Sharon started back the way she had come, but then she heard voices coming from the shut-up room. She returned to the door, looked up and down the gallery, and leaned toward the plywood panel that covered the louvers. It wasn’t voices she heard, but a single voice, Patrick’s. He must have been talking on the telephone.
“Yes,” said Patrick. “Last night.”...
“No.”...
“She’s the same one, yes.”...
“Nothing.”...
“Nothing at all.”...
“Of course not.”...
“He does. He must, mustn’t he?”...
“All you’ve got.”...
“As soon as may be.”...
“No.”...
“That’s too long.”...
“That’s far too long.”...
“Well, he isn’t going anywhere, is he?”
“All right.”...
“I will.”...
“All right, then.”
Sharon turned and walked quickly back around the gallery to their room. She went through the room and out onto the veranda in front. Munro was waiting for her, sitting in a chair. He got to his feet when Sharon came onto the veranda. He took her in his arms.
“Where have you been?” Munro asked her.
“Looking around.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s really quiet.”
“It’s meant to be quiet.”
“So, where are the other guests?”
“Guests?”
“This is your island, isn’t it?” Sharon asked. “It belongs to you.”
“You might say that,” said Munro.
“I might say that? What would you say? If it isn’t yours, whose is it, would you say?”
“I’d say it was ours.”
“Ours?”
“Yours and mine,” said Munro. “For the time being. For the present. For what it’s worth.”
* * * *
Sharon sat beside Munro on the beach. They sat on low canvas chairs. At noon the wind had come back. It was an onshore wind; it blew into their faces, stiffening. Sharon wore a wide straw sun hat, and she had to keep putting her hand up to hold onto it. She turned to Munro. “Do you want to go indoors?” she asked.
Munro didn’t answer. He looked out over the water to the surf breaking on the bar a hundred yards offshore. He hadn’t heard her. He hadn’t heard her on the helicopter, and now here. Sharon wondered if Munro might not be a little hard of hearing. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it was possible. He wasn’t a kid. She reached across and touched his arm where it lay on the arm of his chair. Munro turned to her.
“Do you want to go in now? The wind?”
“I like it,” said Munro. He turned his arm over and she took his hand.
“Let’s stay a minute more, all right?” Munro asked.
“Sure,” said Sharon.
They held hands. Sharon hung onto her hat with her other hand. They were silent together. She thought of Neil. The year before, Neil had taken her to Barbados for a long weekend. Somebody he knew from the bank had a place there. The heat, the beach, the air, the sea had worked on Neil, all right. Normally he wasn’t what you’d call a lot of fun, but down there he came over Sharon like a buck rabbit on his honeymoon. They barely left the cabana, they barely ate.
Munro was the opposite. He’d been more of a lover in New York, in his peculiar hotel. Since their coming to the island, he’d hardly touched her. That suited Sharon. She didn’t have to be screwing all the time. And Munro was by no means cold, he was by no means inattentive. He wanted her with him. He was easy with her, but in a new way, a way new to her. He was as though they’d known each other for years; he was familiar, he was bantering, he was more like an older brother than a lover. And Sharon began to feel the same way, which was odd, because, of himself, of his affairs, his life, of the long-accreted soil in which ease and familiarity must grow—of these Munro continued to give her nothing at all.
Again, the difference from Neil. Neil never talked about anything but himself, and he never shut up. His boss, his accounts, his assistant, his landlord, his sisters, his accountant, his dry cleaner, what he’d said to them, what they’d said to him, and on and on. Wanda couldn’t stand him.
“Neil?” said Wanda. “Don’t give me no Neil. I don’t know what you see in him.”
“He’s nice,” said Sharon.
“Get out of here,” said Wanda. “He’s like a fourteen-year-old boy.”
“He is not,” said Sharon.
“He’s like a fourteen-year-old boy with good credit,” said Wanda.
Sharon laughed.
“What a meatball,” said Wanda.
Maybe Munro’s silence was part of the thing of his being older, and part of the thing of his having money and position. He didn’t have to talk about what he didn’t want to, and if he didn’t want to talk about himself, well, maybe he’s bored with his own stuff, after all this time, Sharon said. After most of a lifetime. Maybe you got that way. Maybe Sharon herself was getting that way, prematurely. Maybe that was related to the next thing.
Munro was by years the oldest man Sharon had been with. She didn’t make a practice of flying down to the islands with men of any age, certainly not with clients. She’d done it twice, counting now, and going to Barbados with Neil wasn’t the same, as they had practically been engaged. But she hadn’t seen or talked to Neil in—what—four months? Six? So when the next thing came along in the form of Duncan Munro, Sharon had been ready, she guessed, and that was all there was to it.
The next thing. You may not do the smart thing, Wanda said. You may not do the best thing. You may not do the right thing. But you will do the next thing.
Sharon turned her head. Two men were on the beach with them, one down the sand to their right, one to their left. Each of them stood perhaps a hundred feet from Sharon and Munro. The men weren’t swimmers. They wore khaki trousers, and they wore leather shoes. Their shirts were untucked and hung loosely. They walked around on the beach from time to time, to the water and back, but they didn’t leave, and they didn’t come closer to Sharon and Munro.
“Who are they?” Sharon asked.
“Who?”
“Them,” Sharon said. “Those two. Can’t you see them?”
Munro leaned forward in his chair. He narrowed his eyes and looked where Sharon pointed.
“Oh, yes,” he said.
“Couldn’t you see them?”
“Not at first. I forgot my glasses.”
“You don’t wear glasses.”
“Maybe I’d better start.”
“Maybe you’d better. Who are they, though?”
“We’ll ask Patrick,” said Munro.
A few minutes later they left their chairs and made their way over the sand toward the trees and the house. Munro went slowly, painfully. His knee had begun to hurt him again, he said. He leaned on Sharon, and she took him around the waist, at first helping him, then practically holding him up. As they came up the path, Patrick left the house and came to meet them. He supported Munro’s other side, and he and Sharon together got him onto the veranda and into a comfortable chair. Patrick went to make them drinks.
“That’s better,” said Munro. “That’s much better. You see why I like younger women, now, don’t you, Patrick? If you can’t walk, they can pick you up and carry you. Women our age can’t do that anymore.”
“Surely some can, sir,” said Patrick.
“Some,” said Munro. “But then, they’re apt to fall short in other ways.”
“I suppose so, sir,” said Patrick.
Sharon sat in Munro’s lap. He kissed her hair. “Poor kid,” said Munro. “Comes down here for a dirty weekend with a rich guy—not young, but still frisky. Turns out she’s signed on with Rip Van Winkle. Or, no. Not Rip Van Winkle. She’s signed on with . . . with . . . Who’s that other fellow, Patrick?”
“Dorian Gray, sir?”
“Turns out she’s signed on with D
orian Gray,” said Munro.
“Who’s Dorian Gray?” asked Sharon.
“Fellow in a book,” said Munro. “Kipling? Conan Doyle?”
“Oscar Wilde, sir,” said Patrick.
“Have a drink with us, Patrick,” said Munro.
“Thank you, sir,” said Patrick. He poured himself a glass of sparkling water and sat in a chair to Munro’s left, facing Sharon.
“We were going to ask you, Patrick,” Munro began. “We were going to ask . . . What were we going to ask Patrick?”
“The name of the island,” said Sharon.
“That was it. What is the island called, Patrick?”
“It’s called Benefit Island, I believe, sir,” said Patrick. “Or Benefit Cay. Or simply Benefit.”
“Why’s it called that, I wonder,” said Munro.
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“And the men on the beach,” said Sharon. “Who are they?”
“Men on the beach, miss?”
“Two men on the beach just now,” said Sharon.
Patrick looked at Munro. “What about them, eh, Patrick?” asked Munro.
“They stayed apart, but they were there the whole time we were,” said Sharon.
“Keeping an eye out, I expect, miss,” said Patrick.
“Keeping an eye out?”
“Keeping an eye out, miss. Keeping a watch.”
“So they’re like security?” asked Sharon.
“Like that, miss,” said Patrick.
“Security from what?”
Patrick looked at Munro again.
“Patrick?” Munro asked.
“Well, miss,” said Patrick. “It’s a small island, you see. There’s no proper population. There are no police. It’s all by itself out here, Benefit is, isn’t it? There can be dodgy people popping in.”
“Dodgy?”
“Unsavory people, miss. To do with drugs, for example, other things. It’s as well to keep an eye out.”
“So those two were guards?” asked Sharon.
“Yes, miss.”
“They were carrying.”
“Miss?”
“They had guns.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if they had, miss,” said Patrick.
That same night, Sharon made Munro lie on their bed while she worked on his knee.
“Busman’s holiday for you, I’m afraid,” said Munro.
“No, it isn’t,” said Sharon.
“Sure, it is. You can’t be having much fun.”
“Yes, I am,” said Sharon. “Sure, I am. How could I not be? I’ve had my first ride in a private plane, my first ride in a helicopter. This is my first private island. Those were my first private armed guards.”
“Brave new world,” said Munro. “How do you like it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll get to like it,” said Munro. “Planes, helicopters, islands, guards. All that. You’ll get to like it, and it won’t take long. It never does. You’d be surprised.”
“Then there’s you,” said Sharon.
“Me?”
“Yeah,” said Sharon. “You gave me my first real pearls. You’re my first boyfriend on Social Security.”
“Is that right?” asked Munro.
“That’s right.”
“Got your cherry, there, did I?”
“You got it,” said Sharon. “I’d been saving myself.”
“Good for you,” said Munro.
“But not anymore,” said Sharon.
“Good for me,” said Munro.
* * * *
The next morning Munro stayed in their quarters to nurse his knee. Sharon went alone to the beach. But there she found the sun blazed and beat down on the sand like a torch, like a hammer. She left the beach on a path that went into the trees, a path that led away from their house and toward the center of the tiny island.
Benefit Island: it wasn’t easy for Sharon to see how the place could ever have been of much benefit to anyone. She had expected on Benefit to be surrounded by the green and flowery growth of Barbados (as much as she’d been able to glimpse of it from beneath the panting and tireless Neil); but Benefit seemed to be grown up in a dry, gray vegetation leaved in cowhide and armed with spines and hooks, which clung doggedly to the hot sandy earth. The path went under drab and rattling palms and dark, shaggy evergreens. Benefit? Maybe the island had been named by shipwrecked sailors who had floated for weeks, starving, in an open boat, to fetch up here at last, men so desperate that for them Munro’s arid, unbountiful refuge would be a benefit, in fact, the saving of their very lives.
Sharon stopped. Ahead of her a group of people came around a bend in the path and approached her. Five people. Sharon looked quickly behind her, and would have turned and gone back the way she’d come, but when she looked again, the group was almost upon her.
“Good morning to you,” called one of them. Sharon nodded. She waited for the five to come up.
A man and a woman in their fifties, and three children: two girls and a boy. The children looked about ten. The boy must have had cerebral palsy or some like condition. He lay slackly in a wheelchair pushed with difficulty by the woman over the sandy path. The girls might have been twins. Both had badly crossed eyes, as did the man. The girls, and the woman, wore long dresses of plain gray cotton that covered their arms and hung to the ground. The man and the boy wore long-sleeved shirts and black trousers.
The woman did the talking; the others were silent. She was tall and thin and had a long face and big teeth. She was very friendly and eager to converse, as though she didn’t get much chance to. She told Sharon that they were a religious community: Pentecostals from Little Rock. They lived at a derelict sugar refinery at the other end of the island. The plant had been abandoned decades since, and the community lived in a trailer on the grounds. They hoped to build a church on the site, but they awaited the arrival of more members of their congregation. At present their community was themselves. Were they a family, Sharon wondered? The man and the woman looked old to have such young children.
“Are these your kids?” Sharon asked.
“These are our gifts,” the tall woman said.
Later, when Sharon told Munro and Patrick about her meeting on the sand path, “What did you say they said they were?” asked Munro.
“Pentecostals,” said Sharon. “From Little Rock, Arkansas. What’s a Pentecostal?”
“It’s some kind of Christian,” said Munro. “Christians. This place is going to hell. How many of them did you say there were?”
“Five.”
“Five Christians,” said Munro. “Five of them. Can you beat it? God, how I hate a fucking Christian.”
“Oh, really, sir,” said Patrick.
“Well, Patrick?” said Munro. “Well? Don’t tell us you’re one, too.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Patrick. “C of E. Pater was the vicar.”
“No,” said Munro.
“Great Uncle Ronnie was the Bishop of Leicester,” said Patrick.
* * * *
Munro was going down. He stayed in their rooms or on the veranda, where he sat by the hour collapsed in his chair, looking as though he’d been dropped into it from a high window. At night, now, it was Sharon who slept soundly, waking to find Munro lying beside her, not sleeping, sitting up, or standing by their window in the moonlight that came in from the courtyard. He was silent, he grew vague. His senses seemed to be more and more affected: his hearing was worse, and his vision. One morning when Sharon came out onto the veranda, to find Munro in his chair, “Who’s there?” he cried.
“It’s me, baby,” said Sharon. “Can’t you see me?”
“Oh, yes, I can see you,” said Munro. “I can see you now. You were in the shadow.”
Sharon hadn’t been in the shadow.
“What’s wrong with Duncan?” she asked Patrick.
“Wrong, miss?” asked Patrick. br />
“Come on, Patrick. Look at him. He can’t hear, he can’t see. He can hardly walk. He’s confused.”
“Mr. Munro isn’t a young man, miss.”
“Come on, Patrick,” said Sharon.
“And then there’s his dodgy knee,” said Patrick.
“There’s nothing wrong with his knee,” said Sharon. “There never has been.”
“I beg to differ there, miss,” said Patrick. “As you observe, the poor gentleman can hardly walk.”
“Maybe he can’t, but there’s nothing wrong with his knee,” said Sharon. “I’ve been working on him, you know. That’s what I do. He didn’t hurt his knee playing football at Princeton. He didn’t hurt it not playing football at Princeton. He didn’t hurt it any other way, either.”
“Princeton, miss?”
“Yeah,” said Sharon. “When we first knew each other, he told me he’d hurt his knee years ago when he was going to Princeton.”
“Ah,” said Patrick. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“He would? You mean he didn’t go to Princeton?”
“I couldn’t say, miss.”
“Yes, you could,” said Sharon. “Yes, you could, Patrick.”
“Miss?”
“It’s you, isn’t it?” said Sharon. “You’re the boss. It’s not Duncan. It’s you. You’re the boss down here.”
“Not I, miss,” said Patrick.
Sharon glared at him. She shook her head. She went to the veranda and looked over the beach. She looked up and down.
“Where is he, anyway?” Sharon asked. “I thought he was in the shower, but he’s not.”
“I couldn’t say, miss.”
“He’s not in our room. He’s not in back. I wish I knew where he’s gotten to.”
“That’s what many people wish,” said Patrick.
“What does that mean?” Sharon asked him.
“Things are not what they seem, miss,” said Patrick.
“No shit, Patrick,” said Sharon.
No shit. Sharon didn’t need Patrick, she didn’t need an Etonian, she didn’t need the great-nephew of the Bishop of Leicester, to tell her things were not what they seem. So what if they weren’t? Sharon didn’t care. Sharon said she was doing the next thing. She didn’t need to know how things really were. Not knowing was, even, part of the thing of doing the next thing. She didn’t care about knowing how things really were. But she wouldn’t have minded knowing how things were not. She knew Munro and the rest weren’t what they seemed to be. But what did they seem to be? What was she, however falsely, supposed to believe? She didn’t even know that. And nobody seemed to care. Was she, then, not even important enough to fool?