Blood Ties

by A. J. Quinnell

  “Humm. You have been reading my thoughts Kirsty.”

  She brought the coffee up and wedged his mug in front of the wheel and leaned against one of the stays. The wind was light and Manasa crept slowly, the only sound being the swish of the small bow wave. The eastern horizon showed a hint of light.

  “Ramesh . . . Sorry, I’ve been a bit quiet these few days.”

  He turned and in the gloom she saw the flash of his teeth as he smiled. “It is all right Kirsty. I think you are not unhappy.”

  “No. If anything the opposite. I feel at peace. I think it’s the sea.”

  He was silent for a while, then said, “I know what you mean. I feel it often. It is so big. So vast. It makes me feel that I am travelling in space. Just a speck – and of course a speck is not having any problems.”

  She moved next to him and put an arm on his shoulder and leaned forward and kissed him on the ear. He turned his head and his hand came up into her hair and he was kissing her lips and murmuring her name.

  “Be patient Ramesh,” she whispered into his ear.

  “I will,” he whispered back. “Specks in space are always patient.”

  They turned with arms around each other and watched the eastern sky blush into sunrise.

  Of all the islands they had visited Farquhar captured Lani the most. She stood on the foredeck with Cady as Manasa glided into the lagoon through the fairway. It ran close in to the curve of sand called the ‘twenty-five franc beach’. The island itself was a crescent and of all the outer islands its lagoon offered the only safe anchorage in any weather conditions.

  On an instinct Ramesh anchored a hundred yards from Jaloud. Everyone on Manasa had the feeling that the haunting would soon be over. The boil only remained to be lanced and it would not be done here. Somehow it was the poultice. Aldabra would be the scalpel.

  Farquhar had a comparatively large settlement. The first night they had dinner ashore with the manager, a Mr Jacques Renee, together with the bird men, whose only interest was to visit the nearby islet of Goulettes and its tern colony. However, they wanted to stay at least three days on Farquhar. First to enjoy a few creature comforts in the island’s guest house, and secondly in the hope that La Belle Vue would arrive from Mahé and they could dump Lascelles and Jaloud.

  On the second morning Jaloud left for Goulettes. It was to be a day trip only and Cady and Lani decided to stay on Farquhar and explore while Ramesh and Kirsty maintained the haunting.

  They spent the day rambling through the three-mile-long island. They came across the occasional plantation workers who, on seeing them, would invariably pick up the nearest coconut, decapitate it with a machete and offer them the resulting cup of thirst-quenching milk.

  By early evening they were on the top end of the twenty-five franc beach. They watched Jaloud come in through the channel, closely followed by Manasa. Both yachts tacked around the point and disappeared into the curve of the lagoon.

  Cady and Lani sat on the powdery white beach and neither had the inclination to leave.

  As the sun dipped and the shadows of the palms stretched out across the sand Lani said,

  “I think now, at this time and in this place you should kiss me.”

  Cady slowly lay back until he was horizontal on the beach. He looked up at her and, in a bantering tone, said: “I would. But I’m scared as hell of the effect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m so damned ugly you might have a heart attack.”

  “Ugly?”

  “Sure. I heard you talkin’ to Ramesh that night. What am I? A barbarian . . .? No, an ape! – a hairy ape!”

  She smiled at the recollection. “Then you heard me say that I would get used to it.”

  “Sure – like a goddam pork pie!”

  Her smile widened. “Cady, it is true you are ugly – beyond imagining —but I still want you to kiss me.”

  She leaned down and her face was inches from his mouth in his mind a membrane away. He felt her breath on his face.

  Very slowly he raised his head from the sand and their lips touched. The mechanic that he was, his mind likened it to an electric circuit being joined.

  She did not think of it. Just enjoyed the contact. Her mouth parted and her tongue slid across his lips and then, like an opening, curious flower, probed.

  A lifetime passed, then she raised her head and looked down at him. He was bare chested and she ran a hand through the blond mat and whispered. “My barbarian. My ugly ape.”

  He pulled her back clown to him and they kissed again and he twisted in the sand until he was looking down at her.

  “Why? If I’m ugly, why do you kiss me?”

  She rolled her head, moulding it into the sand, and asked, “Are all barbarians as stupid as you?”

  He narrowed his eyes in mock anger and she smiled and said, “Cady, I love you. I must love you. How else could I kiss such an ugly man unless I loved him!”

  The deserted beach echoed to his grateful laughter, then he sobered and asked seriously, “Why do you love me?”

  She thought; her lovely brow wrinkled in concentration, then she answered him.

  “It’s the balance. The ‘yin’ and the ‘yang’.” She noted his puzzled face and explained: “You are very strong, very tough, truly a barbarian. That may attract some women. But not me. It must be balanced. The ‘yin’ is woman, the ‘yang’ is man. There must be a balance. You have it. You are steel and you are cotton wool – not separate but together. One is nothing without the other. The whole makes you. The whole is what I love.”

  He pondered that then asked, “If you are so wise, tell me why I love you.”

  She smiled and her brow wrinkled again.

  “Because the ‘yang’ in you wants to protect me. Because you see me as beautiful. Because you need to love-and I am here. Because the ‘yin’ in you responds to my love.” She paused and said very seriously, “Because in our lives we are lucky we met and find ourselves together. Now must we keep talking? Is it not enough what we feel?”

  “Yes. But Lani, I also know you are a virgin – yes I know. You talk to Ramesh. I talk to Kirsty.” He smiled. “Help the ‘yin’ in me. I have never been with a virgin.”

  She smiled and stretched languorously and slid both her arms around his neck and kissed him again and said,

  “Barbarian, I will close my eyes to exclude the ugliness of you. But do it now, and when I open my eyes you will be beautiful.”

  And so it was. She kept her eyes shut tight. He loosened her shorts and she arched her back as he slid them off and the wisp of white beneath. She rolled one side to the other as he eased off her halter top. Her breath quickened perceptibly as he ran a hand wondrously down her body, contouring the peaks of her breasts, the slope of her belly and the slim, silky valley between her thighs – already moist,

  A brief hiatus while he wriggled out of his own shorts. A poignant pause while he hovered over her, then slowly, with excruciating pleasure he was easing inside her. A momentary twist of pain on her lips, a hesitation from him, then with a gasp she arched up to him. His hand slid under her bottom and pulled her close and tight and he moved, probing and moaning deep in his throat.

  He was sensitive to reaction and his heart quickened as he felt her response. The momentary pain as she involuntarily dug nails into his back. The whites of her eyes as they rolled oblivious. And finally the roller-coaster ride of her belly as her nerve ends reached out and grasped the first sweet orgasm of her young life.

  They shuddered together, clinging and gasping, sweat lubricating the shift of skin on skin.

  She subsided slowly, a longer pause each time between shudders and she pulled his head tight into her neck and hooked her slim brown legs around his thighs as though to hold him forever. She opened her eyes and with her lips vibrating against his ear she sighed, “Cady. You are beautiful.”

  That night they all barbecued ashore with Renee and his workers and the bird men. They had no worries about
Manasa. She rode at a mooring thirty yards from where they sat. The twin lights hung from her sides and they could see clearly beneath the keel. Every couple of hours Cady or Ramesh would go out and charge the batteries.

  The workers made a big fuss of Cady. They had learned of his beating of Carlo from the bird men. Neither Carlo nor his skipper were popular, and the workers slapped Cady on the shoulder and made sure his glass of calou was never empty.

  A pig had been killed for the occasion. They had scooped a big hole out of the sand and lined it with stones and built a fire. The pig lay across it on a makeshift grill of expanded metal. They sat in a circle round the fire and while they waited for it to cook one of the workers, an old, grizzled fellow, played a zeze and sang. The words were obviously humorous for the workers grinned throughout and laughed when it was over.

  Kirsty was sitting next to Renee, with Ramesh on the other side.

  ‘What’s it about?” she asked Renee.

  “It’s a naughty song. Most of them are.” He smiled and slid her a look. “Shall I translate it for you? You won’t be shocked?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well it’s about a girl called Anne-Marie who is a little loose, you understand. She is visiting an island. One day the manager injures himself trying to turn a turtle over on the beach. She runs to help him.”

  Renee called out something in creole and the old man started the song again. Ramesh leaned over and listened as Renee translated.

  “Tell me where it hurts.”

  “Touch me, Anne-Marie, and I’ll tell you.”

  She placed her hand on me and I broke out into a cold sweat.

  “But tell me where it hurts.”

  “Touch me, Anne-Marie, and I’ll tell you when you’ve found it.”

  She begins to look for it.

  “Is it here?”

  “No!”

  “There?”

  “No . . . Anne-Marie, you’ll have to massage me.

  Rub me quickly, I can’t stand the pain!

  Lower down lower!

  Don’t be afraid.

  Ah!! That’s it!! Again, again!!”

  Everyone burst out laughing and Renee, with a sly grin, asked Kirsty, “Did it shock you?”

  “Oh no.” She smiled. “But perhaps it shocked Ramesh.”

  Ramesh was looking studiously around the expanse of beach. “No,” he said. “I was looking for a large turtle!”

  They ate the pork with their fingers from strips of palm leaf, together with small pumpkins in sweet sauce. It was delicious and messy and afterwards everyone went into the lagoon to wash off with a swim. Later they gathered again around the embers of the fire and the old man sang again.

  Lani and Cady were sitting close together a little back from the others. She was leaning against him, an arm draped casually over his thigh.

  Kirsty watched them from the other side of the fire, then said,

  “Ramesh, I’m not propositioning you or anything, but I think it’s time I swapped bunks with Cady.”

  His head swivelled in surprise. “Oh! What are you meaning?”

  She pointed with her chin. “Look at them. What do you see?”

  He studied the couple for several minutes and a slow smile spread across his face. “I am seeing that they are in love.”

  “More than that Ramesh – they are lovers.”

  “But she is a virgin!”

  “Was. Ramesh. I think now she is a woman.”

  She turned her head to look at him. He was still gazing across the fire. The smile was still on his lips. Slowly he nodded.

  “Kirsty, I think you are right.”

  “It won’t be difficult for you?” she asked. “I mean my being in the other bunk.”

  He pursed his lips and said seriously, “Well, let me say that I will be exercising great restraint and thinking hard of other things.”

  “What things?”

  “Well maybe of Aldabra, and all the wonderful creatures there . . . yes, especially those giant tortoises . . . and how easy it is to become injured turning them over!”

  The bird men had decided that if La Belle Vue had not arrived by noon the following day they would leave a message and press on to Aldabra with Jaloud.

  At eleven in the morning Kirsty and Cady went ashore. Renee had promised Kirsty the run of the settlement’s vegetable garden, and Cady wanted to pick up an extra can of lubricating oil from the settlement’s stores. He quickly found it and paid for it and then went round to the guest house to chat with the bird men. But they were not there. They had gone off to the northern point of the island to see if they could spot La Belle Vue. Cady found a few magazines lying on the patio table and sat down and started browsing through an old Time.

  Kirsty found him there twenty minutes later. She was carrying two huge baskets woven from palm leaves.

  “So what’s new in the world, Cady?”

  He looked up startled, then tossed the magazine back on the table.

  “Who in hell knows — that’s months old. Here, let me take those.”

  He put the can of oil into one of the baskets on top of a pile of pumpkins and they turned to the beach.

  Chapter 23

  Cady unpacked the guns, cleaned them carefully, unloaded and reloaded the clips and then placed them all in the long, shallow open-topped box that he had built just inside the companionway. It was invisible from the deck, but easily reached, even from the wheel.

  The Manasa was anchored alone a hundred yards off Île Picard, at the north-western edge of the Aldabra lagoon. The regular camp site was nearby. Having placed the guns and practised reaching for them a few times, he picked up the binoculars and panned along the horizon, past the northern edge of the island.

  The others were all ashore. It had been decided not to shadow the Jaloud on the four-day voyage, but to press on ahead and maybe have a little time to look around before the final confrontation.

  But they had arrived the morning before and there was still no sign of Jaloud. Kirsty, in particular, was getting worried. To take her mind off it Ramesh had taken her and Lani ashore, promising her that if they still had not arrived by dawn they would sail round the lagoon in the unlikely event that Jaloud was anchored elsewhere.

  Cady was about to lower the binoculars when Jaloud sailed into view. She was about five miles away and had previously been hidden by the outer curve of the island. He watched her sailing slowly on a port tack that would take her three or four miles from the nearest point of the island. There was little wind and he was puzzled, until he suddenly realised that they must have had engine trouble. He considered sounding the siren to alert the others but then discarded the idea. With the low, easterly wind it would be two or three hours before Jaloud tacked in.

  On shore, Lani was feeding a piece of bread to a rail. It was tiny, with a little hunched back, spindly legs and a long, sharp beak; and it was completely unafraid.

  They had been enchanted by Aldabra. The moment they had dropped anchor noddy terns had flown out and perched on the booms and the cross trees of the masts. They were totally unaffected by the presence of humans. Kirsty and Lani had been delighted but Ramesh had looked at the decks and the first droppings and said wryly to Cady.

  “If we stay here long enough I’ll be able to go into business selling guano!”

  On shore they marvelled at the thousands of tortoises dozing in the shade, their heads stretched out to increase ventilation. They saw little rails darting about pecking at their skin and remembered the bird men explaining how they picked the lice from folds of the tortoises’ flesh. Huge crabs with long red claws were everywhere. They looked fearsome but their flesh was reputed to be one of the world’s great delicacies for they ate the flesh and drank the milk of fallen coconuts. There were birds everywhere. Irises, multi-coloured pigeons, terns, boobies and the elegant egrets. The waters of the lagoon stretched to the horizon. The tide was coming in when they first saw it and the birds wheeled and dived in their thousands over t
he water feasting on the twice daily bounty so conveniently provided.

  Kirsty above all was enraptured. Were it not for a worry about the absent Jaloud she would have wandered for hours.

  “I would like to stay here for months,” she told Ramesh on their first night while she lay in her bunk four feet away from him. “I would like to study them – learn how they co-exist. It’s the most wonderful place I’ve ever seen. How Garret would love it! He’s always loved animals and nature.”

  The Jaloud was two miles out and coming straight in when they returned to the beach. On seeing it Kirsty felt a mixture of relief and apprehension. The apprehension was for the others. She knew that things were coming to a head and she feared for their safety.

  Back on board they watched as Jaloud crept in towards the beach. Carlo was at the helm, gripping it with his good arm. Lascelles was at the forepeak, peering forward into the water, calling out instructions. Not once did he even glance at Manasa. The three bird men stood on the deck waiting to take in sail.

  Lascelles called out a final instruction and Carlo swung the wheel and the yacht turned into the wind and lost way. The sails came down and the anchor splashed into the water, about eighty yards from Manasa.

  For the next hour the bird men made several trips to the shore unloading equipment until a small mountain of it was piled on the beach. Lascelles did not help them. Once satisfied that Jaloud was riding safely at anchor he had gone below, again without a glance at Manasa.

  With all the equipment ashore, one of the bird men rowed up to Manasa. It was ‘Brown’, and he was sweating from his recent exertions.

  Lani fetched him a beer and after a grateful gulp he said, “Engine trouble. Last night. Something to do with the fuel pump.”

  “Can it be fixed?” Kirsty asked.

  “He says so — by tomorrow. He’s been working on it all day.”