The Beach

∨ The Beach ∧

32

Zero

Colour-wise, progress was good. The sky had been mainly cloudy over the first few days, and by the time the sky had cleared I had enough of a base tan to avoid burning. Now I was getting close to my darkest shade. I peeked under the waistband of my shorts to check I was as dark as I hoped.

‘Wow,’ I said, seeing the creamy skin beneath.

Étienne looked round. He was sitting by the edge of the boulder, cooling his legs in the water. His tan was rich and golden, I noticed enviously. I never went golden. At best I went the colour of a recently ploughed field. Walnut brown, I would sometimes describe it, but it was much more like earth.

‘What is it?’

‘Just my tan. I’m getting dark.’

Étienne nodded, tugging absently at his necklace. ‘I thought maybe you were thinking of this place.’

‘The beach?’

‘You said ‘wow’, so I thought you were thinking how good it is here.’

‘Oh, well, I often think that…I mean, it was worth the trouble, wasn’t it? That swim, and the dope fields.’

‘Worth the trouble.’

‘You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone’s so friendly. It’s such simple stuff, but…If I could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, I think I’d restart it like this. For everyone.’ I shook my head to stop myself rambling. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘All these thoughts are the same as mine.’

‘They are?’

‘Of course. The same as everybody’s.’

I stood up and gazed around me. Gregorio and Françoise were climbing out of the water a few boulders over, and past them, near the sea-locked cliffs, three dots of colour described Moshe and the two Yugoslavians. From the land I could hear a steady tapping – Bugs and the carpenters working on some new project – and walking along the beach I could see a single figure. Ella, I thought, until I squinted against the bright white sands, and recognized Sal.

I remembered the way Sal had teased me to realign my expectations. ‘You’ll see that this is a wonderful place, as long as you appreciate it for what it is,’ she’d said. I pushed my shoulders back and closed my eyes against the hot sun, and thought how right she was.

I was broken out of my reverie by a sudden cold splash of water against my legs. I opened my eyes and looked down. It was the fish in the bucket, getting close to the split second before Game Over. I watched them for a while, impressed by their tenacity. It often surprised me how long it took for fish to die. Even speared right through their bodies, they still flapped about for as long as an hour, working up a bloody lather in the water around them.

‘How many do we have?’ said Étienne.

‘Seven. A couple are big ones. That’s enough, isn’t it?’

Étienne shrugged. ‘If Gregorio and Françoise also have seven, it is enough.’

‘They’ll have seven at least.’ I checked my watch. It was exactly midday. ‘I think I might go back early today. I’m meeting up with Keaty and he’s going to show me this tree.’

‘Tree?’

‘Some tree by the waterfall. Want to come? We could leave the bucket here.’

He shook his head and pointed to Gregorio and Françoise. Gregorio had his mask pushed up on to his forehead. ‘I want to see the corals. They sound very beautiful.’

‘Yeah, they are. Maybe I’ll come and find you after this tree thing.’

‘Good.’

‘Tell the others for me.’

‘Yes.’

I dived into the water, shooting down at a steep angle then levelling out to skim over the seabed. The salt stung my eyes but I kept them open. Even without Gregorio’s mask, the blurred colours and scattering fish were a sight to see.

♦

There were two ways I could get to the garden. The first was the direct route that Keaty walked every morning. It was the quickest way, but I’d only done it a couple of times, and that was with Keaty. I knew if I tried to do it alone I’d only get lost; once in the jungle there wasn’t much that could be used for orientation, apart from distinctive trees and plants. Instead I chose the second route, which was to follow the waterfall stream to its source. Once there I could turn left and walk along the cliff, which eventually led to the garden.

After about ten minutes’ walking I began to empathize with Keaty’s complaints about his work detail. Without a sea breeze and cool water, and stuck in the greenhouse forest, the heat was incredible. By the time I reached the waterfall my whole body was greasy and prickling with sweat.

Since arriving at the beach, I’d only been to the waterfall a couple of times, and never on my own. It was partly because I had no reason to go there, but also, I now understood, because the area made me feel uneasy. It represented a link between the lagoon and the outside world, the world I’d all but forgotten, and as I stood by the pool I realized that I didn’t want to be reminded. Looking up through the fine mist of water vapour I could see the spot where I’d crouched before jumping. The memories it brought back were uncomfortable. I didn’t even pause to cool my face. I found the path that led towards the garden and headed straight down it.

Quarter of an hour later I found Keaty on the outskirts of the vegetable patch, disconsolately poking at weeds with a Bugs-made trowel.

‘Hey,’ he said, perking up. ‘What are you doing down here?’

‘You were going to show me a tree. I got off work early.’

‘Right. I forgot.’ He looked over to where Jean was growling at one of the other gardeners. ‘Jean!’

Jean looked round.

‘Gottataketimeoff.’

‘Heugh?’ Jean replied.

‘Backlateriftherestimeok?’

Keaty waved, and Jean waved back uncertainly. Then Keaty propelled me out of the garden. ‘If you talk quickly he can’t understand,’ he explained. ‘Otherwise he would have tried to make you wait until the detail stopped work.’

‘Smart.’

‘Uh-huh.’

♦

It was a rocket-ship tree about twenty metres to the right of the pool. I’d noticed it before when I’d been wondering how to get down from the waterfall. Some of its branches grew near to the cliff, and I’d considered an Indiana Jones-style leap into its lower canopy. Standing at its base, I was glad I’d had the sense not to try. I’d have jumped on to a deceptively thin layer of leaves and fallen forty feet to the ground.

It was, like all the other rocket-ship trees, an impressive sight, but that wasn’t why Keaty had brought me to see it. He’d brought me to see the markings cut into one of its twelve-foot stabilizer fins. Three names and four numbers. Bugs, Sylvester and Daffy. The numbers were all zeros.

‘Sylvester?’

‘Salvester.’

I shook my head. ‘Sal.’

‘I tawt I taw a puddy tat.’

‘So they were the first?’

‘The first. Nineteen eighty-nine. The three of them hired a boat from Ko Pha-Ngan.’

‘They knew about this place already, or…’

‘Depends who you talk to. Bugs said he’d heard about a hidden lagoon from some fisherman on Ko Phalui, but Daffy used to say they were just island-hopping. Found the place by chance.’

‘Chance.’

‘But all the camp and stuff. That didn’t start until ninety. They spent the second half of eighty-nine doing the Goa thing, then came back to Ko Pha-Ngan for the new year.’

‘And what, Ko Pha-Ngan was on the way out?’

Keaty nodded. ‘Well on the way. That’s when it clicked. The thing was, those three had been going to Ko Samui since it was a secret, so when they saw Ko Pha-Ngan had maybe a year left…’

‘A year left at best. I heard by ninety-one it was already fucked up.’

‘Right, so they’d seen it all before. Especially Daffy. Daffy was completely obsessed. You know he wouldn’t ever go to Indonesia?’

‘I don’t know anything about Daffy.’

‘Boycotted because of Bali. He went there only once, in the late eighties, and wouldn’t ever go back. Used to talk all the time about how sick it made him.’

We sat down with our backs against the slab of root and shared a cigarette.

‘I mean,’ said Keaty, exhaling hard, ‘you’ve got to hand it to them.’

‘Definitely.’

‘They really knew what they were doing. Most things were set up by the time Sal took me here, which was…uh…ninety-three. The longhouse was up and the ceiling was sorted out.’

‘Two years.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He passed me the cigarette.

‘So when you came, were there this many people?’

Keaty paused. ‘Well…Pretty much…’

I looked at him, sensing that he was being cagey. ‘How do you mean, ‘pretty much’?’

‘…Everyone apart from the Swedes.’

‘In two years the only new people were the Swedes?’

‘…And Jed. The Swedes and Jed.’

‘That’s not many. Well-kept secret.’

‘Mmm.’

I stubbed out the cigarette. ‘And the zeros. What are they about?’

Keaty smiled. ‘That was Daffy’s idea. It’s a date.’

‘A date? The date of what?’

‘The date they first arrived.’

‘I thought that was eighty-nine.’

‘It was.’ Keaty stood up and patted the stabilizer fin. ‘But Daffy used to call it year zero.’