Solomons Seal (15 page)

I went back to the bridge and took over from Luke again. The coaster was still there ahead of us, and nothing to do but follow her. The chart showed Kieta as the main port of Bougainville. I tried some star fixes then. The night was very clear, ideal for sextant practice, but after I had twice made a nonsense of my calculations, I gave it up. I just couldn't concentrate, my mind on Perenna Holland instead of star charts
and correction tables. I slid the starboard bridge wing door open and stood thinking about it in the cool night air. Well, I had done my best. I had tried to explain, and if he didn't share his sister's belief about sorcery, it was none of my business. But it still didn't make sense expecting her to fly on to Kieta when she could so easily join ship at this beach we were putting in to. And she certainly wouldn't stop with an aunt in Perth, not when she had come so far, working her passage until I'd got her the money to fly the last part.

I found myself gazing for'ard over the backs of the empty Haulpaks to the gap left for the two trucks we were going to load from a deserted beach in the small hours of tomorrow night. No Customs, the Indian had said. I wondered what those trucks would be filled with – drink, cigarettes, or was it something more serious? Drugs? Was that what he was afraid of, that she'd find out he was smuggling drugs?

There was a light on in the signals office, and suddenly my mind was made up. I went back to the chart table, wrote out my message and then took it to Shelvankar. He was alone, sitting at a portable typewriter, a cigarette burning in an old tobacco tin, the air thick with smoke. The place was littered with cardboard boxes, and as he glanced up at me, dark eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, he looked more like a storekeeper than a radio officer. I handed him the message I had written. ‘I want that sent right away.' He read it, taking his time. Finally he put it down.

‘You know Miss Holland?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

He shook his head uncertainly. ‘I will have to ask the Captain.' He was getting to his feet, but I pushed him back into his chair. ‘Just send it,' I told him.

‘But Mr Slingsby, I cannot do that. It is very difficult, you see. Captain Holland has already sent quite different instructions to his sister. She is to fly to Kieta.'

‘At his expense?'

‘No, he don't say anything about who pays for the ticket. He just tells her he can't meet her and if she doesn't stay with her aunt at Perth she must fly on to Kieta.'

‘So, after coming all across the Pacific to see him, she's fobbed off with an aunt or else she has to fly up to Townsville, get the Air Niugini flight to Port Moresby, then switch to another flight to Bougainville.'

‘Is none of my business, Mr Slingsby. If you do not agree, then you talk with Captain, please.'

‘I've already talked to him. He's worried about that beach cargo.' I hesitated, sure that this little man knew what it was, but not certain I could wring it out of him. ‘You keep the ship's accounts, don't you?' I saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Well, don't you?'

‘Yes. But I don't see—'

‘Then tell me this. Just how much are you in the red? You've been losing money—'

‘The Hollands, they run very good shipping line. Is very important for the islands.'

‘I'm not talking about the Hollands. I'm talking about this ship. It's been losing money, hasn't it?'

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘There
is a recession, you know. All over the world. In the Solomons and Papua New Guinea, too. Everyone is affected by it. But we were all right until we have to go to Sydney for engine repairs. This is very old ship now.'

‘And Holland's in debt – to his partner?'

He didn't have an answer to that, and because I had already come to the conclusion that Jona Holland was no businessman and relied entirely on this man for cargo arrangements and all the accounts, I said, ‘You know everything that goes on in this ship, Mr Shelvankar, so I'm sure you have discovered what my normal business is. I deal in land and big estates, which means I know all about figures and can read your books the way an accountant can. Do you want me to get Captain Holland to let me check through them?'

There was a shocked look in his eyes as he said quickly, ‘I assure you, Mr Slingsby, there is no need for that. Everything is accounted for very meticulously. I am a most meticulous person.'

I knew I had him then. In total control of the business side, he didn't have it in his nature not to fiddle something. ‘You send that message. Quote the flight number and ask for it to be delivered to Miss Holland on board the aircraft.'

For a moment he sat there staring up at me. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, I send it. But on your responsibility, you understand. I am not responsible.'

‘Just send it.'

The last night watch is always a lonely one, but at 04.00 that morning I felt lonelier than usual. Tiredness may have had something to do with it. I had been on the bridge until past midnight and had had very little sleep. But that wasn't the real reason. It was the strangeness of the ship, the crew all islanders who didn't speak my language, and a coast I had never seen before. As I stood there on the bridge, the night dark and overcast, a black helmsman at the wheel and only the lights of that coaster ahead for company, the sense of isolation was very strong.

My eyelids gradually became heavy, almost gummed together with sleep, and to keep myself awake, I began thinking about Bougainville, what future the island might hold for me. Then my mind switched involuntarily to the trucks we were going to load off that beach and to Perenna Holland – wondering whether she had got my message in time, what she would do. Would she stay with her aunt in Perth
or fly on to Sydney, hire a car and drive up to Tin Can Bay? I knew so little about her, I didn't even know whether she had a licence and could drive. And if she did manage to locate us in the dark, what prospect was there for the development of any close relationship here on board, with her brother and his problems always present? Even my memory of her was now overshadowed by that vivid drunken picture he had given me of her wielding a cleaver in the blood-bespattered kitchen where their mother had been murdered. An outbreak of native hysteria, the lawyer had called it. But hysteria is a symptom; there had to be a cause for such an outbreak of violence.

Luke relieved me as dawn broke reluctantly under the overcast, the ship tramping steadily on over a leaden sea and the coast of New South Wales just visible, a dark line on the horizon to port. He had a reasonable command of English, and I stayed with him for a while. He was from a village at the eastern end of New Britain. He showed me the position of it on the Pacific Ocean chart. It was on the coast facing towards Hixon Bay and a high mountain called The Father. He was an important figure in his village, he said, but to retain his position he had to return at reasonable intervals to hold a feast and give presents. ‘I have two worlds, you see.' He was smiling a little sadly. ‘They do not understand this world. They know I am a navigator and have a ship. That they can understand, for we have always lived partly by the sea. But they can only see that I am a navigator if I go there
and prove to them I am rich. It is a very poor village.' And he added quickly, ‘But the life there is good.'

I asked him why he wouldn't stand a night watch or navigate out of sight of land. He hesitated a long time before replying. Finally he said, ‘Mr Sling'by, believe me, I can do it.' His deep voice was suddenly urgent. ‘But I do not have confidence when the Captain is all time watching me. In the islands he know I am a good navigator, but at night, or on a long voyage like from Louisiade Archipelago to Sandy Cape, he has no trust, so I am afraid I don't do it right and make some very abominable mistake.' He looked at me then, his black, broad-nosed face reflecting a deep-felt sense of wrong. ‘It is a long time since you serve in a ship like this, but he does not watch over you.' He said it almost accusingly.

Looking into his face, I realised that beneath that black, markedly different shell was a very proud man. ‘Would it help,' I said cautiously, ‘if you shared a night watch with me? Later in the trip.' And I added, ‘It would certainly help me if you did. I don't know these waters, and I'd appreciate having you check my navigation.'

He hesitated, his large brown eyes fixed on me intently. Finally he nodded. ‘Yes, I do that.' And suddenly he was smiling at me, a great broad smile that had extraordinary warmth in it. ‘I think you understand.'

I left him then to find the wardroom empty, breakfast already over and the table littered with the remains of the meal. I was tired and didn't feel like food
anyway. I slipped down the companionway to the main deck, got a mug of tea from the galley and took it to my cabin, turning in straight away. Holland was having a long lie-in in preparation for the night ahead, and I was due on the bridge again at noon.

Luke called me a little before twelve so that I had time to eat before going on watch. There was nobody else in the wardroom, and Samson, the big, burly steward, served me in lonely splendour. When I finally joined Luke in the wheelhouse, I found the weather had deteriorated. There was no sign of the coast now, visibility down to about 2 miles. ‘This evening I think it rain,' he said.

‘You've got a new forecast, have you?'

He shook his head, laughing. ‘Don't need forecast to tell me what this weather will be. I know.'

I was to discover that in this, and in many other things, his instinct was infallible. But he knew nothing about sorcery, or pretended not to, though he admitted it existed and that it was still practised in the islands. Talking to him, I found him a complicated mixture of pride and diffidence. He was also one of the most likeable men I had ever met.

He relieved me again at four, and by then there were rain clouds building up to the east of us. ‘Compass course is due north,' I said, ‘and the radar shows the coast six-and-a-half miles off. Have you had some tea?'

‘No, I have coffee.'

I got some tea from the galley and took it up to the wardroom. There was nobody there, and when I
had finished it, I started on a tour of the ship. It was the first opportunity I had had to look around. I started with the engine-room. They were still clearing up after the overhaul, but already the copper and brasswork gleamed and the whole hot mass of machinery had a cared-for look. The chief engineer was from Rabaul, an old grey-haired man who introduced himself as Ahab Holtz. Of mixed German blood, and German-trained, he was a cheerful, friendly man, and his regard for his engines was in the nature of a love affair. The others in the engine-room were different. They were from Buka, and I was unpleasantly conscious of the sullenness of their manner.

Outside of the engine-room the ship was in a poor state, dirt and rust everywhere and no sign of anything having been painted for a long time. Even essential gear looked neglected, and nothing seemed to have been done to clean up on deck after the period in dock. The galley on the main deck of the bridge housing was far from clean, and in the crew's mess for'ard I sensed that same sullenness. They were most of them from Buka, and the coxs'n was there with them, a squat bearded man, the skin of his face so glossy black it looked like polished ebony. He said his name was Teopas, and when I asked him why he didn't stick to his own mess aft, he affected not to understand, though I learned later he had been to school at a Marist Mission and spoke quite good English. I told him to come with me and check some of the things that urgently needed attention, but he just stood there staring at me with surly insolence, not saying a word,
and the devil of it was there was no way I could enforce the order.

I went aft then to what had been the sergeants' mess, which was where he should have been. The only occupant was the bos'n and when I asked him about the attitude of the Buka men, he said, ‘Buka bilong Solomons. No laikim Papua Niugini gavman. Buka pipal laik ind'pendence. Bougainville tu.' He was from Kieta, and he said something about his father's having been killed by the Australians during the war. At least, I think it was that. He said, ‘
Papa bilong mi and ol Australia maikim dai
.'

Finally I went up to my cabin feeling distinctly uneasy. A ship with a political bombshell ticking away in its guts, that wasn't what I had been looking for when I had come out to her in Darling Harbour. As I lay on my bunk, thinking about it, it was hard to realise it was only thirty-six hours since I had come on board.

I was back on the bridge at 20.00 after a greasy, overdone steak, apple pie and coffee. Holland was there, pacing restlessly back and forth. Nobody else except the helmsman. ‘We're closing the coast now,' he said. ‘I altered course about an hour and a half back, shortly after we came on to the continental shelf. I'm not sure, but I think I've got the loom of Double Island light fine on the port bow. We're in sixty-five fathoms at the moment. When you get below thirty fathoms, put the engines at Slow Ahead and give me a call.'

‘What's your ETA at the beach?' I asked him.

‘Between midnight and o-four-hundred was what I told them. I guess we should be there about o-one-hundred, probably a little before.' He went over to the chart. ‘That's our position.' He had pencilled in a cross with 20.00 against it. ‘When you raise the light keep it fine on the port bow, and whatever the depth call me at twenty-three-thirty. We should be less than an hour's run from the beach then.' He turned to me with a quick, nervous smile. ‘I hope you're enjoying yourself. It's a great help to have you on board, and I'm grateful.'

I nodded. ‘Glad I'm of use.' I turned to him then, and the smile faded as I said, ‘There's just one thing. Those two trucks you're lifting off the beach, what's in them?'