After the Storm (23 page)

‘Hey hun. I didn’t think you’d be here already. I thought you’d be on the boat,’ she said.

‘I’ll start work on it tomorrow.’

‘And did you get round to calling that Dutch guy?’

‘There’s no need. Like I said before we’ve got enough to live on for a few months.’

‘How do you reckon that? We must have spent most of Rob and Anna’s money?’

‘The sale of the liquor…’

‘It can’t be that much. Not to live on for a few months.’

‘It’s enough Kimbo. Stop worrying.’

There was something he wasn’t telling her.

‘Did you get something from Money Joe?’

He said nothing but she knew the expression on his face so well, the tell-tale tightening of his lips.

‘Did you carry a package to Money Joe? From Raul? Like you did before?’

‘Will you stop trying to control my life.’

He got up and went into the bedroom and shut the door behind him with an emphatic click. He flung himself down on the bed.

Kim followed him in there ten minutes later, wanting to make it up.

‘What’s up Owen?’

Her voice was gentle.

‘I’ve been feeling achey all afternoon.’

‘You gonna be OK for tonight?’

‘I don’t know. My arms and legs ache pretty bad.’

‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

She went into the small kitchen and boiled water and she was fuming. She was sure he was going to say he felt too ill to go to the party. She remembered his reaction when she’d told him about it. He’d been against the idea all along. She wanted very much to see the inside of the Carters’ mansion and she wanted to wear her new dress. She took a mug of strong black coffee through to him.

‘I’m gonna start getting ready,’ she said.

She went into the shower and stripped off. As she washed she was thinking I’m damned if I’ll miss the party. I’ll go anyway, even if he says he won’t. I have needs too. She took her time in the bathroom and then she stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom with her hair in a towel and started to apply her make-up. She painted black eyeliner along her upper lids and applied mascara carefully. Owen was lying on the bed watching her.

‘I’m not up to it tonight Kimbo,’ he said now.

‘I knew you’d say that,’ she snapped.

He did look pretty rough, but he was always trying to get out of parties and his illness seemed all too convenient to her.

‘I didn’t get ill on purpose.’

‘If it was something you wanted to do you’d find the energy to do it.’

‘No-one’s stopping you going,’ he said.

‘Too right!’

‘No need to shout.’

‘It’s like we’re always living your life Owen, the life you want. But I want to do one thing, have one night off, and hey you’re not up to it.’

‘That’s bullshit and you know it. I feel ill.’

She brushed her hair vigorously and tied it up pulling out some tendrils around her face. She stepped into her new dress, put her dangly earrings on and strapped on her high gold sandals. She put money and lipstick and the keys into her purse and left the cabin closing the door behind her without another word to him. He made her wild! She would get a taxi the six miles to Port Royal. She teetered down the hill to the town in her high heels and wished she’d brought another pair with her for the walking. But she wasn’t going to go back to the cabin, not now, no way.

In the taxi she cleaned the heels of her sandals with a tissue. It would have been more comfortable to arrive at the party in their boat. Now she’d have to get a taxi back later. In her head she was still carrying on an angry exchange with Owen telling him she was thirty-one and she still wanted a bit of fun in her life and was that so wrong? It felt like she’d been battling with him for a while, since they’d left Belize City the last time. It was as if her wishes didn’t count for anything any more. He’d got stoned with Rob yesterday and still hadn’t started work on the boat. What was he thinking? That they would just go on as they had before? He was acting as if they had enough money to live on for a while. She knew he’d been to see Money Joe at least once in the last week. The thought that he’d done some deal behind her back made her even more furious.

The taxi drove down a private road and pulled up in front of the ornate iron gates of the Carter residence. The villa was surrounded by a high wall and a man standing by the gates indicated that Kim should follow the track of the lights. She walked up the illuminated path and this led to the atrium of the Carters’ palatial villa. She entered a large high-ceilinged room where all the guests had assembled. Everyone had dressed up for the occasion with a lot of the men in tuxedoes and the women in cocktail dresses. There were long pink candles glittering in every corner of the room. The flickering light of the candles was reflected back by the many mirrors hanging on the walls. Posies of pink and white roses stood in crystal vases on occasional tables and in one corner a five-man band in white jackets and black bow ties were playing rhythm and blues. Those would be Vivienne’s friends she thought. There was a long linen draped table with ranks of polished glasses and ice buckets filled with foil topped champagne bottles. Waitresses dressed in black skirts and white shirts were circulating with silver trays of drinks and canapés. Excited voices and laughter competed with the music from the band.

She sighed with pleasure as she moved into the room. This was wonderful. What a delightful change it made to be dressed up, made up, light-hearted. With Owen it sometimes felt like she had been on suicide watch for years. She looked around the highly lit and perfumed room and recognised a few faces. There was Gary and his gang over there. A waitress held out a tray to her and she took a glass of champagne. It was Gail from the hog roast, the Australian woman Gary fancied.

‘Hey Gail…’

‘Hey Kim… You look great. Your hair suits you up like that.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Where’s your fella?’

‘Owen. He was gonna come tonight but he’s got a fever.’

‘Well it’s gonna be some party,’ Gail said as she moved away with her tray of glasses.

Kim joined Gary and his crowd and he whistled.

‘Pretty lady. Now did your old man call Sander?’ he said.

‘The Dutch guy?’

‘Yep.’

‘He didn’t call him yet and tonight he’s got a fever and he’s resting up.’

‘Tell him it’s worth making that call. I reckon he could get a good price. I talked your boat up to Sander.’

‘Thanks Gary, you’re a buddy. You know Owen. He works to his own timetable.’

She took another glass of champagne from a passing waitress. As she chatted to Gary she noticed Gideon Carter dressed in a white tuxedo was looking at her with unmasked appreciation. He was standing on the bottom step of the staircase and as their eyes met he smiled at her and raised his glass a bit. She raised her glass back at him and turned back to Gary feeling pleased. She knew she looked good.

Rob was sitting in the saloon of the dive boat as Doug cooked them their supper. It was going to be chilli con carne with rice. They had completed two dives and what a revelation the reef had been. It was as amazing as Owen had described it the first night they met in Belize. He had swum in the midst of a shoal of brilliantly coloured fish and on the second dive he had seen the huge sea sponges Owen had mentioned. A line from a poem he’d learned at school came back to him as he trod water and looked at the giant gently moving sponge in front of his mask: ‘above him swell, Huge sponges of millennial growth and height’. It was a miraculous landscape beneath the surface of the sea, alike and yet different from the land forms above. There were valleys and walls of reef with jewel-coloured life forms darting everywhere. He had been thrilled to his core by it.

Now they were moored on a buoy and the sea was getting rougher. The wind was up and the boat was rolling and pitching. This time he had taken two Dramamine tablets and so far he was feeling OK, better than OK, he was feeling good, physically tired and ravenous after their two long dives.

‘You know Roatán is not the paradise it might look to visitors,’ Doug said as he handed Rob a beer.

‘Thanks. It is paradise under the water,’ Rob said.

‘Yeah it is. We’ll drink to that.’

They clinked their bottles together and drank. Rob wondered how Anna was doing alone in the cabin as Doug handed him a plate piled high with rice and meaty bean sauce.

Anna took a cool shower and changed into her white cotton trousers and a pale green T-shirt. She tied her hair back in a ponytail. It had been a sticky day, unpleasantly warm with too many insects buzzing around and trying to bite her when she’d sat outside after lunch. So she’d spent the afternoon inside, writing up her notebook and reading. She knew Kimberly and Owen were going to that big party tonight so she couldn’t join them for dinner, but she felt the need to get out of the cabin. She would go down to Oak Ridge and have dinner out on her own, treat herself to something nice to eat and a glass of wine. She had her book with her and she would find a place where she could sit and eat and read.

She walked down the hill and into Oak Ridge which had the feel and the tension of a working town. She passed the fish and shrimp processing plant. What a stinking place it was. She couldn’t imagine having to work there. She had seen lots of workers, male and female, coming out of the gates. That awful throat-catching smell must linger on your hair and your clothes when you got home. There was nowhere suitable to eat by the fish plant. Indeed she wouldn’t have dared walk into some of the small bars she saw in this area. She continued round the harbour and even here she struggled to find a place where she would feel comfortable as a woman sitting on her own. She peered through the windows and doors and the bars were full of groups of working men. There didn’t seem to be any women about and she wondered if she’d have to go back to the cabin after all.

Then she saw two women standing together down by the harbour wall. One woman, the older one, was dressed in a tight black top and a short skirt that rode up her legs. Her face was lined and her mouth had the slightly caved in look of a drug user who has lost some of her teeth. She was standing next to a younger woman with brightly hennaed hair who was wearing a micro-skirt, cropped top and high heeled sandals. They were both smoking and looking around in a desultory way. They had to be prostitutes. She hurried past them feeling a mixture of awkwardness and empathy. When she was a sixth-form student she had worked in a fruit-processing factory in Norfolk one summer holiday. She had stayed over at her grandparents’ place for the whole six weeks. She had got to know the factory women well. They were a friendly and ribald group, always telling dirty jokes and laughing off their troubles although their lives were hard and money was short. One of their team had stopped coming to work and the other women speculated that she had gone ‘on the game’. One woman said it was a mug’s game and she would come to regret it. Another woman said ‘you can’t blame her. She’ll get paid now for lying on her back, easier than what we do here.’ Anna was a freshly minted feminist and had said if men weren’t willing to pay for sex then there would be no prostitution. The first woman said ‘the men pay with cash but the women pay in another way, a worse way, and no good will come of it.’ The conversation had made a deep impression on her. Was it just her, or did other women also think about what it must feel like to work as a prostitute? What was it like to take all those different male organs into your body? Could you somehow detach yourself from your bodily sensations?

Five minutes later, she found a café where there was a woman serving behind the bar and she went in. She sat at a table in the corner, scanned the menu and ordered the dish of the day, a fish stew, and took out her book. But she didn’t read. It had been a strangely disconcerting day from the moment she got up. She hadn’t expected to miss being on the boat but she realised now that she did miss it.

Owen felt much worse. He was burning up and sweating and he needed water but he felt pinioned to the bed. Tonight in her anger and her haste Kim had left her money belt behind by the side of the bed. He reached for it, unzipped it and took out the small case. He opened this and held her sharp little knife and pressed the point against his forefinger until a tiny drop of blood appeared. He put the knife down on the floor by his pillow where he could reach it easily.

When Anna left the café it was dark and the weather had got worse. The wind was rising and the branches of the stunted mangroves were rocking back and forth. She hurried up the hill. She was not looking forward to the moment when she would have to unlock the door to her cabin. She would put on the lights and check all the rooms before she could relax. She wished she was a braver person, despising her feebleness at times like this. Then she saw that there were lights on in Owen’s and Kim’s cabin. That was odd. She thought they’d be at the party by now. She tapped on the door. No answer. She tapped again, waited a minute, twisted the handle and walked in. Owen was lying in the bedroom and he looked strange and sick.

‘You’re ill?’

‘Can you get me some water,’ he said.

His voice was hoarse. She got him a glass of water which he drank down at once, and then gulped down a second glass. She felt his forehead which was burning hot and his cheeks were unnaturally flushed.

‘You need to cool down,’ she said.

She went into the bathroom and found a small towel which she soaked in cold water and she used this to wipe his face and his arms.

‘How long have you been like this?’

He moved his head on the pillow.

‘A few hours…’

‘Did you take anything to bring your temperature down?’

‘I took some Tylenol,’ he said.

‘I’ll stay with you till Kimberly gets back from the party.’

He lay on the bed and she kept wiping his face and his neck with the damp towel. He looked vulnerable lying in the bed staring up at her. There had always been something about Owen’s face that went straight to her heart. It was the look in his eyes which was the look of a hurt, suffering child in his long, rangy man’s body. She started to tell him about her work and what had drawn her to it. She had been deeply moved as a teenager when she read about how they had treated soldiers in the First World War who had lost the power of speech.