After supper, Suzy whispered to Patty, “You were so wonderful. Why are you treating me like this now?” Silently, Patty had looked at Suzy as if they had just met, as if she was threatening Suzy never to remind her of the intimacy that had existed between them on the beach. And that night, Patty left her own bed and went to the other hut, where she slept on Jonathan’s bed, between Annie and Carey.
Typical male behavior after a one-night stand, Suzy thought bitterly, remembering many nights of passion followed by a similar cold lack of interest. This, in turn, reminded her of all she owed Brett, whom she had just betrayed, and she wept acrid tears.
In the dark, Silvana heard Suzy snuffling. It wasn’t too hard to guess the reason. They had been feasting with panthers. This new sexual current between Suzy and Patty had not been lost on the other three women.
Silvana remembered that they had both looked flustered and red-faced when she’d gone down to the beach that afternoon to look for the fish. They said they’d been resting on the beach, but it was far hotter on the beach than in the shade of the jungle. None of the women ever rested on the beach. They had been feasting with panthers, Silvana thought, remembering Oscar Wilde’s description of homosexuality.
Silvana couldn’t help being curious about what it felt like, and what they’d actually done together. Silvana’s idea of lesbians was large, ugly women stomping around in army surplus clothes and finding solace in each other’s hairy arms because no man in his right mind would want either of them. Neither Patty nor Suzy seemed the type.
In the second hut, Carey was thinking about the same thing. In her experience, straight women’s attitudes toward lesbianism ranged from finding it vaguely threatening to downright terror of catching it. But thinking of soft, warm little Suzy, Carey guessed that perhaps lesbians liked other women for exactly the same reasons that men liked them. Maybe she wouldn’t mind trying it, so long as nobody ever found out.
Equally wide awake, Annie lay on her bed in the darkness. She thought irritably, As if we didn’t have enough problems! She tried to understand it. Of course they had all been brutally widowed and deprived of their families. They were surrounded by violence, they were cooped up and bored, with nothing to do during the interminable downpours, in confined quarters that were just short of intolerable. And they lived in constant fear. What they all needed was maternal comfort, cuddling and protection. Naïvely, Annie supposed that was why it had happened. But it was clear, from Patty’s abrupt, brutal, and obvious rejection of Suzy, that it would not happen again.
But suppose it happened with somebody else?
19
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1984
After an exhausting two weeks of nursing Jonathan, Annie was again at his side, crouched under the canvas lean-to, getting ready to spoon a bowl of fish soup into his mouth.
Jonathan opened his eyes. “Hi, Annie,” he said.
She blinked, because she had become used to being called Louise. Quickly, Annie felt his forehead. It was dry and cool. She grinned at him. “Good morning. We’ve missed you. Welcome back.”
Annie rushed out of the lean-to to tell her good news to the others, but only Carey was in the camp.
During the second week of December, there had been two more sick-bay cases—Suzy and Carey. Suzy, who always grumbled when it was her turn in the morning to sweep the leaves out of the hut, had stepped on a scorpion hidden beneath a leaf.
Annie knew that a scorpion bite was treated the same as a snake bite. You did nothing. Jonathan had warned them never to use massage, or cut, or bleed, or suck out the poison from a bite. The more you do that, the more the venom spreads and it is possible to die from blood loss. So Annie had washed and dried the bitten area, then applied a constricting bandage—not as tight as a tourniquet—above Suzy’s wound; the first day, Annie undid it and fastened it again every thirty minutes. She also immobilized Suzy’s foot by putting it in a splint, and after twenty-four hours of high fever and delirium, Suzy was weak but recovering.
Carey’s tropical ulcers had been a more serious problem. The ulcers had developed on her lower legs after she had scratched ant stings in her sleep. They all knew that tropical ulcers could lead to gangrene, amputation or death. Like an inverted boil, they could start with the smallest scratch, tiny craters developing into large putrid holes that stank. Whenever Carey went fishing, she plugged her suppurating holes with bits of boiled rag and bandaged them with a torn strip of shirt. But, one day after Suzy’s scorpion bite, Carey had swellings in both sides of her groin and could hardly move. Her legs were swollen and a pinkish color, like a Walt Disney Pig.
When Jonathan had told her that the islanders used maggots to clean out their sores, Carey had refused to consider it. But after a night of agony, she was willing to try anything. Annie had brought her a pile of rotten fish. Carey picked off a maggot, gulped, then slapped it into one of her sores. Maggots eat only dead tissue, Jonathan had said, so they suck the pus from wounds. This proved correct. When her sores were clean, Carey brushed off the maggots and left the sores to dry. But her ant stings kept turning into new ulcers.
Eager to tell her good news, Annie cried to Carey, “Jonathan’s getting better! Where are the others?”
“The rain stopped suddenly,” Carey said, “so they’ve gone to have a dip in the waterfall pool before the afternoon rain starts.”
“That means we have no lookout!” Annie tore off to the eucalyptus.
* * *
“Watch out!” Silvana warned Suzy, pointing into the shallow water of the lagoon. “You nearly stepped on a stonefish!”
Suzy shrieked as she saw the repulsive, wrinkled, gray creature.
“Jonathan said you’re not to go in over your head.” Silvana reminded Suzy.
Suzy mimicked Silvana’s Italian accent. “‘Jonathan says. Jonathan says’…. I’ll do as I damn well please!”
Deliberately, she waded out and started to swim.
Silvana looked around for Patty, who now avoided Suzy as if she had the plague. Patty was about a hundred yards away with her head down, plowing through the water in a racing crawl. Silvana sighed, and waded in. With her careful breast-stroke and her head held above the water, she jerked along after Suzy, who was, once again, behaving like a rebellious two-year-old.
As she drew level with Suzy, Silvana yelled, “Get back near the beach, immediately.”
With her clumsy dog paddle, Suzy swam obstinately on toward the entrance to the lagoon. She yelled, “Goddamn bossy know-it-all, snobbish wop.”
Silvana pulled ahead of Suzy; treading water, she blocked Suzy’s progress whichever way Suzy floundered.
“Get back, Suzy. You’re heading for the current.”
Whether or not it was deliberate, Silvana didn’t know, but with one flailing arm Suzy hit Silvana in the face, ducking her.
Silvana surfaced, gasping and furious. She remembered her old-fashioned life-saving drill, and with the palm of her right hand she banged Suzy under the chin, knocking her backwards and underwater.
As she went under, Suzy thrashed out and accidentally kicked Silvana in the stomach, making her double up in pain.
Both women surfaced and faced each other, gasping and spewing out seawater. Boiling with fury, they both lunged forward. A flailing, ineffectual water fight began.
After about five minutes of furious battle, Silvana lifted her left arm to give Suzy a real punch. Her magnificent emerald-and-diamond engagement ring flew off her finger, soared through the air and disappeared beneath the green translucent water.
Suzy’s wet face froze with horror.
Silvana burst out laughing. “You see, even my fingers are now thinner,” she said. “All right, Suzy. You’ve certainly proved you can swim, so I’ll leave you alone.”
Lazily, Silvana swam away from Suzy. She turned on her back and floated in the water, enjoying the sun and the soothing, warm water that lapped her body and rocked it in the soft, beguiling rhythm of the sea.
In the di
stance Suzy shrieked, “Shark!”
Silvana turned her head.
Suzy was thrashing in the water, panic on her face. She disappeared below the surface.
As the horrified Silvana started to swim toward her, Suzy reappeared and screamed again. She choked, thrashed wildly and again disappeared below the water.
As she broke the surface again and shouted in terror, Suzy coughed out the water that she had just inhaled, but this caused her to expel much of the air in her lungs. Her next gasping attempt to breathe pulled even more water into her lungs. As the inhaled water again triggered coughing, yet more air was pushed out of her lungs and again she was gasping for air, trying desperately to scream—in the suddenly menacing, warm water. Because her last intake of water increased her body weight, Suzy started to sink.
Frantic and fighting for her life, Suzy thrashed her arms and kicked. Half-conscious, she struggled up toward the unruffled aquamarine surface above her. With her lungs incapacitated, she started to flail her arms harder and gasp spasmodically.
Every time she gasped for breath Suzy repeated the cycle. As she gasped, she expelled air, and as she screamed, water swamped her open mouth. Then the struggle ceased. She lost consciousness, and her water-weighted body sank slowly toward the bottom.
When Suzy disappeared, Silvana’s first thought was to swim back to the beach as fast as she could, but she managed to control her panic. The only sharks that came over the reef and into the lagoon were babies—four feet long at the most. They could hurt you—they might even bite your foot off—but they could not totally consume a live human being.
Silvana yelled to Patty, but she was swimming a good distance away with her face underwater concentrating on the pleasure of sliding through the water with speed, so she didn’t hear Silvana’s shouts.
With her jerky, awkward breaststroke, Silvana headed for the spot where she had last seen Suzy. She took a deep breath and jackknifed into the water.
Two minutes later Silvana surfaced, gasping. She had seen nothing. She swam ten strokes farther, then dived again. This time, at the limit of her breath, Silvana saw a drifting black ball, like a huge sea urchin. It was Suzy’s head.
Silvana surfaced, took a deep breath and plunged deep. The body had drifted. At first Silvana could not see it, but then she spotted the limp form, languidly surging with the tide. Silvana kicked hard toward it.
When she reached Suzy, Silvana grabbed her by one arm and kicked as fiercely as she could to the surface. Spluttering, her lungs on fire, Silvana hung on to Suzy’s limp, heavy body.
Once on the surface, Silvana didn’t want to let go of Suzy’s arm, because she was afraid of losing her again, but she managed to maneuver her body under Suzy’s, then took hold of her other arm. Swimming on her back and clutching Suzy against her breast, Silvana swam jerkily toward shore. She’d never imagined that a body could be so floppy, so difficult to maneuver.
As she swam, Silvana tried to remember how to give the kiss of life. She must have read the instructions at least a dozen times at swimming pools, but now all she could remember was that you had to take any false teeth out before you started.
Patty had left the water. She stood naked on the beach, in the “tree” position. You couldn’t do yoga lying down on the beach or the sand flies bit you. Deep in concentration, eyes on the horizon, Patty was unaware of the swimming accident until the gasping Silvana had reached the shallows. She let go of Suzy, scrambled to her feet and screamed to Patty.
Patty jerked her head around, to see Silvana dragging Suzy from the water.
As fast as she could, Patty ran along the soft sand toward the two women, then she hesitated.
Silvana was still gasping for breath. “For God’s sake, help me, Patty. She’s dying!”
Stiff and reluctant, Patty dragged Suzy clear of the water. She pushed the limp body onto its right side and roughly lifted Suzy’s right arm above her head.
Silvana gasped, “The kiss of life. Can you do it?”
“Not yet,” Patty said. “First you rid the mouth of obstacles and clear the airway to the lungs.” Kneeling at Suzy’s waist, she massaged her stomach upward to force out the water. Dribbles trickled from Suzy’s blue-tinged mouth.
Gingerly, Patty hooked her index finger into Suzy’s mouth, to check that there was no seaweed or other blockage.
“Now the kiss of life!” Silvana wailed.
Patty felt repulsed at the thought of touching Suzy, let alone with her lips. She felt as if any contact might contaminate her.
“Get on with it,” Silvana cried.
Patty checked Suzy’s pulse but couldn’t feel it. She knew that four minutes after breathing stopped, permanent brain damage occurred, but if you breathe forcefully into the mouth of a person who isn’t breathing, your discarded breath contains enough oxygen to provide a life-support system for that person.
Patty turned Suzy onto her back, unstrapped her Swatch-watch and held the black face to Suzy’s mouth. “If Suzy is still breathing,” she told Silvana, “her breath will mist the face.”
“Is she still breathing? Is she?” Silvana knelt helplessly on the sand.
Patty inspected the watch. “It’s misted over.”
“Then get on with it! The kiss of life!”
Carefully, Patty tilted Suzy’s limp head backward to open the airway to her lungs. She pulled the slack jaw open and closed the nostrils by pinching the nose. Then she paused again.
“For God’s sake, do it,” Silvana said. “Can’t you understand? She’s dying!”
So Patty bent and blew hard into Suzy’s mouth. From then on, Patty’s lungs did the breathing for Suzy’s body. She counted up to four, then blew hard into Suzy’s mouth again.
Suddenly Suzy retched.
Patty also retched.
Silvana cried, “Oh, Patty, don’t stop!”
Shuddering as she did so, Patty turned Suzy on her side so she could vomit. Again she massaged Suzy’s stomach in an upward motion.
Slime and water gushed from Suzy’s mouth onto the white sand.
Silvana held her breath.
When Suzy again lay still, Patty turned her on her back and continued with the unpleasant task of blowing hard, fifteen times a minute, into Suzy’s vomit-encrusted mouth.
“Look at her chest,” Silvana whispered.
In rhythm with Patty’s breath, Suzy’s rounded breasts gently rose and fell. This meant that there was no obstruction in her throat.
“Blow into her mouth again!” Silvana urged. “Quickly!”
Hating every touch of Suzy’s mouth, Patty continued to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—fifteen breaths a minute for several minutes—then she gasped, “How long are you supposed to do this? Can’t you take over, Silvana?”
Frozen with anxiety, Silvana said, “I’ve no idea. Don’t stop! You know how to do it, Patty. I don’t.”
Patty spat into the sand, then continued with her reluctant kisses.
“Oh, Patty, she’s breathing again! Look!”
Patty stopped. She saw that Suzy’s chest was rising and falling of its own accord.
Swiftly, Patty turned Suzy on her right side, in the recovery position, with her right arm above her head and her left knee bent forward.
The two women watched anxiously, kneeling naked on the burning sand.
Suzy belched. She coughed and spluttered. Then she vomited.
Silvana burst into tears.
Later in the hut, the white and trembling Silvana was treated for shock by Annie.
Annie angrily turned to Patty and said, “You were only supposed to go wash, not swim. There’s been nobody in the lookout for the past two hours. Get up there!”
Sickened by what she had been forced to do, Patty felt she had been suitably punished. She loped off, wondering what would have happened to Suzy had Silvana not been present.
* * *
That afternoon the rain stopped early, so Patty went to check the fish trap in the stream, which yielded only
one huge shrimp. As the lines were still unbent, she returned to the camp for her beach tackle—a bucket, a dip net, two light fishing rods and the underwater spear gun. Now that their hut had suddenly been turned into a field hospital, Patty was the only person left to hunt for food.
Clutching her fishing equipment in gloved hands, lonely, depressed, still ashamed, and wondering whether they were all going to die of stinking wounds or malaria, Patty scrambled too fast down the steep cliff path. She stumbled and nearly fell. She managed to regain her balance without dropping her heavy load of tackle, but her jungle hat had fallen off and came to rest on a rock by the edge of the waterfall, where it would take some time to retrieve. Patty decided to pick it up later, when her arms were free, rather than stop now for a job that might take twenty minutes.
Thigh-deep in water, Patty had no luck. Time after time she swung the weighted lure above her head, then hurled it out over the little waves. Doggedly, she fished on. She enjoyed feeling the balance of the fishing line in her hand, and she was seriously absorbed in her task in spite of the blasting midday heat and the sweat that dripped down between her breasts.
Eventually she decided to call it a day. She would try the river later. They generally fished the river first thing in the morning and last thing at night, because that’s when fish fed—when the insects came out. Patty decided that if she had no luck she’d come back to the beach in the moonlight, although they tried to avoid night fishing—there were mosquitoes by the streams and river, while in the sea there were stingrays and box jellyfish, whose sting could kill a human being in less than a minute.
At worst, when the tide was out, Patty could try to catch some scuttling crabs. At least then, she’d have the best possible fishing bait, as well as crab soup.
Wading back to shore, Patty glanced up at the ominous, purple-black clouds overhead. As she did so, she stepped on a sharp stone, tripped, then overbalanced. As she scrambled upright she felt cold gusts of wind on her back and she could hear the spatter of water on the palm leaves. By the time Patty reached the cliff path, the rain was hissing onto the lagoon, hitting the water hard in an angry, pimpled pattern. She found it was almost impossible to stand on the beach, let alone climb the cliff path, which had turned into a torrent of mud. Annie would just have to wait for the food—serve her right for ordering Patty around like that! Anyway, nobody could attack the camp in this downpour.