Mr. Brimner nodded. Still a little pale under his sun-pinked skin from last night’s upset.
Mrs. Fruelock nodded with him. “No church. No. But teaching!”
That seemed odd to Thea. What was the point of a mission without a church? Mr. Brimner was looking off to the long white wall, where the jalousied blinds let in slits of light in a shifting pattern on the plaster.
Mr. Fruelock stood again, and sat again. Crossed his thin legs. “Yes!” He crossed his legs the other way. “It is a delicate business here in Ha‘apai, between the Wesleyans and the relatively new Free Church of Tonga—which is also Wesleyan, the church to which the king belongs. But the rift, for we must call it that, allows of movement. I do credit Bishop Willis, his judgment is acute. He presents, or rather we present, here in Ha‘apai, a kind of wedge that may drive through—although always in a Christian sense!—to bring more converts into the comfortable fold of Anglo-Catholic worship. The bishop fears the Latter Day Saints will return with the Samoan mission. In fact, they have already established a school in Neiafu, and there are rumours of property purchased for a church in Nuku‘alofa.”
These machinations were not unfamiliar to Thea from the Indian missions in Canada. But there seemed to be an embarrassment of churches involved here.
“But the LDS are not our chief concern. Assuredly, the Roman Catholics will arrive in force! We hope equally to save these poor islanders from the excess of the Romans, as we instill the principles of Christian love in the heathen heart.”
“Not that there are actual heathens left in Tonga!” Mrs. Fruelock struck in. “Because the Work has been strong!”
“Yes, ah! Yes, it has, my love. But delicate, as I say. And so—no church here, as yet, but we make inroads. My dear wife runs the infant school, and I take pupils in the middle school, but we believe, that is, the bishop believes, a school in the hamlet of Ha‘ano will provide a foothold on the island and strengthen our position in all of Ha‘apai…This entails considerable responsibility for you.”
It seemed Mr. Fruelock was a schemer, a political animal. Mr. Brimner would never be that. But he was a very good teacher, Thea knew. They were fortunate to have him.
Mrs. Fruelock patted a firm, kindly paw on Mr. Brimner’s knee. “Eric has secured you a house. The outbuilding, in need of some repair, will do for a schoolroom…”
“Yes, yes, he will see all that soon enough,” said Mr. Fruelock. “Now we must pray, Dorothy, and perhaps you can show Mrs. Grant and Miss Um the school? We have Shirley Baker’s printing of the Book of Common Prayer in Tongan, Brimner—a Wesleyan, but a man of parts, Anglican in his outlook, moving toward conversion, I believe, in his later years. Anyhow, his translation will do until Bishop Willis finishes his own, next year…Gracious, Dorothy, are you still here? Do proceed, and I will strive here with Mr. Brimner, and then take him to see Baker’s grave—a side note to our current struggles…”
Prayer was a working mechanism for Mr. Fruelock. They were still following Mrs. Fruelock out as he bent his head fiercely forward and began, “O God, who hast made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and didst send thy blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off…”
“Eric is not un-devout,” Mrs. Fruelock was saying, “you must understand, dear Mrs. Grant—but he is single-minded. The task is the establishment of solid ground in Ha‘apai, which nothing but zeal can accomplish. And even then—well. We shall see.”
She led them out into a sunlit enclosure, tamped-down earth and a few parched weeds, and across into a building with jalousie windows, a long porch giving shade to the windows. Inside, in two classrooms, were twenty or thirty children, one half repeating a vocabulary list from the board under the direction of an older girl with tidy braids, the other reciting by rote as another older girl—a pale, pretty girl, who must be another Fruelock daughter—pointed to pictures pinned to the wall. All the children were neatly turned out in long green tunics. Some of the boys wore mats, but not all. Perhaps they were not all well-connected, Thea thought, since the mat seemed to be a mark of rank or prestige.
They poured out of the rooms and mustered into rows under direction from the two elder girls, crying greetings from group to group until hushed and orderly. “Mālō,” they said in unison, and then broke into a laughing discord of “Mālō! Mālō e lelei!” Miss Winifred had told them that mālō e lelei meant “it is good to be alive,” but the people seemed to use it as both “hello” and “thank you.” Mrs. Fruelock translated again: “Congratulations on being well, they are telling you. Being in good health is worthy of gratitude to our Lord!”
The children sang a greeting song, bathing their guests in good nature, and then gave a display of poetry, including recitations of “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” and Rossetti’s “Up-Hill” and other famous works, made charming by their great enthusiasm for the task. They laughed at each other and prompted the speakers when words failed, and were equally happy to be dismissed at the end of their demonstration.
One little boy came directly to Thea, and stood beside her, patting her knee with his hand. Five or six, perhaps. He was serious, and looked up into her eyes with complete trust, as if he already knew and loved her. “Mālō,” he whispered, leaning closer.
“That is Sione, don’t let him bother you. Be good, Sione!” said one of the Fruelock daughters, Thea did not know which.
She laughed and said, “He is perfectly good, are you not, Sione?”
He lifted his eyebrows several times, such a funny little man, as if trying to tell her something secret.
“That means yes, he is saying yes, yes,” said the Fruelock girl, and Thea bent and raised her own eyebrows back at him, yes yes yes! Refreshing to see her look less forbidding than usual.
She and Kay clapped with as much vigour as they could, and were swarmed with more children come to give a special mālō before they ran off and out the green wooden gate.
Mrs. Fruelock waved them away and set her daughters to tidying the schoolrooms, and said that after such a strenuous morning she felt the need of her dinner, did not Mrs. Grant? She called her daughters to order and they came at once, the youngest one slowly, because she had skinned her knee and was weeping a little, but still with good nature.
Dorothy Fruelock ran both the school and her household with such efficiency and lack of fuss that Thea felt ashamed of her own efforts at Blade Lake. No emergency fazed her. While attending to the daughter whose knee was skinned and needed ointment, she directed other daughters to the putting on of the kettle and the setting out of linens and cake tins, so that very soon the midday dinner was spread out neatly on the board, although Mrs. Fruelock’s attention had remained fixed on her task and she had never raised her voice or become cross, as Thea might have done. Knee mended, she patted the daughter off to the garden with her sisters and Kay, and settled back in her chair for a cozy and leisurely visit with Thea while they waited for the gentlemen to join them.
Mr. Fruelock’s wife was lovely, Kay thought. Her name was Dorothy, the same as Thea’s name Theodora, but backwards, and much more modern. And she was a teacher too, but with all those girls of her own, identical in white smocks, identically well-scrubbed except for the bandaged knee of the littlest one.
Kay did not mind being sent away with the girls. Mr. Fruelock had Mr. Brimner closeted in his study anyhow. In a little while he would go down to the wharf with them and board the Morning Light again for the short trip to Ha‘ano. The mission boat, upended in the back of the garden awaiting repairs, looked like it would be some time till it was seaworthy, but Mr. Brimner would not be trapped on the smaller island: Mr. Fruelock said he could borrow a Wesleyan boat for the asking, and promised he would be out himself within the week to see how things were going on. So that was all right. And it was only for two years—he had only promised to stay that long in mission.
Some of the girls were younger than she was, t
heir names all flowers, hard to remember. Rose was the eldest, four years older than Kay; she had been teaching the native children. Then Violet, Lily and Pansy—or was it Daisy? It must be Pansy. In former years, when Kay had sometimes made lists of the children she would have, there was always a Daisy on the list; sometimes she had a twin, called Buttercup. The girls were undemanding company, sufficient in themselves, content to continue a long-running, complicated game involving a pattern scraped in the dust and the tossing of a stone and jumping to and fro. Kay stood at the edge of their marked-out turf, looking away into the gardens. Small birds flitted through the trees, twittering to each other, mālō, mālō e lelei.
* * *
—
Mr. Brimner had sent a message to Francis, asking if he could be ferried on to Ha’ano, and Francis himself came in answer. He had discovered a minor leak on the Morning Light, a matter of caulking that should be done before setting out for Fiji, and had left Mr. Wright to oversee it while he came ashore to fetch Thea. The Fruelocks offered beds for the night, but there was no need for that, Francis said. The work would be done today, and they might as well wait till morning to take Mr. Brimner on to Ha‘ano; but he intended to take Thea back to the ship for a proper rest, if she was willing.
Looking at Kay, who shook her head violently, Thea laughed a little. “You may spirit me away, dear Francis, but I think Kay would like to stay and spend the day with the girls, if she may?”
Mrs. Fruelock said of course, and that they would undertake to get her back to the ship with Mr. Brimner after supper. Kay loved her even more.
“I am grateful, Captain,” Mr. Brimner said. He looked pinched about the eyes, tired perhaps from the indisposition of the previous night—perhaps from the strain and delay in reaching his destination. Anybody might find it difficult. He did not know the language yet, and was to be sent to a separate island without English company at all or anyone to talk to. Kay would be frightened, if it was her, going there all alone.
Mrs. Fruelock smote her hands together and said they must go to market now, to send provisions with Mr. Brimner. The girls took the plates. Swept up in their industry, Kay was given a tea towel to dry with. When they came back to the sitting room, the adults were ready to walk out.
Taking a little pull-wagon, sufficient for Mr. Brimner’s needs, they walked to a market lot where trays were laid out in the sun with a straw awning over them and a woman or man sitting behind each; there was a shack with shelves inside it, on which were two or three jars and a few canned goods. Mrs. Fruelock spoke in Tongan to each person, warm fluid syllables, beginning each conversation with mālō, mālō e lelei, mālō aupito. One of the older women asked them “Na’a ke kai?” which Mrs. Fruelock said was a very traditional greeting meaning have you eaten? From an olden time when perhaps you might not have, Kay guessed. She wished Francis had brought Pilot ashore. With a rope to keep him, he would find this market interesting, and there did not seem to be any wild dogs to worry him.
Mrs. Fruelock told Mr. Brimner she could provide flour and sugar from their own store, and the people of Ha‘ano would give him white sweet potatoes and fish, but he would need sorghum, corned beef and various other things—tea, and tinned milk, for there was no fresh milk on the islands. Mr. Brimner declared he had no need for milk, being a plain man who took his tea in its natural state, so (murmuring, “But guests!”) Mrs. Fruelock contented herself with two cans, and went on heaping bananas and melons into a bushel basket. She promised him a brace of good-laying hens before Christmas, and he said he would be glad of eggs. So they continued in a bantering promenade around the various stalls.
Kay and Rose followed along, the younger girls darting off through the market to see their own friends.
Rose said, “Is he your father?”
“Mr. Brimner? No! He is my teacher.”
“Oh. I thought he might be—I knew the captain could not be.”
“No, he is married to my sister.”
Rose looked at Kay through her lashes. “He is very handsome.”
Kay was startled.
“Captain Grant, I mean,” Rose said. Her mouth pulled into a considering moue. “Your sister is quite old.”
People had interior selves, Kay already knew. But this secret wickedness was a surprise.
“She is no older than he,” she said. “They were engaged for ten years, because he was at sea and she was teaching the Indians.”
Rose shrugged. “She looks old. Many captains stop here. Many of them have lovers here, so perhaps that is why your sister travels with him now.”
Kay turned away from that girl without saying anything more. She walked back along the dusty road to the jetty and stood there for a time, waiting for a boat. But it came to her that they could not know on the Morning Light that she wanted a boat yet, and might not see her standing there. Eventually, after walking a good deal farther than she might have, she found the Fruelocks’ house again, recognizing it by the green wooden gate into the schoolyard. She stood about in the back garden a while longer, watching through the window where Mr. Brimner and Mrs. Fruelock were carrying on a laughing conversation, while Mr. Fruelock worked irritably at a desk. She did not go inside when the girls carried the supper dishes in, either. Rose was as sleek and proper as always, her eyes down-turned.
Kay decided to wait until Mr. Brimner came out to walk to the jetty. Mrs. Fruelock must think she had already gone back to the boat. Perhaps Rose had told them so.
You cannot know what is inside people’s heads, Kay thought. And Rose was older than she was, fifteen or sixteen. Kay could not fault her for it, though she did dislike her. Girls thought of love at that age, and in this strange missionary landscape she had no one to think about but the visitors.
Kay told herself she would not treat Francis differently because some girl thought him handsome. It prickled her, though, that Rose had not asked about Mr. Brimner, who was much younger than Francis and, if not precisely handsome, a very good sort of person.
Dusk had fallen as it did here, too early and too fast, and the night garden became soft and strange. Birds flew above—or, no! They were bats, great bats flitting in the branches in black silhouette. Nothing was wrong with bats, anyhow, but that they had a wrong or a different tempo, when you were not expecting them.
A feeling of unreality settled over Kay, the human part of life shown up as unreal, unreliable. Or merely unimportant. The bats moved quickly, shadows in the sky. Like voles in their movement, going swimmingly across the patches of dark-blue sky.
* * *
—
In an hour or so, Mr. Brimner came out, trundling the wagon of supplies behind him, and Kay fell into step beside him. He did not seem surprised to see her.
“There you are. Found the company of all those biddable girls trying, did you?”
Kay nodded in the darkness.
They went on in companionable steps, not speaking, the moon giving enough light that they could have walked all night. But they soon reached the jetty. Mr. Brimner lit the lamp to signal the boat to come out for them, and they arranged themselves on the stones to wait.
“October the fourth. This is the anniversary of my ordination,” Mr. Brimner said. “I therefore indulged in a tot of rum, in lieu of the venerable sherry in the MCR. It makes me friendlier, I do notice that.”
Was he unfriendly, usually? He seemed to Kay to be an entirely serious person, separate, solitary. But easy to work beside.
“I am rather reticent in the social niceties. Not shy, only restrained. But I must tell you, my dear Kay, that I will miss your good company.”
His face burst or blossomed into his beaming smile, the excessive beam that broke his face in half and stretched his mouth—a great many large teeth showing, caught in the moonlight. His forehead was damp, but the smile was sweet, refuting the glistening jumble within.
Kay smiled back, or tried
to; she was not much good at it. She had dreamed last night, she now remembered, that it was possible to love someone who is conventionally ugly. (But it was not Mr. Brimner in her dream, it was a larger man, with a bald head and a tender face.)
“Most beautiful,” he said—and the words hung for a moment in the air. “Most beautiful I leave: the light of the sun. Second: bright stars, the face of the moon—but also: ripe cucumbers, apples, and pears.” He bowed in some vague easterly direction. “Praxilla, a poetess! The shades in the Underworld asked her what was the most beautiful thing she left behind…Most beautiful I leave: the light of the sun.” He paused for a moment, and then recited it in Greek. “κάλλιστον μὲν ὲγὼ λείπω φάος ἠλίοιο, δεύτερον ἄστρα φαεινὰ σεληναίης τε πρόσωπον, ἠδὲ καὶ ὡραίους σικύους καὶ μῆλα καὶ ὄχνας.”
Kay nodded. No cucumbers in this place. No apples, no pears. The boat came toward them out of the inky water, and they descended the stone stairs to meet it.
* * *
—
In the morning they set off for Ha‘ano. A mere jaunt, as it turned out: an hour’s easy sail along the in-curving western coast, with a light breeze to make it pleasant. Kay and Mr. Brimner did not open a book, but leaned together on the port-side railing. At the near horizon, a perfect triangle of a mountain rose, occupying a whole island.
“A volcanic isle,” Mr. Brimner said, pointing it out to Kay. “I believe that must be the island they call Kao. The one to the left, that is Tofua, an extinct volcano, with a crater cutting off the top. Mr. Fruelock tells me there is a lake within, and that someday we will take an expedition there, to visit the sole resident.”
The Difference Page 14
