The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest

by Graeme Lay

  Inside, there’s no better place in Rarotonga to rub shoulders with the locals. For Jack’s regulars, the bar is the confessional, the marketplace, the stock exchange, the psychiatrist’s couch, the gossip column and the Lonely Hearts’ service, all in one. It’s where all of Rarotonga’s movers and shakers hang out, especially on a Friday night. Jack’s regulars are today’s equivalents of the beachcomber exiles of the old Pacific. They are merchants, hucksters, lawyers, charter-boat operators, retired ships’ captains. Men like Don Silk, who for years skippered the inter-island trading vessels which sailed, often under perilous conditions, to the islands of the Northern Cooks. Home from the sea, Don became Rarotonga’s harbour-master and wrote a memoir, From Kauri Trees to Sunlit Seas, which should become a South Seas’ classic, and which he still displays in a case above the bar, autographs and sells. ‘You’re very lucky, this is the last copy,’ Don always tells the person buying the book. Then when they’ve gone he slips another copy into the case. (There is a persistent rumour that Don is writing a sequel to Kauri Trees, entitled From Sunburnt Knees to Alzheimer’s Disease.)

  Then there’s Ross Hunter, a giant of a man who looks as if he’s just stepped out of a pirate movie. A boilermaker who came to Rarotonga in the early 1970s to help build the airport, Ross stayed on, married a local woman and started, along with an engineering business, what will undoubtedly become an island dynasty. Another fixture at Jack’s is Ewan Smith, a pilot who in 1978 began a small airline which grew into Air Rarotonga and today connects over half the fifteen islands of the Cook group. Ewan’s also a publisher and a photographer whose camera has captured the character and beauty of even the most remote of the Cook Islands. And no description of Jack’s regulars would be complete without mention of Mike Mitchell, lawyer and honorary British consul to the Cook Islands. A bon vivant and raconteur who was best man at my wedding, Mike launched two of my books at Trader Jack’s. All these characters were born in New Zealand, but all have sunk their roots deep into the soil of Rarotonga and are in some way inheritors of the great South Pacific dream.

  And there are the locals. Men like ‘Papa Tom’, Sir Tom Davis, scientist, doctor, politician, traditional navigator and author, a patrician figure who, from Jack’s bar, will regale an audience on any subject, from early Polynesian dispersal patterns to the right kind of hook to use to catch a mahi mahi. And George Ellis, descendant of an English trader and his Manihikian wife. A one-time cabinet minister and now a businessman, George is an expert on the black pearls which thrive in Manihiki’s lagoon. His children received high qualifications overseas, then returned to help invigorate economic developments in the Cook Islands. And there’s Brett Porter, genial, generous and good-looking, who imports most of the meat that’s consumed in Rarotonga’s hotels and restaurants. It’s easy to get the impression that Brett, a man with fingers in many pies, is the de facto prime minister of the Cook Islands.

  Sitting at the bar and eavesdropping, I realise that the conversations on either side of me are distinctively Pacific. There is a salvage opportunity after a big yacht was wrecked on Pukapuka. There are rumours about the way prices will go at an upcoming black pearl auction, and the latest developments in the long-abandoned hotel project at Takitumu, and yet more rumours about another shipping venture which is about to be floated, and a new international airline connection to Rarotonga. Everyone has a strong opinion, everyone expresses it, and everyone’s opinion is a target for mockery. It doesn’t matter that everyone already knows what everyone else’s opinion will be, and exactly how everyone else fits into this microcosmic plan. It’s all part of living on a tropical island – and one only the size of Wellington harbour.

  About 60,000 people – almost all of them tourists – pass through Rarotonga every year. That’s a lot of people for an island whose permanent residents number only 9,000. Life on an island whose economy is based on tourism has another odd aspect in that at any given time a substantial slice of the population is in a state of transience. Several times a week a loaded plane slides out of the sky and discharges hundreds of strangers from all parts of the world, who for varying periods of time roam about the island’s beaches, reefs, valleys, mountains, villages and bars. A few days later, another plane comes along, deposits another load of tourists and uplifts the previous lot, who within hours are somewhere completely different. This is known as global tourism.

  For many of the permanent residents of Rarotonga, monitoring these arrivals and departures involves a degree of social and commercial opportunism. I am in Trader Jack’s enjoying an evening beer when Malcolm Laxton-Blinkhorn, ex-minor English public schoolboy, former army officer, former pawpaw exporter and currently an Avaruan motelier, known to his friends as Malcolm Laxative-Bunghole, rushes into the bar. He is clearly in a state of high excitement, his face flushed and his breath coming in snatches as he makes an announcement to the gathered drinkers.

  ‘Slovenian Olympic ski team, came in on the nine o’clock flight. Been training at Queenstown. Here for four days. Eight gels, twelve chaps. Terrifically attractive, I hear.’

  Even by Rarotonga’s thoroughly international standards, this is unusual news. The locals are inured to Americans, blasé about the British, only mildly curious now about Scandinavians, but Slovenia is something else again. Mike Mitchell turns to me. ‘Where the hell is Slovenia?’

  ‘It’s in what used to be Yugoslavia. In the north. Next to Italy.’ I know this only because I once got to know a very pleasant Slovenian man in a guest-house in Apia. Anton was an agricultural scientist and a painter and he had told me something of his homeland.

  ‘Oh. So where’s this team staying, Laxative?’ asks Mike.

  ‘At the Edgewater. I’ll ring them up and invite them to the Coconut Grove.’ He reaches for the bar phone, taps the keys. ‘Vaine? Malcolm here. Listen very, very carefully. I want you call the Slovenian ski team and tell them they’re invited to the Coconut Grove for a few drinks. By the Cook Islands ice hockey team. When? In ten minutes, Vaine. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  In a remarkably short time we’re all crammed into Mike’s Nissan and heading off around the island in an anti-clockwise direction, past Avatiu harbour, past the airport, around Black Rock and into Arorangi village.

  The Coconut Grove is a cavernous bar, restaurant and small dance floor, set back from the road on the lagoon side. Tonight it has a three-man band, and the music is loud and the lights dim. Sure enough, the Slovenes are there, some of them already dancing. And the rumour about their physical attributes is entirely correct: they are snowtanned, lean, athletic, with short dark hair and shapely Slavic faces. There’s just one problem – they’re all men.

  They’re in their early to late twenties, dressed in designer jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts stretched tightly over their bulging pectorals. They are smiling broadly as they dance with the one female on the floor, an Australian woman of about thirty who’s already proved herself to be an enthusiastic party girl in her short time on the island. Now she’s leaping frenziedly in the centre of the circle of Slovenes, jumping like an aerobics instructor, grinning at each guy in turn, relishing her privileged position. Laxative-Bunghole introduces himself to another team member at the bar and asks, casually, where the Slovenian women are.

  ‘They are very tired. They get off the plane, they go to the beach, then they go to bed,’ the skier replies. He looks admiringly at the bouncing Australian. ‘But we don’t go to bed. Yet.’ He laughs in a knowing way, and Jack’s team joins in, but very thinly. The news that the female Slovenes have gone to bed is in itself sobering, but the subtext is equally so: these men are so handsome and virile, so athletic, that the likelihood of their women being enticed away from their own kind by a bunch of overweight, middle-aged inebriates is remote.

  We have a round of drinks at the bar and glumly watch the dancers. Suddenly, in the middle of a hot number, the Australian woman bursts from her Slavic circle, and jerks her way out the door and into the night. The skiers look
momentarily disconcerted, then continue dancing with each other. ‘Shirt-lifters, probably,’ Mike mutters.

  The evening is obviously going nowhere, it’s nearly midnight, so I finish my drink and decide to walk back to Mike’s place. Outside, along the road a little way, I hear a groaning, and see a huddled figure on the verge. As I approach, the figure gets up from the long grass. It is the Australian woman. She shakes her head vigorously, wipes her mouth and says to me matter-of-factly, ‘Ah, that’s better.’ She gulps, shakes her head again. ‘I just chucked.’ She takes a few deep breaths. ‘Okay now though.’ She gasps again. ‘Must get back to the Russian spunks.’

  And out there on the roadside she starts dancing again, jerking, jumping, snapping her fingers, and in this agitated manner makes her way back into the nightclub.

  Next day I’m lying reading on the sand at the end of the little motu, Oneroa, across the lagoon from Muri beach. Between this motu and the next one is a broad, shallow channel of clear water. Looking up, I see two snorkel periscopes approaching, two prone, flippered figures moving lazily through the waters of the channel until they’re just a few metres from where I’m lying. One figure, then the other, rises from the water. Both remove their flippers, masks and snorkels and wade ashore. I recognise the man as one of the Slovenes who was in the Coconut Grove last night. The woman with him is clearly another of the Olympic ski team.

  She stands at the water’s edge, mask in hand, looking about her, and I’m immediately put in mind of that unforgettable scene from the first James Bond film, Dr No, in which Ursula Andress emerges from the tropical sea, in Jamaica or somewhere. This woman, who must be about twenty-five, has the same proud stance, the same tall, perfect, athletic body. Her hair is blonde too, and hangs in wet strands over her finely deported shoulders. But there’s one startling difference. This statuesque woman is naked from the navel upwards, and her high, firm, dripping breasts are two of the most spectacular natural features I’ve ever set eyes on in these islands.

  Wading back across the lagoon, I pass several more snorkelling Slovenian women, none so handsome or strikingly unclad as Ursula, but all strongly built and obviously relishing their South Seas stopover. And back on Muri beach I pass the whole Slovenian men’s team playing volleyball. Most of them are wearing only shorts, and their bodies are unbelievably muscular – shoulders as wide as doors, thighs like barrels, stomachs flat as planks. All that slaloming and poling across mountainsides must be a powerful bodybuilder. Certainly these skiers are magnificent physical specimens, and I have to stop and watch them for a while.

  Just to top things off, they’re good volleyballers too, fast, limber, with fine hand-eye coordination. As they serve or volley or spike they shout, laugh and call across the net. Their language, which sounds rather like Russian, is spoken with feeling and accompanied by much waving of their powerful arms.

  Eventually it’s time to get back to Trader Jack’s, to watch another sunset and catch up on the latest bulletin of news. The Slovenians are already history. They’ll be on a plane out soon, and gone forever. But tomorrow or the day after others will be dropping out of the sky to take their place, to excite the expectations of the locals. A netball team from Barbados, perhaps, or a film crew from Rome, or a bevy of models from Berlin. We raise our glasses to the prospect.

  THREE

  A REAL HEROINE

  AITUTAKI, COOK ISLANDS

  AITUTAKI IS TO RAROTONGA what Capri is to Italy: a beautiful, accessible tourist playground just a short trip from the mainland. Forty minutes by plane from Rarotonga, its main attraction is its huge lagoon and a string of ten islets – motus – along the lagoon’s eastern fringe. The main island, which lies to the west of the lagoon, is pendant shaped and rises to a height of just 124 metres. The population of Aitutaki lives in several villages on this island, where the airport is also located, but the motus are uninhabited, just like the desert islands of romantic fiction.

  However, one motu, Akaiami, for a time had an international airport terminal. During the 1950s Aitutaki’s lagoon provided a landing strip for the Tasman Empire Air Lines’ Solent flying boats, which plied the so-called Coral Route from Auckland to Tahiti via the lagoons of Fiji, Samoa and Aitutaki. These cumbersome but comfortable planes flew across the South Pacific at low altitudes – their cabins were unpressurised – and the little island of Akaiami had a jetty where the planes tied up for refuelling. During the brief stopover the passengers – the Solents carried up to forty-five people – could stroll about the creamy sands of the motu or wander through its lushly vegetated interior for a few hours. Travel on the Coral Route was expensive at a time when most international passengers went by sea, and many of the world’s rich and famous stepped from a Solent and on to the sands of Akaiami.

  The Coral Route was a romantic way to travel, but by the late 1950s sealed runways had been built at Nadi, Papeete and Rarotonga, and Aitutaki’s desert-island airport had become obsolete. Today, though, Aitutaki is flourishing again as planes fly to and from Rarotonga several times a day, bringing tourists from all over the world to stay in resort hotels, motels or backpacker hostels. But in spite of its popularity and many visitor arrivals, Aitutaki remains unspoilt and laid-back. For West Europeans in particular, it conforms perfectly to their vision of a tropical South Seas island.

  Best-known of Aitutaki’s motus is One Foot Island, or Tapuaetai, which lies at the south-eastern corner of the lagoon. It looks like a human footprint when viewed from the air, and is surrounded by golden sands. Legend has it that a man was forced to flee across the lagoon to the little island with his son, his mortal enemies in pursuit. After first walking behind the boy to conceal his footprints with his own, and so deceive the enemy into thinking that there was only one person on the island, the father hid the boy in the top of a palm tree. The footprint ruse worked: the father was caught and killed, but the boy went undiscovered and survived.

  Some years ago I wrote a short story which evolved into a novel for young adults. It was about a teenage girl from Aitutaki who, being top of her class in all subjects at her island high school, was sent to Auckland by her family so that she could fulfil her academic potential. Life in the big city for the girl, whom I called Tuaine, was disastrous. Living with relatives who had little money, she was cold, homesick and lonely, and had to steal a jacket from a department store to keep warm in the Auckland winter. Apprehended after feelings of guilt drove her to return the jacket to the store, Tuaine just avoided being brought before the court. The novel ended with the girl opting to return to her island to live and complete her schooling. I called it Leaving One Foot Island. After it became a set text in some secondary schools, I considered writing a sequel. But what could possibly happen next to Tuaine, back on her idyllic island home? I needed a narrative implant, but one wouldn’t come.

  Then I was commissioned to write the text of a large-format book called The Cook Islands. Lavishly illustrated with photographs by aviator Ewan Smith, who has lived on Rarotonga for many years, the book covered the island nation’s history, geography, customs, fauna, flora and art. Many of Ewan’s photographs, particularly those of the Cook Islands’ remote Northern Group, were strikingly beautiful. After the book was launched with due ceremony and celebrations in Rarotonga, Ewan and I flew to Aitutaki to carry out a small marketing exercise. We sold a respectable number of books there, as the island was given generous coverage in both text and photographs. Among those who bought a copy was a local girl of about twelve, who asked shyly if we would sign it for her father and mother.

  Dining that night at a local resort hotel with some of the locals, I found myself sitting next to a pleasant, middle-aged Aitutakian woman. We chatted about the island and, in particular, the prospects for its young people. The woman commented, ‘There’s a problem for our young people in that they often meet other young people visiting from overseas countries, and they become restless and want to leave.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Just recently the sixteen-year-old daughter of a friend o
f mine fell in love with a boy from a visiting yacht. He wanted to stay on Aitutaki and be with her, but his parents disapproved and he was sent back to California, to go to university. My friend’s daughter was heartbroken.’

  I caught my breath. At a stroke, serendipitously, I had an idea for the sequel to Leaving One Foot Island. And as soon as I got home, I began to write it.

  In the sequel, Tuaine meets an Australian boy, Adam, while she is sailing on the lagoon and he shows off to her on his jet-ski. After they get to know each other better, Tuaine takes Adam sailing to Akaiami and One Foot Island, and they share the pleasures of her island home. Tuaine is fearful that Adam will discover the secret of why she had to leave Auckland, but this concern is overshadowed by the disapproval she receives from Adam’s parents. His family are Jewish, and for their only son to have a relationship with a Polynesian girl is not in their plans for his future. Adam runs away with Tuaine to One Foot Island and she hides him there, but his sanctuary is only temporary and the novel ends with his family insisting that he return to Melbourne and begin a law degree. He does so, leaving Tuaine distraught.

  I called the second book Return to One Foot Island. But clearly, it too demanded a sequel. Again I gave considerable time and thought as to what could happen next. As often happens with fiction writing, my invented character, Tuaine had become such a presence in my imagination that she practically stalked it, demanding that her dilemma over Adam be resolved.

  Then, not long after I had sketched out some ideas for the third novel, I again visited Aitutaki, to write a travel story about a couple of new resorts which had opened there. One of the resorts, Are Tamanu, was a little way out of the main village. I parked my rental car beside a small reception building by the entrance and was somewhat surprised to see a teenage girl lying sound asleep on a couch under the eaves of the building. Slender and barefooted, with long black hair, she was wrapped in a pareu. As there was no one else inside the building, I coughed a few times and she woke, sat up, stretched and smiled apologetically. And there before me was Tuaine, the living embodiment of my imaginary heroine, a girl so like my fictional character it was scary. I could hardly believe my eyes.