The Love Beach (12 page)

Bird nodded. The cat which had been watching the bakery sign had torn itself away and came sauntering up the street towards them. It rubbed itself for comfort along the channel of Bird's back and she softly caught its thin tail and let it run through her hand.

'Well,' said Davies. 'It was
me
who got the surprise. One of the chaps at work does photography as a hobby and he said he would do the developing job for me. When he came back with the prints, I was all keen and eager as you could imagine.' He laughed without humour. 'I was in such a bloody rush I dropped the things all over the floor at work, behind my desk, fortunately, because the boss came in and started telling somebody off about something; so I couldn't

pick them up from the floor for a minute. They were down there, scattered about, and the picture of the chap with the car was on top. I sort of stared at it, trying to make out what it was, because I was still standing up, you see. I could see this snap quite clearly, but the others were either hidden underneath it or had fallen face down on the floor. Naturally I thought "Old Harry's given me the wrong photographs". I thought he'd got them mixed up with somebody else's.

'Then Mr Trellis went out and I dived down and picked up the bunch. They were mine, all right. All except that one. The others showed the kids on the swings and the seesaws, and there was just the one of that smug‑looking bastard in his new suit and his crappy car.'

Davies looked up dizzily. The heavy sky had gathered around them. 'Looks like a bit more rain,' he said. 'We'd better get on.' He took Bird's hand and helped her up. They walked apart, onwards down the dumb street, the cat following with puzzled walk. 'Even then I thought that Harry had mixed this one in by mistake. But he said it was on the roll, and he wouldn't be shifted from that. I didn't know the bloke in the picture, never saw him in my life. But you can see the number plate of the car, see, and one of the blokes at work had a diary with all the registration letter codes in it ‑ all the ones in Britain, that is. He's from London and he brought this over to Australia with him. Anyway, we checked, and those letters are a Newport registration. I sent off to the County people in Newport and they turned up the address of this bloke. He lives about half a mile away from us. Well, from Kate.'

Bird stopped walking. 'This is where I live.' she said. 'This is the shop and I live up there, over the top.' Davies stopped awkwardly on the pavement. 'There'll be another downpour soon,' he said turning his head up. 'Doesn't stop for long, does it?'

'Not at this season,' she said. 'Did you write and ask her about the man?'

He said softly: 'No. I didn't have the guts. I keep thinking that everything will be all right and she'll bring the kids 89

out to Australia. I've got just about enough for us to start again now.' He stopped there and they stood without speaking. Then: 'Goodnight, Davies,' said Bird.

'Goodnight,' he said absently. Then starting forward he continued with a rush of words: 'It's a funny thing, you know, but I should have realized there was something fishy the day I left home. It struck me at the time, but I didn't think any more about it. Or hardly. At Newport, you see, the railway bridge crosses the river almost alongside the old road bridge. There's only a couple of hundred yards between them. And that day when they all came to see me off, Kate and David and little Mag, I kissed them all at the train, got in, and it moved off pretty quickly from the station. They were all on the platform when it pulled away. Well, it was a false start. The train waited a bit, just stopped outside the station for a couple of minutes for the signal or something, and then went off across the river bridge. And I hung out of the window hoping that with any luck they might have walked as far as the bridge and would wave. Well, they were on the bridge right enough ‑ right at the far end ‑ waving to me. I was a bit shattered at the time. I thought "Well, how the bloody hell did they get that distance in a couple of minutes, out of the station, along the street and on to the
other
end of the bridge". It was like a conjuring trick. And, thinking back on it, there was a car standing not very far from them, which is unusual because they won't have parking on the bridge in Newport. That's how they got there. In his car.'

Bird said: 'He must have been waiting outside the station, then.'

'Yes. He didn't let the grass grow under his bleeding feet did he. Goodnight, Bird.'

'Goodnight,' she said again. She watched him walk down the sloping‑ street towards the hotel. As she did so heavy gobs of rain fell. Davies began to lope, at a jog, his shoulders hunched.

Seven

'I think I like you best in red,' said Conway. He hung back across Dahlia's bed, considering her, his shirt, his trousers, and his shoes off, two toes, blinking at the light, poking from a hole in his black sock. Dahlia was standing in the centre of her room, tall and naked, a bottle in her hand, caught delicately by the neck. She had been returning from her drinks cupboard when he stopped her with a policeman's upright hand. She had a very strong body, with big, steady breasts, and her hips, pelvis, navel, and crease forming a perfect heart. Each time the neon light changed outside it threw its garish reflection through the net curtains at the window and coloured her flesh. now red, now startling white, now blue.

Conway thought it was very erotic. Somehow it electrified her shape, the blue turning her icy, the white making her like an apparition, and the red making her flesh bum. The moon shadows under her breasts and in her other hillocks and pits were deep as wounds each time the light changed.

'It suits you, that red,' continued Conway casually. 'The blue is a bit cold and the white makes you look like you've got no clothes on.'

She said: 'I haven't got any on. Can I move now?'

'Oh yes,' he replied waving his hand. 'Carry on. Don't let me stop you pouring.'

She went towards the glasses on the bedside table. 'You're a born bastard,' she said without malice. 'Really, I've ordered some heavy curtains, you know. I've been hanging it out, not knowing whether I was going to stay here in the island another week or another year. But I need my sleep. So I've sent the measurements to Noumea and told them to make the curtains in velvet or something heavy. Nobody in this dopey island is capable of making them even if I could get thick material here, which I can't.'

'Stand there a minute,' said Conway abruptly, leaning towards her. She was quite near. She stood. She mimicked uncertainly: 'Stand here, stand there. You sound like Van Gogh or someone.'

He rolled over on his stomach, his white backside in view from beneath the end of his longish singlet. He rested his head and eyes on one arm and put the other out, seeking her. He got his fingers rolled in the thick hairs about her point and began to gather them together, pulling them gently down and arranging them into a sort of Frenchman's beard.

'Jesus,' she breathed. 'Now what are you doing?'

He began to tug at the beard firmly, but not hurting her, with a milking motion, his face still buried in the curve of his other arm. 'This,' he said, eventually answering her. 'It's called Fud Tugging.'

She began to bend forward tenderly. 'Excuse me,' she said. 'I can't take too much of this.'

'Take a bit more,' he suggested. 'It's very difficult to get the right rhythm and the correct control to the little perversion like this. Finesse, that's what's required. It's an art...'

She was looking at him with full eyes, half pulling away from him, half pushing herself towards him. Her hands moved eloquently, but she remained helpless. Conway still didn't look at her. 'I can't stand much more,' she repeated the warning, speaking very low.

'They
should have this Fud Tugging in the Olympic Games,' he muttered. 'Better than hop‑skip‑and‑a‑jump. Better than the pole vault or any of those events. Just think of doing this on an international scale.'

'Con,' she began again. 'Stop...'

'I know who'd get the gold medal,' he said rolling over and displaying to her what the exercise had achieved for him. She looked down at him. 'Australia,' she whispered putting out her hands.

'Steady,' said Conway, stopping her. He lifted the front end of his long vest and hung it over the top of his penis, like a shroud. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' he intoned, 'we are here today to witness the unveiling of a statue of one of the most important members ‑ members, get that? ‑ of our community. He has stood erect among us for a long time...'

'Stop it,' said Dahlia seriously, not laughing.

He smiled officially at her. 'Lady Dahlia,' he announced, 'looking lovely as ever in alternating red, white, and blue will now perform the unveiling. Lady Dahlia!'

Conway applauded politely while Dahlia, the wild lights still flowing over her skin, stood and made a speech. She had found some control of herself now and she purposefully went on for some time until Conway looked up uncomfortably and whispered: 'Hurry up, then. There won't be anything to unveil in a minute.'

They made varied love after that, at intervals through the night, with the neon flashes bouncing upon them on her bed. Then the dawn peeled over the ocean, first, then the lagoon, and then the town, clear and yellowy after the rain, and the sign lost its power and went on blinking pathetically in the growing day.

They did not sleep much, but lay quiet mostly, talking sometimes, for they were both wanderers, both adventurers. They had loved in many places. Late in the night Conway said: 'Who would you say knows St Paul's the best? Is there anyone gets across there regularly?'

She was lying in the bend of his arm, her big breasts pressed into his flank, the rest of her half underneath him. 'When are you going?' she asked.

'Tomorrow,' he said. 'No, I mean it's today now. Today.'

'Abe Nissenbaum goes across pretty regularly. He does deals with the natives over there. He has a motor boat and he takes stuff across to sell to them. He does a great trade in religious things, prayer beads, and crosses and all that stuff.''He fixes the crucifixes eh?' said Conway.

'As a matter of fact he does.'

'With a name like Abe Nissenbaum?'

'The natives don't know the difference. He's very popular over there.'

'You wait till they find out that his lot had the hammer and nails.'

'He means to make sure they don't. Old Colin Collins, the Yank missionary, you know, he gets very mad at Abe, but he doesn't do anything about it because he's scared to go over to St Paul's himself and Abe is always generous when the mission church has a collection for anything.'

'Have you been over there?' asked Conway.

She stirred against him. 'Once,' she said. 'It was creepy. I didn't breathe till I got away from the place. They think it's the Holy Land, you know, the natives. They tell you that Jerusalem is there and the stable at Bethlehem, and all that junk from the Bible. And, the time I went over ‑ that was with old Abe ‑ it was near Christmas and they had a sort of play in the middle of the main village.'

'What sort of play?'

'Well like a religious play, except they truly believe it's all happening. And they're just savages, really, and they look it. But they go through all this rigmarole and it's frightening. Abe just laughed but I was terrified. They let this woman have her baby on some straw in a stable with an ox and a donkey standing there and the Three Wise Men turning up and everything. I mean, it was a real thing, this woman giving birth and she had a hell of a terrible time, but everyone stood around watching and singing carols.'

Conway said quietly: 'They're as gone as that, are they?'

She laughed quietly. 'Gone, gone, gone. They very nearly sent me too. The trouble is it's a long time since a real missionary has had the guts to go over there, so everything they know has sort of got mangled up. The tunes and half the words of the carols are unrecognizable. You should hear them sing
Hark the Herald Angels.
It's like a war dance.'

'What about the cargo cult?' said Conway.

'Oh, they're waiting for this new Messiah. What do they call him. Dodson‑Smith, that's right. Dodson‑Smith. They're expecting him any time, and when he arrives a new life is going to begin for them. They're going to be in milk and honey, honey. Abe says they've got an old American army bike stored somewhere up on the volcano waiting for this chap. When he rides down among them that will be it. He's their God and King.'

'Dodson‑Smith,' said Conway.

'Yes,' she said. 'Not much of a name for God, is it?'

Conway rolled on top of her. He kissed her nose luxuriously, getting his mouth right round it, and pushed his big hands under the cushions of her bottom.

:Again?' she murmured. 'You're in good shape.'

I'm a hungry man,' he said. 'Not eaten for weeks.'

'Apart from Greta MacAndrews on
The Baffin Bay,'
said Dahlia.

Conway stopped what he was doing.
'How did you know

that?' he said.

Dahlia shrugged and wriggled more comfortably beneath him. 'She told me,' she said simply. 'She's very obliging, I know. And the captain rather enjoys her telling him all about it afterwards. They always pick out one passenger for her.
They
do it together like choosing a carpet or chair. This trip it was you.'

'It's a funny place this,' commented Conway, beginning to move to her.

'Hilarious,' she said, moving too.

At ten o'clock in the morning Abe Nissenbaum stood by his work boat in Sexagesima harbour. It was steamy hot with a mixed sky of clouds and open holes of brilliant blue. Not much was moving, just a native boat going out to the moored copra bulk loaded high with husked coconuts, and the British Governor's launch cutting a fine ridge across the harbour as it went to collect that morning's milk. Four cows were properly tended and fed under an Anglo‑French agreement so that both governors and their immediate echelons could have fresh milk every day.