Nurse Jess

by Joyce Dingwell

  “What time do we get to Crescent?” she asked. He shrugged. “Hours earlier than my dad did it, days sooner than my grandfather, but later, I fear, than the Tourist Bureau will make the trip.” His tone was sarcastic. “Their craft, also, being a sea-plane, will land right in front of the pub, which will be a tremendous attraction to the guests. This poor old bus has to take you to the little air-strip on the other side of Lopi.”

  Margaret put in eagerly, “Jessa’s beloved volcano.”

  Ba nodded. “You take the Station waggon then into the town.”

  “How much of a town?”

  “One store, one mission, one copra-drying yard, one bamboo factory for wicker furniture and the Jessamine Hotel. Oh, and a jetty. There must always be a jetty.”

  “I think it sounds lovely.”

  Barry said offhandedly but proudly, “It is.”

  Margaret looked down beneath them on the diamond clarity of a Pacific morning. Sydney had looked like a goblin landscape in comparison with this vast seascape of endless blue.

  She glanced over her shoulder, reluctant to leave here, feeling perhaps she should support Jessa who had taken upon herself the duty of tea.

  “You don’t have to go,” said Barry a little gruffly. That is”—awkwardly—”if you’d like to stop.”

  “Oh, I would. It’s beautiful, it’s magic.”

  Ba waved an arm to a stool. “Sit down,” he said.

  * * *

  Tommy Swinson was returning from boarding school for his holidays. His nose was in a comic. He was a lugubrious boy and showed no more emotion at returning home than going to school. The only difference, thought Jessa watching him over the flame of the spirit stove in the minute galley, was that he swotted history coming and read Funny Cuts going. Assuming, being a boy, he preferred Funny Cuts to history, she gave him the benefit now of being pleased to be coming back.

  The missionary’s wife with her latest baby was the only other passenger. She had been thrilled to know she would have two nurses with her. “It’s like a royal escort,” she beamed.

  “King Baby should have a royal escort,” Jessa had declared.

  She now slipped two biscuits beside Mrs. Flett’s tea and took it along to her. The baby slept in the Moses basket in the gangway. Jessa edged carefully round it when she took two cups out for Margaret and Ba. She opened pop for Tommy, poured her own cup of tea and went to sit beside the mother.

  “Did you want a boy, Mrs. Flett?”

  “I just wanted a picaninny,” smiled back the mother. She, too, looked down on the blue water, the occasional coral atoll with its fringe of white sand and reef with foam breaking over it. She said, “It’s good to be coming home.”

  Jessa had the same feeling some hours later, as, ten minutes’ flying time from Crescent Island, the Lockheed began to lose height in a series of planned small falls.

  She knew Ba’s landing procedure now by heart. She knew that within thirty minutes she would be home.

  She saw the earth clothed in trees, rocks and umbrella palms coming up to meet them.

  She rose automatically to do the things she always did for Ba, folding rugs, putting away magazines, taking down hand luggage. Tommy Swinson’s nose still did not move out of the comic.

  “Tom, we’re there,” she called indignantly.

  “Where?”

  Jessa’s eyes met Mrs. Flett’s despairingly. The missionary’s wife glanced proudly at her son as though to say, “This one will grow up a different sort of picaninny.”

  The Lockheed rose a little, banked delicately, the wings tilted, the wheels touched down.

  Benjamin was sitting proudly in the Jessamine station wagon. Mrs. Flett’s husband had travelled out with him. The Swinsons had come in their own big car.

  The car pulled out, and Jessa could have sworn that Tommy pulled out yet another comic. The party in the wagon waited for’ Ba to finish putting the Lockheed to bed.

  Margaret was looking around her with keen interest.

  “As you imagined, Meg?”

  “Not quite. One gets a set idea about South Sea Islands “

  “I know—palm trees, frangipani, orchids, all that. You will see it, too, but this is fairly close to Lopi.” Jessa waved an arm to a bare rise. Even as Margaret watched, a tiny puff of steam floated idly upwards.

  “Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a smoke signal welcoming you to Crescent,” smiled Jessa.

  “The Tourist Bureau have even been thinking of using that as a catch phrase,” put in the Reverend Mr. Flett. “Smoke puffs from Lopi saying ‘HAPPY YOU’RE HERE.’”

  “If I know Lopi she’ll be «»happy,” said Jessa feelingly. “She’s been select for centuries (I don’t believe she counts us), and I’m sure she’ll hate a crowd.”

  Ba joined them, got in beside Margaret, and Benjamin started the engine.

  Once past the rather bare country surrounding the crater the scenery was wild and beautiful, the soil lush and fertile. Margaret saw her frangipanis, her palm trees and orchids.

  They rimmed a mangrove bay, then came into the town. As Barry had said, there was only one store, one mission, one copra-drying yard, one wicker furniture shop, one hotel. But there was an air of new expansion about the place, and particularly about the hotel.

  Jessa cried aloud in dismay at the alterations being carried out. “It won’t be the old Jessamine any more.”

  “I told your dad that,” said Ba. “I said it should be called the Star.”

  The long white inn that faced the jetty still stood that way, but alteration pegs had been driven into the ground, and one of the five wings was already complete.

  The finished building was still to be white, assured Jessa’s mother, hugging her daughter, greeting Margaret, peeping at the new baby, but that was the only resemblance. It would not be an island trading inn any more, it would be a luxury holiday hotel.

  “How do you feel about that, Mrs. Barlow?” asked Margaret, waiting for Benjamin to get her bag.

  “Excited, rather, in spite of my nostalgia; it’s impossible not to be. The list of V.I.P.s wanting accommodation is quite a thrill. A lot of people I’ve only heard about or read about are coming. Fame has settled upon us, like it or not, I fear. Incidentally, Jessa, we’re to be the seat of quite a few conventions. Seems that these conventions feel they can get a more unbiased viewpoint a thousand miles from what they must convene, particularly on an island, or so they write, completely disassociated with any of their home problems. Political bodies, welfare associations—and this should interest you two, even an infant society.

  Margaret looked at Jessa and raised quizzical brows. “Will Belinda be represented?” she asked.

  Jessa shrugged, but she was thinking quickly. A gold moon, silver stars, the scent of jessamine—what better place for a rendezvous for lovers—? And particularly dedicated ones like Margaret and Professor Gink.

  Glancing up to Lopi she thought confidently that the goddess, too, would give her blessing, and that was very important. She hadn’t told Margaret that old legend yet.

  Her mother was still chattering. “Oh, yes, I’m excited, but I still know I’m going to be horribly nostalgic. You can’t wake up for twenty-five years to a little mission on a hill from one window and a seaward reef with a cap of foam from another and not miss them both.”

  “Won’t you still see them?” asked Margaret sympathetically.

  “If I do,” said Mrs. Barlow sadly, “I’ll have to move one of those guest wings about to be erected.” She pointed to the pegs.

  Tea had been served on the wide verandah.

  “The roof is to come off, an arch of jessamine built across, and it’s to be called the terrace or the patio, not the verandah,” said Mr. Barlow to his daughter.

  “Break the rest of the bad news, Dad.”

  “There’s to be gift shoppes and beauty salons, organized amusement, and a nightly dance.”

  “That means a four-piece orchestra,” said Jessa, being a bright gi
rl.

  “Wrong, it’s to be ten.” Jessa sighed.

  “I suppose Benjamin will be in a white suit.” She glanced across at Benjy in his coloured lap-lap.

  “If I can persuade the Bureau not to give me one of their own commissionaires,” said Mr. Barlow doubtfully.

  “Dad, you must have Benjamin,” put in Jessa, outraged, “in whatever he wears.”

  The Barlow parents laughed immoderately at that, and Mrs. Barlow explained to Margaret.

  “It happened many years ago. Jessamine was quite little. As you see I’m not svelte now.” She looked down at her plump figure and sighed. “And I wasn’t then.”

  “The tropics do one of two things for you generally, you either get thin or you get well-covered.”

  “Fat,” Mr. Barlow said.

  “Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Barlow gave him a tart look. “Anyway, Margaret, I was not, as I have just said, svelte.

  “We were expecting the Commissioner of our particular group of islands. Naturally we were anxious to have everything very nice. It was nice, too. Benjamin had arranged the meal perfectly. It wasn’t the food, or the way he served it, it was his dress.”

  “How was he dressed, Mrs. Barlow?”

  Jessa’s mother hung her head. “An old foundation garment I had discarded. If I had imagined he had his eye on the thing I would have burned it at once. You can imagine our horror when he carried in the dish correctly, as I had carefully instructed him, first to the Commissioner—but dressed only in a corsellette and nothing else.”

  “Brassiere top, suspenders and all,” put in Mr. Barlow with relish.

  “That’s enough,” said his wife, and to Margaret, “More tea, my dear.”

  Vanda came along soon afterwards. Roger followed her as soon as bank hours permitted. Unlike the Barlows they were entirely delighted by the prospect of a tourist hotel. “It means this,” grinned Roger deliberately. “I shall now be in a position to look around matrimonially and not be compelled to make do with one prospect.” He glanced at Vanda.

  “Don’t forget I’ll be in the same position, only more so,” she retorted. “I’m to be your father’s hostess, Jessa. I’ll be in the centre of things.” She looked at Roger and tossed her head.

  “Any schemes?” asked Jessamine with interest of the future hostess.

  “I’m bursting with them, first of all we must have floral leis for the guests when they’re departing.”

  “Wouldn’t be much use the guests throwing them overboard to ascertain if they will return,” put in Barry dryly. “An aircraft, either sea or land, takes off far quicker than a ship, my infant, and the leis would flop.”

  Vanda ignored this. “I thought of making it a custom that once you look over your shoulder as you go you’ll come back again to Crescent Island. I read that about Burma once and I thought it was a pretty idea.”

  “What other Hollywoodian, or rather Burmese, schemes?”

  “Don’t be sour, Ba. I thought about lantern parties on the lagoon. It would be awfully pretty. You carry down a lantern, light it, launch it and make a wish.”

  “Did you read that, too?”

  Vanda turned her back on Ba.

  “The only thing I hate is Lopi, Jessa,” she said mournfully. “Your father—and the Tourist Bureau—insist on making it one of the attractions, so I shall have to take up parties, I expect, and recite the fable, and I hate that ugly place.”

  “It’s not really ugly, it’s just the way you look at it,” said Jessa. “I’ve lived with Lopi all my life and I understand her. The pair of us are good friends.”

  “I can’t follow all this,” put in Margaret. “What is the fable?”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask of Jessamine,” pleaded Vanda. “I wanted to know if she will come up before she leaves and give me a demonstration lecture about Lopi so that I won’t fall down on the job when I take along my first wretched tour.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow, all of us,” suggested Ba. “We’ll make a picnic of it.”

  Vanda grimaced. “Lopi’s no picnic for me, she’s the worm in my peach.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Barlow declined to re-visit Lopi. “We went years ago,” Jessa’s mother reminded Jessa’s father, “and were duly approved by the goddess.” They both laughed.

  “What goddess?” asked Margaret, “and what had to be approved?”

  “Jessamine will tell you when you reach the top of the volcano,” said Mrs. Barlow. “How many of you will go, so I can tell Benjamin what to pack?”

  The five young people decided they would make the trip. Roger had his bank work up to date, and as there were no island traders in the bay at the moment, nor any expected, he decided that it would be all right for him to come along as well.

  “Margaret, Vanda, Roger, Barry, Jessamine,” counted Mrs. Barlow.

  Mr. Barlow said, “Take the station wagon as far as the beginning of the waste, it’ll mean an easier walk.”

  The next day they all climbed into the wagon. Benjamin had got in before them. He loved driving and never lost an opportunity to get behind the wheel.

  The lunch hamper was stowed aboard and a colossal number of lemon pop bottles. “It gets thirsty up there,” explained Jessa.

  They started off round the mangrove bay; skirted several taro fields; stopped a few moments for Margaret to inspect the sides of a new house being lashed together with coconut fibre, then climbed into the wagon again.

  Lopi was coming nearer. It was only thirteen hundred feet high, but in comparison with this flat rim of coast this seemed quite considerable. Its wisp of smoke was lazy, even benign and friendly. “It likes us,” Jessa assured them.

  Vanda scowled.

  It was still luxurious country. Giant fern trees, their huge umbrella leaves stirring gracefully in the soft wind, enticed them to pause and picnic in their cool shade.

  Margaret, indeed, believed that this was what Jessamine intended when Benjamin, without being instructed, stopped the wagon and waited while she ran to the side of the track.

  She returned at once, however, carrying a branch of bright red berries.

  “A gift to the Goddess Lopi,” she told Margaret. “You must never explore her kingdom without first tossing these berries.”

  Ba added, “Benjamin says once she demanded human sacrifice, but later accepted a little pig instead.” He added laconically, “A fat little pig, Benjamin told me. Probably it was tender as well, if Benjamin cared to admit it. I’ll swear it only went as far as his stomach.”

  “Poor pig!” shuddered Vanda. “Though of the two fates I believe I’d prefer Benjamin to Lopi.”

  “You mustn’t blame our volcano for such foolish talk,” reproved Jessa severely. “The natives probably made the fable up for their own benefit. They adore pork.”

  “All the same you always take up a branch of red berries,” pointed out Ba pertinently.

  “I believe in that part of the fable, but I don’t believe about the pig,” persisted Jess.

  “Is all this the legend of Lopi?” asked Margaret, interested.

  Roger drawled, “No, you’ll hear that on the top of the crater.”

  Suddenly, it seemed, there was no more forest, no more colour. Black desolation that could have been the very end of the world took its place. It happened with astonishing abruptness, almost within a yard.

  The green stopped, the level surface became wave-like, as if the ocean had been trapped there and turned into stone.

  Benjamin stopped the wagon and they all piled out, Roger rather indignantly.

  “I say, can’t we go further?” he complained. “It’s easily a mile hike from here.”

  Benjamin wouldn’t go further if you paid him, and he won’t let anyone else behind the wheel,” Jessa informed him.

  They each took a pop bottle but left the hamper, then started across the hard lava rock. It was sharp and broken and unpleasant to walk on. Now and then you felt a faint warmth beneath your feet. Jessa drew Margaret’s attention to two thin s
pirals of steam floating idly upwards from the surface crack.

  “Lopi is a sleeping volcano,” she said. “Actually when a volcano has escaping steam it should be classed active, but as the steam is so slight with Lopi, and as there are never any rumbles, we on the island insist it’s dormant, even near-extinct.”

  Vanda said with dislike, “It couldn’t be too extinct for me.”

  “Anyway, it’s what’s known as a ‘gentle’ volcano. Scientists consider such volcanoes act merely as safety valves for the escape of internal steam.”‘

  They were climbing now. Margaret was glad she had listened to Jessa’s advice and worn strong walking shoes. It was not such a high hill, but it rose abruptly and the three girls had to be helped to the top.

  Now they were on the summit. Around them were black distorted lava shapes. Jessa, her cheeks as red as the red berries she carried, ran excitedly to the pit. The others followed her.

  Margaret did not know what she had expected—perhaps a huge basin of boiling lava—a black ugly crust that swelled and lifted. But it was not at all like that.

  As she stared downwards she found she could sympathize more with Jessamine than Vanda. Lopi certainly seemed benign enough.

  There was only the slightest rising and subsiding, almost, she thought, like a little ripple in a pond. The smoke signal came spiralling lazily up.

  Jessa was standing on tiptoe and throwing the branch of berries. “For you, Lopi,” she called.