The Beach

∨ The Beach ∧

70

Politics

Damn,’ I said, spotting Cassie. She was standing near the kitchen hut, talking to Ella. It meant I had no choice but to pass her. My only other options were to walk directly across the centre of the clearing or to skirt around and come from behind the longhouse. In other words, passing Bugs or passing Sal. Not really options at all.

I sighed. Getting from one side of the clearing to the other had become like an eye-contact obstacle course. It was true that the shark attack had distracted attention away from the flare-up in the longhouse, but although an unspoken truce had been agreed, the tensions behind the incident were still there. Tactically, I had to hand it to Bugs. His group – basically the carpenters and Jean’s gardeners minus Cassie and Jesse – had taken over the centre of the clearing. Starting from the first afternoon after the shark attack, I’d come back from the island to find them all sitting there in a loose circle, smoking dope and chatting quietly. So as well as the commanding vantage point they had over the camp, there was a psychological aspect. It was like they represented the establishment, making the rest of us feel like dissenters.

Our dissenter role was accentuated by the fact that, unlike the Bugs group, we had no sense of unity. In effect, we were several sub-groups. There was my old fishing detail and Keaty, which I included myself in, but there was also Jed, and I included myself with him as well. Then there was Moshe’s detail, who seemed uncertain of where their affiliations lay, and there were the cooks. The cooks, as a result of Ella, partly included Jesse and Cassie. But you could also partly include Jesse and Cassie with my old fishing detail, because of their friendship with Keaty.

Finally, there were Sal and Karl. Karl was a law unto himself, drifting somewhere in outer space, and Sal was trying extremely hard to appear neutral – though we all knew where her loyalties would lie if push came to shove.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it was.

This, then, was the politics involved in crossing the clearing, and we all had to deal with it to the same degree. Except me, that is, who had an extra burden to deal with in the form of Cassie. Ever since the incident when Bugs had shat himself, she’d been treating me like I was mentally unstable, talking slowly, carefully enunciating each word, using an evenly modulated tone as if she thought a sudden noise would scare me. It was really getting on my nerves. But I’d have shinned up a rocket-ship tree to have avoided passing Bugs, and Sal would make me give her a troublesome report on our guests on the neighbouring island, so Cassie it had to be. Biting my lip and looking intently at the ground, I moved out from behind the foliage and set off in her direction. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that she was deep in conversation with Ella. ‘I’m going to make it,’ I thought optimistically, but I was wrong.

‘Richard,’ she said, just as I was about to move out of her range.

I looked up with a studiously blank expression.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ I replied quickly. ‘On my way to see the patient.’

She smiled. ‘No, Richard, I mean, how are you?’

‘Fine,’ I repeated.

‘I think this has been harder for you than anyone.’

‘Oh well, not really.’

‘Finding Christo…’

‘It wasn’t so bad…’

‘…And now you have to work up on the island without company, without…support.’

I shrugged helplessly. It would have been quite impossible to explain that, from my point of view, the three days since Sten’s death had been great. Jed’s knowledge of first aid meant he was spending all his time looking after Christo, and that meant I got to spend my days alone in the DMZ.

Alone in a manner of speaking, anyway.

‘But maybe being without company is a good thing, Cassie. It gives me time to think and come to terms with what’s happened.’ From similar encounters, I knew this was the right thing to say.

Cassie widened her eyes as if she hadn’t considered this, but now that she had, yes, it was a good idea and she was impressed I’d thought of it. ‘That’s a positive attitude,’ she said warmly. ‘Well done.’

I felt that was enough for me to disappear without appearing rude, so I made my excuses and continued on my way.

♦

I was aiming for the hospital tent. More accurately, the Swedes’ tent, but seeing as Sten was dead and Karl had started living on the beach, I’d begun calling it the hospital tent. Disappointingly, no one else did. Even though I’d made a point of using the new name at every opportunity, it had stubbornly refused to catch on.

‘Back early today,’ said Jed, when I climbed in. ‘It’s still light.’ He sounded very tired and was sweating like a pig. It was baking under the canvas, even with the flap pegged open.

‘Got hungry, needed a fag. Nothing much going on.’

‘No developments then.’

I looked at Christo.

‘He’s asleep. It’s OK.’

‘Oh…well, yeah, no developments.’ I lied. There had been a very particular development, but not one I could go into. ‘Just the same as always.’

‘So we ‘re lucky again. I wonder how long it will last.’

‘Mmm…I got some more grass by the way.’

‘More? Richard, you…’ Jed shook his head. ‘…We’ve got grass coming out of our ears. Every day you’ve brought some back.’

‘People are smoking a lot at the moment.’

‘We’d need all the hippies in Goa to smoke through your supplies, and if you take too much the guards might notice.’

I nodded. The same thought had crossed my mind, though with a different slant. I’d been hoping that my regular expeditions would get the guards on their toes. They were so pathetically easy to avoid that it made you wonder why they were there in the first place.

‘So what about Christo?’ I asked, changing the subject. ‘Any developments with him?’

Jed rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes. He’s getting worse.’

‘Delirious?’

‘No, just in pain. If he’s awake. He spends most of the time unconscious and he’s running a bad fever. Without a thermometer it’s hard to be sure, but it’s higher than yesterday…To tell you the truth…’ Jed lowered his voice, ‘…I’m getting seriously worried about him.’

I frowned. Christo looked OK to me. When I’d seen him in the daylight, the morning after rescuing him, I’d felt slightly let down by the undramatic nature of his injuries. Apart from a single cut on his arm – the cut I’d mistaken for a mouth – his only wound was a large bruise on his stomach from where the shark had rammed him. The injuries were so superficial that he’d walked around on the first day, trying to find Karl. He’d only collapsed on the second day, which we’d thought was a result of stress or possibly a relapse of the food poisoning.

‘I mean,’ Jed continued, ‘the bruise should be going down, shouldn’t it?’

‘You’re the doctor, Jed.’

‘I’m not a fucking doctor. That’s the point.’

I leant over to take a look. ‘Well, it’s blacker than it was. Not so purple. I think that means it’s healing.’

‘Do you know that for a fact?’

‘Not for a fact, no.’ I paused. ‘I’m sure it’ll be just the food poisoning that’s keeping him low. Jesse is still getting gripes.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And so is Bugs…unfortunately!’ I added with a mischievous wink that Jed either missed or ignored.’…Well, I’m going to get some food and catch up with Françoise and the others.’

‘OK. Leave a cigarette will you? And come back later. Nobody comes in to check on me apart from you and Unhygienix. I think they’re avoiding having to see Christo…Pretending it hasn’t happened maybe.’

‘Pretty hard,’ I said, chucking him the packet. ‘Sten’s still lying in that sleeping-bag around the back of the longhouse. It’s right on the other side from where I sleep, and I can smell him through the walls.’

Jed glanced at me. There was obviously something he wanted to say so I nodded, to say, ‘Go on,’ but he only sighed. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said sadly. ‘Sal said she’s given up on trying to persuade Karl to be there, so he’ll be buried by the waterfall tomorrow morning.’