The Love Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  'Jesus,' said Davies quietly, looking at the Australian's face, 'I always knew you were mad, but it's got worse.'

  'Listen,' said Conway, leaning forward. 'You can get people to believe anything. People mate, any sort of people.

  People in cities, in out‑stations, on funny little islands. Tell them something properly ‑ anything, tell them it's going to rain blue frogs or the sun is coming up black tomorrow, and they'll swallow it. How do you think politicians and public relations blokes get by? Telling the truth? Do they hell! They get by because the bigger the lie the more people believe it. And especially if they want to believe it. And over there, on St Paul's, they want old Dodson‑Smith to come riding down that hill on his motor bike more than anything. More than life even. They're ripe for it.'

  'Couldn't you have offered them money to come with you?' interrupted Davies practically. 'Money usually works anywhere.'

  'Anywhere else,' Conway conceded dolefully. 'I tried that. They said no thanks because they can manage till the copra collection. So I could stuff my money.' He looked thoughtful. 'Mind you, I did get a scent of an idea. But I'll leave that for now.'

  'Well how are you going to work this miracle? And, what's important to me, where do I come in?' said Davies.

  Conway picked at the stubble on his chin as though seeking out weeds. 'You and Abe,' he said.

  'You've told Abe?'

  'Yeah, I had to rope him in. I need his boat.'

  'What about Pollet?'

  'No, not yet. In a funny way I think he'd be a risk.'

  'You mean he's got a decent regard for the natives?'

  'If you like.'

  Davies said: 'All right, what is it and when?'

  Conway grinned. 'I wish it was as simple as that, sport. But it just ain't. It will need to be soon. During the next three nights, I think. We've got to get over there in the dark, get around the back of the island, the volcanic side, and climb up over the top...'

  'We've got to?' queried Davies.

  Conway glared at him. 'Maybe me, maybe both of us. It depends on how much help I need. Maybe I won't ask you, anyway. I can handle it myself. I need a bell...'

  'A bell,' said Davies.

  'A bell,' confirmed Conway. 'And a sort of black cloak, which is what this Dodson‑Srnith character is supposed to arrive in ‑ according to all the stuff in the records and observations of the island.'

  'Where did you get that?'

  Conway shuddered. 'Mrs Flagg,' he said. He glanced at Davies but Davies did not react. 'The bell rung continuously is a sign that they must prepare for war. I mean, I don't intend to ride that motor bike down to the village and tell them in my Sydney accent that I'm Dodson‑Smith and they've got to go off to Vietnam like good fellas.'

  'That is a bit thin,' commented Davies wryly.

  'And risky,' agreed Conway.

  'So you ring the bell like a muffin man and they'll follow you anywhere,' said Davies.

  Conway glanced at him. 'They're only going to see me from a distance,' he said. 'The whole village will go down on the beach.'

  'In the middle of the night.'

  'I've worked out a little diversion there ‑ a sort of counter‑attraction. Like a sign, shall we say, or a vision.'

  'Like what?'

  'Not yet. You']] see if you come. Anyway, when DodsonSmith turns up he's going to ride through the village ‑which will be empty because they'll all be on the beach ‑and along that track that runs just above the beach, remember it?'

  Davies nodded: 'And ringing his bell,'he said.

  'Right. So they know he's turned up and so they know he's sounding the war signal.'

  'Then what?'

  'Then old Dodson‑Smith pisses off along the track for a mile to the little pebble beach at the north of the island where Abe's boat will be ‑ with you and Abe in it ‑ and we get the sacred bike on board via a ramp from the pebbles, no tracks or anything see ‑ and clear out quick.'

  'And the next day you'll go over there and then we get a dozen men with their bags packed, itching to get at the VietCong,' said Davies. 'Absolute bloody lunacy.'

  'Listen,' said Conway. 'I'll bet you that they'll come with me within a few days. How much will you bet?'

  Davies said: 'It's so mad. It's unbelievable.'

  Conway looked at the Welshman's negative face. 'Listen,' he said fiercely. 'Can you picture that day when we went over with the harmonium. Was anything more mad, more unbelievable, than that? Go on tell me.'

  'I suppose it was really. Judging by normal standards.'

  'That's the trouble. You're using the wrong measure. Normal standards don't count here. I know you think the whole thing is far out but what you've got to admit is that everything is like that here. Look at this Mrs Flagg and her natives with their dicks all bound up. Look at this Unknown Soldier business. If that's not looney I don't know what is. Look at this nut with his bread sign flashing all night, and this Chinese place where they have their meetings. And the meetings. It's like an insane asylum, anyway. What might seem madness in your place, what d'you call it? ...'

  'Newport,' said Davies helpfully. 'Mon.'

  'Yeah, Newport, Mon, and what might seem like madness in Sydney is normal here. It works! It's got something to do with the sun and the isolation and the way the moon is, and the season. It has got everything to do with all these.'

  'I still think it's barmy,' said Davies. 'God, is it worth all that?'

  Conway bit his top lip into the stubble. 'It is. To me it is anyway. I never start a thing I don't finish, son. I'm known for that.' Davies got up and looked out of the split in the window blind. The ancient Chinese across the road was putting up the communist flag of his homeland and a large photograph of Mao and his contribution to the street decorations for the royal visit. Davies shut his eyes and turned into the room again.

  'What sort of chance does Abe give it? 'he asked.

  'Every chance. He's like Pollet, he knows this place, these islands, and these people. He knows the mad things that happen, and especially with the natives. He knows their minds, the superstition, even when it's supposed to be religion.' He leaned forward towards Davies. 'Listen, people in these islands sit down and die, just like that, because somebody else says they've got to sit down and die. They kill their parents if they feel they've got to kill them. And it's not just to go to the bleeding orphans outing, either. Their whole lives, mate, are built up on terrible fears, bogie.. wogies, ghosts, and Dodson‑Smith if you get me.

  'Look, in the South Hibernian Islands the people went religion mad. They were so full of the Holy Ghost they ate all the missionaries and their wives. So brimming with the spirit that they couldn't help themselves. And that wasn't any voodoo religion, it was a substitute for voodoo, and they called it Christianity. They put everything primitive into it, everything that's powerful in their lives and the lives of their tribal ancestors for donkey's years back. They call on Jesus and then lay down on a bed of red hot coals. And they get up again without a blister. I'd like to see your Archbishop of Canterbury do that.'

  Davies said: 'And you're prepared to stir them up, nutty children though they are, just to get your little thing going.'

  Conway said: 'Aw, now come on, sport. Don't let's get down to ethics. If you like I'll give you the whole works, Hbombs, napalm, women, and kids. I can recite the lot. Because I've seen it. I've been there. Ethics are no worry of mine. I just want to get these blackies on the way to Aussie.'

  He took an impulsive swig at the beer bottle, found it empty, and dropped it dully on the floor. 'Are you still with me? 'he said to Davies.

  Davies had gone to the window again. He looked out on to the enclosed hot street. The Chinese shopkeeper was showing his flag and his portrait of Mao to his Vietnamese neighbour.

  Davies said slowly: 'It seems that the insanity in this place is catching. It must be the heat or something.'

  'Good,' smiled Conway. 'I'm going to need you.'

  'Well, listen before we go any fu
rther,' said Davies. 'First of all I want to tell you that at the first sign of murder, even if it's yours, I'm pissing off out of it with Abe.'

  'Abe will be yards ahead,' said Conway confidently. 'If I have to swim, I have to swim.'

  Davies said: 'Secondly, since I've turned from a butter and fats salesman to a wholesale kidnapper and southseas adventurer. perhaps we could come to some agreement about what I'm going to be paid.'

  'Why not?' said Conway. 'Two hundred Aussie dollars, flat rate, is that all right?' He held his hand up to Davies. 'I'll give you a note of agreement, don't worry, just in case I don't get back. After all, mate, why should you lose?'

  'Why should 1?' agreed Davies.

  Thirteen

  Newport was so far away as the planets that night, Dayies thought. Newport with its wet evenings and the lamps like water lilies on the pavements. The car sizzling through the rain, and the bikes going by making whispered hissings like snakes. The neon over the Odeon, the river mud under the bridge, the copper dome of the tech gone mouldy green, the old town hall crowded by buildings all sides so that its clock tower peered helplessly out like a pinioned man. The bandstand in Belle Vue Park, the buses on the Cardiff Road, and those big ships riding in the meadows in the south, just as little Mag and David had seen them on that day.

  Abe was already aboard the boat, working in an efficient manner, coiling a rope, banging his foot in a testing manner on a board, giving the engine a little oil from a can like a nurse giving a child night‑time medicine. Conway stood on the jetty, looking very big in the dark, feet astride, staring over the tired sea to where he knew the hump of St Paul's squatted. There was no moon that night and there were never any lights showing from the island at that distance.

  It felt very unreal to Davies; unreal and yet somehow natural enough that all this should be happening in these hot places. It was he who was the unreality. He, Issy Davies, South Wales factory‑hand, turned immigrant, turned butter and fats salesman, turned sailor, explorer, adventurer, and God knows what else before the morning came. But the setting was right. The dark sea heavy and warm, the stirrings of the Pacific dark; the close sky. He had just left Bird lying diagonally across her bed, beautiful, resting, her sweat cooling. How did all these things come to take place. As Conway had said, they could only happen here. In Newport they would never believe you.

  He put his fingers up and felt his face. The night perspration was lying across it like drizzle. His chin felt hard. Pollet had cut his hair for him. The Belgian cut the hair of the natives in the villages, kept the bits, and used them in the manufacture of Melanesian dolls which he carved from wood. He had chopped and changed and chopped again until Davies's hair was hanging around his head like tails.

  Bird had loved him profusely that evening, lying on that ridiculously erotic bed with him above her, held in her soft arms. As they lay and moved together, they no longer needed to converse in their sex, big moths and other airborne insects flew in frenzy about the globe of the lamp by the bed, sending whirring shadows over the skins of the lovers. When Davies loved her, when his body was beside her and within her, he could find no room for any other thought or emotion. Only the great swollen sickness that she drew from him with her love, the feeling of it swelling up, gathering inside him, and then flooding away, leaving him clean and relieved. Then he could look from the window out to the assembled night and its staring stars, and send his thoughts away through the sky and back to distant places again. Then he wondered about the components of him that were stretching over so many thousand miles. How could a man be in two such separate places at once? She, with true woman's insight, never asked him where his thoughts were. She lay and felt him, all over his body, touching each part, examining him almost, his face, his hair, his ears, front and back, his chest, his stomach, his backside, his legs, and his loving parts.

  Once, as he stared from the bed to the world she asked: 'Looking for the boat?'

  'The boat? 'he asked stupidly.

  'The Baffin Bay?'

  'No,' he said, looking around to her and seeing the pain in her face. 'No. Never thought of it. It'll come some day, I suppose.'

  'No supposing is necessary,' she said firmly. 'It will be

  here soon. It is on the ocean now. I hope it meets a hurri‑cane or a typhoon, Davies.'

  He had laughed quietly and took her choice breasts in his hands and kissed them. 'Poor Captain MacAmdrews, and Greta and old Curry and Rice,' he laughed. 'What about them in your hurricane?'

  She had smiled ruefully. 'Well I hope they are saved by a passing boat,' she conceded.

  'In a hurricane?'

  'Yes, it will be a miracle rescue. The whole world will discuss it. But I hope The Baffin Bay never gets here.'

  'It will,' he had said surely. 'By Tuesday.'

  On the jetty he stood just behind Conway. Conway, who, he knew, would leave Dahlia very easily and she would leave him the same way. They were travelling lovers, they would never forget, but they would never particularly remember either. That was a good thing to be, a travelling lover.

  Davies was wearing some sailcloth jeans and a blue shirt with one button the middle of an original family of five. He still retained his tennis shoes, although they had aged and his big toe was thrusting through the right one. He felt that his body was brown and tough. Strangely he felt as though he had grown. That night he felt he could have undertaken a fight with Conway.

  Conway said: 'Ready, then?'

  Davies said: 'Ready. Why is Abe so keen? Have you paid him?'

  'Half,' said Conway looking at Davies sideways. 'The other half later.'

  'What about me?' said Davies. 'Don't I get anything?'

  'Christ,' muttered Conway. 'Show a man danger and he starts counting the pennies.'

  'Dollars,' corrected Davies. 'Aussie dollars. Let's be businesslike.'

  'All right,' agreed Conway. 'I said I'd give you a payment note, is that good enough? It's a hell of a fine time to discuss your terms, sport.'

  'It's the best,' said Davies. 'A payment note will do if you haven't got the change on you.'

  Conway grimaced. 'The day of the gifted amateur is over, eh? Well, as it happens I've got your note all ready here and signed. You would have got it. Do you want me to stamp your health card?'

  'I'll just take the note,' said Davies. He took it. Two hundred Australian dollars. A hundred pounds. That would get him some of the way home, anyway. He folded it carefully and slotted it into the back of his trousers. 'Right, I'm ready,' he said, clambering down into the boat. 'Best of luck, Messiah.'

  Abe watched them studiously, especially Davies. He felt surprised at Davies. He had always thought he was a bit soft. Playing that harmonium, that morning on the beach at St Paul's, he had really thought he was a bit soft. This place changed people.

  They left the harbour quietly, the vessel snuffling along the sea like a smelling puppy. Davies had not been among the islands at night, except for his arrival in The Baffin Bay. St Peter's slunk off astern, black except for the stark fluttering of the 'Bread' sign over Livesley's shop. It reminded Davies strangely of a can‑can dancer lifting a many-coloured skirt. He watched it and hummed out the time and tune of Orpheus in the Underworld.

  'Cheerful,' commented Conway. He handed Davies an Australian army water bottle.

  Davies looked at him and then the bottle. 'No thanks,' he said.

  'Scotch.'

  'Sorry.' He took the bottle and had a drink, feeling the fiery glow coming through the hard, rimmed neck. He felt it farming out quickly inside him. 'Aussie army issue?' he asked.

  'For special combat assignments,' said Conway. 'This thing here is a gun. A pistol. Aussie army issue again. It's for you.'

  Davies made a face at the weapon. 'I told you, didn't 1? Any trouble and I'm running not fighting.'

  Conway said: 'Listen, son, all sorts of things could happen. If you get two hundred of those fanatical buggers

  around you waving clubs and spears it's no use playi
ng the bleeding harmonium.'

  'A gun won't be much better if there are two hundred,' said Davies, nevertheless taking it. 'How does it work?'

  'You've been a soldier?' asked Conway. 'Don't you know?'

  'Officers had little guns,' said Davies. 'Other ranks, that was me, had the long guns. I've never used a little one.'

  Conway ill‑humouredly showed him the working of the pistol, flicking it open and closed, throwing the magazine, closing it, handing it back. 'You point it this way,' he said sarcastically. 'With the little hole directed outwards.'

  'Glad you told me,' said Davies. 'Can you now tell me exactly what is going to happen when we get there?'

  Conway said: 'I wish I knew. Too right I do.' He clamped his top teeth over his lower lip. 'What I hope will happen is that we'll close in to the little pebble bay just around the headland from the lagoon. There's a wide opening in the reef there, but hardly anything of a beach. Enough for us though. I'll go ashore and all you have to do is to wait for me to come back. Abe knows the drill already because I've been through it with him. Right, Abe?'

  Abe nodded in the dark. 'I know it all,' he said. 'Just as long as nothing goes wrong, I know it all.'

  Conway continued to Davies. 'We've made a wooden ramp ‑ it's there, see? ‑ to run on to the boat from the beach. It's pretty elevated just there and the levels shouldn't be any worry. All you have to do is to be waiting with that ramp in place for me to get back on their sacred motor bike.'

  'You'll run the bike aboard,' said Davies. 'And we get out as quick as we can?'

  Conway grinned. 'Simple for you, mate. Just nothing to it. I've got the hard part.'

  'That's how it should be. How are you going to stop them rushing you when they see you on the motor bike? After all if they think you're the divine Dodson‑Smith they'll want to grab hold of you. When they find it's only you, not Santa, they'll have your balls off.'