The Takamaka Tree (4 page)

“I saw a strange shell this morning that might do for chess,” she said, changing the subject. “It was wonderfully spiky and encrusted like some medieval helmet. I couldn’t carry it then, but I know exactly where I left it. It looked like this.”

She picked up a pencil and one of Daniel’s notebooks. She began to sketch on the cover. A few quick lines and she had outlined the shell. The pencil moved confidently, hardly hesitating. Delicate strokes began to trace out the crusty surface, with the occasional firm stroke to define the hardness of the shell.

Daniel watched. She was drawing unconsciously, as if she was unaware of what she was doing or the quality of the sketch she was producing. Her face was totally absorbed in the work. It became not merely a sketch for identification, but a portrait of the shell. She was shading it now, with feathery strokes that glided over the paper like thistledown. This was nothing new. She had done it before.

“Very good,” he said carefully, not wanting to disturb what was clearly an avenue leading back to her life before the accident. There was a chance some thread of memory might be established if he could keep it open long enough. “We might be able to use cone shells for the pawns,” he added casually. “You know the kind?”

Her pencil immediately began to sketch the smooth shape of the cone shell, accurately portraying the quite different surface and colour patches.

She drew a whole family of cone shells, no two alike. She could remember different patterns and variations on the basic shape.

“What’s this one called?” she asked, going back to her first sketch, adding a little more definition.

“It’s a chiragra spider shell.” He wondered if her ability to draw included birds. “Remember the red-tailed tropic bird we saw the other day…”

Her pencil was already flying over the other side of the cover. The bird’s body and wing span were exactly in the right proportion, a difficult task with its long streaming tail feathers.

Suddenly she seemed exhausted and the pencil slipped. A jagged line ruined her sketch. There was no strength left in her fingers. She looked at the drawings as if they had been produced by another person. Daniel said nothing, half expecting some glimmer of recollection from her.

It came as a shock to him to admit that he did not want to know who she was. If she remembered her identity, she would remove herself to rejoin her own circle of friends and family, and take up the threads of her life again.

Sandy got up, a little unsteadily, and went down the veranda steps onto the soft sand. She was elated and excited and a little frightened at the same time. It was another person who had been drawing. Her previous self. Some of that other woman had washed over into this new life.

She heard the scrape of Daniel’s chair on the wooden floor.

“I want to be by myself,” she called back.

She walked down to the sea shore, the warm breeze blowing her hair back from her face. Friendly little waves ran over her bare feet and she hardly noticed. Almost immediately she found a beautifully marked conch shell for her collection. It seemed like a good omen and she was nearly happy.

The limpid shallows were a clear blue and she could see little fish darting this way and that. Their brilliant colours delighted her and she no longer thought of the sea as her enemy. She did not think of it at all, but stood fascinated by the flickering, fragile, gossamer-finned little creatures so bravely exploring the great unknown. Daniel was right. She would have to see them for herself, observe them more closely. But not today.

She became aware of a man coming towards her on the shore. She could see that it was Leon. His reddish hair stood out like a brush. She had caught sight of him several times since the night he had crept into her room, but he always disappeared into the palm groves. He had been swimming. His coffee-skinned body was glistening with moisture, his ragged shorts clinging wetly to his loins. He was swinging a couple of rainbow-hued crayfish in his hand, their claws still waving feebly.”

“For supper,” he announced.

He was about eighteen, Sandy decided. Quite handsome to her eyes, for his features were more Western than African. What a mixture, she thought with a stab of pity. Kinky red hair, dark skin, and the straight flared nose and mouth of some roving European. It was a striking combination.

“Good,” he added, holding up the wriggling creatures for Sandy’s inspection. She flinched. “You see.”

Sandy wished she had more on than her red bikini and one of Daniel’s shirts, for Leon was looking her over quite openly.

“You Mr. Kane’s woman, yes?” he grinned, his big yellowed eyes all knowing despite the isolation of the island. She wondered where he and Bella came from—Mahé perhaps. Surely they did not live on La Petite all the time.

“No, I am not Mr. Kane’s woman,” she said with some spirit.

“Then you like me,” he said immediately.

“I-I beg your pardon?” Sandy hoped she had misunderstood his meaning. But he was closing in on her. Muscles rippled under his skin. He smelt of salt and sweat and spices.

“You very pretty girl,” he said, flashing his strong white teeth. “You have pretty hair. Like sunshine. I come and see you soon.”

Sandy did not know what to say. She did not want to hurt the boy’s feelings, and yet she must be firm with him.

“You must not come to my room again,” she said. “Perhaps I will see you here on the beach.”

His face showed his disappointment, but not for long. He was obviously not too dismayed if she demanded some preliminaries to his courtship.

“I will take you fishing,” he said. “I have a boat.”

“You have a boat?” Her heart leaped, but she did not know why.

“Yes, I have a boat,” he said almost casually. “It is mine. I will show it to you.”

She heard music in her ears, which was strange, for she had never heard music on the island before. But she could definitely hear a high, pulsating sound pounding in and out of her mind. She could not believe it. For a moment, panic gripped her. Was this the beginning of some dreadful brain illness? Perhaps she was ill.

A hand came down onto her shoulder, lightly, but she could feel the fingers gripping her through the thin stuff of the shirt. She knew it was Daniel standing behind her. Suddenly he was everything she knew, everything that was familiar.

“This is my woman,” he told Leon in a normal, even voice, as if he were laying claim to a book or an axe. “She will tell you that she isn’t, but she is. She is mine, and mine only. Do you understand, Leon?”

“I understand, Mr. Kane.”

“Leon was going to take me fishing,” said Sandy, in a valiant attempt to retain some independence.

“You can go fishing with Leon, but not until you have learned to swim. It would be too dangerous.”

“I can swim,” she said.

“Can you?” he asked quietly.

“I could hear music,” she said with a note of desperation. She turned to him. Daniel would know. Daniel would say the right thing. “It was a real music.”

“It was the sea,” he said. “Sometimes I can hear the sea singing. It’s the waves through the reefs and the wind in the palm trees. It was only the sea, Sandy.”

“I thought it was my head. I thought I was ill, going mad.”

“No, you’re not,” he said quite casually. “It was just the sea.”

“I’m not, am I?” she repeated, still needing reassurance. “I’m not mad, am I, Daniel?”

Leon had wandered away with their supper. He was not convinced by Daniel’s declaration. He began to whistle.

“Don’t encourage Leon, or you will end up with a red-haired baby,” said Daniel abruptly.

“I won’t,” Sandy stormed. “What a dreadful thing to say to me.”

“There’s no need for such a show of outraged innocence,” said Daniel. “I was merely warning you that Leon thinks love-making as natural as eating and drinking. And to go fishing with him would be a natural preliminary to such a liaison.”

“I don’t want to listen to another word,” said Sandy, leaving Daniel by himself on the sand.

He watched her stomping back to the bungalow with some amusement. She was beginning to show sparks of fire. A totally docile character would bore him. But he hoped she would not sulk. They had another month to live on the island together.

His work of plotting the arrival of migratory birds was progressing well. He had seen several species which normally spent the winter in East Africa. There was the white stork from mid-Europe, the occasional stray sandwich tern who had overshot South Africa, and the blue-cheeked bee-eater on its way south.

He marvelled how these birds, some weighing less than an ounce, made the immense journeys across continents and oceans. How could they navigate to make landfall? What instinct enabled them to navigate by the sun and the stars?

Three months was not long enough to do all the work he planned. How many years would it be before he got another chance to turn his back on civilisation, to immerse himself in a life uncomplicated by people and pressure?

Yet the unexpected discovery of Sandy had complicated life on La Petite. It was up to him to get her safely to Mahé and to London.

Then he would leave her in the hands of the experts.

He returned late from an afternoon among the shearwaters on the southeast plateau. Sandy came up the veranda steps, her hair tied back in a scarf, her face flushed from standing over a wood fire. She had a plate.

“I’ve made you a breadfruit cake,” she said. “As a peace offering for being so childish yesterday.”

He laughed, and peered at the round object. “And how do you make breadfruit cake?” he asked.

“Mash up cooked breadfruit, mix in grated coconut, eggs and vanilla, and then sort of bake in the fire. Bella helped me.”

“Mmm, good,” pronounced Daniel, his mouth full. “A bit chewy, but definitely different. Try some.”

“There’s masses of things you can do with breadfruit. Boil it, stew it, make it into chips. And you can make sweet things with it, too.”

“The Seychellois will never starve. That’s why they are not really concerned whether they work or not. Their next meal is always by the wayside—coconuts, paw-paw, mangoes, bananas, and of course the versatile breadfruit. All just waiting to be picked.”

“I adore paw-paw,” said Sandy. “I could live on it.”

“Well, don’t eat too much. It’s a fruit that has to be treated with respect.”

“And tonight for your supper I’m cooking a stuffed bécune. Bella has shown me how to split the fish and stuff it with minced onions and chillies. It’s baking now.”

“All for a peace offering? You’ll have to be cheeky to me more often,” he mocked. “Or is Bella training you up so that she can have the occasional day off?”

“Yes, maybe that’s the idea,” she agreed with a twinkling smile. “You’ve been overworking her.”

Daniel broke off another piece of warm cake and leaned back in his chair. “And you know what a bécune fish is, of course?”

“No?”

“Barracuda.”

“Is that bad?” she asked, bemused.

“Not bad, but dangerous. I wouldn’t like to meet one. It belongs to the shark family.”

Her face clouded as if a memory had presented itself. But it was fleeting and she grasped nothing except a moment’s apprehension.

“And yet you are always trying to get me to swim.”

“Sharks don’t come into the warm water. You are quite safe within the reefs. And there’s nothing to be afraid of in a little moon butterfly fish, or a blue demoiselle,” he teased.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “I want to see them. I want to please you, but I can’t make myself.”

He leaned forward and took her hand. “I won’t force you,” he said gently. “All in your own good time.”

She was wearing the daisy-chain bracelet. He noticed that she always wore it. It slipped down her thin wrist to the wider part of her hand. He wondered who gave it to her. Some man perhaps had fastened it on that brown arm the first time. Was it special? Daniel thought it was.

He dropped her hand. The routine of the evening was beginning. A swim before supper. Then after the meal, a game of chess or draughts on the veranda until the light faded. Then Sandy would retire and leave Daniel to listen to Radio Mahé on his transistor radio. He did not seem to mind sleeping on the wooden floor. In fact he had got quite used to it.

Since the June ’77 coup in the Seychelles, the news on Radio Mahé had been rather less local. Although the change of power had caused little more than a ripple among the islanders and even less among the tourists, the radio station had given itself a momentary mental shake, as if to shrug off its dependence on music and requests.

Daniel listened to the monotonous rhythm of Seychellois folk music. It was as different to Western pop music as their Creole cooking was to Wimpy bars. He tried to tune into something different and caught an announcer’s voice.

“…so far no trace has been found. The search has now been called off,
and
Sun Flyer
has been declared officially lost. There are no survivors.
Sun Flyer,
a 53-foot ocean racing schooner, specialised in fishing safaris to the Admirantes, but also won the Cape to Rio race in…”