Color Him Dead (13 page)

Ian had been drinking too; she could smell it. But then he drank all the time. Did he have to prepare for these monthly sessions, as she did?

His breastbone grated against hers, and she felt rather than heard the rasping râles inside his chest. He breathed heavily, mouth against the hollow of her throat. The wetness made her skin crawl. Wipe it off! No, don’t break his rhythm. Lie still; better yet help it along. Nothing to it, like riding a bicycle up a long hill, like rowing a boat, push-pull, push-pull….
Did I ever enjoy this? Yes, but not with Ian. That strange bearded man.
… She pictured him in Ian’s place, but when she tried to see his face it went away and left her with a strange unease. She should be afraid of him, but she didn’t know why. She could remember the sound of his voice, the sight of his lips moving, but not the words. Had he threatened her somehow? Well, he was gone and the hell with it. Unpleasant things always went first and that was a consolation, but then she was never sure how many good things went too. It was like being murdered, and then living on….

At last. Now run to the bathroom—

“Don’t get up yet, Edith.”

She stiffened, then sighed and lay back. She watched Ian rise with an old man’s slow caution. He sat on the edge of the bed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. She read the weary relief in his face and felt a dull, sour rage.

“Is it worth it, Ian? A kid with flippers for arms? A cleft palate? Big milky spheres where its eyes should be? What diseases do you get from your little girls?”

Ian finger-combed the long hair above his ears, then fitted a cigarette into a golden holder. “There’s been nothing for two years, Edith. Doc comes out every week, and the girls no longer leave the place.” His pale blue eyes crinkled in amusement. “I’ve told you this before. Is your memory getting worse?”

His tone held a mild concern, but the words alone sent a thrill of fright coursing through her body. She knew that he could just as easily say, with the same quiet regret:
“I’m sorry Edith, I’ll have to ask them to come and take you away….”

“Well, what about me? What kind of baby … in my condition—?”

“Let’s not row about that again.” He lit his cigarette and poured a drink. He spoke slowly, enunciating each word separately as though instructing a child. “The condition of your mind will not affect the baby. Your physical and mental abilities—those you had before your illness—lie intact in the sparkling thread of your genes. I understand heredity, dear Edith. My family once built a fortune from breeding slaves. It does not matter if you gibber, if you must be fed with a spoon, cleansed of your own filth, dressed and undressed: the qualities for which I married you—greed, cunning, lack of compassion and mercy—will be passed on to my son.”

“Qualities.” She said it with scorn, but softly. She wasn’t sure what she had been before she married him; she would have asked but no doubt he had already told her. She didn’t want him to know she’d forgotten. “That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? Just a womb. Just a….”

He smiled, then reached back and pinched her thigh until the flesh swelled out white between his thumb and forefinger. “Be thankful I need that, Edith. Otherwise I might have let them hang you.” He withdrew his hand, regarded the two reddening circles on her thigh, then turned his back. “You can go.”

She slid out of bed and walked quickly toward the bathroom. She would fill the tub with hot water and let herself sink beneath a mountain of suds.

The women pulled in the net, and the rising sun gleamed on naked flesh as black and shiny as sealskin. Drew sat on a palm trunk and sketched the girl coiling the rope in the sand. It was his fourth sketch, and he could feel the talent coming back in his fingers; the rough, carbon-pencil lines were no longer cramped and twisted.

“Say!” came an imperative voice from the terrace. “You! Come have some tea with me.”

Drew stood up and walked toward the terrace, where Ian Barrington sat eating breakfast. He was struck by the man’s floppy, careless appearance. His seersucker suit radiated wrinkles from beneath the armpits; the collar of his white shirt was caught under his tie and stuck up along his throat like the dorsal fin of a mako. A red neck matched a narrow, brilliant nose. Drew had to remind himself that this unimposing, unkempt figure controlled Edith’s destiny, serviced a dusky harem in the bush, and held the island in a grip of steel.

“Thanks,” said Drew. “I never touch the stuff.”

“Really? I thought you were an Englishman.” Ian laughed as though being taken for an Englishman were some kind of joke. “Join me anyway,” said Ian, waving at the bottom tray of the serving cart. “Be your own chemist.”

Drew walked onto the terrace and laid his sketch pad on the marble-topped table. The serving cart held imported Scotch, but Drew saw no point in acquiring expensive tastes. He poured out two fingers of Barbados rum and dropped an ice cube into the glass.

“I’ll fire one with you,” said Ian. “The same.”

Drew fixed the drink and gave it to Ian, who toasted him with upraised glass and waved to a chair. When Drew was seated, Ian commented that the island provided nice scenery for an artist. Drew nodded and asked Ian if he’d like to have a sketch made of himself.

Ian laughed. “No thanks. I know what I look like.”

“Your wife—?”

“I also know what she looks like.”

Drew settled back and sipped his drink. A fisherman walked past, lifted his beret by the button on top, and bent his head toward Ian. The planter flipped his hand.

“Pretentious ape,” he mumbled, then turned to Drew. “The fishermen seem about to leave. It’s been a pleasant chat.”

Drew felt a bone-deep tiredness in his legs. This was dismissal; the peaceful approach had failed. Now he would play the ace Guillard had given him. “I won’t be going back with them.”

“Oh?” Ian lifted his head and scanned the shore line. “I don’t see your boat. Is someone picking you up?”

“I’m staying up in the fort.”

Ian’s head jerked around, his face stiff. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t permit tourists on the island after dark.”

“I don’t need your permission to stay in the fort,” Drew said half-apologetically. “It’s a historical monument, property of the crown. Your ninety-nine-year lease requires that you keep it open for tourists twenty-four hours a day.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t get there without crossing my property.”

“Your lease says you have to maintain a four-foot right-of-way across your land.”

Ian leaned back and laced a pair of small, surprisingly well-kept hands across his stomach. “My grandfather signed that lease. I’ve never read it. I don’t care what it says. I have only one thing more to say to you.
Get … off … my … island.
”

Drew rose slowly, picked up his sketch pad, and moved off the terrace. Sand crabs scuttled away on spidery legs as he struggled through the loose sand. He passed the windrow of fan coral, shells and coconut husks which marked the high water line, planted his crutch firmly into wave-packed sand and lit a cigarette.

“I’m off your land,” he said. “This is the tidal strip, property of the crown. It’s as far as I go.”

A brief taut silence followed, broken by Ian’s puzzled query: “What the hell are you after?”

“I could use a job.”

Ian barked a laugh. “I’ll give you something to do.” He raised his voice. “Doxie! Come out here.”

Drew felt a cold, icy calm settle over him. This was the climax for which he had prepared, even as he had worked with his sketches. He waited, smoking. Wind rattled the palm fronds above his head. Down the beach the fishermen loaded their catch into woven baskets. Out in the channel, a man was sinking fish traps, marking them with floats of bamboo. It seemed a strange, peaceful setting for violence.

Boot heels clattered on the terrace. Ian gave a low-voiced order: “There. He’s to leave with the fishing fleet.”

Drew heard the muffled
shh-shh-shh
of Doxie’s boots in the sand. He waited until he figured Doxie was five feet away, then he pivoted on his good leg, lifting the crutch. Doxie stopped, his eyes bulging in startled recognition. During that single, off-balanced instant, Drew took one step forward and swung the weighted crutch. It struck Doxie’s left temple with the meaty
thunk!
of a coconut falling from a tall tree. Doxie staggered, head thrown back and eyes squinting, as though he were trying to follow a flight of birds. Drew raised the crutch for a second blow, then caught himself in mid-swing. Doxie was stumbling away, rubbing his eyes with one hand while the other groped before him. He fell over a conch shell and sprawled face down. His splayed fingers gouged the sand and pulled him onto his hands, then to his feet. He lunged into the low terrace wall and his legs turned rubbery again. He fell to his knees, caught the terrace wall and clung there panting. His voice was a plaintive, bewildered croak:
“Mon Dieu,
I can’t see,
c’est noir—”

Ian rose from his chair looking puzzled and annoyed. Drew was vaguely aware that the fishermen had abandoned their catch and were clumped beyond the groins, staring white-eyed at the scene. Drew felt a sick-sweet nausea in his stomach. He would rather fight Doxie than watch his blind-worm groping.

It seemed to enter Doxie’s dazed mind that he was inside the terrace. He groped along the wall to the opening, then lunged inside with his arms outspread. He struck the serving cart and sent it crashing into a pillar, where it overturned with a clatter of antique silver. He staggered against Ian and seized his lapel for balance. Ian beat his shoulders as though trying to rid himself of a venomous insect. At last he gave Doxie a shove which sent him stumbling over a chair. Doxie fell to his knees, clawing at his belt. He straightened with his gun gripped in a white-knuckled fist. “Don’t come near me. I’ll shoot!”

Ian whirled toward Drew. “Finish it, dammit, before he kills somebody.”

Drew crept to the wall on hands and knees and swung the crutch against the back of Doxie’s head. The red man crumpled behind the wall.

Barrington stepped forward, straightening his tie. He bent over Doxie, lifted his limp hand, and let it fall. He spoke in a tone of bored disinterest: “You killed him.”

Drew felt an icy flutter in his chest, then saw the faint rise and fall of Doxie’s breathing. “He’s alive.”

Ian rose and looked narrowly at Drew. “You didn’t waste much effort on him. Maybe I can use you.” He frowned down at Doxie, nudged him with his toe, then waved toward the jetty. “Take him to my launch. Tell Captain Leo to haul him to Petty-lay and put him in my car. The driver will take him to Doc Ainslee.”

He walked away, and Drew heard him growl at someone to get outside and clean up the terrace. Drew shrugged and bent down and started to maneuver Doxie on his back.

“We carry he,
‘sieur.
”

A flat-nosed, purple-skinned man was leaning over the wall. Drew waved him forward, and a half-dozen rope-muscled fishermen crowded onto the terrace. One seized each of Doxie’s arms, two more seized each side of his belt, and another gripped each leg. They shuffled toward the jetty with Doxie swinging between them like a slaughtered calf, then dropped him on the deck of a sleek, lap-hulled Swedish cruiser. Captain Leo appeared in the cabin door, yawning and scratching his belly beneath a gray undershirt. He was a narrow-chinned, red-necked, towheaded specimen of the island’s poor whites, with a chest like a chicken’s breast and without the faintest suggestion of a rump. While Drew relayed Ian’s instruction, he looked down at Doxie as though he were a putrefying fish which lay stinking up his gleaming hardwood deck.

“Who bash he?” asked Captain Leo, in the sing-song speech of the Redlegs. He regarded Drew from pale blue eyes. “You bash he?”

“He slipped on a wet goat turd.”

Leo laughed, his thin mouth twisting. “Mahn, he be vex when he waken, no pitty gurl to see.” He walked to the control. “Cast off, seevooplay.”

Drew untied the line, tossed it on deck and returned to the terrace. Ian had a fresh drink in his hand and was looking at Drew’s sketch pad. He motioned Drew to a chair and tossed the pad onto the table. “What brings you to St. Patricia? Are you wanted?”

Drew managed a surprised laugh. “That’s a helluva question to spring on a man.”

“Is it?” Ian folded his hands and regarded Drew thoughtfully. “You needn’t be afraid to tell me if you’re wanted. Several of my men are, and they’re the ones I trust.”

“Sorry,” said Drew. “I came down here to recuperate from an accident. My money ran out, so …” He spread his hands.

Ian sipped his drink and regarded Drew over the rim of his glass. “Name?”

“Seright, William.”

Ian nodded. “All right. You’ll come with me to my estate back in the bush. There’s little to do at the moment, but I’ll want you when we have trouble with the blacks.”

Drew felt a stab of dismay. He wanted no part of the bush as long as Edith remained on the island. He was debating how to refuse when Ian suddenly raised his eyes toward the staircase. Drew parted the leaves of a potted rubber plant and looked up at Edith.

She treaded down the stairs like a queen descending from her throne, holding her head erect and steady. A blue ankle-length dressing gown dimly revealed the twin white column of her legs. Drew guessed that she had spent the last quarter hour in communion with her dressing table mirror; the only signs of last night’s drinking were the faintly shadowed perimeters around her eyes. It occurred to him that perhaps she had not assumed the copper hair as a disguise after all, but rather to conceal a touch of gray in her midnight hair.

She reached the floor and walked to the corner bar without glancing toward the terrace. Ian stood up. “Edith, it’s a bit early for that.”

She looked at him and raised her brows. “It is? And what do you have in your glass? Lemonade?”

She bent over and set out a bowl of ice and a bottle of White Horse. Ian strode toward the bar. “Edith, I’m going back to the estate shortly. I don’t intend to leave you drinking.”

She dropped an ice cube in a glass and uncapped the bottle. “Why not? I’ll be in the firm hands of the faithful Doxie.”