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  The beachcomber had come to his feet. He looked impressed, with me or the man in black, I wasn’t sure. I closed my eyes and lowered my head. I had done something depraved and wicked. Surely beaten girls don’t have orgasms when they are violated by strangers. Was I a freak? Was I a fallen woman fit for nothing but fucking? What had happened to me since I scrambled ashore on this degenerate little island?

  My stomach was wet with sweat and I slipped down over the black rubber hull of the boat on to my knees. I remained there, panting for breath, and then stood defiantly to face the man who had thrashed me.

  ‘Satisfied?’ I said.

  He must have guessed what it meant and shouted something to the other man.

  Best fifty euros I’ll ever spend?

  That’s what I imagined he remarked, but of course he could just as well have said, not worth the money, you old crook!

  He looked back at me, grabbed his own crotch, said something open to myriad interpretations and laughed.

  It occurred to me that, had the men been English, or even spoken English, what they had done to me would have been even more of an indignity, that the absence of any other mode of communication made using me in this brutish manner the only logical form of communication when two lone men on a deserted island come unexpectedly upon a naked girl. Would two Englishmen or two Americans on an island with an African or Oriental girl have behaved the same way? I think they probably would.

  As I had already construed, my nudity was an open invitation few men would have turned down, my breasts with prominent nipples, my saucy bottom that had been slapped by strangers in night clubs on more than one occasion, much to my annoyance and Bobby’s amusement. My own craven, immodest display was bound to get me into trouble, and I must have known that when I threw my sunglasses back on my towel and set off like Christopher Columbus into the unknown.

  Why did the men both beat me before sticking their dicks into my body? Was it to make me more receptive, more submissive to their demands? I knew that there was an erotic side to spanking and corporal punishment, like with anal sex and threesomes, and all girls think about those things. But I would never in a million years have thought it would happen to me. It was weird and worrying that I had been so wet before the man in black released in me that astonishing orgasm. And why now did I feel so energised; so contented?

  The questions ran without answers in a continuous loop through my thoughts. My body hummed like a recharged battery. Sperm trickled down the insides of my legs. The bird that had flown out from the undergrowth returned to its former position as if to show that the world was once more in balance. The man who had fucked me made his way towards one of the fishing boats where he pissed over the flaking paint of the hull. At least he’s well-mannered, I thought. The beachcomber was making his way towards the sheds, each step taking him further away from me.

  I watched the beachcomber. I looked back at the man pissing. This was my chance.

  I turned and ran across the sand into the sea, striking out and swimming in a fast crawl, legs kicking, my body filled with strange energy. I must have been about a hundred yards from shore when it occurred to me that I had crossed the island. I wasn’t swimming back to La Gomera, but out into the empty ocean. Next stop the Statue of Liberty. I paused, treading water, and looked back.

  The men were standing on the beach, eyes shaded like two figures in a still life. I could see tendrils of grey smoke drifting from their mouths. If they were concerned as they smoked their cigarettes, they didn’t show it. They must have known that I would see the futility of this attempt at escape and turn back. If I had tried to circle the island, they would put to sea in the Zodiac that obviously had a functioning outboard.

  My flight had been useless, but I enjoyed it anyway. I had made a show of courage and independence. The salt water washed the old beachcomber’s piss from my body and douched the other man’s sperm from my vagina. The sting was fading from the welts across my bottom. I felt clean and revitalised. They were stronger than me. They could hurt me, abuse me, fuck me. But they hadn’t broken me. My time would come, I thought, as I swam lazily back to shore.

  They watched, expressionless, unconcerned. Unless I could steal one of those boats, there was no escape from the island.

  The man in black went back to repairing the outboard on the Zodiac and I followed the other man towards the shed above the dunes. He paused at the entrance and, as he scanned the horizon, I couldn’t help wondering if, when I had been swimming out to sea, the two men hadn’t been observing me at all, but were watching the horizon for the same illusive something the man who’d captured me seemed to have been looking for when we paused earlier at the tower. That illusive something on the sea could only be a boat and again I felt confident that help was on the way.

  I looked up at the sky. The sun was still immobile. It had seemed as if a lifetime had passed since I swam away from La Gomera, but it was probably no more than a few hours, three at the most. It must have been a little after midday when I first saw that speck of rock out in the sea. Now, I was getting hungry and would have adored a late lunch, some grilled prawns and fresh bread with olive oil, a cold glass of white wine, a siesta.

  Inside the shed the smell of fish lingered on the dry air but it was clearly long ago when that shed had last been used by fishermen to sort their catch. Along one wall, supported by posts, was a wide shelf at table height. Below the shelf, flat wooden crates were stacked up, the sides stamped with the curlicue lettering of an alphabet I had never seen before; Arabic, perhaps, although it could have been from the language of the people who must once have lived in the black stone huts beyond the bay.

  All along the shelf, like a display in a museum, were hundreds of objects that had washed ashore, wooden chests, some ancient with engraved brass stays and locks; porcelain cups, aluminium candlesticks, oil lamps; a painting I was sure was the work of Picasso; plastic and alabaster figures, toy soldiers; a spear, a bow, a quiver of arrows. There was a big copper kettle ornamented in brass – Russian, I thought; some small barrels marked Jerez and bottles like strange works of art in various shapes and shades, the glass glistening in the light angling through the plastic sheeting. Above the display on a narrow shelf where knives and gutting tools would no doubt have once been kept, was a line of china dolls and rubber dolls, mostly naked, their blue and green and brown unblinking eyes following me as I moved along the exhibit.

  At the far end of the shelf was an arrangement of sea shells, judiciously chosen and displayed, each with its own colouring and contours, unique like fingerprints. The beachcomber unpacked the conch from his bag and the way he set it down and moved it fractionally for best effect showed a sensitivity that was all the more surprising seeing how after sucking his cock he had pissed on me.

  He turned back from the display with a look of pride and for some reason I smiled. He said something, his expression like a painter at a gallery opening, and seemed to appreciate my nod of approval.

  ‘You’re a genius,’ I said, and he revealed his row of brown broken teeth as he grinned.

  From the shelf above the display, he found a length of leather thong and removed the pendant from his tunic. As he fastened the pendant around his neck, I noticed that it was a gold coin with the raised head of what looked like a conquistador. He saw that I was studying the medallion and repeated that gesture with his thumb and fingers to show that it was worth a lot more than 50 euros.

  On the other side of the shed, some stone blocks taken, I suspected, from the abandoned huts, had been set up to create a hearth. On the wall, among a heap of blackened pots and wooden spoons, was a calendar from the year 2000 showing, of all things, a photograph of the Twin Towers in New York, and I remembered being 13 and starting at senior school, the new millennium arriving with its uncertainty and symbolism. The picture of the towers seemed prophetic in that shed somewhere off the coast of Africa and I wondered if in being there – hanging from a rusty nail – there was some significance other
than expressing for the beachcomber an enduring idea of home.

  As he broke kindling to light a fire, he noticed there was insufficient wood and, fluttering his hand, sent me out to collect more. As I made my way towards the exit, he called and pointed at the sacking bag. His body language as he spoke reminded me of my mother and seemed to say think before you act, or look before you leap, as she was always telling me.

  After being inside the shed, the light outside was brilliant and I missed my sunglasses; I missed my sunglasses more than I missed my clothes. The bay was littered with wood and, as I filled the bag, I was overwhelmed once more by conflicting emotions. I should have been neurotic and trembling with fear, but my fear appeared to have gone. I wasn’t exactly happy, that would be an exaggeration, but neither was I downcast being there on the beach stretching my limbs, breathing the clean air, the tide receding behind a ring of seaweed humming with tiny flies. That other girl, the one in the denim skirt and red heels, was a million miles away and from out of those cute little costumes of the chrysalis a butterfly had emerged in a suit of new colours; a wild creature being slowly tamed, a naked girl with perspiration glistening on her skin and an inexplicable feeling of contentment in her belly.

  After being bent over the hull of the boat and fucked to a braying climax, it didn’t exactly feel natural walking about naked, but it didn’t seem to matter much either. When I had first set off swimming to the island without wearing a costume, I had felt daring. Then I began to feel ashamed. Now, my shame was vague as I noted that the man in black working on the Evinrude motor didn’t even bother to look at me as I was bending over next to him to gather another piece of wood. After being fucked and beaten, nothing worse could happen. I wasn’t safe. But I didn’t feel as if I were in danger either. I was just being; living in the present without a past and the future uncertain, as the future always is.

  The bag was full and my man in blue looked pleased as I unloaded it next to the fire. He added the wood to the flames, placed a huge metal pot on the improvised grill and poured in water from a large plastic bottle that was new, not washed ashore, and my confidence that a boat would soon be arriving put a spring in my step when the man waved me back out to collect more wood.

  On the far side of the fishing boat furthest from the shed, the hull was torn open and I pulled off some long dry planks, making the hole bigger. I crawled inside with some daft idea that I might find something to help in my escape, but there was nothing there and the big crab that scurried by almost scared me to death. I pushed my way out, took a peep at the man in black, he was still absorbed by the faulty motor, and squatted down to pee, the first chance I’d had to do so in private. I gave myself a little shake, there was no paper, and it was an odd pleasure relieving myself in the open air. The smell of my pee was rich and spicy, and I could understand why boys on country walks were always pulling out their dicks and spraying trees.

  The sky above was clear blue like a sheet of silk. I wriggled my toes in the black sand. I was anxious to return to my old life, even though I knew my old life would never be the same again. I wanted to get away, I was dying to get away, but as I sat at that moment on the sand watching a seagull skimming the surface of the waves, I experienced a complete calm, an inner stillness in absolute contrast to how I should have been feeling. Had a man violated me on La Gomera, I would have been crazed with rage and anger; I would have felt degraded, used, ruined. But here in this unknown place, all rules and certainties had changed, evolved or regressed. Without money, a passport, my mobile, without a stitch of clothing, what mattered wasn’t what these two men thought of me, what I imagined other people may have thought, or what I thought of myself. Like natives who run naked in the jungle, like nomads in primitive times, nothing mattered except survival. I had never faced a real challenge and my determination to survive now made me feel totally alive and living in the present tense.

  I felt my breasts. They were firm, my nipples a deep dark red and jutting out like two hard knuckles. Little spasms were still erupting in my vagina, a pulsing sensation like the sparkles left from fireworks. As I thought about the man gliding into my wet pussy my heart beat faster and the breath caught in my throat. It was specious and shameful. I had been beaten into submission only to discover that there was promiscuous pleasure to be found in being taken against your will.

  It was hard to reconcile the gravity of my situation with my body’s serene response. I was a little English girl with two wild men. They could kill me, weigh me down with stones, feed me to the fish. Whatever they wanted to do to me, I couldn’t stop them. But I knew deep down that all they wanted to do is what men always want to do, and that is treat a woman like an object and fuck her until she screams in ecstasy, her moment of rapture a mark of their virility and power. I was certain every man in every night club in the West End would want to do the same as those two men, and I had made it easy by appearing on the island naked without a word to explain myself in their language.

  My bottom felt warm, not tender, but glowing, a tacit reminder of being flogged. I rolled back and sprang to my feet in one flowing motion. I twisted round, brushed away the sand, and the six red stripes that marked my flesh appeared like a stigmata, like the brand owners apply to animals and slaves to show who they belong to.

  It was time to go back to work. I filled the bag, collected the strip of cane that had been used on my bottom and carried the load back to the shed with some strips of planking balanced on one shoulder. The man in blue gave me a nod of approval, stoked up the fire, and I watched as he pulled vegetables from sacks and diced them in swift, practised movements. There were green peppers, heads of garlic, onions, tomatoes, corn on the cob and some long misshapen roots. He tossed the corn husks into the fire but nothing else was wasted, peel and seeds, everything went into a big iron skillet with some oil and a pinch of red pepper from a jar. The smell soon rising into the air reminded me that I was starving.

  He gave me a wooden spoon and I stirred the rice boiling in the big pot. There was sufficient food to feed a small army and I wanted to ask why we were was cooking so much, why he had pissed on me, why he had stopped the other man beating me after three blows from that cane I now fed with pointless triumph into the fire. I had a desire to talk, but had no language in which to do so, and anyway my companion was content humming to himself as he turned the vegetables in the skillet. I hummed, too, finding his tune, and he jiggled his shoulders rhythmically as he glanced at me, his expression that of a parent happy to be working with his child. We hummed together as if without a care in the world, smoke filling the fish shed, and I couldn’t recall ever having gone so long without talking.

  At work, we didn’t read the books we promoted. We read the synopses, we leafed through the author profiles, and we chatted over cappuccinos with cinnamon buns and almond croissants. P.R. is all talk, talk, talk; my life was a whirlpool of tittle-tattle and chatter. Everyone was hungry for each grubby little crumb of gossip and rumour, drawing it corrosively into our souls from the mouths of friends, the radio, magazines, the newspaper where Bobby worked. We were talking without listening to each other or to that voice inside that must have conveyed me to the Canary Islands, stripped my costume from my limbs and urged me to swim across the ocean from the known to the unknown; from security to danger. I was standing there barefoot and naked beside that man in the scruffy blue tunic because a secret version of myself must have wanted it to be that way.

  He tasted the rice, his expression saying it was nearly done. It was then that we heard the roar of an engine and it seemed as if the relief felt by the man cooking was contagious and I felt it too; everything was progressing as it should, the food would soon be on the table, the machine was working; within the confines of my present existence, harmony had been restored.

  We rushed outside. The man in black looked pleased, but he didn’t punch the air as do game-show contestants when they answer some inane question or tennis players when they score a point. It was just as well, as
the engine immediately spluttered and died. The man called, my companion tapped my bottom with the flat of his hand, and I ran down the beach to see what was wanted. The mechanic turned the key again, the engine fired and, conversing in sign language, while I nursed the throttle, easing the rubber grip back and forth, he ducked under the engine cowling with a screwdriver and made adjustments until the motor was running smoothly. He stood straight, waiting for a few moments, looking intently at the engine, then closed the clasp on the cowling. He said something, his voice sharp, then made scissors with two fingers and pointed at his eyes so that I watched as he turned off the engine, unhooked the orange cable holding the key and slung the cable around his neck.

  Perhaps he had bought me for 50 euros and as my new owner was making sure I understood that there was no escape.

  I followed him back up the beach. In the shed there were two plastic jerry cans filled with gasoline. He shoved a pole through the two handles and we carried them together, one at each end. I was at the front and could feel his eyes on my back, on the red welts he’d placed on my bottom with the cane since turned to ash in the flames. We put one of the plastic containers in the boat he had just repaired. When we placed the can in the other boat further down the beach, he went through the same ritual, pointing at his eyes, removing the key and hanging it on the cord around his neck.

  ‘Yes, dear, I got the point the first time,’ I said, and he stared at me until I looked away.

  The tide had receded far out beyond the bay and a strip of black sand stretched around us like a velvet band of the sort I wore during my preppy period before university. We ambled down to the water’s edge where crabs were emerging from the hard sand. We stared out to sea. He grinned and pointed.

  I could just make out the shape of a boat heading towards us from a point at the centre of the horizon. The man shaded his eyes and glanced up at the sun as if to judge how long it was going to be before the boat arrived. He wasn’t wearing a watch and I imagined his life was driven by the motions of the sun and moon, the stars and tides, by the forces of nature, that the way he had beaten and penetrated me was a demonstration of passion more than violence. He said something, then rubbed his stomach, asking it seemed if I were hungry, and I nodded eagerly. Like the older man, in his eyes I saw the expression one might have for a child, a look incompatible with the fact that I was a grown woman and happened to be stark naked.