Robert Stone - Bear and His Daughter

“ Écoutez, Liam. Écoutez bien. We going to stop, man. We going to stop where I say.”

He turned laughing into the wind, gripping a stay.

“What did I tell you,” Gillian said softly. “You won’t have to marry me after all. ‘Cause we’re dead, baby.”

“I don’t accept that,” Blessington said. “Take the wheel,” he told her.

Referring to the charts and the cruising guide, he could find no anchorage that looked as though it would be out of the wind and that was not close inshore. The only possibility was a shallow reef, near the south tip, sometimes favored by snorkeling trips, nearly three miles off the Pitons. It was in the lee of the huge peaks, its coral heads as shallow as a single fathom. The chart showed mooring floats; presumably it was forbidden to anchor there for the sake of the coral.

“I beg you to reconsider, Honoré,” Blessington said to Freycinet. He cleared his throat. “You’re making a mistake.”

Freycinet turned back to him with the same smile.

“Eh, Liam. You can leave, man. You know, there’s an Irish pub in Soufrière. It’s money from your friends in the IRA. You can go there, eh?”

Blessington had no connection whatsoever with the IRA, although he had allowed Freycinet and his friends to believe that, and they had chosen to.

“You can go get drunk there,” Freycinet told him and then turned again to look at the island.

He was standing near the bow with his bare toes caressing freeboard, gripping a stay. Blessington and Gillian exchanged looks. In the next instant she threw the wheel, the mainsail boom went crashing across the cabin roofs, the boat lurched to port and heeled hard. For a moment Freycinet was suspended over blank blue water. Blessington clambered up over the cockpit and stood swaying there, hesitating. Then he reached out for Freycinet. The Frenchman swung around the stay like a monkey and knocked him flat. The two of them went sprawling. Freycinet got to his feet in a karate stance, cursing.

“You shit,” he said, when his English returned. “Cunt! What?”

“I thought you were going over, Honoré. I thought I’d have to pull you back aboard.”

“That’s right, Honoré,” Gillian said from the cockpit. “You were like a goner. He saved your ass, man.”

Freycinet pursed his lips and nodded. “ Bien ” he said. He climbed down into the cockpit in a brisk, businesslike fashion and slapped Gillian across the face, backhand and forehand, turning her head around each time.

He gave Blessington the wheel, then he took Gillian under the arm and pulled her up out of the cockpit. “Get below! I don’t want to fucking see you.” He followed her below and Blessington heard him speak briefly to Marie. The young woman began to moan. The Pitons looked close enough to strike with a rock and a rich jungle smell came out on the wind. Freycinet, back on deck, looked as though he was sniffing out menace. A divi-divi bird landed on the boom for a moment and then fluttered away.

“I think I have a place,” Blessington said, “if you still insist. A reef.”

“A reef, eh?”

“A reef about four thousand meters offshore.”

“We could have a swim, non? ”

“We could, yes.”

“But I don’t know if I want to swim with you, Liam. I think you try to push me overboard.”

“I think I saved your life,” Blessington said.

They motored on to the reef with Freycinet standing in the bow to check for bottom as Blessington watched the depth recorder. At ten meters of bottom, they were an arm’s length from the single float in view. Blessington cut the engine and came about and then went forward to cleat a line to the float. The float was painted red, yellow and green, Rasta colors like Gillian’s bracelet.

It was late afternoon and suddenly dead calm. The protection the Pitons offered from the wind was ideal and the bad current that ran over the reef to the south seemed to divide around these coral heads. A perfect dive site, Blessington thought, and he could not understand why even in June there were not more floats or more boats anchored there. It seemed a steady enough place even for an overnight anchorage, although the cruising guide advised against it because of the dangerous reefs on every side.

The big ketch lay motionless on unruffled water; the float line drifted slack. There was sandy beach and a palm-lined shore across the water. It was a lonely part of the coast, across a jungle mountain track from the island’s most remote resort. Through binoculars Blessington could make out a couple of boats hauled up on the strand but no one seemed ready to come out and hustle them. With luck it was too far from shore.

It might be also, he thought, that for metaphysical reasons the Sans Regret presented a forbidding aspect. But an aspect that deterred small predators might in time attract big ones.

Marie came up, pale and hollow-eyed, in her bikini. She gave Blessington a chastising look and lay down on the cushions on the afterdeck. Gillian came up behind her and took a seat on the gear locker behind Blessington.

“The fucker’s got no class,” she said softly. “See him hit me?”

“Of course. I was next to you.”

” Gonna let him get away with that?”

“Well,” Blessington said, “for the moment it behooves us to let him feel in charge.”

“Behooves us?” she asked. “You say it behooves us?”

“That’s right.”

“Hey, what were you gonna do back there, Liam?” she asked. “Deep-six him?”

“I honestly don’t know. He might have fallen.”

“I was wondering,” she said. “He was wondering too.”

Blessington shrugged.

“He’s got the overstanding,” Gillian said. “We got the under.” She looked out at the water and said, “Boat boys.”

He looked where she was looking and saw the boat approaching, a speck against the shiny sand. It took a long time for it to cover the distance between the beach and the Sans Regret.

There were two boat boys, and they were not boys but men in their thirties, lean and unsmiling. One wore a wool tam-o’- shanter in bright tie-dyed colors. The second looked like an East Indian. His black headband gave him a lascar look.

“You got to pay for dat anchorage, mon,” the man in the tam called to them. “Not open to de public widout charge.”

“We coming aboard,” said the lascar. “We take your papers and passports in for you. You got to clear.”

“How much for the use of the float?” Blessington asked.

Now Freycinet appeared in the companionway. He was carrying a big French MAS 3 6 sniper rifle, pointing it at the men in the boat, showing his pink-edged teeth.

“You get the fuck out of here,” he shouted at them. A smell of ganja and vomit seemed to follow him up from the cabin. “Understand?”

The two men did not seem unduly surprised at Freycinet’s behavior. Blessington wondered if they could smell the dope as distinctly as he could.

“Fuckin’ Frenchman,” the man in the tam said. “Think he some shit.”

“Why don’ you put the piece down, Frenchy?” the East Indian asked. “This ain’t no Frenchy island. You got to clear.”

“You drift on that reef, Frenchy,” the man in the tam said, “you be begging us to take you off.”

Freycinet was beside himself with rage. He hated les nègres more than any Frenchman Blessington had met in Martinique, which was saying a great deal. He had contained himself during the negotiations on Canouan but now he seemed out of control. Blessington began to wonder if he would shoot the pair of them.

“You fucking monkeys!” he shouted. “You stay away from me, eh? Chimpanzees! I kill you quick… mon, ” he added with a sneer.