The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  Only then did she find the strength to move. Scrambling to her feet she saw that he was walking down the beach to where – she saw for the first time – a small dinghy-like boat, a bright lamp hung over its stern, was drawn up onto the beach.

  She stood silently watching as he pushed the boat into the water and athletically leapt aboard. The rasp of rope on the pulley signalled the raising of the one triangular sail which, filling immediately, with the light night breeze, brought silent life to the boat as it arced its way seawards, leaving a phosphorescent trail in its wake.

  As the boat gathered pace, Helen felt filled with something akin to awe. This stranger had appeared, full-fledged as if from a fantasy, and now was, it seemed to her inflamed imagination, returning to the mythical Valhalla from which he had sprung.

  Breathless, she watched the bobbing bright light which marked his boat’s passage and began, even then, to wonder if it had really happened. The tingling ache in her sex reassured her that it had, but it was still difficult to believe that anything that fierce and animalistic could be so satisfying. Drawn to the water’s edge, she scooped up water to wash herself down in its warm saltiness while her eyes remained fixed on the lighted boat until it was lost in the vastness of the ocean beyond the reef.

  When she did turn away she was filled, not with sadness at something lost, but a certainty that she had lived a day which would be fixed forever in her memory. Had she perhaps, she wondered, found the first strand of what Qito had called her quest for a soul?

  While certain that such a momentous experience must have more significance than mere gratification, the stranger had left no room for her to take refuge in any delusion of romance.

  He had come out of the night and delivered precisely what she had craved. More than enough, and certainly nothing less. If he had been a messenger from the prescient deity that Qito denied, he had left in her a soaring confidence which filled her with joy.

  As she came into the tent and saw that Qito slept on undisturbed by the activities, the sounds of which must surely have carried to the campsite, she felt even greater pleasure in knowing that the experience was hers alone with no need to explain or account to anyone.

  Hugging the memory of the night close to her breasts, as she might have done with a favourite teddy bear, she summoned up the image that had lodged most firmly in her mind – the moment when, satiated, he had stood over her, his still half-hardened cock standing proudly out from his muscular stomach. Her groin went into spasm as she regretted that he had not allowed her the pleasure of re-arousal – nor the wanton abandoning of self that taking him into her mouth would have given.

  Had the stranger even understood how completely he had been welcomed? Demanding only her submission, he had not even allowed her the pleasure of acquiescence, but, once more safe, she acknowledged that he had been right.

  They had coupled as two animals meeting in the night. No words had been used and, what words were needed, she wondered, to communicate the most basic of needs?

  In the dark stillness of her desert island tent, with only Qito’s nasal snorts for company, she felt herself in communion with thousands of past generations of women. Tonight she had known what it was to be truly, consentingly, taken. Not romanced, not seduced, with no pretence at anything other than an urgent response to a mutual need.

  She knew with certainty that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Content that she now knew something granted to few women, she slipped into the sleep of the innocent.

  14

  WAKING THE NEXT morning Helen was pleased to find she was alone. It gave her the space to appreciate the sensation of peace and a freedom from guilt that warmed her entire body. To be able, as she was, to rise naked from the light covering of her camp-cot and step out of the tent into an unthreatened peace and bathe in warm sunshine, was, to her, the definition of what it is to be alive.

  Finding coffee, still warm in a pot, she poured herself a cup and stepped through the margin of brush that separated the campsite from the beach to feel the comforting ooze of warm sand pressing between her toes. Looking out over the sparkling lagoon towards the white water of the reef, she imagined that anyone looking at her would see a body carved, as Qito had once remarked, in the shape of a smile. To be happy was one thing but to know it – to feel it settled about her shoulders like a comforting blanket – was sheer bliss.

  Suddenly, it was important to her to establish the reality of last night’s ‘fantasy’ encounter. Walking around a slight bend in the immaculate shoreline she came upon an area of disturbed sand. Was this the place? She wasn’t sure. The tide had lapped away at where the boat might have been moored while the sun beat down, bleaching out signs of where she might have lain and received the man. Deciding it would take the skill of a forensic scientist to find traces of the night’s debauch, she smiled happily in the knowledge that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. This morning, as no other she could ever remember, she felt in love with a world which had, it seemed, suddenly chosen to focus all the blessings it could offer on herself.

  Wading into the bounteous sea she washed herself down with the warm water, and felt her stimulated body sing with happiness. A distant voice, calling her name, carried to her. Looking round she could see nothing but the extravagant greenery of the island’s vegetation soaring steeply up the hill towards the glade in which Qito had posed her.

  Making her way up the scarcely discernible path, her body being rapidly sun-dried, she came upon Qito sketching a detail of the rock formations with such concentration that he hadn’t noticed Helen’s arrival.

  She stood a moment and watched him at work, filled with a throbbing awareness of being in the company of genius. Bathed in the glowing awareness of privilege, she moved forward to let him know of her presence.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, straightening from his crouch. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake.’

  ‘Sorry if I’m late.’

  Qito shook his head. ‘The light won’t be right until the afternoon anyway. Have you noticed how the rocks soften in the evening light?’

  Shaking her head she happily felt she would never again be able to rid her expression of the smile which seemed to start somewhere deep in her body.

  ‘You look different this morning,’ Qito murmured.

  Nodding happily and, prompted by her overwhelming feeling of invulnerability, she went towards him and gently wrapped her arms about his diminutive body. ‘I feel different,’ she told him. ‘This is a magical place. It makes me happy.’ Aware that Qito was standing very still and making not the slightest attempt to return her loose embrace, she drew back her head and looked down into his widened brown eyes. ‘Today anything is possible,’ she told him. ‘Today I love you.’

  Qito’s eyes softened before suddenly flaring with decision. Reaching for her hands, now resting lightly on his shoulders, he drew them aside. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘I must have those eyes.’ Turning her so that she was half faced into the sunlight filtering through the overhang of foliage, he took up his sketch pad. ‘Your eyes are incredible this morning. If Carla saw them she would know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you were in love.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Since I’m the only other being here she might be justified in thinking so, don’t you think?’

  Helen felt her inward smile turn to a satisfied grin. How little this intense man knew! Content that her fantasy was lodged safely and secretly, she found she could look back at him innocent and unblinking as he stared into her eyes, the silence broken only by the scratch of his pencil on the coarsely textured pad.

  Throughout that morning Qito seemed quietly intent on capturing every tiny detail of her face and its unvarying expression of happiness, until hunger drove him to thoughts of lunch.

  Dismissed from witnessing the mysteries of his preparations, she went again to swim in the lagoon, exquisitely conscious that the same water
in which she bathed was, somewhere, lapping at the keel of the fisherman’s boat which would, that night, bring him to her.

  Called back to the campsite she found chilled melon, Parma ham, an odoriferous but delicious cheese and bread so flakily crisp that it forced its way between her teeth to edge sharply against her gums.

  ‘Do we have a refrigerator on the island?’ she asked.

  Qito nodded enthusiastically. ‘And a freezer.’

  ‘That’s incredible. How is it powered?’

  Qito waved a hand vaguely in the direction of a panel of glass. ‘Solar panels,’ he said. ‘Just because we have left civilisation it doesn’t mean we have to reject it.’

  As she ate, Helen found herself filled with unworthy suspicions about the source of Qito’s gastronomic feats and decided that she would have to investigate the contents of their amazing freezer.

  Immediately after eating, Qito took himself off for his hour’s siesta while Helen decided to force all thoughts of skin melanoma, and Qito’s insistence that she coat herself in sun blocker, from her mind while she lay on the sand and worked on getting some colour into her skin.

  It was Qito’s angry voice that roused her from an intense but immediately forgotten dream. ‘Are you crazy?’ he was shouting at her while dragging her to her feet and back to the shaded campsite. ‘Look at you! You’re on fire! You’ll be lucky not to have sun-stroke. My God, you could get ill and we wouldn’t be able to work. You Anglos go crazy in the sun!’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she murmured, feeling her earlier felicitous mood rapidly diminishing.

  Later that afternoon, posing in the sylvan glade, she needed all her will-power to disguise from Qito just how light-headed and dizzy she felt. Daunted by the belief that Qito knew just how much she was suffering, but determined not to acknowledge it, it was with great relief that she heard him finally call ‘enough’.

  Back at the campsite, Qito insisted she lay in the cool of the tent where he carefully smoothed more cream to her outraged skin. Feeling quite sick, Helen was happy to agree to his suggestion that she rest while he prepared the evening meal.

  She had gone to bed with no intention of sleeping for any length of time but when she woke she found the evening had slipped into the deep silence of night. Qito was asleep and it was with the excitement of a daring teenager eluding the vigilance of a parent that she started towards the beach. She had been staring out to sea, eagerly watching for the dancing light on the stern of the fisherman’s boat for some minutes before she found the night breeze, striking chill on her breasts, intolerable and turned back to sneak out a blanket.

  The moment she came out of the tent she saw, through the shrubs, the gleam of a light out at sea and rushed, breathless, to watch with rising excitement as the boat found the break in the reef and turned towards the shore.

  Unable to contain her patience, discarding the blanket, she waded into the still-warm water for some yards before plunging headlong into it and swimming out to meet the oncoming boat. There was a moment when she feared her headlong dash would end in disaster as he, not seeing her in the dark water, might have run her down. Seeing her only at the last moment he turned the boat so that she was swept along its side. With one immensely strong arm he reached down to lift her bodily from the water and cast her, breathless and spread, across the wooden slats at the bottom of the boat – which were still slimy from the entrails of past catches.

  There was no pretence possible between them. Both knew why she had come so eagerly to greet him, but he had other things to do. Turning aside from her brazen, open invitation, he knocked away a piece of wood which brought the single sail crashing down the mast.

  Flinging out a sea anchor he turned to her as if she were but one more chore to be taken care of before work could begin. Pulling away the rope that held up his trousers he came to stand magnificently naked and fully aroused over her liquid body.

  Scrambling up, she would have paid homage to his risen flesh with her mouth but this man had no patience for such subtleties and, instead, caught her up, turned her around and penetrated her from behind – all in one swift movement which knocked the breath from her body.

  Ravaging her, she felt his hands tight about her shoulders as if to prevent her escape, he brought her gasping to a rapid climax and, while she hoped for more, he pulled out of her and let her feel the shower of him pulsing onto her arching back. With a murmur of protest she tried to turn to take some part of him into her mouth but, instead, found herself lifted into his arms and carried over the side of the boat. Fearing that he simply meant to dump her, she rejoiced when he stepped into the now-shallow water and waded ashore while she felt a featherweight in his arms.

  Dumping her unceremoniously on the sand he came down heavily on her, her legs pressed wide and high, and she was astonished to feel his already fully rearoused flesh probing deep into her.

  Anxious to hear him speak, she tried to provoke him with urgent murmurings, but received only grunts as his hugeness delved deeper and more painfully into her. Reaching a climax, she wound her legs about him, gripping him tightly, determined that, this time, he would deliver himself into her and not on her belly, but this man had some deeply imprinted objection to coming inside her and, with great force, wrenched himself from her and levered himself upward. Not to be cheated, letting out a cry of frustration, Helen grabbed at his already erupting penis and sunk its convulsive size deep into her mouth. He made a move as if to protest but his orgasm had weakened him, so she had little difficulty in easing him onto his back where she triumphantly sucked on him until the last convulsive spurt. Straddling him, she looked down into his closed face and felt that she had conquered. The beast, now moaning with pleasure, lay vanquished between her thighs as she felt a soaring sense of fulfilment.

  ‘Say something!’ she told him harshly.

  The man’s eyes opened and she was shocked to see in them a flicker of shame.

  Suddenly, it occurred to her that it was possible that no woman had ever taken him in her mouth before. Their few encounters had been animal – wild, even. Could it be that he thought of women as simple victims who could only be taken by brute force?

  As the man continued to stare silently up at her, as if at some strange alien species, she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she had made him vulnerable – frightened of her, even – and moved to reassure him. Moving her body down over his she laid her head on the firm muscles of his tensed stomach and reached for his now sad-looking penis. Taking it gently between two fingers, she reached out with her tongue and touched its most sensitive point.

  His reaction was instantaneous. Two huge hands reached about her ribs and lifted her bodily, as if she were no more substantial than a china doll, then turned her so that she was held at arm’s length above his body with only her legs drooping to contact the ground. The breath driven from her, she felt totally vulnerable as fear rushed in to replace her earlier feeling of superiority.

  His lips parted to reveal a shining row of perfect teeth and she felt herself being lowered onto his waiting cock. There she felt his flesh re-erected and waiting for her. Gasping at his entry, still dangling helpless above his head, she was effortlessly raised and lowered as he teased her by plunging her deep down onto him and then lifting her so that only the point of him nudged at her flowing sex.

  He was reasserting himself, reminding her that he was master here and that her attempts to take the initiative were not to be held of any account. The ache of her ribs, where he held her, lessened in direct ratio to the reawakened fire between her legs. Gasping, breathless, she felt deliciously helpless and used. As her body burned, her mind reeled with the thought that she was, literally, no more than a toy in his hands to be used and tossed aside like any other masturbatory aid.

  In the fear and humiliation she found an intense and worrying excitement. The power of the man that could so easily dispose of her as he wished, brought her quickly to climax and, as she gasped out her appreciation, she h
eard him murmuring the first word she had ever heard him speak. ‘Puta!’ he growled.

  Two things then happened so synchronously that they appeared for a moment to be cause and effect.

  The man rammed her rigid body down onto his throbbing flesh, surging fully and cruelly deep into her, while a blinding white light shone into her face.

  Concentrating on the one, and, for the moment, ignoring the other, she yelled out in climactic orgasm which became protest, as the man under her unceremoniously dropped her and scrambled to his feet.

  Lying abandoned and helpless in the soft, warm sand she heard Qito’s voice murmuring something that sounded like an Italian apology. Abstractedly she realised that her cries must have drawn Qito to the scene but she, still light-headed, found she didn’t care.

  The torch was switched off and allowed her to see Qito turning away down the beach. The man had disappeared by the time she looked for him and, resenting the abrupt end to their encounter, she got to her feet and hurried towards where the boat had been beached.

  Frustrated to see the bright lamp at the boat’s stern already some metres from the beach, her first impulse was to call out and reassure him that there was nothing to fear, but the hand she had raised to wave him to come back, went instead to smother the cry that had come to her lips as she stood and watched helplessly as the beacon that signalled her pleasure sailed away.

  Coming back to the campsite she found Qito, his back resolutely turned to her, making coffee. Feeling curiously assertive she spoke to challenge his silence. ‘Did we wake you?’ she asked.

  Qito turned and looked at her. ‘Do you know what “puta” means?’ he asked her and, when she shook her head, went on. ‘It means whore,’ he said, before walking round her and into the tent.

  Had there been a solid door on the tent frame Helen felt certain he would have slammed it. Instead, she savoured the word and its meaning in her head to combine it with the almost certain feeling that Qito had been jealous. Self-embracing her tingling body she was even tempted to offer herself to Qito as he lay on his tent cot, but instead she turned away to the beach where, registering that the light of the dinghy was now far out to sea, she waded into the water and washed herself.