‘I told you that you’d regret sacking those two Kerema boys,’ Sylvia said. ‘At least that dirty old devil, the tall one, was a good cook.’
‘I don’t regret it,’ he cried childishly. ‘Don’t present me with your silly regrets. Only fools regret. I regret nothing!’
He did not mean to hurt her. He believed her for the most part incapable of intense feeling and incapable of understanding half of what he said. It relieved his feelings to have someone to lash out at. But looking up into her untroubled face, he yearned momentarily for her calm, uncomplicated view of things. He stood up, went across to her and, sinking down at her feet, buried his head in her lap. Sylvia stroked his head and smiled. She could put up with his tantrums for they nearly always ended in this.
She reminded Washington not of his mother but of his sister, who was ten years older than he was, and had looked after him throughout his childhood and adolescence. She was a plain woman with an unselfish nature and a twisted foot, who lived in Melbourne and made ‘artistic’ pottery.
It had been his ambition to live with her in a house on the hill among the administration’s most distinguished servants. Though he despised the successful, he yearned for success and wished to cut a figure in the world. But seven years lived extravagantly on a low salary had seen little advancement of these plans. He had no money to build a house of his own and the government would not provide. Housing was difficult, and the names on priority waiting lists had a way of shifting in favour of high salaries. It was argued by the housing department that he at least had a roof over his head, even if only thatch infested with geckoes and cockroaches, and boards beneath his feet, rotten with white ants as they were. He was one of the fortunate, they informed him. Most of the single men lived in an unspeakably frightful mess and almost went off their heads with noise and discomfort.
But for a few years he had been fairly happy. He loved the tropics and his house, until it began falling to pieces. He had usually two Papuan servants and sometimes as many as five, and had formed friendly and sometimes passionate attachments to all of them. They had kept him poor but had amused him. There had always been the hope of promotion and, with it, a house. Six months ago, these hopes had vanished. The higher position in the department had gone to someone else. His house was falling to pieces. His clothes were patched, the stores were demanding payment. His sister was still making pottery and had stopped asking for further news of housing in her letters. The government obviously could not provide and he certainly could not build. People had found him difficult and decided that he was not, after all, so terribly entertaining. If Washington had been offered a job down south he would have gratefully taken it.
Now, like a frightened puppy, he buried his nose deeper into the folds of Sylvia’s skirt. She stroked his head.
‘I can’t sleep,’ he said, his voice muffled in her dress. ‘If I could only sleep. I haven’t slept for weeks.’
‘You must take something,’ she soothed him.
‘People prowl around at night. I know they do. I hear them walking around. Somebody came into my house last night.’
‘Nonsense,’ she murmured, stroking his hair.
‘I tell you somebody was there,’ he insisted. ‘I was lying with my eyes closed – not asleep, I never sleep these days. It was a native, I could smell him. I could see him.’
‘Perhaps it was Rei,’ said Sylvia.
‘I asked him and he said he hadn’t been there. Anyway, do you think I wouldn’t recognise Rei?’
‘Well, he’d lie about it, wouldn’t he? If he felt you were accusing him. Or if he’d been in, sneaking after a cigarette or something.’
‘It wasn’t Rei!’ he almost shouted at her. ‘Perhaps it was one of those damned Keremas, and up to no good too.’ He did not believe that it might have been a Kerema, but this was all he dared to say. Actually, until speaking about it, he had not been sure about the native at all. Had it been a man? Or just a patch of moonlight? It was only thinking that made it grow more solid. And the smell was something he had not made up. He had smelt it then, as he had smelt it out in the passage half an hour ago. It never left him. He carried that odour round with him. He felt he would never lose it as long as he lived.
‘What could they be up to?’ Sylvia said calmly.
He laughed wildly. ‘Getting their own back because I threw them out. Probably trying a bit of purri purri or something.’
‘Sorcery!’ She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. ‘Nonsense, I expect you imagined the whole thing.’ Anticipating another outburst, she reached for the only cure she knew and poured him another glass of gin.
‘Here, drink this, darling. You’re nervy. You don’t get enough sleep.’
‘How can I get enough sleep,’ he complained, ‘if damn natives wander round my house all night.’
But the gin was having its effect, and he was beginning to feel happier. He began to stroke Sylvia’s thighs. She loved him, dear silly, stupid Sylvia. And his sister loved him. And Rei at least was loyal to him, even though he was a bad cook and couldn’t be relied upon to keep the dogs away. Soon he would buy land and build his house, and they could all go to the devil. He would snap his fingers at the lot of them. He would snap his fingers at Trevor Nyall, because he would have his house, and people would respect him and come to his dinner parties and be astonished by the magnificence of his hospitality. He knew a particular way of serving pawpaw. He would import a Chinese cook – the immigration authorities, having been lavishly entertained, would not raise objections. He began to work out the menu for his first dinner party and drew up a list of guests. Trevor Nyall, he decided, would not be invited.
It was 11.30 when he left Sylvia. The jeep was waiting pulled up by the side of the road, but Rei was nowhere to be seen. Washington, a little unsteady on his feet, but fairly clear-headed, looked up and down the road and whistled. The houses farther up the hill were still lit up, and from somewhere above him came the sound of Papuan voices, but the road was empty.
The wind had dropped and only a light breeze soughed through the fringes of the casuarina trees. He could smell the scent of frangipani. He paused, enjoying the cool night air. Then he remembered Rei and tooted the horn furiously.
The darkness ahead broke and a vague form appeared, moving hesitantly towards him. It was a police boy. Washington could see his belt shining in the darkness. ‘Oh, go away!’ he said impatiently.
He tooted again, sat down in the front seat and lit a cigarette. Down the side of the opposite hill a loose white blob was moving towards him. It was all that could be first be seen of Rei, his white rami flapping. He arrived breathless. He had evidently been making a night of it. He was chewing betelnut, wore a hibiscus flower in his hair and had knotted round his neck one of Washington’s new dishcloths. Under his arm he carried a guitar decorated with strips of coloured paper.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Boyhouse,’ Rei said, smiling broadly.
‘Whose boyhouse?’
Rei pointed with a vague, sweeping gesture that took in most of the hill.
‘What taubada’s boyhouse?’ said Washington. The feeling of well-being that Sylvia’s body had imparted was already drifting away. He felt suddenly suspicious of Rei, though he did not know why. What had he been doing? Who had he been talking to? He feared … he did not know what …
Rei did not answer. His smile had died. His face had become stupid and still, but his eyes seemed to grow larger and brighter. Washington, who could read these signs, knew he was nervous and might now say anything.
‘Have you been with any strange boys, any bad boys?’ he asked more gently.
‘No, taubada.’ There was no way on earth of telling what might be going on behind those lustrous eyes, staring now so steadily into his own.
‘All right. Get in and let’s go home.’ They had probably just been gambling. They would naturally not like being questioned. When Rei started up the engine and the jeep moved down the hill, Washington sa
id, hoping to soothe the boy’s ruffled nerves, ‘Sing to me Rei. What was that song you were playing up there?’
‘I no sing, taubada.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sore head,’ said Rei, chewing again.
Washington looked away. They were passing along the dock side. A cargo ship was tied up against the jetty. It was still lit up and the lights from its ports tossed and broke as the water lifted and fell. There was no unloading that night and the jetty was deserted. Only one solitary native squatted on the edge of the wharf, his black, fuzzy head silhouetted like a flower against the sky.
Even Rei had changed, thought Washington. He had always been a fool, but a gay one. He was always happy. He would bring his friends up to the boyhouse and play his guitar and sing for hours on end – local songs, hillbilly songs, Samoan dances learned from the early Polynesian missionaries.
But now he only sang with his own people, making Washington feel a stranger. He went about solemnly, and quietly, in a manner altogether foreign to his nature. He had ceased to be childlike and had become enigmatic. Sometimes Washington felt he was hiding secrets.
All of them, thought Washington – retreating further from the comfort of Sylvia’s caresses – including Rei, had turned against him. And he had been their friend. They had come to him with their troubles – a piece of old sheet for a sail, iron to patch a roof, a rusty knife, a letter to be written to a friend. He had made speeches at their weddings. But now they no longer came and there was nobody to sing to him. Rei, who wandered around looking enigmatic and doing things more efficiently than usual, was the only one left. He felt the whole brown race had smelt him out and no longer trusted him – conspired to shun him, perhaps, God knows, even more than this. He suppressed a shudder.
The road wound round the edge of the water. The tide was out, leaving a few yards of pebbly beach, and half a dozen native men with flashlights were fishing in the shallows. He could see the vague, shadowy outlines of their bodies. The road turned and led back past a long row of buildings towards the hills. A wild hillside with only one path threading over its crest loomed ahead. The road turned again and finished in a group of tumbledown iron sheds that had once been army stores.
‘There’s no light,’ said Washington, standing up and peering through the trunks of half a dozen coconut palms. ‘I told you to leave a light.’
‘No light,’ reiterated Rei, and they both stared at the black smudge on the hill ahead that was Washington’s house.
‘Well, you bloody well go up and light it and come back with my torch.’
Rei, who did not like the dark any more than Washington, rolled his eyes.
‘Go on! Hurry up ! I don’t want to wait here all night!’
Rei clambered out of the jeep and started slowly up the path. The darkness swallowed his head, shoulders, arms and legs, and left only his white rami floating away like a moth into the gloom. He started to sing.
Why does he sing now? thought Philip. To keep spirits away? What spirit is he afraid of here? Or did he, without knowing why, sense that there was no peace in that decrepit little hut?
The white moth of Rei’s rami had disappeared but his voice could still be heard, chanting away up the hill. Washington lit a cigarette. In the tangled rubble of the sheds something moved. A door scraped and a piece of tin fell with a clatter to the ground.
‘Damn that boy!’ he said aloud. He was beginning to feel nervous again and jerked violently as a flying fox stirred in a pawpaw tree. The leaves scraped and rustled with a papery sound, then the big, shadowy bat flopped out of the leaves, its heavy wings beating the sky. His skin had started to prickle. He stared at the path ahead. What was that boy doing? He tooted furiously on the horn, and in the next moment a light showed in his house. He caught a glimpse of Rei moving across the front door and then the point of torchlight moving towards him down the hill. He watched it pick out the path in a long, narrow beam. He heard Rei call out, ‘Wow! Wow!’
Across the beam of torchlight raced a thin, black dog. Washington sucked his breath between his teeth and clenched his hands in a spasm of rage. For a moment he could not move, then he flung open the door of the jeep and scrambled out on to the road. ‘Hold that dog!’ he screamed. ‘Throw the light on that dog!’
The light bobbed up and down wildly, but the dog was almost down to the sheds. Washington clawed about on the ground and picked up a handful of stones. He threw them with wild, inaccurate fury. There was a rattle of struck tin and a faint yelp. The dog, headed off, was streaking his way. He kicked at it as it passed, but it was a gesture of fury rather than an attack, for the dog was at least five feet away. He cursed it savagely and threw another stone, this time taking careful aim. His mind was full of brutal images. He saw his boot crack the dog’s skull, he saw a pointed flint pierce its eye. He heard its scream of agony. But it had gone, unscathed.
Rei was advancing slowly towards him.
‘Where was he?’ he said. It was agony not to shout, to speak quietly and reasonably, not to frighten Rei.
‘Under the house, taubada.’
‘Under the house!’ In spite of his efforts, his voice rose. ‘What was it doing?’
‘Nothing, taubada. Kaikai.’
‘Eating? What was it eating?’
‘Bone, taubada.’
‘A bone! What bone?’
Rei looked nervously away. ‘Nothing, taubada. Taubada’s kaikai. Bone long taubada’s kaikai. ’E take ’im long frying pan.’
Fear drained out of Washington’s body, leaving a feeling of nausea and weakness. ‘Oh!’ He remembered a chop bone lying in a frying pan outside the back door. He started to walk up the hill.
At about three next morning he woke. It was still and cool. Dawn had not yet come, but the sky outside his window was light and empty waiting for the sun. The leaves of pawpaw trees spread out like hands against the sky. Three glow-worms winked palely in the thatch above his head, their lights blinking on and off like the beating of tiny hearts. For a moment he lay in peace, as he had done in the old days before there was anything to fear, looking at the glow-worms and the pawpaw leaves. Then, remembering where he was, his naked body grew tense beneath the sheet. He lifted the mosquito net and his eyes, wide and wary, began their careful examination of the room. His gaze started at the foot of the bed and slowly moved across to the opposite wall. There were many objects which in this eerie hour looked odd and out of place. His raincoat hooked up on a nail over the front door showed no fold or crease, and might have been the dark, humped shape of a waiting man. But it was a phantom that he had faced before, that he had spoken to in fact on a previous evening and flashed his torch upon. Tonight he passed it by, and his gaze moved on across the wall. Here a boar’s tusk glimmered like a disembodied smile. Three lime gourds set on a shelf had the stark, bone foreheads of human skulls. Tapa cloth rustled like the dry, whispering tread of rats. The only other sound was the faint tinny rattle of a bundle of bamboo jews’ harps hanging on the opposite wall.
Not until his eyes had reached the door did he see it. It was standing in the doorway, blocking out what he should have been able to see behind – the hillside, the banana trees, the corner of the boyhouse. None of this was visible, only above its head a few pale stars. It was a man. A little man, a native. He was not Rei or for that matter any houseboy, for he wore no rami. As soon as Washington saw him, he could smell him too. The whole room stank with the odour of his flesh. Native flesh, unwashed, primitive native flesh. Not the sweet, musty odour of the coastal people who washed and swam in the sea, but the rank stench of a primitive inland man who rubbed pig fat on his skin.
Panic seized him. His hand shot out, his fingers clawed the first thing they touched, which was the half-empty rum bottle on the table beside his bed, and he flung it at the open door. The bottle struck the side of the door and rolled down the steps to the ground outside. The shadow had gone. It seemed not to step aside but to fade away, leaving clear the sky with its pricking stars
, the hillside and the long floppy leaves of the banana trees. There was no sound but the faint drip, drip of the spilt rum, the tinkle of the jews’ harps and the dry, husky flap of the tapa cloth.
Sobbing with terror, Washington lay as if chained to his bed.
CHAPTER 5
At 8.30 the next morning the phone rang on Washington’s desk. He let it ring for a few moments, then lifted the receiver and said sulkily, ‘You’re late.’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ said Sylvia, who phoned him every morning at 8.15. ‘I’ve only just arrived. I’ve been round at Staff, looking after a lost lamb. Has anyone come into your office during the past few minutes?’
There was a pause while he looked around. ‘Only a girl.’
‘A thin girl with short hair, looking frightened?’
‘I wouldn’t say frightened. She’s talking to Finch.’
‘She’s the girl you bumped into last night,’ said Sylvia. ‘An extraordinary creature. She’s only just arrived and had to report at Staff this morning. But she was scared to go alone, so I had to go with her.’ Then she said, with a certain note of self- satisfaction, ‘She’s not Warwick’s daughter, she’s his wife.’
There was no answer from Washington and she went on. ‘What do you suppose she’s doing here? It’s odd, isn’t it? She’s so terribly young. I feel sorry for her and yet I wish she wasn’t here. She seems unbalanced, makes me shiver. I have an odd feeling about her …’
‘How do you know who she is?’ said Washington. His voice sounded far away for his head was turned away from the phone.
‘Oh, I know. From things she says. And she’s working for your department. She wanted to get into Cultural Affairs where her husband used to be, but Nyall’s secretary’s on leave, and they’ve put her in there, relieving. She was upset about not going into CA, but when she heard about Nyall … Hello! Hello! Are you there?’
‘Yes, I’m here. I’ve got to go now.’
‘You haven’t told me how you are. Are you all right?’
Beat Not the Bones Page 6
