Just three grey sheep, waiting to die.
Ray had lost interest in the business. He was wandering back down the beach, kicking a can ahead of him. It rattled and skipped, reminding me of the stones.
‘We should let them free,’ said Angela.
I ignored her; what was freedom in a place like this? She persisted, ‘Don’t you think we should?’
‘No.’
They’ll die.’
‘Somebody put them here for a reason.’
‘But they’ll die.’
They’ll die on the beach if we let them out. There’s no food for them.’
‘We’ll feed them.’
‘French toast and gin,’ suggested Jonathan, picking a sliver of glass from his sole.
‘We can’t just leave them.’
‘It’s not our business,’ I said. It was all getting boring. Three sheep. Who cared if they lived or –
I’d thought that about myself an hour earlier. We had something in common, the sheep and I.
My head was aching.
They’ll die,’ whined Angela, for the third time.
‘You’re a stupid bitch,’ Jonathan told her. The remark was made without malice: he said it calmly, as a statement of plain fact.
I couldn’t help grinning.
‘What?’ She looked as though she’d been bitten.
‘Stupid bitch,’ he said again. ‘B-I-T-C-H.’
Angela flushed with anger and embarrassment, and turned on him. ‘You got us stuck here,’ she said, lip curling.
The inevitable accusation. Tears in her eyes. Stung by his words. .
‘I did it deliberately,’ he said, spitting on his fingers and rubbing saliva into the cut. ‘I wanted to see if we could leave you here.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘And you’re stupid. But I’ll be sober in the morning.’
The old lines still made their mark.
Outstripped, Angela started down the beach after Ray, trying to hold back her tears until she was out of sight. I almost felt some sympathy for her. She was, when it came down to verbal fisticuffs, easy meat.
‘You’re a bastard when you want to be,’ I told Jonathan; he just looked at me, glassy-eyed.
‘Better be friends. Then I won’t be a bastard to you.’
‘You don’t scare me.’
‘I Know.’
The mutton was staring at me again. I stared back.
‘Fucking sheep,’ he said.
‘They can’t help it.’
‘If they had any decency, they’d slit their ugly fucking throats.’
‘I’m going back to the boat.’
‘Ugly fuckers.’
‘Coming?’
He took hold of my hand: fast, tight, and held it in his hand like he’d never let go. Eyes on me suddenly.
‘Don’t go.’
‘It’s too hot up here.’
‘Stay. The stone’s nice and warm. Lie down. They won’t interrupt us this time.’
‘You knew?’ I said.
‘You mean Ray? Of course I knew. I thought we put on quite a little performance.’
He drew me close, hand over hand up my arm, like he was hauling in a rope. The smell of him brought back the galley, his frown, his muttered profession (‘Love you’), the quiet retreat.
Deja vu.
Still, what was there to do on a day like this but go round in the same dreary circle, like the sheep in the pen? Round and round. Breathe, sex, eat, shit.
The gin had gone to his groin. He tried his best but he hadn’t got a hope. It was like trying to thread spaghetti.
Exasperated, he rolled off me.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
Senseless word, once it was repeated, it had lost all its meaning, like everything else. Signifying nothing.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘Fuck off.’
‘It really doesn’t.’
He didn’t look at me, just stared down at his cock. If he’d had a knife in his hand at that moment, I think he’d have cut it off and laid it on the warm rock, a shrine to sterility.
I left him studying himself, and walked back to the ‘Emmanuelle’. Something odd struck me as I went, something I hadn’t noticed before. The blue flies, instead of jumping ahead of me as I approached, just let themselves be trodden on. Positively lethargic; or suicidal. They sat on the hot stones and popped under my soles, their gaudy little lives going out like so many lights.
The mist was disappearing at last, and as the air warmed up, the island unveiled its next disgusting trick: the smell. The fragrance was as wholesome as a roomful of rotting peaches, thick and sickly. It came in through the pores as well as the nostrils, like a syrup. And under the sweetness, something else, rather less pleasant than peaches, fresh or rotten. A smell like an open drain clogged with old meat: like the gutters of a slaughterhouse, caked with suet and black blood. It was the seaweed I assumed, although I’d never smelt anything to match the stench on any other beach.