The Takamaka Tree (15 page)

“But don’t you want to?” Her voice was very small. He knew he could hurt her terribly.

She stood very slender and pale in the gathering darkness, the gold strands in her tawny hair turned to silver by the moonlight. The hollows from her cheekbones had gone, and her face was shining with health and pure living. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and love her through the warm night.

“Of course, I do, Sandy,” he said quietly. “I care for you very much, you know I do. But how do I know that you are not already married?”

“Oh!” said Sandy, almost angrily. “All these scruples suddenly. But I don’t feel married. I
know
I’m not married. I have this feeling somewhere inside me that I would know if I were married. And I don’t have this feeling. I just feel empty and let down and alone. Daniel, please…” She was confused and hurt.

He shook his head. He leaped down from the veranda and began to walk purposefully across the sand, his heels kicking up the fine grains.

“I’m going to see if the old couple are all right. They probably thought the helicopter was attacking the island.”

Sandy made her few preparations for the night. She was not hungry anymore and the fruit Daniel had cut went unheeded. Perhaps he was right to wait, if waiting was what he meant. He had said he cared for her. But was caring the same as loving? It had a more restrained feeling to it. He cared for her welfare and had shown that all along. But did he love her?

She curled up on the basket chair and let sleep drift into her mind. At least she was still on La Petite and not hurtling through the air at several hundred miles an hour on her way to London. Even if she never found out who she was, she intended from now on to give herself a new identity—Sandy Kane. Married or not married to Daniel, she was going to take his name.

When Daniel returned, Sandy was already asleep, although she looked uncomfortable, curled around like a kitten. He watched her flickering lashes.

Events had brought him to La Petite as a refuge, and events had washed this woman onto the shore. Two people from totally different streams of life, but once shorn of the pretences and ugliness of civilisation, they were completely happy together.

He had had a tear-off calendar in his office in London, with little sayings for each day of the week. He remembered one of these sayings now:

Visions of the future are better than dreams of the past.

He wondered what was passing through Sandy’s mind in her sleep. Was she dreaming of the past, or seeing visions of the future?

But Sandy seemed to want the future to include him and Daniel knew this could not be so. He sighed deeply; it was almost a groan. La Petite had suddenly become more tangled and complicated than any tropical paradise should be.

Chapter Seven

The sun, the glorious sun, awoke Sandy from her cramped sleep. Tentatively she moved her stiff neck and stretched out her legs. She was alone. Daniel had gone, and there were no signs that he had slept near her last night.

The peace of La Petite was all around. A smile came to her face as she thought of the day ahead with Daniel, and no more worries as to where she was going or who she was.

A scraggy black claw touched her arm. Sandy almost shrieked but choked back the cry. Surely not a monkey, not on these islands? The claw withdrew, timorously.

“Sorry to fright you Miss-Sandy. It’s only old Flora. Mr. Kane said to bring you tea and paw-paw, and see, I have made little coconut cakes for your breakfast. You like?”

It was the old woman Sandy had last seen coming ashore looking decidedly seasick. She was very old, her face a web of lines, her eyes yellowed with years, her skin crumpled like a wizened fruit. But there had once been beauty in a curiously Chinese slant to her bones. And her nostrils were not flat and flared but small and delicate.

“Tea, how nice,” said Sandy, recovering. “Thank you, Flora. And coconut cakes for breakfast.”

“I make them with little blueberries. Bella no cook. She too fat.”

“Oh?” said Sandy, detecting some rivalry.

“Bella always fat girl. More sleep than work. I am up before the sun, to work in the cool air.”

Flora put the tray on the veranda table, and Sandy felt ashamed of being waited on by such an old woman. She seemed almost too frail to lift the battered tin teapot. Flora grinned, and Sandy shuddered at the sight of jagged fragments of teeth left in the old woman’s mouth. Flora wore spotlessly clean clothes, though: a blouse over a dress and a pinafore on top of that. Her wispy hair was hidden by a large kerchief tied at the back.

“You know Bella well then?” said Sandy, knowing that she must overcome her revulsion of the old woman.

“Bella daughter number three. I have eleven children. Noah is my husband now. Two other husbands gone.”

Sandy almost spilt her tea on hearing this information, all given so casually. She cleared her throat and tried to look suitably sympathetic.

“I’m so sorry,” said Sandy. “How sad.”

“Not sad,” said Flora cheerfully. “Husbands go off. All right with me.”

Sandy took a bite of one of the little brown cakes. “You must show me how to make these, they really are delicious.”

Flora grinned again and then her face fell into an expression of commiseration. She hesitated on the steps of the veranda, but then returned to Sandy.

“Bella tell me you girl with no name. The sea wash you up on the shore,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Sandy, looking out to the distant curve that was White Sands, where Daniel had found her. “I don’t remember who I am or what my name is.”

The old woman bent forward, her hands clasped like an oriental mandarin. “Have you asked the takamaka tree?” she said curiously. “Sit beneath the tree, listen, and the leaves will talk to you.”

Then, afraid she had said too much, Flora scuttled away across the sand with an odd mixture of a hobble and a limp, as if some foot injury had never been attended to.

Sandy sat quite still. The takamaka tree.

The trees lined the shores of all the Seychelles islands, vying with the sweeping palms for their nearness to the sea. Some were old and had grown very tall before being cut down to make furniture, others were no more than saplings, with a profusion of dark glossy leaves that rustled in the sea breeze and forever seemed to be whispering.

Of course the superstitious Seychellois people would think that the trees were talking, thought Sandy as she started on a second cake. For a moment she was diverted by the new taste. This cake was subtly flavoured with cinnamon. She would certainly have to discover Flora’s culinary secrets.

Sandy unbuttoned her dress. It was very creased and she thought she would wash it herself rather than trust it to Flora, who would probably bash it with stones in the stream. She unpacked her small bundle of clothes, hung up her skirt and blouse, and then put on her old red bikini and tied the sarong around her waist. She stretched herself, feeling so much better without clothes, wondering if she dare venture in the shallows of the sea.

She sat at the water’s edge, legs straight, the baby waves washing over her. She threw back her head, letting the sun’s rays dazzle against her closed eyelids.

“Good morning, mermaid,” said Daniel. “So you have shed your clothes already. I needn’t have wasted my money.”

“I shall wear them sometimes,” said Sandy. “Perhaps in the evenings when we are having supper. They won’t be a waste, truly. They are so pretty and I am grateful to you for buying them.”

“Quite a speech,” he nodded. “We shall be having a formal conversation soon.”

Sandy looked puzzled. Daniel was in his ragged jeans, bare-chested, and had been fishing. Three fish glistened in a large banana leaf in his hands.

“I don’t understand. Am I quiet then?”

Daniel sat on his haunches beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I was being facetious quite unnecessarily. No, you’re not always quiet; sometimes you’re quite a chatterbox. What I meant was that your little speech was so polite, like a little girl reciting thanks for a present.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Forget it. It’s just a rub-off from the Reef. Would you like to help me this morning?” he asked, changing the subject. “Bird Cliff is teeming and I might as well get back to work, and I’ll need one or two of my crates unpacked. Would you like to do it for me? You are far less likely to break anything.”

“Just tell me which ones.”

“The equipment is in the crates marked ‘one’ and ‘three’. I don’t need the one marked ‘specimens’. You can leave that.”

Their conversation of the night before seemed to have been forgotten. Daniel was cheerful and friendly, but the lover of those moments on the darkened shore had disappeared.

“I’ll see if Noah is fit to carry the crates over, if not I’ll bring them myself,” he called, as he went off whistling.

Sandy watched his tall back and swinging walk. She would be able to pick him out of any crowd, simply by that walk and the way he carried his shoulders.

The hot sun was drying the salt droplets on her skin and she decided to move into the shade. She might still burn after her days of being more covered on Mahé. She strolled along the beach, looking for shells, picking up the odd cowrie with a differently ringed back.

The takamaka tree was of medium size. It was about fourteen feet tall, and its branches fell all around it like the skirts of a dancer. The trailing branches swayed too as the breeze chased the petals of floating blossom in the air.

Sandy pushed aside the branches. It was cool and dark inside, like a chapel. The sand was cold and prickly with the husks of coconut shells and dried fallen leaves. She spread out her sarong and sat on it, cross-legged. She did not really believe what Flora had told her.

The leaves rustled and whispered like voices from a long, long way away. Through the dappled foliage the brilliance of the sea twinkled like cut glass. The voices were children’s voices, clear and sweet, as if in a meadow that was full of the fresh awakening of spring.

“
Miss…Miss
…” they seemed to be calling. There was a church with a squat Norman tower, and close by the stonework of the tower were two graves. Very old graves, side by side, with no headstones or slabs of stone to give names and dates. They were just two slight mounds covered in lichen and moss, hardly seeming long enough for men’s bodies to lie beneath.

“And these are the graves of two crusaders,” Sandy heard herself saying, a long way away.

“
But Miss…Miss…”

“
Miss-Sandy! What you do there? Are you all right?”

A wet, black face appeared between the branches, full of concern, breathing heavily.

“Leon! Heavens, wherever have you come from?”

Sandy scrambled to her feet, twisting her sarong around her waist as she stumbled out into the sunshine. Leon was standing with his long arms hanging beside him, water dripping off his face and running down his glistening black skin.

“Have you swum all the way here?” she asked incredulously.

Leon laughed, showing all his fine white teeth. “No, Miss-Sandy. Only from the fishing boat.” He pointed out to sea, where a fishing boat was disappearing in the distance.

“But that’s marvellous,” said Sandy. “We could do with you here. Your grandparents are very old people. But you’ve scratched yourself on the reef, Leon.” She saw that blood was oozing from the front of his legs. “I must put some antiseptic on those cuts.”

“No. It’s nothing.”

“I insist. Coral cuts can be very dangerous. You get a little bit of coral stuck in there and you’ll be in trouble. Come back to the bungalow and I’ll look for Mr. Kane’s medicine box.”

Leon looked sheepish, but pleased just the same. At that moment Sandy must have seemed like a ministering angel to him. He began to follow her as she trampled over the sand.

“How did you find me under the tree?” she asked.

“Like now,” he said. “I saw your footprints in the sand. I thought perhaps you were ill again.”

Sandy wondered whether to tell him of Flora’s advice, but decided that she had had enough of the islanders’ quaint old tales.

“I was just thinking,” she explained. “In a nice quiet place.”

She had to smile to herself, for the whole island was a quiet place, except for the birds. And even the bird calls were mainly on Bird Cliff. From here they were no more than a background of faint music.

The mercurochrome was in Daniel’s supply of medical aids. She found the black tin box in one of his leather bags and began to dab the red liquid onto Leon’s scratches with some cottonwool. It looked bizarre on his black skin, and he sat on the steps of the veranda, grinning. She managed to get more on her fingers than on his wounds.

“I’m not a very good nurse,” she said. “Does it sting?”

“Yes, it stings, Miss-Sandy.”

“Good. That means it’s killing off all the nasty germs,” she said with more hopefulness than accuracy.

Leon ambled away, hugely pleased by Sandy’s attention and his own initiative in returning to the island.

Sandy looked at her red-stained fingers. She was a mess. No amount of washing in the sea would remove the antiseptic. It would have to wear off.