The Far Side of the Sun (2 page)

‘Not far now,’ she told him.

Like the loafers, Dodie took it one step at a time. Her instinct was to hide him, to find somewhere he would be safe. So she chose a little-used path that headed in the direction of the beach, leaving behind the houses and the hazy neon lights of an occasional late-night bar where people might be searching for him. It seemed to take for ever to get there but finally they reached the point she was aiming for – a sandy track that branched off and twisted away through a dense fringe of coconut palms edging the shoreline. She breathed in the warm humid air with relief.

‘All right, Mr Morrell?’

‘All right,’ he grunted.

She was killing him. He didn’t say it, but she knew it was true. She was killing him. She couldn’t go on.

‘Enough of this,’ she announced.

With her heart thumping she edged him over to one of the palm trees that looped drunkenly over the track, its trunk a slender black streak against the velvet of the night sky, and there she stopped.

‘Sit down.’

He needed no second bidding. His knees buckled and he sank to the ground in an untidy sprawl. With care she sat him so that his back was propped against the slope of the trunk, checked that he was still breathing and hoped he wouldn’t fall down.

‘You’ll be safe here,’ she assured him.

There was a silence, a moment when neither breathed, both wanting to believe her words, before he murmured with elaborate Southern courtesy, ‘Thank you kindly for your help, ma’am.’

‘I’m leaving you now.’

He managed a nod. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back.’

She removed her cardigan and tied it tightly around his middle. There was a smell to him now, not just the blood or the rum, a smell of something bad. It was the sour stench of terror, rising from deep down in his gut. She recognised it because she had smelt it on herself the day her father had waded into the wide turquoise waters of a Bahamian beach and announced, ‘Wait here, poppet. I’m going to swim back to England.’

In the lonely darkness under the palm trees, Dodie felt a rush of sorrow for this wounded stranger and wrapped her arms around him, while above their heads palm fronds shuffled in the salty breeze that came exploring off the ocean.

‘Trust me,’ she whispered in his ear.

‘There’s no need to lie. You’ve helped me this far and I’m grateful.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m only going to find you some transport, Mr Morrell. You can’t walk any more.’ She sat back on her heels and patted his shoulder awkwardly, aware that he didn’t believe her. ‘Just sit tight. I’ll be as quick as I can.’ She even managed a smile of sorts. ‘Don’t go running off anywhere, will you?’

His hand clutched her bare arm.

‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘I promise I’ll come back.’

A tremor ran through his fingers before he let his hand fall to his side. ‘Thank you, ma’am. You have been kind.’ He exhaled a long breath as if he expected it to be his last.

Dodie ran. She zigzagged through the trees, sprinting along the sandy track. It was familiar to her feet even in darkness, a route she took every day, but panic made her feet clumsy. Twice she crashed into a tree, skinning an elbow and thumping the air from her lungs, while the nightly chorus of cicadas reverberated through the undergrowth. She made herself slow down and concentrate as she headed for old Bob Coster’s place. Off to her right beyond the trees came the rumble of the waves as they raced up the narrow beach and the familiar sound of it calmed her.

Oh, Mr Morrell, what is going on
?

She thought of him sitting alone in the dark, believing she had abandoned him. The poor man should be in hospital, but she had no right to make that decision for him if there really were people lying in wait for him there.
To finish what they started
. The recollection of the way he’d said it sent a shiver through her because he’d said it as if it were normal. As if any of this were normal.

The moonlight allowed her to quicken her pace and she had no problem locating Bob Coster’s house. It was set back in a small clearing, a wooden building with a roof of corrugated iron that rattled in the wind, and a wooden porch where old Bob liked to laze in his rocking chair and spin a yarn with anyone who cared to split a beer with him.

The windows were dark, no sign of life. Dodie hurried down the side of the house to the back where Bob boasted a good-size plot of land, cleared and planted up with sweet potato. He had built himself a toolshed. In these parts nobody locked doors – it was regarded as unneighbourly – so Dodie lifted the shed latch. She reached in, found what she was searching for, grasped its handles and backed out. She had her transport.

The wheelbarrow creaked with each turn of its wheel. The noise of it sounded raucous among the softly spoken trees and startled a yellow-crowned night-heron into spreading its great wings in flight, silent and ghostly as it skimmed the silvery tree tops. There was a brief spatter of rain, big bloated drops that drummed in the well of the barrow, but the clouds passed overhead, allowing Dodie to see more clearly.

Please, be alive
.

She hurried through the warm night, bats darting on leathery wings above her head as she approached the spot where she’d left him. ‘Mr Morrell?’ she called out.

Shadows stubbornly cloaked the tree where he’d been sitting.

‘Mr Morrell!’

He was gone.

She peered into the black blur of tree trunks. ‘It’s me, Dodie.’

Only then did she catch a whisper that drifted to her from further back among the trees. She abandoned the barrow and, nervous of every rustle, trawled through the prickly undergrowth until she found him. He had buried himself under a carapace of slick wet leaves, and at the sight of him still alive the depth of her relief took her by surprise. He’d dragged himself here and camouflaged his body – so he wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Slowly he raised his head from the foliage.

‘You came back.’

‘I said I would.’

‘I didn’t believe you.’

‘I’ve brought a barrow for you to ride in.’

A strange hiccupping sound escaped him and Dodie realised it was a laugh.

‘So that’s what the noise was,’ he muttered.

‘Yes, your chariot awaits.’

His hand grasped hers and didn’t let go until she had lowered him into the wheelbarrow, but as she tightened her cardigan around his waist, she could hear an odd rumbling vibration at the back of his throat that scared her.

‘Off we go,’ she said brightly and took the strain of the handles. It was heavier than she expected.

She gripped the handles tighter but the weight of it was making her shoulder sockets burn. She blinked away sweat from her eyes, as mosquitoes honed in for their midnight feast. What frightened her was that when she shook her head to shift the jagged fragments of the evening that were lodged like glass inside her mind, nothing changed. Only her heart thumped harder and the wheelbarrow tilted, as though it wanted to rid itself of Mr Morrell.

‘Help me.’

The words drifted out of the bedroom. Ella Sanford flicked away the cigarette she was smoking on the balcony, watching the lights of Nassau spring into life one by one as the sky grew dark and the city prepared for another night of partying. Since the war had come to the Bahamas, the city had changed. The military had moved into the island of New Providence like a force of nature with their airfields and their uniforms and their loud laughter. These men knew how to work hard and how to play hard, and the petty colonial atmosphere of idle in-bred gossip had been swept aside. With a little smile of anticipation Ella returned to the bedroom.

‘What’s the matter, Reggie?’ she asked.

‘Help me do these bally things, will you?’ Her husband was holding out a pair of gold cufflinks. ‘They’re little bastards.’

She laughed and slipped them into his starched white cuffs with ease. She always thought Reggie looked at his best in evening dress. She knew he liked her to do things for him, especially things that meant he could touch her, and as soon as she had finished the small task he rested both hands on her naked upper arms.

‘You look lovely tonight,’ he said.

‘Thank you. So do you.’

Reginald Sanford had worked for His Majesty’s government in the diplomatic service most of his life and the stamp of it was all over his face. From the polite set of his full features to the cautious expression in his grey eyes and the slightly secretive mouth. He liked order. He liked hierarchy. And he never raised his voice. If anyone did so in his presence, he was skilled at calming them down and possessed a remarkable ability to remove their sting and persuade them to see reason. His reason, of course.

It was why he now had the honour of representing His Majesty in the Bahamas as right-hand man to the Governor. It was why he lived in a magnificent house and drove around the island in a silver-grey Bentley. And Ella suspected it was why he sometimes tossed and turned at night or wrapped an arm tight around her in bed, nuzzled her neck and murmured, ‘Do you ever wonder what our life would have been like if I’d taken my father’s advice and become a quiet country solicitor?’

‘No. You’d have hated it.’

But it wasn’t true. Sometimes Ella did wonder. She smiled at him now and tried to smooth away a slight crease at the side of his mouth, but he held her arms firmly.

‘You’ll be good tonight, won’t you?’ he said.

‘Reggie, I’m not a child. I’m your forty-one-year-old wife.’

‘You know what I mean. Dance with him if he asks.’

‘He may not ask this time.’

Her husband’s gaze travelled from her golden hair that hung in heavy glossy waves over her naked shoulders to the evening gown of chartreuse silk that cast new lights into her blue eyes and seemed to glide like a second skin over her slender hips.

‘He’ll ask,’ he nodded.

‘Do I have to?’

Reggie gave her one of his serious smiles. ‘It goes with the job, I’m afraid, my dear. Talk to him about that ghastly music he’s so keen on.’

‘Jazz?’

‘Yes. I don’t know what on earth he sees in that noisy caterwauling. But he’s always so eager to be regarded as modern.’ He said the last word as if it tasted dirty in his mouth.

Ella laughed. ‘Maybe its rhythms make him feel young again. We all like to feel young at times.’

Reggie frowned. ‘He’s only two years older than I am. He’s forty-nine, that’s not old.’

Unconsciously he touched the spot at his temple where his thinning brown hair had begun to sprout badger-grey tufts. She had one morning caught him dabbing cold tea straight from the teapot on to the tell-tale patch. He had been acutely embarrassed but she had been tactful, never mentioning the brief moment of vanity.

‘He looks older than you,’ she told her husband truthfully.

To be honest, Reggie ran slightly to fat. Not excessive, but definitely well-cushioned despite the hours spent on the golf course. His cheeks were round and smooth as billiard balls and showed no sign of ageing. The years of hard toil had manifested themselves only in the two tension furrows across his brow and in the soft sadness that bloomed around his eyes when he was tired.

Ella gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I could talk to him about something else, I suppose.’

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Like what?’

‘A donation to my auction.’

He stepped away from her and headed straight for the whisky glass on the bedside table. It was still half full. He lifted it to his lips and studied her face with a neutral diplomatic gaze.

‘Don’t pester him tonight, Ella.’

‘No?’

‘Please don’t discuss donations – or any other kind of work – with His Royal Highness, the Duke of Windsor, when he’s off-duty.’ Annoyance flickered in the corner of his eyes. She said nothing while he knocked back the scotch in one swig. ‘Come along, my dear.’ He picked up her velvet wrap from the bed and draped it over her shoulders. ‘Best foot forward.’

She linked her arm through his and, smiling, they set off towards the bedroom door with their right foot leading the way in perfect timing together. It was a foolish little ritual.

Ella was fond of her house here in Nassau. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had splendid houses before on other postings. She had. There was the one in Alexandria with the tapering tower that caught the cooling breezes off the sea, and there was the one in Malaya with the lewd mosaics and peculiar drainage system. Both were provided by courtesy of His Majesty, of course.

But this house – Bradenham House – with its long colonial verandahs and elegant white pillars where bougainvillea cascaded in abundance, was more than just her house, it was her home. Her first
real
home. She and Reggie had lived here longer than in any other house, eleven years. Where had all that time vanished, all those wasted hours? She should have taken better care of them, instead of letting them trickle away through her fingers. But she had been young then, just thirty years old when she arrived and still clinging to the hope that they would have a child one day soon. But it didn’t happen. The set of lead soldiers that she had bought from Stanhope’s Toyshop on Bay Street had been thrown in the bin. Those days were long gone.