Five good-sized fish lay on flat stones by the edge of the pool, their glistening sides pulsing with last breaths. One had silvery tiger-stripes on its olive green back – George couldn’t identify it. He sliced off their heads, gutted and filleted them, and wrapped their flesh in banana leaves. That done, he took a stroll into the thickets, located a banderilla tree growing beside a cluster of hibiscus bushes, and began removing the barbs from the tips of the twigs, placing them on banana leaves and carrying the leaves to the perimeter of the camp. He was loading his ninth leaf when Sylvia pushed through the bushes to his side and asked what he was doing.
‘I’m going to rig some booby traps along the trails,’ he said. ‘They won’t do serious damage, but we’ll hear when someone trips them.’
She said nothing, watching him work.
‘Is Peony sleeping?’ he asked.
She nodded and knelt beside him. ‘She’s going to require a lot of care. I’ll do what I can, but . . . I don’t know.’
‘What’s wrong?’
Sylvia shook her head.
‘Tell me,’ George insisted.
‘It’s what happens to beautiful young girls when there’s no one to care for them.’
Recalling the way Peony had looked, it was difficult to think of her as beautiful. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Men. As best I can tell, they’ve been at her since she was eight.’
Sylvia’s voice quavered with emotion and George suspected that her empathy for the girl might be due to a similarity of experience.
‘Men did most of the damage,’ she said. ‘But her mother used her as well.’
George had the impulse to suggest that being sexually abused by one’s mother would have a momentous effect. A centipede crawled onto his ankle – he flicked it off. ‘Did she say whether the Snellings were her parents?’
‘I asked, but she’s not clear about it. She’s hazy about most things. It’s good you brought her here.’ She uprooted a weed. ‘I’m sorry for earlier . . . what I said about you.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘I had no business saying it. You’ve treated me better than most.’ She paused. ‘She saw Griaule’s scale in your kit. I let her keep it, if that suits you.’
‘That’s up to you. It’s yours, after all.’
After a pause she said, ‘Could you sleep somewhere else for a while? Peony’s grateful for what you did, but it would do her a world of good not to sleep at close quarters with a man.’
George mulled this over. ‘I should build a larger shelter, anyway. We could be here for a while. There’s a nice spot by one of the smaller ponds. If I put it there, that should give her enough privacy.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Once I finish with the booby traps, I’ll get started.’
She made as if to stand, but held in a crouch with one hand flat to the ground, and then settled back onto her knees. ‘One more thing. Can I have your shirt? I want to cut it up and make her a halter.’
‘There’s no need to cut it up. It’ll be too big for her, but it’ll do the job.’
‘I thought I might make something for myself to wear, too. I know you like watching my titties, but they’re an encumbrance for me.’
He heard resentment in her tone, but her face remained neutral.
‘You were using it as a carry-all,’ she said. ‘I don’t figure you’ll miss it so much.’
He shrugged out of the shirt and handed it to her. ‘I’d give it a wash first.’
She stood, holding the shirt in both hands. Again he thought she might speak and when she did not he lowered his head and went to twisting banderilla barbs from the twigs.
‘Save me a fish,’ he said.
Worn out by his labors, by emotional tumult, George fell asleep in the partially completed new shelter shortly after dark. He was overtired and slept fitfully, now and again waking to a twinge of strained muscles, conscious of scudding dark clouds that obscured all but thin seams of stars, and of wind rattling the palm thatch, raising a susurrus from the surrounding thickets. During such an interlude a shadow slipped inside the shelter and lay next to him, her fingers spidering across his belly and his groin. He intended to tell her that he was too tired, too sore, but while he was still half-asleep, his senses pleasantly muddled, she took him in her mouth, her tongue doing clever things, finishing him quickly, and then she slipped from the shelter and was gone, leaving him with the impression that the wind and the darkness had conspired to produce a lover whose sensuality was the warm, breathing analogue of the rustling thatch and the sighing thickets. Waking late the next morning, he half-believed it had been a dream or a visitation of some sort until he saw Sylvia beside the pool and she flashed a smile that persuaded him the intimacy had neither been imagined nor supernatural in origin.
