Kk 4

Gibbons and ghosts

The terrors came fast, one upon another. The lights of the Peggy Sue went away into the dark of the night, leaving me alone in the ocean, alone with the certainty that they were already too far away, that my cries for help could not possibly be heard. I thought then of the sharks cruising the black water beneath me – scenting me, already searching me out, homing in on me – and I knew there could be no hope. I would be eaten alive. Either that or I would drown slowly. Nothing could save me.

I trod water, frantically searching the impenetrable darkness about me for something, anything to swim towards. There was nothing.

Then a sudden glimpse of white in the sea. The breaking of a wave perhaps. But there were no waves. Stella! It had to be. I was so thankful, so relieved not to be all alone. I called out and swam towards her. She would keep bobbing away from me, vanishing, reappearing, then vanishing again. She had seemed so near, but it took several minutes of hard swimming before I came close enough to reach out and touch her. Only then did I realise my mistake. Stella’s head was mostly black. This was white. It was my football.

I tried singing to stop myself from shivering, to take my mind off the sharks. I sang every song I could remember, but after a while I’d forget the words. Always I came back to the only song I was sure I could finish: ‘Ten Green Bottles’. I sang it out loud again and again.

I floated away into sleep, into my dreams. And in my dream I saw a boat gliding towards me, silent over the sea. The Peggy Sue! Dear, dear Peggy Sue. They had come back for me. I knew they would. Strong arms grabbed me. I was hauled upwards and out of the water. I lay there on the deck, gasping for air like a landed fish.

Someone was bending over me, shaking me, talking to me. I could not understand a word that was being said. But it didn’t matter. I felt Stella’s hot breath on my face, her tongue licking my ear. She was safe. I was safe. All was well.

I sat up. I was on a beach, a broad white sweep of sand, with trees growing thick and lush behind me right down to the beach. Then I saw Stella prancing about in the shallows. I called her and she came bounding up out of the sea to greet me, her tail circling wildly. When all the leaping and licking and hugging were done, I struggled to my feet.

I was weak all over. I looked all about me. The wide blue sea was as empty as the cloudless sky above. No Peggy Sue. No boat. Nothing. No one. I called again and again for my mother and my father. I called until the tears came and I could call no more, until I knew there was no point.Stella, of course, was unconcerned about all the whys and wherefores.

Then came the howling again from the trees, and the hackles went up on Stella’s neck. She charged up the beach barking and barking, until she was sure she had silenced the last of the echoes. It was a musical, plaintive howling this time, not at all menacing. I thought I recognised it. I had heard howling like it once before on a visit to London Zoo. Gibbons, ‘funky gibbons’, my father had called them.

From where I now stood I could see that the forest grew more sparsely up the side of a great hill some way inland, and it occurred to me then that if I could reach the bare rocky outcrop at the summit, I would be able to see further out to sea. Or perhaps there’d be some house or farm further inland, or maybe a road, and I could find someone to help. But if I left the beach and they came back looking for me, what then? I decided I would have to take that chance.

It wasn’t the sounds of the forest that bothered me, though, it was the eyes. I felt as if I was being watched by a thousand inquisitive eyes.We emerged exhausted from the trees, clambered laboriously up a rocky scree and stood at long last on the peak.

Sea. Sea. Sea. Nothing but sea on all sides. I was on an island. I was alone. So far as I could see there was no sign of any human life. Even then, as I stood there, that first morning, filled with apprehension at the terrifying implications of my dreadful situation, I remember thinking how wonderful it was, a green jewel of an island framed in white, the sea all about it a silken shimmering blue. Strangely, perhaps comforted somehow by the extraordinary beauty of the place, I was not at all down-hearted. On the contrary – I felt strangely elated. I was alive. Stella Artois was alive. We had survived.

“We’ll be all right,” I told Stella. “Mum and Dad, they’ll come back for us. They’re bound to. They will. They will. Mum’ll get better and they’ll come back. She won’t leave us here. She’ll find us, you’ll see. All we’ve got to do is keep a look out for them – and stay alive. Water, we’ll need water. But so do those monkeys, right? We’ve just got to find it, that’s all. And there must be food too – fruit or nuts, something. Whatever it is that they eat, we’ll eat.” I soon discovered that the track down through the trees was bereft of all edible vegetation. I did see fruit of sorts, what looked to me like fruit, anyway. There were coconuts up there too, but the trees were all impossible to climb.  All the same, I was becoming desperately parched now, and so was Stella. She padded alongside me all the way, her tongue hanging.

Stella’s eyes looked up into mine. “There’s got to be water,” I told her. “There’s got to be.” So, said her eyes, what are you doing sitting here feeling sorry for yourself?

I forced myself to my feet and went on. The seawater in the rockpools was so cool, so tempting. I tasted it, but it was salty and brackish.  You went mad if you drank it. I knew that much.Despite all my searching, I had found no water, nothing to eat. I could go no further, and neither could Stella.

 I remembered then that it was my birthday, and thought of my last birthday back at home with Eddie and Matt, and the barbecue we’d had in the garden, how the sausages had smelled so good. I slept at last.

The next morning I woke cold and hungry and shivering, and bitten all over. I cried aloud in my misery, until I saw that Stella was gone. I ran out of the cave. She was nowhere to be seen. I called for her. Then I turned and saw her. She was up on the rocks high above my cave, half hidden from me, but even so I could see that her head was down. She was clearly intenting on something.I heard her drinking before I got there, lapping rhythmically, noisily, as she always did. She did not even look up as I approached. That was when I saw that she was drinking from a bowl, a battered tin bowl.

I left Stella to her water feast and climbed up further to investigate. Another bowl of water and, beside it, palm leaves laid out on the rock and half covered by an upturned tin. I sat down and drank the water without pause for breath. Water had never tasted so wonderful to me as it did then. Still gasping, I lifted aside the tin. Fish! Thin strips of translucent white fish, dozens of them, laid out neatly in rows on the palm leaves, and five, six, seven small red bananas. Red bananas!

I ate the fish first, savouring each precious strip. But even as I ate I was looking around me, looking for a telltale trembling of leaves at the edge of the forest, or for a trail of footprints in the sand. I could see none. Yet someone had brought this to me. Someone must be there, someone must be watching me. I wasn’t sure whether to be fearful at this revelation or overjoyed.Once I had finished I stood up and scanned the forest. My benefactor, whoever he or she was, had to be somewhere close by. I was sure I had nothing to fear. I had to make some kind of contact. I put my hands to my mouth and called out again and again: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” My words echoed round the island.They would have to come back for the bowls, I thought. I would leave a message. I found a sharp stone, knelt down and scraped out my message on the rock beside the bowls: “Thank you. My name is Michael. I fell off a boat. Who are you?”