Inheritance (26 page)

Simone asked me, a few days later, whether Jeanie was planning to leave Samoa.

‘I feel it,’ she pronounced. ‘I can feel some change in her. Hamish I should know. Her good friend.’

I tried to prevaricate; tried to turn the conversation, but bluster has no effect at all on Simone. ‘So it
is
true,’ she cried. ‘She has to get away from that man! So how can we help her, Hamish? How?’

I had been helping her in secret for some time. The last thing we needed was for Simone to find out. I pleaded with her for her silence. ‘You are quite right my dear, as usual. She plans to go I believe, but she needs it to be a complete surprise to Stuart. He must not follow her. You would understand.’

‘But of course I understand, you stupid man. I will breathe no word. You will see that I can keep a secret as well as you.’ She patted my cheek in a rather demeaning way and headed for the garden. I was sure she had something in mind and was immediately anxious.

The weeks that followed were ominously devoid of her questions and opinions. I found out later that she was busily spreading counter information to her circle
of friends. Jeanie had been offered a job at the hospital; Jeanie would be travelling back and forth from Savai‘i on medical business so might not be seen for days or weeks sometimes; Jeanie had decided to take in boarders at the big house (this to discourage Stuart from arriving at all hours of the day and night). She even invented an imminent family visit from her Aunt Mary. I heard all these stories second-hand from various men at the club, without realising they originated in Simone’s fertile imagination. She was having fun. Perhaps she and Jeanie were laughing together and inventing new lies.

Meantime, I was completing a very successful sale of the plantation. The wider Levamanaia ‘aiga had joined forces and come up with a fair sum. The plantation would be in one piece again (and no doubt Gertrude would be raging from beyond the grave!). Jeanie would be quite well off. She arranged for a modest sum to be kept in my legal account to be paid to Stuart some weeks after she left. In my mind, there was no question of an equal division. She had inherited directly from her father only months earlier.

Once she popped into the office wanting to know about changing her name. ‘Can it be done simply?’ she asked. ‘Can it be made untraceable?’

I assured her that it was easy enough to simply change your name. Any bank, when she arrived back in New Zealand would probably happily open an account for her in any name she chose. But to do it legally, I told her, by deed poll, would be traceable. Records would be kept.

She looked at me in that stubborn, determined manner that I had begun to dread.

‘Could I change my passport, so there was no record
of my entry into New Zealand?’

She was trying to draw me into shady areas, and I would not be drawn there. No, I told her; that would be illegal. That would be forgery. I began to fear her questions, you see. She didn’t seem to care about legality. Making a clean break from Stuart seemed, in her eyes, to justify any means. And she tried to make me feel that it was my duty to help her escape.

She changed tack. What would be the least traceable way of leaving the country? By plane or sea? I thought slipping quietly onto the banana boat at the last minute might be better than flying. Everyone knew who was arriving and leaving at Faleolo Airport. Flying was the favoured dramatic exit overseas for study or work. Crowds gathered with flowers and necklaces of shells to farewell the lucky few who flew away. The handful of tourists on the banana boat were usually foreigners. Jeanie could disembark at Fiji if she chose to, if the boat was going that way.

I was allowing myself to be drawn in despite all my scruples. There was something seductive about planning this clandestine escape. And given Stuart’s wretched stalking, his demands and threats, my actions felt at the time thoroughly justified.

‘Would I need a passport on the boat?’ she asked.

Yes, I said. There was no way to compromise with the passport. They might not check as she embarked, but wherever she disembarked there would be a customs check.

She stood up and paced my little room. I couldn’t see why she was so fussed. Surely Stuart wouldn’t go to the trouble to check customs controls?

‘Yes he would,’ she said, with a grim smile. ‘Oh yes he would. He would try everything. He knows the law too.’

A rather sour note to bring into the conversation, considering all I was doing to keep her plans quiet.

Later, after she’d left the islands, I did help her to deposit money in a new account in New Zealand under a new name. I was right. The bank in question had no scruples at all. I believe Jeanie would have been required to give an address and telephone number – nothing more. She never told me where she settled. I arranged a bank draft for a considerable amount to the account in question. Ann Hope was the name. I made no connection at the time. But later I wondered if she had falsified her passport. Her name was Ann Jeanie Roper. Perhaps, on that boat trip back to New Zealand, she had painstakingly altered the two r’s in Roper. In those days it might have been possible. Customs checks coming off the banana boat were probably cursory, and of course, in the nineteen-sixties, passports were primitive things compared to these electronic days.

Up until the day she left, I felt I had done nothing really unprincipled. My actions could be construed as a quiet helping hand to a client in trouble.

I had no idea about any baby. But what could I do at that late stage? I felt thoroughly compromised and very angry with Jeanie.

Jeanie came running across the garden and up the steps, not five minutes after Simone had left to help at the clinic.

‘Hamish, I need your help. Please, please don’t say no. Please!’

The poor girl looked quite distraught, bags under those pretty dark eyes, her clothes a mess. She kept looking back at her house. Perhaps she was worried Stuart might appear.

‘Here, calm down,’ I said, laying down my precious newspaper. In those days I had the
Guardian Weekly
flown in – an airmail version on tissue paper which was a lifeline to the real world. That edition contained dreadful news, I seem to remember, about civilian conditions in Vietnam.

She danced and fussed while I found a stone to weight the pages. Obviously something was up.

Naturally, I offered to help. At first I thought the request could easily be granted. She was finally off. Had booked a passage on the
Matua
, which had been tied up at the new wharf since yesterday and was leaving shortly. Would I drive her and her luggage down? She was in a ferment; fearful that Stuart might find out and wanting to board at the last possible moment. I agreed feeling a little excited to be part of her escape. The plantation was sold, her Apia house settled with a renting agency, all her affairs in order. I felt I had acted reasonably honourably; had done all I could to help her escape the intolerable situation with Stuart. Was quite proud of myself, if I remember rightly.

Jeanie thanked me breathlessly, planted a kiss on my head and ran back to her house. She said she’d be ready in half an hour. I must say she’d been quite enterprising. I hadn’t helped with booking the passage, or with sorting her effects. I expected the furniture to travel with her on
the boat; that she’d have arranged cartage already, but was wrong on that count. She left it behind.

Jeanie was ready on the drive when I backed the Datsun up. Three suitcases stood there ready, along with a backpack and a large basket covered with a muslin cloth. Jeanie herself was dressed rather extraordinarily – a big shapeless mumu with some sort of large overcoat over that. I had only ever seen her neat as a button. She must have been sweltering. I assumed these were clothes that wouldn’t fit in her suitcases.

We loaded the car, Jeanie hopping and fussing over everything, nervous as a flea despite her weight of clothes. The basket went in last. She settled it gently onto the back seat, wedging it tightly with the backpack; wouldn’t let me touch it. Food, Jeanie said, and some fragile things. I thought no more about it and we set off for the wharf. A short trip.

But just before we arrived, near the bottom of Leifiifi Street, the baby cried.

‘Stop, stop!’ cried Jeanie. ‘Stop please, Hamish!’

I looked at her in amazement. ‘I thought I heard a baby!’ I was making a joke, you see. Knew it couldn’t have been.

‘Hamish, Hamish,’ she cried, ‘don’t look. Just pull in over there.’ She pointed to a patch of shade, and then turned in her seat to fuss at the basket.

Well it
was
a baby. Jeanie was desperate for me not to know; didn’t want me implicated, perhaps, or feared that I would ruin her plans. But the baby had other ideas. It cried for a moment, despite Jeanie’s jiggling of the basket. Nothing would do but she must get out a bottle and settle the tiny thing down. Jeanie giving me pleading glances,
and me huffing and puffing as well I might.

I told her I would have no part of this. That we must return to the house. That what she was planning amounted to kidnap for all I knew. That my reputation and standing in the legal profession would be severely compromised if I became party to her mad plan. Jeanie nodded grimly at all my protestations without a word. She continued to feed the mite, who settled after a bit. I saw love in her eyes. In that desperate, desperate situation, she looked at the little scrap of a baby with tenderness.

‘If you don’t help,’ she said quietly, ‘you may well be signing this baby’s death warrant.’ Then, in a whisper, she told me the whole shocking story. I was absolutely appalled. What a dreadful crisis that poor young woman had been dealing with, on her own, all these months. We had suspected a fight between Teo and Stuart – everyone had. But we had guessed it was over Jeanie. In retelling the story she had gone quite white with the fear and emotion of it. There was nothing serious between her and Teo, she insisted, just a bit of innocent flirting. But then Stuart involved in a rape! Of Teo’s fiancée! What a dreadful, spiteful deed! I could scarcely imagine the recriminations and shame if the story had got out. Stuart would have been lynched. This explained why he had not laid a complaint. I lost all sympathy for the wretch.

Jeanie pleaded with me to be silent. If anything came to light, she said, I could safely say that she had tricked me, and that I had no idea a baby was involved. She said the baby – a little girl – had been dumped at her door a week ago. Jeanie had been at her wits’ end keeping the whole thing quiet until the banana boat came in.

I told her she should report the whole matter to the police. It was my duty to say so, but the endless implications were as clear to me as to her. Clearer perhaps. The assault. The rape. The shame to Ma‘atoe and the aualuma; the hidden pregnancy; the crime of abandoning the baby. I was very, very angry with Teo for putting the burden on poor Jeanie. He should have reported Stuart immediately. But then I could also imagine his dilemma. I knew Ma‘atoe’s family. They were definitely of the old fa‘asamoa. Very strict and traditional. And she a taupou.

Jeanie told me that she would probably have the baby adopted in some other country. That she planned to pretend to give birth on the boat – hence the shapeless clothes. Goodness knows how she thought she could get away with that. A mad, desperate plan.

But with the baby asleep and covered and the ship about to sail, I thought she might get away with smuggling it aboard.

I closed my mind to the whole matter and drove her onto the wharf. I knew the officer on duty, Paul, and chatted to him while Jeanie took the backpack and basket to her cabin. Paul and I carried her cases up the gangplank. At the cabin door Jeanie gave me a quick kiss and touched my sleeve in that light-fingered way she had.

Her eyes were shining. Perhaps with tears, but I sensed there was happiness too. Simone would have known.

‘Don’t let Stuart know,’ she said. ‘Not ever.’

I promised. She was so brave. I think I would have promised her anything at that moment. I should have felt a great weight of guilt, I suppose, but at the time
I believe I felt rather proud. I longed to tell Simone – wouldn’t she have laughed and cheered!

I never knew what happened on the voyage. For all I knew the baby could have died. When the
Matua
next came back into port a fortnight later, I made a point of going down to the club, as the officers usually ended up there. Paul was very much in attendance, chatting up the girls in his usual overt way. He nodded to me, but we didn’t speak. I never heard any gossip about an illegitimate baby on board. Or a birth. The ruined shipment of bananas and the collapse of the banana export trade was all everyone was talking about. Lucky for Jeanie, perhaps. Or perhaps she had convinced the officers to stay mum with some invented story. Such a little slip of a thing. She could be very appealing.

The hardest thing was not telling Simone. She knew, of course, that Jeanie had gone. Knew it almost at once and suspected the
Matua
. She badgered me, naturally, suspecting that I knew more than I was letting on, but for once I think I was able to keep the truth from her. Clever Simone somehow managed to disguise Jeanie’s absence for a good four weeks. Then she put out various titbits of gossip, implying that Jeanie had taken off with a handsome man to New Caledonia. Or Tahiti. Or was it Papua New Guinea? Oh she enjoyed herself over all that! Invented a dark fellow with flashing eyes, in banking was it? Or some foreign business? Apia was abuzz.