Bear and His Daughter

UNDER THE PITONS

ALL THE PREVIOUS DAY, they had been tacking up from the Grenadines, bound for Martinique to return the boat and take leave of Freycinet. Blessington was trying to forget the anxieties of the deal, the stink of menace, the sick ache behind the eyes. It was dreadful to have to smoke with the St. Vincentian dealers, stone killers who liked to operate from behind a thin film of fear. But the Frenchman was tough.

Off Dark Head there was a near thing with a barge under tow. Blessington, stoned at the wheel, his glass of straight Demerara beside the binnacle, had calmly watched a dimly lighted tug struggle past on a parallel course at a distance of a mile or so. The moon was newly risen, out of sight behind the island’s mountains, silvering the line of the lower slopes. A haze of starlight left the sea in darkness, black as the pit, now and then flashing phosphorescence. They were at least ten miles offshore.

With his mainsail beginning to luff, he had steered the big ketch a little farther off the wind, gliding toward the trail of living light in the tug’s wake. Only in the last second did the dime drop; he took a quick look over his shoulder. And of course there came the barge against the moon-traced mountains, a big black homicidal juggernaut, unmarked and utterly unlighted, bearing down on them. Blessington swore and spun the wheel like Ezekiel, as hard to port as it went, thinking that if his keel was over the cable nothing would save them, that 360 degrees of helm or horizon would be less than enough to escape by.

Then everything not secured came crashing down on everything else, the tables and chairs on the afterdeck went over, plates and bottles smashed, whatever was breakable immediately broke. The boat, the Sans Regret, fell off the wind like a comedian and flapped into a flying jibe. A couple of yards to starboard the big barge raced past like a silent freight train, betrayed only by the slap of its hull against the waves. It might have been no more than the wind, for all you could hear of it. When it was safely gone, the day’s fear welled up again and gagged him.

The Frenchman ran out on deck cursing and looked to the cockpit, where Blessington had the helm. His hair was cut close to his skull. He showed his teeth in the mast light. He was brushing his shorts; something had spilled in his lap.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est là?” he demanded of Blessington. Blessington pointed into the darkness where the barge had disappeared. The Frenchman knew only enough of the ocean to fear the people on it. “Quel cul!” he said savagely. “Who is it?” He was afraid of the Coast Guard and of pirates.

“We just missed being sunk by a barge. No lights. Submerged cable. It’s OK now.”

“Fuck,” said the Frenchman, Freycinet. “Why are you stopping?”

“Stopping?” It took a moment to realize that Freycinet was under the impression that because the boat had lost its forward motion they were stopping, as though he had applied a brake. Freycinet had been around boats long enough to know better. He must be out of his mind, Blessington thought.

“I’m not stopping, Honoré. We’re all right.”

“I bust my fucking ass below,” said Freycinet. “Marie fall out of bed.”

Tough shit, thought Blessington. Be thankful you’re not treading water in the splinters of your stupidly named boat. “Sorry, man,” he said.

Sans Regret, with its fatal echoes of Piaf. The Americans might be culturally deprived, Blessington thought, but surely every cutter in the Yankee Coast Guard would have the sense to board that one. And the cabin stank of the resiny ganja they had stashed, along with the blow, under the cabin sole. No amount of roach spray or air freshener could cut it. The space would probably smell of dope forever.

Freycinet went below without further complaint, missing in his ignorance the opportunity to abuse Blessington at length. It had been Blessington’s fault they had not seen the barge sooner stoned and drunk as he was. He should have looked for it as soon as the tug went by. To stay awake through the night he had taken crystal and his peripheral vision was flashing him little mongoose darts, shooting stars composed of random light. Off the north shore of St. Vincent, the winds were murder.

Just before sunrise, he saw the Pitons rising from the sea off the starboard bow, the southwest coast of St. Lucia. Against the pink sky, the two peaks looked like a single mountain. It was hard to take them for anything but a good omen. As the sudden dawn caught fire, they turned green with hope. So many hearts, he thought, must have lifted at the sight of them.

To Blessington, they looked like the beginning of home free. Or at least free. Martinique was the next island up, where they could return the boat and Blessington could take his portion and be off to America on his student visa. He had a letter of acceptance from a hotel management school in Florida but his dream was to open a restaurant in the Keys.

He took another deep draft of the rum to cut the continuing anxieties. The first sunlight raised a sweat on him, so he took his shirt off and put on his baseball hat. Florida Marlins.

Freycinet came out on deck while he was having a drink.

“You’re a drunk Irish man,” Freycinet told him.

“That I’m not,” said Blessington. It seemed to him no matter how much he drank he would never be drunk again. The three Vincentians had sobered him for life. He had been sitting on the porch of the guesthouse on Canouan when they walked up. They had approached like panthers — no metaphor, no politics intended. Their every move was a dark roll of musculature, balanced and wary. They were very big men with square scarred faces. Blessington had been reclining, tilted backward in a cane chair with his feet on the porch rail, when they came up to him.

“Frenchy?” one had asked very softly.

Blessington had learned the way of hard men back in Ireland and thought he could deal with them. He had been careful to maintain his relaxed position.

“I know the man you mean, sit;” he had said. “But I’m not him, see. You’ll have to wait.”

At Blessington’s innocuous words they had tensed in every fiber; although you had to be looking right at them to appreciate the physics of it. They drew themselves up around their hidden weaponry behind a silent, drug-glazed wall of suspicion that looked impermeable to reason. They were zombies, without mercy, and he, Blessington, was wasting their time. He resolved to count to thirty, but at the count of ten he took his feet down off the rail.

Freycinet turned and shaded his eyes and looked toward the St. Lucia coast. The Pitons delighted him.

“Ah là. C’est les Pitons, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oui,” said Blessington. “Les Pitons.” They had gone south in darkness and Freycinet had never seen them before.

The wind shifted to its regular quarter and he had a hard time tacking level with the island. The two women came out on deck. Freycinet’s Marie was blond and very young. She came from Normandy, and she had been a waitress in the bistro outside Fort-de-France where Freycinet and Blessington cooked. Sometimes she seemed so sunny and innocent that it was hard to connect her with a hood like Freycinet. At other times she seemed very knowing indeed. It was hard to tell, she was so often stoned.

Gillian was an American from Texas. She had a hard, thin face with a prominent nose and a big jaw. Her father Blessington imagined, was one of those Texans, a tough, loud man who cursed the Mexicans. She was extremely tall and rather thin, with long legs. Her slenderness and height and interesting face had taken her into modeling, to Paris and Milan. In contrast, she had muscular thighs and a big derriere, which, if it distressed the couturiers, made her more desirable. She was Blessington’s designated girlfriend on the trip but they rarely made love because, influenced by the others, he had taken an early dislike to her. He supposed she knew it.

“Oh, wow,” she said in her Texas voice, “look at those pretty mountains.”

It was exactly the kind of American comment that made the others all despise and imitate her — even Marie, who had no English at all. Gillian had come on deck stark naked and each of them, the Occitan Freycinet, Norman Marie and Irish Blessington, felt scornful and slightly offended. Anyone else might have been forgiven. They had decided she was a type and she could do no right.

Back on Canouan, Gillian had conceived a lust for one of the dealers. At first, when everyone smoked in the safe house, they had paid no attention to the women. The deal was repeated to everyone’s satisfaction. As the dealers gave forth their odor of menace Marie had skillfully disappeared herself in plain view. But Gillian, to Blessington’s humiliation and alarm, had put out a ray and one of the men had called her on it.

Madness. In a situation so volatile, so bloody fraught. But she was full of lusts, was Texan Gillian, and physically courageous too. He noticed she whined less than the others, in spite of her irritating accent. It had ended with her following the big St. Vincentian to her guesthouse room, walking ten paces behind with her eyes down, making herself a prisoner a lamb for the slaughter.

For a while Blessington had thought she would have to do all three of them but it had been only the one, Nigel. Nigel had returned her to Blessington in a grim little ceremony, holding her with the chain of her shark’s-tooth necklace twisted tight around her neck.

“Wan’ have she back, mon?”

Leaving Blessington with the problem of how to react. The big bastard was fucking welcome to her but of course it would have been tactless to say so. Should he protest and get everyone killed? Or should he be complacent and be thought a pussy and possibly achieve the same result? It was hard to find a middle ground but Blessington found one, a tacit, ironic posture, fashioned of silences and body language. The Irish had been a subject race too, after all.

“I gon’ to make you a present, mon. Give you little pink piggy back. Goodness of my ha’art.”

So saying, Nigel had put his huge busted-knuckle hand against her pale hard face and she had looked down submissively, trembling a little, knowing not to smile. Afterward, she was very cool about it. Nigel had given her a Rasta bracelet, beads in the red, yellow and green colors of Ras Tafari.

“Think I’m a pink piggy, Liam?”

He had not been remotely amused and he had told her so.

So she had walked on ahead laughing and put her palms together and looked up to the sky and said, “Oh, my Lord!” And then glanced at him and wiped the smile off her face. Plainly she’d enjoyed it, all of it. She wore the bracelet constantly.

Now she leaned on her elbows against the chart table with her bare bum thrust out, turning the bracelet with the long, bony fingers of her right hand. Though often on deck, she seemed never to burn or tan. A pale child of night was Gillian.

“What island you say that was?” she asked.

“It’s St. Lucia,” Blessington told her. “The mountains are called the Pitons.”

“The Pee-tuns? Does that mean something cool in French?” She turned to Blessington, then to Freycinet. “Does it, Honoré?”

Freycinet made an unpleasant, ratty face. He was ugly as cat shit, Blessington thought, something Gillian doubtless appreciated. He had huge soulful brown eyes and a pointed nose like a puppet’s. His grim haircut showed the flattened shape of his skull.

“It means stakes,” Blessington said.

“Steaks? Like…”

“Sticks,” said Blessington. “Rods. Palings.”

“Oh,” she said, “stakes. Like Joan of Arc got burned at, right?”

Freycinet’s mouth fell open. Marie laughed loudly. Gillian looked slyly at Blessington.

“Honoré,” she said. “Tu es un dindon. You’re a dindon, man. I’m shitting you. I understand French fine.”

It had become amusing to watch her tease and confound Freycinet. Dangerous work and she did it cleverly, leaving the Frenchman to marvel at the depths of her stupidity until paranoia infected his own self-confidence. During the trip back, Blessington thought he might be starting to see the point of her.

“I mean, I worked the Paris openings for five years straight. I told you that.”

Drunk and stoned as the rest of them, Gillian eventually withdrew from the ascending spring sun. Marie went down after her. Freycinet’s pointed nose was out of joint.

“You hear what she say?” he asked Blessington. “That she speak French all the time? What the fuck? Because she said before, ‘No‹, I don’t speak it.’ Now she’s speaking it.”

“Ah, she’s drunk, Honoré. She’s just a bimbo.”

“I ‘ope so, eh?” said Freycinet. He looked at the afterdeck to be sure she was out of earshot. “Because … because what if she setting us up? All these time, eh? If she’s agent. Or she’s informer? A grass?”

Blessington pondered it deeply. Like the rest of them he had thought her no more than a fatuous, if perverse, American. Now, the way she laughed at them, he was not at all sure.

“I thought she came with you. Did she put money up?”

Freycinet puffed out his hollow cheeks and shrugged.

“She came to me from Lavigerie,” he said. The man who called himself Lavigerie was a French Israeli of North African origin, a hustler in Fort-de-France. “She put in money, oui. The same as everyone.”

They had all pooled their money for the boat and to pay the Vincentians. Blessington had invested twenty thousand dollars, partly his savings from the bistro, partly borrowed from his sister and her husband in Providence. He expected to make it back many times and pay them off with interest.

“Twenty thousand?”

“Yes. Twenty.”

“Well, even the Americans wouldn’t spend twenty thousand dollars to catch us,” he told Honoré. “We’re too small. And it isn’t how they work.”

“Now I think I don’t trust her, eh?” said Freycinet. He squinted into the sun. The Pitons, no closer, seemed to displease him now. “She’s a bitch, non?”

“I think she’s all right,” Blessington said. “I really do.”

And for the most part he did. In any case he had decided to, because an eruption of hard-core, coke-and-speed-headed paranoia could destroy them all. It had done so to many others. Missing boats sometimes turned up on the mangrove shore of some remote island, the hulls blistered with bullet holes, cabins attended by unimaginable swarms of flies. Inside, tableaux marts not to be forgotten by the unlucky discoverer. Strong-stomached photographers recorded the tableaux for the DEA’s files, where they were stamped NOT TO BE DESTROYED, HISTORIC INTEREST. The agency took a certain satisfaction. Blessington knew all this from his sister and her husband in Providence.

Now they were almost back to Martinique and Blessington wanted intensely not to die at sea. In the worst of times, he grew frightened to the point of utter despair. It had been, he realized at such times, a terrible mistake. He gave up on the money. He would settle for just living, for living even in prison in France or America. Or at least for not dying on that horrible bright blue ocean, aboard the Sans Regret.

“Yeah,” he told Freycinet. “Hell, I wouldn’t worry about her. Just a bimbo.”

All morning they tacked for the Pitons. Around noon, a great crown of puffy cloud settled around Gros Piton and they were close enough to distinguish the two peaks one from the other. Freycinet refused to go below. His presence was so unpleasant that Blessington felt like weeping, knocking him unconscious, throwing him overboard or jumping over himself. But the Frenchman remained in the cockpit though he never offered to spell Blessington at the wheel. The man drove Blessington to drink. He poured more Demerara and dipped his finger in the bag of crystal. A pulse fluttered under his collarbone, fear speed.

Eventually Freycinet went below. After half an hour Gillian came topside, clothed this time, in cutoffs and a halter. The sea had picked up and she nearly lost her balance on the ladder.

“Steady,” said Blessington.

“Want a roofie, Liam?”

He laughed. “A roofie? What’s that? Some kind of…”

Gillian finished the thought he had been too much of a prude to articulate.

“Some kind of blowjob? Some kind of sex technique? No, dear it’s a medication.”

“I’m on watch.”

She laughed at him. “You’re shitfaced is what you are.”

“You know,” Blessington said, “you ought not to tease Honoré. You’ll make him paranoid.”

“He’s a asshole. As we say back home.”

“That may be. But he’s a very mercurial fella. I used to work with him.”

“Mercurial? If you know he’s so mercurial how come you brought him?”

“I didn’t bring him,” Blessington said. “He brought me. For my vaunted seamanship. And I came for the money. How about you?”

“I came on account of having my brains in my ass,” she said, shaking her backside. “My talent too. Did you know I was a barrel racer? I play polo too. English or western, man, you name it.”

“English or western?” Blessington asked.

“Forget it,” she said. She frowned at him, smiled, frowned again. “You seem, well, scared.”

“Ah,” said Blessington, “scared? Yes, I am. Somewhat.”

“I don’t give a shit,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“You heard me,” she said. “I don’t care what happens. Why should I? Me with my talent in my ass. Where do I come in?”

“You shouldn’t talk that way,” Blessington said.

“Fuck you. You afraid I’ll make trouble? I assure you I could make trouble like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Blessington said. He kept his eyes on the Pitons. His terror he thought, probably encouraged her.

“Just between you and me, Liam, I have no fear of dying. I would just as soon be out here on this boat now as in my little comfy bed with my stuffed animals. I would just as soon be dead.”

He took another sip of rum to wet his pipes for speech. “Why did you put the money in, then? Weren’t you looking for a score?”

“I don’t care about money,” she said. “I thought it would be a kick. I thought it would be radical. But it’s just another exercise in how everything sucks.”

“Well,” said Blessington, “you’re right there.”

She looked off at the twin mountains.

“They don’t seem a bit closer than they did this morning.”

“No. It’s an upwind passage. Have to tack forever.”

“You know what Nigel told me back in Canouan?”

“No,” Blessington said.

“He told me not to worry about understanding things. He said understanding was weak and lame. He said you got to overstand things.” She hauled herself and did the voice of a big St. Vincentian man saddling up a white bitch for the night, laying down wisdom. “You got to overstand it. Overstand it, right? Funny, huh.”

“Maybe there’s something in it,” said Blessington.

“Rasta lore,” she said. “Could be, man.”

“Anyway, never despise what the natives tell you, that’s what my aunt used to say. Even in America.”

“And what was your aunt? A dope dealer?”

“She was a nun,” Blessington said. “A missionary.”

For a while Gillian sunned herself on the foredeck, halter off. But the sun became too strong and she crawled back to the cockpit.

“You ever think about how it is in this part of the world?” she asked him. “The Caribbean and around it? It’s all suckin’ stuff they got. Suckin’ stuff, all goodies and no nourishment.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all turn-ons and illusion,” she said. “Don’t you think? Like coffee.” She numbered items on the long fingers of her left hand. “Tobacco. Emeralds. Sugar. Cocaine. Ganja. It’s all stuff you don’t need. Isn’t even good for you. Perks and pick-me-ups and pogy bait. Always has been.”

“You’re right,” Blessington said. “Things people kill for.”

“Overpriced. Put together by slaves and peons. Piggy stuff. For pink piggies.”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. He looked over at her. She had raised a fist to her pretty mouth. “You’re clever, Gillian.”

“You don’t even like me,” she said.

“Yes I do.”

“Don’t you dare bullshit me. I said you don’t.”

“Well,” Blessington said, “to tell you the truth, at first I didn’t. But now I do.”

“Oh, yeah? Why?”

Blessington considered before speaking. The contrary wind was picking up and there were reefs at the south end of the island. Some kind of monster tide was running against them too.

“Because you’re intelligent. I hadn’t realized that. You had me fooled, see? Now I think you’re amusing.”

“Amusing?” She seemed more surprised than angry.

“You really are so bloody clever” he said, finishing the glass of rum. “When we’re together I like it. You’re not a cop, are you? Anything like that?”

“You only wish,” she said. “How about you?”

“Me? I’m Irish, for Christ’s sake.”

“Is that like not being real?”

“Well,” he said, “a little. In many cases.”

“You are scared,” she said. “You’re scared of everything. Scared of me.”

“Holy Christ,” said Blessington, “you’re as bad as Honoré. Look, Gillian, I’m a chef, not a pirate. I never claimed otherwise. Of course I’m scared.”

She made him no answer.

“But not of you,” he said. “No. Not anymore. I like you here. You’re company.”

“Am I?” she asked. “Do you? Would you marry me?”

“Hey,” said Blessington. “Tomorrow.”

Freycinet came up on deck, looked at the Pitons, then at Blessington and Gillian in the cockpit.

“Merde,” he said. “Far away still. What’s going on?”

“We’re getting there,” Blessington said. “We’re closer now than we look.”

“Aren’t the mountains pretty, Honoré?” Gillian asked. “Don’t you wish we could climb one?”

Freycinet ignored her. “How long?” he asked Blessington.

“To Martinique? Tomorrow sometime, I guess.”

“How long before we’re off les Pitons?”

“Oh,” Blessington said, “just a few hours. Well before dark so we’ll have a view. Better steer clear, though.”

“Marie is sick.”

“Poor puppy,” Gillian said. “Probably all that bug spray. Broth’s the thing. Don’t you think, Liam?”

“Ya, it’s kicking up,” Blessington said. “There’s a current running and a pretty stiff offshore breeze.”

“Merde,” said Freycinet again. He went forward along the rail and lay down beside the anchor windlass, peering into the chains.

“He’s a cook too,” Gillian said, speaking softly. “How come you’re not more like him?”

“An accident of birth,” Blessington said.

“If we were married,” she said, “you wouldn’t have to skip on your visa.”

“Ah,” said Blessington, “don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me. Nice to be a legal resident.”

“Legal my ass,” she said.

Freycinet suddenly turned and watched them. He showed them the squint, the bared canines.

“What you’re talking about, you two? About me, eh?”

“Damn, Honoré!” Gillian said. “He was just proposing.” When he had turned around again she spoke between her teeth. “Shithead is into the blow. He keeps prying up the sole. Cures Marie’s mal de mer. Keeps him on his toes.”

“God save us,” said Blessington. Leaning his elbow on the helm, he took Gillian’s right hand and put it to her forehead, her left shoulder and then her right one, walking her through the sign of the cross. “Pray for us like a good girl.”

Gillian made the sign again by herself. “Shit,” she said, “now I feel a lot better. No, really,” she said when he laughed, “I do. I’m $$$ do it all the time now. Instead of chanting Om or Nam myoho renge kyo.”

They sat and watched the peaks grow closer though the contrary current increased.

“When this is over” Blessington said, “maybe we ought to stay friends.”

“If we’re still alive,” she said, “we might hang out together. We could go to your restaurant in the Keys.”

“That’s what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ll make you a sous-chef.”

“I’ll wait tables.”

“No, no. Not you.”

“But we won’t be alive,” she said.

“But if we are.”

“If we are,” she said, “we’ll stay together.” She looked at him sway beside the wheel. “You better not be shitting me.”

“I wouldn’t. I think it was meant to be.”

“Meant to be? You’re putting me on.”

“Don’t make me weigh my words, Gillian. I want to say what occurs to me.”

“Right,” she said, touching him. “When we’re together you can say any damn thing.”

The green mountains, in the full richness of afternoon, rose above them. Blessington had a look at the chart to check the location of the offshore reefs. He began steering to another quarter away from the tip of the island.

Gillian sat on a locker with her arms around his neck, leaning against his back. She smelled of sweat and patchouli.

“I’ve never been with anyone as beautiful as you, Gillian.”

He saw she had gone to sleep. He disengaged her arms and helped her lie flat on the locker in the shifting shade of the mainsail. Life is a dream, he thought. Something she knew and I didn’t.

I love her, Blessington thought. She encourages me. The shadow of the peaks spread over the water.

Freycinet came out on deck and called up to him.

“Liam! We’re to stop here. Off les Pitons.”

“We can’t,” Blessington said, though it was tempting. He was so tired.

“We have to stop. We can anchor, yes? Marie is sick. We need to rest. We want to see them.”

“We’d have to clear customs,” Blessington said. “We’ll have bloody cops and boat boys and God knows what else.”

He realized at once what an overnight anchorage would entail. All of them up on speed or the cargo, cradling shotguns, peering into the moonlight while they waited for macheteros to come on feathered oars and steal their shit and kill them.

“If we anchor,” Freycinet said, “if we anchor somewhere, we won’t have to clear.”

“Yes, yes,” Blessington said. “We will, sure. The fucking boat boys will find us. If we don’t hire them or buy something they’ll turn us in.” He picked up the cruising guide and waved it in the air. “It says right here you have to clear customs in Soufrière.”

“We’ll wait until they have close,” said Freycinet.

“Shit,” said Blessington desperately, “we’ll be fined. We’ll be boarded.”

Freycinet was smiling at him, a broad demented smile of infinitely self-assured contempt. Cocaine. He felt Gillian put her arm around his leg from behind.

“Écoutez, Liam. Écoutez bien. We going to stop, man. We going to stop where I say.”

He turned laughing into the wind, gripping a stay.

“What did I tell you,” Gillian said softly. “You won’t have to marry me after all. ‘Cause we’re dead, baby.”

“I don’t accept that,” Blessington said. “Take the wheel,” he told her.

Referring to the charts and the cruising guide, he could find no anchorage that looked as though it would be out of the wind and that was not close inshore. The only possibility was a shallow reef, near the south tip, sometimes favored by snorkeling trips, nearly three miles off the Pitons. It was in the lee of the huge peaks, its coral heads as shallow as a single fathom. The chart showed mooring floats; presumably it was forbidden to anchor there for the sake of the coral.

“I beg you to reconsider, Honoré,” Blessington said to Freycinet. He cleared his throat. “You’re making a mistake.”

Freycinet turned back to him with the same smile.

“Eh, Liam. You can leave, man. You know, there’s an Irish pub in Soufrière. It’s money from your friends in the IRA. You can go there, eh?”

Blessington had no connection whatsoever with the IRA, although he had allowed Freycinet and his friends to believe that, and they had chosen to.

“You can go get drunk there,” Freycinet told him and then turned again to look at the island.

He was standing near the bow with his bare toes caressing freeboard, gripping a stay. Blessington and Gillian exchanged looks. In the next instant she threw the wheel, the mainsail boom went crashing across the cabin roofs, the boat lurched to port and heeled hard. For a moment Freycinet was suspended over blank blue water. Blessington clambered up over the cockpit and stood swaying there, hesitating. Then he reached out for Freycinet. The Frenchman swung around the stay like a monkey and knocked him flat. The two of them went sprawling. Freycinet got to his feet in a karate stance, cursing.

“You shit,” he said, when his English returned. “Cunt! What?”

“I thought you were going over, Honoré. I thought I’d have to pull you back aboard.”

“That’s right, Honoré,” Gillian said from the cockpit. “You were like a goner. He saved your ass, man.”

Freycinet pursed his lips and nodded. “Bien” he said. He climbed down into the cockpit in a brisk, businesslike fashion and slapped Gillian across the face, backhand and forehand, turning her head around each time.

He gave Blessington the wheel, then he took Gillian under the arm and pulled her up out of the cockpit. “Get below! I don’t want to fucking see you.” He followed her below and Blessington heard him speak briefly to Marie. The young woman began to moan. The Pitons looked close enough to strike with a rock and a rich jungle smell came out on the wind. Freycinet, back on deck, looked as though he was sniffing out menace. A divi-divi bird landed on the boom for a moment and then fluttered away.

“I think I have a place,” Blessington said, “if you still insist. A reef.”

“A reef, eh?”

“A reef about four thousand meters offshore.”

“We could have a swim, non?”

“We could, yes.”

“But I don’t know if I want to swim with you, Liam. I think you try to push me overboard.”

“I think I saved your life,” Blessington said.

They motored on to the reef with Freycinet standing in the bow to check for bottom as Blessington watched the depth recorder. At ten meters of bottom, they were an arm’s length from the single float in view. Blessington cut the engine and came about and then went forward to cleat a line to the float. The float was painted red, yellow and green, Rasta colors like Gillian’s bracelet.

It was late afternoon and suddenly dead calm. The protection the Pitons offered from the wind was ideal and the bad current that ran over the reef to the south seemed to divide around these coral heads. A perfect dive site, Blessington thought, and he could not understand why even in June there were not more floats or more boats anchored there. It seemed a steady enough place even for an overnight anchorage, although the cruising guide advised against it because of the dangerous reefs on every side.

The big ketch lay motionless on unruffled water; the float line drifted slack. There was sandy beach and a palm-lined shore across the water. It was a lonely part of the coast, across a jungle mountain track from the island’s most remote resort. Through binoculars Blessington could make out a couple of boats hauled up on the strand but no one seemed ready to come out and hustle them. With luck it was too far from shore.

It might be also, he thought, that for metaphysical reasons the Sans Regret presented a forbidding aspect. But an aspect that deterred small predators might in time attract big ones.

Marie came up, pale and hollow-eyed, in her bikini. She gave Blessington a chastising look and lay down on the cushions on the afterdeck. Gillian came up behind her and took a seat on the gear locker behind Blessington.

“The fucker’s got no class,” she said softly. “See him hit me?”

“Of course. I was next to you.”

” Gonna let him get away with that?”

“Well,” Blessington said, “for the moment it behooves us to let him feel in charge.”

“Behooves us?” she asked. “You say it behooves us?”

“That’s right.”

“Hey, what were you gonna do back there, Liam?” she asked. “Deep-six him?”

“I honestly don’t know. He might have fallen.”

“I was wondering,” she said. “He was wondering too.”

Blessington shrugged.

“He’s got the overstanding,” Gillian said. “We got the under.” She looked out at the water and said, “Boat boys.”

He looked where she was looking and saw the boat approaching, a speck against the shiny sand. It took a long time for it to cover the distance between the beach and the Sans Regret.

There were two boat boys, and they were not boys but men in their thirties, lean and unsmiling. One wore a wool tam-o’- shanter in bright tie-dyed colors. The second looked like an East Indian. His black headband gave him a lascar look.

“You got to pay for dat anchorage, mon,” the man in the tam called to them. “Not open to de public widout charge.”

“We coming aboard,” said the lascar. “We take your papers and passports in for you. You got to clear.”

“How much for the use of the float?” Blessington asked.

Now Freycinet appeared in the companionway. He was carrying a big French MAS 3 6 sniper rifle, pointing it at the men in the boat, showing his pink-edged teeth.

“You get the fuck out of here,” he shouted at them. A smell of ganja and vomit seemed to follow him up from the cabin. “Understand?”

The two men did not seem unduly surprised at Freycinet’s behavior. Blessington wondered if they could smell the dope as distinctly as he could.

“Fuckin’ Frenchman,” the man in the tam said. “Think he some shit.”

“Why don’ you put the piece down, Frenchy?” the East Indian asked. “This ain’t no Frenchy island. You got to clear.”

“You drift on that reef, Frenchy,” the man in the tam said, “you be begging us to take you off.”

Freycinet was beside himself with rage. He hated les nègres more than any Frenchman Blessington had met in Martinique, which was saying a great deal. He had contained himself during the negotiations on Canouan but now he seemed out of control. Blessington began to wonder if he would shoot the pair of them.

“You fucking monkeys!” he shouted. “You stay away from me, eh? Chimpanzees! I kill you quick… mon,” he added with a sneer.

The men steered their boat carefully over the reef and sat with their outboard idling. They could not stay too long, Blessington thought. Their gas tank was small and it was a long way out against a current.

“Well,” he asked Gillian, “who’s got the overstanding now?”

“Not Honoré,” she said.

A haze of heat and doped lassitude settled over their mooring. Movement was labored, even speech seemed difficult. Blessington and Gillian nodded off on the gear locker. Marie seemed to have lured Freycinet belowdecks. Prior to dozing, Blessington heard her mimic the Frenchman’s angry voice and the two of them laughing down in the cabin. The next thing he saw clearly was Marie, in her bikini, standing on the cabin roof, screaming. A rifle blasted and echoed over the still water. Suddenly the slack breeze had a brisk cordite smell and it carried smoke.

Freycinet shouted, holding the hot shotgun.

The boat with the two islanders in it seemed to have managed to come up on them. Now it raced off, headed first out to sea to round the tip of the reef and then curving shoreward to take the inshore current at an angle.

“Everyone all right?” asked Blessington.

“Fucking monkeys!” Freycinet swore.

“Well,” Blessington said, watching the boat disappear “they’re gone for now. Maybe,” he suggested to Freycinet, “we can have our swim and go too.”

Freycinet looked at him blankly as though he had no idea what Blessington was talking about. He nodded vaguely.

After half an hour Marie rose and stood on the bulwark and prepared to dive, arms foremost. When she went, her dive was a good one, straight-backed and nearly splash-free. She performed a single stroke underwater and sped like a bright shaft between the coral heads below and the crystal surface. Then she appeared prettily in the light of day, blinking like a child, shaking her shining hair.

From his place in the bow, Freycinet watched Marie’s dive, her underwater career, her pert surfacing. His expression was not affectionate but taut and tight-lipped. The muscles in his neck stood out, his moves were twitchy like a street junkie’s. He looked exhausted and angry. The smell of cordite hovered around him.

“He’s a shithead and a loser,” Gillian said softly to Blessington. She looked not at Freycinet but toward the green mountains. “I thought he was cool. He was so fucking mean — I like respected that. Now we’re all gonna die. Well,” she said, “goes to show, right?”

“Don’t worry,” Blessington told her. “I won’t leave you.”

“Whoa,” said Gillian. “All right!” But her enthusiasm was not genuine. She was mocking him.

Blessington forgave her.

Freycinet pointed a finger at Gillian. “Swim!”

“What if I don’t wanna?” she asked, already standing up. When he began to swear at her in a hoarse voice she took her clothes off in front of them. Everything but the Rasta bracelet.

“I think I will if no one minds,” she said. “Where you want me to swim to, Honoré?”

“Swim to fucking Amérique,” he said. He laughed as though his mood had improved. “You want her Liam?”

“People are always asking me that,” Blessington said. “What do I have to do?”

“You swim to fucking Amérique with her.”

Blessington saw Gillian take a couple of pills from her cutoff pocket and swallow them dry.

“I can’t swim that far,” Blessington said.

“Go as far as you can,” said Freycinet.

“How about you?” Gillian said to the Frenchman. “You’re the one wanted to stop. So ain’t you gonna swim?”

“I don’t trust her,” Freycinet said to Blessington. “What do you think?”

“She’s a beauty,” Blessington said. “Don’t provoke her.”

Gillian measured her beauty against the blue water and dived over the side. A belly full of pills, Blessington thought. But her strokes when she surfaced were strong and defined. She did everything well, he thought. She was good around the boat. She had a pleasant voice for country music. He could imagine her riding, a cowgirl.

“Bimbo, eh?” Freycinet asked. “That’s it, eh?”

“Yes,” Blessington said. “Texas and all that.”

“Oui,” said Freycinet. “Texas.” He yawned. “Bien. Have your swim with her. If you want. “

Blessington went down into the stinking cabin and put his bathing suit on. Propriety to the last. The mixture of ganja, sick, roach spray and pine scent was asphyxiating. If he survived, he thought, he would never smoke hash again. Never drink rum, never do speed or cocaine, never sail or go where there were palm trees and too many stars overhead. A few fog-shrouded winter constellations would do.

“Tonight I’ll cook, eh?” Freycinet said when Blessington came back up. “You can assist me.”

“Good plan,” said Blessington.

Standing on the bulwark, he looked around the boat. There were no other vessels in sight. Marie was swimming backstroke, describing a safe circle about twenty-five yards out from the boat. Gillian appeared to be headed hard for the open sea. She had reached the edge of the current, where the wind raised small horsetails from the rushing water.

If Freycinet was planning to leave them in the water; Blessington wondered, would he leave Marie with them? It would all be a bad idea, because Freycinet was not a skilled sailor. And there was a possibility of their being picked up right here or even of their making it to shore, although that seemed most unlikely. On the other hand, he had discovered that Freycinet’s ideas were often impulses, usually bad ones. It was his recklessness that had made him appear so capably in charge, and that was as true in the kitchen as it was on the Raging Main. He had been a reckless cook.

Besides, there were a thousand dark possibilities on that awful ocean. That he had arranged to be met at sea off Martinique, that there had been some betrayal in the works throughout. Possibly involving Lavigerie or someone else in Fort-de-France.

“Yes,” said Blessington. “There’s time to unfreeze the grouper.”

He looked at the miles of ocean between the boat and the beach at the foot of the mountains. Far off to the right he could see white water, the current running swiftly over the top of a reef that extended southwesterly, at a 4 5-degree angle to the beach. Beyond the reef was a sandspit where the island tapered to its narrow southern end. On their left, the base of the mountains extended to the edge of the sea, forming a rock wall against which the waves broke. According to the charts, the wall plunged to a depth of ten fathoms, and the ocean concealed a network of submarine caves and grottoes in the volcanic rock of which the Pitons were composed. Across the towering ridge, completely out of sight, was the celebrated resort.

“I’ll take it out of the freezer,” Blessington said.

A swimmer would have to contrive to make land somewhere between the rock wall to the north and the reef and sandspit on the right. There would be easy swimming at first, through the windless afternoon, and a swimmer would not feel any current for the first mile or so. The last part of the swim would be partly against a brisk current, and possibly against the tide. The final mile would seem much farther. For the moment, wind was not in evidence. The current might be counted on to lessen as one drew closer to shore. If only one could swim across it in time.

“It’s all right,” said Freycinet. “I’ll do it. Have your swim.”

Beyond that, there was the possibility of big sharks so far out. They might be attracted by the effort of desperation. Blessington, exhausted and dehydrated, was in no mood for swimming miles. Freycinet would not leave them there, off the Pitons, he told himself. It was practically in sight of land. He would be risking too much — witnesses, their survival. If he meant to deep-six them he would try to strike at sea.

Stoned and frightened as he was, he could not make sense of it, regain his perspective. He took a swig from a plastic bottle of warm Evian water dropped his towel and jumped overboard.

The water felt good, slightly cool. He could relax against it and slow the beating of his heart. It seemed to cleanse him of the cabin stink. He was at home in the water, he thought. Marie was frolicking like a mermaid, now close to the boat. Gillian had turned back and was swimming toward him. Her stroke still looked strong and accomplished; he set out to intercept her course.

They met over a field of elkhorn coral. Some of the formations were so close to the surface that their feet, treading water, brushed the velvety skin of algae over the sharp prongs.

“How are you?” Blessington asked her.

She had a lupine smile. She was laughing, looking at the boat. Her eyes appeared unfocused, the black pupils huge under the blue glare of afternoon and its shimmering crystal reflection. She breathed in hungry swallows. Her face was raw and swollen where Freycinet had hit her.

“Look at that asshole,” she said, gasping.

Freycinet was standing on deck talking to Marie, who was in the water ten feet away. He held a mask and snorkel in one hand and a pair of swim fins in the other. One by one he threw the toys into the water for Marie to retrieve. He looked coy and playful.

Something about the scene troubled Blessington, although he could not, in his state, quite reason what it was. He watched Freycinet take a few steps back and paw the deck like an angry bull. In the next moment, Blessington realized what the problem was.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said.

Freycinet leaped into space. He still wore the greasy shorts he had worn the whole trip. In midair he locked his arms around his bent knees. He was holding a plastic spatula in his right hand. He hit the surface like a cannonball, raising a little waterspout, close enough to Marie to make her yelp.

“You know what?” Gillian asked. She had spotted it. She was amazing.

“Yes, I do. The ladder’s still up. We forgot to lower it.”

“Shit,” she said and giggled.

Blessington turned over to float on his back and tried to calm himself. Overhead the sky was utterly cloudless. Moving his eyes only a little, he could see the great green tower of Gros Piton, shining like Jacob’s ladder itself, thrusting toward the empty blue. Incredibly far above, a plane drew out its jet trail, a barely visible needle stitching the tiniest flaw in the vast perfect seamless curtain of day. Miles and miles above, beyond imagining.

“How we gonna get aboard?” Gillian asked. He did not care for the way she was acting in the water now, struggling to stay afloat, moving her arms too much, wasting her breath.

“We’ll have to go up the float line. Or maybe,” he said, “we can stand on each other’s shoulders.”

“I’m not,” she said, gasping, “gonna like that too well.”

“Take it easy, Gillian. Lie on your back.”

What bothered him most was her laughing, a high-pitched giggle with each breath.

“OK, let’s do it,” she said, spitting salt water. “Let’s do it before he does.”

“Slow and steady,” Blessington said.

They slowly swam together; breaststroking toward the boat. A late afternoon breeze had come up as the temperature began to fall.

Freycinet and Marie had allowed themselves to drift farther and farther from the boat. Blessington urged Gillian along beside him until the big white hull was between them and the other swimmers.

Climbing was impossible. It was partly the nature of the French-made boat: an unusually high transom and the rounded glassy hull made it particularly difficult to board except from a dock or a dinghy. That was the contemporary, security-conscious style. And the rental company had removed a few of the deck fittings that might have provided hand- and footholds. Still, he tried to find a grip so that Gillian could get on his shoulders. Once he even managed to position himself between her legs and push her a foot or so up the hull, as she sat on his shoulders. But there was nothing to grab on to and she was stoned. She swore and laughed and toppled off him.

He was swimming forward along the hull, looking for the float, when it occurred to him that the boat must be moving. Sure enough, holding his place, he could feel the hull sliding to windward under his hand. In a few strokes he was under the bow, feeling the ketch’s weight thrusting forward, riding him down. Then he saw the Rastafarian float. It was unencumbered by any line. Honoré and Marie had not drifted from the boat — the boat itself was slowly blowing away, accompanied now by the screech of fiberglass against coral. The boys from the Pitons, having dealt with druggies before, had undone the mooring line while they were sleeping or nodding off or scarfing other sorts of lines.

Blessington hurried around the hull, with one hand to the boat’s skin, trying to find the drifting float line. It might, he thought, be possible to struggle up along that. But there was no drifting float line. The boat boys must have uncleated it and balled the cleat in nylon line and silently tossed it aboard. He and Freycinet had been so feckless, the sea so glassy and the wind so low that the big boat had simply settled on the float, with its keel fast among the submerged elkhorn, and they had imagined themselves secured. The Sans Regret, to which he clung, was gone. Its teak interiors were in another world now, as far away as the tiny jet miles above them on its way to Brazil.

“It’s no good,” Blessington said to her.

“It’s not?” She giggled.

“Please,” he said, “please don’t do that.”

She gasped. “What?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Come with me.”

They had just started to swim away when a sudden breeze carried the Sans Regret from between the two couples, leaving Blessington and Gillian and Honoré and Marie to face one another in the water across a distance of twenty yards or so. Honoré and Marie stared at their shipmates in confusion. It was an embarrassing moment. Gillian laughed.

“What have you done?” Honoré asked Blessington. Blessington tried not to look at him.

“Come on,” he said to Gillian. “Follow me.”

Cursing in French, Freycinet started kicking furiously for the boat. Marie, looking very serious, struck out behind him. Gillian stopped to look after them.

Blessington glanced at his diver’s watch. It was five-fifteen.

“Never mind them,” he said. “Don’t look at them. Stay with me.”

He turned over on his back and commenced an artless backstroke, arms out straight, rowing with his palms, paddling with his feet. It was the most economic stroke he knew, the one he felt most comfortable with. He tried to make the strokes controlled and rhythmic rather than random and splashy to avoid conveying any impression of panic or desperation. To free his mind, he tried counting the strokes. As soon as they were over deep water, he felt the current. He tried to take it at a 4 5-degree angle, determining his bearing and progress by the great mountain overhead.

“Are you all right?” he asked Gillian. He raised his head to have a look at her. She was swimming in what looked like a good strong crawl. She coughed from time to time.

“I’m cold,” she said. “That’s the trouble.”

“Try resting on your back,” he said, “and paddling with your open hands. Like you were rowing.”

She turned over and closed her eyes and smiled.

“I could go to sleep.”

“You’ll sleep ashore,” he said. “Keep paddling.”

They heard Freycinet cursing. Marie began to scream over and over again. It sounded fairly far away.

Checking on the mountain, Blessington felt a rush of despair. The lower slopes of the jungle were turning dark green. The line dividing sun-bright vegetation from deep-shaded green was withdrawing toward the peak. And the mountain looked no closet He felt as though they were losing distance, being carried out faster than they could paddle. Marie’s relentless screeches went on and on. Perhaps they were actually growing closer; Blessington thought, perhaps an evening tide was carrying them out.

“Poor kid,” Gillian said. “Poor little baby.”

“Don’t listen,” he said.

Gillian kept coughing, sputtering. He stopped asking her if she was all right.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really cold now. I thought the water was warm at first.”

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Gillian stopped swimming and looked up at Gros Piton. Turning over again to swim, she got a mouthful of water.

“Like … hell,” she said.

“Keep going, Gillian.”

It seemed to him, as he rowed the sodden vessel of his body and mind, that the sky was darkening. The sun’s mark withdrew higher on the slopes. Marie kept screaming. They heard splashes far off where the boat was now. Marie and Honoré were clinging to it.

“Liam,” Gillian said, “you can’t save me.”

“You’ll save yourself,” he said. “You’ll just go on.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be a bloody stupid bitch.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I really don’t.”

He stopped rowing himself then, although he was loath to. Every interruption of their forward motion put them more at the mercy of the current. According to the cruise book it was only a five-knot current but it felt much stronger. Probably reinforced by a tide.

Gillian was struggling, coughing in fits. She held her head up, greedy for air her mouth open like a baby bird’s in hope of nourishment. Blessington swam nearer her. The sense of their time ticking away, of distance lost to the current, enraged him.

“You’ve got to turn over on your back,” he said gently. “Just ease onto your back and rest there. Then arch your back. Let your head lie backward so your forehead’s in the water.”

Trying to do as he told her she began to thrash in a tangle of her own arms and legs. She swallowed water gasped. Then she laughed again.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“Liam? Can I rest on you?”

He stopped swimming toward her.

“You mustn’t. You mustn’t touch me. We mustn’t touch each other. We might…”

“Please,” she said.

“No. Get on your back. Turn over slowly.”

Something broke the water near them. He thought it was the fin of a blacktip shark. A troublesome shark but not among the most dangerous. Of course, it could have been anything. Gillian still had the Rasta bracelet around her wrist.

“This is the thing, Liam. I think I got a cramp. I’m so dizzy.”

“On your back, love. You must. It’s the only way.”

“No,” she said. “I’m too cold. I’m too dizzy.”

“Come on,” he said. He started swimming again. Away from her.

“I’m so dizzy. I could go right out.”

In mounting panic, he reversed direction and swam back toward her.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “Liam?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m fading out, Liam. I’ll let it take me.”

“Get on your back,” he screamed at her. “You can easily swim. If you have to swim all night.”

“Oh, shit,” she said. Then she began to laugh again. She raised the hand that had the Rasta bracelet and splashed a sign of the cross.

“Nam,” she said. “Nam myoho renge kyo. Son of a bitch.” Laughing. What she tried to say next was washed out of her mouth by a wave.

“I can just go out,” she said. “I’m so dizzy.”

Then she began to struggle and laugh and cry.

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” she sang, laughing. “Praise him, all creatures here below.”

“Gillian,” he said. “For God’s sake.” Maybe I can take her in, he thought. But that was madness and he kept his distance.

She was laughing and shouting at the top of her voice.

“Praise him above, you heavenly host! Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

Laughing, thrashing, she went under; her face straining, wide-eyed. Blessington tried to look away but it was too late. He was afraid to go after her.

He lost his own balance then. His physical discipline collapsed and he began to wallow and thrash as she had.

“Help!” he yelled piteously. He was answered by a splash and Marie’s screams. Perhaps now he only imagined them.

Eventually he got himself under control. When the entire mountain had subsided into dark green, he felt the pull of the current release him. The breakers were beginning to carry him closer to the sand, toward the last spit of sandy beach remaining on the island. The entire northern horizon was subsumed in the mountain overhead, Gros Piton.

He had one final mad moment. Fifty yards offshore, a riptide was running; it seized him and carried him behind the tip of the island. He had just enough strength and coherence of mind to swim across it. The sun was setting as he waded out, among sea grape and manchineel. When he turned he could see against the setting sun the bare poles of the Sans Regret, settled on the larger reef to the south of the island. It seemed to him also that he could make out a struggling human figure, dark against the light hull. But the dark came down quickly. He thought he detected a flash of green. Sometimes he thought he could still hear Marie screaming.

All night, as he rattled through the thick brush looking for a road to follow from concealment, Gillian’s last hymn echoed in his mind’s ear. He could see her dying face against the black fields of sugarcane through which he trudged.

Once he heard what he was certain was the trumpeting of an elephant. It made him believe, in his growing delirium, that he was in Africa — Africa, where he had never been. He hummed the hymn. Then he remembered he had read somewhere that the resort maintained an elephant in the bush. But he did not want to meet it, so he decided to stay where he was and wait for morning. All night he talked to Gillian, joked and sang hymns with her. He saved her again and again and they were together.

In the morning, when the sun rose fresh and full of promise, he set out for the Irish bar in Soufrière. He thought that they might overstand him there.