The Action Read online

  “At the camp, late last night. I supposed she was going to relieve herself.”

  “Yeah, that sounds just like her, waiting until everybody was asleep before going to pay a call.”

  “Why didn’t you raise the alarm when she didn’t come back?” asked Bates, his voice dripping with accusation.

  “I went back to sleep.”

  “Convenient!” he sneered, but Stone let it rest.

  “Any tracks? Sign of a struggle?” asked Slobowski. Stone wondered whether he was just naturally a clear thinker or whether he had been trained to think like that. He said, “No. None.”

  “She would have left tracks going to the john. Someone must’ve wiped them out.”

  Gant nodded - “He’d have had to do it to the edge of the brush. Beyond that the grass is pretty thick. And the sand is pretty well churned up anyway.”

  “O.K. But why bother?”

  Silence: Nobody had thought of asking why.

  “Because he didn’t want us to know where he was coming from?” Rebecca, uncertain.

  “Or who he was?” Gant.

  “How could tracks tell us who he is?” sneered Bates.

  Stone looked around them. “They would tell us quickly enough if ‘he’ were a she.”

  Rebecca swung towards him, mouth open. Mrs Gash gobbled, her eyes round. “Or,” he continued relentlessly, “if there were no ‘he’ at all and Miss Buhl simply wanted to disappear.” They all thought about that.

  “Well, we’d better look again, all the same,” said Slobowski, unimpressed by this display of logical reasoning.

  They returned to the camp and began another, more thorough, search. The extra eyes made no difference: there was still no sign of Miss Buhl. The morning wore on through to afternoon, and they ran out of places to search. The beach where the black skeleton of the boat lay was empty except for Laughton’s grave. The sandbar has still except for the blowing sand. The blackstone cliffs were alive only with the birds. The cove above the beach peopled only with the echoes of their cries.

  At last they returned to the clifftops where the sailors had spent the night. The fire was dead now. Bates re-lit it and they settled down to eat something. During the day the sailors’ mistrust had faded, and the necessity of working together to try to protect everyone had been borne upon them. “We haven’t got much up here,” said Slobowski apologetically.

  “We didn’t take no more than our fair share,” said Bates defensively, running a hand through his light brown hair.

  “That’s O.K.” said Gant expansively. Mrs Gash had been silent all through the afternoon. After the food she retired behind a convenient bush.

  The sky was beginning to darken. Gant looked up at the spiralling birds. “There should be eggs down there,” he said, wandering to the cliff edge. “They’ll be a nice change from that corned beef if we can get at them.”

  “We brought some rope out of the boat before it blew up,” said Slobowski. “We could lower somebody over to see.”

  “We’ve brought the rope up with us. We’ve got it here,” said Bates. He turned to the pile of their supplies, and as he did so there was a terrible scream.

  “What’s that?” snapped Gant.

  “Mrs Gash!” Rebecca.

  “Mrs Gash?” Stone, on his feet. “Mrs Gash?” The scream went on and on. They ran into the gathering gloom. Stone caught up a blazing branch from the fire. Behind a bush a little way from the camp stood Mrs Gash alternately screaming and choking for breath.

  Before her, neatly folded on the ground, lay all of Miss Letty Buhl’s clothes.

  Rebecca and Stone supported Mrs Gash back to their camp. Gant followed. Nobody had anything to say to Bates or Slobowski who yelled after their retreating figures, “We don’t know nothing. Honest to God!”

  That night they kept watch from the moment they began to feel sleepy, long before sunset. Stone and Gant took three hours each, then Rebecca took two, cradling Gant’s snub-nosed .38 revolver beside the blazing fire, then Stone again and Gant until dawn. Nothing happened. Stone sat through the long weary hours thinking fruitlessly. When Gant took over he went to sleep thankfully. In the early hours Rebecca woke him: “Your turn again.”

  “Great. Thanks.” The sleep had refreshed him, cleared his mind. He built up the fire and moved closer to its bright blaze. Shadows danced like witches round the edges of the clearing, now hiding, now revealing the three restless sleepers in a beguiling display of magic. The song of the waterfall almost drowned the subliminal earthquake rumble of the surf and the restless whispering of the wind in palm fronds, bushes and grass. After a while he pulled a stick from the bundle of firewood, smoothed the sand at his feet and like a geometrician began to examine a problem.

  He drew a rudimentary boat-shape. Down the middle he drew a straight line. Down this line he drew eleven circles, and a twelfth a little away between the end of the line and the stern of the boat. By the eleven circles he drew the letters G DSSLOWBGBS. Each letter represented a name: each circle a person. The line down the boat was the oar and the twelfth circle was Spooner. That was the problem: How?

  On one of his courses a small, bald man with pebble glasses had explained at length about bombs and how to detonate them. “Now this detonator has a rocker mechanism. It is a kind of trembler switch which reacts to any movement. The rocker mechanism works on the same basic principle as a seesaw. It is basically controlled by the fulcrum, where it is balanced. All the forces which act upon the mechanism are centred here. The switch itself is balanced flat on the fulcrum, like the board on a seesaw. If the mechanism is subjected to any movement, the state of equilibrium is upset and one end or other of the seesaw sinks - thus making contact and Bang!”

  Stone was nodding and digging the stick deep into the sand as though stabbing the earth.

  “What are you doing?” He didn’t hear. Rebecca rolled over in her shadowed bed and asked again. This time he heard her, “Looking at a bomb,” he said.

  She sat up and pulled her tangled hair back behind her right ear. The firelight flared. The shadows magically danced away. Brightness played on her long body. The shirt she was wearing had come undone but she seemed to be unaware of it. Stone’s glance lingered momentarily upon her breasts nestling in the shadow. She pulled the shirt closed and tugged it down over her long tawny thighs.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. He nodded, scrubbing the drawing out. “Do you really think that it is one of those sailors who has been doing all this?” He thought of his diagram. “They’re both possibles,” he told her. She shivered. “So am I,” he added.

  Now why had he said that? He frowned. After years of hiding everything from Anne, his wife who had left him and died, he was now making a game of doing the opposite with this strong, appealing woman.

  She sat back and watched him. What is he thinking about behind that fierce scowl, she wondered. Why had he said that about himself? Was he trying to warn her that he was really the murderer? She did not doubt, looking at him, that he could kill.

  And when that calm, cold look settled on him during the fight with Bates and Slobowski, she thought that perhaps he had killed. And what was he? An actor. A fine actor by all accounts. Looking at him she could see Richard III without the devilish, self-destructive humour. Not Hamlet, but Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, the tortured King. Macbeth: yes. Macbeth certainly, finding strength in doing evil. Only, of course, such figures did not exist in real life.

  She shivered suddenly. This was a face of Stone she had not seen before and it might very well be the face of a killer. She shifted uneasily, remembering how easily he had taken the two sailors. But when he looked up, although his eyes were still cold and distant, he was smiling slightly.

  “Have you been with Mr Gant long?” he asked.

  “Some time. It’s great fun I must admit. We go all over the world, you know. First Class.” She smiled like a child showing off a treasure. Stone smiled back. “And I get to see all his great performances. We’re go
ing to do Long Day’s Journey Into Night next. His James Tyrone is going to be better than Olivier’s.”

  “Stone’s smile became indulgent: he shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “Well,...” she tilted her head a little, aware that she had been a little outrageous, “different, then.”

  “I must come and see it.”

  “Oh yes, do. Unless…well, it hasn’t,…”

  “Hasn’t what?”

  “Hasn’t been cast yet.”

  “You think I should try for Jaimie? It’s the lead.” “Someone has to play it.” She swept another few strands of hair back behind her ear.

  “Don’t,” said Stone, so she left it. She looked up at him.

  “It’s all tangled,” she said. “I must try to wash it tomorrow, too.” Stone smiled. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking that neither on Treasure Island nor on the Coral Island did anyone ever seem to wash. Robinson Crusoe probably did, but I can’t remember.”

  “People don’t in books. You know that. Well, not in that sort of book. It’s like at the beginning of Swallows and Amazons or whatever, where it says that we’re just getting the exciting bits and we’re to imagine people doing boring things like getting washed and having tea without being told.”

  “Was that in Swallows and Amazons'? I don’t remember.”

  “I’m not sure. It’s a long time since I read it.”

  “It’s a day or two since I did, too, I must admit. What were we talking about?”

  “My hair.”

  He nodded. A silence came and lingered. Rebecca looked at him from under lowered lashes. His eyes fell on the jumbled mess of his drawing in the sandy dust. The look she didn’t understand, like or trust settled on his face once more. The fire spluttered. The waterfall fell into the pool. They both glanced up one last time as though of one accord.

  Their eyes met. She did not reach for him nor he for her. After a while she lay down and went back to sleep.

  Stone drew the boat again, and the oar, and the circles, but his mind was too restless to extract more than the obvious from it. Perhaps there was no more. Rebecca stirred. The shirt fell open all down her body. Stone looked at her long and hard, bitterly regretting his inaction.

  At just after 0400 on the morning of 22 July, Stone woke Gant and went back to sleep again. He awoke nearly ten hours later. Gant was asleep behind him and Mrs Gash beyond Gant.

  Rebecca was not there.

  Stone came to his feet immediately, his skin ice-cold and crawling, and looked around the clearing. At first he did not see her but she was there, crouched in the dappled shade beyond the pool. In cold water and without the aid of soap, she was washing her hair. For a moment he watched. She knelt, unaware of his scrutiny, wearing only her now grubby white panties, her hair a gleaming black cascade around her. Stone moved silently back to his sleeping place and lay down. After a while he heard her coming back. He stirred as though waking and smiled gently at the muffled exclamation and the covert rustle as she covered her nakedness. He yawned ostentatiously, opened his eyes, winced at the light, stretched, scratched, yawned again and climbed stiffly to his feet.

  “Morning,” said Rebecca brightly. She had washed her shirt as well as her hair. Stone suddenly became aware that he stood in urgent need of a wash himself. He smiled at Rebecca. “Morning,” he said, and he might have said more but Mrs Gash woke then and began to cry. Rebecca went to comfort her. Stone went to the pool, stripped off his shirt and trousers, waded into the cold, clear water and washed himself.

  It was that afternoon, as much to occupy Mrs Gash as for any great danger of sunstroke - though they were all suffering from the fury of the sun - that Gant suggested that the women should make palm-frond hats. While they were doing so, the men wandered off. After a while they split up, not for any reason but because they each wanted to be alone. Mrs Gash wandered off too, when she had finished her hat and then Rebecca also left the glade.

  The sun was low in the sky when they all drifted back into their camp. They came in as they had left: singly. Mrs Gash came in first, vague and lost. Every now and then she would look behind her as though expecting to see Miss Buhl in her usual place three paces back. She found the clearing by chance, and lingered like a child, fascinated by the waterfall. Rebecca found her there, and they sat side by side without speaking. Then Gant returned, hot and weary. He lay on his stomach by the pool and plunged his head into the cold water. For a moment the only sound was that made by the actor drinking his full.

  But then in the distance there came a strange undulating scream which flew closer and closer until Slobowski, his mouth wide, his face swollen, purple and mad, burst into the camp.

  “You…! you…!” he screamed. “Which of you? You!” And he went for Gant. Gant was on his knees by the water, but he had turned towards the big American. Slobowski took a short shambling run towards him and aimed a massive kick at his head. Gant threw himself sideways, rolled under Slobowski’s heavy seaboot and grabbed the other ankle unsteady on the sand. He twisted it with all his wiry strength, causing the solid Pole to fall. Gant was up like a cat, aiming a short sharp kick of his own at Slobowski’s head. It connected with a dull thud and the fight was over as suddenly as it had begun.

  “Now what was all that about?” asked Stone. He was sitting on a rock outcrop at the head of the waterfall, looking down at them like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Nobody answered, so he shrugged and began to run lightly down the curving slope from the top of the cliff to the clearing. Gant rolled Slobowski’s inert body over towards the pool and pushed his face into the water.

  By the time Stone joined them, Slobowski was coughing and spluttering, and trying to sit up. Gant helped him. In a moment he had shaken the confusion from his mind and was glowering at them all. “I don’t trust you. None of you!” he said violently. They said nothing. He tried to get up. - Gant stopped him. “What happened?” asked Rebecca gently. Slobowski sat in moody silence. “This is silly, Mr Slobowski,” she said. “Please tell us.” So he shrugged and told them.

  At lunchtime Bates and he had finished what little was left of their corned beef and had still felt hungry. Slobowski, himself, had remembered what Gant or Stone had said about the gulls’ eggs on the cliffs and they decided that Bates should go down for them. Slobowski, being by far the heavier and stronger, would hold the rope. So Bates had knotted one end securely around his waist and the big Chicago Pole had lowered him gently over the cliff edge. In order to gain safe purchase with his feet, Slobowski had stood well back from the cliff edge and so he couldn’t see Bates going down, but they had kept up a steady flow of conversation. “You all right, Bates?”

  “Fine. Give us more rope.”

  “See any eggs?”

  “Not here. Farther down…Christ!”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a hell of a long drop down here.”

  “You want I should pull you up?”

  “Nope. More rope…that’s it. Got one. Hope they’re allright. Shoo off old lady. And another.”

  “Mind them birds, Bates. I heard tell they’ll maybe attack guys going after their eggs.”

  “Fine time to tell me that.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. ” They were yelling now, to make themselves heard above the screaming of the birds.

  “No trouble. Bit more rope.”

  “There ain’t too much left up here.”

  “OK. Won’t be long. Hang on as they say. Hey!”

  “What!”

  “Give us another couple of feet would you? There’s a sort of a ledge down here. There. That’s it.” The strain went off the rope. There was a silence. It lengthened.

  “Bates, you still there?”

  “’Course I am. You can let go now, sit down. Have a rest.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. ’Course. There’s a ledge down here maybe a yard wide with a sort of a hollow going back into the cliff. It’s really snug.”

&n
bsp; “Slobowski sat down, wedged the rope under his foot and relaxed. “How many eggs you got?” he yelled after a while.

  “Five. I…” Silence from Bates. Sudden. The voice stopping abruptly as though his head had been cut off. Slobowski sat upright.

  “Bates? What is it, Bates?” Silence: he couldn’t believe it.

  “Aw, come on Bates, stop messin’ around. Bates, you there?” As he asked, he had started to get up and suddenly the end of the rope whipped out from under his foot. He grabbed at it. Missed. The end brushed his fingers and vanished over the cliff as he screamed, “BATES!”

  That night Slobowski ate with them but after the food was done he wandered off on his own into the dark. Stone, Rebecca and Eldridge Gant kept watch as they had the night before beside the hissing fire: Stone, then Gant, then Rebecca for two hours, then: “Wake up, Alec!” Quiet voice. The gentle hand on his shoulder. Stone stirred. “Alec. It’s your turn.” Stone woke. Rebecca was beside him, her hair like a curtain of shadow. He moved languorously. His hand brushed the cool column of her thigh. She moved, flinched like a startled deer, and yet remained. “Are you awake,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Silence. Stillness. Then her hair closed about him - wings of the night. As they kissed, she moved her body, extending her legs until she was pressing her whole length against him. He slid his thigh between hers and she moved against it. His body stilled as their lips parted.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.” His hands at her shoulders pushing the shirt away. Her hands at the waist of his trousers. His hands under the web of her hair high on her shoulders: her hands at his shoulders pushing the shirt away. The fire chuckled. The wind in the palms whispered. The sea rumbled. The waterfall sang. A single bird, black and cruciform against the enormous moon, let fall its raucous cry like a leaf in an English autumn.

  The lovers paused. Lingered. Explored. His lips at her throat. Burning. His tongue gathering salt drops at the pit of her throat. Her back arching above him. Her head raised suddenly, thrown back, her lips parted and dumb. Her eyes wide and blind.