Oleander

I didn’t notice her at first.  The hotel had several more interesting characters who occupied my attention.  The mahogany-tanned businessman, late fifties, paunch distressingly displayed beneath the beach umbrella, accompanied by the young mantis-thin blonde.  He read e-mails on the beach while she did her nails, yawning like a bored kitten.  She perked up each evening, after she’d downed a volume of alcohol which would have had me in a coma.  Mostly, they didn’t speak.

Less typical of this glamorised Barbadian resort were the two elderly women, stubbornly refusing to submit to the rising tropical heat, sitting uncomfortably hot in neat blouses and long skirts, embarrassed by the attentive service as if they felt themselves interlopers at a party.  I wondered about a Lottery win but something about their upright, self-conscious rectitude suggested stern disapproval of any such enterprise.  A retirement, then, or a sixtieth birthday celebration.  Maybe a sudden desire to see the world after a life spent toiling in education or the civil service.  At home, ordinary, but here, as exotic as the monkeys which patrolled the grounds of the hotel in the early morning.

I made covert notes.  People watching is a writer’s curse - noting the idiosyncrasies of our fellow humans, judging without participating.  I was happy to sit back with my rum punch and weave idle stories around my fellow guests, not caring to discover the reality of the lives I so casually scrutinised.  It was three days before I realised I was being watched myself.

The woman was unmemorable, drab even.  Small with faded brown hair, the beginning of a few strands of silver, head tilted in silent query.  She reminded me of a little brown bird, harmless and without interest.  When I caught her eye, she smiled but there was no invitation there and I found nothing to fuel my imagination.  I smiled back and dismissed her from my mind.

Next morning, I saw her again.  She had secured a shady spot in the garden and had set up a small easel.  Her head tilted as she observed the scene before her.  An artist, then.  Like me, an observer.  I hesitated for a moment before approaching, curious to know what she was painting.  I strolled casually across the lawn to stand a pace behind her, grateful of the shade from the lush hedge of tropical foliage which shielded us from the brazen sun.

She did not turn, but spoke in the manner of a college lecturer:
‘Nerium oleander, a member of the dogbane family.  A food source of the caterpillars of the polka-dot wasp moth, Syntomeida epilais, native to the Caribbean although the oleander is not.’

I inspected her painting.  She had captured the leathery texture of the plant’s leaves perfectly, creating a grey-green backdrop for the delicate pale pink flowers.  I felt I could reach across and pluck a bloom from the canvas.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.  ‘I hope you don’t mind my curiosity?’

‘Curiosity is a gift,’ she replied.  ‘Or, sometimes, a curse.  Which do you find it?’

I was startled.  The question seemed too probing for our casual encounter. My interest piqued, I moved forward.  Her face was hidden under the brim of the white straw hat she wore so I could get no sense of her intention in quizzing me.

‘A gift,’ I replied.  ‘I’m a writer and curiosity is a necessary tool.’

‘Curiosity allied with imagination.  A dangerous combination.’

She leaned forward to place a streak of deeper pink along the base of one petal while I puzzled over this reply.  The flower, already life-like, took on almost a hyper-real effect.  I could swear it fluttered in the breeze.  Before I could respond, she glanced sideways up at me, dark brown eyes boring into mine as if she read deep into my soul.  She nodded once, as if a question had been answered.

‘A gift, then.  I hope you always find it so.’

I stood, bewildered, the conversation surreal under the merciless sun.  The woman returned to her painting, placing delicate strokes of subtle colour with an artist’s touch.  She seemed to have nothing further to say and finally I turned away, oddly disturbed.

It was a relief to return to the beach and join the others baking and browning beneath the Caribbean sun.  The jewelled sea, kingfisher blue, calmed my unease, washing away the lingering oddness of the encounter.  I settled to my customary role of observer, watching the businessman, stretched like a walrus on the shore, as the blonde rubbed sun lotion into the broad expanse of his back, her nose wrinkled in disgust, scarlet nails as threatening as talons.  Nearby, the two elderly ladies whispered together beneath their parasol, one seeming to wipe a few tears from her eyes.  Sand, I thought, fine grains lifted by the onshore breeze.

Later I watched the businessman drink mojitos, green mint leaves verdant as emeralds among the frozen diamonds of the shattered ice.  Celebrating, I guessed, or merely desperate for the oblivion of alcohol.  He usually drank wine.  Beyond, I was intrigued to see that one of the elderly ladies had also ordered a mojito.  She stared at her glass, mesmerised, while her companion sipped water and absent-mindedly stroked her friend’s hand, like a mother soothing her child.
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Hesitating over my own order, tempted by the iced mojitos, I heard a choking gasp.  The elderly lady fought for breath, her companion soothing, tears sliding down her cheeks.  A new sound drew my attention away.  The businessman clutched his chest, pale under the leathered tan, his blonde partner wide-eyed but oddly detached before his obvious agony.  The world seemed to tilt, things I had observed taking on a new significance.  As staff rushed to help the two dying guests, I looked for the artist.  Under the cold light of the rising moon her face was a graven mask and I remembered the one thing I knew about the oleander plant.  It is highly toxic and deadly if eaten.