They seemed to be abandoned and mostly in ruins. If there had ever been a community on the island it had long since gone.
Beyond the first shed, there was a bay hidden from view below a wall of rock. The inlet was ringed with volcanic outcroppings coated in cockle shells, which made a natural harbour and protected the black sand beach where the remains of three old fishing boats lay like dead animals on their sides. There were two rubber Zodiacs, heavily patched, looking anything but seaworthy, one half in and half out of the water, the other pulled up on the sand.
As we drew closer to the bay, I began to think we were completely alone, just the two of us, and was processing the implications of this when another man popped up from behind the beached Zodiac. He had been working on the outboard motor and shook his head in an irritated gesture that revealed that whatever he had been trying to do, he had not been able to do it. He approached, wiping oil from his hands with a greasy rag. He said something to my man, and they didn’t exactly shake hands, but touched their fingers lightly together.
The newcomer was dressed in a similar fashion as the beachcomber in a black tunic and matching black turban. He was younger with a precise pointed beard and clear lively eyes that studied me with the concentrated gaze of a scientist looking at a rare specimen through a microscope. He said something and the other man laughed. The younger man pinched my narrow waist as if to show there wasn’t much meat on me and then took a grip on my breasts, turning to the other man as if to say they at least were satisfactory.
They carried on talking and I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. Their language was completely unknown to me; with French, Spanish, Italian, even German I could have understood something, but their guttural sounds held no clue to their meaning and I was trying to follow the conversation by studying their impenetrable features. They moved down the beach to look more closely at the open outboard and I followed automatically, as if my will had gone. When they finished discussing the problems with the motor, I plucked up the courage and took a step closer to the man in the black tunic.
‘Can you help me, please,’ I said. ‘Do you speak English? Habla usted español? Parlez vous francais ?’
He stood back as if in shock and shouted at me, waving his fist as if I had done some terrible thing. He then spoke to the beachcomber and they both laughed.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ I said.
The man in black stared at me, sealed my lips with a stiff greasy finger and said a single word I did understand. ‘Shush,’ he hissed.
He then waved his finger at me as you may wave a finger at a naughty puppy. That’s what I was in their eyes. I was secured by a leather thong, a dog being trained to behave itself. I stared at the man and he stared back until I lowered my eyes.
My captor removed the conch shell from his bag and the man in black turned it through his hands like a connoisseur with a rare gemstone. He examined the pink glaze on the inner lip of the shell, running the tips of his fingers over the smooth surface. He looked up and, as our eyes met, I knew instinctively what was going through his mind. He gave the conch back to the other man and then did something revolting and inexcusable. He ran the side of his hand like a saw between my legs, opening the pink lips of my vagina. I tried to back away, but his hand slid around my waist and he held me still as he wormed his fingers up inside me. He removed his hand and showed me his palm slicked and shiny with discharge. I couldn’t believe he had done this and I couldn’t understand why I was wet.
The man rubbed his fingers together, held them to his nose and stared at me at the same time. I would have slapped him across the face, but couldn’t with my hands tied behind my back. I understood how controlling this is, that with your hands bound in this way you can