Big Fish

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Reality Surfs

  “Huahine remains one of the undiscovered gems of the Society Islands.”

  • • •

  There were seven blanks pages in Stuart’s diary. He had never been a particularly lengthy journal-writer, but he had prided himself on at least making some written acknowledgement of each passing day of his travels, no matter how brief, and so the missing log was something of a mystery. As was the fact that he was clearly on a different island. The angry shop keeper had been the first clue.

  “Ger-ow-a-ma-shop.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Memory was flooding back, filling corners of Stuart’s brain which had been drained of all past events for over a week; a noisy rush of near-forgotten experiences, like evacuated air too anxious to fill a vacuum. He shook his head and looked dazed. His legs felt as though they were going to buckle from beneath him, but by a supreme effort of will he managed to stay standing upright, dimly aware that collapsing was not going to enamour him to the Oriental-looking gentleman, who was gesturing angrily towards him.

  “You! Eh! You-ger-ow-a-ma-shop.”

  You. Eh. U. A. Stuart. With a ‘u’, ‘a’. He was beginning to remember. He held up a hand to try to momentarily stop the torrent of angry words from the agitated shop-keeper, to give himself long enough to regain his composure; to assess his situation. How had he got here? Where?

  “Ger-ow!”

  “Where am I?”

  “Out!”

  The man was moving forward menacingly. He was a short man, with a confrontational sweep of greasy, black hair, stretched across his forehead as though it was held in place with a piece of clingfilm, plastered down like someone just having walked in from a rain storm. Beady, black eyes were obscured behind thick, dirty lenses. There was no mistaking the threat behind the stick that he carried though. He struck the heavy object into the cupped palm of his hand, where the padded flesh soaked up the noise of the impact with a dull thud.

  There was a large mirror on the wall behind the counter. For the first time Stuart looked beyond the shop owner and caught sight of his own reflection. The image that peered back was not the man that he had expected to see. He was never going to win any beard-of-the-year competitions, probably would not even have qualified as a part-time member of the Taliban, but the hair around his lower face was certainly more profuse than he had previously allowed it to grow. He stroked it experimentally. It was a horrible, straggly mess, but compared with the spectacularly, eccentric coiffure of the rest of the hair on his head, it looked positively normal. His normally civil locks stood up in matted, aggressive tufts, and the impression of a clown was further exaggerated by the strange face paint that he appeared to be wearing. Stuart wiped a finger across a dark streak of colour beneath his eye and was relieved to find the hue was not permanent. Mud, dirty river mud, appeared to be the culprit. He held his now stained finger out towards the Chinese man for him to see, as if, in some way, this would explain everything.

  “Ger-ow!”

  There was obviously not going to be any opportunity to reason with the angry man, let alone expect him to listen to Stuart’s explanation for his dishevelled appearance, and even less hope that he might provide some assistance in Stuart’s current plight.

  He held out his hands - defensive now - and started to back up towards the door of the shop, almost knocking over a shelf loaded with tinned vegetables, as he stumbled into it. “I’m going, I’m going.”

  Retreating from such a bounty of food as the shop contained - shelves stacked with boxed and canned provisions, a display of fresh fruit, and a basket of long bread sticks - only served to remind Stuart just how hungry he was feeling. Passing a large, chest refrigerator next to the exit, its lid glazed with condensation, obscuring the promise of cool delicacies within, was almost to much for him. He did not need to feel inside the pockets of his shorts to know that there was no money there, and from the expression on the face of the Chinese owner he doubted that his francs would have been accepted even if he had been able to produce hard currency. He considered grabbing the first edible object within reach and doing a runner, but he quickly reasoned that despite looking like a savage, his only hope of returning to some kind of normality would be to remember his civility. It was hard, though, faced with such an objectionable adversary.

  Emboldened by seeing the object of his disgust so close to leaving his premises, the shop-keeper had stepped up his level of abuse, “Ger-ow bas-ad! Bug off!” He shooed his hands, as though he were chasing off a lame dog, still keeping a tight grip on the stick, which provided the ultimate threat.

  “And thank you for your service,” Stuart said between his teeth, as he took the final step backwards to stand outside the shop, on a dusty stretch of deserted, unmade road. He glanced up at the shop name, ‘Gao’s General Store’. He did not recognise the name from his memory of some of the shops quoted in his old guidebook. There were no other clues to his location. No town name. No phone number. Nothing. He looked in both directions along the road. There were no distinctive landmarks either way, nothing that he remembered, no indication of which direction he had arrived here from; no idea which way he was travelling to. He asked himself again, how had he got here? The last thing he could recall was a late-night conversation with the French couple, Cedric and Yvette. He had been staying at Chez Ato. On Bora Bora. In French Polynesia. In the South Pacific. On Planet Earth. In the Known Universe. Stuart looked up at the fiercely glowing sun in the improbably bright, blue sky. It was a comforting sight. Chances seemed high that he had not strayed too far from home. Strange though that he could not see the sea. On Bora Bora it was difficult to escape it.

  He would have tossed a coin, if he had one. Heads or tails? Left or right? To the left the gradient was steep and uphill, to the right a gentle slope down, otherwise the landscape was unremarkable, low, featureless scrub land, and a thin line of trees which blocked out any more distant panoramas. Right it was then. The prospect of an uphill walk in the heat of the day was not something that Stuart currently relished. He was feeling thirsty as well as hungry and, by any reasoning, a road downhill should ultimately reach the ocean, and where the land met the sea there were generally people, and where there were people there was the opportunity of nourishment and possibly an explanation of where he was and how he had got there.

  Stuart had only taken a couple of hundred paces - 196 to be precise, he had been counting in the absence of anything else to do - along the dusty track, Gao’s store having only just disappeared from his view, when he heard the sound of a motor ahead of him, and by the increasing volume of decibels, fast approaching. The trail curved back and forth in short, snaking loops at this point, and Stuart realised that it would not be possible to catch sight of the oncoming vehicle before it was practically on top of him, and, more importantly, the driver of the potential lift was not likely to see him standing at the side of the road, thumb extended in universally recognised greeting. A memory of his own reflected image returned to Stuart as well: the driver was not likely to stop even if he did see him. Desperate times called for desperate remedies. Stuart could hear that the approaching car was having difficulties coping with the steep incline of the hill, the engine was revving noisily and putting on a petulant display of juvenile histrionics at the uphill task that it was being asked to surmount; the chances were that it would not be travelling too fast by the time that it reached him. It seemed likely that if he stood in the middle of the road, waving his arms, the braking distance would be sufficient for the vehicle to stop and so prevent him from being smeared over the bonnet. It was a sobering thought: if he had been previously able to push memories of Stefan to the back of his mind, the similarity of his present predicament to that of the young German’s, that night of Tiurai on Bora Bora, was now only too apparent. Stuart wondered if this was how the accident happened: a dark night, poor visibility, little chance of a passing car s
eeing him on the verge, signalling for a ride, he takes a tentative step forward into the road, confident that the oncoming car will pick him out in its headlights and, bang! A shallow grave on a paradise island beach. It wasn’t the least desirable of final resting places, but I guess if Stefan had had his say, he would have been of the opinion that it had just arrived about fifty years too prematurely.

  Stuart was standing in the centre of the road. He had a week of his life that he could not account for. He had no idea where he was currently washed up. He looked and felt like a piece of flotsam of society. Being hit by a car seemed like a fairly minor anxiety in comparison. It would scarcely be a down slide from his present circumstances.

  The car, when it finally reached the summit of the rise and came into view as it turned the bend in the road, was travelling so slowly that Stuart need not have been fearful at all. An old, rust-holed, Toyota, the original orange paintwork, stripped and pealing, revealing the dirty umber tones of the metal beneath, it was further handicapped in its pursuit of forward momentum by the weight of four passengers and, piled one on top of another on the roof-rack, at least three bulky surf boards. Stuart groaned with the realisation of recognition. He knew that the Fates were catching up with him. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos disguised as three all-American surf boys. And the fourth passenger? She looked too small and puny sitting in the backseat to be Nemesis, but Stuart was quite prepared to believe anything. Now, when he would have been quite happy for the car to put on a burst of speed and ignore him altogether, there was instead the sound of grinding gears and the vehicle pulled up to a halt beside him.

  Greg was leaning out of the driver’s window, “Yo! Remember me?”

  “Couldn’t forget,” said Stuart.

  Greg tapped the vinyl covering of the board, strapped onto the roof above him, affectionately, “Been catching a few waves.”

  “I thought you might have been.” It was hardly a surprising piece of information, given the surfer’s obsession. Stuart was more surprised that the American seemed unfazed by the sight of his own extraordinary appearance.

  “Do you want a lift?” Greg was nothing if not friendly.

  Stuart looked sceptically inside the car. There did not appear to be much room for a fifth person. Greg recognising his concern, said, “It’s OK. We can all budge up a bit. We’re all friends here.” He turned to address the male backseat passenger, a thick-necked individual with an army-style crew-cut, “Right Skin?”

  “Right, man,” replied the young man, sleepily.

  “We’re going up past Maroe, to see what the waves are like through Fareera Pass. Is that OK? Where are you staying? We can drop you off.”

  Stuart must have looked rather blank, because Greg added, “You OK, dude?”

  Stuart decided that he was not going to get very far without some sort of assistance and better the Devil you know, “I know this is going to sound strange, but where am I?”

  “Lost eh?” Greg turned to Skin again, to share the joke, “Guy’s lost.”

  Skin shouted from the depths of the vehicle, “Where you staying?”

  “That’s just it,” explained Stuart, “I don’t know.”

  Greg took a second to digest this piece of information before laughing even more riotously, “Man, that must have been some good stuff you’ve found.” He reached behind him to open the back door of the Toyota, “Come on, jump in. You can come along with us. We’ll take you back to your place, soon as you remember.”

  “No, really,” Stuart continued, a note of frustration in his voice, “I’m not staying anywhere. Or at least the last place I remember was at Chez Ato.” He added, seeing that Greg did not know the place, “In the hills by Viatape.”

  “Bora Bora! Man you are lost.”

  “Why? Where am I?”

  “This is Huahine, fellow. Different island. You better come with us, unless you’re prepared for a long swim.”

  • • •

  Besides Greg and Skin, the other occupants of the car were introduced as Richie, another surfer, and Dale, who Skin rather disparagingly described as a ‘wave-hag’, not that it seemed to upset her. Stuart had squeezed in between Skin and the young woman on the backseat of the ancient automobile, which was making better progress now, downhill, on the tarmac road which runs alongside the picturesque Maroe Bay, on the way to that day’s surfing grounds. Greg explained that Dale was a surf-groupie, that they had picked her up on the beach the day before. He spoke as though she was not present.

  “Come across them all the time. Chicks who get their kicks hanging around the surf beaches, hoping to date the guys, you know. Some of them are even pretty decent lookers,” he added, oblivious to the implied insult to Dale. “I‘m not really interested myself.”

  “Always said you were a queer sort of guy,” said Skin, laughing and making a limp-wristed, downward movement with his hand.

  “That’s not what I meant,” defended Greg, who had not seen the gesture but realised the other man’s implication, “I mean, I’m only here for one thing.”

  “Me too,” butted in Skin, still laughing, reaching across Stuart to squeeze Dale’s shoulder, “Eh.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Skin. I’m talking about the surfing. That’s all that matters to me. You might be just some part-time paddler, but for me...”

  Greg knew that the insult would wrangle with Skin, “Man, don’t call me that. No way am I any less committed than you. Man, I was out there surfing barrels when you were still swimming with floaties.”

  “Yeh?”

  “Yeh, that’s a fact, man.”

  “So, what are we doing bringing her along then for?” asked Greg.

  “Gotta come out of the water some time, haven’t we?” said Skin, smiling, the potential argument blown over, “Just think I like playing around on land a bit better than you do, man.”

  Dale had sat, impassive, throughout this whole exchange. Stuart glanced sideways at her to see if she was looking upset, or was preparing some sort of verbal defence of her status. Instead she looked utterly vacant. Her mouth was fixed in a slight smile and Stuart could see that her pupils were widely dilated.

  Richie observing his gaze, as he turned the front mirror to his side of the car so that he could watch the passengers in the back, said, “She’s out of it. Been like that most of the time she’s been with us. It’s why we brought her along. We didn’t think she was safe left on her own. We’re not quite the reckless playboys that Skin might have you believe.” He reached over the backrest of his seat and gave Skin a matey slap of admonishment.

  “No. Regular good samaritans ‘s what we are,” answered Skin.

  The bay flashing past to the left of the car, was actually a large water channel, which divided the separate land masses of Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti in two. The islands were joined by a causeway at low tide and a narrow bridge for vehicles. The view back to Huahine Nui was spectacularly beautiful with the craggy peak of Mount Turi rising above a sea of dense vegetation. Everything about the place looked wilder and more unspoilt than what Stuart had become used to on Bora Bora. They passed through a small village of ramshackle dwellings, where a few children where playing in the middle of the road, but otherwise they did not encounter any other people.

  “Lovely place,” commented Stuart, admiring the scenery and momentarily allowing the mysterious circumstances behind how he had actually arrived here occupy a less prominent place in his mind. “I would never have known to come here. I was planning to go back to the mainland after Bora Bora.”

  “It’s far less touristy here,” said Richie.

  “Better waves too,” said Greg.

  Even his fellow surfers were becoming a little annoyed by Greg’s single minded obsession, “Oh, give it a rest, man,” said Skin.

  Richie asked Stuart, “So what’s your story then? Still don’t remember how you got here?”

  “No,” said Stuart, trying to make sense of t
hings himself, “It’s like I said, last thing I remember I was on Bora Bora.” He had unconsciously slipped into a semi-American drawl, his speech belying the need for acceptance that was paramount to his current well-being.

  “You get some sort of a bang on the head?” asked Skin.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Amnesia, that’s what it is,” diagnosed Greg. “I got some of that, that time I took a dunk off an eight-footer in Panama. Drilled me proper. Board came down on top of me, hit me right smack here.” He took both hands off the steering wheel to indicate a point above his right temple.

  “You’re thinking of concussion,” said Skin.

  “No, Sir, man. Amnesia. That’s what it was. Couldn’t remember a God damn thing for... phew, well minutes. Had to shake myself real hard to get it all back working together again.”

  Stuart, not having a more rational explanation for his condition, decided it was probably simplest to agree with Dr Greg, “I’m sure it must be something like that. Is your leg better?” he added, remembering the state of the other man’s injury on the previous occasion that they had met. It was not a wise move.

  “Not much.” To prove his statement, Greg slung the still-strapped limb around from where it had been resting on the clutch pedal, and brought it up so that it was practically resting on Richie’s lap. The car veered sickeningly to one side of the road, before Richie gripped the wheel and returned the machine facing forwards again.

  “Concentrate on the road,” said the saviour-of-the-moment. “You can save your stunts until we’re out there on the water.”

  The ocean was once again visible in the distance ahead of the car and it was not long before the vehicle had been brought to a halt, and the oddly-assorted quintet were standing on a short, expanse of white, sandy beach, staring out over the breaking waves.

  “The channel comes in there,” said Greg, pointing to an expanse of sea, some several hundred yards distant, where the colour of the water was a noticeably dark shade of blue, and where it was apparent that there was no surrounding reef, revealed by the tell-tale sign of white, breaking waves.

  “Doesn’t look like there is much activity,” said Skin, critically.

  “Shame to come this far and not give it a go,” said Richie.

  “Oh, yer. I wasn’t saying that,” countered Skin, “Just that there’s not much of a swell.”

  Richie turned to Stuart, “Will you be all right, if we’re out there for a while?”

  “Yes, fine,” said Stuart. He still felt rather shell-shocked and deeply confused, and was actually quite looking forward to having a bit of time alone to collect his thoughts. “I’ll watch you from the beach here.” As an after-thought he added, rather apologetically, “I don’t suppose you have anything to drink, do you?”

  “Sure, man,” said Greg. “Just look in the trunk of the car. There’s some cans in there. Help yourself. See-ya!”

  Stuart watched the three men swiftly strip down to their swimming trunks and, leaving the debris of their clothes on the sands around him, wade out into the waves, their boards held under their arms, until the water became too deep and they were forced to paddle the multicoloured floats. They all adopted the same technique, lying flat on the wooden surface, legs pulled out of the water, arms either side of the board, energetically paddling the water, moving themselves forward, further out to sea, in easy, confident strokes. Stuart was left alone on the beach with Dale.

  She was dressed in pale pink hot pants and a multi-coloured hooped tee-shirt, which did not manage to add any additional bulk to her very slender frame. The vest was tight and served to accentuate the angular nature of her shoulder blades and the convex arch of her rib cage, beneath her small, boyish breasts. Her eyes were still wide and staring, avidly following the progress of the three surfers as they gradually merged with the receding waves, rising and then disappearing before each undulating crest. Stuart did not think that she had noticed his presence at all, until she spoke.

  “You surf?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a prolonged silence, which Stuart felt obliged to break, picking up where the previous conversation had petered out.

  “How about you?”

  “What?”

  “Surf.”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  The conversation showing no signs of developing beyond monosyllables, Stuart felt no need to display insincere bonhomie by keeping the young woman company in her seaward vigil. He strolled along the short stretch of beach, kicking the sand absentmindedly, trying to take stock of his situation. He had asked Greg the date during the car journey. The answer had come as a shock. As far as he could tell he had ‘lost’ seven days. Amnesia did seem the only logical explanation. He had no clear idea either of how he had departed Bora Bora or arrived at Huahine, or how he had spent the intervening week. What he did know, was that he was going to have to get a grip again now. And quickly. There were practical problems to overcome. He had no money. All of his belongings were back at Chez Ato - he hoped. He did not even have his passport. He guessed that he would need to contact the Embassy somewhere. That was the usual thing to do, if you ran into troubles overseas, wasn’t it? A little bit of Britain, to make everything all right again. He was going to need some help from somewhere, that much was clear. Stuart sat down on the sand, staring out towards the boundless ocean. Three specks, still just visible on the horizon, seemed to offer him the best hope at the moment. Greg had already said that he could stay with them: “We’re camping up on the beach, close to the Sofitel. Cool place.” The guys would probably be able to see him right for a bit of cash, until he could repay them, when his gear turned up. They did not seem to be particularly possessive when it came to money: what belonged to one, belonged to all. What he would give now for a credit card, though, Stuart thought, before smiling to himself as he suddenly remembered his current isolation. How close the nearest cash machine, he wondered?

  The wind off the sea blew a cool breeze in his face and, for the first time that day, a few clouds began to appear in the distance, already looking dark with the promise of rain. Somewhere, Stuart mused, this holiday had gone seriously off-track.

  • • •

  The threatened storm did not arrive. Neither, though, could the atmosphere be described as particularly calm.

  The three surfers had returned to the beach, frustrated by the paucity of suitable waves, disappointed at not being able to add to their repertoire of tales of daring and skill. Nevertheless, Dale provided a willing audience for the men’s accounts of their escapades of Man pitted against a mighty ocean. Despite earlier having been contemptuous of the young woman, Greg was the first to make use of her listening ear, to bolster up his fragile ego. Listening to the three men’s après-surf discussion, Stuart quickly gained evidence for his initial impression that both Greg and Skin talked a better ride back on the security of the shore, than they ever managed to achieve out among the breakers. Richie was quieter, more of a dark horse. Stuart had not yet formed any clear impression of him, or his relationship to the other two men. He was still undecided on the subject, five hours later, sitting around the smouldering embers of a beach barbecue, next to the makeshift campsite which the surfers had claimed for their own, on a narrow spit of land, in the north of the island. The location may have changed, the conversation had not.

  “Nothing like Vina, man. I thought you said the surfing was cool here. Nothing larger than a ripple so far,” Greg was reviving an argument that he had had with Skin earlier on in the evening, this time fuelled by several more bottles of beer. “Thought you were a serious surfer. Didn’t realise that you were just a boogie boy.”

  The insult went straight over Stuart’s head, but it succeeded in incensing Skin, “Fuck you, you call me that.”

  “Boogie boy.”

  The big man proceeded to grasp Greg’s head in a less-than-pl
ayful lock and wrestle him to the ground, at the same time yelling like a playground bully, “You take that back. You take that back.”

  Greg was still laughing despite the hold, until Skin managed to push his face fully into the sand, and further taunts of ‘Boogie boy’ were stifled beneath a cushion of fine particles. Skin released his grip and Greg emerged, spluttering, and wiping a full beard and moustache of damp sand from his face.

  “What does it mean?” Stuart asked Richie, quietly.

  “It’s nothing. A boogie is what we call a body-board. You know the short, plastic boards. Kid’s stuff, really.”

  Dale reappeared at this point from the shadows of a narrow band of palm trees, close to the beach edge. No one asked where she had been.

  “Which tent am I sleeping in tonight?” she asked.

  “You’re with me again, babe,” said Skin, looking around his companions as he spoke. There were no objections.

  Greg, his humour restored, turned to Stuart, “Looks like you are in with me and Richie. OK?”

  “Fine,” said Stuart.

  “Unless you prefer to sleep out under the stars.”

  “Whatever,” said Stuart.

  “It gets pretty cold at night,” said Richie, “You’ll be better off under shelter. You must have been somewhere this past week?” he added.

  “I know. I just don’t remember.”

  “Weird, man.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Skin and Dale had retired to their tent for the night, leaving the other three men sitting on the beach. Richie handed Stuart another bottle of beer. “Might as well finish these. We’ll stock up with some more in Fare tomorrow.”

  “Fare?”

  “It’s the main village here. Pretty small, but there are a few basic shops.”

  “I passed one place on the road, just before you picked me up.”

  Greg answered, “Hell no. You don’t want to go there. Owner’s an absolute... no, I won’t say. Rudest man on the island, is what they say. Ungrateful...”

  He was interrupted by Richie, “Did I tell you about the time I nearly lost it?”

  Even in the short time that Stuart had known the trio of surfers, he was attuned enough to realise that a confessional from Richie was a rare occasion. Greg too became quiet, attentive to the story.

  The remains of the fire still sparked with occasional bursts of orange, illuminating a small circumference around the huddled group. The three witches in Macbeth could scarcely have looked less conspiratorial, as Richie began to tell his tale. “Was a time I was taking stuff pretty regular, you know?” Greg nodded sympathetically and Stuart followed suit, hoping that he might work out what Richie was talking about as the narrative progressed. “This day, must have been on to my second bong, really shredded, you know, when my mate comes in, says surf’s wild. I mean we’re talking Big Island now, when the surf’s wild, it’s fucking wild.”

  “Big Island?” queried Stuart.

  “Hawaii,” whispered Greg, respectfully waiting for Richie to continue.

  “OK, so when the waves call, you’ve gotta go. Right?”

  “Right, man.” Greg punched the air with his fist as a sign of solidarity.

  “So, I get out there, and first it’s total mush. I mean the waves were flat, there was just nothing happening. There was a group of... must have been at least two dozen of us, just sitting out there on our boards, waiting for something to occur. Dullsville, with a capital ‘D’.”

  “And?” Greg’s attentiveness had limits.

  “OK. All of a sudden, this swell brews up, don’t know where it came from, never seen anything like it before, but it was awesome.

  “Awesome.”

  “Awe-and-then-some. Waves this high.” Richie stretched up, trying to illustrate how high, but his combined height plus outstretched arms only managed to reach a point which to Stuart’s literal mind registered about eight foot six. It was not that noteworthy. Greg was impressed, though, “Wow! Man.”

  “A killer set. Tubes, barrels, I rode them all, like I’ve never done before. Rips, you know. I swear it was a religious experience. I mean you can take your Christianity, and your Islamity and your Buddhismness. You can take your Free Love, your Aeroplane Religion, all your weird, New Age, dogs-on-strings type of stuff, and roll it all into one, and it wouldn’t be any better than this. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I know,” agreed Greg, enraptured. Disciple before the master.

  “That day, I thought I was invincible. Fucking riding on top of the world.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You know what though?”

  “No, what?”

  “Comes crashing down. It all comes crashing down.” Richie lapsed into silence, not explaining any more. Greg was still looking at his friend, expectant, hopeful of gleaning some further ‘designs for living’ advice, instead Richie got to his feet, saying, “I think it’s time for bed. Later.”

  “Later, man,” agreed Greg.

  Stuart had been daydreaming. How easy it was, here, he had been musing, far from the scene of the crime, to forget all about poor Stefan’s death. It was almost as though he had never existed. He had expected the guilt to follow him around forever, but he now realised that it was only retribution that he feared, and from that it was usually possible to flee. Somewhere during Richie’s narrative he had had a recollection of what Nietzsche had said about drugs and organised religion being the twin evils of western society - both were served up in palatable, daily doses, making you think your problems were better, without you ever having to diagnose the root of your disquiet. Better to dull the symptoms rather than to effect a cure. Both were flights from harsh reality. For Stuart, reality returned with a bang.

  “Did you ever hear about the cheese-thief?”

  “Pardon?” Stuart thought that he must have misheard Greg. The breeze was still blowing quite strongly off the sea, and the American’s words were being lost to the ocean.

  “The cheese-thief? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I hear you,” answered Stuart, all attention. “What do you know about him?”

  “I was talking to this French guy about him.”

  “Oh?” Stuart remembered back to the last time that he had seen Cedric. He wondered if he had split from Yvette as he had been intimating.

  “He was a cool dude. Said he might join us over here.”

  “Cedric said that?” Stuart sounded surprised.

  “Cedric? That wasn’t his name. What makes you say that? Jan. That was it. Jan. Cool dude.”