CHAPTER TEN
Watching
GIGGILY DIZZING, RALPH explained to Rachel how he should have known from the first glimpse. After all, the man in the woods – the first man – had had red hair, so it was only natural that he should be a force for belligerence. He was an adult echo of the Chief.
Night had fully blanketed the island by the time the boy and the woman reached the sand. There most of the hunters were asleep, safe from the tormenting mosquitos in the forest, but still irritated and frownsome from harsh coastal whips. The youngest of them huddled inside the bower. Ralph nodded at the slumbrous heap as he passed. Justice had returned.
One figure remained isolated from the party: the other redhead, sitting stationarily near the neck of rock by the pool. As Rachel slumped down by the frozen bodies of Maurice and Henry, Ralph sidled up to the gloomy water and its companion, then reached into the filthy stiff of his right short pocket. There was sufficient moonlight to produce a bouncing flash on the metal he withdrew.
Jack saw the glint and looked up as Ralph held out the penknife, relinquished by Roger after the fight on Castle Rock. He summoned enough energy to snort appreciatively, then shook his head with a new modesty.
'Keep it,' he muttered, returning his eyes to the unvaryingly hard grey sand. 'You're the Chief now, remember.'
Ralph sat down in the shadow of the rock. 'Listen,' he began, still buzzing from his discourse on the hill, 'I need your help.' So he told Jack about the hill, the entrance, the bunker, and the mission he was to spearhead the next day. The Chief watched Ralph's animated face with muted admiration, perhaps more impressed by this boundless enthusiasm than the extraordinary events in the centre of the island.
When Ralph finished the two boys looked at each other in silence, then a shy gust prompted Jack to nod his compliance. 'Alright,' he said. 'Count me in.' Together they retreated to the palmy fringe for a substantial stretch of sleep.
IN THE MORNING Ralph noted how he was never awoken by a traceable stimulus: never a piercing birdcall, or being shaken awake by Rachel, nor even the loud, stupid sunlight which pervaded the entirety of the island, either with its officious yellow radiance or the paralysing heat. He always drifted to consciousness in imperceptible time. It was summer, Ralph thought unfeelingly, all over the world. And had there been an altogether more sinister heatwave a few weeks before? He shook his head clear, and found that hair had fallen over his eyes again in rigid strips. Time for a bathe.
The boy stretched his limbs luxuriously over the hard ferns that he and Jack had groggily gathered for the night, then sat up, sensing the other one's absence. His green bed lay between two arching palm trees that provided a degree of shade from the ascendant scorch. From here he could see a paradisiacal vista of white sand, serene sea, and beaming blue doming the scene from above. He guessed the time was about nine o'clock, and wondered if Rachel had a watch.
Ralph wiped his hair away again, then zombied out onto the beach. Ten or twelve children splashed each other lazily in the shallow tier of the lagoon, and a few of the older ones floated and sat in the pool to his right. To Ralph's delight he saw Jack beyond the neck of rock, standing alone and looking into the wild edge of forest that flirted with the ocean. He pondered exploring the site of the crash, just the two of them, but Rachel appeared and asked him about the plan for the afternoon. Doubly distracted, Ralph mumbled something consoling, then changed the subject: 'Do you have any scissors?'
Rachel nodded with a smile. 'What for?'
Ralph fingered his filthy head. 'Need a haircut,' he grimaced.
Rachel fetched the shining silver blades from one of the boxes, then sat Ralph down in the shade of a palm and tentatively began to snip blond slivers from his crown.
'Don't cut off too much,' he warned her, and Rachel did not reply, in the way that women assuage without words. The boy enjoyed the stern, humorous way Rachel handled his dozy head – prodding it into position, snip; pushing it forward, snip – and the tickling of hair as it feathered down his back. Her hands had the warm, dry touch of his mother's.
He felt drowsy again, and would have loved to fall asleep with the woman attending to him, but was disappointed when Rachel told him she had finished. 'Sorry I can't offer you a mirror,' she said, standing up and pulling him with her. She gazed at the pool of elders, then prodded him towards it. Henry was swimming from the sandy slope to the rocky wall and back again; he sat on the ledge to dry when he saw the two leaders approaching. Ralph looked into the stilling water. His hair had been cut carefully yet had an uneven, spiky look. Curiously it made him appear and feel much younger. He liked it, and turned to give Rachel a brilliant smile.
TIME STOOD STILL on the island during the day. From seven or eight in the morning until the first traces of evening, the coast was drenched by beams and waves, interminable and conquering, while the evening and night were black as a panther, yet retaining the distant crashes of the sea. The ocean was time.
After his haircut Ralph had watched Rachel conversing with the smaller children by the shore, and when he was sure she was occupied, he sped past the pool, scrambled over the platform, and made for the end of the beach, nestled by the curving forest. Jack had disappeared while Ralph was busy brushing the stray hairs from his neck and head.
The boy left the warm sand and entered the cooler jungle. Somewhere ahead was the healing scar, the scene of earliest chaos, and the birthplace of the hunters. None of the children had revisited this area; as with the unseen spine of the island they all displayed a childish disinterest in the most significant places, instead preferring the luxury of sand and the fairytale Castle Rock.
Ralph struggled over a few obstinate rocks, then saw a flicker of flesh a few metres to his left; nimbly he picked his way over the thorny ground towards the figure and saw Jack examining the edge of the island. Here large black rocks defied the sea. The boy watched the Chief climb onto this miniature cliff, then to his surprise he saw him jump from the top and disappear from view. Alarmed, Ralph battled through the thick foliage to where the rocks ended, then saw with relief that they led down to a small cove of sand, divorced from the main beach, running down to the impatient water. There Jack was standing, facing the sea.
Ralph was about to call out to him in his thankfulness, but stopped himself; instead he crouched down on the black rocks and looked at the red-haired boy a few feet below him. After a hesitation Jack undid the remains of his belt, pulled down his shorts, and walked noisily into the sea. Here the ocean was kept sober by protruding rocks fifty feet out, as well as by the band of coral, which half a mile away curved closer to the island. Ralph watched Jack's bony body disappear into the shadow-dappled green of the lagoon. He felt solemnity on his face as he stared, and wondered what he was thinking. Without reaching a conclusion he surmised that this was not an unpleasant activity. Jack's head bobbed farther out to sea, then vanished beneath the waves. He was a good swimmer. Ralph tried to guess where the Chief would surface, but was out by a good four metres when the redhead suddenly appeared near one of the rocks. Jack rested against the protrusion and caught his breath. Vaguely Ralph was reminded of den lille havfrue…
Once more he shook his head, sleepy again from the subtle warmth of the forest and the cool coastal zephyr that infiltrated the sparse vegetation around the rocks. He had slept too long in the night beside Jack, dreamlessly for once, and he wanted to return to that neutral, appeasing state. His thoughts were broken by a call from the water.
'Coming?'
Jack had returned halfway from the protuberance and espied Ralph above him. The watcher felt a jolt of embarrassment, then converted his shame to humour with a brief smile. He climbed down the black rocks, removed his shorts, and walked slowly into the water.
Ralph wondered why he had not bathed that morning. Perhaps there was something comforting, as well as abject, about the camouflage of earth and sweat he usually wore; it was protection of a sort. After all, why clean his body when he felt so unclean?
Now he let himself enjoy the icy waves around his ankles, thighs, stomach and arms, then, committed to the ocean, he launched himself fully into the swelling monster. Jack's shock of copper hair glistened from intermittent strokes of sun ten feet away. Ralph reached him and they exchanged bashful grins.
'Race you,' said Jack, before Ralph had time to catch his breath, and took off to the Lilliputian coral thirty feet away. With a groan Ralph resumed his swim, and gained on Jack, but the Chief got to the rocks first, and sat on the flattest one with a victorious laugh. Ralph slowed down to retain his dignity, and when he reached Jack he leaned against the rock by his feet. The water was warm here, baked by the resplendent sun, and mirroring the sky with a fresh cornflower blue.
Ralph looked past Jack's bruised feet to the proud arc of the coral a mile away, and when his gaze became transfixed the Chief did likewise. A slow groaning sound came to their ears: staggered wood against reef and tide. The two boys watched the wreck of Rachel's boat slowly grind and splinter against the coral, then, rising up, as if stretching towards the sun, it tipped over the coral and fell into the lagoon, leaving a trail of debris in its wake. Overnight the sloop had almost been ground in two; now the front half drifted slowly towards the shore with the remnants of the rear dragging behind it.
On the black rock Ralph and Jack spoke to each other with their eyes, then together fell back into the sea and made for the sandy inlet. Refreshed, they donned their shorts then made their way through the spiky edge of the jungle to the safety of Rachel and the beach.