Escape

THE BOAT WAS RUST-COLOURED, probably an old fishing vessel, although it looked

as if it had been patched together from the cannibalised parts of many boats. At

the stern, the flag moving idly on the breeze was from a country I couldn't

identify, the pale configuration on a dark background suggesting the Skull and

Crossbones and making me wonder if on my long swim I had slipped through a

time warp into NeverLand.

The tide had gone out another hundred yards or so and the boat dropped

anchor almost as far again beyond the low-water mark. A spiral of fumes rose up

in a pale corkscrew, the motor booming like a heartbeat that echoed over the sea,

the sound intrusive after the long hours of silence; there was no electricity on the

island, no wailing radios or fizzing neon, no car horns or rowdy crowds.

When the motor died, the fumes dispersed and there was a momentary calm

before the lap of the waves and the night birds continued their song. The sun was

going down, staining the sky orange, but the light lingered and from where I

stood between the two men I could see people emerging on deck, the numbers

swelling until the side of the boat was a wall of bodies like passengers waiting

for a delayed train on the Underground. A white dinghy was lowered over the

side and, while some of the men loaded it with sacks and containers of water,

others climbed one at a time down a rope ladder into the sea.

They waded towards us through waist deep water like survivors from a

shipwreck. They were carrying sports bags, rucksacks, baskets, parcels tied with

twine; I saw one man in a shiny suit and tie balancing a well-travelled suitcase

on his head. As they left the boat, they appeared as silhouettes, one

indistinguishable from the next, but as they drew closer I saw that the people

coming ashore were weary Africans, black as ebony, some with tribal marks

scarred into their cheeks and foreheads, the whites of their eyes vivid in the

fading light.

Behind the men were four women in bright dresses and headscarfs. The first

moved nimbly down the rope ladder. One of the men on board leaned over the deck and dropped an infant into her outstretched arms in the same casual way

that his two companions were lowering sacks to the man in the dinghy. The

other three women were having difficulty negotiating the rope ladder and the

same man climbed down, either to help or hurry them along.

Once they were off the boat, the women moved towards us with the slow

rhythm of buoys bobbing on the tide. When they were closer, I realised that the

three women were pregnant, their great bellies swollen to the point that I thought

one or all of them might at any moment have given birth right there in the sea.

As the men waded ashore, my first thought was that I was the only white

person among those dark-skinned people. Then it struck me like a revelation,

like the sudden lash from a bamboo cane, that I alone was without clothes. Since

the beachcomber had found me, I had been defiled, flogged, fucked and pissed

on. I had been treated abominably, yet the fact that I was naked had gone clean

out of my mind until those tired people in their modest finery wandered across

the sand and flopped exhausted against the dunes.

Most of the men scarcely gave me a glance although others, the younger ones,

the boys, gazed at me as children gaze at television with amazement and wonder.

Was this a glimpse of their dream? Of the future? Did the girls in Europe really

bare their bodies for the newspapers and magazines and parade in the gold-paved

streets half naked? That was the question in their eyes and it made me ask

myself if I, if we, if all of us were lost in surface desires and pleasures, in

materialism and individualism, in the lust for instant reward and gratification.

Was I with my tabloid breasts and blonde curls the symbol of a world gone

wrong? That's how it seemed to me at that moment with the eyes of those black

women sweeping over my body. That it was all my fault, the fault of PR and

advertising and fashion and greed and celebrity gossip, that I, a naked blonde,

was the root of all evil.

I followed the progress of the three pregnant women. They had joined arms

and, as they caught sight of me, they slowed to a standstill and stared in the way

of people confronted by something shocking and inexplicable, a village in

flames; dry river beds; boy soldiers. They studied my hair, my breasts, my long

legs, and they looked into my eyes, their gaze switching from shock to

disappointment and foreboding. If they were going to find naked savages in the

lands of the north, it was hardly the best place to rear their unborn children.

That's what I read in their long pause for reflection. I wanted to explain, to

apologise, to move my uncovered self from their path, but my feet had grown

roots into the sand; I was a hare in headlights mesmerized by their gleaming

eyes. As they finally continued up the beach, I had a vision of the three witches

in Macbeth and recalled their terrible curse. Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

I was cursed. I was lost. I was going nowhere. I wanted to be like those people

with a mission and hope. Those women would have saved every precious penny

over a very long time, years probably, and were leaving Africa in this precarious

way to start a new life. They had timed their journey precisely and, should they

give birth once they arrived in Tenerife or Cadiz or Almeria, their new babies

would be entitled to Spanish citizenship. They would have passports, a future, all

the things we take for granted and I had left behind.

Articles I had read on the black diaspora questioned whether the schools and

health services and work forces could absorb the flood of new immigrants with

new colours and cultures and religions. I had no idea if this was true or not, we

only know what we read and what we conclude through the prism of our own

experience and prejudices. Europe to me seemed to be bursting at the seams,

growing dusty and worn, decaying from within like an apple with a worm at its

core. There must have been countless numbers of people like me anxious to

escape from that world without knowing why or what exactly we were trying to

escape from. It made sense that this subconscious craving to go and be some

place else was echoed across the continents by others, that at heart we are all

nomads travelling in search of something that will never be found and may not

exist.

The women sat together on the dry sand and my attention turned to the white

dinghy soaring over the water, the motor like a slow hand clap getting gradually

louder until the craft glided on to the beach and stopped. The man who stepped

out was dressed in white, a carefully turned turban, leggings, baggy around the

top, tight over his calves, and an embroidered shirt that reached below his waist.

His skin was pale, the colour of ivory piano keys, and in his expression was a

look of surprise he was trying to conceal.

Like the three women, he looked at me, not so much at my nudity, but into my

eyes; he looked away and looked back again. He studied my face as if it were a

puzzle and, unable to unravel the mystery, he shouted impatiently, clicking his

fingers, and the beachcomber hurried towards us, spine bent almost double, his

silky words sounding like a servant's entreaty, each line a refrain ending in the

word sheikh, which I assumed is what the man in white must have been. He was

much younger than the beachcomber, about my age, I thought, clean shaven and

clearly in charge. He had arrived on the beach in the dinghy and stepped out without getting wet while three other men in turbans waded through the sea

behind him.

The man in white fluttered his fingers in a dismissive gesture and stood

watching as I helped the beachcomber unload the dinghy. The sacks weren't so

heavy, but the water came in round containers like you see in offices and

weighed a ton. As I bent to lift those bottles one at a time on to my shoulder, the

sheikh just stared with the vaguely bored expression an employer might show

someone surplus to requirements.

You're fired!

It was a line from an inane television programme that entered my mind like a

magpie in a starling's nest. I shook my head, shaking out the nonsense, and

adjusted the weight of the bottle.

As I picked my way back through the crowd of immigrants to the fishing

shed, my first thought was that the sheikh was annoyed that I was parading

around like some porn star in a skin flick. But, of course, it wasn't that at all. It

wasn't my state of undress that had made him cross, but its potential

consequences. The Africans were being smuggled into Europe. It was illegal,

dangerous, lucrative, I'm sure, and something I should not have been allowed to

witness.

If the people were captured by the authorities when they landed in Spain,

when they described their journey, they would all remember seeing a naked

white girl. When my being missing was reported, as it would be when my two

weeks holiday came to an end, the police and Coast Guard would know where to

begin their search and who exactly they were searching for.

The feeling of optimism I'd had when I first saw the boat on the horizon had

gone. I was in terrible danger. In swimming away from La Gomera without my

costume, I had placed myself in the hands of fate and my fate it seemed was now

inextricably entwined with the man in the white turban. As I came back out of

the shed, I glanced at him again. He was standing there like he owned the world

and, in that warm night, a cold chill ran up my back bone.

We made several trips to unload the provisions from the dinghy into the shed.

The beachcomber lit oil lamps and filled plates with rations of vegetables and

rice. I was taken aback, although I shouldn't have been, and embarrassed, too,

when I was sent out, two plates at a time, to feed the people on the sand. I gave

food to the women first and they watched my every move, the dance of my

blonde curls, the sway of my breasts as I bent to give them the plates, my green

eyes full of desperation and shame.

'Do you speak English?' I whispered. 'Parlez vous Francais?'

I spoke, a woman to women, but it wasn't that they didn't understand, it was as if they didn't hear me at all. They took the food, but behaved as if I were a

ghost, invisible, some demon that might damage their unborn children. I went

back into the shed and returned again with more plates. I spoke to the men, but

the only response I got was a shake of the head, and mostly nothing at all. One

young boy ran his palm over my thigh, but the man at his side pulled his hand

away and, as he glanced nervously at the man in white, I knew my fear of the

sheikh was justified.

When I was making my way back into the shed for the sixth or seventh time,

the woman with the child, a boy of about two, hissed and beckoned me in a soft

melodic voice. From out of her straw basket she produced a folded sarong which

she held in her outstretched hands. She was trying to give it to me. My heart beat

faster. This small act of kindness was more than I could bare. Perhaps this

woman knew what it was like to be a slave.

'I can't,' I said.

The woman stood and opened the sarong. In the remains of the daylight, I

could make out the blue pattern on a white background, the same colours as the

porcelain plate from which I had eaten my own rations before the boat arrived. I

wanted to see this accident of fate, these matching colours, as another link in a

chain, that more than coincidence, destiny was at work and my being there in the

middle of nowhere had some purpose, that I would be delivered from this ordeal

and be a better person after the experience. I would leave PR and join a

voluntary group in Africa, dig wells, feed the hungry. I would do something.

Our eyes met and she smiled. The woman wrapped the material around me,

covering my breasts, tucking it expertly so that it didn't open. The hem of the

sarong reached my knees and, dressed in this unexpected gift, I stopped feeling

like an object, an outsider. I didn't belong. I didn't want to belong. But I didn't

not belong either. The tears that trickled over my cheeks moistened the dry

surface of my heart and filled me with new hope.

'Thank you,' I said.

I continued going back and forth with plates until all the people had been fed.

Enough food remained for the man in white and his three sailors, and I was

impressed that the beachcomber had worked out exactly how much he was going

to need, that there was no waste, that these people had learned to use everything,

to throw away nothing. I stacked the dishes. I thought the beachcomber was

going to instruct me to wash them, but he had something else in mind when he

grabbed one of the oil lamps and crossed the shed to the display of found objects

laid out on the long shelf.

He rooted around for a few minutes and, when he called me, he held in his

palm a St Christopher on a tarnished chain. He hooked it around my neck and stood back, expressionless, studying me in the necklace and sarong as if we were

a couple about to go out to a party. This man was a bully quick to take advantage

of any opportunity; he'd sold me for a fuck for 50 euros, yet he had stopped his

companion from beating me when the man in black was still warming up.

It was all so confusing, so hard to interpret, so foreign. The beachcomber

inhabited a world of harsh realities and constant uncertainty. He survived on

whatever the sea brought to shore. He was primitive, uncompromising and it was

little wonder when he found a naked girl on the beach that he softened her up

with a spanking and used her mouth to unload his semen. If the facts had been

laid out for me in court I would have said guilty with extenuating circumstances,

a conditional discharge, don't do it again.

I was dressed now, my costume completed with a Christian token and again in

this world without language I could only assume one thing: I was with the St

Christopher about to begin a journey.

Outside, the orange light had faded and a few hesitant stars appeared in the sky.

The man in the black turban, the mechanic, joined the three sailors who had

arrived with the sheikh and, in pairs, carried the Zodiacs down to the sea. Two of

them made their way back to the fishing shed to collect containers of water

which they loaded on board with the gasoline cans; the last fresh water and fuel

before the refugees reached Spain.

The sheikh spoke for several minutes to the beachcomber. The older man then

scurried rodent-like among the Africans, fluttering his hands like the wings of a

bird as he urged them down the beach to the boats. The woman who had given

me the sarong lifted her little boy into her arms and, as she hurried behind the

others, the child raised his small hand to wave.

Just the sheikh and I were left in the flickering pool of light made by the oil

lamps ranged along the entrance to the shed. As he approached, I squeezed my

fists tightly together, took a deep breath to slow my pulse and turned to face him.

I drew my hair from my eyes, batted my eyelashes and smiled.

'I swam here from La Gomera,' I said. I spoke slowly and pointed. 'La

Gomera,' I said again, trying emphasise that I belonged somewhere.

He didn't appear to understand what I had said and said something back to me

in the short, hard syllables of what I thought must be Arabic. He stood feet

planted a foot apart, hands on hips in a faintly feminine way. The puzzled look

he had worn earlier had gone from his features and he studied me as you might a

photograph of someone met on holiday whose name you can no longer recall, or

a book jacket that doesn't quite work. You know the design's wrong, and you

know the book's not going to sell, but you don't know why. He moved his head fractionally, taking in the shape of my nose, my lips, my

well-defined shoulders. I was tanned, slender, bright-eyed. I was more at ease

dressed in the sarong, and the butterflies in my tummy I tried to ignore. I held

my spine straight, shoulders back. I was the same height as the man and looked

into his eyes. I spoke slowly.

'Please help me. Por favor. S'il vous plaît.'

His eyes grew more intense. He stared at me, at my lips, as if trying to fathom

these strange words.

'S'il vous plaît,' I tried again. 'I just want to go home.'

It was hopeless. He had no idea what I was saying. And I had no idea what the

beachcomber had told him, what version of the truth he had spun for the sheikh.

Now the man in white did something strange and touching. He reached

forward and stroked my cheekbone. He ran the tips of his fingers over my full

lips, pulling softly at my bottom lip and allowing it to spring back. He stroked

my hair, then the soft pad of his finger traced the circumference of my ear. He

gently squeezed my ear lobe. That same finger ran across the arc of my eyebrow

and back again over my cheek.

He said something and smiled. I smiled back and remembered for some

reason that man I met once at a party who had slowly unzipped the back of my

dress. He had paused, waiting for me to say something, and what I said was "no"

with a giggle that defined me as a girl not a woman.

That day on that unknown island I had grown up. I was a woman with one

weapon.

'Yes,' I said.

He smiled again.

The moment passed. He snapped his fingers and, with a movement of his

head, commanded me to follow. We made our way across the hard sand and

watched the people climbing into the boats. The Zodiacs were built for eight, ten

at a pinch, and 27 people squeezed into those patched vessels with their baskets

and bags, the pregnant women, the man with the suit and tie, the man with his

teenage son, the woman with nothing who had given me the sarong.

As the boats got heavier the Arabs, gripping the handles, moved forward to

allow the sea to take the weight. The man in the black turban glanced at me with

what I thought was a look of complicity as he lifted the two cords containing the

keys over his head. He turned over the first motor. It fired immediately, and he

showed the men on board how to lower the propeller and work the accelerator.

He moved to the other boat, inserted the key and connected the link on the

flexible cord to the hasp on the side of the motor. He paused, to say a prayer, I

assumed, and the engine he had been working on earlier in the day fired briefly, spluttered, then stopped. The people grew tense as he turned it over again. It

didn't sound as if the motor was going to catch, but then it started to run

smoothly and the people on the second boat let out a sigh of relief. There was no

common language among those people and again, like the masons on Babel,

using gestures and signs he explained how to work the craft, the men on board

watching with concentrated expressions.

A half moon had appeared over the horizon and its silvery light made a path

on the sea. The Arabs eased the Zodiacs further from shore, the man designated

as helmsman on each boat lowered the propellers, and the people looked back as

they set off across the black waves to Europe.

We stood there, six men in turbans and me in my St Christopher necklace and

blue sarong. No one spoke. We watched as the rubber boats got smaller, the

sound of the motors faded and the two small vessels vanished into the night.

The calm that descended was total. The sheikh finally spoke and, with a slight

wave of his fingers, the other men made their way back up the beach to the

fishing shed where the last of the food remained in the iron pots.

He turned to me, his dark eyes flashing, difficult to read. He looked as if he

was coming to a decision and it seemed at that moment as if my very life

depended on that decision. The sheikh would have seen the ten red welts on my

backside and must have known who placed them there. The beachcomber would

have told him that he found me washed up on the shore like a conch shell that

belonged to whoever found it first; although, I was certain if that were the case

among these men in turbans, I now belonged to the sheikh. He looked into my

eyes as if he were trying to look inside me, at my soul.

When he smiled, I followed automatically as he made his way around the

ribbon of sand, back the way I had come from the lighthouse. We wove a path

through the dry sandbanks. He paused a couple of times, but continued until he

found what he was looking for. He stepped down into the deep hollow of a dune.

He stretched out his arm and I climbed down to join him.

The sheikh held my shoulders. He stared once more into my eyes, a look that

was long and intense, and, whatever it was he was looking for, if my eyes were

the mirrors of my soul, I prayed that in me he saw no ill will, that I was worth

the risk I might represent from having seen his smuggling operation first hand.

There were no words I could say. No words he would understand. Like the

sheikh, I remained quiet and studied him as he studied me. His eyes were black,

shiny as opals, the moon reflected on the surface in two semi-circles, the stars

above casting a ghostly glow over the landscape. He drew the fold of material

from where it was tucked in the sarong and the garment fell to our feet. He had

already seen me naked, everyone on the beach that night had seen me naked, but still there was something sensual, even poignant in the way that he did this. My

breath caught in my throat. My heart beat faster.

Like a sculptor putting the final touch of polish on a marble figure, he stroked

the side of my neck, my arms, my hips. He ran the tips of his fingers in the fine

grooves defining my ribs before tracing a circle under my breasts. My nipples

sprang out, hard and responsive, demanding attention. I wanted him to take me

in his arms and bite those two flaming buds until they hurt.

But he didn't. Everything he did he did with great tenderness. Unlike the

beachcomber who must have thought it terribly amusing to piss over me, and the

other man who could think of nothing but thrashing me with a cane then taking

me violently over the side of the dinghy, the man in white behaved as if he had

come across a delicacy to enjoy and savour, something rare and precious; a

unicorn, I thought, a fairy queen, Wendy for Peter Pan in this timeless

NeverLand. He moved me to one side of the dune, and stretched the sarong over the sand.

I watched as he unwound his turban and was surprised how long it was, how

intricately coiled. He folded the material and placed it at one end of the sarong.

He removed his shirt, then his leggings, which he placed on top of the turban,

making a pillow. As he turned to me, the pendant around his neck caught my

attention. I studied the gold spider on its golden web and in his expression was

the desire for me to understand its significance.

Just as he had read the contours of my body, I did the same, not because he

demanded that I do so, but because I wanted to. I ran my palms over his

unblemished skin. He was beautiful like a carving with a broad chest, narrow

hips, a small round bottom and a perfectly straight penis that bobbed between us.

I imagined the sheikh was used to being admired as well as being obeyed, that

unlike his companions, he would never have to take a woman against her will.

I held his penis in my hand, drawing the loose flesh gently up and down, up

and down. As I looked back into his eyes I could feel rather than hear his sharp

intake of breath. The pale light sketched shadows over his prominent cheek

bones, his strong, faintly hooked nose, his sensuous lips that I kissed and, as I

did so, he seemed startled as if the kiss burned like fire, as if kissing was a

mystery to him. He moved back momentarily, then pressed forward, his kiss raw

and unformed, a boy's first kiss. I didn't pull away. I slid my palm between our

lips, then cupped his cheeks, holding his head still. Now I kissed him, slowly,

patiently, sucking his bottom lip, running my tongue over his teeth, pressing into

his cheek.

'Slowly. Softly,' I whispered.

Did he understand?

Not my words. Our bodies were finding a common language. As I kissed the

sheikh he kissed me back, finding new positions, new rhythms, new pleasures.

The kiss is the greatest of gifts, uniquely human. A kiss before midnight. A kiss

before dying. The Judas kiss. The kiss of the devil. A big wet smacker beneath

the mistletoe. More can be said with a kiss than a book full of words. We kiss to

say I love you. We kiss the rings of the self-important. The feet of conquerors.

The rich dark earth when we reach the promised land. We kiss babies' cheeks to

soak up their innocence. We kiss the foreheads of loved ones as they begin a

journey. We kiss beautiful strangers in far away places because on hot July

nights with the music of the sea and the stars above your head your lips are

incomplete until they are joined in a kiss.

As we kissed, his penis swelled against my tummy, urgent, throbbing, a little

animal with a will of its own. Breathless, our lips parted. I ran my tongue over

his chin, down his chest and, dropping to my knees, I kissed the head of his

penis. I slid the creature into my mouth. He sighed. He pushed into me, deep and

hard, much too fast, and again I stopped. I pulled at his legs and he lay back on

the sarong like a reclining god in an Oriental temple.

He propped up his head with his hands and watched as I knelt between his

legs, made myself comfortable, and sucked the fine soft head of his penis. I ran

my tongue down the shaft and up again, wetting that smooth column. I sucked

the head and rimmed the groove, teasing all the nerve endings. I wetted the

fragile parchment of his testicles and took his balls one at a time in my mouth,

sucking away as if those buried Easter eggs were the home-made toffee one of

the girls from Cornwall used to bring back to school in a big yellow tin after the

holidays.

Every boy I had ever been out with had managed to get his cock down my

throat, but I had always considered it one-sided, a mixed sense of joy and

conquest for the boy and a bit boring and jaw-aching for me. Never before had I

appreciated the sheer delight of having a man's cock massaging my mouth, the

inside of my cheeks, my jostling tonsils, this love game, this oral exchange, the

male phallus not invading but completing me, filling my throat like the key piece

in a Chinese puzzle. His pulsing cock was vibrating over the membranes and

tissues of my throat, touching my taste buds with its sultry perfume, the slap and

slurp of flesh against flesh like an echo of the tide drifting back into the bay. We

were protected in the oval-shaped dune like seeds in a cocoon, the moon on its

journey, the sheikh's bottom rising from the ground as he pushed and pierced

deeper into the heart of my being. Two men had fucked me that day, but this was

different. The sheikh wanted me, but I wanted him, too, with a feeling of want

I'd never had before. As I felt him tense in pre-climax, I let his cock slip from its hiding place and

stitched a row of kisses over his belly, his chest, his lips. I straddled his neck,

then lowered my drenched pussy over his mouth. He kissed and sucked, he

nudged my clitoris and wormed his tongue deep, deep into the silky cavern of

my pulsating vagina. Girlie liquids seeped from me, a slow continual stream,

warm and piquant, rich and spicy, the scent of sex, the fragrance of some

wondrous fruit being milked. And the thing about being a girl is that the juice

just keeps coming, oozing down the walls of my pussy, over the spread pink

labia like honey from a comb, anointing the sheikh as the sweet stuff spread in a

fine coating over his face.

I felt contractions. My heart was pounding. My breath was trapped in my

throat. I rolled to one side and slid across the sheikh's body to take his penis

back into my mouth, completing the circle, his tongue pushing back into my

vagina, my tongue wrapped about his silken shaft. We rocked to and fro like two

children on a seesaw in the park, up and down, deeper and deeper while the stars

glimmered and the moon climbed higher into the heavens. Sex al fresco. There's

nothing like it.

Our bodies were slippery with perspiration. My pussy continued to leak sweet

nectar into his mouth. I could have remained in that position for the rest of the

night, the rest of my life, but the tempo changed, his body grew tense and my

mouth filled with his sperm, a long pumping gush of creamy liquid that tasted

like fresh yoghurt, like ripe mango, like coconut milk, an exotic salad of

unknown fruits that I gobbled down, slurping and swallowing, greedy for more.

He kept pushing into me, I kept drawing at his cock and, as the last drips drained

into my mouth, I went rigid, released his cock and gasped for air as his meaty

tongue ignited an orgasm that made the sand move beneath the blue sarong. I

cried out as if in pain but the pain was an intense, all-consuming pleasure.

My body was trembling as if in fever. I rolled to one side, arms wrapped

around the sheikh's legs, our bodies dripping, throbbing, electric. I was dizzy.

My head was spinning. Something had happened to me since I crossed the point

of no return on that swim from La Gomera, some truth had turned to a lie, some

unbreakable link had broken, some barrier had been torn down. Freed like a

prisoner from all restraints, like the boys in Lord of the Flies, I had instantly

gone native.

With the beachcomber, after the initial shock of his hand crossing my

backside, I discovered the perverse pleasures of bending over and being

spanked. I had shamefully screamed fuck me, fuck me, fuck me during that

brutal assault by the man in black. The humiliation of being naked on the beach

had transcended to the immaterial by the time the immigrants arrived and only returned when I saw myself through their eyes.

I was lying there now cosy and satiated, ripe like an animal in heat with a

stranger who held over me the power of life and death.

The reverberations from that orgasm echoed through my womb. I panted for

breath. I was staring up at the sky and, in the movement of the stars I was struck

with sudden insight. It was a Zen moment.

I had a plan.

I untangled myself from the sheikh and he seemed content when I began to

massage his feet, pressing my thumbs into the arches, pulling each little toe. I

rubbed his shins, his thighs, his chest. I urged him to roll over and he did so after

a moment's hesitation, a moment's doubt, a moment when he remembered that

no woman ever commanded him to do anything, that women were there to obey

and serve.

He looked back at me, then buried his head as I sat astride his waist and

pressed the heels of my hands in a slow dance up the his back. There was no

tension in those strong muscles, but like a cat being stroked he wriggled and

writhed. I massaged his neck, his head, and I rolled him back over again. I kissed

his nose, his lips, his chin and by the time I moved slowly down his torso, the

little creature awoke from his slumbers ready to play again.

'You are a clever boy,' I said, and planted a friendly kiss on the winking eye

of his helmet.

'Shush,' he replied, and I gave it a good shake to remind him that while he

was the boss, I had power over the little sheikh between his legs.

It was nice taking it small and limp into my mouth and feeling the blood race

back into the thickening shaft. Up and down, sucking toffee, biting and nibbling,

teasing the eye of the needle. I adored this smooth rod of flesh. I was going to

dream about it on long winter nights when I awoke with Bobby, or some

replacement Bobby, in my cold bed in the shoebox garden flat at the down-at-

heel end of Fulham. Up and down. Getting harder. The 14 bus. The bars and

shops. Lick and suck. The cappuccino, comfort food, the unfinished croissant. I

dribbled spittle over that stiffening cock and like a doctor beating life back into a

still heart I beat the wet flesh up and down, up and down until the spring was

rewound and it was fully charged and ready to go.

Sucking for breath, slithering up his body like a snake, pussy slippery as a

fish, his cock glided into me like a kite through warm air; a stiletto through

nylon; a knife through water. It's just so nice fucking after a really colossal

orgasm. There's no hurry. No urgency. Nothing to prove. You slide up and down

that oiled column of flesh like it's a piston in some marvellous machine, a

lightning rod, the mast of a sailing ship. You roll over so he's on top, pushing in further, deeper, like a missionary with a duty to perform, rolling back again, his

knees raised, feet pushing into the sand, the sarong coiled in a ball, his eyes

gleaming like black gold.

You can feel it coming again. He's coming again. His neck is thrown back.

His body tenses. He's leaking sweat that smells of roses. He's thrusting hard.

He's trying to reach something just out of reach. He's an athlete going for gold,

a man attempting the pole vault. The bar is set high, higher than he's ever been

before. He's making that last run, breath short and sharp, loud and clear. He's

going faster, his body a concentrated fission of nuclear energy. He digs the pole

deep in the groove, he throws himself into the air and he makes it.

He makes it.

'Agh, agh, agh.'

His hot come spurts in short jabs over the saturated canal of my burning

pussy. His face distorts with tension, ecstasy, relief, too. As he has reached up

for something out of reach. I reach down and find a little lost orgasm like a baby

kitten which I nurse until a dribble of milky sap slips over my thighs. I can at

that moment imagine nothing more wonderful than being a girl.

The stars when I roll over have realigned.

The world is on course. The moon is in Mercury, messenger of the Gods,

fleet-footed. The young sheikh remains on his back, breath gradually slowing

and growing even. I kiss his neck. Snuggle at his side. With one hand, he unrolls

the balled up sarong and brushes it down over us, hiding our nudity from the

eyes of the night.

The drum of his breath fades until I can't hear it any more. His heart and his

pulse beat in silence like a digital clock. He is a man. A satisfied man. And what

satisfied men do after two orgasms is they stretch their backs, they roll on to

their sides, they raise their legs like giant foetuses and, sated, like tired little

boys, they fall fast sleep.

I am wide awake, my heart pounding like footsteps in a hollow corridor, ears

cocked listening as his hushed breath grows louder again, catches and resounds

in a sigh of contentment. He burrows into the sand. I kiss his arm. He doesn't

feel it. He is lost in his dreams as I roll from his side and remain motionless

against the edge of the dune staring up at the sky. I close my eyes and count to

one hundred. I wait. I listen for his breath and hear that same long rumble of

satisfaction.

Men are exhausted after fucking. Girls are rejuvenated. They want to go out

and dance, drink, laugh, kiss, kick off their shoes. My body was filled with

carbohydrates and male sperm, an energy drink that warmed my blood as I

climbed out of the dune and raced across the sand towards the path that led up to the old lighthouse. I moved like a city fox, my feet barely touching the ground.

The cactuses were deformed ogres with spines shining like blades in the

moonlight. One of those monsters took a nip at my arm. I spat on my fingers,

rubbed at the wound and kept going.

The air swirling around the tower tasted of old dust and long memories. I

crossed the peak and, as I began to descend towards the far shore, the stars

seemed to fade and the night grew darker. I remembered the razor shells and

fossilised starfish that littered the beach and picked my way as carefully as I

could over the dunes to the sea.

I paused on the shore, catching my breath, the tide lapping at my feet. I

glanced back across the hillside. There was no movement. The sheikh was

sleeping still. The tall palms along the beach could have been a corps de ballet,

black swans with arms moving imperceptibly. Ahead, the waves spread as far as

I could see, vanishing invisibly into the sky.

You can do it. You can do it.

It had probably taken me about forty minutes to swim to the island. At the half

way point going back, I expected to see the lights on La Gomera. When I saw

the lights, I would be home and dry.

You can do it.

I strode into the surf, plunged in and the sea chilled the nervous sweat coating

my damp on my body. I emerged for breath and warmed myself striking out in a

fast crawl before switching to the less demanding breast stroke, conserving

energy. This isn't a race, I kept telling myself. Don't panic, keep your eye on the

same spot on the horizon and keep going, one breath, one stroke, another few

yards between the island and safety.

Having swum across the strait during the day, I knew I had the strength to

make it back. But at night with nothing before me except the long march of the

waves, I began to fear that I might get lost. I knew in the desert when people

thought they were going in a straight line they eventually walked in a circle. Was

it the same at sea? I didn't know. All I could do was rise over each swell of the

ocean and press on into the next. The wind whipped the surface of the water and

stung like razors that seemed to be striking my face with the indifference of the

beachcomber striking my backside and the man in black beating me with a

broken cane, fucking me until I screamed for more. I didn't know that girl

parading naked with a remarkable lack of self-consciousness, a disdainful

bravado, the touch of vanity concealed behind every club door that opened to let

her in. Was it really me? Was that the girl I wanted to be and the girl swimming

through the waves was the shell of who I had once been, that composite of other

people's designs and dreams and ideas? I was thrilled to be swimming back to La Gomera, but it struck me that in

spite of everything that had transpired that day on the hot sands, I felt no shame,

no conscience or self-doubt. We all cast ourselves in different roles, re-write the

past. We all find the perfect thing to say after the moment to say it has past. We

all have a fantasy life and the island was a fantasy. The fear we have of opening

the box concealing our secret self is the fear of what we might find, the fear of

what others might say or think, the fear of what we might think of ourselves.

As I pushed through the waves, I thought about the sheikh, how he was

nervous of that first kiss, how there was a look of wonder in his moonlit eyes as

his cock vanished into my mouth. I had been beaten against my will and I had

seduced the sheikh to engineer my escape. I had done nothing to be ashamed of.

It was getting colder. I knew that the temperature of the sea changes very little

at night, but the air cools and on the current were icy hands that crept over my

body like a foreboding and made me shiver.

Earlier in the day, when I had stood with the beachcomber at the foot of the

tower and looked back the way I had come, the clouds on then horizon warned

me that a storm was coming. That storm finally arrived, announcing itself with a

stripe of lightning and a roll of thunder that drove a line of stamping sea horses

pounding into my face. The stars above like light bulbs in a string of seaside

illuminations went out one after the other. The world turned monochrome, my

white arms clawing at the grey waves below a sky now black as pitch. The pale

silver path lit by the moon disappeared and spots of rain the size of coins struck

the water like drumming fingers. I closed my eyes and swam without looking

and didn't know if the briny tang in my mouth belonged to the sea or my tears.

When I opened my eyes, everything was black except distant spots in the

dome of the sky that turned blue as lightning crackled in long zigzags like a

pattern on a piece of cloth. The crash of thunder hit the sea in sonic booms that

plunged me below the surface and, like a dolphin, after each dive I leapt higher

to take another breath.

There was a cramp in my leg and I rolled on to my back and kept going,

kicking with one leg, panting, filling my lungs. I was 22 and in six months I

would be 23. I didn't want to grow old, it seemed pointless growing old, but I

thought in the next ten years, by the time I was 33, I could do a lot of things,

achieve something, be something, do something other people don't do. Until

now I had done nothing. I had gone to university and idled my way through long

months of long nights drinking, flirting, sleeping with different boys, sleeping

through morning lectures, cramming for exams.

When I got my modest degree I felt like a complete fraud stepping up on the

stage in Durham Cathedral and staring out with my embossed scroll at the graduates lined up in black gowns like beetles, all identical, all carried to uni on

the same mediocre mother ship. Even my job at the publishing house was

acquired through family friends. I was a shoe-in. Eye candy for the office, nicely

spoken, nicely shaped, a blonde with full pink lips, a short skirt, a slice of

cleavage on show for the authors, those middle-aged men pretending to be

young, those middle-aged lesbians writing to succeed in what they saw as a

man's world. Nothing I had read in the last year was original and nothing I had

written for jacket notes and PR handouts was original. I was going to drown

there that night in the sea and the only original thing I had ever done was fuck

three Arabs in one day.

I wasn't swimming any more. I was surviving. I was being tossed about in ten

foot waves. I could have been moving with the tide back to the island or out into

the open sea where oil tankers and cruise ships plied the sea lanes between

Europe and America. A vicious burst of lightning ripped the sky in two, the light

was brilliant, a ghostly blue, and the thunder that followed was like a barrage of

guns, boom, boom, boom, the shock waves lifting me up in the air and throwing

me deeper into the sea.

Down I went, spinning under water, down and down, eyes open, mouth open.

I'm never coming up again. I'm never going to get back to La Gomera. In two

weeks my mum and dad would be wondering what had happened to me. They

will set out for the Canary Islands. They will talk to the police and no one will

have a clue where to look for me and no one will understand a word they are

saying. I didn't want that to happen. It would ruin their lives.

I kicked down and shot up through the murky water and breathed again. I had

almost drowned. I had almost died. That's not going to happen, I told myself. I

didn't panic. I took deep breaths. The storm, as if we were subtly linked, was

moving away. The rain stopped as quickly as it started. I could just make out a

line of red fairy lights. I rubbed my eyes. Was I seeing things? No. They were

there. A few more lights were dimly flickering on the horizon and I realised I

had reached the half way mark. It was La Gomera that I could see and I set off

again in a steady crawl.

In a few minutes, I switched to breast stroke. The lights were stronger now.

They outlined the building that carried the Spanish flag, the landmark guiding

me home. The lights gave form to the hill, the village where I had found a room

in a fonda. I smiled. I would have to stride back through the streets wearing

nothing but the St Christopher, the patron saint of travel, the necklace a reminder

that what had happened that day wasn't a fantasy. I had swum off into the sea

dreaming of adventure and the adventure was over. Perhaps I'll phone Bobby,

tomorrow, give him another chance. The moon was back in the sky, lighting the beach, the sand at night grey like

pewter. The stars burst into life. The wind died. The only sound I could hear was

my arms and legs cutting through the water.

Then, quite suddenly, from the distance, like a murmur, came the steady drum

of a motor beating like a train getting closer and louder. I turned on to my back

and could just make out a white shape moving towards me. The beach was a

hundred yards away. I could do that in five minutes. I turned back on my front

and set off again in a fast crawl, the fatigue sliding from my limbs, my breath

steady, three strokes and breathe, three strokes and breathe.

The dinghy overtook me in a swirling circle, round and round, trapping me in

a wall of foam. The craft moved faster and faster. The engine howled like a

wounded beast. Then the motor died, the roar ended and the night grew still. The

dinghy slowed, bobbing on the tide, the wake pushing us together and I took a

grip on the rope looped along the side. It had been a long swim, a long day. I

was tired.

The sheikh's features were sharp in the moon's glow. He wasn't smiling. He

wasn't angry. He seemed ponderous as he glanced towards La Gomera. I did the

same. He was looking towards the bar with dim yellow lights at one end of the

beach. Shadows. Tourists. People like me. With the motor silent now, I could

hear the beat of music, the tune familiar. As I looked back at the sheikh, he

stretched out his hand and, for the first time since I left my towel on the sand and

dived into the sea, I had control over my own destiny.