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At first, it is just a matter of surviving, when the heat and the seafood makes him feel sick, and the strangeness of the shack they give to him at night threatens to overwhelm – the roaring, noise-filled silence of it! How could the relentless sweep of the ocean and the endless percussive cacophony of the jungle be so quiet? How could such flimsy walls press in so hard?
And then, it is a matter of becoming accustomed. Growing used, in a fashion, to the sight of the small, ridiculous hut at the end of the day; a home, of a kind, even when chickens invade in the night and lay eggs in his slippers. Putting his own mark on things. Clearing away all evidence of the past Inspector, his clothes and his posters and his terrible CDs. Organizing the bathroom how he likes it. He buys some new soap and puts it on the tiny rusted tray that sticks haphazardly from the shower wall, and is very pleased at the sight of it.
Finally getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep, letting the noise of the life-ridden jungle fade into almost nothing – not the same way the hum of London in his ears had been like his own breath through his lungs, but getting there.
He stays, and stays, and stays, and misses his home. It is like a constant headache. But it’s a headache that he grows accustomed to, just like everything else. Like the psoriasis on his hand, or the bitterness of the tea.
-
DI Richard Poole has always been one to grow into a place, put his feet firmly on the ground and let himself take roots.
It wouldn’t happen here, though. Not in this crazy, light-filled, colour-bursting hell. Not in this place of rum burning his stomach and sun burning his tender fleshy skin and people, animals, flowers, living violently, brightly, incoherently everywhere you turned to look. Even away from the sand of the beach, where the soil becomes rich and dark, he has no stability. The very plants are strange to him.
Even so. Even so. He grows to love – not the island. Not Saint-Marie. Saint-Marie is his purgatory. But he grows to – appreciate small parts of it. Tiny pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle that’s only been half done. An apt metaphor. He likes puzzles. It happens slowly, in the same way the hot days blur gently into the hot nights, and the lights come out one by one.
He grows to like:
Harry. Harry. At least he has someone to come home to, even if it is a very impudent lizard. Richard wonders sometimes if Harry should be off in the wild instead, with a lizard wife and children, or finding the alpha lizard so he can kill him and establish dominance, or something like that. It's actually rather nice that he chooses to stay in Richard’s hut instead. It’s probably all the grapes Richard feeds him.
Dwayne’s laugh, unapologetic – Fidel’s quiet chuckle. The two of them sitting with beer bottles in their hands, solid and reliable and friendly. Richard has never gotten on very well with colleagues. Or other men. Or women, for that matter. Or anyone, really. He likes to think he has had several very sensible and uneventful friendships in his life, certainly with much fewer bawdy jokes and sarcastic jabs (followed by Dwayne’s wide-eyed ‘Who, me, Chief?’ look which has become as familiar as Richard’s own hand), but looking back on them, he thinks that perhaps those relationships were simply a matter of mutual tolerance, and it is Dwayne’s mocking laughter and Fidel’s stifled smirk that are the Real Thing, so to speak. He’s not sure, and it is not in his nature to look inwards, so he does not.
The strange, satisfied, neat little pleasure that comes from solving a case with no advanced forensic equipment, no decent computer system, no properly maintained lab or facilities at all. Just him, his mind, a whiteboard, Camille’s sharp questioning, her intuition, Fidel’s endless patience with the fingerprints and the cross checking. Dwayne, who knows everyone on the island and knows the right questions to ask. That wonderful moment when it all comes together, and a crime is solved, and he did it with just him and his team and their brains and several half-dry whiteboard markers.
Beer, cold on his tongue.
The sea-breeze that comes through every now and then, cooling the sweat on his skin.
The small chipped teacup he buys in the market one morning on the way to work. He washes it and wonders exactly why he bought it. It’s not like you can get decent tea here anyway. There was something about the flowers on it that he liked.
The lack of light pollution. Good God, how he loves the night sky here. Yes. That is one thing that he loves, and he is willing to admit it to himself. The constellations are clear and sharp like the ancient maps of the heavens, and the stars go on forever. It makes his breath catch, on occasion. He is not romantic about it, but there are so many, and they are so bright.
The lights of Katherine’s bar. The place is an abominable mess of noise, and it is the number one place for endless arguments with the horrible French women in his life, but the lights are nice in the evenings, yellow and soft.
The lights of Katherine’s bar, and the way they nestle and gleam in Camille’s hair.
Privately, he comes to like a great many things about Camille. It is something of a torture. He is not entirely sure what to do about it. There is one thing he knows he can do, and that is his job, so he does it. Camille pushes boundaries and makes it very hard to keep it together, every now and then. Comes too close, dances near like a butterfly, and then flits away. She smells of sandalwood and sometimes he wonders how his hands might fit around her waist. One night he is lying awake, looking up at the whiteness of his mosquito net, and he realises with a sinking feeling in his stomach that she is probably a good deal of what keeps him here.
It is a frightening realisation, and he resolves to do absolutely nothing about the hands-on-waist situation. That hypothesis shall remain untested. For now. He sighs.
-
The next morning he awakes, and steps out, and looks at the sun rise over the ocean. It is like a postcard, only it is not something flimsy and bendable in his hand. It is all around him, in his hair, pushing against his skin, rushing in his ears and his chest. He breathes in the salt. Everything about this place astounds him, and it still does, but this morning the bright hyacinth-pink in the sky does not feel like as much of an indecent assault as it might have once. His pores fill with it. His elbows hurt where he leans against the railing, splintery wood pressing hard through the flannel of his pyjamas. He does not really mind it much.
He will never have the symbiosis with this place that he has with London. London, whose streets he can still call up in his mind – the buses, roaring, and the thin cold rain on his face. He will always be an outsider. He’ll never feel like he belongs to Saint-Marie and its dizzy nonsensical world.
But it’s the details that are important. The small things. They make or break the case. This Richard knows.
“You know, if I was ordered to go back to London right now, at this very moment, I’m not entirely sure what I would do,” Richard tells Harry, who is perched on the railing near his elbow.
Harry blinks.
“Shouldn’t have said that,” he continues, half to himself, half to the lizard. “Some higher power has heard me, and I’ll end up dying here.”
Harry blinks again.
“Quite,” Richard says in response, and watches the sun come up.