Fin

Phyllis Bottome

Shark's Fin

  Dorothy Layton stared at the retreating head of her young husband with incredulous eyes. Was it really Jo walking away from her with that easy, effortless swing, accompanied by the boring young man, tactlessly introduced to them at lunch by an acquaintance, interrupting without a qualm a perfectly good honeymoon?

Dorothy had been mildly annoyed even then, though in her scale of values two young men were generally better than one_—but not two young men interested in each other—their eyes and their minds obstinately glued upon imaginary diesel and turbine engines.

Dorothy was five foot three of concentrated easiness to look at; and she knew it. Her hair, the silvery gold of platinum, had never been dyed, her skin was creamy and her colour clear. She used lipstick from habit, but nature would have done as well for her. Her eyes were not quite the blue of the Caribbean Sea, but they sustained the comparison. Had the Medician Venus consented to diet and take P.T. from infancy, she would have had precisely Dorothy’s figure. Probably neither the Venus of the Medici nor Dorothy had much heart, but the Venus would at least have pretended to feelings which Dorothy frankly despised. What Dorothy wanted was to have the best of everything on the table on her plate at the same time, and to be helped first; and so far in her nineteen dashing years fate had heard Dorothy’s prayer. Most people get what they live for, but as they do not know what they are living for, they do not always like it. Until her honeymoon Dorothy had often had to put up with shouldering crosses. Her parents for instance—she was an only child—had given way to her all along the line, yet it was evident to Dorothy that they did not always like it. What Dorothy had wanted was to be loved and admired while she was having her own way.

She did not want just to have her own way and be criticised for taking it. But when Jo fell in love with her, it was quite evident that whatever she wanted was Heaven itself to Jo. Her whims enchanted him almost, if not quite as much, as they enchanted Dorothy. Everything she did was right for Jo; everything she said was purest wisdom. Everything she wanted became in a flash the purpose of Jo’s life to obtain for her. And now, after a sparkling month of unsullied felicity, with no fin of a shark showing like a sinister shadow in the translucent sea of her bliss, came this sudden appalling shock. Jo had walked off with Tony Cootes, down the steps of the promontory on which the hotel stood, to the little white-sanded cove with only one small motor launch, and into this they both got and made off for the Island. Neither man once glanced up at the hotel to see what had become of Dorothy. The centre of the universe had fallen out and they behaved as if nothing had happened. It was true that Jo had told Dorothy to hurry if she wanted to come to the Island because Tony had to get back early. But why should Dorothy hurry? She had never in all her life hurried unless she had wanted to hurry, though she had always hurried when many people—including Jo perhaps—had wished her to keep still.

They had gone to visit the Island with the coconut palms, the feathery waves—perhaps real coral strands—without Dorothy. They simply hadn’t waited that one little half-hour which Dorothy had proposed to make them wait. .

The Island floated like a leaf on the breast of satiny, untroubled azure, Everything shimmered in the sunny air so that Dorothy could not be quite sure which was Island and which was foam. The sea and the sky were an interchangeable, unsubstantial blue. The little black dot, which was the motor launch, moved swiftly and purposefully towards the landing stage. The engine—it was Tony Coote’s launch—worked beautifully. Dorothy's softly curved lips set in a straight line, which would make wrinkles later on if she set it too often.

There were two things she might do to punish Jo; and to punish Jo was her immediate and single-minded aim. The choice was merely in the nature of the punishment. Should she wait till he came back and just explode? She could frighten him out of his wits if she put her mind to it. Or could she think of something less savage but more subtle—something lingering, like boiling oil—which would continue to hurt him whenever he thought of unilateral action again? The trouble with rage is that it seldom keeps. Dorothy could explode now, but in two hours’ time—and that would be the soonest she could expect Jo back—she might have mislaid the dynamite. Should she then swim to the Island after him and strike while the iron was hot? This would really punish Jo for, of course, the swim had the element of risk. Besides a mile of perfectly solitary sea with unknown currents, it was the Caribbean Sea. The channel between the Island and the promontory was unprotected from “fish”. Sharks are not mentioned in polite society in Jamaica; but Dorothy had never known real danger, and anything that a selfish person has not had happen to them, does not exist. She simply saw the pain she was going to inflict on Jo as Jo’s pain.

She quickly slipped off a dawn-pink linen frock and substituted her prettiest bathing dress, a diminutive butterfly wing of a yellow skirt with a frill across her pointed breasts. Her body was the colour of a shell and her finger- and toe-nails a dark crimson. It was a pity to cover her soft yellow curls with a bathing cap, but salt water doesn’t suit silky hair, so Dorothy covered hers. No one saw her slip like a ray of honey-coloured light, across the lawn to the steps, and down the steps into the softly lapping sea. The sea took Dorothy’s slim young body caressingly, as if it loved her, not breaking over her, but gently drawing her into its pulseless rhythm.

Dorothy swam a quick crawl to start with, till she felt herself well out into the swinging depth of the channel, then she went in for a steady over-arm stroke, getting her breath quietly to match the rise and fall of the foamless sea. Her anger ebbed away from her and she began to think quite differently of Jo. She longed to see him with that happy anticipation of a lover. Soon she would be with him, and sea and sky and earth would be enriched and sociable again. In her mind’s eye she saw Jo’s tall, strong body, useful and graceful at the same time, his incredibly kind young eyes, always, when he looked at Dorothy, so full of wondering pride. Well, perhaps after this swim, it wouldn’t be pride just at first. He’d be more surprised than pleased to see Dorothy, as indeed she still meant him to be. “You don’t mean to say you've swum across! Why the hell, girl—don’t you know it’s not safe!” she almost heard him say. “Well, you took the boat, didn’t you?” she would answer casually rather than viciously.

“There wasn’t any other! You went without me, didn’t you? You didn’t even call up. You knew I wanted to see the old Island, didn’t you?” Then of course he’d be right down sorry; and he'd look a fool. He might even be a little angry and bluster a little, as people sometimes do who are in the wrong. She would take it quite calmly because now she felt calm—cool and calm—and she had already swum a third of the way across the channel. “Well,” she’d say, “don’t run off and leave me alone again Jo—that’s all!” It would be a lesson to Jo—and possibly also to that Tony Cootes—she might have been made out of leather for all the notice he had taken of her at lunch.

Suddenly it occurred to Dorothy in quite a cheerful way, that what looks like a mile of water, doesn’t feel like a mile of water when you're swimming across it—it feels rather more. If a current is strong and keeps pulling a swimmer toward rocks, which can’t be climbed, instead of towards the one safe landing place, which is his goal, it can seem very much more than a mile. Dorothy was a good swimmer, but she changed her stroke and began to feel extraordinarily alone. The channel was very deep; but depth means nothing to an accustomed swimmer. Still, when Dorothy had swum over deep water before she had always had companions. She could not remember ever having swum alone over an empty sea. Far away the hotel stood glittering up to the sky, and far away the Island moved its palms in idle grace, as sea weed moves in the soft swaying of a summer sea. There was no sound at all. Far off, at the foot of the rocks, white feathery screens of foam rose high and fell back noiselessly into the shining sea. A Johnny crow swooped its slatternly wings high above Dorothy’s head. Its chafed red head and evil eyes looked cynically down at her. Of course, Dorothy assured herself, she was perfectly all right. The sea was calm, it was not cold, she was making_ headway against the current, though not fast. Something, probably a jellyfish or a piece of floating sea-weed, brushed against her thigh. It didn’t even sting her; but it did worse. Fear slid

from that light touch through Dorothy’s whole body. It rushed full tilt into her shallow heart. She remembered sharks—not any longer as a threat to Jo—but as a threat to herself. She was out on this lonely sea at the mercy of whatever was in it. She didn’t know what was in it, and if she had known she couldn’t get out. She was in an ice-cold predicament. Sheer panic seized her, and she knew she’d go under if she panicked. She drew several long deep breaths and swam on as well as ever; but the fear at her heart remained. What a fool she had been, safe in that clean, comfortable hotel bedroom, with the twin beds so reassuringly promising under pink silk slip covers. All she'd had to do was to read a book or go downstairs and turn on the radio till Jo came back. Jo wouldn't have stayed away from her for long; he’d probably hurry over seeing the Island. Perhaps he hadn’t even meant to vex her but had honestly believed that she didn’t want to go: he was terribly good-natured and might just not have liked to disappoint Tony Cootes, whose one chance it was to see the Island before he left for Miami that very evening. Jo would just be longing to rejoin her as soon as he decently could, and they'd have their evening game of tennis and a long, leisurely drink. Tony Cootes hadn’t really mattered a red cent to Dorothy and except for engines, which happened to be both their jobs, he couldn’t have mattered a red cent to Jo either. Dorothy had made a mistake. It was no use blaming Jo for it; besides, he wasn’t there to blame.

Dorothy was all alone in the Caribbean Sea with sharks. It was her body that would have to take the punishment, the agony, the helplessness, the panic—all would be hers. Death too; and she’d never even thought of death before, except as something which happened to the old and the infirm—or to other people anyway. There were accidents, of course. You read about death, or you saw it on films—but such accidents only happen to murderers or unpleasant people; and now suddenly death leered at her. Once more she felt a touch on her knee, and she thought it was harder this time—not so much like sea-weed. Dorothy subsided into the old-fashioned breast stroke, she was too frightened to hide her head under the false, smiling water. Just for a moment it flashed through Dorothy that she was to blame—she’d done something not only silly, but cruelly, hideously wrong: not only wrong because she might be torn to pieces in agony, but wrong because it wasn’t only her own body she’d carried with her into unknown depths, but Jo’s heart. She had swum out with Jo’s heart, to risk it against the teeth of sharks.

Dorothy might die in rending torments but she would soon reach nothingness; Jo would not reach it. Jo would be tied for his life to her brief agony. Love, that Dorothy had played with as a becoming ornament, suddenly pierced her heart as a two-edged sword. “Oh, if I can only live!” she cried to Something, Somewhere. “Oh, for Jo’s sake let me live!” And then, as if there was a direct answer, though not the least the answer which Dorothy had expected, she began to swim in earnest, not just keeping herself up, but moving decisively and purposefully through the water. She swam as if she were swimming for a prize. She shut her eyes and her mind to fear. She took the sea over her head and face as if she no longer minded the rush and darkness of the water; and she reached the landing safe and sound, though thoroughly exhausted.

Pulling herself out of the water, Dorothy staggered painfully across the hot sand to the shade of a broad-leaved almond tree. The kind, solid earth held its wilful child safe, without her having to move. She closed her eyes and tried not to think—just to live till Jo came. Suddenly she heard hurrying footsteps, a sharp exclamation, and Jo’s voice. “There,” she thought, “he’s found me!” Blinded by her safety, which seemed somehow to be a part of Jo’s voice, habit ran back into Dorothy’s light, stubborn heart.

“It’s all his fault,” she told herself accusingly. “He shouldn’t have gone off like that and left me!” “Dorothy, Dorothy, darling!” Jo cried. “What’s—what’s happened to you?” She opened her eyes and gazed into his. Jo’s eyes were full of horror—not anger, not surprise—just horror. “Nothing’s happened,” she said quietly, “I just swam across. I—I wanted to see the Island—you’d left me alone!” The horror in Jo’s eyes changed under her accusation but it didn’t become anger, it was a most peculiar expression—an expression of sick shame. But Jo was not ashamed because he had left her, Dorothy had the sense to see that, he was ashamed because of what Dorothy had done. Tony Cootes stood behind them.

 “My God!” he irritatingly said, “you swam that channel full of fish! You certainly took some risk, Babe! Didn't I tell you at lunch time—a boatman told me he’d killed a ten-foot shark in the middle of that channel yesterday. Gosh, what a challenge!” “Why did you do it, Dorothy?” Jo asked her in a most curious, grave way, as if he’d just met her for the first time and had to be

polite.

“Well,” she heard herself saying, belligerently, “you’d gone off and left me, hadn’t you? I had to pay you back somehow!”

Jo looked up at Tony. “You might go down to the launch,” he said, “and start up the engine. We'll have to get her back to the hotel as quick as we can.” “Well, I guess we all need a drink!” Tony agreed, walking off.

“Don’t, don’t look at me like that, Jo!” Dorothy cried, “and oh, love me! Jo, love me! You don’t know what it was like out there alone! I got frightened! I’m not sure, but I think—I think a fish touched me! It was terrible, Jo! You can’t think!”

She stopped. It was as if Jo still wasn’t there.

He said slowly, “I’m sorry, Honey, I don’t feel so good. I reckon I love you all right but not just now—not till I get over this. You did it—you did this thing—just because we'd gone over to the Island without you... Why—why, I didn’t know you wanted to go to the Island! I waited half an hour and then I thought you'd just not be coming back! Besides, such a little thing—and this!” “But it’s over!” Dorothy pleaded. “Oh, Jo darling! It doesn’t matter any more, now I’m here!” But even as she said it the sense of her own identity—-the lovely deity she was to Jo—slipped away from her. She saw in Jo’s eyes a different Dorothy. He would try to get used to this new Dorothy. He would see that she was cared for and protected. He would love her again. Even now his unsteady hands tried to be a lover’s hands, but she knew they were not. The Dorothy Jo loved had been given to the sharks.