The Beach (21 page)

I walked along the path to the beach as fast as I could, which wasn't that fast because I didn't want to bump into any tree-trunks or stub my foot on a root. At the same time I smoked the joint, practically hit and running it even though I was alone, because I felt like getting wasted and because Keaty had told me to smoke it quick.
Meanwhile I seethed about the papayas, and pretty soon I was very stoned and deeply involved in a fantasy about beating up Bugs. In its earliest form the fantasy started off as just me and him, but soon I decided I needed an audience to bear witness to his humiliation. I added Françoise, then Jed and Keaty, then Étienne and Greg, and eventually the whole camp.
It was a Sunday. It had to be a Sunday, because that was the only time you got the whole camp in one place. Most people were kicking a ball around, a few were swimming, and a few were playing Frisbee. I was standing with Françoise. We were sharing a joke when Bugs appeared from the tree-line with Sal, and three big papayas cradled in his arms. 'Got some more papayas,' he called. 'Enough for everyone.' 'Excuse me,' I said quietly to Françoise. 'Won't be a moment.' He caught my eye as I strode towards him and did a double-take, recognizing the purposeful nature of my step and the grim set of my mouth. First he looked alarmed, then arrogant. He was going to bluff it out, I realized.
'Yes,' he said loudly, holding up the fruit for all to see, and still watching me from the corner of his eye. 'Here are some more papayas that
I found
.'
I stopped a metre away from him. 'Papayas that
you
found, Bugs?'
'That's what I said.'
'Uh-huh. Then how about we take a walk down to the orchard... right now.'
His eyebrows flicked upwards.' ...Now?'
'Now. And I'll show you the joint butt I left, when I found the orchard no less than
two weeks ago
!'
Everyone gasped, including Sal. A crowd had formed a circle around us and Françoise had come running over to stand by my side. 'Is this true?' she demanded angrily.
Bugs scoffed. 'Of course not! He's lying! I found the orchard!'
'So how about that walk?'
'I don't have to prove myself to you!'
'I think you do.'
'Up yours. I found the orchard. End of story.'
I smiled. 'You know what, Bugs...?' The silence was deathly, aside from the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore. 'You're kinda
buggin'
me!'
The crowd laughed and Bugs' face twisted with rage. 'Is that right?' he sneered. 'Well take this!' A papaya hurtled towards my head but I ducked and it flew past me into the crowd.
'Hey!' someone yelled. 'Watch it!'
Bugs swore and made as if he was about to throw another, but quick as a flash I grabbed the Frisbee from Cassie, who was standing beside me, and hurled it with lethal accuracy. The papaya exploded at the impact. The remaining chunks slithered from his hand and fell to the sand, harmless.
'Why you...' he started to say, but I was already on him. I faked with a left and floored him with a right. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Now he was scared. 'I'm thorry,' he yelped, holding a hand up to cup the blood splashing from his busted lips, 'lt'th true! I didn't find the papayath! Richard did!'
Slowly I bent down and picked the Frisbee up again, pausing to wipe away a few shreds of pulped papaya flesh. 'Too late for that, Bugs,' I muttered softly, almost kindly. 'Too late...'
He screamed but didn't move, paralysed with fear like a rabbit in headlights. The Frisbee shot down and connected squarely with the bridge of his nose, shattering the bone. Then he rolled on to his side and scrabbled weakly at the sand, trying to crawl away. I kicked him on the back of the head and gave him four hard punches in the kidney.
He whimpered. 'Pleathe,' he said. 'Don't.'
A bad choice of words. My temper rose. Looking around me I spotted a fishing spear.
'Rewind,' I said, taking the last drag from the joint. 'Can't do that.' I sucked until the tips of my fingers burned, then threw away the roach and rewound back to my first punch.
I faked with a left and floored him with a right. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.
'I'm thorry,' he yelped, 'lt'th true! I didn't find the papayath!'
'Say that again!' I shouted, looming over him with the Frisbee poised.
'I didn't find them! You did! I'm thorry!'
'Louder!'
'You found the papayath!'
I nodded curtly, and turned to Françoise. 'Just wanted to set the record straight.'
She glanced down at Bugs' twitching figure. 'Of course,' she said briefly.
'You want to swim out to the coral garden?'
'Yes, Richard,' she breathed, interlocking her arm with mine. 'I would love to.'
The fantasy might have happily continued from there, but the dead leaves and dirt under my feet had become sand. I'd reached the beach.
It took me ages to find Keaty and the others. Even with the moonlight I couldn't see them, and their laughter seemed to come from everywhere, spread evenly over the water and faintly echoing off the cliffs. But after twenty minutes of stoned wandering along the shore I finally pinned them down to a group of small boulders, a hundred metres out.
As I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me, I decided there wasn't much sense in calling out, so I slipped off my T-shirt and began swimming towards them. Gradually their figures became discernible in the darkness. They were all standing and bending over to look downwards into the water. Then — at roughly the moment I must have become visible to them — their laughter abruptly cut off, and as I got closer I saw that they had all turned to face my direction. 'Hey!' I said, finding their watchful silence a little eerie. 'What's up?' They didn't answer. I continued swimming and repeated the question, irrationally thinking they might not have heard me. When they didn't answer again I stopped, treading water ten feet from the boulder. 'Why aren't you answering me?' I said, puzzled.
'Look down,' Keaty replied after a moment or two.
I paused, then looked. The water was as black as ink, except for where the moonlight caught the ripples. '...What's to see?'
'He is too close,' I heard Étienne say.
'No,' said Keaty. 'Richard, move your hands, just under the surface.'
'OK...' I did as he said. From the boulder I heard Françoise sigh, but I still couldn't see anything past the blackness. 'I don't get it... What's this about?'
'Too close,' Étienne repeated.
Keaty's silhouette scratched its head.' Yeah, you're right... Come up on to the boulder, Richard. Watch me dive. We'll show you...'
At first I could see nothing but the disturbed water and reflected moonlight from where Keaty had vanished. Then, as the water settled, I began to see light below the surface. A milky glow at first that separated into a thousand tiny stars, next becoming a slowly moving meteor trail behind the brightest cluster. The cluster rose and turned back on itself, and turned again to form a glittering figure of eight. Then it sunk downwards, disappearing for several seconds.
'What...?' I said, baffled and astonished and unable to think of anything better to say.
Françoise put her hand on my arm. 'Wait,' she whispered. 'Look now.'
Deep in the blackness the glow returned, but this time it quickly divided into seven or eight clusters, brighter than before. They flickered and darted, dissolving and shedding light, but somehow replenishing themselves and becoming more intense. I took an instinctive step backwards, suddenly aware that the miniature fireballs were travelling up towards me at an increasing speed. The next instant the surface broke into a flurry of bubbles and Keaty appeared, gasping for air.
'What did you think,' he spluttered between lungfuls. 'Did you ever see anything like it?'
'No...' I replied, still stupidly dazed.' ...Never.'
'Phosphorescence. Minute creatures or algae or something. They glow when you make a movement.' He hauled himself on to the boulder. 'Phew! What an effort! We've been practising that all night. Trying to get the best display.'
'...It looked incredible... But... where do the creatures come from?'
'Daffy would say they come from the corals,' said Gregorio. 'It only happens on some nights. Not often. But now it is here, it will stay for the next few days. Maybe three or four.'
I shook my head. 'Amazing... Just amazing...'
'Ah-ha!' Étienne slapped me on the back and pushed Gregorio's diving mask into my hands. 'But there is still the best to see!'
'Underwater?'
'Yes! Put this on and follow me! I will show you something you could never imagine!'
'It'll blow your mind,' Keaty agreed. 'It's indescribable.'

I returned Jed's binoculars to him and lay on my back. My head was still bleary from all the dope I'd smoked the night before, despite the brisk morning trek up the island, and I couldn't seem to focus on the tiny figures. 'Basically,' I said, folding my hands behind my head, 'it was like being in space. Floating with loads of stars and comets around you. One of the most amazing things was disturbing a shoal of fish...'
Jed readjusted the binoculars to suit him. 'I've seen phosphorescence before.'
'But not underwater.'
'No. Underwater sounds good.'
'Yeah. Really good...' I sighed. '...Did I tell you about Bugs and the papayas?'
'Nope.'
'I found a papaya orchard a couple of weeks ago, and now Bugs is making out like he found it. Granted, I couldn't remember the orchard's exact location, but it was me who found it first.' I sat up to see how Jed was reacting. He didn't appear to be reacting at all. 'I suppose it isn't that big a deal. What do you think?'
'Mmm,' Jed replied absently.
'Mmm—it is a big deal, or mmm—it isn't?'
'Oh... probably...'
I gave up. This was, after all, the precise problem with Bugs. Unless you were tuned in to the subtleties of his character, you couldn't appreciate how irritating he was. I lay back down again and looked up at the clouds, feeling frustrated.
Actually, I'd been feeling frustrated for quite some time. It had started when we'd arrived at our look-out post two hours earlier, to find, yet again, that Zeph and Sammy were still on their same patch of beach. I was aware that this should have been cause for relief but instead it had got on my nerves, and as the morning passed I'd thought carefully about this paradox. My first guess was that it was connected to the uncertainty of the situation. I'd become tired of the waiting and I wanted some kind of resolution to occur. Even if it was the worst-case scenario and they set off towards us, at least the situation would become tangible. It would be something it was in our power to affect.
But it didn't take long for me to realize that my first guess was wrong. In the process of working through the worst-case scenario, I inevitably worked through the best-case. I imagined Zeph and Sammy disappearing, going back to Ko Pha-Ngan or Phelong, and my never seeing them again. It was at that point I realized my mistake, because what I registered, whilst entertaining this optimistic thought, was disappointment. The strange truth was that I didn't want them to leave. Neither, as the root of my frustration, did I want them to stay put. And that left only one possibility: The worst-case scenario was the best-case scenario. I wanted them to come.
'Bored,' I murmured, carelessly, and Jed laughed.
'Bored is good, Richard,' he said. 'Bored is safe.'
I paused. I hadn't mentioned my thoughts about Zeph and Sammy yet, assuming that Jed wouldn't take them too well. But I wasn't sure. It was possible that he felt the same way. I knew he took pleasure from evading the dope guards, part of which had to be a danger buzz, and I hadn't forgotten the way Keaty used to talk about him. I decided to obliquely test the water.
'Jed,' I said, yawning to reinforce the casual nature of the question. 'You remember the Gulf War?'
'Course.'
'I was just wondering... You remember the build-up? When we were saying get out of Kuwait or we cream you, and Saddam was saying whatever he was saying.'
'He was saying "no", wasn't he?'
'Right.' I leant on my elbows. 'So I was just wondering, how were you feeling at the time?'
'Feeling?'
'About the build-up to the Gulf War.'
Jed lowered the binoculars and rubbed his beard. 'I was feeling that it was all a load of hypocritical bullshit, if I remember correctly.'
'No, I meant about the possibility of there being a war. Did it bother you much?'
'Uh... not really.'
'You weren't sort of... looking forward to it?'
'Looking forward to it?'
'Yeah... Speaking personally...' I took a deep breath. '...I was kind of hoping Saddam wouldn't back down... You know, just to see what would happen.'
Jed narrowed his eyes. 'Now, Richard,' he said. 'I can't imagine why you've suddenly brought this up.'
I felt my cheeks flush. 'I can't either. It popped into my head for some reason.'
'Uh-huh. Well, I suppose I was looking forward to the Gulf War in a way. It was all dramatic and exciting and, like you said, I wanted to see what would happen. But when I saw the pictures of the Basra road and that civilian shelter that got hit, I felt pretty shit. I felt like I'd missed the point, and only got it too late. Does that answer your question?'
'Oh yes,' I said quickly. 'Absolutely.'
'Good.' Jed chuckled. 'So, Richard, you're bored.'
'Not bored...'
'Listless.'
'Maybe.'
'Whatever. You want some excitement. Fine. Perhaps we should go and nick some grass.'
'We?' I said, stammering slightly because I was both eager and surprised. Since I'd begun working with Jed he'd only gone dope collecting once, and he'd left me behind at our look-out spot. 'You mean both of us?'
'Sure. We've got plenty of time to come back here later, and we can take the chance they won't do anything while we're away. Anyway, I noticed camp supplies are getting low.'
'I think it's a great idea!'
'OK.' He stood up. 'Come on then.'
The pass between the island's two peaks was the one position from which you could clearly make out the location of the dope fields, although the fields themselves were obscured behind trees. The only thing you could see were sudden dips in the canopy where one terrace dropped down to another. From higher up the terraces seemed to merge into a single slope with occasional - natural-looking — breaks in the canopy, an illusion caused by the elevated angle. I guess it stopped them being spotted from the air.
Once we reached the pass, Jed made the closed-fingers pointing gesture and we began our descent into the DMZ - as I'd decided to call it. While we walked, I watched Jed's feet closely. I'd noticed he was able to walk much more quietly than me, even though we were both treading on the same mixture of dead leaves and twigs, and I was determined to discover how he did it. One thing was that he used the flat of his foot instead of the ball. I'd been doing the opposite, simply because my instinct was to walk on tiptoe when trying to move without noise. But after watching him, I realized that my way lacked common sense. By spreading the pressure across his whole foot he put less weight on twigs and flattened an area of leaves instead of just one or two. When I swapped to his method, I heard the change immediately. The other thing he did was to lift his feet quite high, so that they weren't skimming just above the surface of the ground and catching loose material.
In order to press these lessons home, I played a private game as we crept through the DMZ. If I snapped a twig then I'd triggered a land-mine, and if I rustled a leaf above a particular volume—a rustle that couldn't pass as a regular jungle sound — then I'd been shot by a sniper. I also decided that the spider-web strands which occasionally stretched across the path were Claymores, and took care to step over them if they hadn't already been broken by Jed. In deference to video games I gave myself three lives, allowing an extra life if I saw any animal larger than a beetle before it saw me. The only flaw to the game was that there was no punishment if I lost all my lives — as I did several times. But the shame was punishment enough, and that one flaw aside, the game proved to be excellent.
I was enjoying myself so much that I was a bit pissed off when we reached the dope field. At the edge we crouched in silence for several minutes, checking that the coast was clear. Then Jed turned to me. 'OK,' he mouthed, pointing at me. 'You go.'
I raised my eyebrows and touched my chest, and he nodded. I grinned and gave him the thumbs up. Then I hunched down as low as I could go without being on all fours, and scuttled forwards.
Between the trees and the start of the dope field was a space of at least three metres, well beaten down where the guards made their patrol. Once clear of the trees I looked both ways and sped across the gap. I was mindful that a guard might appear at any moment, so I wasted no time in trying to pull off a few good-sized branches. But I immediately ran into difficulty. The stems of the marijuana were remarkably tough. I twisted and ripped, as quietly as I could, but was completely unable to get them free of the main stalk. Worse, my hands were sweating like mad and infuriatingly slippery, and I couldn't get a proper grip. I looked back at Jed, who had a hand clamped to his head in despair.
'What do I do?' I mouthed.
He held up his knife, waving the point sarcastically. I realized I'd scuttled off before he'd had a chance to give it to me. Cursing my haste I cupped my hands, indicating he should throw it. The knife came sailing through the air and finally I was able to sever the troublesome stems. In order to compensate for the fuck-up I hung around a minute longer than I had to, so I could return with a particularly daring sized bunch.
'What's the matter, Richard?' said Jed, when we'd got back to the safety of our look-out position. 'I thought you'd be happy after all that excitement.' He patted me affectionately on the back. 'I thought you'd be singing that ridiculous mouse song.'
I shook my head and laid out my bushel. 'I'm fine, Jed.'
'It wasn't that thing with the knife, was it? That was my fault, you know, not yours. I told you to go before I'd given it to you.'
'No, no. The knife thing didn't bother me... not much anyway... and it wasn't your fault. I should have stopped to think. But I'm fine, really.'
Jed seemed unconvinced. 'I know what it is. You wanted to spot some of the guards, right?'
'Well...' I shrugged. 'It would have been interesting.'
'I don't know, Richard. You get disappointed by all the wrong things. Listen, take it from me, you're glad we didn't run into anyone.'
'Sure...' I thought for a moment, idly plucking at a couple of buds.' ...Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if they were to find us?
'Mmm... don't know. Rather not find out.'
'Do you think they'd kill us?'
'It's possible. In a way I doubt it though, because there'd be no sense to it. They know we 're here and vice versa, and neither of us wants our secrets to get discovered, so...'
'I heard that Daffy once talked to them.'
Jed looked surprised. 'Who told you that?'
'Uh... Greg, I think.'
'I think maybe Greg has that wrong. Sal would have told me if there'd been any contact with them, and she never has.'
'Oh... So what if they caught Zeph and Sammy? That would be different, because they're not connected to us.'
'Yeah. They might kill Zeph and Sammy.'
'That would solve our problem at least,' I suggested cautiously, waiting for Jed to say something disapproving, but he didn't. He just nodded.
'Yep,' he said bluntly. 'It would.'