Dunstan had already started to go around again. The blue out of the left-hand side of the plane was now exclusively that of the ocean, the sky having disappeared. Ray waited to see if Frankie would say more about Flynn. She saw him watching her and fell silent.
She was similar to Victoria, but when Ray looked at her he felt nothing. Victoria was gone and the feelings he had had for her were gone also. It didn’t mean they hadn’t existed. But they could not be reawakened. Something in Ray had changed, even if he didn’t understand the full nature of the change. He didn’t doubt that he was still grieving for Victoria, but living on the island, in the company of Dunstan and the other men, was altering him. He couldn’t have said what he did feel, only what he didn’t.
‘Can you take it any lower this time?’ Joan was asking Dunstan as she leaned over the back of his seat and the line of men grew bigger in the pilot’s windshield.
‘What’s that boy doing?’ Ray muttered, as Flynn clambered on top of the cab of the supply truck that was still parked on the beach.
‘Sometimes we fly as low as fifteen feet,’ Dunstan shouted, sweat standing out on his forehead as he clung to the controls and fought to keep the plane steady. He knew that one mistake would be fatal. If the right-hand wing tip caught the trunk of a palm tree, if the wake of the aircraft created an updraught that interfered with the rudder, control would be wrested from him in an instant, setting in motion a chain of events that would be as swift as it would be inevitable. Ray knew this and he knew that Dunstan knew it. He could sense that the two girls were beginning to realise it, as they watched, wide-eyed and white-knuckled.
The line of men was no more than a hundred yards away, the plane travelling at 140 knots.
‘Be careful, sir,’ Ray murmured. ‘Watch Flynn.’
The youngster was standing on the roof of the cab, stretching his arms in the air, his face ecstatic, hair swept back.
As the plane passed over him, they felt a bump. It would have felt harmless to the nurses, but Ray knew nothing is harmless in a plane of that size flying at that kind of altitude. He twisted around and looked back through the side window. He saw a figure in a blue uniform falling from the roof of the truck and something the size of a football rolling down the beach towards the sea.
‘Christ!’ said Ray.
One of the girls started screaming.
The golden sand, the turquoise sea. Rolling and rolling. A line of palm trees, the outermost buildings of the station. Henshaw, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Another engineer bent double. Over and over. The golden sand, darker now, black, the sea, fringe of white foam, the vast blue sky. The black cross of the Hercules climbing steeply, banking sharply, heading out to sea. The golden sand. A body, damaged, somehow not right, lying on the sand by the supply truck. A quickly spreading pool of blood. The golden sand, line of trees, the vast empty sky, the distant plane, a line of men, men running, a body on the sand. The golden sand. Ghost crabs. A shell. Shells. The vast blue sky, line of trees. The supply truck. The golden sand. Palm trees swaying, blown by the wind. Henshaw. The golden sand again, darker, wetter. White foam, tinged pink. The blue of the sky. The body by the truck. Line of men, line of trees. The golden sand.
Horror Story
HE’S A NICE guy and everything. Well, he’s OK. But you can’t help but look at his track record and wonder. One published novel, I don’t know how many hidden away in the bottom drawer. And the one that did make it didn’t really make it, if you know what I mean. Yes, it was published, but it didn’t set the world alight and it’s been out of print for donkey’s years. No one on the course has read it or even seen a copy — except me. How can we take instruction from someone who doesn’t seem to know how to do it himself?
Am I being harsh? After all, he’s a published novelist. He didn’t self-publish either; a proper publisher bought it and put it out because they thought it was good enough (or because they thought they could make money out of it, but having read it, I kind of doubt it). That’s precisely what all of us on the course dream of, to have a novel published. It’s weird how books are meant to be under threat from all other forms of entertainment and kids don’t read any more and bookshops and publishers find it increasingly hard to make ends meet, yet everyone, from A-list actors to stand-up comedians to top poets to the woman down the street, everyone wants to write a bloody novel. And Dave, our course instructor, has done it and me and the other girls and our two token boys, who are really honorary girls since Vince is gay and Justin’s so sweet it’s like he’s a girl, are all thinking big deal, so what, where’s his second?
So, yeah, maybe I’m a bit hard on the guy. But you know what they say. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. And that’s a bugger of a sentence to punctuate. Not at all convinced I’ve got it right; Dave would know how to do it. One thing he does know about is punctuation. Use a semicolon correctly and suddenly Dave’s your best friend, until you confuse it’s and its, or there and their. Whatever. Still, the argument goes, if he were any good, he wouldn’t need to teach. Right? Wrong. Look at Martin Amis. The moment the fifty-something enfant terrible of British letters announced his professorship at Manchester, hundreds of washed-up novelists in universities up and down the country received an ego boost the equivalent of Mariella Frostrup suddenly saying, in her gravelly voice, ‘What we really need are more novels by X.’ They felt validated. They were able to take that resignation letter out of the print queue. They even started thinking about getting stuck into another novel — or resurrecting the last failed attempt.
Dave’s got all of that going on, I reckon. Anyway, I’m waiting outside his office for a quick meeting, not really a tutorial, I haven’t got time for that, but, amazingly for me, I’m five minutes early, so I don’t knock. Suddenly his door opens and one of the three people he shares his office with comes out and Dave sees me and gets up and suggests, since it’s so busy in there, that we go to the canteen, which I’m cool with. So we head downstairs and he’s moaning about not having his own office. Something to talk about, I guess. I nod and make appropriate noises, but I’m wondering if he knows I’ve read his book. How could he? I’ve not told him. I’ve been careful not to let it slip. I haven’t even told any of the others I’ve got a copy, let alone lent it out. Salt, it was called, about a guy whose wife dies from eating too much salt. That may be an oversimplification, but that’s basically it. He does go on about it, does labour a point, but when you factor in the research that’s been done, a lot of it since he wrote his novel, about the dangers of consuming too much salt, it kind of makes it OK, I guess.
Dave gets a duck-breast wrap with hoisin sauce or something equally Daveish, while I get a plate of chips. I’m sprinkling them with salt when Dave says, ‘Go easy. It’ll kill you,’ and that gives me a jolt, but when I look up, he’s got this weird half-smile on his face. I think it’s Dave’s attempt at a full smile, but he doesn’t really do smiling. There’s too much seriousness and tragedy in that big balding head. Stretching a smile across it must seem a bit like sticking a smiley badge on the door to the mortuary.
‘I was thinking,’ I say to him, ‘you know you told us all to write a horror story for Halloween?’
He nods.
‘I’m struggling with it. I’m trying to experiment with point of view and perspective, like you said, and frankly the further I get into it, the less I feel I know about how it’s all done, and I really need a tutorial, but I can’t get away for long enough during working hours because of my job. Anyway, you once offered to make yourself available out of hours and I’m wondering if I can make an appointment, and probably not here, either, cos it’s a right bastard to get to. Oh, excuse my French,’ I add because I just looked up and he had this, like, bizarre look on his face and I’m thinking do I really want to book to see this guy out of hours? But I tell myself he’s been checked and double-checked or else they wouldn’t let him work here and I really must stop being so paranoid.