The Far Side of the Sun (24 page)

Blood pumped under her skin. Shameless and unbidden. It flowed to his fingers and was carried to other parts of her, so that she could feel the heat building in her body. He murmured words to her, but the sounds of them joined together, wrapping around each other, rippling through her brain the way the rumble of the sea did at night in her beach shack.

She closed her eyes and let the whisper of his voice wash over her.

Ella lay in bed awake. It was the moment before dawn when the day seemed to hold its breath. A window stood open in the bedroom and she could feel the sultry night air on her skin.

Ella was listening to her husband beside her in the bed. The night was hot and they were both naked with just a sheet over them, though whatever the temperature Reggie always slept in the buff. It was one of the things that had surprised her about him. He was a noisy sleeper. A flurry of grunts and murmurs and subdued snores issued from him all night, but just before daylight his feet would start to rub against the sheets, slight at first but growing stronger. Like a cat scratching at a door. Often she wondered whether he was trying to get in or get out.

But far louder was the sound in her head. Just days ago she would have scoffed at it, laughed out loud at the very thought that in her head she would be listening to such a sound. But it was loud and clear, the sound of Detective Dan Calder expelling air from his lungs.

It was the way he did it. A sharp gust of air. A brief unguarded moment. It happened sometimes when he was smoking a cigarette and she said something that he disagreed with but was too polite to correct, or sometimes when she laughed, though she had no idea what it meant then. And there were other sounds. The click of his tongue when he was impatient with the traffic. The tapping of his fingers on the table. Of his shoes on the pavement. A piercing whistle through his fingers that nearly tore her eardrums out of her head.

He was a symphony of sounds. She tried to block them out but failed, and she was shocked by the failure. The problem was, she decided, that she was seeing him each day out of context – he had no setting of his own because he had been transplanted into hers. She knew nothing about him. Was he married? He wore no ring. How old was he? Easily ten years younger than she was. Where did he live? How long had he been in the Bahamas? What were his aims?

She imagined him in bed. Right now. This moment. Stretched out on a plain white sheet, the hard muscles of his body naked in the darkness. Was someone with him? Touching him? With a moan of self-disgust she turned over in bed, turning away from the images in her head. But almost immediately Reggie felt the loss of her even in his sleep and hunched up close behind her, moulding himself to the contours of her back. He draped a sleep-heavy arm across her over the sheet, pinning her to him and his bed.

Ella breezed into the kitchen where her maid was picking seeds out of a pomegranate with a pin and popping them into her mouth.

‘Emerald, have you seen Detective Calder yet this morning?’

‘No, Miss Ella, I ain’t. But he’s here all right.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s in the garage. I seen his smoke. That man smokes too much.’

‘Oh. Right. I’ll take him a coffee.’

Emerald paused, pin halfway to the cavern of her open mouth. ‘Now, why you wantin’ to do that? That’s my job.’

‘I’m going to get Dryden to make a start on the new fencing today and thought he might like to help us.’

Dryden was the gardener and general odd-job man around the place. A section of the chicken enclosure needed to be replaced.

‘You thinkin’ a policeman wants to fix fencin’? You is out of your mind.’

‘It would be more fun than polishing the car again.’

Emerald rolled her black eyes and stabbed her pin deep into the heart of the pomegranate. ‘More fun for who, Miss Ella?’

Detective Dan Calder had jumped at the chance when she invited him to help.

‘Don’t feel obliged,’ she’d said.

‘I’m happy to. Always feel free to ask,’ he’d responded, but in a way that made her wonder if they were talking about the same thing.

He’d been hammering in posts for the last couple of hours, much to the delight of Dryden, who relished the unexpected bonus of bossing around a minion who was twice his size. Dan Calder’s blue shirt was patched with dark sweat and Ella wondered whether he would remove it, but he didn’t. When Emerald waddled down with a tray of iced lime juice for them all, he drank his in the shade with Dryden, and when the fence was finished, Ella admired his handiwork and thanked him for his help.

‘This afternoon I’d like to go to the library, if that’s all right with you, Detective Calder.’

‘Of course. Wherever you wish.’ He caught her eyes flicking to the sweat marks on his shirt and he shrugged self-consciously. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go and wash, and borrow another shirt from Dryden.’

‘I wasn’t worried,’ she said, but by then he was striding off towards the tap outside the garage.

When she looked back at the fence, she saw that Emerald was standing there staring at her, hands on her buffalo hips, mouth pursed.

‘What is it now, Emerald?’ Ella sighed.

‘You done went to the library last week. Got yourself four fat books.’

‘Two of them are dreadfully dull. I want to change them.’ Ella started up the path.

Behind her she heard Emerald mutter, ‘That’s not the only thing you aimin’ to change.’

Nassau library in Shirley Street was unique. No other library came close. Ella loved to go there, if only because its building was so quaint it made her smile each time she trotted up its front steps. Octagonal in shape and four storeys high with a circular balcony around the upper floor and a dome on top, it looked more like a lighthouse that someone had mistakenly stuck in the middle of town, rather than a sedate library.

It dated back to 1798 when it was built as a much-needed jail for the lawless inhabitants who roamed the city at that time. Its dungeons were now bursting with books instead of buccaneers, and normally Ella liked to linger but not today. Today she smiled at Mrs Faircourt behind the desk, snatched
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
and
The Body in the Library
off the shelves, had them date-stamped and hurried back out into the blazing sunlight. Palm fronds hung limply in the grassy square, exhausted by the heat. For two minutes she stood in the patch of shade under one of them and gave herself a serious talking to, the way she did to Emerald when she was getting out of hand.

‘Get in the car. Have him drive you straight home. No small-talk about anything other than the fundraising party coming up and its good cause – the widows of servicemen killed in action.’

Right.

‘No personal questions. No laughing or tipping the brim of your hat at him.’

Right.

‘And no staring at his hands on the steering wheel.’

Right
.

But the last
Right
caused a wrench. Like one of her ribs had been yanked out.

She strode across the square and round the corner to where the Rover was parked in the shade, face stern, books brandished in front of her.

‘Where now?’ he asked.

‘To the Berryhead Bar, I think. I need a cold drink. You too, I’m sure.’

They drove to the bar with its terrace of beach umbrellas overlooking the sea and its array of young men and women strolling on the sand that had been swept to a dazzling pristine whiteness. A smiling black waiter in a red waistcoat brought Ella a cool rum and lime and a grapefruit juice for Dan. She was thinking of him as Dan now, no longer Detective Calder. He never drank on duty, he told her. She may have messed up the going straight home part of her plan but she stuck scrupulously to the rest of it. She talked about the fundraiser that was to be held at the Cockatoo Club and the way she had to flutter her eyelashes at the local businesses to get them to donate luxurious raffle prizes for the cause. She talked about her Red Cross work, she talked about the Duchess of Windsor and her dedication to the children’s clinic, she talked about Reggie’s scheme to get clean water into more homes.

He listened attentively. She couldn’t tell whether he was just being polite or was genuinely interested. She left gaps in the conversation for him to fill and was surprised when he did so with snippets of the history of the island. He told her a story about the slave ships that the Royal Navy emptied on to New Providence Island. It happened when slave-trading was declared illegal in 1807, a time when Britain was by far the biggest transporter of slaves from Africa to the Americas. Altogether, he informed her, about three million slaves were transported.

‘And many freed slaves travelled here from the southern states of America after the Civil War was over too,’ he told her, and the pupils of his grey eyes were wide with enthusiasm. She recognised that he really cared about this island. ‘It changed the population of the islands and formed the basis of today’s Bahamians.’

‘Fascinating.’

He smiled. ‘You knew it already.’

‘That doesn’t make it any the less fascinating.’

When they left the bar, Ella was pleased with herself. She hadn’t asked a single personal question and she told him briskly, ‘Home now.’ But as they were about to climb into the car, he wiped a speck of sweat from his temple and said, ‘It’s a real scorcher today. Do you mind if I take off my jacket?’

‘Of course not.’

But she did mind. She minded a lot. Because seeing his bare forearm right next to her in the car, with its dense muscle and wide strong bones and curls of unruly dark brown hair, undid her resolve, so that before they had even pulled away from the kerb she asked, ‘Where do you live?’

He glanced at her, surprised. ‘Albert Street. On the east side of town.’

‘Will you show it to me?’

‘Now why on earth would you want to see my house?’

‘Because I need a context for you.’

He seemed to understand. Without further comment he turned the car and headed east. They kept the windows down to catch any breeze, but the sky was relentless in its blueness and its brightness as they took the picturesque East Bay Road running alongside the shoreline, rockier here, more rugged. The sea was glinting a deep jade that faded into rich purple off to their left. This was where magnificent wealthy mansions slept quietly behind high pastel walls draped in bougainvillea and banks of tall pine trees, but soon after they passed the yacht club on their left, they swung right, twisting inland. Here the houses were smaller and the streets no longer had a policeman in a white jacket, white gloves and white topi directing traffic at junctions.

In a sleepy residential street he pulled up outside one of the houses. They both studied it. It was more modest than Ella had expected but she had no idea how much a policeman was paid. The house was pleasing enough. A two-storey place that was painted white with a dark red front door and shutters. There was a tiny parched garden in front in which a spiky yucca was the solitary occupant. Clearly Detective Calder was no gardener.

‘How long have you lived in Nassau?’ she asked.

‘Twelve years.’

‘Really? You must like it here.’

‘It’s my idea of paradise.’

He smiled and something new came into his face that she hadn’t seen before. Something hopeful and earnest, a sudden enthusiasm in him beyond his control.

‘I joined the police force,’ he told her, ‘in Swindon in England as a young lad and loved the work. My father was a policeman in the same town, and his father before him. In the blood, I guess.’

Ella was touched by this family that devoted itself to public service through generations but with none of the rewards that Reggie received.

‘So how did you end up here?’

‘Oh, I grew restless, I suppose. I was young and wanted to widen my horizons. Britain was in a miserable state during the Depression after the Wall Street Crash, and I was lucky. I saw an advertisement in the
Police Gazette
for recruits to police postings here in Nassau and I reckoned this was my chance of adventure.’ He shrugged self-consciously, as if she might laugh at the idea of adventure. ‘I passed the interview and arrived in time to miss the dismal British winter. But now,’ he glanced out of the window at a pair of aircraft droning across the blue sky, ‘I’m wondering if I made the right decision not to swap this job for a military uniform.’

He sounded unsure. It was the first time she’d heard any hint of uncertainty in his voice.

‘Someone has to stay here to keep the island safe,’ she said brightly. ‘Clearly you’re the man for it.’

He smiled at her. ‘I love it here. Who wouldn’t?’

‘Lots of people wouldn’t. It would scare them. Somewhere so different. But I don’t suppose you’re easily scared, Detective Calder.’

He laughed.

‘Are you married?’ Ella asked. She glanced away out the window and could feel her blouse sticking to the back of the seat. Not until she turned to face him again did he answer.

‘No, I’m not married.’

She changed the subject, but awkwardly. ‘Is there much crime in Nassau?’

She saw him relax. ‘No, not normally. Mainly a few robberies on a Friday night and the usual clutch of drunken fights on a Saturday. But with so many servicemen on the island now, as well as the present unrest among the black Bahamians, the mood has changed. We have to be far more watchful.’