The Love Beach (34 page)

'Ladies and gentlemen, Citizens of Sexagesima and the Apostle Islands.' He left it there for a moment and the crowd stirred uneasily. He noticed how the people in the

local dignitaries' seats, without the native chiefs who were to have sat there, seemed to crouch.

He breathed slowly and continued. 'Today I am afraid I am the bringer of bad news...' There was a stir like a foreign wind in the crowd but no voices. 'We are all here awaiting the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen ‑ an event to which we have, every one of us, looked forward for many weeks. A great deal of work and effort has gone into our preparations and this would have been a great, good, day for the islands.'

No movement now, not even a stir. They were frozen solid in their attitudes under the growing sun. 'Unfortunately,' he went on, 'as quite a number of you may know, there was late yesterday an unprecedented tribal battle out at sea between the islanders of St Paul's and those of St Mark's. Many men were killed before this conflict was stopped.

'Any one of you who knows anything about the responsibility of being a governor ‑ my responsibility ‑ will realize at once that it is not possible to have violent bloodshed one day in a place and expect to entertain a Sovereign the following day. Therefore, during the night, by radio, I had to inform Her Majesty's advisers in the royal yacht of the state of affairs here, and they had no hesitation, indeed no option, but to tell me that the royal visit would be considered too great a security risk. I therefore have to tell you that the Queen will not be coming today to Sexagesima. 'He added wearily: 'I am very sorry.'

He stood before them, his tired head now dropped a little forward. They were silenced still, as though each had just heard a sentence passed upon them all. Then the sound of their reaction swept the quayside, no shouts, no violence, just their thousand voices all talking at once. All sad, all disappointed, all agreeing that it was right the Queen should not come to that island.

Davies and Conway were standing in the first floor window of the hotel, hanging out over the rotting balcony so that they could see down into the quayside square. Bird and Dahlia were in the next window.

'You,' said Davies bitterly to Conway, 'you, mate. You buggered the whole thing up for them.'

'So I did,' answered Conway. 'What do you want me to do, go out there and apologize?'

'Why not?' suggested Davies. Conway did not reply. His eyes squinted against the sun now clearing the rooftops across the street. He shuffled back so that the shadow of a tousled palm, higher than the red roof, took the sun from his face.

From the dais the Governor continued. 'I have only a little consolation in all this,' he said. 'First a message from Her Majesty in which she says: "Please convey to the people of the Apostle Islands my deep regret at being unable to visit them. I shall think of them and pray that their lives may be full and fruitful. In the future I hope it will be possible for me to visit your islands. God Bless You All." '

A frantic cheer, as though the visit itself had been reprieved, blew up from the people when Sir William read this message. He saw some Melanesian women from the northern villages weeping at the barrier. He cleared his throat again. 'The tea parties for the children and the other events arranged for today will still take place, of course,' he croaked. Then he laughed sadly: 'We can't waste all those sandwiches and cakes, can we?' The crowd, especially the children, laughed and cheered him and shouted: 'No!'

The Governor caught a glimpse of George Turtle, with a piece of yellow paper in his hand, approaching the dais. His heart jerked for a moment thinking that perhaps she would come after all. But he knew this would not be. Cooper passed him the message slip. He read it and moved again to the microphone, silencing with his movement the buzzing of the people in the square.

'Something further,' he said. 'I understand that the royal yacht will in fact be steaming quite close to this island and that if we assemble by midday at The Love Beach we will catch sight of her as she makes her way north. I suggest we all go there and cheer our Queen.'

They shouted and cheered at that, the black and the white children jumping in their excitement and heading off immediately from the square, hundreds of them running along the coastal track in their bright best clothes, through the closer trees and the village, until they reached the beach.

As the children ran on. their shouts in the sunlight frightening the birds in the tangled trees and puzzling the dogs in the village, the other people began moving that way too. The youths and girls first, coloured and white, racing off after shouting children, the young men, heads down, trying to show off, to be there before any of the others. Then the adults, hurrying along in their silks and their best suits, perspiring, panting, but jogging patriotically anyway towards the place where they would see the passing of the monarch.

Bird and Dahlia pulled Davies and Conway along by the hands along with the hard‑breathing crowd, through the town, along the track, under the closer trees, over the village, and down to The Love Beach. Davies looked around. Some of the people were laughing as they ran. Hats flew away and had to be caught, legs soon tired, some limped before the village was reached. Young men on bicycles, bells shrill, rode along the outskirts of the crowd like roundup cowboys with a herd. They shouted and teased the girls as they went. There were native, and British and French, all together. The elite, the island dignitaries in their special hats and suits were folded into the crowd of the others and hurried along in its company. The band, its uniform creased and stained with the morning's sweat, began to march, but the ragged march became a run and they pounded on their hot boots, their instruments clutched to them, the piccolo player far out in front, the man with the big drum rolling it resoundingly through the dust far behind.

They streamed out on to the brilliant beach, with the ocean rearing, in apparent surprise, at the invasion. It fell over the reef and flopped into the flat of the lagoon. The hundreds of bright people ran from the trees like a happy army, fanning out among the dead barges, now all beautiful

with the trailing flowers that Bird and her helpers had placed there. They lined the fringe of the sea, looking out to the two blues of ocean and sky. They climbed to the flat catwalks and other places on the barges, crowding and cramming along the rusty metal strips, exposed to the fullness of the high sun.

The barges which formed the chapel of the Unknown Soldier were as populated as the rest, people lined on every vantage place, for they had forgotten all about the sanctuary and the bones of the man which were beneath the sand.

Conway saw them as he and Dahlia with Bird and Davies following went down on to the beach. They found Pollet standing looking in the same direction. He smiled and studied again the flamboyant people all over the three walls of the chapel, then shrugged. 'It is so typical,' said Pollet. 'They have now forgotten their Unknown Soldier. He was to have been the star today.'

'He's just a bit player now,' said Conway and Davies winced at his cruelness. But he knew it was true. The people of the islands, of every race, wanted this to be their holiday. and they would make it fully so. The whole beach was vivid with them now, standing and sitting everywhere, their noise like the noise of an overpopulated seabird sanctuary, a sort of mass cawing into the wind. They sat like crowded birds too, on every ledge and in every space, sitting, singing, eating sandwiches, staring at the southern edge of the cape that formed one coral wall of the lagoon. Waiting.

The band had been assembled on one of the landing craft, the police having forcibly removed the people who had climbed there first. Now, sweating heavily from their run, the clambering and the impromptu transportation of instruments, they sat, squatted, and stood, launched into the best‑rehearsed piece of their limited repertoire which was selections from South Pacific. Abe, with his big business smile flooded across his face, and aided by recruited helpers, distributed further rosettes to the people with an added line in wide paper sun hats, Japanese fans, and sunshades.

Sandwiches and ice cream meant for the mission school's tea party were brought to the beach and the children began to eagerly eat. The native villagers competed against each other in song and dancing competitions in the sand. Wrestling contests were cheered. When the Governor arrived with M. Martin at eleven‑thirty there was hardly room for them on the patriotic stand.

Cooper and other busying officials cleared a path for them and they arrived at the landing barge nearest the seashore which had been quickly cleared and reserved as their official vantage point.

Davies thought he would never come to understand these islands. He had half expected a revolution fired by disappointment when the Governor made his announcement in the square by the quay. Instead there was only touching loyalty and tears. And now these same people, black and white, the kin in many ways of those he had seen fighting so bitterly the previous afternoon, were making this beach like Barry Island on an August Monday. Bird saw him looking at their animation and smiled for she knew how he thought. She took his hands and sat him in the shade of a barge. She knew that he would not be with her much longer.

Just before noon, under the powerful sun, a great quiet fell over all the people on the beach. The singing, the dancing, and the games stopped, the talking petered away, the movement of the hundreds was stilled and they stood, like a huge congregation, watching the southern rim of the sea. The emotional expectation of the people could be felt in the heated air. Sir William and M. Martin, seated on their rusty barge on hastily acquired official wooden chairs, sat unmoving. Cooper and a dozen others all round had binoculars fastened to their eyes and to the horizon. Abe, counting his takings, heard the silence come over the beach, stretched up, and tried to peer over the heads of the people towards the Pacific. Davies and Bird remained in the shadow of their barge, but the people who had now risen in front of them walled their view. An inviting foot came from the deck of the barge above them. Conway was standing with Dahlia fixed very close in front of him, and with Pollet at his side. The two men reached down and hoisted first the delicate Bird and then the lightweight Davies up to the platform with them, shuffling back and making two extra squares of room on the already crowded deck. Bird had red, white, and blue ribbons in her hair. Her face had the eagerness of a schoolgirl. Davies looked at her carefully.

It was Cooper who spotted the royal yacht first, a reward for the aching arms he suffered holding up his boot‑sized binoculars. Others were just behind him. The exclamation flew above the crowd and immediately everyone on the beach was straining eyes and toes. 'She is coming,' whispered Bird to Davies.

'The ship of the Queen is coming,' she repeated. He touched her brown arm where the white short sleeve of her dress cupped over it. She put her fingers up and met his fingers. Conway had casually lifted Dahlia's short skirt at the back and had hooked his hard hand around the cool top of her left leg. Dahlia glanced below at the people, but no one was looking at them. She smiled agreeably and pushed backwards into Conway's body.

On the horizon where previously only the sky interrupted the sea everyone could see the growing patch that was the royal ship. Hardly an eye was taken from it. Conway said to Pollet: 'Christ, I hope it's not old MacAndrews in
The Baffin
Bay. They'll lynch him.'

'I had thought of that,' said Pollet. 'But he's not due until tomorrow. He has never been early yet.'

Davies suddenly thought: 'Tomorrow. And the next day I will be going from these strange people and this strange place. Away. Far down to Sydney and to Trellis and
Jones
of Circular Quay, and then home, really home, across the world to Newport. If Conway keeps his promise.'

It was not
The Baffin Bay.
The ship that appeared was too high out of the water, too noble, too fast. It was clear enough now, steaming far out, three or four miles away, approaching the island initially, but then, turning in her course and heading north.

'Good God,' muttered Sir William to Cooper. 'Is that the closest they're coming? I can hardly see the damn thing.'

Cooper said: 'I suppose they want her to keep well away in case of trouble, sir. Look, she's going off again. I'm afraid that is all we shall see.'

I suppose we had better stand,' suggested Sir William wearily to M. Martin. The two governors stood, facing out to where the ship remained a miniature on the huge shining sea. The crowd were realizing that the vessel was going away again, that she would come no nearer to their view. A muttering of disappointment moved across the beach. Sir William looked at Cooper. 'The National Anthem,' he breathed. The ADC signalled the conductor of the police band and his baton flicked. The band began to hump out 'God Save the Queen' and the people stopped muttering, stood to attention on the searing sand, and sang loudly, the minor breeze from the sea carrying their voices high and wide, back over their own island.

The force of it, the disappointment, and the faithful singing of the people moved Sir William to elderly tears. The fine sentiments of the anthem sounded loud and the yacht to which they addressed them was drawing away pathetically to become once more a smudge on the sun‑heavy sea. The islanders sang every verse, for every verse was always sung in the Apostles, at school, after public gatherings, after the monthly cinema show. At the end, when the vessel was hard away north, dipping below the horizon again, the Governor called for three loyal cheers and all the people of the hot, neglected, shoddy, little place, cheered loyally and loudly. Then. when there was not even a smudge to see, everybody turned and walked quietly away from The Love Beach and back to their small town and their smaller villages.

Seventeen

The beach, when the people had wandered away, was as dead as a desert. All the day's brightest flowers, in their garlands and vivid strings, were feeling the afternoon sun. Some had been pulled and trampled by the crowd. The invasion barges looked more gaunt than before and rubbish ‑sheets and scraps of paper and palm leaf which had been used for wrapping ‑ moved around the beach slowly in ritual procession with the slight breeze. The chapel they had made for the Unknown Soldier squatted shabby and sorry on the sand.