Free Blessed Isle by Alex Beecroft Page A

possession of enough of a corpse to handle the sails. Seizing a sudden opportunity to escape, I had dived off into the sea, their insubstantial hands clutching at me. So when I opened my gritty eyes to find myself washed ashore on a dingy pumice beach, I thought at first I was still asleep.
But the waves tickling up my body were exquisitely cool, like a mouthful of elderflower iced-cream, sweet and fresh and clean. I breathed in and felt the air move unobstructed in my chest. Splinters of coral dug me in the buttocks with edges like shattered glass. If this was a dream, it was altogether more embodied than I was used to.
With much labour I turned my head, my spine having been replaced by seaweed and my flesh with jelly. There lay Harry, quite exhausted, his mouth hanging open and holes in his stockings. No hat, no shoes. Urchin-like, bruised about the face. The sun shone yellow on his umber stubble and his closed eyes. Even fast asleep, he looked thoughtful, sceptical, and sad. I used to wonder in those days whether he was capable of joy at all.
Beyond him, the sun shone like adamant on a lagoon the unnatural, iridescent blue of a peacock feather’s eye. Through the dazzling light and colour there lazily sailed towards us the black, triangular tip of a cruising shark’s fin.
I don’t know how we got up the beach, both of us so spent, but you can be assured we did. And fast—stumbling and falling and dragging one another up, out, away from the water. After perhaps five feet, the beach gave way to moss. Dwarf trees rustled about our waists and the light danced in gold-green stars upon our feet. Harry clutched my upper arms as we fell down together for the final time. “You . . .” he gasped. “You . . .!” A wild glitter of the eyes and then he lunged forward and crushed me, his hands knotting painfully in my hair as he sobbed into my neck. I, being weak and ill and not immune to sentiment, began to cry as well. Partly because I felt so dreadful, partly because of everything we had lost. Mostly, I believe, simply because he had begun it and I could not stop.
If you think this was unmanly, dear reader, I challenge you to do better under similar circumstances.
We shared what must have been the world’s dampest kiss—tears and seawater and snot between us as I held onto his ears for comfort. We shifted closer, little by tired little until we were lying entangled. Then we slept in the dappled sunshine for a day and a half.
When we woke, that first morning, we made love. Nothing needed to be said; we both understood it would happen as soon as we had the physical resources to allow it. It was sweet and weary and gentle, just kisses and the stroke of calloused palms. Afterwards I held Harry tight and mourned for all the things he had had to lose to make this possible. I wished I had the power to give his prudishness and his confidence and his career back to him. And in a petty part of myself, I wished he might have come to me despite them, instead of needing to be ruined first. But I will say that holding on to him afterwards, in the warm glow and satisfaction of coitus, I entertained the inexcusable thought that the past months had been worth it.
Thus began our eight months as castaways. For such a long time, there’s little to tell of it. Well, it was a little place. The main island lay like a sausage curled in a pan, somewhat less than a mile long, and narrow. Five minutes’ walk across, and nowhere was it possible to get away from the sound of the sea. From the ends of the main island curled causeways of sand and rock, underwater at high tide, but perfectly dry at low, and if one faced the lagoon, at the end of the left-hand causeway lay two smaller wooded isles. I estimate perhaps a hundred acres of green land, all in all. A hundred and fifty if one counted the sandbanks.
The island where we found ourselves proved exceptionally suited to life. The trees were of two sorts, the one with small white flowers the shape of