High Stakes

10

Warren, enjoying himself hugely, bought Black Fire for four thousand six hundred dollars. Bid for it, signed for it, and paid for it.

With undiminished good nature he also contracted for its immediate removal from Hialeah and subsequent shipment by air to England.

‘Having himself a ball,’ Minty said.

His good spirits lasted all the way back to Garden Island and through several celebratory nightcaps.

‘You sure bought a stinker,’ he said cheerfully, ‘But boy, I haven’t had so much fun in years. Did you see that guy’s face, the one I bid against? He thought he was getting it for a thousand.’ He chuckled. ‘At four thousand five he sure looked mad and he could see I was going on for ever.’

Minty began telling him to make the most of it, it was the last horse he’d be buying for a long time, and Allie came to the door to see me off. We stood outside for a while in the dark, close together.

‘One day down. Three to go,’ she said.

‘No more horses,’ I promised.

‘Okay.’

‘And fewer people.’

A pause. Then again, ‘Okay.’

I smiled and kissed her good night and pushed her indoors before my best intentions should erupt into good old-fashioned lust. The quickest way to lose her would be to snatch.

She said how about Florida Keys and how about a swim and how about a picnic. We went in the Impala with a cold box of goodies in the boot and the Tropic of Cancer flaming away over the horizon ahead.

The highway to Key West stretched for mile after mile across a linked chain of causeways and small islands. Palm trees, sand dunes, sparkling water and scrubby grass. Few buildings. Sun-bleached wooden huts, wooden landing stages, fishing boats. Huge skies, hot sun, vast seas. Also Greyhound buses on excursions and noisy families in station wagons with Mom in pink plastic curlers.

Allie had brought directions from Warren about one of the tiny islands where he fished, and when we reached it we turned off the highway on to a dusty side road that was little more than a track. It ended abruptly under two leaning palms, narrowing to an Indian file path through sand dunes and tufty grass towards the sea. We took the picnic box and walked, and found ourselves surprisingly in a small sandy hollow from which neither the car nor the road could be seen.

‘That,’ said Allie, pointing at the sea, ‘is Hawk Channel.’

‘Can’t see any hawks.’

‘You’d want cooks in Cook Strait.’

She took off the loose white dress she’d worn on the way down and dropped it on the sand. Underneath she wore a pale blue and white bikini, and underneath that, warm honey coloured skin.

She took the skin without more ado into the sea and I stripped off shirt and trousers and followed her. We swam in the free warm-cool water and it felt the utmost in luxury.

‘Why are these islands so uninhabited?’ I asked.

‘Too small, most of them. No fresh water. Hurricanes, as well. It isn’t always so gentle here. Sizzling hot in the summer and terrible storms.’

The wind in the palm tree tops looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. We splashed in the shallows and walked up the short beach to regain the warm little hollow, Allie delivering on the way a fairly non-stop lecture about turtles, bonefish, marlin and tarpon. It struck me in the end that she was talking fast to hide that she was feeling self-conscious.

I fished in my jacket pocket and brought out a twenty dollar bill.

‘Bus fare home,’ I said, holding it out to her.

She laughed a little jerkily. ‘I still have the one you sent from England.’

‘Did you bring it?’

She smiled, shook her head, took the note from me, folded it carefully and pushed it into the wet top half of her bikini.

‘It’ll be safe there,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘How about a vodka martini?’

She had brought drinks, ice and delicious food. The sun in due course shifted thirty degrees round the sky, and I lay lazily basking in it while she put the empties back in the picnic box and fiddled with spoons.

‘Allie?’

‘Mm?’

‘How about now?’

She stopped the busy rattling. Sat back on her ankles. Pushed the hair out of her eyes and finally looked at my face.

‘Try sitting here,’ I said, patting the sand beside me with an unemphatic palm.

She tried it. Nothing cataclysmic seemed to happen to her in the way of fright.

‘You’ve done it before,’ I said persuasively, stating a fact.

‘Yeah... but...’

‘But what?’

‘I didn’t really like it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t like the boy enough, I expect.’

‘Then why the hell sleep with him?’

‘You make it sound so simple. But at college, well, one sort of had to. Three years ago, most of one summer. I haven’t done it since. I’ve been not exactly afraid to, but afraid I would... be unfair...’ She stopped.

‘You can catch a bus whenever you like,’ I said.

She smiled and bit by bit lay down beside me. I knew she wouldn’t have brought me to this hidden place if she hadn’t been willing at least to try. But acquiescence, in view of what she’d said, was no longer enough. If she didn’t enjoy it, I couldn’t.

I went slowly, giving her time. A touch. A kiss. An undemanding smoothing of hand over skin. She breathed evenly through her nose, trusting but unaroused.

‘Clothes off?’ I suggested. ‘No one can see us.’

‘... Okay.’

She unhitched the bikini top, folded it over the twenty dollars, and put it on the sand beside her. The pants in a moment followed. Then she sat with her arms wrapped round her knees, staring out to sea.

‘Come on,’ I said, smiling, my shorts joining hers. ‘The fate worse than death isn’t all that bad.’

She laughed with naturalness and lay down beside me, and it seemed as if she’d made up her mind to do her best, even if she found it unsatisfactory. But in a while she gave the first uncontrollable shiver of authentic pleasure, and after that it became not just all right but very good indeed.

‘Oh God,’ she said in the end, half laughing, half gasping for air. ‘I didn’t know...’

‘Didn’t know what?’ I said, sliding lazily down beside her.

‘At college... he was clumsy. And too quick.’

She stretched out her hand, fumbled in the bikini and picked up the twenty dollar note.

She waved it in the air, holding it between finger and thumb. Then she laughed and opened her hand, and the wind blew her fare home away along the beach.