The Eden Inheritance (52 page)

The memory was just one pain amongst so many yet sharp enough to inflict its own particular agony. Oh Mama, why, why? Lilli's heart cried, but all the while she knew. Jorge was as much a danger as any drug. However one might despise him one was still addicted to him. Loathing him, loathing oneself for the weakness, it made no difference. Jorge raised his hand and beckoned and those who were enslaved by him thought: Just one last time – just one! Let me taste his lips and feel his arms and love his body once more and then I will leave him forever. Except that one never did. Her mother had not had the strength to do it and for all her good intentions Lilli was terrified that if he put her to the test she would not have the strength either.

Sadness washed over her like the waves of the ocean and she felt old suddenly, as old as the palms, as old as the island itself. The beach shouldn't do this to her! It was her refuge, here she should have been able to lose herself. But she couldn't. Past, present and future seemed all to have become one and she was trapped, unable to escape her destiny, hurt and afraid.

She turned her head slightly looking along the beach and realised with a prickle of annoyance that she was no longer alone. A figure had emerged from the trees – a man wearing shorts and a yellow shirt. Lilli stared almost accusingly and as the man came closer she recognised the pilot who had flown her in yesterday – was it really only yesterday? Then, she had warmed to him, felt almost that he might become a friend and ally, now she saw him only as a stranger encroaching on her private worid of pain.

‘Well hello,' he said, stopping a few yards away from her, one hand thrust into the pocket of his shorts, the other hooked around a rolled-up bathing towel. ‘I didn't expect to meet you here.'

Lilli glanced at him; glanced away again.

‘I come here when I want to be alone,' she said pointedly.

‘Oh – I'm sorry. Is this beach private?'

‘The whole island is private – apart from the hotel, that is.'

‘I didn't realise.' He pulled a face. ‘A little difficult, really, for those of us who have to work here. But I dare say if you happen to own an island it's your right to decide who goes where.'

With some surprise Lilli noticed the hauteur in his voice, quite different to yesterday's open friendliness, and realised too, with a prickle of guilt, that it was the natural response of a supremely self-assured man to her own hostility.

‘I'll leave you in peace then,' he said, half turning away.

‘No!' Lilli said quickly. ‘Yon don't have to go. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that … I really do want to be alone. I've got an awful lot on my mind.'

Behind his sunglasses an eyebrow quirked.

‘You're worried about your father. I quite understand.'

No, you don't! she wanted to say. Instead she nodded mutely.

‘I am worried about him, yes. He's … very ill.'

‘I'd heard. I'm sorry. What exactly is the trouble?'

Lilli stared at her feet, emerging, as if dismembered, from the tent of her skirt.

‘He has cancer. Didn't you know? I thought it was common knowledge amongst the workers.'

‘Well I'm not really one of the workers.' His tone was amused, but again Lilli was all too aware of how patronising she must have sounded. Was this what stress did to you – turned you into everything you most hated? Or had this other self been there all the time, just waiting for the chance to come to the surface. Lilli Brandt, spolit little rich girl, the daughter and granddaughter of drug-traffickers Christ!

The lump was there in her throat again. She swallowed hard at it, wishing on the one hand that he would go so that she could cry again, and on the other, suddenly, perversely, that he would stay.

Somehow she managed to turn the choking sound of threatening tears into a small harsh laugh.

‘I'm saying all the wrong things, aren't I? I'm not usually like this, honestly …'

‘Don't worry about it,' he said easily. ‘I know you're not like that. At least, you weren't yesterday. In fact when I flew you in I thought how much I liked you. You even asked me over for drinks, remember?' He managed to say it lightly, giving no indication of how important that particular invitation was to him.

Lilli smiled wanly.

‘Oh yes, I did, didn't I? I don't know that that is going to be possible. My father is a great deal more ill than I realised.' She broke off, biting her lip, wondering if he might take this as yet another snub. Upset as she was, little as she wanted to be bothered to talk to anyone at this moment, yet somehow she was terribly anxious not to offend him or have him think badly of her. ‘Look, won't you please sit down?' she said, then flushed, aware that even this overture had, in her present mood, come out sounding more like a command than an invitation.

He was looking at her with that same wry directness; she knew it, even though his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses.

‘Are you sure you really mean that?'

‘Yes, I'm sure. You make the place look untidy standing there,' she said in an attempt at humour.

‘All right. As long as you promise to tell me if I overstay my welcome.'

‘Don't worry, I will.'

He threw his towel down, then dropped to the sand beside her.

‘I take it your father's illness is the reason you came home.'

‘Yes. I would have come ages ago if I'd known, but I didn't. Daddy didn't want me to know,' so Ingrid didn't write me.'

‘Ingrid your sister?'

‘Stepmother.'

‘
Wicked
stepmother?'

‘That,' Lilli said, ‘ is not a question I am prepared to answer.'

He smiled. It was the first time today he had heard any levity in her tone. But he couldn't afford to let up. An opportunity to talk to Lilli might not come again in a hurry.

‘They are Germans, are they?'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought so from the name, though I've never met your father. You don't look German though.'

‘My mother was Venezuelan. She died …' The cloud was back, shadowing the sun.

‘That explains it. How did your father meet her?'

‘He came here after the war. It was terrible for them too you know. His family home was destroyed in the bombing … everything. There was nothing left for him there.'

‘So he came here with nothing.'

‘I suppose so.' Her brow furrowed; cleared again. ‘He knew my grandfather, Vicente Cordoba, because his family had been in the coffee-importing business before the war. Grandfather Vicente helped him make a new life and he fell in love with Vicente's daughter Magdalene – my mother.'

‘I see. It must have been very difficult for him.'

‘Yes.' Again, the shadow. She did not want to talk about her family. Not now, not knowing what she now knew about them. ‘ I think,' Lille said, ‘that I would like to go for a swim.'

‘And so you want me to go now.'

‘Not necessarily. Stay if you like. I really didn't mean to be rude about the private beach.'

She stood up and unbuttoned the cotton skirt, half expecting him to say he would swim too, but he did not. She dropped it on to the sand and ran towards the sea without a backward glance, a slim, dark-skinned girl in a bright bathing costume who looked, suddenly, almost carefree, but who felt, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, a hundred years old.

The water was warm; it scarcely shocked her sunbathed skin. She ran through the breakers without pausing, then leaned forward, letting the water envelop her. Oh bliss! How she had ached to feel the soothing warm seas of home as she had shivered in New York! She swam away from the beach then turned on her back, spreading her arms wide and letting her body rise and fall with the waves. Above her the sky was blue and wide, a heaven quite separate from the imperfect world beneath, yet
there
, only just out of reach.

The motion of the sea and that blue, blue sky, each microscopic atom which composed it shimmering in the afternoon sun so that it seemed almost opaque, lulled Lilli into a state which was almost trance-like. Her body was totally relaxed for the first time that day – for the first time, perhaps, waking or sleeping, for many days – and by the same token her mind was blank. Lilli gazed at the sky and thought how wonderful it would be to be a part of it, and then that thought was gone too, as though it had been drawn from her by the spiralling heat of the afternoon, and she was quite, quite empty. No – not empty, except as a vacuum is empty. Just a stillness, a quiet place within herself that she never wanted to leave again …

The waves rocked Lilli gently and in that same unthinking way she knew she would stay here, just
stay
here, until the sea and the sky took her into their own.

Guy lay back full length on the sand, the end of the towel, which he had formed into a pillow, fanned out across his face to protect it from the fierce glare of the sun.

He could have gone in for a swim with Lilli – the thought of the water which, in the shallows, was tepid as a warm bath, was a tempting one, and who knew? a frolic in the waves might have helped the relationship along. But then again it might not. She was very … fragile … at the moment and obviously needed her space. Guy did not want to encroach upon it too fast. If he did he was fairly sure she would back off entirely, just as she had done earlier when she had as good as told him to get lost. Under the towel, Guy winced. That had been a nasty moment and he had realised there and then that he was going to have to tread very carefully. The girl was in the midst of an emotional unheaval and couldn't be rushed. Under normal circumstances, all well and good. Guy had won over difficult women before and often more for the thrill of the chase than because he really wanted to catch them. But this was different. He had a reason for wanting to gain Lilli's confidence, and time was running out for him.

Not for the first time Guy cursed the fate that had given von Rheinhardt cancer just when he had caught up with him. If it
was
von Rheinhardt, he reminded himself; that was something he could not yet be absolutely sure about. And if he didn't make headway with Lilli pretty soon, perhaps he never would know. Well, it was up to him to play it right and not mess up this opportunity which had presented itself. Forcing his company on Lilli was certainly not the right way.

A light aircraft droned overhead. Guy shifted the towel and squinted up, more from habit than anything else. The aircraft was a mere speck in the blue – it had nothing whatever to do with Madrepora – but it reminded him all the same of the incident which had taken place this morning and he wondered again about the truck unloading in the most remote part of the island. Very odd. But whatever its reason for being there he couldn't imagine it had any bearing on his self-appointed mission, and after a few moments' idle speculation he let it slide to the back of his mind.

The sun beating down on his body and the towel covering his face was making him drowsy now, his line of thought becoming muddly whilst giving him the illusion that he was somehow making perfect sense, and he dozed, believing himself to be still awake. It was only when a sandfly alighted on his bare arm and the irritating tickle returned him to awareness that he realised he had actually been asleep.

He flicked the sandfly away, folded the towel back from his face and felt with unerring instinct the passage of time. Then, with a slight jar of consternation, it occurred to him that he was alone. Had Lilli returned from her swim and left the beach without waking him? If so, he had let a golden opportunity slip through his fingers. But no, her skirt and deck shoes were still there on the sand beside him.

Guy stood up, rubbing his eyes, which were slightly bleary from sweat and sleep, and looked towards the sea. From the palms which framed it where it met the beach the water stretched deep blue and unbroken towards the horizon – no boat on it today, no sea birds, and – as far as he could tell – no Lilli. Guy experienced the first qualm of concern. Where the hell was she? She couldn't be snorkelling, she hadn't had any equipment with her. He would have expected her to be in the shallows, sitting perhaps with her legs outstretched while the breakers ran over them in lacy ripples, but she wasn't there and she wasn't swimming either.

For God's sake don't be so stupid! he chided himself as his concern grew. This is a girl who was raised in the islands and has swum in that sea since she was a child! She must know every bay, every cove, every tide. She'll have simply swum around the headland to another beach where she can be alone. But the anxiety was too strong to be quelled by reason. Guy got to his feet, shading his eyes and scouring the sea. Idiot, she's run out on you, that's all. She's not there, she's simply not there …

And then he saw something way, way out. At first he thought it was a sea bird riding the waves, then he thought it might be a piece of flotsam from a passing ship. And then, for no reason be could explain, he became convinced it was Lilli.

Guy's heart came into his mouth with a jolt, his lazy limbs suddenly suffused with adrenaline. Lilli – if indeed it was Lilli – was not moving, except with the gentle swell of the ocean. From this distance it appeared that she was quite still, quite … lifeless. Guy hesitated for only a moment, still disbelieving his eyes and instincts, then he kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shorts to the swimming trunks he was wearing beneath them, and ran towards the sea. He plunged into the breakers, striking out strongly, not stopping to wonder what the hell she was doing or the reasonableness or otherwise of his own actions, thinking now of nothing but reaching the distant floating body. Once he stopped, his arms aching from the effort, treading water whilst he fixed her position, which seemed to be as distant as ever, and glancing back, with some unease at the now equally distant shore. Then he swam on, cutting a powerful crawl through the calm warm water. Painfully slowly, it seemed to him, he drew closer, closer.