Meanwhile, I had hatched my own plan for his return. The last of the elixir I had secreted in an iron safe with a combination lock, purchased in town for just that purpose; if the elixir alone was what brought on the murderous madness, then never again would he have access to it. I had felt its effects myself, the brutal physical transformation, the almost ungovernable impulses, but I could only surmise that it worked hand in hand with some natural propensity—that where the urge to malevolence already existed, the conjunction led to murder and mayhem; but that in a higher nature, its influence could be controlled, or even quelled. I, too, had experienced the quickening of the blood, the sensation of sudden strength and, in my case, an exalted constitution, but I had committed no murders under its sway.
Regardless, I had determined to confront Lloyd upon his return and tell him that I now knew all. All. Once we were done with what were sure to be his furious denials, we could move on to the more practical questions. I would have to make quite clear to him that his secret was safe only so long as no further monstrous acts occurred; if one did—before I could put a stop it—the full account of his crimes, along with the evidence (from combs to keys, buttons to brass rings) would be given up against him.
Privately, I had made another decision, one that I could not share with anyone. At the first sign of a descent, I had decided I would take matters into my own hands, but in such a way that neither Fanny nor the authorities could ever hold me responsible for his demise.
By the end of the week, however, I felt I could no longer postpone a trip to the neighbouring island of Savai’i, from which I had promised “McClure’s Magazine” one of my regular dispatches. The Samoan nation was being torn in every direction by the great colonial powers—England, France, and Germany—and in my reports I have attempted to describe the ruthless machinations of the Europeans against the weaker and unsophisticated islanders, who are no match for them in cunning, duplicity, or greed. In acting on their behalf, I feel myself compensating in some small way for all the grief I have brought into the world.
Grief that I have confessed in a letter to Henley, the only man who would fully understand, and left in the postal basket on the hall table, along with a short story I hope he might be able to sell for me, days earlier. The story, like ‘The Bottle Imp’, is based on one of the ingenious local legends.
Malaki kept a small fishing boat in the harbour, no more than twenty-five feet long, with a double hull and half-claw rig. Known in the islands as an alia, the boat and its single triangular sail is as nimble as it is fast, remarkable for its windward performance free of heeling force. In true Polynesian fashion, two big eyes have been painted on its prow, so that the alia, as primitive as it is unsinkable, can see where it is going. Even so, Malaki was reluctant to take it out to sea. The cyclone had passed, but the weather was still changeable and uncertain.
‘We wait, Master. Maybe tomorrow, better.’
‘No, today we go,’ I said. I needed to be away from Apia, away from Fanny, away from the whole business. ‘We can beat the weather.’
The strait between the islands was only eight or nine miles wide, and if a storm struck, there were two smaller islands—Apolima and Manono—where we could put in. ‘You are a great sailor, Malaki, and I have every faith in you.’
Grumbling, though unwilling to offer further resistance, Malaki made the boat ready, stowing the fishing nets in the tiny cabin and freeing the sail from its resting place in the fork at the top of the mast. We were just passing the end of the dock when I heard thundering footsteps on the planks and saw Lloyd, in straw hat and soiled clothes, leap into the air and land full square on the deck of the boat. Malaki looked at me in astonishment, wondering what to do and whether to turn back, but I was nonplussed myself.
Lloyd, straightening, said, ‘A fine day for a sail, don’t you think?’
He was unshaven and sunburned, and gave every impression of having roughed it in the jungle, or on the beach. He also looked slightly different . . . his brow more pronounced, his jaw more jutting. Around his neck he wore the familiar necklace of bleached shells, his good-luck charm.
I waved a hand at Malaki to indicate that he should keep to his course, and soon we were well past the breakers and reef and out in the open sea. The storm the day before had dropped pieces of the village huts and the fronds of palm trees into the water all around us. I even saw the painted placard of a French café, the Coq D’Or, bobbing among the waves.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Lloyd said, helping himself to a hunk of cheese and a slab of bread from the basket that Fanny had packed, ‘but I’m famished.’ He had lost weight, and I could not help but wonder what weapon he might be concealing under the loose and untucked tails of his long white shirt.
‘How is my mother?’ he asked, eating with such gusto that crumbs fell from his mouth.
‘She is well,’ I replied, ‘but, of course, concerned about your absence.’
He nodded, as if that was only to be expected, and said, ‘You can tell her I’m fine.’
‘Why not do that yourself?’
He gave me a long, level stare. ‘Do I need to dignify that question with a reply?’
‘You do. No suspicion has fallen on you, or anyone in my household.’
‘Oh, that’s right—the mighty Tusitala! Lord of all he surveys!’ He bowed his head three times. ‘Forgive me, Your Highness, for my presumption!’
Rooting around in the basket, he took out a ripe coconut and then, reaching under his shirt, withdrew a long and evil-looking blade with a bamboo handle. He thwacked the top off the coconut and tilted it back to drink the milk. Was that the very knife used on the girl in Apia? I did not doubt it.
‘Then what are your plans?’ I asked. ‘To hide out in the jungle, or sleep on the beach, forever?’
‘You should try it sometime. It’s not bad at all.’
I let that pass. Malaki threw me another glance; had he surmised that it might have been this dishevelled creature on the boat—a Lloyd unlike any he might have seen lounging about Vailima—and not the bottle imp at all, who had committed the abomination in the tide pool? I signalled, with a raised palm, that all was under control, and he returned to his piloting. The alia, heeling only a few degrees, skimmed along the water like a skater on smooth ice, sending up a fine but cold salt spray.
‘I have given it some serious thought,’ Lloyd said, carving out chunks of coconut, ‘and I’ve decided that it’s too difficult to maintain a proper literary career from this godforsaken place. I need the stimulation of my peers.’
What he needed was talent, and the industry to use it. But what would be the use in saying so?
‘London isn’t for me—too snobbish, and I’m an American, after all. I don’t like New York, either—too noisy, too dirty. Coconut?’ he said, holding up a white chunk, and before I could decline it, chucking it to me. Considering the knife that had cut it, I could not eat it.
‘No, I think California’s the coming place,’ he continued. ‘San Francisco, or even perhaps Los Angeles. It’s still a little rough around the edges right now, but it will clean up nicely over the coming years. Mark my words.’
I knew where this was going. Every conversation with Lloyd inevitably went in the same direction.
‘Of course, it may take some time for me to establish my reputation.’
‘And in the meantime, you will need an allowance.’
‘You always were a quick study, Louis.’
A sudden surge sent the coconut rolling against the bulwark, and I put out a hand to brace myself against the stern. Malaki looked off to the northwest, where the blue volcanic peaks of Savai’i were being obscured by a rapidly approaching bank of clouds.
‘But what assurance would I have that you had not returned to your old ways?’ I asked. ‘Once you were beyond my purview, how could I be sure you had not succumbed to the same savage impulses?’
‘What assurance do you have right now?’
There he was co
rrect. What had I done to protect the people of Apia from this monster of my own creation? Even now, it looked as if the elixir was having some residual effect. His jaws, when he chewed, did not neatly align.
A powerful gust of wind billowed out the sail, and Malaki, legs spread wide to keep his balance on the sloping deck, hauled in on the line.
‘Master, maybe we go Manono instead. More closer.’
The cloud had already turned a darker shade of grey. Squalls in these seas can come out of nowhere, and dissipate just as abruptly.
‘Can’t we outrun it?’
Malaki shrugged, his bare brown shoulders straining at the line.
‘I’d say five hundred a month,’ Lloyd suggested, oblivious to the growing danger. ‘Dollars, of course, not pounds.’
‘Of course.’
‘And it wouldn’t hurt if you wrote a few letters of introduction to your various editors in the States. Just to make them aware of my availability.’
I agreed to this, too.
‘Scribner’s, in particular. I think I have an idea for a book they’d like.’
I nodded, humouring him for want of any better strategy, but he seemed to have guessed as much. ‘Why do I doubt your sincerity, Louis?’
The boat was buffeted again, and a surge of water washed across the small deck and into the tiny cabin where the fishing nets and emergency provisions were kept.
‘Master, too far! Must go Manono instead!’
‘Then do!’ I shouted back, over the rising wind. Malaki was one of the most renowned sailors on the island, but even distracted as I was by the colloquy with Lloyd, I heard a note of alarm in his voice that could not be denied.
Malaki braced himself hard, and held tight to the sail. The boat tacked sharply to the east, where I could just make out the waves crashing on the coral reefs of the nearby island.
‘Bloody hell,’ Lloyd said, his brow furrowing with anger, and one hand groping for purchase on the cabin door. The other still clutched the knife. ‘What have you got me into now?’
I gripped the handle of the tiller and flattened my sandals against the deck.
Moments later, the squall had descended upon us in all its fury. It was as if we had just stepped under the falls at Niagara, a wall of white water whipped to a frenzy by a lashing wind, wrapping the alia in a cocoon of pounding waves and stinging spray. Catching a breath was nearly impossible, and squinting my eyes against the salt and mist, I could barely discern Malaki, clinging to the line, his feet swinging free above the tilted deck, and Lloyd, the knife clutched between his teeth like a buccaneer, crawling towards me along the length of the rope.
The sail swung across the boat as swiftly as a cricket bat, back and then forth, with Malaki struggling to keep some hold on it. The boat heeled and ducked and dodged among the waves, the eyes on its painted prow no doubt as blinded by the storm as our own. Lloyd was close enough now that he could grab at my ankle, and did, but I pulled it back. His face was more contorted than it had been, the look in his eyes more malignant, and it came to me that he had suddenly gone beyond reason, that the monster in him—perhaps aroused by the storm, finding in the tempest a kindred spirit—had swallowed whole the rational man. One hand was grasping at me, but the other now gripped the gleaming knife. There was no question in my mind that he had set aside all practical advantages to my continued life—that his intellect had been subsumed by base animal instinct—and that he meant instead to settle all his scores with me then and there. Hang the reference letters to Scribner’s—with me gone, his mother would freely dispense as much money to him as he could spend.
I drew my legs back as far as I could, and when he jabbed the knife, I swivelled my body to one side, the tiller nestled in my armpit, and then, when he thrust again, twisted the other way. A wave crashed down like a sledgehammer, sending him skittering back down the deck towards the cabin.
Malaki shouted something in his native tongue—a plea to some Polynesian deity?—all the while wrestling with the flapping triangle of sail.
Lloyd dragged himself back towards me, clinging to the rope like a man climbing a mountain, his murderous intent confirmed by the strange grin on his face and the obsidian glint in his eyes. His hair was plastered to his skull, his shirt ripped open by the wind to reveal a mass of curls so dense as to constitute fur.
The boat bucketed through a trough in the waves, and when it rose again on the next crest, Lloyd rose with it, staggering to his bare feet, one hand braced against the mast, the other brandishing the knife aloft, like one of great Caesar’s assassins.
‘The whole world’, he bellowed, ‘is my Whitechapel!’—before plunging towards the stern, where he was met by the soles of my feet on his chest. My knees were crushed by the weight of him, and though his face came so close that the necklace of shells dangled against my lips, I was able to lever him back before the knife could swipe again. He stumbled towards the cabin, and then, when the alia pitched again, he used its momentum to rush at me once more.
I readied myself for the onslaught, and caught hold of the arm wielding the knife only when the tip of the blade was inches from my throat. I squirmed to one side, the knife propelling itself deep into the wood of the stern. As he struggled to free it, I scrambled towards the bow, nearly colliding with Malaki, whose battle with the boat had rendered him oblivious to everything transpiring behind him. But now he turned, astonished, as Lloyd trudged after me, and when he had come close enough to deal another blow, I shoved Malaki to the deck, hard enough to send him sprawling halfway into the cabin and safely out of reach of the knife and the errant sail. The sail swung wildly, its wet canvas wrapping itself like a shroud around the flailing Lloyd, who tried to slash his way free. He had almost managed it when the howling wind lifted the boat, and I threw myself at the rope, yanking it with all my might. The shredded sail carried Lloyd over the bulwark, and before swinging back the other way, it dropped him, arms and legs thrashing like a lobster in the pot, into the churning ocean.
I banged down hard on the deck, and let go of the rope only long enough to throw my arms around the creaking mast. All I could see of Malaki were some fingers tenaciously gripping the cabin door. The boat rocketed this way and that, a bucking bronco with no one holding the reins, and every moment I was sure would be my last. There was a splintering judder that ran all the way down its shaft as the mast snapped in two, the upper portion splashing into the sea, and then a grinding noise from below. The boat wrenched itself to a stop, waves sluicing over the deck, the winds still swirling, until, almost as suddenly as it had come on, the squall passed, and the ocean slowed to a ponderous roll.
Minutes later, the sun broke through, and I wiped the salt from my eyes. The alia was perched, like a seabird, atop a coral reef, its painted eyes staring straight at the strip of beach not a quarter mile away. Head down, Malaki emerged from the cabin on hands and knees. He saw me clinging to the stump of the mast and looked around for the missing Lloyd, but neither of us saw him, and by mutual assent neither of us said a word about it. Providence, I could not help but feel, had lent a righteous hand.
2 December, 1894
The strip of sand that I could see from the stranded boat was littered with seaweed and debris from the storm.
After several hours of teetering atop the reef, Malaki and I were rescued in a war canoe sent by the natives of Manono, and though we told them that we had lost a man at sea, they said none had been found, nor did they appear to believe anyone could have survived the squall.
I prayed that they were right.
After spending a night ashore, we were carried back home in the same canoe—these are made to hold as many as twenty men and to travel swiftly among the many islands that dot the Polynesian archipelago—and once we had put in at the harbour at Apia, I rewarded our saviours by telling the proprietor of the Coq D’Or, whose sign I had seen floating out to sea, to give them all the food and drink they desired, and send me the bill. They were eager to have me join them—Tusitala
is a name to conjure with on all the islands of Samoa—but I was anxious to return to Vailima, where Fanny would be awaiting my return. All the way up the mountain trail, I wondered how I would be able to break the news to her. She had no idea that Lloyd had leapt onto the boat, much less that he had been swept overboard in a squall.
When Malaki and I came into the clearing, I saw her on the verandah, slicing breadfruit into a bowl for our customary afternoon tea. ‘When do we start calling it afternoon coffee?’ she often remarked, as both of us preferred the stronger brew. She beamed at our approach.
‘I wasn’t sure what day you’d be home,’ she called out. ‘But I made the snack anyway. Malaki, you’re welcome to have some.’
But there must have been something in the set of our shoulders and heads that told her something was amiss.
‘Louis, is everything all right? Did you get a good story on Savai’i?’
‘I never made it there,’ I replied, slowly mounting the steps to the rocking chair next to her own. Malaki, knowing that this needed to be a private conversation, veered off to the stable to tend to the horse.
‘Why not?’
‘We encountered a sudden storm at sea.’
‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ she said, ‘but you both look like you made it through all right.’
‘Not entirely.’
‘What happened? Did the boat sink? If it did, we’ll have to make it up to Malaki.’
And then, in halting words, leaning forward to take her hand in my own, I told her that her son had unexpectedly joined us. She stiffened immediately. I told her that Lloyd had been in good spirits and was helping us to untangle the fishing nets when a squall descended out of nowhere. Her eyes were retreating into their sockets; her lips grew thin and bloodless. When I told her how heroically he had attempted to help hold the sail, even after the mast had begun to break, she had already grasped the full import. The bowl of breadfruit slid off her lap, spilling onto the verandah. I did not need to concoct anything more; she could read it in my eyes. Nor would she have heard me, anyway, over her anguished cries.
The Jekyll Revelation Page 38
