The Far Side of the Sun Read online

  “Hello, Reggie, old chap, how are things up in the hallowed halls of Government House? Have you heard the latest?”

  Ella turned to find a sunburned man with a vast ginger handlebar moustache greeting her husband.

  “Ella, this is Wing Commander Knightley. He’s been keeping the duke up-to-date on the new intake at the Operational Training Unit at Oakes Field. They’re a group from Czechoslovakia, I hear.”

  “Good evening, Wing Commander,” Ella said.

  Beside him stood two men. One was extremely tall and dark, a stylish figure with a pointed little beard, acutely aware of his own attraction. This was Freddie de Marigny, who possessed a swarthy complexion and all the confidence of a man who has recently married the teenage daughter of one of the world’s richest men, Sir Harry Oakes. Terms like “fortune hunter” and “cradle snatcher” always trailed in Freddie’s wake.

  “Hello, Hector,” Ella said to the second man, and he kissed her cheek warmly.

  “Good evening, Ella. A great turnout. Congratulations.”

  “We must thank Tilly for that.”

  Hector Latcham was the husband of Ella’s good friend Tilly. She was the one who had persuaded Ella to march into the air base at Oakes Field and suggest that all the men should buy tickets for a chance to dance with the duchess this evening. The fact that the duchess hadn’t turned up hadn’t disturbed Tilly in the slightest and she stepped into the breach herself.

  “So what’s the latest?” Reggie asked the wing commander.

  “We’ve had a report that U-boats have been withdrawn from the Atlantic.”

  “That’s great news, if it’s true.”

  “They’re being pulled back to counter the possibility of an Allied invasion of Europe. That means we can free up planes from patrolling the ocean for enemy submarines.”

  “God knows,” Reggie said, “those aircraft are badly needed in the Far East.”

  “About time we had some good news from your lot, Knightley.” Freddie de Marigny smiled, flashing his extraordinarily white teeth. He clapped the wing commander on the back. “But I hope it doesn’t mean you’ll be reducing military numbers on New Providence Island. We need you chaps to keep our economy going.”

  “On the contrary,” Knightley assured him politely, though he clearly didn’t care to be touched by the likes of Freddie, “we will be instructing more aircrews than ever.”

  The RAF had selected the Bahamas as a training air base because of its uninterrupted blue skies. There was no fear that the B-24 Liberator bombers would be shot down by German intruders. Planes were constantly flying into Windsor Field from America before being ferried across the Atlantic to the war in Europe and Africa. It was something the island was proud of, this essential role in the war effort. The sight of RAF uniforms thronging the streets gave the islanders a sense of pride, so that Bahamians queued to sign up on the dotted line to become a part of it.

  Ella left the men to their war talk and their cigars, and circulated among the crowd. She greeted friends and stopped to talk with any serviceman who seemed at a loss, but it was only when she reached the dance floor that she managed to track down Tilly. Tilly Latcham was a tall striking woman with dark elaborately waved hair and tonight she was wearing a dramatic burgundy gown with milky pearls gleaming at her throat. But her expression was one of acute misery. She was clutched in the arms of a short pilot officer with two left feet who was singing blithely along with the band and kept bumping into other couples.

  “Tilly!”

  Tilly rolled her eyes with relief and bolted off the dance floor. “Darling, where have you been? You’re late.”

  “I’m sorry, but Reggie had a flap on up at Government House and was wretchedly late home.”

  “Then I forgive you.”

  She kissed Ella’s cheek. There was a softness to the edges of her usually crisp words. Tilly had been drinking more than just a cocktail or two.

  “Go and sit this one out, Tilly. You’ve done your duty.” She gave her a mock salute. “I’ll take over your mission here.”

  Tilly laughed, her scarlet mouth relaxing. “You are a lifesaver, darling.” She gave a shiver and added, “Talking of lifesaving, how is your family back home?”

  Ella’s parents over in England lived in the Kent countryside under the flight path of the German bombers’ nightly run into London and their house had recently been hit. Damn rotten luck. But thank God they—unlike their poor house—escaped with no more than minor injuries.

  “Tilly,” she said firmly, “go and sit this one out. And that’s an order.”

  “Is the duke here yet?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Oh,” Tilly said. “Drat.”

  “He’ll probably drift in later, don’t worry. You’ll get your dance with him, I’m sure.”

  Tilly grinned. “Especially as she is not here.”

  “Behave yourself.” Ella laughed and turned back to the matter of Tilly’s abandoned airman. “Now, Mr. Pilot Officer, here I come.”

  She scooped him up from where he was hovering uncertainly on the edge of the dancing and twirled him expertly across the floor.

  * * *

  “Had enough?”

  Ella turned at the sound of his voice. She was standing at the bottom of the terrace just where it spilled down onto the beach, and was staring out at the vast blackness of the sea in front of her. She liked the nights best. That was when she felt the island cast off its dazzling daytime mask and let its true self emerge under the cloak of darkness. She could sense its quick hot breath on her neck, and hear the pad of its feet as it reclaimed its beaches from its colonial overlords. Only at night could she smell the sweet scent of its ancient hardwood trees that had been stripped from the island for shipbuilding. Pines and palms and the ghostly casuarinas remained in abundance, but the island remembered its hardwoods. The island forgot nothing.

  Long ago the Lucayan people had lived peacefully among the seven hundred islands of the Bahamas for hundreds of years, but they were ousted by the Spanish after Christopher Columbus discovered the islands in 1492. From then on, the Spanish, the British, and the freebooting pirates spent years slitting each other’s throats over possession of these lush islands with their natural harbors and secret cays. They became a crown colony of Britain in 1717, but even now, at night when the masters of the Empire slept, New Providence Island released its sounds and smells and breathed in the wild scent of the sea.

  “Had enough?”

  “Good evening, Your Royal Highness. Just taking a breath of air. It’s hot in there.”

  “It’s good to see the men enjoying themselves. You are to be congratulated, Ella.”

  “Thank you.”

  “A great boost to our Spitfire Fund.”

  “To the men’s morale as well, I hope.”

  “Yes, you only have to look at their faces. A grand job.”

  The Duke of Windsor stood beside her in the warm semidarkness, the lights of the elegant terrace and the brightly lit hotel behind them. He was a slight man, no taller than Ella, with soft fair hair and a face that managed to look boyish despite being deeply lined. Ella wondered why he was out here instead of carousing inside. Everyone knew that the duke liked to party. They lapsed into silence while he offered Ella a cigarette and lit one for her and one for himself, inhaling with satisfaction.

  “How is the duchess?” Ella asked. The terrace lights caught the edge of the surf on the beach and turned it into lace.

  “She is indisposed, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry. Give her my best wishes for recovery.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  If the duchess was “indisposed,” it usually meant her stomach ulcer was playing up, although she had commented to Ella the other day that it had been much better recently. Maybe she just didn’t want to dance with air
men. Or just had something better to do. The Duchess of Windsor was a secretive person and there was much that went on behind her intelligent violet-blue eyes that she didn’t divulge. Ella thought the duke always looked a little lost without her.

  “Is your husband here?”

  “Yes, Reggie’s inside.”

  “I might have a word later.”

  She wanted to say, Keep your demands away from my husband tonight, let him relax. Isn’t it enough that you suck him dry each day at work? Can’t you rely on yourself instead of on him?

  But she didn’t say it. No one ever said it to him. Except the duchess.

  The sound of the breakers on the beach was joined by a sudden roar overhead as a formation of bombers set off to train the new recruits in the skills of nighttime maneuvers.

  “Ella, do you like it here?” the duke asked in a sad voice.

  “Of course I do. It’s beautiful.”

  The aircraft droned into the distance.

  “Don’t you?” she asked.

  She knew he longed to be governor of Australia, or of Canada at the very least.

  “Sometimes,” he said, exhaling his frustration into the humid darkness, “I regard these islands as my Elba.”

  Elba? Napoleon’s place of exile. The hubris of his pronouncement took Ella’s breath away. Did he think he was that important? She shivered and moved to go back indoors, but with a sudden display of charm he took her arm through his and smiled engagingly.

  “Come, Mrs. Sanford, let us have the next dance.”

  Chapter 3

  Dodie

  Dodie’s house lay farther along the coast in the next cay, tucked under a grove of casuarina trees that drooped their long green fingers over the sand. It was no more than a wooden shack with one room, a roof of thatched fronds that didn’t leak too often, and two windows that kept constant watch over the ocean. Summer storms were harsh, dramatic, and frequent here, and their ferocity had shocked her at first when she and her father came to this tiny speck in the ocean six years ago.

  She lit the lamp. The oily smell of kerosene rippled through the room and the amber light shuffled the night shadows into dark corners.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  Morrell was lying on the single bed, curled on his side with his arms wrapped around his stomach.

  “All right . . .” His breath came in shallow gasps.

  “Good.”

  Now that she could look at him in the lamplight, she could see that his skin had taken on the same color as the galvanized bucket she had placed beside him, so gray it no longer looked like skin. She didn’t know where to start. Where to touch. Where not to touch. She knelt down beside the bed and tucked a folded clean white towel under his hand on his stomach. He shut his eyes.

  “I owe you,” he muttered.

  His face was heavy-featured under a mass of bushy brown hair, and even with his eyes shut, Dodie could see the toughness of him. But that toughness was crumbling as the pain started to eat away at it. She rested her hand on his cheek and a faint smile touched his lips.

  “What are we to do?” he whispered.

  “You must let me look at the wound.”

  “Leave it.”

  “It needs to be bathed and cleaned.”

  A grunt came in response. His mouth clenched in a tight line.

  “Mr. Morrell, there is a woman who lives not far from here who knows about this kind of thing, she’s good with illness and—”

  “No.”

  “She’s not a doctor or a nurse or anything official. She wouldn’t report you to anyone. Her name is Mama Keel and she knows everything there is to know about herbs and healing, so I could—”

  “No.”

  “—fetch her and she would know what to do to help you. She wouldn’t breathe a word.”

  “No.”

  “I have to, Mr. Morrell, can’t you see? Because I don’t know what to do.”

  His eyes opened a slit. “Do nothing.”

  She started to move but his hand gripped her skirt. “Do you like this woman?” he asked urgently.

  “Yes, she’s—”

  “Do you want her to die?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then tell her to stay clear of me.”

  Dodie felt the hairs rise on the skin of her arms. “Are the people who did this to you so dangerous,” she asked in a stunned voice, “that they would hurt people who help you?”

  His eyes stayed fixed on hers. He nodded.

  She backed away from the bed, fear sharp in her chest. “Very well, Mr. Morrell. No Mama Keel here.”

  “You are quick to understand,” he said with an attempt at a gallant smile, but she could see he was losing strength as fast as the clean towel was losing its whiteness.

  “Mr. Morrell.” She spoke louder, her voice trying to drag him back to her. “I’m going to run over to Mama Keel’s place. To get something for your pain. I will be quick.” She smiled at him brightly. “We both need help if we’re going to get you through this.”

  Before he could reply or seize her skirt again, she had kicked off her shoes and was flying up the beach.

  Chapter 4

  Flynn

  She’s gone.

  To hell with her. She complicated everything.

  The dark figure of Flynn Hudson was crouched at the water’s edge. He watched her run. She was fast as a jackrabbit. He reckoned she must have cat’s eyes in her head, the way she could see in the dark even when the clouds switched off the moonlight.

  It was one of the things he hated about this darned island. The dark. It got to him. It was a world away from what he called darkness in Chicago, where he could flit down unlit rat-infested alleyways and still see where he was going. Here the darkness was so intense it felt like being chucked down a well and having the lid slammed shut on top of you. That kind of dark. Solid and unbreakable. It swallowed her now. As he trailed a hand through the water, he questioned where the girl had gone. At this hour? With blood still wet in the barrow?

  Don’t come back.

  He rose to his feet, his limbs eager to be on the move once more. They didn’t like to stay still, didn’t care to be a sitting target the way Morrell had been. The moon slipped free from the grip of the clouds, making the white sand of the beach glow silver-blue in the moonlight.

  Goddammit, what kind of color was that?

  A color he’d never seen before in his twenty-four years, but in the weird light he could see the shack up on its little plot of scrub, clear as fresh spit. A minute or two was all he had, he reckoned. The jackrabbit could come skidding back at any moment.

  He moved forward, conspicuous on the beach now. His thoughts were leaping ahead of him, unleashed. He could almost see their footprints in the sand.

  Chapter 5

  Dodie

  Mama Keel’s cabin was perched alone on a rocky stretch of land and showed no lights, but Dodie could hear the soft crooning of an island song somewhere inside. Everyone knew Mama Keel never slept.

  “Mama Keel,” she whispered, and tapped on the door.

  It shifted on its rusty hinges, in no hurry to get itself open. Behind it stood Mama Keel, a broad smile of welcome on the strong bones of her face before she even knew who it was who had turned up on her doorstep in the dead of night. In her arms lay a sleepy-eyed infant.

  “Well now, Dodie, you look mighty het up.” She stepped back into the darkened room at once and pulled a box of matches from her dressing gown pocket. “Come in.” She lit a lamp, keeping its flame low, and when she turned to look at Dodie a stillness settled on her.

  “Oh my Lordy, girl,” was all she said.

  “Mama Keel, I need help.”

  “You is covered in blood, child.”

  “It’s not mine.”

 
“I’m real glad to hear that. Whose is it?”

  “A stranger’s. I found him in the street on my way home.”

  Mama nodded and half closed her purple-black eyes, as if peering at something only her own gaze could see in the dim light. Her long stringbean of a body in its tattered old dressing gown seemed to grow very still, and Dodie had no idea what she was imagining. The wound maybe? The blood spilling from it? No one knew what went on inside Mama Keel’s head under that tangle of wild gray hair.

  The main room was plainly furnished—handmade seats, a table, a cupboard—everything strictly functional, except for a colorful decoration of bird feathers suspended on a rattan thread that zigzagged back and forth across the ceiling. Mama Keel’s black skin gleamed in the lamplight and a calmness radiated from her that steadied Dodie’s breathing.

  “Mama Keel?”

  The woman blinked.

  “He’s been stabbed,” Dodie told her. Her voice sounded strange and unfamiliar.

  Immediately Mama Keel eased the sleeping child onto a rug that lay in a cardboard box in one corner of the room, scooting a gray cat out of it first with her foot. “Joseph!” she called softly. A door opened and a gangly white youth in his teens emerged from a back room. He was wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts and his fair hair was ruffled into spikes from sleep, but his eyes shot wide open at the sight of Dodie.

  “Don’t stare, boy, it’s bad manners,” Mama Keel said briskly. “Just a splash of blood. Here, take Elysia for me.”

  The boy ducked his head, scooped up the cardboard box, and vanished. Dodie looked down at the scarlet stains embedded thickly under her fingernails and at the streaks of blood over her waitress uniform. What kind of man did this? Pushed a blade into another man’s flesh. Cold hard sorrow rose up in her and she opened her mouth to speak, but no sound emerged. She raised her hand to her cheek and found her fingers cold as ice.

  “Sit down, Dodie.”

  “I have to get back. He’s waiting for me.”

  Mama Keel spent a moment resting a warm comforting hand on Dodie’s shoulder, then abruptly she was all movement, gathering pots and packets and jars of strange-smelling liquids. She thrust a tin mug into Dodie’s hands with the command “Drink it,” and Dodie did so, though it tasted bitter and felt as if it stripped enamel from her teeth. When she saw Mama Keel wrap a scarf around her head and tip the herbs and potions into a straw basket, she laid a firm hand on the basket’s handle herself.