The Beach

At first glance the camp was close to how I’d imagined it might be. There was a large, dusty clearing surrounded by the rocket-ship trees and dotted with makeshift bamboo huts. A few canvas tents looked incongruous, but otherwise it was very like the kind of South-East-Asian village I’d seen many times before. At the far end was a larger construction, a longhouse, and beside it the stream from the waterfall re-emerged, bending around to run along the edge of the clearing. From the straightness of its banks, it had obviously been deliberately diverted.

It was only after taking all this in that I noticed there was something strange about the light. The forest had been both dark and bright by turns, but here everything was lit in an unchanging twilight, more like dusk than midday.

“Of course this is more than a beach resort. But at the same time, it is just a beach resort. We come here to relax by a beautiful beach, but it isn’t a beach resort because we’re trying to get away from beach resorts. Or we’re trying to make a place that won’t turn into a beach resort. See?”

Just as people were drifting off, a sleepy voice from somewhere in the darkness would say, “‘Night John-Boy.” Then there’d be a short pause while we waited for the cue to be picked up, and eventually you’d hear someone say “‘Night, Frankie,” or Sal, or Gregorio, or Bugs, or anyone they felt like saying good night to. Then the named person would have to say good night to someone different, and it would go around the whole longhouse until Bugs, or anyone they felt like saying good night to. Then the named person would have to say good night to someone different, and it would go around the whole longhouse until everyone had been mentioned.

Anybody could start the game off and there was no order to the names called out. When there were only a few names left it got difficult remembering which people had been mentioned and which hadn’t, but that was part of the game. If you screwed it up, then there’d be loud tuts and exaggerated sighs until you got it right.

I stubbed out the cigarette. “And the zeros. What are they about?”

Keaty smiled. “That was Daffy’s idea. It’s a date.”

“A date? The date of what?”

“The date they first arrived.”

“I thought that was eighty-nine.”

“It was.” Keaty stood up and patted the stabilizer fin. “But Daffy used to call it year zero.”

It took me over two hours to get to sleep that night, and the thoughts that kept me awake were as unusual as the rest of the day had been. For the first time since arriving on the beach, I started thinking about home. Almost, in fact, wishing I could return. Not to leave the beach permanently — just to contact a few important people and let them know I was still alive and OK. My family particularly, and a few of my friends. I suppose it may have had as much to do with my earlier conversation with Françoise as with the subsequent unsettling events. The thought of parents had hovered in the back of my mind, reluctant to fall under the beach’s amnesiac spell.

Then I heard Sal call behind me, “What’s happened?’, and at once Karl began yelling at the top of his lungs. For a minute he yelled non-stop, filling the longhouse with high, frantic sound that made some people cover their ears or yell equally loudly, for no apparent reason other than to block him out. It was only after Keaty had grabbed him, shouting at him to shut up, that he managed to form an intelligible word: “Shark.”

“I’ll add that matters have not been helped by certain individuals who have hardly tried to patch things up. In fact, I might say they’ve deliberately made things worse. And yes, Richard, before you even dream of denying it, I mean you. I don’t want to repeat anything that was said in the longhouse a few nights ago, but I will say that if anything like it ever happens again, the one who’ll be chucking spears is me. Clear?”

“If we’d taken him the day after the attack, maybe two days after, he might have been OK. And I’d have taken that chance, even if it meant losing the beach. I think Sal would have too… But now… what would be the point?”

I reached Christo’s head by simply sliding around the left-hand side of the tent. Then, just as I’d suggested earlier, I pinched his nose and covered his mouth. There was no twitching, no resistance. A few minutes later I took my hands away, counted to one hundred and twenty and slid back to the cool outdoors. And that was it. It really was that simple.

As I returned across the clearing, clicking my fingers in time with my footsteps, I saw the reason for the cheering I’d heard. Both the Yugoslavian girls were in the central circle of candles, heads resting on each other’s shoulder, slow dancing to the buzz of noise.