Nadine began to eat and Luc took charge of the conversation at the table by beginning a long anecdote about an eccentric painter he had been at art school with who had gone on to become famous by painting for films.
'Whenever Hollywood does a film about an artist it's Jack Hurley they get in to paint the pictures. He must have the most famous hands on celluloid, but nobody has ever heard of poor old Jack because his own work simply doesn't sell. Have you ever used him, Sean?'
'Once, yes. He painted what I wanted him to paint and it looked OK on film, but actually it was crude and garish. I've no idea what happened to it afterwards.'
'Talking about afterwards,' said Luc, 'we're having a display of limbo-dancing down on the beach after dinner for anyone who's interested!'
There was an excited murmur. 'Will we be able to have a shot at doing it?' asked Johnny Crewe. 'I've always wanted to do limbo-dancing.'
'Of course,' said Luc, looking amused.
When the meal was finished the guests all drifted down to the beach bar and sat around, drinking, at tables set out facing over the sands. The limbo- dancers were a noisy, lively bunch in white cut-off jeans fringed at the ends, and psychedelic shirts, violet, acid-green, explosive yellow and orange. They danced to their own music, played by a trio of drummers, on hammered steel drums, building up the crescendo of noise and movement with practised skill, making their audience laugh and shout out for more. One of the men was a fire-eater; the climax of his act was when he danced around the circle of faces watching him, juggling with fire, tossing his flambeau high into the air and catching it, drawing shapes in the air with fire, before finally dancing under the limbo bar eating fire at the same time. The hotel guests went wild with enthusiasm as he stood erect, bowing, afterwards.
Johnny Crewe got to his feet, clapping, then shouted out, 'Can I have a shot at limbo-dancing?'
'Come on up, man,' the leader of the dancers said.
Nadine watched, smiling wryly. Johnny was loving being the centre of attention, getting applause, his face flushed, his eyes very bright.
He was surprisingly supple and to everyone's amusement very quickly picked up the rhythm, moving his hips and swaying sensually, and was soon limbo-dancing as if born to it. The audience loved it and clapped noisily, then others went up to try, and Johnny called out to Nadine to join them.
She shook her head. 'No, thanks, I'll just watch.'
Johnny ran over, barefoot now, flushed and excited. 'Come on, Nadine,' he urged, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. 'Dance with me!'
Sean was on his feet too; he moved like greased lightning, clamped his fingers around Johnny's wrist.
'She said no, chum! Are you deaf?'
'She can talk for herself, can't she?' Johnny said belligerently, and Nadine suddenly realised he was drunk. Sober he would never have challenged Sean, especially tonight. Tonight Sean had the look of a man poised for battle, his eyes glittering, his body as tense and lethal as an unsheathed sword. Nadine had the distinct impression that Johnny had merely given him the excuse he needed to do something violent.
'She did talk. She said no,' he told Johnny through his teeth and detached Johnny from her somehow.
'Now look ' began Johnny but never finished
the sentence. The next second Sean took hold of both Johnny's shoulders, lifted him off the ground, his bare feet kicking, and hurled him backwards.
Johnny landed with a thud and a scattering of sand. Everyone else had stopped to watch the short fight. Some people actually clapped; others laughed. Johnny got up, staggered, covered in sand, and looked as if he was coming back for round two, but Luc rushed over there and caught hold of him, put an arm round him in a friendly hug.
'Come and show us all how to do it, Johnny!' He urged him back to the limbo-dancing and Johnny ambled with him.
Nadine turned on Sean furiously. 'You had no business doing that! He didn't mean any harm. He was only trying to be friendly.'
'I know what he was trying to do, and it wasn't friendship he was after,' Sean said bitingly.
She sensed the watching eyes, the listening ears, the fascinated curiosity of their fellow guests.
'Oh, shut up! You've got a nasty mind!' she told Sean and hoped they could all hear.
Turning on her heel, she walked away, down the beach, out of the ring of firelight, the yellow flares of naphtha. The shouts of the dancers and the bursts of laughter and applause died away behind her; she couldn't even see them any more as she followed the curve of the beach out of sight, but she knew that Sean had followed, was walking slowly some way behind her.
She heard the lapping of water around his legs as he strolled through the waves at the beach edge. He made no attempt to catch up with her, however; kept at a distance, as if shadowing her, like some detective in a thriller film, so she pretended she hadn't noticed him.
The moon swam silently through the deep blue sky, like a round silver fish, spreading shimmering silvery patterns in its wake like fish scales, fell across the Caribbean waters in swaths of white silk, turned the palm leaves in the garden to finest filigree, laid paths of silver through the trees and made the shadows seem blacker, almost sinister.
Nadine paused to stare out across the rippling waters towards the glimmering horizon and sighed. The scene was so peaceful: they could have been marooned on a desert island. It was easy to forget that just around the curve of the bay lay the hotel with its lighted windows and the noisy crowd on the beach with their faces lit by naphtha flares and the jewel-like coloured light bulbs around the beach- bar.
'Beautiful, isn't it?' Sean said from a few feet away, standing still, too, to gaze at the view. 'Look at that moon.'