arrangements for hiring a car, to be ready in front of the hotel at nine the following morning.
Then I got undressed and fell asleep as though I’d been sandbagged.
IV
At nine-fifteen next morning I was threading my way out of San Martin in a fire-engine-red Ford Mustang with an automatic shift that I didn’t like. I prefer to change gear in a car when I want to, and not when a set of cogs thinks I should. Maybe I’m old-fashioned.
The road took me out along the coast for a way and through the outskirts of what was evidently a high-life area. Large and expensive-looking houses were set discreetly away from the road, some of them surrounded by high walls, and there were some plushy hotels with turquoise swimming pools of all shapes except rectangular. Those of the pools that I could see were surrounded by acres of bare skin, all tanning nicely. Here and there, uniformed waiters scurried around the poolsides with the first rum-and-coconut-milk of the day. La dolce vita, Caribbean-style.
I drove slowly, taking it all in. Even at this hour the sun was uncomfortably hot and the air pressed heavily on the open-top Mustang. Presently the road turned away from the sea and began to climb into a hilly and wooded area. The ambiance changed and the air cooled a little as I went inland. There were fewer white faces and more black, fewer bikinis and more cotton shifts, less concrete and glass and more corrugated iron. The tourists stuck close to the sea.
The landscape seemed poorly adaptable for agriculture. A thin soil clung to the bones of the hills but there were naked outcrops of limestone showing where the ground had eroded. Most of the afforested land was covered by a growth of spindly trees, which couldn’t be of any economic significance, but occasional clearings opened up in which crops were apparently grown.
Nearly every clearing had its shacks – usually of the ubiquitous corrugated iron, although beaten-out kerosene tins were also to be seen. Around each shack were the children, meagrely dressed and grinning impudently as they waved at the car and shouted in shrill voices. I passed though a succession of villages, all with rudimentary church and classroom. The churches were marginally better built than the classrooms, which tended towards the shanty school of architecture, each with its dusty, pathetic area of playground.
As I came over the central ridge of the island, I pulled off the road and looked north towards the distant glint of the sea. Close by, a couple of Campanillans were hoeing a field and planting some sort of crop. I got out of the car and walked over to them. ‘Am I on the right way to El Cerco?’
They stopped and looked at me, then the bigger one said, ‘That’s right, man.’ His face was beaded with sweat. ‘Just keep going.’
‘Thanks.’ I looked at the ground by his feet. ‘What are you planting?’
‘Corn.’ He paused. ‘You’d call it maize.’ His accent wasn’t the usual Campanillan drawl; he enunciated each consonant clearly. He didn’t sound like your average peasant.
‘It’s hot,’ I said, and took out a packet of fat, imported American cigarettes that I’d picked up on the plane.
He gave me a pitying smile. ‘Not hot yet. Still winter.’
I tapped out a cigarette, then offered him the packet. ‘Smoke?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘Thanks, man,’ and took a cigarette. The other man, older and with a seamed, lived-in face, ducked his head as he took one with gnarled fingers.
I took out my lighter and we lit up. ‘This is a very nice island.’
The younger man stabbed his mattock into the ground with a sudden violence that made the muscles writhe in his brawny arm. ‘Some think so.’
‘But not you?’
‘Would you like it if you were me, mister?’ he asked.
I looked around at the arid field and shook my head. ‘Probably not.’
He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘You going to El Cerco? The Salton place?’
‘That’s right.’
‘If you see Mrs Salton, you tell her McKittrick said hello.’
‘Are you McKittrick?’
He nodded. ‘Tell her I was sorry about Mr Salton.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ I said. ‘Do you know her well?’
He laughed. ‘She probably won’t remember me.’ He took the cigarette and delicately nipped away the coal before dropping the stub into his shirt pocket. ‘People forget.’ He tugged the mattock out of the dust. ‘This isn’t getting the corn planted.’
‘I’ll pass on your message,’ I said.
McKittrick made no answer but turned his back and bent to draw a furrow in the ground. I hesitated for a moment and then went back to the car.
I knew immediately what Jackson had meant about invitations when I arrived at El Cerco. I looked at the strong, meshed cyclone fence set on steel posts and at the two men at the gate. They wore what might or might not have been a uniform and, although they didn’t seem to carry guns, they looked as though they should have done. One stayed by the gate; the other came up to the car and bent to look at me.
‘My name is Kemp,’ I said. ‘Mrs Salton is expecting me.’
He straightened up, consulted a sheet of paper which he took from his pocket, and nodded. ‘You’re expected at the beach, Mr Kemp. The boat is waiting for you.’ He waved at the other man, who opened the gate.
What boat?
I found out about two hundred yards down the road the other side of the gate, where the asphalt curved into a bend giving a view over the sea. El Cerco was breathtaking. The natural coral formation was a perfect circle about three-quarters of a mile in diameter. Outside, the steady trade wind heaped up waves which crashed on to the coral, sending up spouts of foam, but inside that magic circle the water was smooth and calm.
Right in the centre was a small island, not more than a hundred yards across, and on it was a building, a many-planed structure that curved and nestled close to the ground on which it was built. It seemed as though David Salton had created his own Shangri-la. It was a pity he wasn’t around to enjoy it.
I drove on down the road, which descended steeply in a series of hairpin bends until it came to the edge of the lagoon. There was another house here and a row of garages with a big boathouse at the water’s edge. A man was waiting for me. He waved the car into a garage and when I came out he said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp,’ and led me to a jetty where a fast-looking motor launch was moored. Less than five minutes later I stepped ashore on the island in the middle of El Cerco.
An elderly servant stood in attendance. He had grey hair and wore a white coat – a typical Caribbean waiter. When he spoke I thought I recognised the voice I had heard on the telephone when I called the previous day. He said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp … sir.’ There was just the right pause to make the insolence detectable but not enough to complain about. I grinned at the thought that the staff didn’t like being ticked off by strangers.
The house had been designed
