The Weight of Numbers Read Free Page B

it’s a bloody miracle I didn’t spit myself on the reef.’ He thought about this and added, ‘Some did.’
    Jenkins’s Land Rover was drawn up a few feet from where I had parked the Toyota. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and I saw that the Land Rover was leaning drunkenly to the right. Before I thought to stop him, Jenkins had walked over to investigate. He was still spinning his tale as he vanished into shadow. ‘I heard them screaming in the dark. I tasted their blood in the water—’
    There then came the sound I imagine a cricket bat makes as it strikes a cabbage, a thud as of a body falling into sand, and Jenkins was silent.
    I charged like an idiot into the darkness.
    I couldn’t see a thing. Arms upraised, I swung about, hoping I might collide usefully with Jenkins’s attacker. I stumbled and fell headlong. I tried to get up. Something buried itself in the sand by my right ear. I grabbed it. The stick came free without a struggle. I scrambled to my feet. I was afraid to swing the stick blindly, but then the assailant, disarmed, stumbled out of the vehicle’s shadow into the moonlight. Austrian Boy, of course. I ran at him with the stick held point-first. It was a flimsy sort of weapon – the best the boy’s fool mind could come up with in all the hours Jenkins and I had been drinking. I did what I could with it, punching himdeep under his ribcage. Winded, he fell back another couple of paces. Jenkins was already up on his feet. He blundered past me and swung his clenched fist back and forth in front of the boy’s face: his features disappeared in a splash of black blood.
    â€˜Jesus,’ I said.
    Jenkins turned past me. The boy was staggering blindly about the track, hands pressed to his face, holding it together.
    I followed Jenkins across the sand. It was a magnificent night, the sky white with stars. At the water’s edge, each wave gave a faint burst of greenish light as it rolled into the sand. Jenkins kneeled, oblivious to the water swilling round his knees, and washed the blood off his Stanley knife. He dried it fastidiously on his shirt.
    I said to him, ‘Don’t do things by halves, do you?’
    He ignored me, scooped up seawater in handfuls and threw it over his face, washing off the blood dribbling from the scratch on his scalp.
    When he was done bathing his head he sank back on the sand. ‘We never stood a fucking chance,’ he said, his face empty of all feeling. I couldn’t tell whether he meant tonight, or 16 April 1961. I didn’t much care, either. The war had acclimatized me to Jenkins’s brand of cheap violence, but it had not got rid of my distaste.
    I helped him up and back towards the vehicles. The boy had vanished again. Once I had got Jenkins into the passenger seat of the Toyota, I turned on the cabin light and examined his cut. There was still blood running behind his ear and into the collar of his shirt, but the cut itself was trivial; the seawater had already begun to staunch the flow. I studied his pupils, and got him to hold out his hands for me. I found no sign of concussion. ‘Sit tight,’ I said.
    Taking the flashlight with me, I went to check what damage the boy had done to his Land Rover. The worst I found were a couple of deflated tyres, but, when I returned to the pick-up, Jenkins had disappeared. I called and, when I got no reply, I seriously considered driving off and leaving him there. Every instinct told me I should leavethis evening behind as quickly as possible.
    Then I heard Jenkins ranting in bad Portuguese: ‘What the bloody hell is the point?’ His angry exclamation came to me muffled by distance. ‘If I was a burglar you’d be dead by now!’ Jenkins was fairly screaming. I turned my flashlight back on and shone it towards the bottle store. He must have gone round the back.
    Another, unfamiliar voice replied, ‘
Eeh? Eeh, chiyani?
What? Where