“You just noticed that?” She daintily fixes a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth, squinting to see in the fading daylight.
“I can’t believe this is happening to us. Conner uses his control of the supply room to keep everyone in line.”
I tell Pamela of the altercation in the restaurant.
“He’s trying to keep me away from Gwen,” I conclude.
She dabs a spot of perfume on her wrists and rubs them together. “Of course. I suspected it right away when he assigned you nighttime patrols and Gwen to the day shift. Conner has been turning to Gwen more and more, especially since Alexandra’s breakdown.”
“Yeah, I saw Gwen spoon feeding her.”
“Alexandra has a chemical imbalance. She had pills to regulate it, but when she heard her family died she had a fit and threw them into the nature preserve. We tried to find the pills but never did. I imagine right now there are some very happy crabs creeping about in those bushes.”
Pamela returns to the mirror and dusts a shimmery powder over her décolletage.
I pause in the middle of my tirade and sit on the edge of the tub again. “Can I ask you a question? What the hell are you doing?”
Inspecting her handiwork, she replies, “Keeping up appearances, dear boy.”
“Have you seen the haggard faced zombies wandering around this place? I don’t think anyone will care if you wear eye shadow or not.”
She turns to me with a slight smile. “I would care, Phillip. Let me tell you something. My mother lived in London during the Blitz. She was just a child then. She saw her father go off to fight the Nazis—never to return. Living in London during that time, my mother told me how suddenly the stillness of the night could change to sheer panic. Wailing air raid sirens. The thunder of exploding bombs. People screaming, grabbing whatever they could carry, and rushing to the streets. Spotlights sweeping the sky. Fires turning the night sky a bloody red. My mother huddled in air raid tunnels, her face buried in my grandmother’s arms. During those dark, terror filled hours, my mother learned what it meant to have courage and dignity. It is a valuable lesson she passed on to me. She taught me to bend, but never break. In short, she taught me how to be British.”
“Damn, Pamela, another speech like that and you’ll have me slapping on the lipstick,” I say with a deferential bow.
She chuckles and says, “Come. Walk with me back to the restaurant. I want to get there before the last of the gruel is gone.”
As we walk along the winding path back to the restaurant, the sun sinks even lower.
“Does Gwen ever talk about me?” I ask.
A slight smile crosses her lips. “I wondered when you were going to ask me that. She’s talked about you, yes. Of course, I asked why she came to live in my bungalow instead of staying with you. At the time, numerous people asked the same question.”
“So then everyone knows Gwen and I are separated.”
“Separated? When a husband and wife separate, there’s always the possibility that they may get back together. Gwen gave me the impression that you told her the marriage was finished.”
Unintentionally, my pace slows to a crawl. “I never said the marriage was completely over. We came here to try to work out our problems—”
“Yes, she said.”
“And instead of working them out, somehow things just fell apart. How much did Gwen tell you about what happened to our marriage?”
“I know about her affair. Gwen takes all the blame for why your marriage failed.”
I am torn between relief that I have someone else to talk to about my failed marriage and embarrassment that someone else knows that my wife preferred to have sex with another man instead of me.
Pamela assuages my sense of embarrassment. “Infidelity is not an easy thing for any marriage to survive. I have been in your shoes, so I know how difficult it is. Bill was not my first husband, you know.”
“So your first husband cheated on you?”
She sadly nods.
“And you left him because of it?”
She nods again.
“Did you ever regret it?’
“Maybe at first. I might have had second thoughts, questioning if I made the right decision but years later when I heard that my first husband also cheated on the woman he married after me, any misgivings I had vanished.”
I ponder this a moment, and then add, “Well, Gwen is not like your first husband. Of that, I am sure. She’s no serial cheater, hopping from bed to bed. Our problem is something that Gwen cannot help: She is physically drawn to a certain type of man and that man is not me. I’ve thought about this a lot, Pamela. Since we lost all power on the island, I have nothing but time to think about it. You say Gwen told you that I ended the marriage—that it was my decision. I disagree that it ended that way, but let’s say I fought to preserve our marriage; I would not have succeeded. Look at how she revolves around Conner ever since the E.M.P. blast.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘revolve’.”
I arch a brow. “Oh, no? That’s how it looks to me. I hardly see Gwen anymore and when I do, she’s dutifully tending to Conner’s catatonic wife and he sticks closer to Gwen than a barnacle on the hull of a ship. I am surprised, but I shouldn’t be. Gwen is only reverting to her true nature. She is young, beautiful, and fertile; Conner is the strong, virile warrior. He can protect her and provide food for her. It sounds primitive, I know, like something out of the Stone Age, but it makes sense. I couldn’t even keep Gwen faithful to me when we lived a block from a supermarket packed with food. Now, under these circumstances, with someone like Conner around, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Pamela gives an incredulous laugh and shakes her head. “Is that what you think life is all about? Who’s bigger? Stronger? The alpha male conquering the alpha females? I really thought you were smarter than this, Phillip.”
Flummoxed by her laughter, I stare back at her. She continues, “Granted, Conner is the strongest man in the resort, but for all his strength he is still afraid. The way he rules this place like some kind of police state is proof of just how afraid he is. The men who appear the toughest, the strongest, the quickest to fight are usually the most afraid. All their macho posturing is just an act to mask the fear that governs their lives. You should realize there are many ways to be strong, and many ways to be brave. If you realize this then I have no doubt that Gwen would be yours again.”
Stopping, I turn to her. “So then you are saying there is still a chance for me and Gwen?”
She purses her lips. “Not with your current mindset, there isn’t.”
We reach the restaurant. Before I can say anything else to Pamela, Bob trudges over to me, hands me a torch and I begin another lonesome patrol.
The trick to avoid becoming a feast for the mosquitoes is to keep moving. My patrol takes me deep into the nature preserve along the edge of the lagoon—prime mosquito breeding locations. A chorus of insects, frogs and the occasional warble of a nocturnal bird fill the night. At times, the cacophony is so loud that an elephant could sneak up on me and I would not hear it. I prefer to walk without a torch, slowly making my way along the packed dirt paths, relying on the dim light of the half moon to guide me. I find that while a torch illuminates everything directly around me, it blinds me to anything beyond the reach of the torch light. In addition, without a torch Bob and Dean do not know where I am and cannot meet up with me.
I make a sweep of the edge of the lagoon. Finding no sign of intruders, I head back to the row of bungalows along the shoreline. As I near the bungalows, I glimpse a long, lean figure moving like a wraith along the path. I quicken my pace to catch up to them, but they round the corner of a bungalow, heading towards the beach. Perhaps I should call out, but I hesitate, not wanting to awaken everyone for what probably is nothing more than one of the guests unable to sleep and taking a night stroll. I follow the slender figure to the beach, but there is no one there. Assuming whoever it was returned back to their bungalow, I return to the lagoon.