The Love Beach (26 page)

'It did too,' confirmed Abe. 'Boy, you should have been there. Almost everybody in 'Gesima saw it. He took off from the lagoon, great sight that was too; big forward wave and just getting gently up into the air, like a big beautiful cow. Then one of the propellers fell off and went splash. And all the people in the town, who'd been flying with him, and knew him and how he tried to look after the flying boat, stopped and watched and nudged each other saying things like: "Look, there's the propeller just fallen from Wilkie's flying boat!" That sort of thing you know. Just conversation. Because it seemed so natural for things to fall from Wilkie's flying boat. I mean, they was always falling off. But this time something else came away, and then another lump and then some more, until there was no flying boat at all. Just all bits and pieces, Wilkie among them. They
all fell in the lagoon and so did Wilkie. He was by himself in the contraption that day, trying it out after putting something right. I suppose he didn't put it right enough. Anyway all the oddments fell down and old Hassey, who was a pal of Wilkie's, said: "He'll never be able to put the bloody thing together now." '

Davies nodded vigorously.

'A great man, see?' said Abe. 'Lunatic, but great. It's the same thing in the island. You come to get to know that, son.'

'I'm getting to know it already,' said Davies clumsily, his mouth full.

'Sooney,' Abe mused. 'Sooney Petersen. Ha! Came from a circus in Copenhagen or somewhere cold like that. Went over to St Barnabas and stopped the tribe over there putting him in a casserole for dinner by showing them circus tricks. He used to leap from a big high tree fifty feet or round about like that, with a rope looped around his ankle, just a bit shorter. Wham! He'd stop dead a couple of inches from the ground. Boy, that was something to see. He taught the boys over there on the island. They can all do it now. They been on the movies and television and all those things. A great man.'

'Great,' agreed Davies.

'Lunatic again,' said Abe. 'So you call this Livesley a lunatic because he's got the sign up saying "Bread". Right, maybe. But he's a pioneer, son, that's what he is. Next week maybe the cycle shop will have a neon sign saying "Bikes" and then the undertakers saying "Deaths" or "Burials" or something if you get me. I'm the agent for those signs, by the way. Then the hotel gets one, if Seamus can get himself away from playing his own fruit machines, and then somewhere else and somewhere else. In no time the whole town is flashing on and off across the Pacific! Red, blue, yellow, all the colours of the Union Jack, boy, and the ships that go passing us by will want to know what this place is with all the life. So they come, big ships, even, ocean liners, tourists. So Livesley's a great man.'

Abe half stood and listened across the night. 'Nothing yet,' he said. 'But not too long to wait, I fancy.'

He returned to Davies. 'You came here selling what? Butter and fats, or something?'

'Don't remind me,' said Davies.

'Now that was lunatic,' said Abe. 'Only someone from outside the islands could be that lunatic. And it doesn't make you great. It was
genuine
lunatic. That's the difference.'

He listened again, but lowered his ear after a while. 'Pollet, now he's a friend of yours?'

'Yes, came in on the boat with us.'

'A great man, see. Knows about the islands and knows what to do. He can smell things. Trades with the villagers, gets their knick‑knacks and sells them. Right? And he knows every village and what it wants. There's one place, Uru‑uru, do you know it?'

'No,' admitted Davies.

'Pollet took them a football one day. The English football, the round one. Yes? Now they play football all the time, not just the boys and men, but everybody, women, girls, babies, grandmothers. Every spare second they're hacking a ball about in the village. Two hundred of them sometimes, in the monsoon rain even, going wild. All in football shirts, all different colours, shorts and socks, but no boots. They can't take the boots. Pollet just has to take them these football things and they trade their wooden carvings, and all the rest of it. I'm the agent for sports gear in these parts, by the way. But he's a great man. Boy, I've seen a huge big pregnant woman kicking a ball like crazy, going like a tank through boys and men. A man, ninetyeight, was killed by a ball there last year when he was playing goal. Straight in the face. It's like it all the time.‑In and out the houses, kicking against walls, playing inside the huts in the dark nights, they never run down. Old toothless women, two‑year‑olds...'

'What's that?' said Davies, reaching for the gun.

'Something,' agreed Abe. 'I beard something.'

From beyond the trees, a mile away from the lagoon of St Paul's, came a second sound, a cotton‑wool thud. A spray of sparks ran above the palms. The sky glowed orange, then yellow, then a deep red. They could hear a. throaty roaring.

'The diversion,' said Abe.

'No,' whispered Dayies in disbelief. 'He's not set the copra boat on fire?'

'Looks like it,' said Abe calmly. 'It was the natural thing.'

'That's criminal.' whispered Davies. 'But that's bloody criminal. He can't do that. The stupid bastard doesn't know where to stop.'

'You're in it too,' Abe reminded him.
'
You've got a signed promise note for your fee.' He looked at the crimson sky. 'Burning great,' he said admiringly. 'I offered to insure it for them, but they said the premium was too big. Alice and Northern Territories Mutual Protection. I'm the agent around here.'

There was one light left burning in the village when Conway was on his way to the fire boat. In the circle of that light he saw someone moving about. He could wait. He sat at the edge of the lagoon on a painful piece of lava rock, where the lava joined the coral, and waited.

He had time, so he asked himself why he did these things. It was not often he put the question but then it was not often he had to hang about like this before setting fire to a ship.

'All right, then, why do you do it?'

'Because it's me. Because I like to do things in a certain way. And I like to do certain types of things.'

'Don't you think that sometimes it's difficult, dangerous, and bleeding unnecessary. I mean like setting fire to these poor buggers' copra ship. It's like burning a man's bank balance.'

'You're beginning to sound like a conscience.'

'Not before time, either. Well, why?'

'Because it's a job I've fixed to do and I'm going to do it. I don't like to lose.'

'That's just about it. You don't like to lose. 'That's why they gave you that medal in Vietnam. That was a laugh.'

'Right.'

'But what you did, running into that village like some film star, was difficult, dangerous, and unnecessary. Agreed?'

'Agreed. Right, now shut up because I want to get this incendiary grenade right in the middle of this copra hulk. I've never set fire to a copra hulk before.'

'I'm dead sorry for you, son. You know this will make the poor sods penniless, don't you?'

'That's partly the idea. First to make a diversion. .

'So you can get the motor bike and play Jesus...'

'Dodson‑Smith.'

'And so these savages, ignorant so‑and‑sos will take your money to cart them off to Vietnam…'

'Australia. They'll never get as far as Vietnam. You know that.'

'All right. Aussie then. So you can tell the boss what a marvellous job you've done again. They may give you another medal.'

'It's all fixed, so shut up, sport. Right, the light's gone out. Here we go. See if a drop of water will keep you quiet for a while.'

He stripped. Once he was in the warm water of the lagoon he felt better. He was on his way. The whole thing would be great. He just did things this way.

Efficiently, with no noise, he moved across the dark lagoon. Animals and various birds were clucking in the jungle fringe, but they were not alarmed. He swam with shortened strokes so that the water was worried as little as possible. It rode easily under and above his arms, his legs scissored gently. The hulk, sitting placidly at its eternal mooring like a grandmother in a bed, was just ahead of him now. He wondered momentarily if they ever kept a watchman on board. He doubted it. They were too tired. ‑

The bow of the hulk was over his head now, like a black canopy. Little mewings came from it at water level. Creaks and strainings, and these little kitten sounds. He trod water to make certain the sounds were from the timbers. He realized they were; the old wood talking to the water. There were some carvings on the side of the hull, ancient and dulled but still there, clearly embossed in the dark. Conway wondered where the ship had traded.

About his waist he had a watcrproof wrapper and within this the Australian army issue incendiary grenade, fixed to a timer which gave him thirty minutes before the fire started. He lay on his back in the supporting lagoon, unwrapped the package, checked that he had fixed the timer correctly. He had. He lobbed it efficiently over the bulwark above his head. It struck the deck boards and rattled on the wood. He waited, waited in case it rolled back. But it stayed up there. He got close to the hulk to listen for its ticking, but the water against the hull made too much commotion.

That would be all right. Thirty minutes from now. He went back to the shore, to the right‑hand jut of the land around the lagoon, with the same quiet swim, watching the village for movement or light. There was none. He genuinely hoped they never got as far as Vietnam because it was not a place for tired people. Too many things happened when you were asleep. They wouldn't, though, he was certain of that. Six weeks in Aussie touring about, big cities, and then shipped back here to tell everybody what a great time they'd had.

He reached the edge of the water, climbing out low and carefully, trying to decide whether coral or lava hurt most. He decided on the coral. There was a towel in his pack. He believed in doing things comfortably if not lavishly. After he was dry he dressed, looked back at the silent vessel in the anchorage, crossed his fingers, uncrossed them, then set off through the trees for the track that led to the hill above the village. Night noises froze him sometimes, but he made no great disturbance in the jungle. In the days he had spent on the island he had carefully judged distances and directions. He always did this kind of thing very well. Time spent in reconnoitring had never been time wasted.

The path rising to the plateau, where they kept the sacred motor cycle, was steep but not difficult. He used a secondary route for the first section so that he kept out of sight of the village at all times. It took him twenty minutes. He checked his watch, looked at the motor bike and checked that over.

It was an American wartime Argosy model, standing like a museum piece there on the hill. They kept over it a cover made of thatched palm to protect it all the year. They had made the area about it like a little temple, an altar and a lectem, and unlit candles. An oil‑buming torch sent out a lick of flame at one corner. That was always there in case Dodson‑Smith should lose his way. Conway looked about him and felt a gleam of pity for the men who had made this

place. Strange how people always put their faith in something unknown and then tied it up to something familiar and known. Like a motor bike.

He ran his hands over the old metal of the machine. He knew it would start because the islanders started it up every day at noon and kept the engine running for five minutes. Abe sold them two gallons of petrol every month for the operation. Abe was the agent for the petrol company.

Conway unscrewed the cap on the fuel tank and hung his finger in the aperture. The tank was almost full. It was possibly grade one too, unless Abe charged them for grade one and gave them grade three. He kept checking his watch. At the thirty minutes he sat down sedately and looked over towards the village and the lagoon. The dark trees fall‑ing down the hill in front of hira, cut away in a parting down the middle, shielded most of the village but he knew that, had it been daylight, he could have seen the brown roofs from where he sat. The lagoon was a liquid shadow and on it, like a dark coffin, the old ship.

At the thirty minutes nothing happened. He stared towards the lagoon. He shook his watch but it answered with its prim tick. Nothing. Just Pacific darkness, an infant wind, a touch of inherent light from the ocean. At twentythree seconds past the half hour the incendiary grenade exploded on the deck. Conway felt the quick excitement and the relief run through him. Those crappy timing devices. Twenty‑three seconds late.

The explosion was dull and quite minor like a little bush of light suddenly grown in the centre of the ancient deck. It spurted and flared, coughed and half expired. Then it reared up like a blatant red sword, forcing its bright way through the deck wood, getting at the stored coconut oil, blowing outwards into a thousand fires. A great crack sounded over the lagoon. All the water was alive now, green and red, and orange, with the sparks shooting up into the thick night. Conway sat and thought that Livesley's neon sign would look better in green and red and orange. Much better than red, white, and blue. It would be more like a bakery and
not so much like a recruiting office.

Nothing had happened immediately in the village. But then there was a delayed rush from the houses, into the streets. Conway could see rapidly jolting lights. Trust them to take a candle to a conflagration. Voices, shouts, and cries and native lamentations came from far below him. He sensed, from his high perch, the movement towards the beach, an onrush down to the side of the lagoon, with Joseph of Arimathea at the front. He did nothing, merely lounged there, waiting for the village below to clear. He glanced at the motor cycle on its mounting and ran his hand up the tyres. The originals had perished long ago, but Abe, who was the Pirellli agent, had replaced them twice. Conway guessed they were retreads.

'Enter Dodson‑Smith,' purred Conway to himself. It was strange how the most outlandish plans worked. He took from the army shoulder pack a grey robe and hood which Dahlia had made that afternoon from two blankets quietly obtained from the ambulance station. Conway had once won a bottle of champagne at an army fancy‑dress parade by making a monk's robe from a blanket and entering as a friar with a filthy habit. It was an easily manufactured costume and Dahlia, who still did not know why the garment should be required, made it dutifully.