Visitants (27 page)

He put back his head as if to take one last look at the stars, and seemed to fix in that position, and keep gazing.

‘Come on,’ I said again. ‘You know I’m quite capable of carrying you, if I have to.’

I heard him take a sudden deep breath, then he muttered to himself: ‘It won’t come to that.’

The space-craft was seen over Boianai for two nights in late June. From here, Boianai is about 125 miles S.W. Coming from there to here it would have passed over Vaimuna: specifically, over Kaulagu village.

The first sighting at Boianai was on 26th June. It may be possible, with the co-operation of the Kailuana people and Mr MacDonnell, to establish the dates of the sightings at Wayouyo.

Check the date of the disappearance at sea of the
Munuwata
. It was near the end of June, beginning of July. No trace was found. At that time I was at Vaimuna and heard of it. On Vaimuna there is no wireless, no radio, and no one speaks English anyway. The abandoned church in Kaulagu village has been restored and strangely decorated. Most of the objects hanging from the rafters are based on a rather vague notion of aircraft.

It will pretty certainly never be possible to date the disappearance of the three men from Budibudi island, but the fact was known on Kailuana in late October.

There is also the disappearance of Metusela. Is the idea of murder too simple?

At midday we all came back to Rotten Wood, the Government people and Boitoku and my aunt’s husband and I. I went straight into the cookhouse and began helping Naibusi, as if I had never been away. I wanted to be alone with her, but the other girls were coming and going, and calling out that Saliba was being taken to Osiwa, that she was being sent to the calaboose. And at that Naibusi grew angry, and told them they lied, that I and my aunt’s husband were only going to help the Government, to tell about the painted men.

On the veranda there was much talk and movement, and Naibusi came back from there to say that Sayam would not sail until nearly dark, because there was bad weather coming, and if the
Igau
left then, it would not be able to anchor at the Government’s village. She said that Misa Kodo was shut up in the room where he slept, and that Misa Makadoneli was in a bad temper with the other Dimdims and was reading a book, and that Misa Dolu’udi was angry.

He is angry today. No, not angry, but sad and hard. He never notices me. Benoni calls him: ‘Masta Tim,’ but when I was talking to the ADO and called him: ‘Timi,’ he looked surprised and then ashamed.

Is Benoni ashamed? O, my mind is very heavy. He is so beautiful, he is so noble now. Does he want to forget everything he said to me on the night of the painted men?

It is because of that radio that we are here.

Old Mak was fed up about having us hanging around all afternoon, and left me to entertain myself. So most of the time I sat at the table on the veranda, watching the canoes go out to the
Igau
with all our stupid gear: the patrol-table, the chairs, the typewriter, the patrol-boxes, all the Government’s signs of rank.

Later, Mak came out to be sociable, carrying the radio. He said: ‘Something for you to do, old man. It’s kaput again.’

I took the back off, saw what a simple thing it was, and fixed it. I gave him a blast to prove that, then killed it.

Presently Naibusi came out of the cookhouse with the tray and the rum and the lemon, and we were ready, a bit early, for the sundowner ritual.

She asked Mak some question about ‘Alistea’, as she had taken to calling him, and after he had muttered something she went into the main part of the house and I heard her knock on the door in the passage.

When Alistair came out to join us his clothes were crumpled and damp with sweat. He stood leaning on the rotten veranda-rail, looking down on the
Igau
, and said after a while: ‘I thought we’d have been off by now.’

‘Any minute,’ I said. ‘Sayam will send a boat-boy to tell us.’

‘Here’s your rum,’ Mak said, ‘young Alistair.’ It was probably the first time in half a century that he’d called a grown man by his Christian name.

But Alistair just shook his head and said: ‘No, thanks, Mak,’ still with his eyes on the boat.

Mak looked at his watch, then clicked on the radio. ‘Might as well hear the news,’ he said.

So we listened, Mak and I. I didn’t think that Alistair even heard it. It started with a local story, pretty grim, about sharks. Then it whipped quickly round the rest of the world. There was something happening in France, and something else in America. One of Harold Macmillan’s men was saying something important about independence somewhere, and the South Pacific Commission was saying or doing something not so important. Whatever it was, it sounded like progress, and so Mak switched off.

‘Sad, that,’ I said. ‘I mean, about the fellow at Vuna.’

‘Sad,’ Mak said, ‘but always, I can’t help thinking, a bit fishy. At least, people will say so, and think so. The clothes left on the beach—we’ve all heard that one before. Sad, anyway, for his wife. Of course he can’t be presumed dead for seven years.’

I wondered whether Alistair had heard it, and whether it had given him any more crazy ideas about flying saucers. But he still had his back to us, at the rail.

‘When I said fishy,’ Mak said, ‘I meant, why should a chap go for a swim alone at night?’

Alistair said, not looking round: ‘He’d probably had a row with Sheila, and stormed out of the house for a while.’

‘What was that, old man?’ Mak said. ‘I say. Did you know him?’

Then I realized why the name Manson had rung a bell. It was the only friend he’d ever spoken of. That day in the resthouse at Vilakota he had said that he might go and stay with them, because Mrs Manson was a good cook.

‘It’s the watch I can’t get over,’ Alistair said. ‘The watch ticking away on the beach, when Jack was—all in bits.’

He went away so fast that we couldn’t see his face. We heard the door slam, on that sweating, musty room that looks like a cage.

‘Don’t go after him,’ Mak said to me. ‘He won’t want to talk. If he does, he’ll talk to Naibusi.’

I couldn’t have talked to him, anyway. Those words of his, ‘all in bits’, had hit me too hard. I was seeing what he saw: the real sea, flowering with a real man’s blood.

Well, we’re coming to the end of it. Browne promises to read us a draft of his report, to put us all in the picture. Just in case we should be blaming ourselves. Very civil of him, too.

I shan’t be sorry to see the stern of the
Igau
this time. Then I can call my house my own. I don’t care if these are the last white men I ever meet. White men are more trouble than they’re worth.

Saliba looks peaky. Something is wrong there. I think it’s Benoni.

Amazing, the change in that young fellow. That is my idea of a chief.

I’m not so happy about the change in Dalwood. Our puppyish man-mountain is turning into something rather formidable. I preferred him before.

Yes, I heard you. When the boat-boy came to fetch them I called for Naibusi to go and tell Cawdor. They came out of the passage together, and stood talking for a few minutes at the far end of the veranda. She was crying, and he put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked into her eyes, before coming to join us at the top of the steps.

I held out my hand to him. ‘Safe journey,’ I said. ‘Get fit, and come back soon.’

I knew I should never see him again. You had only to look at his face to know that he had died already.

Long before we reached the strait between Vaimuna and the south of Osiwa the rain was falling hard and the sea growing rougher. And Sayam called to me, and asked me to tell Mister Cawdor that we could not anchor at the Government station that night. He said that we should go ashore at Vilakota, and he would take the
Igau
around the tip of Vaimuna into the lagoon.

We both knew that Mister Cawdor was too sick to be in charge, but we did not wish to discuss important matters with a boy like Mister Dalwood.

Mister Cawdor was lying, wrapped in his red blanket, on the bench. He was holding a book in front of him, but I do not think he was looking at it.

When I told him what Sayam had said, he sat up and was thoughtful. After a moment, he said: ‘Very well, we shall sleep at Vilakota.’

I went back to Sayam, but kept watching Mister Cawdor. Presently he took a blue pencil out of his pocket and wrote something in the front of the book. Then he stood up, and went to one of the patrol-boxes, and opened it. He put the book inside, and before he closed the lid I saw him take something from the box and drop it into the pocket of his shirt.

Afterwards, when he was sitting on the bench again, he was looking at his arms.

The last time I spoke to Mister Cawdor was when he was getting into Keroni’s canoe to go ashore at Vilakota. I leaned out from the
Igau
and said, almost into his ear: ‘Very bad, taubada.’ But he pretended not to hear.

From Keroni’s canoe we went straight to the resthouse, through the rain. The palms were thrashing overhead, and one nut just missed me. In the resthouse, Alistair wandered off without a word into the sleeping-room. All he had with him was that stupid blanket.

Not that I had much more, for once. Just my sponge-bag, two tins and a tin-opener, and it felt good to be without all the usual Government clutter. We were going to sleep on mats on the bare boards, and if the
Igau
had gone down overnight with the typewriter there would have been mixed feelings in me.

At first Keroni and I squatted on the veranda by the blaze of a torch, which flickered wildly in the growing wind, and exchanged polite mutters, from which I gathered that he was peeved about being ignored in that way by his friend Misa Kodo. But I explained: ‘Misa Kodo is sick,’ which was a word I had good reason to know by then, and he got all concerned and said a lot of things in which I picked out several times the words ‘my wife’. Remembering his wife and her teapot, I could imagine a banquet suddenly arriving, so it was a relief when Kailusa came ashore with the Tilley lamp and started explaining something about how things were.

I opened the two tins, one of sausages and one of beans, and went into the room. I said: ‘Are you still not eating?’

‘No, thanks,’ he said, from his mat on the floor. On that last patrol I don’t remember seeing him eat or drink at all, and he’d almost given up his foul tobacco. I had noticed that if he did smoke, the shaking of his hands got worse.

‘I won’t be long,’ I said. ‘When I’ve got rid of the locals and finished with the lamp, you can have a good night’s sleep.’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

But it took quite a while to lose them all, and even afterwards it was hardly peaceful. There was a lot of running around in the dark, and muttering and whispering, and the sound of the storm was growing tremendous.

So as not to disturb him, I turned out the lamp on the veranda, and groped my way through the dark to my mat in the room which was roaring with wind. That night even I felt cool, and lay down with all my clothes on.

Just before I went to sleep, he said: ‘Tim.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘I can’t go out,’ he said. ‘They’re watching. Osana is watching. I’m sorry, Tim.’

I didn’t know what he meant, and was too sleepy to wonder. I thought perhaps he was going to take a leak through a crack in the floor boards, which was hardly the sort of thing to bother me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘You won’t forget?’

‘No,’ I said, just before falling asleep. ‘I won’t forget.’

That night I slept in the house with Keroni’s wife, because you never know about those mainland policemen, and I felt that I was Benoni’s woman. I say I slept, but there were so many noises that we two women both lay awake, and sometimes smoked and sometimes chewed. I do not know where Keroni was, but I could hear men moving about outside and talking, or calling quietly to each other.

The sound of the storm was very great, because two seas meet at Vilakota, and there is so little land between the sea and the cliffs that the palms are planted very thickly, like a Dimdim plantation. All night the nuts were thudding around us, and the branches crashing, and the two seas thundering together.

When the screaming began, I was wide awake, and ran immediately out of the house, and was one of the first people to see Kailusa.

He was just outside, lit up by the fire of Keroni’s torch. He was shining in the light. He was shining with blood.

‘O my taubada,’ he kept screaming. ‘I was sleeping underneath his house. O my taubada. His house is bleeding.’

I can’t.

Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you what it looked like. You saw for yourself.

My first thought, when Keroni’s torch burst into the room, was that it had been done in frenzy, with exultation. I thought that it must have been with a sort of joy that he did it.

He had started on his wrists, and worked up to the big veins, arteries, whichever they are, inside his elbows. And then, I suppose because that wasn’t quick enough, he had done his throat. But his hands by then must have been nearly useless, which was why it took so long.

Through all the commotion of getting him to the
Igau
, getting everyone else to the
Igau
, he was still alive. In Keroni’s canoe he was even conscious for a moment, and whispered to me, in a high feeble voice: ‘Tim, don’t hurry.’ Or perhaps it was: ‘Don’t worry.’

I didn’t answer. I was angry with him, furiously angry.

When we were well out on the lagoon, I was standing at his head, and old Boitoku came and looked at his throat. Boitoku said to himself in a wondering way: ‘
Makawala lekoleko
,’ and I understood that. He meant like a chicken, one that had had its head cut off with a bushknife.

The last time he was conscious he said to me, in that falsetto whisper: ‘I saw. Timi, I saw. Down the tunnel. My body. Atoms. Stars.’