East Point, Diego Garcia’s largest village, had a shop where the islanders – the Ilois – could stock up. It could supply food, clothes, fishing tackle, wine and wedding rings (sold on the understanding that a Christian wedding was planned). Its counter was worn and marked from people’s hands rubbing it and knives, sometimes. The shopkeeper was a whittler. He was whittling when Leonard appeared, kicked a stone and asked for a barrel or crate.
‘Take a crate. I’ve got plenty. They’ll only go on the fire.’ He pointed to some.
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you for asking. You could have had it anyway, but it was better having you ask.’
‘Odette told me to.’
‘She’s a good girl. She was here yesterday and I thought that. For such a young girl too – full of news.’ The shopkeeper shook his head at the thought.
‘She looks after me.’
Leonard dragged the crate home, sat on the beach and watched his father in his boat on the lagoon. A flock of birds soared over it, waiting for scraps as coconut and banana trees waved in a lazed, generous breeze. A crab scuttled across the beach. The sky was clear and deep blue. The sun rose.
Leonard pulled the crate down to the tide-line and yelled to his sister.
‘What?’
‘Come here. Help me,’ he said.
‘What?’ Odette didn’t hear on purpose. She wanted to clean a duck. She had reared it herself.
‘Help me!’
‘I’m cleaning the duck…’
‘But I can’t move this!’ The crate had snagged on some rocks. He tugged. ‘It’s stuck.’
The sea was as clear as breath. A lorry back-fired and stalled on the road behind them. Their father cast a line, squinted at something he couldn’t make out on the shore, and he waited.
Ducks had been introduced to Diego Garcia by enterprising people with good ideas. Aylesburys, Khaki Campbells… Odette’s was a Muscovy. The breed is a good forager, intelligent, grows quickly to an enormous size, and though not a heavy layer the female is an attentive sitter. They are not averse to life in the tropics – Piebald, Plain White, Black and Blue, Black and White – the breed comes in a range of colours, all have yellow legs.
They have a reputation for bad-tempered behaviour, and many breeders treat them as geese or keep Cayugas instead, but Odette knew nothing about this. Hers was gentle, let her stroke his bill, and didn’t think for a moment that his mistress was anything but sentimental about him. He didn’t know he was meat. He couldn’t count to five, he didn’t know she’d forget his noise. She smiled and kissed the top of his head.
‘It’s stuck!’ Leonard would not give up. He heaved and fell over. Odette said, ‘Leonard,’ to the duck, and shook her head.
‘Please!’
‘I’m coming,’ she said, and went to help.
He pulled and she pushed until the crate bounced off the rocks and into the lagoon. He picked up a paddle and steered out. She gave one last push. She stood up to her waist in the water and her dress floated around her like a flower-bed. Leonard balanced himself, sat back and headed for his father.
‘I’m coming!’
‘Don’t sink!’ Odette yelled. ‘I’m not saving you!’
‘I don’t need saving!’
‘Good. Because I won’t.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to, even if I was!’
No wind.
The sound of splashing and barely moving ocean-swept miles. It touched a sand spit and dabbed at some beach grass. The sun boiled, sheets of heat slammed anything that moved.
Nothing moved. A veil came down and covered everything, so any noise became silence, silence curled like smoke and turned into a sound. A coconut dropped out of a tree, thudded onto the beach, rolled across a line of weed and into the sea. Odette blinked and broke the spell. She watched her brother paddle away, whistling and waving his free hand above his head.
Raphael watched his son come in a crate. He shook his head and reeled his line. He looked at his catch and gobbed a ball of phlegm into the air. He tidied a corner of sail and leant over the side.
‘What’re you doing out here!’ he shouted. A reminding puff of wind blew off the ocean and ruffled the lagoon. ‘And in that! You could drown!’
‘It’s not leaking! I could go further than you…’
‘But you won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you stop here.’ Raphael tossed a rope. ‘And catch that.’
The rope was long and heavy. Raphael had brought it years before and coiled it carefully. ‘Pull yourself in,’ he said, and he hauled the sail before picking Leonard out of the crate and sitting him in the boat.
‘I paddled all that way,’
‘You’re a big boy now.’
Raphael had done the same when he was a boy. He tied the crate to the back of the boat and let Leonard steer home. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘I steered for my father to a ship that moored… there.’ He pointed across the lagoon to where the remains of a jetty stuck out. ‘We gave them vegetables and chickens for their beer and cigarettes. I had a photograph taken.’
‘A photograph? Where?’
‘I never got it. He was going to post it but forgot. I kept a cigarette packet but it blew off.’
‘What did you keep it for?’
‘It had a woman on it, sitting on a gate in America. There was a mill and an aeroplane.’
‘I could look for it.’
‘No point.’ Raphael shook his head, stood up and began to furl the sail. ‘I lost it years ago.’
An hour later, Odette’s duck ruffled its feathers and aimed a beady eye at Raphael. The man flashed a knife. It was sharp, likely and its tip was serrated. ‘Here.’
‘Now?’
‘Hold him,’ he said to Leonard.
A pair of dogs barked at a lorry. The humidity was steady. The duck quacked.
Leonard laid the duck on its back and put a stick across its neck. The sound of laughter drifted across the lagoon.
Odette smiled. Her friend was going to be a meal, stuffed and roasted, surrounded by cooked vegetables on a table set up on the beach. She fetched a chair.
Her mother was sorting rice. She had a jar of coconut milk to pour over the bird and a pile of tomatoes.
‘Maude?’ Raphael called her. ‘Fetch a sack. I’ll do it now.’
‘I’ve got this one.’
‘It’ll do.’
Everyone was happy; they looked forward to eating and watched Raphael strop the knife before taking the duck’s beak, pulling it and snapping the neck. He cut the head off, tossed it onto the beach and started to pluck. Feathers filled the air, Odette sneezed, a dog picked up the head and took it away.
Leonard stuffed the bag with feathers while the knife dripped on the beach. Maude told him to wash it off before she poured some drink and sat down to wait for the duck to cook.