I moved away then, a little further up the beach, ten yards or so, and fell upon my knees and from there, laid my body on the ground. The sand pulsed beneath me, throbbing with the fervour of the sun, but my skin, scaled and leathered by long exposure, did not flinch from it. I did not close my eyes. Arbitrary and untimely, Joe’s death had brought about in me a dislocation that none other of our trials had done: a hard-edged, emotional jarring that resulted altogether in a bleak rebuttal of ordinary feeling. I could hardly care for anything any more. I lay there, blank, exhausted, unconnected, and listened to the others start to argue.
The burial over, they sat about, a couple of yards away from me, in twos and threes, discussing what should now be done. Their words, as though coming from a distance, hung in the thickness of the air around me, slurred and slow. They settled vaguely about the periphery of my understanding, separate and ill-defined.
While half of us had been struggling to retrieve Joe’s body, others – Tomas, the captain, Rawlins and his boys – had been making fairly faint-hearted explorations of the immediate vicinity to try and discover if there was any hope of water. Battered and disorientated, they had not managed to get far, but far enough to realise that this land would yield us nothing.
‘Got halfway up that bastard.’ Billy waved an arm weakly in the direction of one of the massive sand hills behind. ‘Couldn’t make it any further. Ain’t nothing behind ’em anyhow. Just more of the same.’ He rubbed his face, passing his hand across his eyes.
‘There’s no water anyway,’ the skipper sighed. ‘Dunes behind us. Sea in front. We aren’t that much better off.’ There was a short silence as the truth of this sank in. The rapturous glee we’d revelled in at the sighting of the land and the heady dreams we’d nurtured of abundant water taunted now, as much foolish as premature.
‘Seems to me we should gather what we can, rope and that, and head up that way.’ Jerking his head towards the dunes, Mick looked from the captain towards Fraser. ‘Get through the dunes. Might come upon some water.’
‘More ’n likely not,’ Mac growled, his head lowered and eyes fixed on the sand.
‘I just told you, you stupid bastard. You can’t get up there,’ Billy swivelled where he sat, to glare at Mick. ‘None of us can.’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘Die just bloody tryin’.’
‘And besides, if this is Africa, beyond the dunes, there’s probably nothing more than miles of desert.’ The captain, beyond dispirited, seemed incapable of adding anything at all encouraging. His withered body, heaped on the sand, was not much more than a pile of bones, picked dry.
‘Then we’re gonna die here!’ It was less a statement than a direct plea to prevent it being so. Jack’s small and hollow voice broke up somewhere to my right, filtering through my consciousness, resounding with alarm. If Joe were here, the thought danced lightly through my mind, he’d look at Jack and shake his shaggy head assuredly. ‘We’re not dead yet, Jack the lad,’ he would have said.
Sighing heavily, I fought to swallow and then lifted my elbows and pushed my hands down into the sand, fanning out my fingers on the coarse, hot grains. I sat up slowly, closing my eyes and inhaling sharply to resist the blackening dizziness that came with almost any movement now. I squinted at the sharpness of the sunlight but turned my face in the direction of Jack’s voice and shook my head, trying to shape my crusted lips in to a smile.
‘No,’ I rasped. I tried again. ‘No, Jack.’ My hand wavered out in front of me, towards him. ‘No, no, we’re not. We’ve made water once before. We’ve more wood now. We can do it again. We know it works.’
‘For Christsakes, it’ll take too long! How the fuck can we do that when we haven’t got the frigging kit?’ Mac cried. ‘I’m with Mick. We should move out!’
But Mick, having once been proved wrong before and eager to believe, was more inclined to put his faith in me, ‘Wait, Mac, wait. The boy has done it once before. Can we do it, d’you think we can, Cub? Do you now?’
‘If the fuel tank’s been washed up and a bit of pipe, we could,’ Fraser, catching hold, began to cast about, and started to get up on to his feet. ‘We need to scour the beach. Wood, the fuel pipe and the tank. Anything we can burn.’ He came across to stand in front of me and offered me his hand to help me up. ‘Joe was right about you,’ he murmured, as my eyes levelled up with his. ‘You are the brains.’
‘We can’t do it.’ Clarie’s voice, dull and hoarse, brought us up short. ‘If we can’t get across the dunes, if there’s only desert, we’re gonna have to get off this beach somehow.’ His skinny throat worked painfully. ‘We need to try and rebuild the boat. A raft or something. Try and get further down the coast. We can’t stay here.’ He looked around, from one dishevelled, wasted face to the next until his eyes came to rest upon the skipper. ‘Captain?’
The captain stared at him, raw-eyed and weary, ‘Rebuild the boat?’ he repeated vaguely. ‘Yes. Rebuild the boat… I expect we have to.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Billy muttered, ‘I can’t get up a frigging sand dune, never mind start ’n build a bloody boat…’
‘Well, what the fuck d’you suggest we do then? Sit here till we die?’ Big Sam’s guttural growl cut Billy off. Wincing with the effort, he hauled his heavy bones up to standing. ‘Well, I ain’t gonna,’ he said.
‘We must do both,’ snapped Fraser, exasperated by the senseless, circular bickering. ‘Some of us; me and Cub, Sam, Mick, if you want.’ He nodded decisively at each one of us as he said our names, assuming our solidarity. ‘We’ll try and get the water going. Find the fuel tank or something else. We’ll use the smaller bits of wood we find to burn. Captain. Clarie. You organise the rest. Collect the bigger bits of wood, ropes and rigging, whatever we could use to build a boat.’
As Fraser finished speaking, I became aware that I felt inexplicably unsettled, quietly conscious of a prickling, deep unease rippling stealthily up my back and neck, as though suddenly I was once removed, watching myself and those around me acting out the horrific disintegration of our hopes for survival. A constant feeling of vague disconnection had accompanied me now for days, a kind of secondary mode of being, in which my mind felt itself separate from my body and its surroundings, but I had ascribed that feeling to the nature of my extreme debilitation. This was different. I had an eerie sense, a shadowy misgiving whispering softly that there was something out here somewhere which, while creeping forward, threatening, had so far eluded us.
Some of the others, following Big Sam’s cue, started to falter to their feet and Clarie, pushing on one knee, half turned to the captain saying, ‘Right then, Captain, shall I…?’ but the words died in his throat as his attention was suddenly transfixed on a point somewhere behind me, up in the sand hills beyond. Simultaneously, one or two of the others facing me caught sight of whatever it was that had silenced Clarie and, eyes widening with alarm, they stopped exactly as they were, stricken with a newer, more immediate fear.
Startled by their faces, a blast of cold apprehension swept across me, hollowing and twisting up my guts, spinning me round to scan the mass of dunes behind.
‘Cannibals… oh, Jesus, cannibals,’ Bob Cunningham, who after several attempts had only just achieved a precarious upright balance, suddenly dropped down heavily onto his knees and, hunching over, covered his face with his hands and began to rock his body slowly back and forth, moaning softly. ‘Oh God… oh God, have pity… have pity on us… Jesus…’ He began to cry and the dry heaving of his sobs rose uncontrollably, raking across my quivering nerves and infecting all of us with panic. Appalled and frightened by his anguish, fear gave rise to anger.
‘For Christsakes, Bob, pull yourself together,’ snapped Mick, unable to endure the naked abandon in Cunningham’s collapse. ‘Jesus! Pack it in. ‘Course they won’t be fucking cannibals…’
But the quiver in his voice belied his scepticism and he glanced across hopefully towards Fraser, then to the captain, for reassurance. But neither one of them was listening n
or would take their eyes away from the gathering company on the hills. Cunningham continued to keen and rock, jamming his fist up into his mouth as if he might by that means stop up the outpouring of his terror.
‘People. Least it means there must be water about here somewhere,’ murmured Fraser, out of the side of his mouth to me. ‘How many, d’you reckon?’
I could not tel. I could make out maybe twenty-five or thirty, tall, silent figures standing on the dune tops. The light breeze tugged gently at their long, loose robes, which billowed out around them, but each stood absolutely still. Staring. Though their heads were covered with large, swathing turbans that also framed and partially concealed their faces, there was no mistaking the distrustful hostility of their attitude. The thickness of their beards served only to accentuate the dark ferocity of their features, furrowed with malign suspicion. Some held sticks before them in two hands, while others, chins on their folded arms, used theirs to lean on, bowing them slightly with the weight. From where we stood, I could make out the knots at intervals down each length, the heavy flexibility of their sinew, a strength that surely could be used to deliver a beating so severe that none among us would survive. Our arms and legs were now as thin as the thickest one of them.
And still they stared.
‘Thirty. Maybe more,’ I worked my mouth to speak, trying hard to swallow. My voice came cracked and thin. ‘We’re no match for them.’ I tried to swipe my hair from across my eyes but my hands were shaking with a violence I could not control. I found that I could barely focus. The outlines of the brightly dressed figures before us shimmered and shifted before my eyes. I had to screw my face up to make them still. The sandy wasteland between them and me kept up a constant swaying motion, lurching, tilting; it was all that I could do to keep myself from falling.
‘What d’you think they want?’ hissed Clarie, his eyes darting from them back to Fraser anxiously. For some irrational reason, movement and speech instinctively seemed risky. Surely it was better to keep silent and keep still, as if any sudden gesture or noise from one of us might precipitate a swift and unwarranted reaction. ‘D’you think they’re gonna kill us?’
No one answered. We stood, both groups of men transfixed, apparently incapable of action, in the heavy timelessness of impasse. The sun glared down between us, the density of its heat throbbing visibly, silencing the very air.
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ Fraser said eventually, drawing himself up. It was typical of his impatience for indecision. If he was to die, he would rather get it over with. ‘Captain Edwards. Clarie. Shall we?’
‘We should all go. Approach them friendly like. Hands up in the air,’ Mick gabbled quickly, apparently just as anxious at being left behind as he was at the prospect of an approach.
‘Might look more threatening if we all go at them,’ I whispered.
‘What’s the difference anyway?’ the skipper said, shrugging resignedly. ‘If they’re gonna kill us, they’re gonna bloody kill us. Let’s get on with it.’
He broke away from us, taking a couple of steps forward and then looked back at Fraser, who stepped up immediately to join him. The rest of us began to shamble after them. Twenty yards now from the nearest. They did not flinch but watched us, giving away nothing. Stragglers allowed themselves to drop a little way behind, Mac and Cunningham, taut with fear, ready at any moment to turn and run. Fifteen yards from the bottom of the dunes. We squinted up towards our audience, shying painfully before the sun behind them which, blindingly belligerent, blackened and enlarged their coloured garments.
‘Put your hands out. Show ’em we don’t mean ’em any harm,’ Mick breathed tentatively, slowing up a little, and the rest of us, despite ourselves, slackened pace. Ten yards.
There was a sudden, startling shout of something unintelligible from one of the men on the hill in front of us. He whipped his stick up, out in front of his body horizontally, as if to bar against our further progress. We froze.
I heard Billy swear and Cunningham moan. Even Fraser flinched, turning slightly sideways and raising and bending one arm across his head, as if to protect himself against an unexpected missile. The figure who had arrested our approach started speaking down to us in a fast and furious flow of incomprehensible language. He’d pause abruptly, apparently waiting for an answer and then, impatient, rattle on, firing us, or so it seemed, with a torrent of aggressive questions. The dark blue garments he wore flowed and flapped around him as he gave vent to his displeasure and alarm.
We waited, swaying with the strain and eventually, Fraser, taking advantage of a short hiatus, cleared his throat. ‘Do you speak English?’ Even to me, his words, his very voice, sounded preposterously out of place in this heat, on this dusty shore, to these native men.
There was a silence as our inquisitor digested this and then, he turned and signalled to the men around him, beckoning them in. He took one or two steps down the dune towards us and the others, from their various vantage points around the hills, made strides across to join him.
‘English?’ Fraser tried to lick his lips, fending off his fear at their approach.
The gathering of them up in front of us remained formidable but somehow, with the attempt at communication, their attitude seemed to have softened slightly, as if the sound of another human voice, querulous and desperate, had struck a common chord. As they began a slow and rather tentative descent, their sticks became more clearly now supports, no longer vicious weapons. And although physically so much stronger and exceeding us by far in number, they did not look, as they got nearer, quite so threatening, but appeared, more prevalently, perplexed.
As they reached our level at the base of the dunes, they spread out a little, craning round one another to get a better look. There must have been more than thirty of them and they formed a loose semicircle as their cluster thinned around us. We inched more closely together, huddling in defence.
‘English?’ Fraser tried again. ‘Water,’ he said. ‘We need water.’
The men regarded us quietly, though there was some nudging and a few low darts of speech between them.
‘Let Tomas try!’ urged Clarie, spinning round to face the rest of us as it suddenly occurred to him that there might be some advantage to be gained from a change of tack. Tomas’ head started up, registering both surprise and fear, as we all looked towards him but he made no move to push himself forward, out from safety to the frontline of our number.
‘They ain’t gonna know Portuguese any more than they understand bloody English,’ muttered Billy, as those of us shielding Tomas edged aside, leaving him no alternative but to step forward.
‘I will try Spanish,’ he said anxiously, glancing across Clarie, to the captain. ‘More likely they know Spanish?’
The skipper nodded. ‘Worth a try.’
Reluctantly, Tomas took two more steps until he drew parallel with Fraser, and his voice when it came trembled uncontrollably, ‘Español? Hablais español? El agua.’ He cupped his hands and brought them to his mouth before bringing them, palms upturned, beseeching, out again in front of his body. ‘Por favor, el agua!’
There was no response. The dark faces before us continued to stare at us impassively, blinking slowly in the white-hot heat, as though inclined to wait for as long as they might choose, unmoved as equally by our obvious desperation as by the raking inhospitality of the sun. Our close-knit group, by contrast, seethed with fear and with frustration; shuffling, scratching and shivering on the ragged edges of despair.
‘L’eau,’ muttered Fraser suddenly, and then looking up at the tribesmen, he tried again more loudly. ‘L’eau. S’il vous plaît. Nous avons besoin de l’eau.’
Immediately, several of them nodded and turned to each other, as if relieved at having finally made some headway and their blue-robed spokesman puffed out his cheeks and exhaled deeply. He put his head on one side as though summing up the situation and began to nod thoughtfully. He moved a little closer, keeping his eyes fixed all the tim
e on Fraser, his face now flickering into interest.
‘Jesus! What the fuck was that?’ Mac muttered behind me, as the others among them visibly relaxed and started talking, jabbering quickly to each other and then gesturing at our dry and brittle bodies.
‘French, wasn’t it, Fraser?’ asked the captain, ‘It’s lucky that you speak it.’
‘I don’t,’ Fraser shook his head, ‘only bits I’ve picked up. Not enough to hold much of a conversation.’
‘Well, it’s enough for them to understand. You asked for water?’
Fraser nodded, and looking directly at the eyes of the blue-robed man who was now perhaps three yards in front of him, he put his hands together, fingers interlaced, as if in fervent prayer. ‘L’eau, s’il vous plaît. L’eau,’ he breathed.
Their intermediary stopped abruptly. He was an ageing, spindly man whose every year was marked in minute detail by the myriad of crevices fanning across his weathered face, but his body looked bulky in comparison to the wasted frame of Fraser. He nodded and then turning to one side he put out an arm, the furthest one from us, to indicate our direction and with his other hand he waved us onwards. ‘Oui,’ he said, ‘l’eau.’
We followed him and Fraser and the captain, flanked on every side by dark, inquisitive eyes. I was not far behind them so I could hear the quick, interrogative tones of their leader and Fraser’s long and faltering pauses as he tried to summon up words enough to explain how we came to be among them. Often, he stopped, reduced to gesturing and mime but the incredulity of his audience, particularly as he held up his hands and counted twenty-one out with his fingers, was singularly apparent.
We made slow and laborious progress. Our disaccustomed legs struggled to keep walking on the sinking sands and our extreme exhaustion and physical fragility precluded any speed. We stumbled and we weaved, unsure of every footing, surrounded by our new companions who stopped at intervals, waiting, patient and unhurried. Heads down, we trudged on and on, our scrambled senses nullified before the blinding starkness of the sun. The cool of promised water, which in the mind’s eye of every one of us shone and glistened with its promise, tantalised, shifting and shimmering just beyond the next dune and the next, sliding slightly further off with the drudgery of every arduous step.
Making Shore Page 18
