The Island (26 page)

We decided we'd go back first thing next morning, but we'd be more prepared this time. Rufus didn't talk much the night before. He just sat fiddling with some sort of knot-thing he'd made out of cord.

‘Help me, Fran,' he says.

He's panting heavily and he's looped the knot over the poor creature's front legs and it's squealing like it's being branded.

‘Christ,' I say.

‘Hold the bloody cord, Fran. Don't let it get away.'

‘Jesus.'

• A small piglet with squealing eyes.

• A dash of horror, pure and neat.

A stone is best.

And look away now.

Method
:

1.  Roughly chop your cabbage.

2.  We have no idea if it's really cabbage, but it looks and smells like the stuff Rufus has grown and we've kept it down so far.

3.  Rufus reckons it was planted by people who might have inhabited these islands in the past.

4.  That would also explain the pigs.

5.  Pull off the cabbage flowers and sprinkle in.

6.  If you find any wild barley, sweet potatoes or ginger growing around the island, you can add those too.

7.  We didn't.

8.  Chuck in a load of water and, hey, why not a splash of coconut milk?

There won't be any pig-meat to add because you'll have snatched it off the fire –

the smell, the smell
–

and torn into it with your teeth and drooled and mmmm-ed and
ohmygod
and wiped the grease off each other's chins and you won't have ever eaten such a meal as that, ever.

We finish off with the cabbage soup.

When we've mopped up the juices with our fingers, we just sit and look at each other and at the carcass, stripped bare in the pot.

‘Bloody hell,' I say.

It feels so weird to actually have a full belly, like it's almost hurting. The grease on my lips feels so wrong. I wipe the last slick of fat from my lips with my finger and suck it.

‘There's blood in your hair,' Rufus tells me.

‘And above your eye,' I say.

‘Shall we go and have a shower?'

We grab our washing stuff, which basically consists of the few rags that remain of Rufus's polo, and follow the path that leads to the waterfall.

And it's there that I peel myself raw.

Stupid me.

 

Rocks Don't Make Passes

So maybe it's all the flesh I've eaten.

All that blood pumping through my stony heart and turning rock into pulp.

Or something.

Whatever it is, it makes me creep out of my shell a crack; then flinch back inside like a limpet.

So at the waterfall this happens:

‘Please could you pass me the soap?' says Rufus.

He's singing ever so loudly and untunefully, standing in the spray of the waterfall and rubbing his TeamSkill shirt-flannel all over his chest.

Of course we don't have any.

I pass him a pebble instead, wide and smooth and shiny.

‘Why, thank you,' he says.

‘No problem,' I tell him, ‘and now could I have the Head and Shoulders, please?'

‘Certainly, although I see you more as a Pantene sort of girl. Here you are.'

I thank him for the wet twig he passes me and rub its leaves into my hair.

The water gushes in a whoosh of spilling diamonds; it's clean and cold and fresh.

‘Do you mind if I shave my legs?'

‘Not at all, you go ahead.' He hands me a feather.

We're hairy as wolves, Rufus and me.

He once caught me trying to tug out my armpit hair with a mussel shell:

‘What are you doing?'

‘Passes the time.'

‘Leave it. I like it.'

‘Will you plait it for me?'

‘Only if you plait mine.'

‘Beardy Freak.'

‘Wolf Girl.'

My legs and arms are covered in silky hairs bleached white by the sun. My hair is mostly dreads, which is cool. I close my eyes and let the whole force of the waterfall plunge down on my head. Stripping away the blood, the dirt, the sweat.

I'm very aware of Rufus next to me.

Sometimes our shoulders touch and it's a shock, this skin on skin.

‘Do you want me to scrape the dirt off you?'

I open my eyes. Rufus is standing, grinning; he has a clam shell in his hand.

‘It's doing wonders for my own stinking filth – look.'

He shows me how he's scraped away at his dirty skin and he's right; it does look kind of clean through his freckles.

‘Are you saying that I'm dirty?'

‘Well, yes.'

I splash water at him then and he kicks it back, both of us falling in the plunge pool, laughing.

‘Come on then,' I say, when we've both emerged, gasping.

He coughs the rest of the water out of his lungs as I thump his back.

‘Come on, what?'

‘Make me clean.'

I lie back in the water and lift my leg up for him to wash.

He grabs it and pulls me round so I squeal; and then he places my leg over his knee and drags the shell over it carefully.

‘Hmm, looks like you might need more than just a deep cleanse,' he says, frowning. He's about to plunge me under again but I stop him. His shoulder is both warm and cool and it's scuffed slightly with peeling skin.

‘No, clean me again,' I say.

It feels nice, someone doing this to me. Stone on flesh. Flesh on stone.

With great care and attention, he drags the shell along my leg, from my foot to my knee, washing off the dried-on pig-blood with his other hand.

It feels so nice; I arch like a cat, melt like the moon.

‘Other leg?'

‘Other leg,' I agree.

And that's when my mistake happens.

He's midway through a scrape when I stop him; place my hand over his. He's staring at me; so close up I can see the swirls and flecks in his eyes.

‘Cerulean, azure, sapphire, indigo, cobalt,' I say. I looked up words for ‘blue' once, when I needed to describe the sea for my story.

‘Fran?' He's watching me intently. He doesn't move.

Now I'm the flesh and you're the stone.

He watches me as I move my hands over his cool wet shoulders and then up to his face.

‘The colours in your eyes. There's more of them but they're all the ones I know.'

‘Fran –'

It feels strange and good, to be close to someone like this. There's never been a boy, not really. But something about Rufus makes me feel bold, and safe. And it's not Other Fran that's doing this; it's me. I trace my finger over his splatter-map of a face, over each and every freckle-island.

‘We are here,' I say, ‘on this island.' I point my finger to the freckle by his nose. ‘And that one there is the one we're supposed to be on; it's full of fishermen and boats and chocolate bars and –'

And I lean forward to kiss the one on his cheek.

He doesn't move; just stares at me with his bluer-than-blue eyes.

So I trace my finger over his beard to his lips and they are soft and sun-scabbed and

and I

place my lips over his and

kiss him.

 

Soft as Stone

‘Please, Rufus,' I say, shaking him. ‘Hold me.'

Why won't he kiss me back and wrap his arms round the back of me so that we fit together like a stone in a fruit?

For a moment, I hold his face and press it close and press my lips to his and just need,

just need to be

close

to another human being.

But

when I draw back to ask,

‘Why aren't you…why aren't you?',

he's just shaking his head.

‘I'm sorry, Fran.'

I move backward in the water, shrinking, I am shrinking –

‘I'm so sorry…' –

dying with shame.

I splash my way out of the plunge pool in my stupid bikini and I'm running, back up the path.

My flip-flop twists and I fall, landing on my hands and knees in the dead leaves. Bashing my knee, which is bleeding – so much for the shower.

I can hear Rufus calling me.

‘It's not you, Fran. God, I'm sorry. Wait!'

But I don't wait.

I clamber up to the top of the ravine, where I know he can't follow me, and sit, looking down at his stupid melon garden, his pride and joy.

 

Smashed

I use the peepa pole.

Breath rasping, I seize it with both hands and smash and mash the melon head to jammy pulp.

THWACK.

I cringe at the memory of him staying still as rock. I turned him to stone but this time I needed it not to work. I needed him to melt, to be something warm and soft against my lips; I needed his eyes to not be cold and frozen and

shocked.

Glinting wetly in the headache-sun, black seeds slide down the headless pole. I seize his headdress and rip the feathers out, scattering them in the air like –

a murmuration. It's called a murmuration
.

There is a mess on Rufus's bed –

he won't like that
–

then I kick at the coffee drum we use as a table. It topples and rolls.

I stare around at our camp, think briefly of destroying it all – everything we've built together – but I won't do that –

I'm not frickin stupid
.

And then there's Rufus beside me, and he's saying:

‘Stop, Fran. Don't.'

And that irritates the hell out of me 'cause who does he think I am? Does he think I'll get to the melon garden and swing and swing the pole around like it's got a mind of its own? Send heads flying everywhere and, once they're on the ground, kick them and stamp on them and spike them?

Does he think that for one moment I'll give him the pleasure of shaking his head at me and saying ‘Oh, Fran' in that patronising way of his?

‘Oh, Fran,' says Rufus.

I can feel him walking around, touching his broken headdress, picking up the feathers one by one. He'll be arranging them, neatly, in our could-be pile.

In the stillness, the melons sigh as I wait.

‘It's not that I don't like you. I like you an awful lot.'

He's looking at me with such an expression of – pity. That's it. He pities me. Poor Fran Stanton, unzips herself raw and spills out her insides so that all her heart and guts lie steaming on the ground.

My fingers squeeze on melon slime.

I'm not going to let him frickin pity me.

 

What Did They Teach You?

I stagger to my feet, head swimming.

‘You're a liar, like the rest of them,' I shout.

He's flushing but I'm hotter. I glare through his heat, my fists clenched, waiting.

The air pants.

‘Fran, let me just explain –'

Rufus takes a step towards me but I can't bear it, can't bear him to come closer.

I turn to go, to back away.

‘Right,' he calls. ‘Off you go then. Go and stomp in the forest to slash at some vines like you always do. Run away rather than confront things.'

I stop. We face each other across the ruined garden.

He's right and I hate him. So I hurt him.

‘Think I care that you don't like me?' I spit. ‘Why would I care? Why would I care that a stupid, stuck-up, little – what d'you call it? –
nancy boy
doesn't like me?'

I'm getting into my stride now; I know how to cause pain.

‘You're a loser. Pathetic. Can't even climb a tree, can't even climb a cliff,' I taunt. ‘Bet your frickin dad was glad to see the back of you.'

Rufus's face is stone.

‘Please stop,' he says.

I'm being my worst self now, I well and truly am. It's like I've dug myself a great and stinking hole and am filling it with all the poison I can get my hands on. And the thing is, I can feel his pain. I feel all the little stabs I'm sending him and I still can't stop.

'Cause now that I've shown myself for what I really am –

a bitch, a monster
–

there really is no point in holding back, is there?

So I really go for it.

‘Sent you to boarding school, didn't he? Couldn't bear to have his boy who can't climb trees, can't climb rocks, can't jump off cliffs hanging around while he's making shitloads of money.'

Stab.

‘And what did they teach you at that posh school anyway? To pretend you care about people when you only care about yourself and your uni place and being a frickin do-gooder medic? Oohlookatyou, you're on your gap year doing good and pretending to be nice to little crims, free-school-meal kids like me, so that it'll look good on your CV later and you can tell those uni interviewers that you're the good boy, you've done all that daddy told you, you've passed your exams, done your D of frickin E, been a goodboygoodboygoodboy –'

‘Shut up,' he says, and his voice is low, dangerous.

But I don't stop, do I? Still I go sailing on.

Stab stab stab.

Hurt him while he's down, that's right.

How can a face be so white under all that sunburn?

‘Daddy's boy,' I say. ‘You're a frickin daddy's boy and always will be.'

His face twists. Then he's gone.

Fran Stanton's done it again.

 

Forget-Me-Not

I suck ice from the bottom of my Coke.

This is the poshest street in Brixton.

It's not raining like the last time I came here. Instead the sun bakes the pavement cracks and rises like steam from the tarmacked drives.

I settle down on a wall opposite the house and watch.

Angela looked very serious when I told her what I was going to do.

‘Are you sure?' she asks, and it really is a question this time. ‘Are you sure it's a good idea?'

‘I'm only going to look,' I say.