally excited the most comment. The skirt was cut full enough to be modest, but not so full as to hamper the movements of a woman who made her living tramping through jungles and scrambling up cliffs. An unfortunate incident that had occurred while climbing to the High Place in Petra and had nearly cost India her life had convinced her of the wisdom of having the skirt discreetly split. And because nothing wears quite as well as a good Scottish plaid, India had had her Expedition Outfit cut from the McKnight tartan.
“Well, you’ll be a hard one to lose in the jungle wearing that getup, that’s fer sure,” said Mr. O’Keefe, rubbing the tip of his nose with a splayed hand that did not quite manage to obscure his broad grin.
“That seems unlikely to become a problem,” said India, who had long ago become inured to such reactions to her Expedition Outfit, “seeing as how Mr. Ryder has failed to put in an appearance as promised.”
“Sure then, but it’s liable to be noon or more before anyone’ll be seeing Jack, given what I hear about last night’s game, and him liking to have a good bottle of brandy at his elbow when he’s got the cards in his hands.”
India rose slowly to her feet. “Are you telling me that Mr. Ryder spent last night gambling? And drinking?”
Mr. O’Keefe’s one remaining eye blinked. “Aye.”
India stared off across the sun-sparkled, vivid blue waters of the bay. She’d always been frustratingly myopic, but if she squinted, she thought she could make out the shape of the Sea Hawk, still riding at anchor near Mr. Ryder’s dilapidated dock. A rush of cold fury surged through her, surprising her with the shaking, blinding intensity of its passion.
“Tell me, Mr. O’Keefe,” she said, stooping with swift decision to assemble knapsack, canteen, and pith helmet. “Where might I find someone willing to drive me to the far side of the bay?”
“You want I wait?” asked the woolly-headed Melanesian boy who had driven India around the bay in his rickety pony cart.
Standing in the sun-baked, grassy verge beside the cart, India looked down at the palm-shaded pandanus roofs of the scattering of small huts that had been built into the side of the hill between the road and the beach below. A start-up copra plantation, Captain Simon Granger had called this establishment. Well, India had seen several such places in her tour of the South Seas, but none as ramshackle as this one. Instead of the neat, iron-roofed, colonial-style bungalow one might expect, Mr. Ryder’s home appeared indistinguishable from a common native hut. Nor could she see any significant signs of cultivation. There were a few racks of drying copra, their pungent sweetness filling the hot, steamy air. But as far as she could tell, Jack Ryder must simply lie around waiting for the coconuts to fall out the surrounding trees and into his lap.
“Miss?” said the boy in the cart.
India looked up into the boy’s dark, flat-nosed face. “No, you needn’t wait.” She handed him the agreed fare, and a generous tip besides. “Thank you,” she said, and adjusting the angle of her pith helmet, she set off down the narrow, muddy track to the primitive buildings below.
The leafy canopy of the jungle overhead came alive with a twittering, screeching, rustling protest as India pushed through a thicket of dripping ferns still wet from the previous evening’s rain. The Australians had an expression for it: going troppo, they called it, when a white man abandoned the trappings of Western civilization and assumed the clothing and lifestyle of the natives. Well, thought India, it was difficult to imagine anyone going more troppo than Mr. Ryder.
Shaded by a stand of coconut and breadfruit trees, his house stood in a clearing on a spit of land overlooking both the bay and the thundering ocean beyond it. As she drew nearer, India realized the structure was slightly larger than most native huts, more like two huts put together. The walls were of woven bamboo, the roof of pandanus fastened with coconut fiber thongs to supporting purau-bough rafters. In place of window glass, bamboo blinds swung from the eaves, while on the porch, a young, dark-skinned, bare-breasted woman was squatting on a mat and grating a coconut. She looked up as India approached.
“Is Mr. Ryder at home?” India asked, hesitating at the base of the steps.
The woman was lighter-skinned than most of the Melanesians of the island, perhaps part Polynesian, or even part European. A bare-bottomed boy of two or three gazed up at India from his mother’s side, his eyes big and blue in a pale, even-featured face. A terrible suspicion forming in her mind, India stared at the child, then back at the nubile, half-naked woman.
India was no innocent. She had heard of such things: white men keeping dark women
as their mistresses. But that didn’t mean she found the thought of having to deal with such a man any less disquieting.
“Ryder inside,” said the woman, her attention once more concentrated on the deft movement of her fingers. “You go in.”
India mounted the steps, then paused again before the open, darkened doorway. The woman had told her to enter, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do so unannounced. Raising one fist, she rapped her knuckles sharply against the frame. “Mr. Ryder?” she called, then stood listening as her voice faded away into a silence broken by the gentle swish of palm fronds and the boom of the distant surf.
“Mr. Ryder,” she called again, louder. Somewhere, a cockatoo screeched, but the stillness of the house’s interior remained undisturbed. With a last glance at the bare-breasted woman on the porch, India stepped inside.
Although primitive, the house’s interior was surprisingly pleasant, with tall, open rafters and a deliciously airy atmosphere a more proper plank-and-iron colonial structure could never have achieved. The pale, diffused light filtering in through the bamboo blinds showed her a scattering of island-made furniture: sturdy mahogany and teak tables and settees, and numerous tall bamboo bookcases filled, to India’s amazement, with shelf after shelf of well-worn books. Overcome with curiosity, she was halfway across the floor toward them, intending to study their titles, when a faint stirring followed by a strangled snore froze her in her tracks.
Turning her head to search the shadowy recesses of the room, India found herself staring at a huge, elaborately carved Malaysian bedstead draped in filmy white falls of mosquito netting. From the crumpled depths of the bedding, a dark masculine arm emerged to flop over the mattress’s edge and dangle there limply.
“Mr. Ryder,” said India.
The arm didn’t move.
Remembering the man’s state of undress the previous day, India approached the bedstead with some caution. A tousled dark head came into view, then a naked back, well strapped with muscle and darkened by the sun. Letting her gaze travel slowly down that taut, curving spine, India found herself both relieved and oddly disappointed to discover a twisted sheet obscuring any further details of the man’s anatomy.
“Mr. Ryder,” she said again, louder, but received in response only another half snore that filled the air with incriminating fumes of brandy.
She thought about shaking the bedpost, but it seemed too intimate a thing, to actually touch his bed. Instead, she grasped the edge of a nearby chest for balance and, lifting one foot, used the toe of her sensible lace-up boot to jostle the mattress.
Nothing.
A soft, melodic laugh from the doorway behind her brought India around.
“You could dump him out of bed and it probably still wouldn’t wake him,” said the slim Polynesian boy who stood just inside the hut’s entrance.
India threw a disdainful glance back at the man in the bed. “I hired him to take me to Takaku. He was to have picked me up at the Limerick in Neu Brenenberg at dawn.”
“I know. I’ve had the Sea Hawk ready to go.” He came forward as he spoke, and India saw that, like the Melanesian baby on the porch, this boy must be of mixed parentage, for his skin was surprisingly fair, his hair more auburn than black. His English was good, too, with only a vague trace of an accent. And unlike Mr. Ryder, the boy was decently clothed in a sturdy shirt and canvas trousers. “I am Patu.”
“How do you do?” she said, extending him her hand, and wondering if this boy, like the one on the porch, counted the dissolute, naked Australian in the bed as his father. “It doesn’t look as if we shall be making the trip to Takaku today.”
“I’m afraid it’s today or not at all,” said Patu. “The Sea Hawk’s scheduled to start its run through the islands tomorrow, to pick up copra from the other stations, and we’re late as it is. The weather’s not likely to hold for much longer.”
India knew a bitter combination of disappointment and rising indignation. To have come so close to reaching her objective, only to have the chance snatched away!
The man in the bed let out another brandy-tinged snore, then lay still.
“Stand back, Mr. Patu,” said India, coming to an instant decision.
The smile on the boy’s face faded. “Why?”
“Because I wouldn’t want to get you wet.” Spinning back around, she seized the water jug from Mr. Ryder’s bedside chest and flung its contents in a well-aimed arc that landed with a sodden splash on the dark, disheveled head of the bed’s occupant.
Chapter Four
HE WAS DROWNING.
Choking and sputtering, Jack pushed himself up onto his forearms, his head bowed, his open mouth sucking in air, his brain confused and befuddled. Water ran into his ear and dripped off his nose. He must have gone outside and passed out. That was it. He’d gone outside to take a leak and passed out, and now it was raining.
Opening his eyes, Jack had a brief, confusing vision of mosquito netting and a carved bedpost. Then the room spun around in a familiar, sickening way. Groaning, he closed his eyes and sank down onto the sheets again. Wet sheets. Why were his sheets wet? He was in his bed, but he was wet. It didn’t make any sense.
“We had an appointment today, Mr. Ryder,” said a faintly familiar and smugly self-satisfied female voice. “Have you forgotten?”
Swiveling his head, Jack opened one eye and found himself staring at Miss India Bloody McKnight. She had a malevolent smile on her face and his water jug in her hands. His empty water jug.
“Sonofafuckingbitch.” It came out hoarse and water-logged, but ferociously clear.
“An appointment to sail at dawn,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, although he knew bloody well she had by the angry color in her cheeks and the unnecessary click with which she set the empty jug down on the chest. “The sun is now well up in the sky. You must bestir yourself.”
She sounded like a bloody Sunday school teacher. She should have been a Sunday school teacher, he decided, rather than tromping determinedly around the world, writing her bloody books and trying to drown men in their beds.
Jack rolled onto his back, his hands coming up to rake the wet hair out of his face and rub his bleary eyes. Bestir himself. He brought his gaze into focus on her prim, self-righteous face. So she wanted him to bestir himself, did she? He’d teach her to come barging into a sleeping man’s house and throw water on him.
His gaze still fixed on her face, Jack swung first one leg over the side of the bed, then the other, and pushed the dripping mosquito netting aside. She must have expected him to bring the sheet up with him, wrapped laplap style about his hips for modesty, because she didn’t turn away. It wasn’t until he thrust the covers aside and stood up in all his naked glory that she went skittering backward, her eyes opening wide, her tented hands flying up to press against her lips.
“All right,” he said, spreading his arms wide. It being first thing in the morning, and Jack being the kind of man he was, he didn’t even need to check to know that a certain portion of his anatomy was already wide awake and ready for action. “I’m up. Satisfied?”
He expected her to scream and run away. She didn’t. Clasping her hands together, she let them fall to the front of her skirt—her split tartan skirt, Jack noticed, opening his eyes wider at the sight of it. He also noticed, for the first time, that Patu was standing behind her. Patu was not smiling.
“Mr. Patu informs me that the Sea Hawk is ready to sail.” She drew in a deep breath that lifted her full breasts, but she managed to keep her voice steady, even business-like. And she didn’t look away. “We will await your arrival at the dock.” Then she turned slowly, her shoulders back, her head held high, her dignity and self-possession unshaken, and walked out the house.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Jack.
“Go ahead, say it.” Jack turned his head to study the tight, serious profile of the boy beside him. They were some three miles out of Neu Brenen, running easily with a freshening wind, and Patu had yet
to say a word to him that didn’t deal with the rigging of the Sea Hawk ’s sails or some other detail involved in setting out to sea.
Patu kept his gaze on the gentle swell of the foamflecked, vivid blue waves that stretched back to the dark and jagged outline of Neu Brenen’s high peaks, still visible in the hazy distance. “I have nothing to say.”
“Like hell you don’t. The way it’s all churning around inside you, you’re liable to spew if you don’t spit it out soon.”
Patu turned his head, his nostrils flaring. “All right, I’ll say it. She’s a lady. A European lady. And you . . . you did that to her.”
“Bloody hell.” Jack threw a quick glance toward the prow of the yacht, where Miss India McKnight sat cross-legged on a chest, her head bowed as she scribbled furiously in a little black cloth notebook. He lowered his voice. “She upended a jug of water on me.”
“And you were supposed to pick her up from the Limerick. At dawn.”
A hot urge to defend the indefensible swelled within him. Jack swallowed it. “Here, take the tiller,” he said, and sauntered toward the prow, swaying easily with the pitch and swell of the deck.
He drew up some two feet from his pith-hat- and tartan-clad passenger. She continued writing, not even bothering to glance up, although his shadow fell across her page and she must have known he was there. Jack cleared his throat. “I was thinking maybe you might like a guide. On Takaku.”
She kept her head bowed over her notebook. “Are you offering your services, Mr. Ryder?”
“Patu. I was offering Patu.”
The pencil paused, then resumed its journey across the page. “Thank you, but I always travel alone, and I prefer to explore the various sites I visit alone, as well.”
“Seems a lonely way of life,” he said, surprising even himself with the words.
She did look up then, but only enough so that, with the pith helmet hiding the upper part of her face, he still couldn’t see her eyes. “For a woman, you mean?”
Beyond Sunrise Page 3