One-On-One Read online

  “That’s fine. Now I am going to lift you. Hold on to the side of the boat to begin with. As I take the strain, the boat will lift a little and come slightly towards the house. When I shout, let go.”

  Things happened quite fast, too fast for Christine, who was unaware that she would get wet.

  “OK, let go!”

  She did as she was told and slid over the side of the boat that seemed to spring away behind her. She screamed as she hit the water, which came up to her waist. With a couple of pulls on the winch she was clear of the surface, but drenched.

  “It’s lucky you’re already down to your knickers,” said Cartwright.

  “It’s fucking cold.”

  “Welcome to the tropics,” Cartwright answered, as he strained to crank the winch.

  A few seconds later, Christine was level with Cartwright, but still in mid-air over the sea. He reached out an arm and pulled her over the balustrade so she was over the balcony and then gave some slack to the winch to lower her onto the timber floor.

  Before Christine could speak, Cartwright had already said, “Wait there” and launched himself over the rail into the sea. Christine’s trousers and prosthesis were still attached to the cleat on the boat of course. Also, her travelling bag was still waiting to be retrieved and her shoes were still loose in the bottom of the boat. Cartwright retrieved them all and then came up his makeshift ladder once again to rejoin her, the load this time being light enough for him to carry.

  “Here’s the rest of your luggage, Mrs Green. And here are your trousers.”

  The stressed formality was another attempted joke. In normal circumstances, which might include every other situation with which she has ever been presented, Christine would have immediately put her prosthesis back on her leg before trying to move. But it seemed that Cartwright’s display of apparent freedom, his ability to move with ease around this familiar space, encouraged her to copy. Looking back, this was just the first indication that it was already Cartwright who was calling the shots. I cannot judge whether she saw his performance as a challenge to emulate but, still barefoot and only in her knickers, she too tried to hop along the balcony towards the shade and a waiting chair. She fell, of course, and there was another exchange of laughter as she literally crawled into the seat.

  “Why didn’t you bring the camera box up the ladder, like you just did with my bag?”

  “Because I know my limitations, Mrs Green. It’s too heavy. I might have dropped it, and then where would your little project have been? It was safer on the rope.”

  The view when she eventually came to her senses was breathtaking. The main island, the place I will call ‘the mainland’ to distinguish it from the ‘island’ to which she had travelled that morning, seemed to shimmer in the distance between two swathes of blue, a lighter sky and a glittering sea. There was a breeze, so the humming sound of the boat seemed to continue, but lighter, of course, suggesting a distance that the view presented. From this angle, the port on the landward side of the island was barely visible, a few cranes and a couple of tall buildings being the only structures to break the line of palms and giant mangroves. To the left there was only sea, but to the right there was the coast of Borneo with its forests and hills, both apparently compressed onto the sea beneath the tropical heat and humidity I could recognise but not feel. There was a hubbub of boats, taxis, small craft, fishing boats and passenger ferries occupying the strip of water that Christine had crossed that morning, but from this distance, they were as silent and anonymous as the distant trees, despite their perpetual, frenzied criss-crossing of the strait.

  “There’s nothing complicated,” Cartwright said. “I live on the balcony, which goes all the way round. The roof overhangs, so there’s shade nearly all day. Inside there’s the living room, which stays quite cool. My study is at the back, but there’s only space for one inside. The kitchen is outside on the back balcony. There’s a butane stove. The toilet is also at the back.”

  “Long drop?”

  “You’re kidding! We’re on solid rock here, so there are no holes in the ground. It’s a conventional toilet into a digester, so only a measured amount of water goes down. And that has to be fresh water from the bucket... and that has to be filled from the kitchen tap. There’s only the one tap, so you can’t miss it. It’s rain water, of which we have a plentiful - even daily - supply. It’s also perfectly safe to drink, but might sometimes taste a bit of diesel. I put a drop into the tank to kill the mosquito larvae. It helps a lot if you take a dip in the sea whenever you need a pee, but the brown stuff can hang around so please use the loo for that.”

  “Electricity?” asked Christine, patting the laptop she had already retrieved from her bag.

  “A little... enough. I run a small windmill onto a car generator and a couple of batteries, and then step up the voltage. I can’t raise much power, but then that thing doesn’t need much. There’s a socket in the living room and another in the kitchen, but don’t leave it plugged in all day.”

  “Internet?”

  “There’s unsecured wifi from a satellite link. Just use it. I need it for my work, so it runs all the time.”

  “Where do we sleep?”

  “We?” Cartwright paused here for what seemed like an age to stare directly at Christine. “Mrs Green,” he continued, eventually, “you sleep inside. The sofa is wide and low. It’s longhouse style, the same size as a single bed. I have a hammock strung on the side balcony. And by the way, neither of us will be able to sleep when it rains. If it does, I’ll go into my study and work, so don’t be alarmed if a light goes on. The rain makes a heck of a row. Come inside,” he said, bending to pick up Christine’s accumulated luggage. “I’ll show you where you can put your things.”

  Going inside amounted to a couple of hops through the uncovered doorway, its strung bamboo and bead screen having been gathered to the frame. Once inside, Cartwright dropped everything onto the floor next to what I presumed might be what he called the ‘sofa’, which was merely a construction of loosely lashed bamboo poles with a thin flat cushion, obviously the very cheapest foam.

  “So this is your palace?”

  Cartwright offered a sidelong, rueful glance. “I assume that was a typo in your speech. This is my place. There’s enough palaces in this part of the world without further contribution from me.” He nodded towards the wall, which was also made from bamboo poles lashed with twine. “There are nails and pins here and there. Use any of them to hang your clothes. They won’t take any weight, so the laptop and anything else that’s heavy will have to stay on the floor. Because we’re over the sea, there’s no problem with bugs, so everything will be quite safe... apart from ourselves, of course, because we do get sand flies. They are the little black ones, microscopic, but with jaws like crocodiles. Don’t use repellent, because they love it. Just get bitten and suffer. They lose the taste for you after a couple of days. And don’t scratch the bites... It is, however, extremely humid, and moulds might spring up inside your box and even inside your cameras. Keep everything tightly shut when not in use and...” he said, hopping across to the room’s only shelf, “...I took the trouble to get a few bags of silica gel.” He took a sealed plastic bag from a wooden box, the only item on the shelf, and held it up rather like a prize. “If you put a few of these inside the cases, it will help to keep the moulds away. Always double seal the bag to keep the others dry. I’ll leave you to settle in. As I said, there’s a shower on the back balcony, and there’s always the sea.” He seemed not to realise that Christine would not be able to get back up to the house if she swam in the sea. On the other hand, perhaps he understood fully what he was saying and had thus chosen, in his way, to mock her. “I have to go out for an hour or so, back to town for a few things.” He moved to the side to retrieve a cloth from one of the nails in the wall. “If you prefer a wrapper to your trousers, you can use this. See you late
r.”

  Within a minute, the boat’s engine had already started with what seemed like an ear-splitting roar, since Christine’s microphone level had already adjusted to the tranquillity of the place. And in a moment he had gone, the rasp of the outboard fading quickly behind the constant soft lap of the waves under the floor. Neither Christine nor I had paid any attention to the fact that she was still only in her knickers. Now alone, she spent a couple of minutes extracting her false leg from her trousers. The fabric had ripped where it had caught on the boat and threads had become tangled in the joint. Once free it immediately again became that essential, signature part of her body. The trousers, which were a complete write-off, she crumpled into a ball and stuffed inside her bag, once she had emptied out the few things she had brought. She then began her work.

  I have thought long and hard about Cartwright’s decision to leave Christine alone in the house almost immediately after arriving, and I continue to find it paradoxical. I had already concluded that he knew from the moment he accepted our invitation that it was more than a journalistic venture. But to give Christine, who after all was virtually a complete stranger, someone he had not met in over forty years, free rein to do exactly as she wanted, to give her complete freedom to search everywhere, install whatever she wanted, I found strange, to say the least. And so she was able to place her own devices as we had planned, and do at will, almost at leisure. Our protracted discussions on the subject, including the formulation of endless contingency plans to cover what she might do if the task might prove impossible, began to seem absurd.

  We had, of course, correctly anticipated the sparseness of Cartwright’s interior, so the trinkets that Christine had carried as her mementoes, good luck charms and the like were perfect for the task. She hung them along with her clothes anywhere they would fit, but there were so many places to hang things from the bamboo poles that she was able to establish views of the entire space with some ease, much of it from multiple angles. It would be accurate to state that in our wildest dreams we had never anticipated such comprehensive coverage.

  Cartwright had not even secured the door to his office, so she was even able to place items inside. First impressions of his only private space proved that our assumptions had been completely accurate. The room, or cupboard might be a better term, contained a small table and chair, a computer, desktop variety with separate monitor, and a large stock of paper, pens, pencils and other stationery items strewn in a couple of boxes, that only later I learned were made from woven banana leaves. There was a miniature spotlight with a switch on the flex above his desk. The room had no natural light, so the spotlight was always on when he was in there and, as we were to learn, he always switched it off whenever he went outside. Apart from the IT equipment and the little light, this could have been a Malay water village house from a century ago. There were no obvious signs of recent work, no notes, no books of any description, except for a couple of manila folders lying flat on a single shelf to the left of the desk. With cameras in place inside the office, Christine resisted the temptation to examine the contents of the folders at this early stage.

  Christine, reinstating my faith in her professionalism, carried out all of her assigned tasks in complete silence, resisting any temptation to communicate with me. We did not know, at this stage, of course, whether Cartwright had his own systems in place. All that I can claim for certain is that, since the opportunity arose, Christine did carry out an initial scan of the entire house and found nothing, but of course one can never be sure.

  She deployed her systems, just enough to provide what we wanted, without over-complicating the task of monitoring. She placed devices in the main living room and the office, and then two more at opposite corners of the continuous balcony. By placing them at waist height in the outer banister rail she was able to cover the entire walkway. She put one more above the main entrance facing out so that I could see all the comings and goings. There was no need for more angles, because she had everything covered. As a fail-safe measure, however, she did place three systems to duplicate certain key angles, one in the main living area, one in the office and an extra one on the front balcony.

  She then set up her laptop, and checked her personal email, avoiding, as agreed, any address that might appear, on monitoring, to have any connection with official or encrypted sites. She did send a short message to me, as would be expected from a wife to her husband on reaching her destination. She used only the technical terms and codes we had agreed to confirm that everything was in place and that I should be receiving signals. I acknowledged and, I admit, did include a word or two that were not specifically related to her task. We had then exchanged the two messages we had planned to exchange, and thus our One-On-One assignment was up and running. From now on, the only direct communication I could expect would be via coded, verbal messages slipped into the conversation.

  She had again become the complete professional, carrying out everything exactly as we had agreed, and it was I who broke the rules with my extra few phrases. The fact that she ignored my unnecessary comment and carried on with the job completely restored all the confidence in her that I had questioned when she reacted to her fall by joining in with Cartwright’s laughter. She signed off from her account and went inside to rest. When Cartwright arrived back at the house she was dozing on the couch.

  I could now see everything, of course, and was no longer reliant on the single point of view offered by Christine’s spectacles, so, an hour later, I was able to observe Cartwright’s approach. He was travelling slowly, much slower than when Christine had bounced around his boat. When he reached the house, I could see that he was quite heavily laden. He had two full butane bottles on board, plus boxes of provisions, some fresh vegetables and fruit were visible above several stacked tins and bottles. His water taxi was designed to carry seven or eight passengers, so he could obviously take more weight, but he was clearly trying to avoid upsetting his hastily loaded and only lightly secured cargo. His approach was audible for some time and by the time he moored the boat as before, Christine had clearly been listening to the approach for several minutes. When he came to check on her comfort, she feigned sleep and then a wake-up routine, before moving to a chair on the balcony, as Cartwright continued about his business in silence.

  He immediately unloaded the boxes and gas bottles using his looped rope and winch. I watched him with great care, suspecting he would make a surreptitious inspection of the house in search of the systems that surely he knew Christine had placed. But he did nothing of the sort, which suggested four possible explanations. One: he might be a very good actor and, having assumed that systems would now be in place, resisted the temptation to look for them; two: he might not care because he already had superior systems of his own in place and had thus recorded everything she had done; and three: it was just possible that he really believed that Christine was actually on the freelance mission she had described. At the time - and even now - I am not satisfied with any of these conclusions. The fourth possibility was that he was simply naïve and, though subsequent events may have suggested this might be correct, I still cannot believe it to be possible. He did remain very quiet, however. But he was quite used to living alone. Why would he suddenly want to talk?

  The gas bottles he stowed under the stove on the back balcony. This simple two ring burner on a metre long table was the extent of his kitchen. I must record again the man’s impressive strength, since the butane bottles had to be carried some distance to the back balcony, a task he completed by lifting them to the shoulder and hopping, seeking support as usual with his free hand. He was still not panting after completing the task. I was surprised that he hung the fresh fruit and vegetables in their plastic bags from various hooks and nails along the timber wall. One of the bags fell directly over one of Christine’s cameras and I privately applauded her for placing alternative views. There was a small refrigerator, but he did not seem inclined to use it.

>   With his jobs complete, he filled a plastic tumbler with water from his single tap and then rejoined Christine on the front balcony. She had a reporter’s pad open on her lap and pen in hand, but she had written nothing and probably thought less while she absorbed the view. The day’s intense light had just begun to soften, and I saw for the first time the colours that would mark the progress of the following days, the iridescent but threatening glow that would mark the incremental disintegration of our task.

  This view struck Chris too, that first evening on Cartwright’s island. She was, of course, a much-travelled international correspondent, travel-hardened it might be said, and having worked with her on countless assignments, as well as being married to her - which ought to count for something! - I ought to have been surprised by her reaction. But in fact I hardly noticed her almost enraptured awe until later when I reviewed the scene, because at the time I too was as captivated as she was. The show in the sky was quite breathtaking, and would repeat its magic each time it reappeared to mark the passing of each day, each day of increasing deviation from our aims.

  “Which way are we facing?” Christine had to shout her question, since Cartwright had wandered off along the veranda, out of sight to her left.

  “We?” he shouted back. “I’m facing north. You’re looking east.” He remained standing at the veranda rail as he spoke, around the corner from Christine and out of her sight. He seemed to be staring at the water below the veranda, apparently watching the waves roll past the house stilts.

  “I thought I was facing east, but...” said Christine slowly. After a pause she continued, “...so why am I looking at a sunset?” She rose from her seat, took a pace and turned to her right to inspect the western sky behind the house. The solitary rock of Cartwright’s island obscured the sunset, but the whole of the western sky behind the black of the rock glowed crimson. She turned back to the east to reveal again her captivation with the vision.