The Queen and Mr Dukes : 1

1. The Turtle

1

The Turtle

AS SOON AS BOB DUKES stopped the car under the mango tree in the LaGrange’s yard, Poppy leapt out of the front seat and ran to the top of the cliff where the path led down to the beach.

“Come on, everyone!” she shouted. “Last one down the cliff is a….”

“Wait, Poppy, you’re not wearing your sunhat,” her father called out to her, but she disappeared down the cliff path, with fiddler crabs skittering off in all directions.

Bob shrugged his shoulders. Why was his twelve-year-old daughter always so bossy? He turned to let his younger children, Suze and Charlie, out of the back of the car. They ran off after their sister down the path. Bob put on his pith helmet and followed on behind, carrying the children’s sunhats. When he reached the beach, he found the three children crowded round the object of their journey. There on the brown sludge next to a mangrove thicket was the promised turtle.

He lay on his back with his fat khaki-colored flippers tethered to rough stakes beaten down into the mud.

“He’s huge,” said Poppy. “He’s a real giant.”

“Do you think he’s bigger than I am?” asked Charlie. He lay down on the mud alongside the turtle to see. The turtle reached from Charlie’s feet to his chin and Charlie was three foot six inches tall. That made the turtle just over three feet long.

“He must weight almost as much as all of us put together,” said Bob. “At least 300 pounds.”

“Is he dead?” asked Charlie for the turtle was not moving at all. Even his eyes were shut.

“He looks miserable, Daddy,” said Suze.

She was right. The creature was in distress. Moreover, Bob knew that male turtles never left the sea. The turtle’s element was water, not earth.

“It’s so hot here on the beach,” said Poppy, “and there’s not much shade.”

“Daddy, can’t we let him go?” asked Charlie tugging at his father’s hand.

“Bob, you made it,” called out a deep voice from behind them. They hadn’t noticed that Dominique LaGrange had joined them. “I think this animal is just what you were looking for, n’est-ce pas?”

Bob turned to shake Dominique’s hand. “Well, yes and no. He’s certainly a magnificent specimen.”

“Is good, no?” asked Dominique again. “It’s such a big one. It’ll have lots of fat.”

Unfortunately, Dominique was right, thought Bob. Heaven help him, it was just the right kind of turtle for making soup. A green sea turtle, a chelonia mydas.

“What’s Dominique talking about, Daddy?” asked Suze.

“Is for soup, Suze” interrupted Dominique.

“That’s not true, is it Daddy?” asked Poppy.

Her father didn’t answer.

“That’s cruel! Can’t we let him go? Please Daddy,” begged Charlie again.

An adult look passed between the two men. “You see how it is, Dominique,” said Bob. “I will have to reconsider all this. How to dispatch the poor creature, how to transport it…”

“Is easy… whumpf… chop off ’is ’ead,” answered Dominique, sweeping his arm down with vigor.

Poppy gasped, Suze looked at her father as if she couldn’t believe what Dominique was saying and Charlie cried out, “You’re not really going to kill him, are you?”

Bob himself felt sick at the thought of reducing such a noble creature to a mere bowl of soup.

“I’ll have to get back to you on this, Dominique.”

“Okay. I’ll keep ’im for you, Mr Dukes,” promised Dominique.