Bodily Harm (36 page)

The jeep is parked on the road in front of the house. They go down the stone steps, hurrying, their feet in the strong beam of the flashlight.

Paul has one of the small machine guns; he carries it casually, like a lunch pail. To Rennie it looks like a toy, the kind you aren’t supposed to give little boys for Christmas. She doesn’t believe it could go off, and surely if it did nothing would come out of it but rubber bullets. She’s afraid, but even her fear seems inappropriate. Surely they are not in any real danger. She tries hard for annoyance: perhaps she should feel interrupted.

Just before they climb into the jeep Paul heaves something overarm into the darkness of the rock garden.

“What was that?” says Lora.

“I killed the radio,” says Paul. “I called my boats first. They’re staying away. I don’t want anyone calling St. Antoine, I don’t want any welcoming committees in the harbour when we get there.”

“Who’d do that?” says Lora.

“I’ve got a few ideas,” says Paul.

The motor catches and the headlights go on and they drive down the road, which is empty. Paul doesn’t go all the way into the town. Instead he parks beside a stone wall.

“Go down to the shore and wait beside the pier,” he says. “I’ll pick you up there in about fifteen minutes. I’ll get us a boat.”

“Your boats are all out,” says Lora.

“I didn’t say mine,” says Paul. “I’ll jump the motor.”

He’s younger, alive in a way he hasn’t been before. He loves it, thinks Rennie. That’s why we get into these messes: because they love it.

He helps them over the stone wall and passes Rennie’s bags down to her. She feels stupid lugging her camera: what is there to take pictures of now?

“Don’t talk,” says Lora. Rennie sees where they are: they’re in the garden at the back of the Lime Tree. They find the path and feel their way down it. The hotel is dark and silent; behind a few of the windows candles flicker. The bar is deserted, the patio littered with broken glass. Along the beach, towards the town, they can hear singing. It’s men, it’s not a hymn.

The tide’s going out, there are several yards of wet beach. The waves are strangely luminous. Rennie wants to look at this, she’s heard about it, phosphorescence.

“Crawl under the dock,” Lora whispers.

“For heaven’s sake,” says Rennie, who doesn’t like the idea of crabs and snails.

“Do it,” Lora says; it’s almost a hiss. This, apparently, is serious.

The dock is built on a foundation of split rocks that have not yet been smoothed by the sea; the space between the rocks and the wooden slats of the dock is only two feet high. They crouch together, doubled over. Rennie’s still clutching her bags and her purse. She doesn’t know who they’re supposed to be hiding from.

The moon comes up, it’s almost full; the grey-white light comes
through the slats of the dock, throwing bars of shadow. Rennie thinks how nice it would be to have a warm bath and something to eat. She thinks about having lunch with someone, Jocasta maybe, and telling this story. But it’s not even that good a story, it’s about on the level of being stopped at customs, since nothing more than inconvenience has happened to her.

At last they can hear a motor, turning over, starting up, moving towards them.

“That’s him,” says Lora, and they back out from under the dock.

Marsdon is sitting in one of the wooden chairs up on the patio, one leg bent, the ankle resting on his knee to show off his boots. He’s got his machine gun pointed right at them. Two men stand silently behind him.

“Where you think you goin’?” he says.

The St. Antoine police motor launch is tied at the end of the Lime Tree pier, where it bobs gently up and down in the swell. Paul sits at the round wooden table facing Marsdon. He’s soaking wet, from swimming out to the launch. Between them there’s a bottle of rum. Each of them has a glass, each of them has a machine gun; the machine guns are on the ground under the table, but within reach. The two other men are over at the bar. There’s a woman with them, very drunk, she’s lying on the patio near them, in the broken glass, humming to herself, her skirt up over her thighs, opening and closing her legs. Rennie and Lora sit in the other two chairs.

Paul and Marsdon are arguing about them. Paul wants to take Rennie to St. Antoine, Marsdon doesn’t want him to. Marsdon doesn’t want anyone leaving the island. Also, Marsdon wants more guns. Paul promised him more, says Marsdon, they’ve been paid for; now he should deliver. He’s the connection.

“I told you about the problem,” Paul said. “You should have waited. Next week I have some coming.”

“How can we wait?” Marsdon says impatiently. “When they hear on St. Antoine that Minnow is shot, they goin’ to blame us anyway.” Slyly, he offers to trade Paul’s own machine gun for a safe exit. Slyly Paul refuses.

Rennie can see what she is now: she’s an object of negotiation. The truth about knights comes suddenly clear: the maidens were only an excuse. The dragon was the real business. So much for vacation romances, she thinks. A kiss is just a kiss, Jocasta would say, and you’re lucky if you don’t get trenchmouth.

She listens, trying to follow. She feels like a hostage, and, like a hostage, strangely uninvolved in her own fate. Other people are deciding that for her. Would it be so bad if she stayed here? She could hole up in the Lime Tree, call herself a foreign correspondent, send out dispatches, whatever those are. But maybe Paul just wants to leave, get out; maybe she’s just the occasion.

“You think I’m more important than I am,” she says to Marsdon.

“Don’t bug him,” Lora says in a low voice. Marsdon looks at Rennie, seeing her this time. His movements are slow enough, outwardly calm, but he’s excited, his eyes gleam in the moonlight. Fragmentation, dismemberment, this is what he sees when he looks at her. Then he’s ignoring her once more.

“You bring the guns, you can take her,” he says.

“No deal,” says Paul.

There are more men now, coming along the beach from the town; several carry torches. One of them comes over to the table and puts his hand on Marsdon’s shoulder.

“I am ready to make the broadcast now,” he says, and Rennie realizes that this must be Prince. She’s never seen him before. His face is in shadow, but the voice is young, younger than she thought, he sounds about nineteen.

“I wouldn’t do that yet,” says Paul, “if I were you.”

Prince’s head turns towards him in the shadows. “Why?” he says.

“Have you any idea of what’s going to happen next?” Paul says.

“We have won the revolution,” says Prince, with the placid confidence of a child reciting a lesson. “Grenada has recognized us. They are sending men and guns, in the morning.”

“Where did you hear that?” says Paul.

The outline of Prince’s head turns towards Marsdon.

“The radio,” Marsdon says.

“Did you hear it yourself?” Paul says to Prince.

Marsdon pushes his chair back. “You calling me a liar,” he says. There are more men now, a circle; tension draws them in.

“Take a boat to Grenada,” Paul says to Prince. “Anything you can get. Right now, before morning. If you’re lucky they’ll let you stay there.”

“You an enemy of the revolution,” says Marsdon.

“Bullshit,” says Paul. “You just want an excuse to blow my head off the way you blew off Minnow’s.”

“What you tellin’ me?” says Prince.

“Put it together,” says Paul. “He’s the new agent. You’ve been set up, right from the beginning.”

There’s a pause. Rennie closes her eyes. Something with enormous weight comes down on them, she can hardly breathe. She hears the night sounds, the musical waterdrip, the waves, going on as usual. Then everything starts to move.

Oh God, thinks Rennie. Somebody change the channel.

Rennie walks along the pier at St. Antoine. She’s safe. It’s almost dawn. The power plant here isn’t on the fritz and there’s a string of feeble bulbs to see by. She feels dizzy and nauseated, an hour and a half in the launch, not rolling with the waves but smashing into them, a collision, a sickening lurch downwards, then up like a roller
coaster, thud, crunch of her bones, backbone against backbone, stomach lurching inside her with its own motion. She’d hung on, trying to think of something serene, keeping her head up, eyes on the moon, on the next wave, the water glowed when it moved, phosphorescent, sweating all over her body despite the wind, wondering when she was going to throw up, trying not to. After all she was being rescued.

Can’t you slow down? she called to Paul.

It’s worse that way, he called back, grinning at her. Even now he found her funny.

At the dock he idled the motor and practically threw her onto the shore, her and her luggage, before backing the boat out and turning towards the sea. No goodbye kiss and just as well, she didn’t want anything against her mouth just now. They touched hands for a moment, that was all. What bothers her is that she forgot to thank him.

He’s not going back to Ste. Agathe, he’s heading south. He’ll meet one of his boats, he says. There are other harbours.

What about Lora? said Rennie.

She had the chance, said Paul. She wanted to stay with Prince. I can’t fight off the entire St. Antoine police force just for Lora. She can take care of herself.

Rennie doesn’t understand anything. All she knows is that she’s here and there’s a plane at six and she wants to be on it, and she can’t keep walking. She sits down on the pier with her head between her knees, hoping that the rolling under her feet will stop.

She can hear the sound of the motor launch, receding, no more significant than the drone of a summer insect. Then there’s another sound, too loud, like a television set with a cop show on it heard through a hotel room wall. Rennie puts her hands over her ears. In a minute, when she’s feeling better, she’ll go to the Sunset Inn and
pick up her passport and see if she can get a cup of coffee, though there’s not much chance of that. Then she’ll take a taxi to the airport and then she’ll be gone.

She sits there until she’s ready, ready enough; then she starts walking again. There are a few people about, men; only one of them tries to stop her, a simple request for fornication, and he’s pleasant enough when she says no. There’s no war on here, possibly they haven’t heard anything about it yet, everything seems normal. Then there are more men, running past her towards the end of the pier.

It’s light; close by there are roosters. After what seems a very long time she reaches the Sunset Inn and goes in through the archway. She climbs the stairs; now she will have to sign her name for all the time she hasn’t spent here, all the meals she hasn’t eaten. She won’t even argue, she’ll put it on her charge card. Enjoy now, pay later.

The Englishwoman is up and dressed, in an avocado-green shirtwaist, behind the counter as usual. Possibly she never sleeps.

“I’d like to check out,” says Rennie, “and I’d like my passport, please, it’s in the safe. And I’d like to call a taxi.”

The Englishwoman looks at her with the gloating, almost possessive stare of one who enjoys giving unwelcome news. “Are you thinking of taking that morning plane?” she says.

Rennie says yes.

“It’s been cancelled,” says the Englishwoman. “All the planes have been cancelled. The airport’s been shut down.”

“Really?” says Rennie, cold within.

“We’re in a state of emergency,” says the Englishwoman proudly. “There’s been an uprising on Ste. Agathe. But you must know all about that. Didn’t you just come from there?”

Rennie lies on her bed. At least it’s a bed. She’s fallen on it without even taking off her clothes but she’s too exhausted to sleep. Now she
will have to stay here, at the Sunset Inn, home of beige gravy, until they start the planes again. She feels marooned.

Then it’s full of daylight and the door, which was shut and locked, is open. Two policemen are standing in the doorway. Grins, drawn guns. Behind them is the Englishwoman, her arms folded across her chest. Rennie sits up. “What?” she says.

“We arrestin’ you,” says one of the policemen, the pinkish one.

“What for?” says Rennie. She feels she ought to act like an outraged tourist.