by Clive Barker
“What’s happening, Ray? Where are we?”
Ray didn’t look up from his computations, which earned him a frown.
“We’ve got a bloody awful navigator, that’s all,” he said.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Jonathan protested, clearly hoping for a show of sympathy from Angela. None was forthcoming.
“But where are we?” she asked again.
“Good morning, Angela,” I said; I too was ignored.
“Is it an island?” she said.
“Of course it’s an island: I just don’t know which one yet,” Ray replied.
“Perhaps it’s Barra,” she suggested.
Ray pulled a face. “We’re nowhere near Barra,” he said. “If you’ll just let me retrace our steps—”
Retrace our steps, in the sea? Just Ray’s Jesus fixation, I thought, looking back at the beach. It was impossible to guess how big the place was, the mist erased the landscape after a hundred yards. Perhaps somewhere in that grey wall there was human habitation.
Ray, having located the blank spot on the map where we were supposedly stranded, climbed down on to the beach and took a critical look at the bow. More to be out of Angela’s way than anything else I climbed down to join him. The round stones of the beach were cold and slippery on the bare soles of my feet. Ray smoothed his palm down the side of the “Emmanuelle,” almost a caress, then crouched to look at the damage to the bow.
“I don’t think we’re holed,” he said, “but I can’t be sure.”
“We’ll float off come high tide,” said Jonathan, posing on the bow, hands on hips, “no sweat,” he winked at me, “no sweat at all.”
“Will we shit float off!,” Ray snapped. “Take a look for yourself.”
“Then we’ll get some help to haul us off.” Jonathan’s confidence was unscathed.
“And you can damn well fetch someone, you asshole.”
“Sure, why not? Give it an hour or so for the fog to shift and I’ll take a walk, find some help.”
He sauntered away.
“I’ll put on some coffee,” Angela volunteered.
Knowing her, that’d take an hour to brew. There was time for a stroll.
I started along the beach.
“Don’t go too far, love,” Ray called.
“No.”
Love, he said. Easy word; he meant nothing by it.
The sun was warmer now, and as I walked I stripped off the sweater. My bare breasts were already brown as two nuts, and, I thought, about as big. Still, you can’t have everything. At least I’d got two neurons in my head to rub together, which was more than could be said for Angela; she had tits like melons and a brain that’d shame a mule.
The sun still wasn’t getting through the mist properly. It was filtering down on the island fitfully, and its light flattened everything out, draining the place of color or weight, reducing the sea and the rocks and the rubbish on the beach to one bleached-out grey, the color of over boiled meat.
After only a hundred yards something about the place began to depress me, so I turned back. On my right tiny, lisping waves crept up to the shore and collapsed with a weary slopping sound on the stones. No majestic rollers here: just the rhythmical slop, slop, slop of an exhausted tide.
I hated the place already.
Back at the boat, Ray was trying the radio, but for some reason all he could get was a blanket of white noise on every frequency. He cursed it awhile, then gave up. After half an hour, breakfast was served, though we had to make do with sardines, tinned mushrooms and the remains of the French toast. Angela served this feast with her usual aplomb, looking as though she was performing a second miracle with loaves and fishes. It was all but impossible to enjoy the food anyway; the air seemed to drain all the taste away.
“Funny isn’t it—” began Jonathan.
“Hilarious,” said Ray.
“—there’s no fog horns. Mist, but no horns. Not even the sound of a motor; weird.”
He was right. Total silence wrapped us up, a damp and smothering hush. Except for the apologetic slop of the waves and the sound of our voices, we might as well have been deaf.
I sat at the stern and looked into the empty sea. It was still grey, but the sun was beginning to strike other colors in it now: a somber green, and, deeper, a hint of blue-purple. Below the boat I could see strands of kelp and Maiden’s Hair, toys to the tide, swaying. It looked inviting: and anything was better than the sour atmosphere on the “Emmanuelle”.
“I’m going for a swim,” I said.
“I wouldn’t, love,” Ray replied.
“Why not?”
“The current that threw us up here must be pretty strong, you don’t want to get caught in it.”
“But the tide’s still coming in: I’d only be swept back to the beach.”
“You don’t know what cross currents there are out there.
Whirlpools even: they’re quite common. Suck you down in a flash.”
I looked out to sea again. It looked harmless enough, but then I’d read that these were treacherous waters, and thought better of it.
Angela had started a little sulking session because nobody had finished her immaculately prepared breakfast. Ray was playing up to it. He loved babying her, letting her play damn stupid games. It made me sick.
I went below to do the washing up, tossing the slops out of the porthole into the sea. They didn’t sink immediately. They floated in an oily patch, half-eaten mushrooms and slivers of sardines bobbing around on the surface, as though someone had thrown up on the sea. Food for crabs, if any self-respecting crab condescended to live here.
Jonathan joined me in the galley, obviously still feeling a little foolish, despite the bravado. He stood in the doorway, trying to catch my eye, while I pumped up some cold water into the bowl and half heartedly rinsed the greasy plastic plates. All he wanted was to be told I didn’t think this was his fault, and yes, of course he was a kosher Adonis. I said nothing.
“Do you mind if I lend a hand?” he said.
“There’s not really room for two,” I told him, trying not to sound too dismissive. He flinched nevertheless: this whole episode had punctured his self-esteem more badly than I’d realized, despite his strutting around.
“Look,” I said gently, “why don’t you go back on deck: take in the sun before it gets too hot?”
“I feel like a shit,” he said.
“It was an accident.”
“An utter shit.”
“Like you said, we’ll float off with the tide.”
He moved out of the doorway and down into the galley; his proximity made me feel almost claustrophobic. His body was too large for the space: too tanned, too assertive.
“I said there wasn’t any room, Jonathan.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck, and instead of shrugging it off I let it stay there, gently massaging the muscles. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, but the lassitude of the place seemed to have got into my system. His other hand was palm down on my belly, moving up to my breast. I was indifferent to these ministrations: if he wanted this he could have it.
Above deck Angela was gasping in the middle of a giggling fit, almost choking on her hysteria. I could see her in my mind’s eye, throwing back her head, shaking her hair loose. Jonathan had unbuttoned his shorts, and had let them drop. The gift of his foreskin to God had been neatly made; his erection was so hygienic in its enthusiasm it seemed incapable of the least harm. I let his mouth stick to mine, let his tongue explore my gums, insistent as a dentist’s finger. He slid my bikini down far enough to get access, fumbled to position himself, then pressed in.
Behind him, the stair creaked, and I looked over his shoulder in time to glimpse Ray, bending at the hatch and staring down at Jonathan’s buttocks and at the tangle of our arms. Did he see, I wondered, that I felt nothing; did he understand that I did this dispassionately, and could only have felt a twinge of desire if I substituted his head, his back, his cock for
Jonathan’s? Soundlessly, he withdrew from the stairway; a moment passed, in which Jonathan said he loved me, then I heard Angela’s laughter begin again as Ray described what he’d just witnessed. Let the bitch think whatever she pleased: I didn’t care.
Jonathan was still working at me with deliberate but uninspired strokes, a frown on his face like that of a schoolboy trying to solve some impossible equation. Discharge came without warning, signalled only by a tightening of his hold on my shoulders, and a deepening of his frown. His thrusts slowed and stopped; his eyes found mine for a flustered moment. I wanted to kiss him, but he’d lost all interest. He withdrew still hard, wincing. “I’m always sensitive when I’ve come,” he murmured, hauling his shorts up. “Was it good for you?”
I nodded. It was laughable; the whole thing was laughable. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with this little boy of twenty-six, and Angela, and a man who didn’t care if I lived or died. But then perhaps neither did I.I thought, for no reason, of the slops on the sea, bobbing around, waiting for the next wave to catch them.
Jonathan had already retreated up the stairs. I boiled up some coffee, standing staring out of the porthole and feeling his come dry to a corrugated pearliness on the inside of my thigh.
Ray and Angela had gone by the time I’d brewed the coffee, off for a walk on the island apparently, looking for help.
Jonathan was sitting in my place at the stern, gazing out at the mist. More to break the silence than anything I said:
“I think it’s lifted a bit.”
“Has it?”
I put a mug of black coffee beside him.
“Thanks.”
“Where are the others?”
“Exploring.”
He looked round at me, confusion in his eyes. “I still feel like a shit.”
I noticed the bottle of gin on the deck beside him.
“Bit early for drinking, isn’t it?”
“Want some?”
“It’s not even eleven.”
“Who cares?”
He pointed out to sea. “Follow my finger,” he said.
I leaned over his shoulder and did as he asked.
“No, you’re not looking at the right place. Follow my finger—see it?”
“Nothing.”
“At the edge of the mist. It appears and disappears. There! Again!”
I did see something in the water, twenty or thirty yards from the “Emmanuelle’s” stern. Brown-colored, wrinkled, turning over.
“It’s a seal,” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“The sun’s warming up the sea. They’re probably coming in to bask in the shallows.”
“It doesn’t look like a seal. It rolls in a funny way—”
“Maybe a piece of flotsam—” “Could be.”
He swigged deeply from the bottle.
“Leave some for tonight.”
“Yes, mother.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Just the waves on the beach. Slop. Slop. Slop.
Once in a while the seal, or whatever it was, broke surface, rolled, and disappeared again.
Another hour, I thought, and the tide will begin to turn. Float us off this little afterthought of creation.
“Hey!” Angela’s voice, from a distance. “Hey, you guys!”
You guys she called us.
Jonathan stood up, hand up to his face against the glare of sunlit rock. It was much brighter now: and getting hotter all the time.
“She’s waving to us,” he said, disinterested.
“Let her wave.”
“You guys!” she screeched, her arms waving. Jonathan cupped his hands around his mouth and bawled a reply:
“What do you want?”
“Come and see,” she replied.
“She wants us to come and see.”
“I heard.”
“Come on,” he said, “nothing to lose.”
I didn’t want to move, but he hauled me up by the arm. It wasn’t worth arguing. His breath was inflammable.
It was difficult making our way up the beach. The stones were not wet with sea water, but covered in a slick film of grey-green algae, like sweat on a skull.
Jonathan was having even more difficulty getting across the beach than I was. Twice he lost his balance and fell heavily on his backside, cursing. The seat of his shorts was soon a filthy olive color, and there was a tear where his buttocks showed.
I was no ballerina, but I managed to make it, step by slow step, trying to avoid the large rocks so that if I slipped I wouldn’t have far to fall.
Every few yards we’d have to negotiate a line of stinking seaweed. I was able to jump them with reasonable elegance but Jonathan, pissed and uncertain of his balance, ploughed through them, his naked feet completely buried in the stuff. It wasn’t just kelp: there was the usual detritus washed up on any beach: the broken bottles, the rusting Coke cans, the scum-stained cork, globs of tar, fragments of crabs, pale yellow durex. And crawling over these stinking piles of dross were inch-long, fat-eyed blue flies. Hundreds of them, clambering over the shit, and over each other, buzzing to be alive, and alive to be buzzing.
It was the first life we’d seen.
I was doing my best not to fall flat on my face as I stepped across one of these lines of seaweed, when a little avalanche of pebbles began off to my left. Three, four, five stones were skipping over each other towards the sea, and setting another dozen stones moving as they jumped.
There was no visible cause for the effect.
Jonathan didn’t even bother to look up; he was having too much trouble staying vertical.
The avalanche stopped: run out of energy. Then another: this time between us and the sea. Skipping stones: bigger this time than the last, and gaining more height as they leapt.
The sequence was longer than before: it knocked stone into stone until a few pebbles actually reached the sea at the end of the dance.
Plop.
Dead noise.
Plop. Plop.
Ray appeared from behind one of the big boulders at the height of the beach, beaming like a loon.
“There’s life on Mars,” he yelled and ducked back the way he’d come.
A few more perilous moments and we reached him, the sweat sticking our hair to our foreheads like caps.
Jonathan looked a little sick.
“What’s the big deal?” he demanded.
“Look what we’ve found,” said Ray, and led the way beyond the boulders.
The first shock.
Once we got to the height of the beach we were looking down on to the other side of the island. There was more of the same drab beach, and then sea. No inhabitants, no boats, no sign of human existence. The whole place couldn’t have been more than half a mile across: barely the back of a whale.
But there was some life here; that was the second shock.
In the sheltering ring of the large, bald, boulders, which crowned the island was a fenced-in compound. The posts were rotting in the salt air, but a tangle of rusted barbed-wire had been wound around and between them to form a primitive pen. Inside the pen there was a patch of coarse grass, and on this pitiful lawn stood three sheep. And Angela.
She was standing in the penal colony, stroking one of the inmates and cooing in its blank face.
“Sheep,” she said, triumphantly.
Jonathan was there before me with his snapped remark: “So what?”
“Well it’s strange, isn’t it?” said Ray. “Three sheep in the middle of a little place like this?”
“They don’t look well to me,” said Angela.
She was right. The animals were the worse for their exposure to the elements; their eyes were gummy with matter, and their fleeces hung off their hides in knotted clumps, exposing panting flanks. One of them had collapsed against the barbed-wire, and seemed unable to right itself again, either too depleted or too sick.
“It’s cruel,” said Angela.
I had to agree: it seemed positivel
y sadistic, locking up these creatures without more than a few blades of grass to chew on, and a battered tin bath of stagnant water, to quench their thirst.
“Odd isn’t is?” said Ray.
“I’ve cut my foot.” Jonathan was squatting on the top of one of the flatter boulders, peering at the underside of his right foot.
“There’s glass on the beach,” I said, exchanging a vacant stare with one of the sheep.
“They’re so deadpan,” said Ray. “Nature’s straight men.”
Curiously, they didn’t look so unhappy with their condition, their stares were philosophical. Their eyes said: I’m just a sheep, I don’t expect you to like me, care for me, preserve me, except for your stomach’s sake. There were no angry baas, no stamping of a frustrated hoof.
Just three grey sheep, waiting to die.
Ray had lost interest in the business. He was wandering back down the beach, kicking a can ahead of him. It rattled and skipped, reminding me of the stones.
“We should let them free,” said Angela.
I ignored her; what was freedom in a place like this? She persisted, “Don’t you think we should?”
“No.”
“They’ll die.”
“Somebody put them here for a reason.”
“But they’ll die.”
“They’ll die on the beach if we let them out. There’s no food for them.”
“We’ll feed them.”
“French toast and gin,” suggested Jonathan, picking a sliver of glass from his sole.
“We can’t just leave them.”
“It’s not our business,” I said. It was all getting boring. Three sheep. Who cared if they lived or—
I’d thought that about myself an hour earlier. We had something in common, the sheep and I.
My head was aching.
“They’ll die,” whined Angela, for the third time.
“You’re a stupid bitch,” Jonathan told her. The remark was made without malice: he said it calmly, as a statement of plain fact.
