After his death, she could have retraced her steps back home and started afresh in England, but she didn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the Bahamas. She had fallen too much in love with this beautiful exotic island. Its soft warm breezes, the vibrant colors of its flowers and birds and its saucer-size butterflies, the deep call of its ugly frogs and the distinctive whisper of its palm fronds in her ear—they had all bewitched her. And the vast blue ocean encircled her mind as completely as it encircled New Providence Island, so that she set about building a new life for herself. It had been tough at times. She learned to be wary of people. At first she was employed at the Stanley Sewing Factory, but when that went wrong and she became an outcast, Olive Quinn gave her the waitressing job at the Arcadia and she’d been there ever since.
But now they were trying to take the island away from her, these people who went round sticking knives in men’s guts. They wanted to frighten her. To drive her away. She lifted her head and stared fiercely up at the underbelly of the clouds that hung low over the waves. She was going nowhere.
A solitary Liberator aircraft was forging its way through the sky, buffeted by winds on its course to the new Windsor airfield, and the determined growl of its four engines found an echo inside Dodie’s own head. She swung round to head back to rake through the black debris of the shack before the rain came, but she halted. Up ahead the young man was still there in the shade. Still seated with his back molded to the trunk of the tree as though he’d been there a long time. Still watching her.
Who was he? Why was he there? Come to deliver another warning to her?
No, not this time. She wasn’t going to sit and wait timidly for his warnings. This time she would get to him first and shake the truth out of him. Without hesitation she ran up the beach toward the stranger in the shadows before he could even think of leaving.
Chapter 16
Flynn
Flynn saw her coming up the beach toward him, her long chestnut hair snatched in all directions by the wind, her footprints chasing behind her in the white sand. But he didn’t move. All he did was stub out his cigarette and wish she weren’t so angry. He could see her anger in the quick purposeful strides she took and in the sharp set of her elbows as she raced up the slope.
He had been watching her for more than an hour, wondering what was going on in her head as she made her way through the water. She kept throwing up wide arcs of sparkling sea with her hands, stirring up the heavy roll of the waves as if trying to rearrange her world. She carved a course back and forth along the full length of the cay in her faded blue dress, absorbed in her own thoughts. He had always been quick to read a person’s mood—from the angle of their neck, from the swing of their hips, from the way they held their hands. It was a skill that had kept him alive more than once. He could see that, despite her obvious anger, this girl’s body was caving in on itself, as though someone had taken a hammer to her once too often.
She was not used to death. He could recognize that in her, and the thought of all the blood that spilled on her floor disturbed him more than he cared to admit. It took courage to do what she did for Morrell. Yet she was a shy creature. It showed in the manner in which she looked around her at the world, not quite sure of her place in it. Ready to duck and move away fast. He admired that in her, her alertness.
“I’ve told her nothing.”
Flynn wanted Morrell’s words to be true.
“Don’t let them hurt her, kid.”
The question was—how much could she hurt them?
Dodie.
That’s what poor Johnnie Morrell had said that her name was.
Chapter 17
Dodie
“Who are you?” Dodie didn’t wait for an answer. “What are you doing here at this hour of the morning?”
She took a good look at the man. He was sitting with his head tipped back, looking up at her, and it struck her that here was someone who wore his city toughness like an overcoat. Under a dense mop of dark hair, his brown eyes were quick and capable.
“Why are you watching me?” An angry pulse jumped at the base of her throat.
“It’s a free country, you know,” he said quietly.
He uncoiled easily and rose to his feet. His nicotine-stained fingers brushed his hair from his eyes in a gesture she realized was intended to give her a moment to reflect. But all she wanted to reflect on was why he’d been there so long, spying on her.
“My name is Flynn Hudson.”
His accent was American, from somewhere up in the cold northern states by the sound of it. His skin was pale, as if it didn’t get to see much sun in the normal run of things. Flynn Hudson was in his midtwenties, tall and lean, with a raw uneasy edge to him that was at odds with the calmness in his deep-set eyes and the patience he’d shown in his vigil under the tree.
“Well, Mr. Hudson?”
“I apologize if I’ve upset you by being here. I didn’t mean to. I was just biding my time under the tree, waiting for you to come back up the beach.”
“What is it you want with me?”
“I thought you might need a hand, so—”
“There’s nothing I need from you, Mr. Hudson.” She regarded him warily. “If you are the one who started the fire or if you are here to give me another warning, I’m telling you—and your friends—to stay away from me. You don’t scare me. I’m going nowhere.” Her voice sounded loud in the fresh morning air and her heart had slid into her throat, but she stared intently at the brown eyes so that he would understand that she was not a cockroach to be stamped on. “I repeat what I said, Mr. Hudson. There is nothing I need from you.” She turned on her heel.
“I think there is.”
It made her halt. She waited for more, and when it didn’t come she was obliged to look at him again. He was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, no tie, and he wore brown lace-up shoes that were coated in sand. Respectable enough but the shirt looked cheap and the knees on his trousers were shiny. It appeared that he got by, but only just. He was standing with his hands sunk in his pockets, his gaze scrutinizing her with a fixed attention that unsettled her.
“What exactly do you mean, Mr. Hudson?”
“Nothing much.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I wish it was more but I was too late—to help last night, I mean. The blaze was out of control but I did what I could. I’m real sorry.”
Dodie stared at him wordlessly.
“About the fire,” he added. “I tried to help.”
“Look, Mr. Hudson, I apologize if—”
“Come with me,” he said, “I’ll show you something.”
He headed off in his unsuitable shoes across the sand to the far side of where the hut had been but she couldn’t bring herself to follow. He must have sensed it, because halfway there he cast a glance back over his shoulder and gave her a smile.
“Don’t look so worried. Hell, I’m not going to kidnap you or sell you into white slavery or anything so exotic.”
He said it with a laugh that rolled easily out of him and animated his whole face. Dodie felt herself blush right up to her hairline but he seemed not to notice. He knelt down on the beach beside a small heap wrapped up in what was obviously his jacket, its material crumpled and coated in sand, black smears like tide marks across it.
“Look.”
She came closer as he withdrew the jacket with the panache of a conjuror. Her mouth fell open and a sound came from her. It didn’t form into words.
“I figured you might want it,” he said.
It was her mother’s sewing machine. Dodie’s knees abruptly buckled and she dropped to the sand beside him, reaching out to touch the machine’s wheel. Its wooden base was badly charred and the black enamel paint on its metal body was blistered, but amazingly the workings looked to be still intact. Dodie felt a hollowness open up inside her that was the exact shape of the sewing machine.
“Yes, I saw you last night.” She remembered him. “With the long stick in your hand raking out objects from the fire. I thought you were stealing. I didn’t know that you”—she waved a hand at the damaged machine—“. . . that you . . .”
“Worth saving?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.”
She gathered the blackened machine into her arms. When she cradled it on her lap her isolation did not feel so complete. But when she finally thought to lift her head to thank Flynn Hudson, he had gone from her side and was striding away through the trees.
* * *
Dodie was on her hands and knees in her vegetable garden, her hair tied back to keep it from whipping into her eyes. She was finding it strange, adjusting to owning nothing. It should be easy and yet it felt hard.
She laid a hand on the edge of the hole she had opened up in the earth in front of her, big enough to hold a modest metal strongbox wrapped in sacking. But now she had enlarged it to take the battered sewing machine as well. Lovingly she had bathed the filth off this one thing she possessed that had been her mother’s and she bartered a clutch of potatoes for a towel and strip of oilcloth to wrap it in. Now that it was buried safely alongside the strongbox, she felt better.
She again checked the beach, but Flynn Hudson had not returned. She could see no one near. She listened. There was only the shiver of the wind through the pines and the boom of the waves reverberating up the beach. She could smell the coming storm. Quickly she opened the strongbox and from it removed an envelope that held seven pound notes. She removed two. She wouldn’t starve, not yet anyway. This time she didn’t allow herself to spend a moment on the yellowing photograph of her parents that lay at the bottom of the strongbox or on the seductive gilt-edged pages of her father’s Bible, but snatched out one of the two gold coins tucked in the corner and slammed the lid shut.
Chapter 18
Ella
Ella sliced the top off her boiled egg and glanced up from her breakfast plate to find Reggie watching her.
It was always the same. After a night like last night. As if the strings that controlled his face had turned to elastic and stretched to let his features soften. His lips were parted in a loose smile as he gazed at her without feeling the need to make small talk about his round of golf. She liked him like this. With his guard down and that undisciplined look in his eyes which she knew meant he was thinking of her in bed.
Ella never said no to her husband in bed, not even when she was exhausted or he was drunk. She felt she owed him that. He had given her a nice life—not the one she had expected, but still nice—and he was unfailingly loving and kind to her. They both knew in their heart of hearts that there was a slight tilt in the balance of their marriage, that he loved her more than she loved him. But he never pushed it, never let himself express disappointment when she delivered perfunctory sex in response to his tentative approach each night.
He seemed happy enough. He certainly never complained. They had their little signs, the telling signals that Ella thought of as their mating ritual. She and Reggie nearly always read in bed—she would get stuck into the latest Hemingway or Ngaio Marsh while he studied some office documents, memorizing streams of facts and figures with which to brief the duke the next day. Ella was always impressed by her husband’s ability to remember things.
After exactly twenty minutes in bed, timed by his watch, Reggie would carefully shuffle his papers together, clear his throat, stretch out his arms with a yawn, and turn off his bedside lamp. That was the signal. She would put aside her book but didn’t turn off her light until afterward. She liked to see what she was doing. Twenty years of marriage and yet Reggie approached her each night as if she might say no. A tentative leg hooked over hers, a hand stroking her waist, a kiss on her neck. Nothing too intrusive. Not until she turned to him and kissed his mouth, her tongue stalking his.
Time and again she wished he would come at her like a lion, claws gripping her tight, snarling and snapping and taking what was his by right. But each time he would stroke and caress her body as though he’d never seen it before and was struck dumb by his good fortune. He’d told her he had never slept with any other woman and she believed him, but more and more often now she found herself wishing that he had. When he thrust inside her, he always watched her face closely, checking that he was not hurting or offending in some way. And she was tempted to tell him that tedium was by far the worst pain—but she never did, of course.
Then, once in a while, she lost patience. She would straddle him fiercely and ravage him till they were both slick with sweat, his skin impregnated with hers and the taste of her breasts on his tongue. No endearments. Just bruises on his lips and scratches on his thighs. When she finally collapsed off him with her lungs heaving and her body still shuddering with release, Reggie would turn his face away from her, a blush seeping up the side of his neck.
“Good night,” he would murmur.
“Good night, Reggie.”
And then this. This stretching of the strings of his face when she looked at him the next morning, as though she had somehow pulled him out of shape. Neither of them ever voiced any comment or made any reference to the night before. Ella took a bite out of her toast and smiled at her husband in a civilized manner, but this morning Reggie put down his napkin, rose to his feet, and walked over to the French windows. He remained standing there with his back to her.
“What is it, Reggie?”
She saw the slight straightening of his well-padded back. When he turned, she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he was working himself up to say.
“I am concerned, Ella.”
“What about?”
“The danger that you and Tilly Latcham were put in yesterday. It could have been far worse than a bucketful of pig’s blood thrown over you.”
“Ah.”
Ella did not want to discuss it further. They had talked it to death last night.
“You could have been seriously hurt.”
“But we weren’t, Reggie darling.”
“That’s not the point. We saw last year what can happen when a riot runs out of control.”
“But yesterday was nothing more than a small disgruntled group of workers who—”
“For heaven’s sake, Ella, don’t underestimate what that labor dispute last year signaled. Those black workers faced us down and won. Don’t forget that there are only ten thousand of us, compared with sixty thousand of them. I tell you this is just the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
Reggie smoothed his lips, taking the thorns out of his words. “Of the end of the natural order of society in this colony. One day the native blacks will demand to be our equals and then . . .” He smiled sadly.
Ella felt a ripple of alarm. Reggie had never voiced that conviction to her before. Yet she could imagine him closeted behind doors up in Government House with the governor and a few select and powerful Bay Street merchants—all discussing options. The beginning of the end. She experienced a sharp pulse of panic.
The riot last summer had come about as an outburst by black workers. Two thousand of them crammed themselves into Parliament Square outside the pink government buildings and demanded fair pay compared with the highly paid American laborers who had been brought in to work on what was known as the Project. This was the construction of the two airfields for the U.S. and RAF forces.
Before the war, the Bahamas was one of the most impoverished colonies in the Empire. The lack of employment on the islands made life hard. Most black inhabitants led a hand-to-mouth existence as both the fishing and sponge industries were in sharp decline. With news of the Project, the whole atmosphere in Nassau changed and Bahamians came flocking from the outlying islands to find work. But the government had miscalculated—Reggie included. They paid Bahamians half what they were paying the America
n laborers for doing exactly the same job—four shillings a day instead of eight. Ella could not believe that so-called intelligent men would be so stupid. Of course anger flared. Of course it ended in a terrifying riot. The mob exploded in a two-day rampage of violence, smashing shops and looting up and down the length of Bay Street, the very heart of white colonial territory.
Peace was restored only after four men were killed by British troops and over forty injured. Finally a new pay deal was struck. Life in Nassau seemed to stumble back to normal, but underneath the tranquil surface there flowed a dark undercurrent that hadn’t been there before.
That’s why Ella—and Tilly as well—had reacted so badly yesterday in the car. This time it turned out to be nothing more than a handful of young stonemasons who were angered by a wage cut. Buckets of pig’s blood had been their weapon rather than staves. But it was enough to remind everyone of the terrors of last year when white women dared not leave their houses and white men lost their livelihoods when their shops were destroyed.
Ella pushed her plate away. “What are you trying to say to me, Reggie?”
“That I have spoken with the duke and with Colonel Lindop. We have agreed that until we are certain that the current situation presents no threat, the commissioner is assigning a policeman as bodyguard to a number of wives of prominent figures on the island. So—”
“No, Reggie.”
“So you will have a bodyguard to accompany you outside at all times until—”
“No, Reggie. No.”
“Until we are confident there is no further danger.”
“Reggie! You’re not listening to me.”
“It will probably only be for a week or two.”
“I refuse to—”
He came toward her with quick purposeful strides that took her by surprise. He leaned over her where she sat and took her face between his hands. Not with the tentativeness she was used to. His palms were rigid and the force behind them made her teeth ache. His gaze was set on her face and what she saw in his eyes shocked her: it was stark unbridled rage.
The Far Side of the Sun Page 9
