"I love you," breathes Bella. "Do you love me?" Thurston nods.
But this is not remotely relevant, Best Beloved
In the cockpit there is a series of thuds, followed by a loud, prolonged fart and the advancing clump of hobnailed boots. He's awake! How can he be awake so soon? They stare at each other, horrified. Reaching awkwardly behind him Thurston closes the door and bolts it. They are safe, but trapped. Their clothes are outside. No matter. He begins to thrust faster, Bella urging him on.
"Come on, come on, I want it. I want it now!"
Too late, she remembers the condoms. No matter. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. He's coming! He's coming to use the lavatory! He's closing the outer door. There is no escape. He is lifting the lid. He is noisily defecating, mere inches away, so close it's as if they are in there with him. A retch-making smell invades the tiny cabin.
Now he is closing the lid, pushing down the clamps. He is working the lever, the one that mashes, a regular squish, squish, squish. Between her legs, Thurston also pumps desperately, his hands gripping her thighs, his face puce with effort. Bella groans, this time with despair. It isn't nice any more. She shakes her head and pushes him away.
"You filthy little bastard!" she snarles. "Bloody piss off will you!"
*
Slipping easily under the bows of the chain ferry, the Queen of Tenstone and her now well-seasoned crew leave the harbour entrance behind them, bearing away to starboard to follow the long curve of Sandy Bay. It's another glorious day and the beach is densely packed with grockles, doing – with the aid of a myriad colourful windbreaks, air-beds, beach balls and buckets and spades – what grockles do. A few yards offshore a rainbow flotilla of sailboards skims back and forth, while, dashing among them, a half dozen jet-skis churn out a continuous roar, almost drowning the screams and cries of the children playing in the shallows.
Everyone turns to watch the picturesque old gaffer as slightly heeled now in the light southwesterly breeze she passes serenely by. Bella, standing in the leeward shrouds, gives them an occasional regal wave. She is wearing her daringly exiguous new bikini, and with her lean, tanned body and flying black hair she knows she is the cynosure of all eyes. Leaning out over the passing waves she boldly makes a Y and then an X of herself, with one foot occasionally kicking up a glittering arc of spray.
"Ready aboot," cries McNab, who has the helm, followed by, "Gybe-oh," and as Thurston hastens to sheet in, the old Queen shifts ponderously but relentlessly onto the other tack.
"Yee-ha!" cries Bella as she finds herself swinging round the suddenly taut and vibrating rope of the shroud. Thurston gives her a you-be-careful look and she blows him a kiss. She is becoming exquisitely sensitive to his every expression, to his body language and the subtlest change in his aura. They communicate perfectly, but not in words. Who needs words when you are in love?
Beating offshore, away from the racket of the jet-skis, the Queen acquires a more robust motion, dipping and rising gracefully over the turquoise and azure billows. Bella whoops with joy and exhilaration. This is what she was made to do, not minister to a bunch of stupid stones. Spray drenches her, spattering the teak deck with salty droplets, as she imagines coral atolls and flying fish and making love on blinding white beaches. She cannot wait to begin their voyage and leave behind all the trials of her priestly office. Her excitement is reflected in the faces of the others and even Carol seems to be enjoying herself, spying with her telescope in a corner of the cockpit.
Another tack, and slowly the character of the land changes. The beach and its hordes are left behind and they are gliding beneath high, white cliffs that tumble straight into the sea. Before them lies the great promontory known as St. Ethelfleda's head, culminating in several isolated pinnacles of white rock. At the seaward end of these, where one might perhaps expect to find a lighthouse, is a narrow, towering chalk stack, with the surf crashing hungrily against its blackened base.
"That's the Widower," says Bella. "He used to have a wife, but she fell into the sea. Isn't that sad?"
As they enter the shelter of the headland the wind drops and they are obliged to start the engine, nosing into a tiny, pebbly bay. The white rock looms high above them, patches of vegetation clinging to its cracks and ledges. It is surprisingly calm and still here, out of the wind, an odd contrast with the nearby thump and hiss of the surf. There are no other vessels at anchor. They are quite alone.
"Come on," cries Bella, "last one through the Gate is a sissy," and raising her arms she executes a perfect dive into the clear water. With a whale-like splash Thurston plunges after her and minutes later he is pursuing her along the beach, both running comically slowly as they pick their way over the pebbles.
McNab, busily stowing the sails, watches them go. "See ye later, then?" he mutters sourly. "Dinna fash yersels aboot me."
Bella quickly finds herself in the shadow of the penultimate rock. Only the Widower lies beyond. At the bottom of the cliffs are numerous shallow caves and overhangs, but the most impressive of all is the Devil's Gate, a low, natural arch going right through to the other side. Determined to stay ahead of Thurston, Bella ducks through it, emerging into the wind and spray on the western side of the headland. There is almost no beach here, just the slow-breaking ocean swell and the cry of seabirds. It would seem there is nowhere else to go, but then, looking about her, she fancies she can descry a path or staircase of sorts, leading upwards.
"Can't catch me!" she cries, her voice echoing around her, and immediately begins to climb.
It is harder than it looks, and the higher she climbs the harder it gets. If this was ever a path, she decides, it has long since ceased to be one. The rock is almost vertical in places and very crumbly and it takes all her concentration and newfound physical agility to find a way up. Not until she at last scrambles triumphantly onto the flat, sea-washed turf of the summit, an area about the size of a double bed, does she dare to turn and look back. It seems an awfully long way down. The Queen has shrunk to a toy, McNab to an ant.
Thurston is not far behind but he is struggling. His great size and weight do not lend themselves to climbing, and his soles are not hardened like hers by months of wandering barefoot about the heath. She gasps as a piece of chalk he has been standing on falls away, plummeting into the water below.
"Go back," she warns. "I'll come down." But still he continues stubbornly upwards until a much larger chunk goes crashing down, bouncing off the rock-face as it falls and starting a small avalanche of loose stones. Deprived of this single foothold, Thurston leaps sideways, pulling himself onto a barely discernable ledge just short of the top. This is a mistake. Below him is now a sheer drop and above him a distinct overhang. He is trapped.
Lying on the grass of the summit, Bella reaches down to him, but though she wriggles as far forward as she dares, their hands are just too far apart to meet. Even as they strain towards each other, Thurston's ledge starts to crumble beneath him. He looks desperately up at her, the shadow of fear on his normally phlegmatic features.
There is only one thing to be done. Taking off her ruinously expensive bikini, Bella swiftly twists the top and bottom halves together into a species of rope, then tightly gripping one end she dangles the other over the edge. Thurston grabs it. The bikini stretches alarmingly, but by some contingent miracle of the couturier's art, it holds. He begins to haul himself up it, leaning perilously out from the rock.
Bella hangs on grimly, the fashionably thin bootstrap ribbons cutting cruelly into her hands. Why oh why didn't she buy a nice, sturdy one-piece? An adept should be able to foresee this sort of thing. She begins to feel the ground moving under her. She is slipping! She is being pulled over the edge and there is nothing to hang onto. At the same time she feels a familiar, unwelcome, psychic stirring.
"Let him go, you stupid girl; we'll be killed!"
"I can't do that, I love him!"
"Don't be a fool! He won't be any good to you if you're dead. And what about me? Thanks to y
ou we've no bloody replacement!"
"Shut up, Mother! Bugger off!"
"Don't you talk to me like that!"
Filled with a sudden anger, Bella heaves. She heaves as she has never hove before, the long, thin muscles standing out in her arms. At the same time she tries, by force of will alone, to glue herself to the thin, slippery turf. It is, of course, impossible. Slowly, relentlessly, she is dragged forward until almost her whole sweating torso seems to be over the edge, her breasts dangling into empty space. Thurston looks up and shakes his head, telling her to stop, telling her it is hopeless.
"Don't you dare let go," says Bella, through gritted teeth, "or I'll never speak to you again. Climb, damn you!" At the same time she appeals for help to the greatest power she knows — the Stones. Help me! I'm your Priestess, where the hell are you when I need you?
Almost at once she can feel their influence, reaching out, enveloping her. At the same time, Thurston makes a last, desperate lunge. With one hand he grips her wrist, the vicelike grip of a drowning man. Bella screams as she is pulled even further over the void, the sound of her cry whipped away by the buffeting wind. But now, even as she begins to fall, he is scrambling awkwardly over her, grabbing her legs. They have almost changed places. He is up; she is down, dangling and helpless. All she can see is the chalk face, inches from her nose, a myriad tiny fossils of long dead things. Is she going to join them? Then, grunting with effort, he is dragging her back by the ankles. The chalk disappears to be replaced by blessed grass. Somehow they have defeated several physical laws, including that of gravity itself.
For a while they can do nothing but lie panting on the little grassy plateau, watching the gulls sailing overhead, crying like departed souls, the souls of those who didn't have an adept's superhuman powers, who didn't have a now-ruined designer bikini so conveniently to hand. But at last Thurston props himself up on his elbow and gazes speculatively up and down her long, naked form. "All right, so you've caught me," says Bella. "What are you going to do about it?"
McNab looks for the umpteenth time at his watch. He notes the angle of the sun, in case there is something wrong with the mechanism. He looks, yet again, both ways along the little beach, though it is impossible that he could miss anyone if they were there. He even turns and gazes seawards, scanning the waves for two bobbing heads.
Are they still under the rock arch, perhaps? Going forward along the deck he finds that if he edges out upon the bowsprit, he can see right through the arch to the other side. But there is no-one there, nothing but the booming surf and the sky. Where can they possibly have got to? Is there some cave entrance, not visible from this angle? A cave, perhaps, within a cave? Or even a cave within a cave within a cave? Or a cave within a cave within a cave within a cave within a cave? Does the whole headland resemble a vast honeycomb or Swiss cheese and they lost, wandering, within it? It is hard to imagine any other explanation; apart, of course, from freak waves, joint suicide, murder followed by suicide, pirates, alien abduction and the like, none of which seem statistically very likely.
"They shoudae takken a ball o string," mutters McNab. He of, course, would never be caught out in such a manner. He always has his string, and a box of matches, and a small torch – though the battery is flat, dammit – and, most importantly, an emergency jar of hooch. Fetching it out (the label declares it to be mango chutney) he absently undoes it and takes a little swig. Then another. It has an unusual, spicy piquance, rather pleasant, having partaken, no doubt, something of the original contents.
Returning to the cockpit he settles himself in the warm sunshine and sets the jar carefully beside him. Then, remembering his manners, he offers some to Carol.
"Fancy a wet?" he asks.
To which she replies, in a refined voice: "Why, thank you, McNab; I don't mind if I do."
McNab has another nip to keep her company, then returns to scrutinizing the cliff-face. Caves: a fascinating phenomenon. Palaeolithic art, Neanderthal Man (burial with flowers, possible evidence of spiritual beliefs), fantastical bacterial growths supporting blind, scuttling creatures uniquely evolved from ordinary terrestrial forms. Stalactites and stalagmites! Now which is which? There is some sort of memory jogger, if only he could remember it. "Och ay! Taichts come doon an' mites grow up."
He takes another swig. Why, exactly? What is the connection between these apparently unrelated phenomena? He frowns darkly. Sex, he dares to say, is why; that most mysterious and baffling of human activities. Sex, sex, sex. After three long weeks he is sick of it! The silly giggling; the endless covert osculation as soon as his back is turned; the noises in the night that sound so very like suffering, perhaps are suffering. And always the incomprehensible, unsettling, swapping about; Bella and Simon, Bella and Julius, and now Bella and Thurston! What is the mechanism? How do they decide who goes with whom, and when? Can anyone join in?
Does Pat have sex? She must have done it once of course – indeed, twice – though it's hard to imagine her groaning and crying out like that, or sticking her hand down Thurston's shorts when she thinks that he, McNab, is not looking. Do they think he's blind? Do they think he's deaf? Or don't they care?"
Something airborne captures his attention, fluttering down from on high to float, partially submerged, in the limpid water. Putting aside his chutney jar he ambles forward with the boat hook and fishes it out. It appears to be a bikini top, lilac. He gazes skywards. Here comes another! No, it is the bottom bit: the little triangle. Is it raining bikinis? Are bikinis being swept skywards by some freakish wind and deposited here, as sometimes happens with frogs and fishes? Is there, perhaps, a beach-full of ladies somewhere, suddenly rendered bikini-less? Big, jolly ladies with big, soft, warm, bouncing bubbies? But wait, isn't it a rather odd shape? He holds it against himself. The disappointingly small receptacles are set so far apart they are under his armpits. How very strange! Do these ladies have bubbies under their armpits? Would it not be rather uncomfortable? Or perhaps their chests are exceedingly broad?
Now he fancies he can hear a human cry, deceptively gull-like but surely human all the same. McNab scowls. It's that sound again: the sound she makes in the forecabin, his cabin, while he is obliged to sleep in that horrible cramped berth under the deckhead. And now he comes to think of it, is not lilac the colour of her bikini, indeed of all her clothes? Then again, her bubbies, such as they are, are certainly not under her armpits. He looks up again. High, high on the rock he sees movement; an arm flung out, a flutter of black hair. They're not lost in the bowls of the earth at all, they're up there! They have been there all the time, probably laughing at him, and now they're doing that thing — again!
McNab is suddenly overwhelmed by a peculiarly violent emotion. Casting aside the bikini, he strides back to the cockpit, snatches up Carol and kisses her cruelly on the mouth, smudging her lipstick. Ignoring her lukewarm response he tears at her blouse and taking her breasts roughly in his hands bounces them up and down. There is a muffled metallic clanking. Carol makes no defence, merely gazing at him with an expression of injured virtue.
"Dinnae play the innocent wi' me!" cries McNab, shaking her. "Ye didnae mind daein' it wi' that ither bastart. No guid eneuch for ye eh? No man eneuch mebbe? Ah'll show ye!" And hurling her to the cockpit floor, he begins to rain kicks upon her with his big, hobnailed boots.
*
Veronica slaps down the newspaper, scattering the breakfast things. "There you are madam. Now I hope you're satisfied. 'Local heiress in rescue drama. Teeny weeny bikini saves boyfriend.' Tell me one thing. How is it you can't keep your clothes on for more than five minutes at a time?"
Bella stares at the paper in disbelief. "I don't understand. How did they get this?"
"That's nothing. There's more inside. Go on, take a look. You might as well; everyone else'll be having a good gawp. It's lucky I never see anyone these days, that's all I can say. I won't even be able to go into the post office now; Pat will have to go for me. And what your uncle will say I tremble to think.
He's at the yacht club. You'd better not be around when he comes home if you know what's good for you."
Covering most of the front page is a photograph of Bella being winched into the helicopter. Fortunately she is partly hidden by the young aircrew, but you can still see her bottom a bit. She recalls that he took a surprisingly long while getting her up there. Thurston came up much faster.
"You can't really see it's me. It could be anybody."
"You don't need to. Your name's there, and your uncle's: 'The yacht, Queen of Tenstone, is owned by Miss Hauteville's uncle, Commander Kenneth Aubrey-Hole RN (Retd).' He's going to go ballistic when he sees this."
"I didn't tell them that! How did they get that?"
"Looked her up in Lloyds, probably; unless McNab blabbed. After yesterday I wouldn't put anything past him."
On page four is a series of slightly blurred shots showing Thurston clinging to the rock face, Thurston hauling himself up, and, finally, the pair of them in an undignified heap. There is, thankfully, nothing after that; the Bugle is a family newspaper. Judging by the angle of the pictures, they must have been taken by someone up on the headland, probably some blasted grockle, earning himself a bit of pocket money.
"I don't know what he was thinking of, letting you climb up there," says Veronica angrily. "He's going to get a piece of my mind."
"I'm going to marry him," says Bella.
It is Rat who eventually finds the missing Carol, floating serenely on the tide like a sort of maritime Ophelia. She is almost awash, buoyed up only by her hollow bosoms. With some difficulty he hauls her sodden body into the launch. Her face is gone, and her shoes; otherwise she is complete.
Isabella: A sort of romance Page 41
