Moon Island (21 page)

‘And she loved you.’

He took it as a question. ‘Yes, in her way.’

‘Were you faithful to each other.’

‘I was.’

On the beach May pushed herself into the volleyball game. The bright sunlight made her frown but Kevin Beam sidestepped to allow her some space and she flashed him what she thought might be an Ivy smile. If she could penetrate this circle, she thought, and join up with the younger Beam brothers and their dumb games and be near Lucas, then she could get free of Doone. If she hung out with the other kids and smoked weed and giggled like Gail and Ivy and the others, then everything would be ordinary again. There would be no island woman and no grave overgrown with wild herbs and nothing to be afraid of.

The ball boomed over her head to the opposite side of the net and Lucas swung his crossed wrists to connect sweetly with it. The ball soared again as a star-shaped image of brown limbs and torso and a face blurred with hair printed itself behind May’s eyes. She planted her feet apart and bent from the hips, waiting for the ball as she had seen Ivy do, but she was too late and her eyes were still dazzled as it came out of nowhere and hit her on the shoulder.

‘Hey, Maysy, that’s some cool play. We want you on our team for Pittsharbor Day.’

She knew that Kevin and Joel were smirking behind her back. She twirled round to face them and forced another smile. ‘Sure. You can count on me.’

‘Thanks, man.’

‘May!’ Lucas was calling her. He punched the ball in her direction and as if she were pulled towards him on a thread May’s head lifted in response and her back straightened. She jumped and her arms stretched out to meet the swelling black dot.

The blue air seemed to shimmer around her and gravity lost its hold as her feet left the ground. She knew she couldn’t fail and sure enough her shoulder drove her fist through an immaculate arc and her knuckles connected with a jolt of pain that was also a stab of pleasure. The ball skimmed back over the net and Ivy missed it altogether.

‘Yeah!’ Lucas smiled and swept the hair back from his forehead. Ivy and Gail applauded, even though it was a half-ironic slow handclap.

In the unaccustomed perfection of the instant May was thin and strong, and confident of her powers. She leapt once more in pure exultation and Marty Stiegel caught her in his camera lens. ‘Good one,’ he told her casually and lowered the camera again. He adjusted the sling tied to his chest and cupped his free hand protectively around the baby Justine’s sun-bonneted head before he strolled on again.

‘Five two,’ Lucas called. He jerked a thumbs-up at May and she felt such a pinch of love for him that it crimped her chest and threatened to stop her breath. She bent double, pretending that it was the play that had winded her. After the game the players streamed down to the water’s edge. Lucas and the other boys dived like seals under the glittering swell, while Ivy and Gail and Richard’s daughters shrieked and danced in the shallows. Droplets of water starred their arms and shoulders with diamonds. May was sweaty and still scarlet from her moment of glory, but she was too self-conscious to wear her swimsuit. She hovered in her shorts and T-shirt until Joel sneaked behind her, planted his hands at the small of her back and propelled her into the water. She stumbled forward and lost her balance. A wave broke and she fell, hearing the shouts and laughter.

The water was icy. She gasped and a flood filled her mouth and nose. She came up coughing and blinded, humiliated by water that was not much more than knee-deep.

The next wave washed another body up beside her. Lucas jumped out of the surf and grabbed her wrists, then dipped and rolled his shoulders to hoist her on to his back. Only staggering a little under the burden he stood upright and lunged for the deeper water.

His back was slick and cold. May’s mouth collided with his neck and she tasted salt and – with a shock of amazement – the unique flavour of his skin. He was gasping with laughter and still wading, drunkenly now because she was slipping from his grasp, and before it was too late she pressed a blind and desperate kiss against his shoulder.

Lucas tottered and they fell together. Even under the weight of water May thought she could hear his laughter, but when she surfaced again he was watching out for her. ‘Swim,’ he ordered, and obediently she rolled on her back and kicked towards the island. Immediately the world receded and there was nothing but the sun on her closed eyelids, and the fingers of the tide combing her hair, and the turbulence of Lucas swimming alongside her. Happiness made her buoyant. She forgot that she had been afraid of the rolling currents and the island with its dark spine of trees, even the omnipresent dark shadow of Doone.

They swam for fifty yards, then Lucas stopped and trod water. ‘You okay?’

She nodded, speechless, wishing she could offer him something other than her awkwardness in return for the gift of his attention. In the end she just smiled at him. Lucas looked at her for perhaps half a second longer than he had ever done before.

Ivy was waiting on the beach. The double band of her silvery bikini gleamed as she half turned, hands resting on her hips and all her weight balanced on one leg.

‘Time to head back,’ Lucas said. He ducked under the water and when he surfaced he struck out with a powerful crawl. May paddled after him towards the beach. When she waded out he was already standing with Ivy, their heads close together as she rubbed his hair with her towel. ‘Don’t get cold, May,’ Lucas called. ‘Go put some dry clothes on.’

May’s ears filled up with extraneous sound again. She heard the surf and the complaints of gulls, as well as Ivy’s laughter. But she did exactly as Lucas told her. She picked up a dark-blue towel and swathed herself in it, before plodding up the shingle towards the beach steps and the Captain’s House.

The light in the room had dimmed as the sun travelled westwards. It was the colour of dust now and the shadows in the corners were touched with violet. Leonie and John had talked for a long time, exchanging their histories in a conversation that seemed to her to have been more intimate than sex. They touched each other’s hands and explored the contours of one another’s faces, but it wasn’t until the day receded and left them in the dusk that they stopped talking.

The whiskey bottle was half empty, but Leonie had never felt more clear-headed. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she whispered.

‘Not quite yet.’

The cushions of the chesterfield smelled of mildew and smoke. The timbers of the house seemed to shiver as Leonie and John wrapped themselves together. There was a long, blind interval while they kissed again.

Then Leonie opened her eyes.

There was a face at the window, muffled to the throat in a dark wrap, looking in at them. The eyes were staring with horror in the white mask and the wet hair lay in ropes plastered to the skull.

May had no idea how long she stood frozen to the porch boards. In truth it was probably no more than two or three seconds. But she knew that the tableau of her father and Leonie Beam with their arms and legs entwined and their mouths greedily fastened together was already indelible. She would never be able to make it go away.

It bred another image out of itself.

Once again the other picture came swimming up out of a dark place. The pairs of legs and arms seemed to writhe and multiply, clothed and naked, and the intent unseeing faces fed on one another until they blurred and became one, and turned into everyone she knew and everything she feared.

May drew back her fist, just as she had prepared herself to punch the volleyball, with the same ecstasy of determination. But now she drove her arm straight through the window glass. There was a smash and a scream – she never knew whether it was hers or not – and a white-hot wire of pain ran up her arm and straight down to her heart.

The floor, the rugs and the mildewed cushions were splashed with blood. Leonie knelt in front of her with an armful of towels and over her shoulder May glimpsed the shocked crescent of her father’s face.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Leonie was murmuring over and over. The towels were bloody too, but there wasn’t as much of it as she had feared. ‘John, bring me a bowl of water, some cottonwool, anything.’

May’s fist was clenched and the curled fingers were mired with blood. Leonie swabbed at the lacerated knuckles and May bit the inside of her cheeks to stop herself moaning aloud.

‘Look, see, you’re okay. Open your fingers. Show me, May, please let me help.’

John came with a bowl of warm water and offered it up. Leonie rinsed out a cloth and swabbed the cuts clean. Gently she prised the curled fingers loose. The veined wrist was miraculously unscathed, the palm was sticky with blood but uncut. Leonie bowed her head with silent relief.

‘May, do you know what you just did? Do you know what you could have done, severed an artery?’ John’s voice was loud and Leonie could hear the raw vibration of horror in it. He gasped for breath and the loss of control told Leonie more clearly than all their hours of talk how deeply he cared for his daughters. ‘You could have bled to death.’

‘John …’ She tried to calm him but May sat upright.

‘I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if I did die. Like Doone Bennison.’

John made a movement that was so quick and violent Leonie thought he was going to hit the child. Instead he enveloped her head in his big hands and pulled her face against his chest. He tried to rock her, murmuring, ‘No, no.’

Slowly Leonie stood up. She wanted to leave them alone and to spare herself from seeing this. But May snatched at her wrist with her undamaged hand. ‘Stay,’ she commanded.

She was so angry with her father for what she had just seen that she wouldn’t be alone with him, even if it had to be Leonie who was the buffer between them.

Leonie hesitated and saw John unwillingly nod. ‘I’ll dress those fingers,’ she said.

There was a first-aid box in one of the cupboards. She fetched it, checked the lacerations for splinters of glass and swathed May’s hand in bandages. May sat silent, uncomplaining. At the same time John swept up the broken glass and wrapped the jagged fragments in newspaper. He found a piece of a cardboard carton and cut it to fit over the hole in the window, then taped it securely in place.

At last May sat nursing her bandaged fist in her lap. Leonie made a cup of tea and gave it to her, and the child obediently drank it. Then she put the empty cup aside and stared through the window with its disfiguring patch of card at the velvety sky beyond. There was a bruised quiet.

John sat down on the chesterfield at May’s side. ‘Do you think we should talk about this? About what you saw happening between Leonie and me?’

May turned her head stiffly. She darted a look at Leonie, not her father. ‘Not now. I don’t want to.’

‘Why did you try to hurt yourself?’

‘I don’t know. I just did it.’

Leonie sensed that it was the truth. Also that there were too many other things that May did not know or understand.

‘You won’t do it again,’ John said.

‘No,’ May answered quietly. After a moment she added, ‘I think I’ll go upstairs now.’

They waited until they heard the door of her bedroom close and the faint creak of footsteps subside overhead.

John dropped his head into his hands. ‘Jesus.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry she had to see what she did. But doesn’t she have to learn to accept sooner or later that there’s a world beyond her immediate wishes and concerns?’

‘Yes. But I don’t know how that happens.’

They sat in silence after that, occupied with their separate fears.

May felt calm, as if breaking the glass and shattering the image behind it had been a catharsis. She walked the thirteen steps across her room and back again, then touched the tips of her fingers to the door, checking that it was firmly closed. She turned again and saw the three books innocently lying in their place on the shelf.

Without thinking she picked one up and awkwardly flipped the pages with her bandaged hand. It was the whaling book and she looked with indifference at the heavy old-fashioned type until she noticed some pages near the end that were marked with pencil. Words were faintly underlined, not consecutive words, nor did they make any sense when she read them in order, but still some faint association nagged in her mind. She frowned at the brown-edged pages, then at the pencil marks themselves because they seemed to contain some familiarity that maddeningly swam just beneath the surface of her consciousness. She riffled through the pages in the opposite direction and found nothing. She was about to discard the book again when frustration made the connection for her.

She had flipped the pages of Doone’s diary in this way and felt just the same baffled impatience with a secret she couldn’t unlock. The skin at the back of May’s neck suddenly prickled with cold.

She placed the whaling book open and face up on the top shelf, and picked up the red-and-black diary. Some of Doone’s last entries, the coded ones scribbled with such heat that the groups of numbers were gouged into the underlying pages, were written in pencil. The same soft, blunt pencil.

May stared at the trios and pairs of numbers. She realised that her mouth was open and her breath snicked audibly in her chest. Eagerness fought with an impulse to throw the books aside and never look at them again. With exaggerated care she smoothed both sets of pages, glancing from one to the other.

Then she remembered the birthday present. It had been a gift from an English relative of Alison’s when Ivy turned thirteen. The great-aunt hadn’t seen Ivy or May for a long time and the present was much too young for Ivy, whose interests had long ago switched from toys to nail polish and sleep-over pyjamas. May had inherited the book. She remembered the laminated white board covers and bold tide lettering quite clearly. It was
Great Games, Puzzles and Quizzes for Kids
. One of the pages was headed ‘Secrets to Share: a simple book code’.

May licked her dry lips. That was what it was, of course, Doone’s secret code. Simple, once you knew which book she had chosen. The trios of numbers were page, line and word. Where there were only pairs of numbers she had found the word she wanted on the same page.