The Takamaka Tree (3 page)

La Petite, a pear-shaped island in the Coralline Group, lay about fifty-five miles northeast of Mahé, the main island. It was almost encircled by its reef, only spreading open to the Indian Ocean at White Sands and on the southeast quarter where there was a sheer drop from a small plateau.

The rest of the coastline was a series of white sandy beaches, linked by innumerable footpaths trodden down with coralline sand, climbing over the little headlands and descending to the next cove.

Thousands of seabirds bred on the island—the fairy tern, the noddy and the shearwater; and several rare land birds—the Seychelles fody or toc-toc and the Seychelles turtledove. The Seychelles was a last paradise for many rare birds, and some were now found on only one island: the brush warbler was confined to Cousin, the black paradise flycatcher was found nowhere else in the world except on La Digue, and the famous black parrot made its home in the Valleé de Mai on the island of Praslin.

Daniel loved the islands. One day, when the world had finished with him and he with the world, he wanted to retire to the Seychelles, go native and live in one of the rambling planters’ houses built on pillars off the ground. He would watch birds all day, fish for his supper, swim among the reefs, study the little crabs…

Sandy woke from her deep sleep, disturbed by a tiny sound. It was different to all the other sounds of the island—the waves, the birds, the rustling leaves.

It was the tiniest click. She lay very still in her bed, waiting for the noise to be repeated. Her own breathing sounded louder than anything. Shafts of moonlight stabbed the darkness.

Suddenly, she identified the click. It was the latch on the door. At the same moment she heard a creak, and the pencil-thin crack of light around the door widened slightly.

She froze. It was not Daniel. He would just have walked in, quietly but without stealth. Bella had never come to her room at night, and she was a bumbling, rumbling person whose every intake of air was accompanied by additional sounds.

Someone was standing in the doorway looking at her. She was aware of the shadow and the shape. A man. He had long arms that hung loosely at his side.

Sandy was paralysed with fear. She watched him coming closer, moving across the room like an animal. Now she could see white eyes and a shock of reddish hair. He put out a hand to touch her bare shoulder.

The touch unlocked her throat and she opened her mouth to scream.

Chapter Two

Daniel heard the screams just as he was turning back from his walk along the shore. He dropped the shells he had collected and began to run as fast as the fine sand would let him. Frightened birds scattered into the air, bats swooped down like black kites and geckos slithered into the undergrowth.

He saw a figure leap from the veranda and lope across the sand into the thick palm grove behind the bungalow. Another figure stumbled out onto the veranda, desperately clutching a trailing sheet.

“Sandy,” he shouted, wondering if the name would mean anything to her. “Stay there. I’m coming.”

She heard the voice but did not recognise it. It became part of the clamour in her head, of crashing waves, splitting wood, crackling and roaring, and pounding blood. She gasped, expecting to fall, but Daniel caught her.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried, clawing to free herself.

“Calm down,” he said. “It’s only me, Daniel. I won’t hurt you.”

He pushed her into a chair, and she slumped into a heap. He did not know what to do to help. Daniel waited a little impatiently. He could cope with illness but not with hysteria.

“What happened?”

“It’s all breaking up. I can’t breathe…a man…what are they doing with me? Please, please,” she sobbed incoherently.

“It was only Leon,” said Daniel. “Don’t be scared. I’ll go and talk to him. He’s harmless.”

“Don’t leave me,” she implored.

“Make up your mind. First of all it’s ‘don’t touch me’, now it’s ‘don’t leave me’.”

His rough tone startled her. It was the first time she had received anything but gentleness from Daniel.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I was frightened. There was a man in the room.”

“It was Leon, Bella’s son. He’s been very curious about you. I shall let him think that you are my woman. And it would be safer for you if you let him go on thinking that.”

Sandy looked disconcerted. This was bringing a new aspect into their relationship which she did not want. She did not like any intrigue, pretended or not, that would disturb the limbo of her present existence.

“Don’t worry, I shall do no more than continue to sleep on the veranda outside. But it will be better if you appear to have a protector. Think about it.”

“Are you sure it was Bella’s son? This man had reddish hair.”

He did not find it easy to explain. He too did not want to change their sexless isolation. There were enough complications.

“The Seychelles are often called the islands of love,” Daniel began. “Morals just don’t enter into the concept of love. They love, and make love, and there are a great many illegitimate babies. Leon is probably not the child of Bella’s husband. When we reach Mahé you will see the results of this mixing pot of the races—light-skinned girls with European features and tight kinky black curls, or a coal-black boy with blonde hair.”

“Aren’t the Seychelles people a race then?”

“Not really, the Seychellois are the result of interbreeding between French planters, English colonists, black slaves, some Chinese and Indians who came to trade. Given a wonderful climate, beautiful islands and happy, indolent natures, and the result is eroticism.”

He sounded disenchanted. Sandy was bewildered by the subtle change in atmosphere. It would be too easy to think that somewhere, sometime, a woman had hurt him. She knew nothing about her benefactor. A more practical thought entered her mind. He was a strong, virile man. Lonely days and nights in these sun-soaked islands with only Bella for company were probably becoming a matter of self-inflicted tension.

And her arrival had not helped. She drew the sheet more closely around her.

“Thank you for coming,” she said in a low voice. “I’m all right now. I’ll go back to bed.”

“I’ll speak to Leon in the morning.”

“There’s no need,” said Sandy. “Now that I know who he is, I shall be able to manage. I don’t particularly wish to be labelled anyone’s woman. How do we know? I might already be married or engaged.”

It had not occurred to her before. She looked involuntarily at her left hand. There was no ring, or tell-tale white mark if she had lost the ring. Supposing there was some man somewhere who could claim her. He could just come along and say, “This woman is mine. She is my wife, my own.”

The thought chilled her. How could she tell if she was married or had experienced love-making. She had to wait until people told her who she was to find out what she had done, or not done. She might never find out.

“Don’t be distressed,” said Daniel, reading these thoughts. “Look upon it as a second chance to rebuild yourself. You can be whoever you choose. Not many people get a clean slate and a chance to start again.”

“You mean I could decide to be gay and vivacious, or quiet and shy, and be that person. But surely I shall just be the kind of person I was before? Will my previous character have been wiped out too?”

Daniel shook his head. “I really don’t know. It’s too complex a question for my first-aid manual.”

He left her wondering not just who she was, but what kind of person she had been. What tasks had those hands performed, where had those feet taken her, was that body her own and untouched?

She fell asleep just before dawn. Daniel did not sleep. He sat on the veranda watching the sun’s first rays spike the sky and tinge the high clouds with shell pink edges. He watched the growing glory of crimson as the fiery sun appeared on the horizon and staked its claim to day. It was so different to his life in England. Had he ever seen dawn above London’s rooftops? He doubted it.

As the lazy days went by, Sandy took courage and began to explore her new home. It was indeed a paradise: the tall palms dipping their fronds on the coral sand, ripe coconuts for the picking, banana trees with their ungainly bunches of yellow fruit, ancient breadfruit trees still producing an abundant crop of green-skinned globes.

And the birds, the birds that Daniel mapped and plotted and observed. They splashed the island with ever-changing colour and filled the air with sweet happy song. And they were so tame. They had no fear of humans. Even the visitors, the migrant land and shore birds, lost their wariness.

Daniel showed her wild cinnamon and vanilla. He knew most of the names of the plants and flowers, as well as the birds. He was also studying the exotic tropical fish and the swarms of little crabs on the seashore.

“Soon I shall take you swimming,” said Daniel. “I’ve snorkeling gear you can borrow.”

“Never,” said Sandy, firmly. “I’m not going into the sea.”

“Look,” Daniel stopped. “That’s a stormy petrel. See how it flutters in flight like a swallow, and now it looks as though it’s walking on the water. And over there, with the long streaming tail feathers, is a red-tailed tropic bird.”

Sandy smiled at his enthusiasm. Daniel was keenly absorbed in the birds, more naturalist than man. Yet all man in every respect.

She moved away from him. She had discarded the bandage around her ribs and the sun was tanning her midriff to a honey shade. Her rib cage was still sore, but the pain was gradually diminishing. It seemed strange to wear her red bikini every day, but she had no choice. She had altered some jeans and shirts, and cut down a pair of Daniel’s flip-flops to fit her, though it meant tying them on with strips of material laced around her ankles.

Bella had produced two voluminous dresses, but Sandy felt they were beyond the skill of her needle and thread. She returned them as tactfully as possible, but she did accept some coloured scarves to tie around her hair. And she had made a sarong out of a bright patterned tablecloth she had found tucked at the back of a drawer. She wore it now, casually knotted on one hip.

She was standing there looking like Dorothy Lamour, the sun streaking through her hair, wearing disturbingly little.

“I’m going for a swim,” Daniel said abruptly, pulling off his shirt. He was running away again, and he knew it. He waded into the warm blue water and plunged head first into the sparkling waves, making for the reef with long, lazy strokes. The water poured over his face and the droplets fell like liquid sparks.

Sandy picked up some delicately freckled cowrie shells. She was collecting them. She had taken Daniel’s advice to rebuild her life, for she could still remember nothing. Her headache had gone, but her mind remained a complete blank. It worried her. She felt she ought to be recalling something by now. Surely some fragments of her earlier life should have returned?

Daniel could not help her. He had no real knowledge of amnesia. Nor did he feel there would be anyone on Mahé with the specialist knowledge to advise her. It would have to wait until they reached London.

“I’m not going to London,” said Sandy, terrified.

“Yes, you are,” said Daniel. “You’ll have to if you’re coming with me. Or do you want to be left behind on La Petite?”

“But I should not know what to do there,” she protested.

Daniel was teaching her to play draughts. The black pieces were small granite rocks, and dried sea urchins scraped clean of their prickly spines made the white pieces. He had drawn a draughts board on the lid of a crate, inking in the black squares. He planned to teach her chess, as soon as he had found a suitable variety of shells to use as chessmen. He found she was intelligent and soon learned the general tactics of a game.

Swiftly he took two of her pieces and put them on the side of the table. Bella had made a delicious drink from limes and coconut milk, and there was a jug of it beside them, with pieces of moist coconut flesh to nibble.

“Don’t be so frightened,” he said. “You’ve not forgotten all the actions which are controlled by reflex responses. When you see buses and cars you’ll react normally to them. You’ve either got amnesia because of the blow to your head, or because of the emotional shock of what happened, and the memory pathways have not been properly reestablished. The brain can sometimes wipe out a bad experience by burying it completely. Perhaps hypnosis could help you.”

Sandy shook her head. “I don’t want to be hypnotised,” she said tensely. “Please don’t make me.”

“I can’t make you do anything,” he said. “You’re a person in your own right.”

“I don’t feel like it. I feel like someone you are creating. You began by giving me a name. I would not be surprised if my likes and dislikes will be fashioned for me by you. For instance, you are teaching me draughts. Why? Because it’s a game you like. You’ll not teach me some pastime that you dislike, so my tastes will be governed by yours.”

“Then I take it you’ll be swimming with me tomorrow,” he said dryly.

Sandy did not answer. He could be quite sharp, and it was on these occasions that she had to remind herself how much he had done for her and how much she owed him.