Stranded (21 page)

I hardly dare hope. My stomach turns over and my heart rate speeds up. Ed says it before I can.

‘A boat?’ he asks.

I can hardly bear this. Another beach, and one that has a boat on it. It has to be that. Nothing else would be this exciting. I jump up, imagining a fishing boat pulled up on to white sand, or bobbing in a bay. I see the seven of us climbing into it, the engine miraculously starting, or else all of us fashioning oars from branches and rowing away. Whatever happens, a boat will get us out of here. We would not have to go far before we were able to see land. I picture us meeting another vessel out on the water, being pulled aboard and taken back. Jean and Gene are at their son’s bedside, and he has woken up and is talking to them. Mark and Cherry are with their children, confessing, dealing with the consequences. Ed and Katy are going wherever they would have been going next.

And I am with Daisy. She runs into my arms and I catch her, stumbling back as she thumps heavily into me. I bury my face in her hair. It feels so real that I cannot believe it is not happening yet.

I have to make an effort and refocus my thoughts before I look at Mark’s face.

‘Oh crap,’ he says, and he passes the back of his hand over his forehead. ‘I made it sound too exciting, didn’t I? Sorry, guys.’

I do not trust myself to speak. Ed mutters something and Mark replies, and I do not even hear what the great discovery actually is. They start walking.

Katy is at our side. She has left her fishing rod carefully on the rock. She is talking to Mark too. I don’t listen.

Ed turns back. Even the sight of his face, smiling at me, does nothing for the blackness that has descended.

‘Coming, Esther?’ he says.

I nod and walk, but hang back so I don’t have to speak to anyone. Gene overtakes me to walk with the rest of them, and I think, as I watch him, that he does indeed look as if he is in physical pain. He does not walk well. He limps and holds his body oddly. I try to recall him walking before, but I cannot picture it. We have not really had anywhere to go, and when it is his or Jean’s turn to fetch the water, they do it together, holding the box between them. I have never paid much attention to the fact that they are so much older than the rest of us; in fact, they are probably the hardiest of the group. I just had no idea they were carrying around all this sorrow.

I am wondering whether I should suggest to Gene that he sits down and rests rather than exploring his way through the jungle when I realise someone is next to me.

‘Hey, Esther.’

I look at her and force a smile.

‘Hello, Jean. Are you OK?’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You know. Within the parameters. Can’t recommend sleeping in the jungle at my age, I have to say.’

‘Did you sleep where we were? I don’t even remember lying down. I just woke up all disorientated. Last time I did that, it was wine-related.’ I remember a Brighton night, me stumbling around the streets in the way I used to do, as though hoping I might bump into a better life.

‘Yeah. I do recall moving off a bit and finding a space to stretch out, but I don’t think I slept more than a half-hour. I was surprised even to do that. I woke with a bloody great lizard standing that far from my face, looking at me.’

I shiver. ‘That’s why I keep out of here if I can.’

We are back in the rainforest now, following Mark, Cherry, Ed and Gene through the undergrowth, even though there is no real path.

‘Where are we going, by the way? It looked interesting, and I was hitting a dead end as far as meditation was concerned, so I jumped down to join you all. Didn’t want to miss out on an outing. Something to do.’

‘Mark and Cherry found another beach. Mark is very excited about it.’

‘I see they were back to their old ways last night.’

‘Were they?’

She smiles. ‘Oh yes. At first light, when I saw that lizard staring at me with his beady little eye, the next thing I saw was those two in a state of great undress, cuddled up nearby. Sleeping it off. They got up a while later and giggled and headed into the forest together. It made me feel almost nostalgic.’

I laugh. ‘I was just thinking this morning it was like the Garden of Eden.’

‘Indeed. Very apt.’

We walk in silence for a while, concentrating on climbing over roots and under branches and vines. Spikes and pointed things reach out and scratch us in fury at our passing through their territory. Five minutes pass, maybe ten, and then Jean starts speaking again.

‘Look, Esther. I let Gene have his say last night because he needed to tell you all about Benjamin. I forced myself not to interrupt the way I wanted to. But it’s not quite the way he said. He makes out that I’m the flinty one who has no faith in our son to wake up. It’s not just me. It’s the doctors. The thing Gene has never been able to accept . . . I can see why. It’s much easier to keep hoping. But the thing is this: there
is
no hope. Last night he was daring me to step in and say this, and I didn’t because it would have blown right up. But the doctors, the second opinion, any number of consultants – all of them say the same. Ben’s dead, Esther. He’s being kept alive by the machines because of Gene’s top-notch medical insurance, because it’s up to us to tell them when to switch it all off. And while Gene’s alive, that’ll mean never. He tracks down stories of miraculous reawakenings and prints them off and waves them in my face. He actually has a scrapbook of newspaper reports, going way back in time, that he has found on the internet. Just to prove it could happen. A whole fucking scrapbook. And he’s glued a photograph of Ben on to the front of it.

‘Gene treats every day as a new chance. Every day, for him, is the day when Ben’s going to snap out of it and we’re going to get our darling bright, beautiful boy back. And it breaks my heart over and over again to be the one to say “Darling, that ain’t going to happen.” In fact I stopped saying that more than eighteen months ago because I could not bear it. I want it as much as he does. I’m his mother; I grew him, I gave him fucking life. And there was Gene putting me in the position of having to say, over and over again, “But he’s not going to wake up.” I have never told him we should switch the machines off. No mother is going to take that side in that battle. But a whole heap of what he said about Ben twitching his eye which meant we were OK to go on this holiday is a figment of his imagination. He believes it all right, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. I was there. It didn’t happen. It was just Gene’s way, probably subconsciously, of finding a way for it to be OK for us to go away.’

I hold up a prickly vine and Jean edges through the narrow space it leaves.

‘Thanks,’ she says.

‘So all the fighting you’ve been doing?’ I ask timidly.

‘Yeah. That’ll be him fighting against me. He has to blame somebody, and there actually isn’t anyone else. I’m the nearest. We made our peace with the biker long ago, and anyway what motorcyclist doesn’t zip through sluggish traffic? That poor man paid a horrible price for doing what everyone else does all the time. Gene can’t hold Ben responsible, of course. Neither of us can. There’s nobody else but me. Of course he doesn’t say the accident was my fault, but he lashes out. I genuinely thought it would be a positive thing to do, to get away to Malaysia, to go to the island on Ben’s behalf. It wasn’t. Gene was picking fights all day every day, because there’s only one place in the world where he wants to be, and that sure as hell ain’t here.’

There is a huge bushy thing in front of us which is prickly. It is definitely impenetrable, and I stare for a while, trying to work out which way the others went when they reached it.

‘Here,’ says Jean, and following her finger I see the path they must have taken, going off to our left. A few broken branches, a vine wrenched aside, the smallest indications that people have passed. She takes the lead and talks back over her shoulder. Something moves noisily close to us and I try not to jump. Sweat is pouring off me. The feeling that the world had been cleansed by the rain has long gone.

‘I got furious with him,’ she calls back to me. ‘I mean, we were here, at this beach, and for myself, the reason I’d wanted to come was so I could sit still in this place that he never got to visit, and be still and think of him, of my little Ben, the youngest child, the one who got away with anything. To say goodbye in a way. To do it for him. I did not get one second’s peace because Gene was needling at me non-stop, the entire time. He wanted to be at home, and didn’t I know it. So I gave as good as I got for once. That’s never happened before. It’s not our ordinary dynamic. We’ve always had a traditional family set-up, where I did everything for the children and ran the household, and Gene went to work. I never fought back at him. I just took it all. This time I couldn’t.’

‘Jean, I’m so sorry. It’s awful what you’re having to deal with.’

‘Yeah, I know. One of those things the universe throws at you. What do the Americans call it? A curve ball?’

We walk the rest of the way in silence. The others are out of sight but we can hear them ahead from time to time. It is hard work, and by the time we see the horizon through the trees, I am ready to drop.

They are standing on the beach, Mark and Cherry, Gene, Katy and Ed. Mark is grinning again.

‘Ta-dah!’ he says, and he gestures along the beach. I am almost too tired to turn my head, but I make an effort and look where he is pointing.

‘No way,’ I say.

‘Way!’

Cherry is bounding along the beach. ‘Isn’t it great?’ she says. ‘Isn’t it just the strangest thing you’ve ever seen? Who would have imagined it?’

‘Well,’ says Jean, in her usual dry tone. ‘This certainly seems unlikely.’

We start walking, together, Ed beside me. He takes my hand. I squeeze his gratefully.

‘It’s probably going to need some work,’ he says, ‘but hell. We have time, if nothing else.’

This is the way Paradise Bay would look, the way any one of the guest houses on the main island would look, if they were left alone for a long time. It must be years since this place was used, but all the same, it is a collection of cabins. They have walls and roofs, and although some of the wood is visibly rotting, much of it looks fine. I count six cabins in a semicircle at the end of the beach, with a main building in the middle of them, three on each side. All have been reclaimed by the jungle to a certain extent, but they are far from derelict.

‘Houses,’ I say. There is something deeply creepy about the scene. I try to shake that feeling.

‘And there’s a well,’ Mark says, as proud as he would be if he had dug it himself. ‘With a bucket on a rope. And there’s stuff lying around. Seriously: look at this – look what I found. It’s almost ironic.’

He opens his hand and there it is: an orange plastic cigarette lighter. It looks insouciant in his hand, casual.

I walk closer and look at it. This is just a mass-produced piece of rubbish, from a factory somewhere here in Asia, no doubt. It is the kind of thing you can buy for pennies or cents, anywhere in the world.

It does not look like the sort of object that could cause seven grown adults to become stranded on an island indefinitely. All three of us stare at it.

‘If we’d only had you a week or so ago . . .’ says Edward to the lighter.

‘More than that,’ Mark corrects him.

‘Is it?’ I ask. ‘I have no clue any more.’

‘Anyway – you see what I’m saying, guys? I just found this, under the steps to one of the huts. If there’s a lighter, there’ll be more stuff. We can move in here. Sleep indoors. Make it our new home.’

Their enthusiasm, his and Cherry’s, is infectious. I find myself smiling tentatively along with them. When I look at Ed, I see that he is just as pleased. In my mind I am making us a bedroom, though where we are going to find the mattress and bedside table, candles and vase of flowers that feature in my imaginings, I am not quite sure.

Katy’s eyes are screwed up and she is clearly thinking it through. I look at Jean, and see she is uncertain. Gene, however, is the first to speak.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Fascinating and everything. But if you don’t mind my asking: why the hell would we move here when, if that bloke comes back for us, he’ll be going to the other beach? Are we fucking giving up here? Moving here to make some set-up where we lie about until we die? Is that it?’

I listen to Mark arguing, talking about leaving messages written on the sand at the other beach, making arrows out of twigs and bits of coral to show which way we have gone, keeping a fire burning day and night here so that we will be just as likely to be rescued, ‘Because face it, guys, if anyone finds us, it’s not going to be Samad coming back. That ship has sailed.’

And I realise I don’t care any more, because I no longer have any expectation whatsoever that we are ever going to be found.

Gene and Jean flatly refuse to move into the new home. They announce that they are going back to the original beach, where they will carry on exactly as we were before. They will relight the fire and wait for a boat. Nothing any of us says will deter them, though we try very hard indeed.

‘Won’t you do it for us?’ I try, desperately. I can hear how ridiculous it sounds. ‘We want to do everything we can to keep you safe. And there are buildings here. There’s stuff. There’s a lighter, there’s wood, there’s a water supply .  .  .’

Jean snorts, but kindly. ‘Esther, I like you. You know I do. But I’m not going to do the wrong thing just to save you some anxiety, you idiot.’

‘First rule.’ Gene is breathless, purple in the face. ‘If you’re lost, and you can’t make your own way to safety. Then you bloody well stay put. OK? Everyone knows that. Surely even you fools do.’

‘We are staying put, though,’ Katy says. She has been quiet until now, apparently taking it all in. Her voice is gentle: she and Gene are friends, often talking and even laughing together as they fish. ‘
This island
is where we are. If Samad came back, which we all know is unlikely now, he would hardly just check the one beach where he left us, would he? He’d search the island. We’re far more likely to be rescued by a passing boat, and for that purpose, no one beach is better than any other.’