The Island (20 page)

I don't want to go inside that room.

When I was a little girl, I was taken to see my grandad before he died.

I was eight or nine and he was almost unrecognisable, lying under the hospital sheets.

His hands weren't the ones I remembered, lighting his fags with the blue glass lighter that was always on the sideboard, holding my hand tightly to cross the road to the sweetie shop.

These hands were fluttering birds, nipping and un-nipping at the sheets.

Grandad was fretful. At one point he tried to climb out of bed to go and find my nanna. I remember I was shocked 'cause they hadn't dressed him properly; his pyjamas were too big and they gaped.

My mum tried to push him back into bed but it was no good; we had to call the nurse in the end. My grandad died soon after, followed by my nanna, who wasn't interested in a world without her beloved Frank.

Cassie always liked a drink, but she started drinking a lot more after that. It was good in a way though, 'cause that's when we had lots of TV and movie cuddles. Sometimes all day.

I force myself to move closer and look through the glass at the person that lies at the centre of all the tangle of tubes and wires.

Miss's body seems tiny, a small mound below the spotless sheets.

She's bundled in bandages: her head and arms and hands.

‘She was lucky,' says the nurse. ‘They're only second-degree burns. She'll need skin grafts of course, but…' She smiles at me. ‘Is she your teacher? How lovely, to have one of her pupils come to visit her.'

My face hovers in the glass.

If I stare long enough, my snake hair will wake and coil into S shapes, ready to strike and hiss. My fang teeth will lengthen. My eyes will shrink into empty pockets of hellfire, tiny white-hot pebbles, ready to petrify. Ready to burn.

I tear off my gown. Angela hurries after me.

‘I really think you should go and see her, Frances.'

‘No.'

‘It'll help you with the sleeplessness, with the dreams.'

‘No.'

‘Do you want to talk about it?'

Keep away from me 'cause I bite, I freeze, I burn.

‘Frances?'

 

Fat as Moons

There's that smell again. It's fruity, wet and sweet. It's killing me.

At first I think I'm in Grandad's allotment, up on the park. I imagine I see his tomatoes, fat as moons, hanging above me. There's even the unmistakable
green
smell of them, like when I'd help him pick them and that scent would be on my fingers. It's the smell of being seven.

But there's a face like a green football, bobbing and nodding with its zigzag teeth and wet pink smiles. I rub my eyes and blink. It's a melon on a post, carved like a pumpkin. Its grass skirt rustles.

I shift around and wonder why I'm lying under a neatly-plaited palm canopy on a sturdy bed laced with fresh leaves. The mattress is squeaky. I reach down and realise it's been made with plastic bottles.

But there it is again. A waft in the warm air. I turn round.

Placed next to me on an upturned tin drum is a clam shell. And on the clam shell, sliced into fat chunks, are pieces of watermelon, fat and pink and spitting pips.

I grab a piece and cram it whole into my mouth.

OhmyGod ohmyGod sugarsweet sugarfizz tastes like sugar on my tongue.

I slurp and suck and burp till I've cleared the plate and juice drips down my face and neck.

‘Good. I'm glad you're eating.'

I spin round, chin dripping.

 

Boy

A boy.

Tall, skinny-but-not-too-skinny, he's wearing what seems to be a cloth over his head and shoulders, Arab style. There are feathers poking out of the headband of different sizes and shapes – I recognise pelican and gull and the oh-dear-me bird. Freckles peep through a scrubby beard. Behind all the feathers and freckles, a pair of sharp blue eyes.

The boy is holding a home-made machete in one hand and a melon in the other. The melon is as fat as a football and I can't take my eyes off it.

‘We've got a real glut. This rain seems to have swollen them into beach balls.' His voice is all rusty, like he hasn't used it in a long, long time.

I stare at him, juice still dripping from my chin. Become aware of my lack of clothes, my filthy bikini, and shrink back into bed, under the palm-leaf blanket. Where is my red T-shirt? My shoulder stings; I have bandages on it.

‘You cut yourself on the rocks by the waterfall. You were in a real state. I cleaned your wounds. The top you were wearing is drying – I washed it for you.'

I can't speak, can't say thank you. I cringe back on this boy's bed, just staring.

I don't know how to feel, how to react. I've not spoken to another human for a million years – since I've been on this rock, and for another million years before that.

‘Here.'

His voice is cracked like it needs oiling. He throws me something that once upon a time used to be yellow.

A TeamSkill polo, bleached by the sun.

‘Hi, I'm Rufus,' he says, and the boy holds out his hand.

 

Pleased to Meet You

I have a wild urge to laugh and laugh.

Hi I'm Rufus! It's Hi I'm frickin Rufus!

His hand is still out and I take it as if in a dream. It's hot and sticky and real
.

I want to let it go. I do not want to let it go.

‘I can't believe you're here,' he says.

He scratches at a nasty outcrop of sandfly bites on his neck.

‘I mean, you just appeared, from behind the waterfall.' He gives a shaky laugh. ‘Thought you were some sort of demon or something. All matted and wild and filthy. It was like something out of one of those Japanese horror films. You know, like
The Ring
.'

His voice is still posh but much huskier than I remember.

‘I mean, you're that girl from the plane, aren't you? Not Coral. The other one.'

He leans forward eagerly. ‘Are there any more? Survivors, I mean?'

When I shake my head, I see the flicker of disappointment.

‘Bugger. When I saw the smoke signal I thought that there would be more. That's why I sent the coordinates. I already knew, more or less, the position of the island we were heading for – I'm interested in that sort of thing – and I thought maybe you were with the pilot or someone.' He pauses. ‘So it's just you and me then?'

Yes
, I think,
you've got a raw deal there. Thought there might be a whole party of us, did you? Hoping for both the pilots or Trish or even Joker? Instead you've ended up with me.

Broken, filthy, burnt out. The girl who destroys all that she touches.

Lucky you.

‘I'm sorry,' he says. ‘I'm not used to speaking to people; it's been so long. Eighty-one days, in fact.'

I don't ask him how he knows. Probably keeps a tally on a tree somewhere. I wonder why I didn't think of doing that, and then I'm drowsy.

Close my eyes. Just close them now.

When I awake, he's still hovering.

I curl up on my side again.

He sighs. He does that a lot.

He melts away.

 

Skin

When I think Rufus can't see me, I study him.

I think he does that to me too. Sometimes his eyes dart away and he flushes. He flushes easily, even through all those nasty sandfly bites and his sunburn.

He's got the worst skin for being marooned on a desert island. It's skin that would be happiest in a darkened room with all the blinds down. Cassie's lounge, in fact. His skin would love all that cardboard.

There are bites on his face and neck and on the back of his hands. There are bites on bites on bites.

‘You're Frances, right? You sat behind me on the plane. And I remember you at TeamSkill.'

I sabotaged your team games. That's me.

‘I mean, you were right actually, to not like planes. After what happened. I was lucky enough to have held on to some flotsam – a couple of plastic containers – and I had on my life jacket of course. I estimated that I drifted approximately two hundred kilometres from the SOA, seeing as my raft had no anchor. And I had to guess, really, about the wind, weather, the direction of swells, times of sunrise and sunset and whatnot. I even tried to use celestial navigation to determine my position, but it's practically impossible without a sextant and almanac. Of course, the EPIRB would have transmitted on an emergency frequency the minute the plane went down, so there would have been searchers or a rescue mission. But with the number of islands in these parts, and the distance of the drift, well…I suppose our chances of being found are pretty much non-existent.'

‘SOA? EPIRB?' I say dully.

‘Scene of Accident and Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. I'm surprised you didn't have one of those in your life raft. I'm sure they come as standard.'

I decide not to mention the radio thing that I chucked into the sea in a rage.

Rufus scratches his head and coughs. ‘Well, I'm pleased you're here, Frances. I was wondering if I'd ever speak to another human again.'

‘So you knew I was here then?' I manage to say. Like his, my voice is rusty as old tin.

‘Well, I guessed there was someone. Like I said, I saw your smoke signal. Jolly clever of you to keep it going with wet leaves like that.'

‘Well, I didn't actually. It wasn't…' I nearly tell him that whatever smoke signal I made was definitely not deliberate, but change my mind.

I think of all the times I tried to keep the fire going with damp logs and wet leaves. And of the coughing smoke that would come billowing out and choke Dog and me in our little den.

Dog. I think of his liquid eyes and use my T-shirt to wipe my eyes.

Oh oh oh.

 

You're the Girl Who...

‘Here, don't get upset,' says Rufus awkwardly.

He looks funny, still standing there in his feathered headdress holding that enormous melon, and I begin to laugh helplessly.

Once I start, I can't seem to stop. I snort and snot into my polo shirt, shoulders heaving. And I'm aware of the boy putting down his melon and patting my shoulder like I'm a little kid.

‘Don't cry.'

That does it.

I push my soggy hair out of my eyes. ‘I'm not frickin crying. I never cry.'

I wipe my face with the polo and glare at him. ‘If you must know, I was laughing.'

‘Laughing?'

‘At you. At your stupid headdress.'

See the little stab of hurt.
There. I'm glad.

Rufus shrugs. ‘The sun and I aren't friends,' he says.

He's older than he seemed at TeamSkill, maybe nineteen or twenty. Freckles so big the sun's blended them all together, brown blobby islands making a map of the world. The pink skin between them is trying very hard to get brown.

There's an awkward silence.

‘So did you see my markers?' he asks at last.

I think of the balanced stone towers and nod.

‘I left them in case whoever was on the north side of the island managed to find a way through. Every day, I was hoping…'

He doesn't speak for a moment; scratches at the bites on his hands.

‘Anyway, jolly clever of you –'

Jolly??

‘– I explored every creek and crevice and the only way through seemed to be a tunnel that of course would be lethal at high tide. I never thought to look behind the waterfall.'

I think of Dog on the rock, trusting eyes watching me, tail wagging, and dig my fingernails into my legs, so as not to feel.

The boy shakes his head. ‘So you must have come that way? Crikey. How did you do it?'

I try not to think of the dripping caves, the swallowing darkness. I struggle to sit up; realise that I'm half-dressed – my SpongeBob bikini bottoms wink mockingly from under Rufus's polo shirt.

‘Oh, I almost forgot – here.'

He reaches under my bed and pulls something out. ‘I made you this – thought it might be a bit more…comfortable.'

It's a skirt like the one he's wearing. Grass tightly strung around a long strip of some sort of plant stem. Precisely and expertly done.

‘Thanks,' I say.

It feels strange, talking to someone. Different from when I talked to Dog 'cause with him I never needed to worry about what I was saying. Or what he'd say back. He was always polite and interested. And it's not like I talked to many people anyway, not after the fire.

The skirt ties up at the side and reaches down to my knees. It gapes a bit when I move – as I notice his does – but at least it covers me up a little.

Rufus looks pleased. ‘See, it fits well. You were out for ages. Shame all the medicine's back in the hold. You could have done with some doxepin to help you sleep because you seemed to be having the most terrific nightmares. It would've given your body a chance to recover from what it's been through.'

‘What are you – some sort of doctor?' I say.

‘Well, kind of. I'm a medic. Or I will be. Just got accepted at St Bart's and I'm currently on my gap year.'

He's shaking his head. ‘'Course, I never planned
quite
such an adventurous year. Was thinking more about doing conservation work in Borneo, or perhaps some work experience in Belize – they have the most amazing jungles and I've always fancied doing Tropical Medicine. And then I heard about the TeamSkill project and it sounded like such a marvellous idea and a real chance to give something back and so I…' His voice trails off as he sees me staring.

‘I'm sorry. It's just that I've been here on my own for rather a long time and it gets a bit lonely just talking to one's melons and Virgil.'

I gape at him.

Borneo? Belize? Virgil?

‘And you?' he asks. ‘What's your story?'

What, apart from burning my school down and nearly burning alive my teacher and a boy who I don't even know, who was probably just trying to get some advice from his form tutor…?