The Love Beach (23 page)

Bird smiled uncertainly and stepped a pace nearer, looked down and saw the few scratches of paint on the canvas. 'You have painted nothing,' she whispered. 'Didn't you like the dance, Davies?'

He put out his hands and delicately encircled her ankles. His dark hair fell forward against her legs and he pressed his forehead and then his face and his lips to the brown skin of her legs. 'I was watching,' he said. 'Watching so much I couldn't paint.'

She put her girl's hand down and touched the rough hair at his neck. 'The dance was too short to paint anything, perhaps?' she said. 'It was only for you to get a glimpse, an idea. That was all.'

Without raising his head, keeping his face against the flesh of her leg where the parau divided, Davies reached up with both hands and caught her wrists. He guided her down to the sand beside him. They
were squatting like native children squat in play. He raised his face to her and Bird smiled and wiped his wet cheeks with the back of her fingers.

'You are like a bird,' he said, casting his eyes down again. Her olive knees were thrust from the orange garment she wore and it opened in a wedge between her legs as she squatted. 'No wonder they call you Bird.'

She leaned towards him and kissed him and he kissed her very lightly. 'I have tried, Bird,' he said miserably. 'I have, haven't 1?'

She moved her eyes down. Her lashes were long against the little swelling of her cheeks. 'You have tried, Davies darling,' she whispered. 'Md so have 1. But I cannot try always. They are so far away across that sea. So far they cannot hear you, Davies.'

Davies thought he was going to choke. Little Mag and Dave, and Kate too, his wife, what were they doing now? He tried to see their faces, screwing his eyes up so the tears were crushed. But all he felt was her fingers reaching out for his face, touching his neck, his ears, moving over his lips and his nose, running over his eyes. 'You've lost them,' she said. 'You've lost them, Davies. You must realize that. You are a good man, darling.'

He sat back involuntarily and rather comically on the sand. He felt foolish sitting down like that. She squatted easily and still smiled her serious smile. She moved forward on to her knees, in front of him and his arms went out to her, begging for her, and Bird went to him, holding him tightly, feeling him enclosing her body. They kissed savagely, long, soft, then hard. They rolled in the sand and he was above her, grasping at her, feeling her, touching her with all the powerful gentleness he felt. Her hair panicked
behind her on the sand. He reached for it. the lovely dark soft hair he had so often watched, and wound it in his fingers, tying them prisoners. Then each inch of her young face, with his face and his lips. Hardly touching her.

The night was forming about them like the walls of a house. The village girls ran from the sea and scampered up the beach, calling to each other across the sands, making for the trees and beyond them, the settlement. They were like little black ghosts of the island but Bird and Davies did not hear them or see their going.

By eleven o'clock the temperature had dropped to eightyseven degrees and a rough wind was coming into the island agitating the eloquent heads of the palms, piling the sea against the reef, and rushing swollen low clouds across the moon.

Bird went to the latticed shutters when they rattled, peered out like a prisoner into the streets of the town, then closed the wider of the two outer windows. She said quietly to Davies: 'Sometimes a storm comes at this season. It blows all night and rains, but in the morning it is gone.'

Davies looked at her as she adjusted the shutter. Her hair was tied in a youthful tail now. She wore a satin housecoat that was too big for her. As her hand went to the shutter cord the smooth white sleeve fell back unveiling, like a slender statue, the brown arm. There were two lamps burning in the room. She turned around at the window.

'Davies,' she said. 'Are we going to my bed?'

'Yes,'he said. 'Yes, of course we are.'

'I've never shown you my bed, have 1? I never show it to anybody. It's a joke really, but I like it. It's in here, where you haven't been.'

She pushed a Chinese curtain aside and he walked into the small bedroom with her. The bed was a muscular fourposter, carved, curved, and corniced. Its dark, sombre wood, the four thick posts, like trees, and its embossed side panels, were set off by the lace hangings, white perfection, the creamy extent of the bedspread, and the high pillows.

'It's seven feet wide,' said Bird. 'It is the biggest bed for a
thousand miles.' She stood just before him, looking at the bed, and she did not look around at him. He stretched his hands to her shoulders and he felt her trembling.

'It's very wide,' he said.

'I can walk about at night,' she laughed. 'And never leave my bed.'

'Where did it come from?' he asked.

'From a colonial house in New Caledonia. It belonged to my parents. Davies, will you make me have a come tonight?'

She ran the three sentences quite naturally, without a long pause. Davies turned her about. 'You didn't on the beach, did you?'

'It was my fault,' she replied. 'I was nervous and I have never experienced a come, anyway. I wonder if I perhaps have the right pieces inside me.'

'You have, I'm sure,' he smiled at her seriousness.

'Then I do not know how to work them,' she said. 'I have known two men before you, Davies, and neither could make me work inside.'

She began to slip the buttons open on his shirt. She opened the front and scratched his chest. 'Where is your vest?' she asked. 'I left it on the beach,' he said awkwardly. 'In the confusion. Can you manage that?'

She was trying his front zip. It stuck at first, but she jerked it firmly and it ran down. She helped his trousers down.

Davies said pedantically: 'You should unlace the shoes first. It is very difficult and embarrassing for a man to get his trousers off over his shoes.'

She was kneeling by him, putting her soft hair close to his groin. 'I have never known a man with trousers,' she excused herself candidly. 'That is my trouble. My first man, when I was fourteen, was one of the natives on my father's plantation and he never wore anything. And the second man, well, he was a boy really, only seventeen, was in the police here and he wore shorts only. This trousers is a new experience for me.'

Davies said: 'He was a native?...'

'No, not the police boy. He was white. Well, almost.'

'The first one?' said Davies. 'He was a native, you said.'

'Yes. He was very funny too. I was only a little girl, of course, but he was very good to me, although he was in terror of my father finding out.'

'How long did that go on for?' asked Davies. She had taken his shoes off now. He kicked his trousers across the floor and sat on a basketwork chair.

'A few minutes,' she said, looking at him surprised. 'Oh, it was nothing.'

'No,' he argued. 'Now wait a second. How long did the affair go on? The whole thing?'

Bird blinked: 'Is that important?' she asked. 'Only once, it happened. He was killed by a wild pig three days later. Only once.'

He wondered why he felt angry. She was smiling at him. 'Things are different in the Apostles, Davies,' she said. 'Many things. It is not like your town, is it?'

'No,' he admitted. 'It's not much like that.'

She put her small hands to the lapels of her satin coat, opened them with a natural movement, letting the garment slide from her and fall in a drift around her legs. She was still kneeling, so beautiful he hardly dared to look at her. He swallowed his priggishness inside him, all of it. Everything. Her plantation native, her police cadet, Kate, David, little Mag, Dock Street, Newport, Transporter Bridge, Barry Island beach in autumn, and Trellis and Jones of Circular Quay, Sydney. Choked them all down, stuffed them inside himself and sealed them in, bugger them.

Pale were her breasts, the roots just meeting at the lower inside slopes, swollen out from them and then coming to the quiet unused nipples. The moulding of her sunned shoulders slipped away to the long veneer of those marvellous arms. From above her, looking down the whole valley of her body, he travelled from one place to another, first with his eyes and then with his eager fingers and his entire hands, his palms, his wrists, his knuckles. Her stomach was tucked back in a dark hollow, but her thighs, as she knelt,
were close
against each other like brown pigs buried against their feeding mother.

She moved her face into his open legs and lay there scarcely breathing until he put his arms to her and drew her up the length of his body. They kissed as the first splatter of the expected storm was tossed against the window.

'When we make love,' she asked quietly, 'will you please talk to me all the time? And I will talk to you. It will make me feel
easy, and then what I want to happen will surely happen.'

They
did. They lay, drowning in the white waves of the ridiculous bed, making the most profound love, and conversing.

'What shall we talk of, Davies darling?' 'Anything, Bird. The weather?'

'It is storming. As I said.'

'You were right.'

'Tomorrow the sky will all be all washed and shining.' 'The boat will arrive in before long.' 'I shall get a letter from my mother.' 'I shall get one from my wife.'

'That hurts.'

'What, darling?'

'That there. The thing you did then, Davies.' 'Sorry.'

'That is better. It was sore.' 'All right now?'

'Yes, very much better.' 'Sure?'

'Yes, Davies darling.'

'You're so marvellous to feel.'

'You too. Inside me I feel every centimetre.' 'I feel every bit too.'

'We must not talk too much of what we do.' 'Why not?'

'It will stop my pieces working. I will not come.' 'You still want to talk, though?'

'Oh yes.'

'It's still raining hard.'

'Oh God, that is hard too, Davies.' 'We're back to that again.' 'Think of something different. Please.' 'I will, Bird.' 'When is Her Majesty arriving?' 'In one week.' 'It will be lovely, won't it.' 'A big day for everyone.' 'Are you going away from here?' 'Yes.'

'When? Tell me when.'

'When
The Baffin Bay
arrives.'

'That is soon. I expect a letter from my mother.'

'You said.'

'Davies, this is so beautiful.'

'Yes, darling.'

'It is for you also?'

'You know.'

'Yes, we move so well.'

'Keeping time to a nicety.'

'Hah! you like that?'

'Don't do that, Bird.'

'What?'

'Say "Hah! " like that. It hurts.'

'What! Hurts you there?'

'Yes, it hurts.'

'Just saying "Hah! "?'

'Don't! I said
don't
say it!'

'An I said it.'

'Yes, you did. It hurt then, too.'

'My sweet darling, I'm sorry.'

'I'm sorry I mentioned it.'

'You liked our dancing on the beach?'

'It was very beautiful.'

'Perhaps you understand a little now.'

'A little?'

'About when I was fourteen.'

'I see.'

'I was born here. I am of these islands.'

'And I'm of Newport, Mon.'

'Now you are of the islands also.'

'Bird, quietly, Bird, I must stop.'

'To rest?'

'No. I am too quick.'

'It is me. I am slow.'

'How are your pieces?'

'Inside I think they are working well. I feel strange andfull.'

'Don't talk so much, darling.'

'Are you rested, Davies?'

'Not yet. Wait until I've settled down.'

'Do you think the procession will be exciting?'

'Procession?'

'When Her Majesty comes. Everyone is marching or watching.'

'Very exciting. More now, darling.'

'I have been waiting.'

'It's still pouring outside.'

'It will for an hour. What will it be like to come I wonder.'

'I know what it is like for me.'

'Dahlia told me you would make me come.'

'Did she? How did she know.'

'She is a good judge of people.'

'Good old Dahlia. Darling, I can't much longer.'

'Rest again, please, then. She said a woman coming is like...'

'Like what, Bird?'

'Like eagles leaving their nests.'

'Poetic. Not yet, darling. Be still.'

'I have never seen an eagle. Have you seen a great many?'

'None.'

'But they are very big.'

'So I believe.'

'Great wings. Slow wings and then faster and soaring.'

'Bird my sweet, I must soon.'

'Inside you,' she said. 'It must be strange.'

'Bird ... Bird ... I must.' 'Me too, Davies. Move with me.' 'I am.' 'Move...' 'I am...' 'Move.' 'I am...' 'Soon, Davies...' 'Now! Now, Bird! Oh, Now...' 'Oh, me too! They are flying. Flying!' Encompassed by her great bed they lay. She opened her eyes first and kissed him. He was almost sleeping. 'Those eagles are such big birds,' she said. It rained, as she had said, for exactly an hour.

Twelve

Conway returned from St Paul's in Abe's boat. They moved sluggishly across the glassy afternoon sea, beaten down, subdued it seemed by the persistent heat of the sun. The men felt dry and low as well. Abe was unhappy because his boat was leaking again. Conway had that morning put a clear proposition to Joseph of Arimathea that a dozen of his tribesmen should be allowed to leave the island to fight in a Holy War. It had not worked.

'You're taking a hell of a long time today, Abe,' Conway grumbled.

'It's not me, boy, it's the boat,' said Abe shortly. 'I could get there faster.'

So could 1,' agreed Conway. He felt raw, burned up by the sun, his face, his scalp, his arms, his knees. He had a bush hat but he used it to fan himself. Half sitting on the bleached deck seat he looked over and down into the infinite waters of the lagoon where the coloured fish moved like children's kites.

'Shit,' he said briefly.

'Nice,' commented Abe. 'What's the hurry anyway? You ain't paying by time, mister. You ain't paid at all yet, not for any of the trips. You owe me.'