Then slowly, mounting out of pain, emerged that servant of life, curiosity. What was it like? There had been those snapshots in the brown album, but how nullifying and misleading the snapshots had been proved to be. There was something in this country, its colours, its trees, its glittering air, its beautiful, silky skinned peoples, that evaded all attempts to capture it in pictures, words or writing.
‘How long has it been a government mess?’ she said quietly.
‘Only a few weeks, since the owner died. It’s been open a fortnight. You take the fork by the hotel and follow the right-hand road up the hill. Ask someone, you can’t miss it.’ She turned towards one of the boys who was walking past with a pile of dishes.
But Stella had conquered the dread in her situation, had discovered in it a kind of joy, and stood her ground. ‘What room shall I have?’
‘Good heavens,’ said the woman, turning and staring at her, ‘I don’t know. You’ll find that out when you get there.’
‘I have luggage here.’ This woman who had said ‘Castle Warwick’ twice in the space of a few moments was more important than the shadowy forms that had drifted across her life for the past two months, and she dreaded to let her go.
‘Leave it on the verandah. I’ll send up some of the boys with it when lunch is over.’ And she darted off, making her escape from a girl who struck her as being stupid and odd. They ought to be more careful, she thought, for the twentieth time that week, who they send up to this place. Good solid girls with heads on their shoulders, girls with strong bodies to withstand the climate and the conditions, and strong heads to withstand the men. Not pale, little, tenderly raised creatures like this.
Stella mounted the steps of her future home. It was built back from the road; the land rose sharply so that the garden was terraced and the steps were long and steep. They were bordered on either side by strange, flat-topped trees, reminiscent of trees in Japanese prints, that were breaking out into scarlet blossom and carried long, black pods from last season’s flowering.
It was very hot, and Stella, slowly climbing under the thin shade, became aware that she was tired. The brilliant sunlight, splashing on the ground at her feet, dazzled her eyes and made her feel sick and dizzy. She approached the house ahead almost without emotion. As she climbed higher, the garden grew thicker, more ordered, composed mainly of the trees with the scarlet flowers, and other trees with round, smooth branches and clusters of white, scented flowers.
Every now and again she paused and looked around her, but it was to gather strength rather than absorb impressions. As the steps mounted higher she could see, over banks of green and flowering trees, the bleached tin roofs of the town, the wharf where one large steamer was tied up and, directly below, the backyard of the hotel with piles of amber bottles burning in the sun like huge heaps of resin among a tangled mass of rusty junk, metal, machinery, wrecked vehicles and wire.
As she reached the door, all this dropped out of sight and she was left with a clear view down the coast to the final dim islands and misty peninsulas. A faint breeze fluttered the leaves around her and dried the sweat that had broken out on her body. She mounted the steps and looked in through the open door. The sunlight and the feathery shadows of leaves played on the bare floor. At the end of the passage a black and white cat appeared and swayed towards her, lashing its tail.
She felt again dimly that the photographs had misled her. There was something utterly unexpected here, to do with the light and the leaves, and the feeling that she was not inside a house at all. But she was too tired to think about it.
She tried first the door on the right, but the room was occupied. Untidy clothes draped a bed and chair. The bed was unmade, and there were unemptied ashtrays, a bottle of gin and two empty glasses on a table. She tried the door opposite. This room was unoccupied. It was small and bright, and included a bed with a once-blue cotton cover, a floral curtain fixed across one corner, a chest of drawers, a small carved wooden table and a woven grass mat. There were no windows but the top half of the verandah wall opened outwards like a flap and was held in position by a long peg of wood. Coarse wire netting had been nailed over the aperture.
Stella, her head and heart now entirely empty, walked to the bed. An enormous cockroach shot out from under the mat and scuttled across the room. She lay down on the bed and her limbs seemed to fall apart with weariness. In one corner of the ceiling crouched a little grey lizard. She went to sleep feeling obscurely glad that the lizard was there, that she had infinitesimally escaped utter loneliness.
CHAPTER 3
She awoke to the sound of scuffling feet and voices on the verandah outside. She had no idea where she was, and for some moments she could not make out what was happening. The room in which she lay burned in a rosy glow. The grey lizard on the ceiling was now pink, as if lit from within. Three Papuan men were carrying her luggage on to the verandah. She rose, straightened her dress and went out to meet them. A small, brown-skinned man carrying her hat box addressed her incomprehensibly.
In the garden behind him a few flowers blazed like torches in the trees, and his body glowed with red lights as if from the reflection of a fire. The sky was so violently coloured it shocked her. She felt she wanted to dive indoors and hide from something in the garden that threatened her. She was so oppressed by colour she forgot to feel lonely.
She pointed to her room and the three boys took the luggage in, then departed single-file down the steps to the road, flopping from step to step on flat, yellow-soled feet. Their bodies heaved from side to side and the red lights shifted from shoulder to shoulder. The boy who had spoken went last and, as they reached the bottom of the garden, he thrust up a thin arm, dark as a serpent, and plucked a flower. A vague, unbidden emotion stirred within Stella as she watched, but, suspecting in this sensation the threat of further pain, she turned her back on the garden and went inside.
The door on the other side of the passage opened and a young woman appeared, lifted her arms, stretched and yawned. She was tall, dark and in her late twenties. She wore a black dressing-gown embroidered with scarlet dragons. One sleeve was torn, and her black hair fell in heavy, uncombed locks around her shoulders. She looked rather dirty, but this impression might have been imposed on her by a glimpse of the room behind, which remained as Stella had seen it, the bed unmade, the two unwashed glasses and unemptied ash-tray still on the table, and soiled clothes draping the backs of chairs. But looking at her face, Stella felt immediately that she rode clear of her soiled and sordid air, that her dirty brocade slippers and the frayed grandeur of her scarlet monsters were in no way signs of a tarnished personality. Stella thought her beautiful. Her face was dignified and calm. Her long, heavy eyes looked incapable of any expression but a serene gentleness.
‘Have you just arrived?’ she said, in a smooth, deep voice.
Stella nodded.
She blinked her eyes and said vaguely, ‘So they stuck you up here. You were allotted to number 16.’
‘Yes,’ said Stella. ‘But somebody took the room.’
‘It’s not liked here.’ She turned as she spoke, pushing her door further open to look at an electric kettle on the floor. ‘It’s the rats, the place is over-run with them. It’s falling to bits. They should have patched it up before they let us in. It may be all right for a mad anthrop. They’re a dippy lot and put up with anything. Still, housing’s a problem. Lucky we’re not all in tents.’
‘Mad anthrop?’ said Stella. She looked at the woman eagerly.
‘Come in, I’m making tea.’ She led the way, and Stella, drawn by the kind look, followed her inside. ‘The fellow who used to own this place’ – she cleared some clothes off a chair and tossed them on the bed – ‘David Warwick. I hadn’t heard of him, but that doesn’t mean a thing.’
From a shelf behind a curtain she produced two cups, a bottle of milk, a teapot and a tin of biscuits, and found places for them among the ashtray, glasses, and bottle of gin. ‘He committed suicide,’ she said,
staring at the kettle, which was coming to the boil.
Stella stared too, and did not reply. She was as near to happiness as she had been since she left Australia. She forgot the parrot-breasted sky and the hand thrust up to pluck a flower. She lost her sense of alienation and felt that she had come home. ‘Why?’ she said quietly.
‘Debts. Look at this place, falling to bits. It’s one of the biggest in town. You can always tell the pre-war houses, they’re big and airy, with verandahs. Since the war they put us in boxes, designed for people in snow countries. They think it’s progressive.’
‘But did he have such debts?’
‘It’s come out since that he had enormous ones. He borrowed money from his friends. But being a celebrity – a sort of national figure, you know – some of the debts were wiped out, and he just came out clear. He must have been hopeless with money. Just didn’t care about it …’
‘I can’t understand,’ said Stella, ‘why a man who didn’t care about money would kill himself because he didn’t have any.’
The woman flicked a lock of hair out of the tea she was pouring and handed the cup to Stella. ‘I entirely agree with you’.
‘Do you mean that you don’t believe he killed himself?’
‘For money? Never.’ She spoke with gentle emphasis. ‘A lot of other people don’t believe it either. It’s just said – well – for something to say.’
‘Then why?’
The woman stirred her tea. Her lids were lowered, face sombre. ‘Some people don’t seem to need a reason,’ she said. ‘Just being here is enough.’
‘Oh, that’s not enough!’ said Stella passionately.
The spoon went round and round. The woman’s lids were still lowered. ‘Some people aren’t right for this place,’ she said. ‘You need a particular sort of thick skin.’ She looked up and a lazy smile touched her eyes. ‘Like mine. I can never see anything to complain about. Plenty of sun. I love the sun, and bathing. I love walking round with practically nothing on all day. Some people get jittery.’
‘Not this one!’ cried Stella. ‘He’d been here for years.’
‘No,’ she sipped her tea. If she was surprised at Stella’s knowledge, she gave no sign. ‘Probably not this one.’
‘Then if people don’t believe – about the debts I mean – why don’t they do something?’ She leaned forward. The teacup rattled in its saucer. She put it down and clasped her quivering hands.
‘What could they do?’ She blinked at Stella over the rising steam. ‘Why don’t you drink your tea?’
‘But if they didn’t believe it they should find out the truth.’
‘The facts are he’s dead, and we’re in his house. What does the truth matter and when do you ever find it? How far do you go?’ She put down the cup and began chipping nail polish off her thumb nail. ‘All my life I’ve lived with people who want to find out the truth – about me, about themselves, about anything. I don’t give a stuff about the truth.’
Stella’s shining eyes looked straight through the face of the girl before her. ‘Truth and justice are the only things that matter.’
‘Do you think so?’ The woman was inspecting the chip of pink lacquer in the palm of her hand. She had lived the last five years of her life among people who were, or tried to be, intense, and Stella’s un-Australian earnestness did not alarm her. ‘I don’t think they matter so much. When I think at all,’ she added, ‘which isn’t often, so I’m told. I’m a philistine. I’m against knowledge and truth. Most definitely against justice. It would be terrible for the people I like most if we had justice.’
Stella picked up her cup. Her hands had stopped trembling. ‘Where was he found?’
‘In this house, alone, except for a gecko.’
‘Gecko?’
‘Those little creatures up there,’ she pointed to the ceiling where two lizards clung with their splayed feet. ‘Don’t be scared of them. They’re gentle. There’s a saying that a man who has no geckoes in his house is not to be trusted.’ She threw Stella a brief, searching glance. ‘By the way, my name’s Sylvia Hardy.’
‘I’m Stella Warwick,’ Stella said, not looking at her. She put down her empty cup.
‘More tea?’ Sylvia said, holding out her hand.
‘No, thanks.’ Stella stood up and looked at the door, but she felt reluctant to go. Something desperate in her had grappled itself on this chaotic little room and its occupant. ‘Do you know this man named Trevor Nyall?’
‘Yes, everyone knows him. He’s one of the upper-crust.’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Just up the hill. Where all the big boys live. You follow the road up the hill. It’s the third house from the top.’
Stella moved to the door.
‘Don’t be late for dinner. It’s at 6.30, and it’s five now,’ Sylvia said. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Not exactly.’ She thought she detected irony and scepticism in Sylvia’s eyes. ‘I was told he would help me.’
‘He’ll probably shower you with kindness,’ said Sylvia. ‘It’s his reputation.’
The road mounted steeply and was bordered on either side by houses set back in thick gardens. Some were built like the house she had just left, bungalows with verandahs and walls that opened out like the sides of boxes. Others were more like Australian flats, square and box-like with wire-screened windows. Everywhere the tree with the black pods and feathery leaves was breaking into flower. Two Papuans, walking towards her down the hill, had stuffed clusters of blossom into their thick hair. As she mounted the road the view down the coast behind her cleared and lengthened, but she did not pause to look back. Her feeling of anxiety had returned, and she walked quickly, without looking about her. A lorry passed by, and behind walked a woman in a white cotton dress carrying a tennis racket. She stared at Stella but did not smile.
Soon the road turned sharply and narrowed. The vegetation had thinned and ahead she could see three houses, the last of which appeared to crown the hill. A new house, only as yet a timber shell, stood like a pile of pink bones on the hill above. She paused at the bottom of some steps and looked up.
The house that Sylvia had recommended was blind-eyed – the sun blazed in its verandah windows – and appeared to reject or ignore her.
She went up the steps. The exertion of the climb and the knowledge that she had begun, that this was the first step, made her heart thump and caught at her breath.
She had not, since waking, laid a firm grasp on this strange new land, with its huge leaves and burning flowers, and her presence here was hard to believe in. The garden was not behaving according to laws known to her. The sun had gone from the slopes of the hill, but colours were brighter and denser. Shrubs with red and yellow leaves seemed about to burst into flame. A vine of apricot bougainvillea flowering on the verandah ahead touched her senses like a hand on a raw wound.
It struck her that this country had passed the limits of beauty and richness and dived off into some sort of inferno. She was one of those from whom the tropics drew an immediate and passionate response. To respond with joy at such a time was unthinkable to her; it would have suggested that her sorrow was frail. But she could not deny having responded in some way, and decided, as so many who feared their own passions had decided before her, that the country was evil. The flowers around her might have gorged on blood.
Half way up to the house she met a man walking down the steps towards her. He might have been a house boy for he wore no ornaments or arm bands, only a clean, white cotton rami that fell from his waist to his ankles, and was embroidered on the front fold with a red ‘N’. His hair was cropped straight across the top like a thistle.
She spoke to him, hardly expecting to be understood. ‘Is this Mr Nyall’s house?’
He stood aside, stopped, but said nothing. His eyes, black and so soft as to be like dark, clotted fluid, regarded her without evasion. Then his face broke into a smile. He lifted an arm in a loose, ex
quisite gesture and waved at the house.
‘Mr Nyall, yes sinabada.’
She went on up to the house. As the inferno dropped away behind and the old, familiar world of houses, rooms and verandahs drew nearer, she began to feel nervous. Had she acted correctly? Should she have written or phoned? Would she offend by landing on them like this? She paused at the bottom of the verandah steps and listened.
No sound came from the house – at least there were no guests. She climbed the steps and looked in through the open door. She could see a large, bright room. Actually, it was hardly a room at all: the top half of the outside wall was lifted out and propped open, and sprays of green leaves had found their way in from the bushes outside. Long, gauze curtains falling down over open doorways wafted to and fro in a faint wind. There were rugs on the golden floor and the furniture was made of thick gold bamboo. Stella, caught unawares, thought it the most beautiful room she had ever seen.
A man was kneeling on the floor at the far end of the room, mending the plug of a reading lamp. She paused in the doorway and studied all she could see of him. He was thin, which she had not expected – she had thought of him as large, possibly even fat. His arms were as brown, in this light, as those of the boy she had passed on the road. His hair was black, rather long, and untidy.
He switched on the light, stood up and must have felt her there, for he looked round, still holding a screwdriver in his hand. His face was thin and he looked ill. She had an impression, not of an important man, but of one who avoided importance. He was tall and well built, but stooped, as if he believed that a good physique was a disadvantage and better disguised. He could not have been more than thirty-five and was possibly younger. She had expected someone much older, about the age of David Warwick.
‘Mr Nyall!’ she said.
‘I can’t see you. Come in. You’re standing against the light.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She felt rebuffed, that he should have recognised her instantly. She moved forward and he watched her intently. He wore glasses behind which his eyes, already large, were magnified so that they looked enormous. His eyelids were purple, almost black.
Beat Not the Bones Page 4
