Beat Not the Bones

by Charlotte Jay

A sharp, flicking glance, like the dart of a snake’s tongue, flashed across at her from Washington’s pale eyes.

  ‘Yes, like those.’

  ‘And was there more gold in the long house?’

  ‘Well, just a little, I believe. It was hard to see, we could only sneak a look. These people are very cagey about their long houses, particularly with strangers. They use them for initiation ceremonies. A lot of harmless nonsense goes on, but they put great store by it, and with primitive peoples it’s sometimes dangerous to nose around too obviously. Warwick fished about a bit, and then we came back to find Hitolo and the carriers huddled over the fire waiting for the vada men.’

  ‘I see. And that was all?’

  He waved his fan. ‘That was all.’

  ‘Except that Sereva died.’

  The fan faltered. He laughed. ‘Of course, one forgets. How easy it is to fall into the accepted attitude that such things don’t matter. He was a good boy, a wonderful boy. Your husband was very distressed about it. I’ve never seen him so cast down.’

  ‘Had you any idea what caused it?’

  He waved a hand vaguely. ‘It might have been anything. Fever, bad food …’

  ‘But to die so quickly.’

  ‘It’s not quick for this country. Or for a Papuan. It doesn’t take them long to die. It might have been vada …’ His voice dropped.

  Stella threw a glance at Hitolo. He sat as before with his hands hanging down over his knees, the light flashing on his blue fingernails. ‘But you don’t believe in vada.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I believe in it or not,’ said Washington quickly. ‘The point is that Sereva would, and that would make it effective.’ Then with a clipped note to his voice, he said, ‘It’s obvious that you’ve only just arrived in this country, Mrs Warwick. Don’t forget that these people have lived here for thousands of years – or so we assume. Isn’t it smug of us to laugh at the beliefs that they have built up through centuries? We’re always looking for ways of living in the tropics without going off our heads, but it never occurs to us that they might have the answer. The fact is we’ve lost all but the last decaying stumps of our senses, and there’s nothing for us to do but sneer.’

  They fell into silence. ‘Is there anything else you want to ask?’ said Anthony.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stella. ‘How long did the trip take? – from Maiola, that is, when you left the district officer and the boat.’

  ‘Four days in all – you could do it in three. That’s one way of course. It isn’t far outside the patrolled area.’

  ‘Is it hard going?’

  ‘All jungle travel is hard going,’ said Washington. ‘But it’s easier than most. You don’t have to check your direction. The river leads you, and the paths are clear. But personally I loathe these treks. Hot, filthy clothes, unspeakable tinned food. Though I do like the local food. Yams are excellent if properly prepared. But mosquitoes, leeches … No, I find it horrible.’

  Then the direction of her questions was recognised by both men. ‘Why?’ said Anthony Nyall. The word fell into the stillness with a sharp, explosive sound.

  ‘Because I am going there,’ said Stella. She waited. Anthony did not move. He was looking at Washington. Behind him in the corner Hitolo stirred. Washington beat the air with his fan. ‘What for?’ he said in a high, aggressive voice.

  She only replied, ‘For many personal reasons.’

  He appeared not to hear her. ‘Aren’t you satisfied? Don’t you believe what I’ve told you?’ His fan beat the air like an angry wing. ‘Ask me anything you like. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

  ‘Mrs Warwick hasn’t said that she doesn’t believe you,’ said Anthony Nyall. ‘She wants to make the journey for sentimental reasons.’

  Stella threw him a look of indignation. ‘Will you take me?’ she said to Washington.

  ‘I?’ The fan was still. He stared at her. His eyes looked blank and colourless. She might have been gazing into glass. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. No! No! No!’

  Between each word there was a pause and into each pause washed a torrent of … what? Anger? Fear? Each word was burdened by a whole fresh load of terror. The last ‘No’ was almost a scream. He sprang to his feet.

  CHAPTER 12

  He backed away as though defending himself from something he saw in her face. She had never seen a man so terrified. Words babbled from his lips. Stella, almost as frightened as he was, felt that he did not know what he was saying, or even that he had spoken at all. His reason seemed to have flashed away and left a delirious body behind.

  ‘Back to that filthy jungle, not on your life … the mosquitoes and the mud and the damn mangroves and those filthy little beasts with their white faces and rotten tinned food and yams, yams, yams … slimy leeches hanging out of your shoes, blood suckers, slimy beasts sliding along like lizards and eyes, eyes in the leaves and not a sound, only eyes in the leaves and foxes in the trees. Foxes hanging like filthy rags, while we crawl around with our bellies in the mud, sleeping and not listening’ – his voice trailed away, became slower and clearer – ‘go back to that rotten little corner of hell, not on your life!’

  His face was white and dripping with sweat. He passed the back of his hand over his lips. Into his eyes – fixed at Stella but not seeing her – consciousness drained back like water into the dry bed of a pool. For a moment his face was violently expressive, and then closed up with caution. He waved his fan languidly and sat down again, arranging the yellow robe over his knees.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and his voice was now under control, ‘I couldn’t possibly go back there. I’m working, you know. They’d never let me go.’

  ‘If they would …’ said Stella.

  ‘Well, I don’t much relish these jungle treks. They’re so damned uncomfortable. And when you’ve been in the tropics as long as I have you rather shy off that Boy’s Own Annual stuff. And I’m not fit,’ he added, and raised a hand wearily to his forehead, remembering his sickness with the air of one producing a forgotten asset.

  ‘I think we’ll leave,’ said Anthony, standing up. ‘You don’t look well.’

  Stella rose reluctantly. The man was useless, there was nothing to be learned from him, but she felt herself obscurely bound to him. She felt that there existed between them some sort of close, passionate relationship. It was not love, hate or friendship, it was different, and beyond them. She knew that Washington felt it too. Awareness of what they were to each other had only a moment before shone in his eyes.

  He did not wish them to leave either. ‘Go?’ he said, starting up. ‘Oh, don’t go. Have another drink.’ The asset appeared now as a liability, and he discarded it. ‘I feel better. Really it was good of you to come. Fever is so depressing, particularly when it’s getting better. One craves for company. I wish you’d stay, really I do. You mustn’t take any notice of my jitters, they don’t mean anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid we must go,’ said Anthony, but as he turned to say goodbye he added, ‘Hitolo will stay with you for a while. He’ll get you anything you want. You shouldn’t be up here on your own when you’re ill.’ There was instant relief in Washington’s face. ‘You needn’t worry about my luggage, Hitolo. Stay here with Mr Washington for a while.’ He nodded briefly.

  It was now dark outside. Anthony went first down the little flight of wooden steps, and turned to help Stella. They slithered down the rough path to the bottom of the garden. Here the light from the hut did not penetrate, and they had to feel their way between the frangipani trees. It was quiet, except for the flapping of the flying foxes in the pawpaw trees, and somewhere nearby a tap was running. Anthony stopped. ‘Who’s there?’ There was a low grunting sound and then a figure appeared, brushing aside the leaves, and crouched in the path before them. It was a squat, misshapen body, with a huge bushy mop of hair. It paused and then waddled off into the shrubs on the other side of the road.

  Stella felt an eerie prickling in her skin. She shuddered, and the t
remor passed down her fingers into those that held them. Anthony looked quickly over his shoulder. ‘It’s only a native,’ he said. ‘Don’t be nervous.’

  ‘Is he sick?’ she said, looking back at the house. ‘Is he mad?’ They had reached more even ground now. He still held her fingers to guide her, but his hand was limp and unresponsive. ‘He too,’ he said, ‘has his obsessions.’

  ‘He too! Like me? Is that how I seem to you?’

  She could not see his face but felt he was smiling. ‘Well, it’s how I seem to you, isn’t it?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘in not liking David or your brother.’ She found herself able to say this without animosity.’

  His head turned sharply, as if she had shocked him. ‘My brother? Don’t I like him?’

  ‘No,’ said Stella. ‘Perhaps it’s an obsession. Why do you hate people with houses larger than your own?’

  He did not correct her cruel simplification. ‘Because I know too much of the material that builds them. The average man doesn’t make a pretty victim.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve seen one tonight,’ he said. ‘They aren’t humble or submissive, they’re savage and dangerous, spiteful and treacherous. But they aren’t responsible for themselves. They’re man-made monsters.’

  ‘How was he victimised?’ said Stella curiously, wondering if this explained why, in spite of everything, she had found it impossible to dislike Washington.

  Either he did not hear her or chose not to answer. ‘You can’t force mediocrity on a man who isn’t mediocre.’ he said. ‘He’ll always find some way of being exceptional. That’s what the levellers don’t take into consideration, that if they lock the front door they force the spirit into back passages.’

  ‘What do you mean? Back passages! Do you think this man killed David?’

  ‘I’ve told you before …’ he began.

  ‘You told me before!’ she cried. She tried to be angry. Anger was their customary form of communication, and she was used to it. But now she could not feel anger. Her emotions were no longer direct but wayward, diffused. ‘You lied to me,’ she said. ‘Everyone lies to me.’ She stumbled on the road, her foot slipping into a deep rut. He gripped her fingers and then let them go.

  ‘I won’t lie to you again,’ he said surprisingly. ‘You’re right. Everyone lies to you. Look how they’ve placed you now, chasing another lie, and God knows where it’ll lead you.’ He spoke with a ring of indignation.

  Stella, recognising the direction of his accusation, threw back at him, ‘You know what happened. You know everything.’

  ‘I know enough.’

  ‘And you won’t tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you aren’t stopping me from finding out any more,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No. I can see now that you’ll find out anyway. I couldn’t stop you if I tried. I don’t want to now. I now believe that I want you to go through with it. As you say, enough people have lied to you.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’ He entirely puzzled her. She felt more curious now about his motives than about the secrets he withheld.

  They had reached the jeep. He paused with his hand on the door and turned to face her. ‘For one thing,’ he said, ‘I haven’t any proof, and you would want proof, otherwise you’d never believe what I told you. You’d only hate me for it and find excellent reasons for my having said it.’ He looked away and spoke more quickly. ‘You can find out for yourself. I won’t help you. You can make your own victims, I’ve got enough of my own. You’ve probably heard about them.’

  The twelve men who died. She saw that he was not against her any longer or he would never have said this.

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘You will when it’s over, if you survive it.’ He turned his head again and looked at her. He spoke quickly and intensely. ‘Don’t you see. I can’t make victims. I’m not strong enough, or single-minded enough. I don’t think you could ever understand it. Ever since I’ve been in this country my ability for any dynamic action has grown less and less. I feel that every step we make towards the so-called progress of these people is a step towards their destruction. There is only one thing to do, one reasonable course of action and that is to do nothing. Leave them alone and they will slowly imbibe our culture; force them and they will take only our greed and corruption.’

  ‘But we can’t leave them as they are. It just wouldn’t do.’ Stella searched for words. ‘You just can’t. They must take their place in the world.’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly, ‘we can’t. There’s nothing else to do but what we’re doing. Yet I feel more and more that I can’t do it. I can’t contribute. I can’t even bring myself to attack what seem obvious evils – sorcery, head-hunting. I can’t help to remove the fear from native life, because I know what goes with it. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness, if they exist, aren’t separate and distinct in these people’s lives. If you drag out one thread, you tear down the whole house. What incredible arrogance! Any fool can see that there’s more dignity and integrity in a Papuan than in the average white man who comes up here from the south because anyone can get a living here without earning it.’ He paused, and in his next words there was a note of pleading. ‘That’s why I’m so helpless and incapable of doing anything about it. Ten years in this country have paralysed my will. I’m convinced that it’s invariably better not to act.’

  She looked up at him, trying to read his face in the dim light. She felt disturbed and excited. No one had spoken to her like this. No one had ever exposed their weaknesses before her. ‘But this is different,’ she said. ‘I only want to know the truth.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Exactly. You’re looking for victims. And you’ll find them, some of them innocent.’

  ‘How could that be? Who?’

  ‘Well, one for certain – yourself!’ Startled, she drew back. He continued. ‘But that’s what you want. You’re bent on self-destruction. Well, I won’t help you. I’ve got enough murder on my hands. We’ll make this another suicide.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s no good, you don’t understand me. And anyway you’re right. It’s better to know the truth. But I will be here for you to turn to, afterwards.’ She did not speak, and he went on. ‘When this is over, if you survive it, what then? I don’t think you’ve thought about it. I have.’

  What then? The words had a hollow ring. He was right, though she only now realised it. She had counted on not surviving. All that there had been to survive for would have finished. ‘I don’t think beyond it,’ she said.

  ‘And you have been counting on there being no need to think, on not coming through,’ he added gently. ‘But you’ll want to, when it’s too late. You’ll see it then as an obsession that wasn’t worth your trouble.’

  It was only then that she caught the meaning of what he had been saying. ‘You …’ she stopped.

  ‘I think I could love you,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps I already do. I know I love what you’re doing, and I don’t think it’s only that. It gives you a strange, possessed quality that I can’t get out of my mind. I have a picture of your face, when you say these terrible, misguided things, that hangs there in front of me and never goes. I know you can’t talk about this now because it would be against everything you’re after – to think of me, I mean, as anything but an enemy.’ Stella said nothing. She was astonished and confused.

  ‘I’ve never loved anyone before,’ he said in a rather puzzled tone. ‘I can see that quite clearly now. I thought I loved Janet once, but that was only pity and something to do with Trevor. I think I need you,’ he said, almost grudgingly. ‘I think what I admired most in you was your courage, your tenacity. That was why you made me so angry, because you were doing what I couldn’t do, and what I felt I should do. I wanted to stop it, I still do now, because it’s so misguided and destructive, but I admire it because it’s dynamic. Perhaps you would be able to teach me to act again. Action is your
strong point.’

  ‘You need me?’ Stella murmured.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t realise how much I was in need of help. I didn’t want help. I was proud of being the only one who knew that it was better to do nothing. Now I’m ashamed. You might teach me to be single-minded again. You might break up this paralysis I have. I haven’t done any work for months, would have been thrown out months ago if it hadn’t been for Trevor. I don’t mind one way or another – or rather I didn’t mind, I would have enjoyed being sacrificed, but he wouldn’t tolerate it. I literally haven’t done a thing. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid of the consequences of working. I’m afraid to pay my boy for fear of what he will do with the money. I’m afraid to open a book for fear that I might read something that will tempt me to act. It must be like the sloth of old age when all actions are futile. I feel older than anyone in the world.’

  ‘How terrible!’

  He stood silently in front of her. She did not speak. Words of protest, even of outrage flashed into her mind, but she dismissed them knowing that they would in no way express her real feelings. These feelings were too strong to remain entirely unacknowledged. She was tremendously shaken and very proud.

  He opened the front door of the jeep and she got in. They did not speak again for some moments. They drove down past the men’s mess and the jangle of voices and wireless sets grew fainter behind them. The road turned along the sea-shore. Stella leaned out through the window to catch the breeze in her hair. She felt suddenly tired. Anthony’s declaration of love became like a burden on her spirit. She had never had responsibilities. She had always been the responsibility of someone else. She realised vaguely that whatever she said or felt towards him, here was a person she must do something about. She could not just shrug him away, she owed it to him. She had never felt this before, even about David. Their relationship had been so simple. She loved him, she admired him, she obeyed him. That was all. She had been able to transfer to him quite naturally the attitude and behaviour that had belonged to her father. There had never been any problems, at least, not any that she knew about.