Inheritance (24 page)

Later, over a cold drink in the shade of a fale, Elena mentioned the plantation. Were there any buyers yet?

Jeanie frowned at her friend. ‘You heard?’

Elena laughed. ‘Sweet girl, all Samoa knows it! Our family will try to buy, naturally. But you keep the Apia house, I hear?’

Jeanie sighed. What didn’t Elena hear? ‘Yes, I’ll keep the house.’

‘Perfect,’ cried Elena. ‘I have a plan for you. A job at the hospital. Permanent. You are not really a plantation sort of person. I knew that from the beginning. Come
and work for me.’ She grinned widely, spreading her hands. ‘Perfect!’

Jeanie felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Have you heard also that Stuart is coming back?’

Hamish

S
imone brought the phone into my study. These days it seems the phone can follow us wherever we go in the house. A nasty trait. Next it will follow us into the garden, the car, on holiday. I hope I don’t live to experience it.

‘Another female doing her research,’ she said. ‘I told her you had written two books, full of all your knowledge, but evidently she would like to speak to you.’

Anyone who gets past Simone is a brave researcher, so I reached for the phone.

‘From Gore, for heavens’ sake,’ Simone added. ‘She must be a very rich student. Or wasteful. Ann Hope.’

The name rang a bell. My old brain is slow to make connections. It wasn’t until she began speaking that I knew who she was. She spoke formally, playing a part, pretending she was really interested in some event or
other, or matter of legal importance in the islands. I was too shocked to register the question. After a slight pause, she asked if Simone was in the room.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well I will continue with my questions and try to slip in the real one in a moment or two. You remember who I am?’

I could scarcely manage another yes. Surely she would realise that at my age I could not dissemble? Never could for that matter. Especially with Simone’s gimlet eyes fixed on me.

‘Well here goes,’ she said. I could hear a smile in her voice. The wretched woman was enjoying herself!

I asked her to wait while I found pen and paper. Simone sighed, found them for me. After a few minutes of voluble questions from Ann Hope, and noncommittal answers from me, interspersed with a bit of shaky writing, Simone lost interest and left the room, muttering that lunch would be ready in ten minutes.

‘Will that be all?’ I asked, hoping that she would take the hint. I was sick of all this silly play.

‘I’m so sorry to ring, Hamish,’ she said then, in a completely different voice. Now she sounded like the old Jeanie. ‘Could you please tell me whether you have told Elena Levamanaia anything?’

I cleared my throat, thinking. Had I?

‘You remember Elena?’

I said that of course I did, I was not yet gaga.

The woman laughed and then became serious. ‘She has been to see me. She has also met Francesca.’

‘Who?’ I had no idea who she was talking about.

‘My – the daughter.’

‘I see.’ That wretched Elena. I knew she would ferret away.

‘She said she spoke to you. You didn’t tell her anything about the … the circumstances of my daughter’s birth?’

‘I did not,’ I said, outraged to think that she might suspect me of being loose-tongued. ‘Will that be all?’

My hands were shaking. I couldn’t wait to end the conversation.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to upset you.’

Obviously she could read my feelings down the wire. How women do that I have no idea. To me a voice on the phone is impersonal. And should be so.

‘Thank you,’ she said, then added, ‘There is one other matter. Stuart – you know my …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘He thinks he has found me. I may have put him off. He hasn’t been in touch with you?’ After a moment or two she added more sharply ‘Stuart?’

It was a jolt hearing her speak of him so soon after Simone had found his photograph. I suppose I finally answered in the negative; her sigh of relief was quite clear.

‘My daughter is an artist and is well and happy. I’m very proud of her.’

Even I could hear the warning note. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’ A great relief to put the damn thing down.

Simone was in the room in a flash, to push some button on the phone. She said it was beeping.

‘What did you not do?’ she asked.

I had no idea what she meant.

‘You said “no I did not” in very firm tones.’

I believe I was rather sharp with Simone. The whole
conversation disturbed me more than I would like to admit. I told Simone some rubbish about the woman being too insistent and that I had refused to send her the answers she sought. Simone looked at me sharply, but let the matter lie.

After lunch, however, as I dozed over the
Times
crossword, the matter would not lie quiet in my own mind. The thought of Stuart finding Jeanie again must be desperate for her. She sounded quite in control over the phone, but then I am no judge of women’s emotions, as Simone would be quick to point out. I longed to talk to Simone, but how could I admit that I had acted secretly – criminally – all those years ago? If matters were about to unravel in some uncontrolled way, perhaps it would become necessary, but not yet. Not yet.

Jeanie Roper came to see me in my little shared office on Beach Road. It would have been 1967. April perhaps, or May. She came unannounced as I was sorting my papers into cardboard boxes. Simone and I had finally taken the difficult decision to leave Samoa. One of our boys had moved back to New Zealand (briefly as it turned out, but we were not to know that then) and was insistent that we return to enjoy the grandchildren. He may have meant ‘babysit them’. We had always thought that a time might come to return – either to New Zealand or France – when work and perhaps health gave out. Palagi don’t usually wait to die in Samoa, and most of our friends had long gone. But it would be a wrench, nonetheless, for both of us. We dreaded the next few months tying up
ends, selling or renting the house.

I was feeling particularly grumpy the day Jeanie arrived. The old files and papers reminded me of the many interesting cases I had dealt with in Apia. What on earth would I find to fill my days back in New Zealand? But Jeanie was contrite and I felt I had to spare her some time.

We sat and chatted about the plantation while my boy brought us tea and sandwiches. Jeanie had begun to take an interest in the estate, which was doing better than many others, being in cacao. Something dreadful was happening to the new banana crops since the hurricane. New plants were planted and flourishing – supposedly an improved strain – but the fruit which left on the
Tofua
or
Matua
looking healthy, collapsed on arrival in New Zealand. They became ripe one day and black the next. Officials and experts were perplexed. Meanwhile, our principal export was in crisis. Jeanie could be pleased with her healthy cacao trees, but Samoa’s economy was going downhill fast. So it was a surprise to hear Jeanie say that she wanted to sell the estate.

‘Will you put it on the market for me?’ she asked. ‘Have you time before you go?’

I was pleased to have a little work, and pretty certain that there could be a quick sale.

‘But why? Why now when you are beginning to learn the ropes and trade efficiently?’

I wanted to ask about Stuart; what he thought of the matter. I’d heard he was on the way back. Simone had told me that Jeanie would not welcome his return, but I thought that a bit harsh, after his nasty accident. Surely they’d find a way of rubbing along again. Jeanie put me
straight on that matter without my asking.

‘I’ve told Stuart I want a divorce,’ she said very firmly, her pretty little face determined. I thought of that time when Simone had described her as dangerous. ‘Could you draw up some papers? Is that what happens? We sign something and it’s over?’ She laughed in a tense kind of way. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the procedure.’

To me, this was all quite sudden and strange. We hadn’t seen Jeanie for a while – she often stayed in the house up at the plantation, but recently during the rehearsals and performance of the marvellous Women’s Committee play, she stayed in Apia and we saw her almost daily. She seemed on top of the world. Settled. We were so glad.

The question of divorce put the sale of the plantation in a different light. If I sold the estate and delivered the money to Jeanie, knowing that divorce was her intention, I could be accused of colluding with her to cheat Stuart out of a share. The law is pretty clear on that. Stuart could petition to block the sale. Caution on my part was advisable. Since Stuart was returning, I suggested, it might be better if they both came in and discussed the matter when he arrived.

‘Oh he won’t agree to it,’ she replied, rather grimly. ‘It’s my idea, not his. He thinks we can go on just as we used to. That’s the problem. I’ve written to him not to come back, that I don’t want to see him again, but he doesn’t believe me. I thought if we had a legal paper to present to him, he might understand that I mean business.’

I told her that divorce was a rather more prolonged and complicated matter than that. She had every right to petition for a legal separation, but she must produce
grounds. Then, if they lived apart, after a certain length of time – five years in Western Samoan law – a separation could be declared legal.

‘Five years!’ she cried, looking at me as if I had presented her with a handful of cockroaches. ‘I just want it over and done with!’

I told her that if Stuart didn’t want a divorce then a ‘paper’, as she called it, couldn’t be signed. Unless she could cite grounds.

She was silent for a bit then, frowning. ‘What grounds would do?’

I recited them. Adultery, desertion, cruelty. Possibly habitual drunkenness, although since the plantation was in her name, she could not claim that he drank away the necessities of life.

‘He beat me,’ she said, then, in a small voice.

‘Well that could certainly be cited as grounds for divorce,’ I said. But I had the feeling that his beating her was not the reason. Something else.

‘And the sale of the plantation? This is connected to the divorce?’ A rather shady area for me. Possibly I shouldn’t have asked. But I was curious you see. Anyone would have been curious.

She said then that she was planning to leave Samoa, but that she wanted it kept a secret for the moment. She wanted to make sure that the plantation was hers to sell and that she need not share the proceeds with Stuart. The house in Apia she thought she might keep meantime, but the house and all the buildings on the plantation would go with the sale of the land. Clearly, she had thought it all out.

I was astonished. ‘I thought you were settling
really well,’ I said. ‘Congratulations, by the way, on the performance at the Tivoli. You really made a big difference. We’ll miss you,’ I added.

‘You’re going,’ she said rather pointedly.

‘Elena will miss you. You and she make a great team.’

‘Elena’s going back too,’ she said. ‘For a while anyway. They want her back in New Zealand for something.’

I hadn’t heard that. But Elena was always coming and going. She’d be back.

Jeanie brought me back to the matter in hand. Did she have a right, she wanted to know, to refuse Stuart entry to her house? To the plantation?

Oh dear, oh dear. I certainly didn’t want to be dragged into this! Technically, I suppose she might. Both were in her name and very recently inherited. But it would surely be looked on as unkind to lock out a returning invalid who was still, in fact, married to her.

Jeanie frowned and bit her lip. She seemed to have no feeling at all that she was being unkind.

I pointed out that Stuart would possibly have no means of support if she insisted on selling the plantation and refusing him entry to the house. He might have some legal redress, as her partner of some years (only four, she was quick to point out) to some share of the plantation sale. I was quite shocked, to be honest, that she was able to harden her heart so.

Jeanie looked at me squarely. I think she realised how my mind was running.

‘What if I paid for a room at the hotel for him? The plantation could do that for him.’

I agreed that that would ease the matter, certainly.

Jeanie seemed to need, then, to persuade me that she had right on her side. She explained that Stuart had been a disaster on the plantation – too forceful in his dealings with the workforce. (‘He hit them too,’ she said, ‘and let them know he carried a gun.’) I was not quite sure she told the truth. His temper and impatience, she said, got in the way of good plantation practice and production went down when he was in charge.

Suddenly she seemed to lose patience with the whole conversation. She stood up and walked to the open door. Outside the midday downpour had just begun. Her voice was all but drowned in the roar.