Mr Peacock's Possessions

by Lydia Syson

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Solomona, noting her fretfulness.

  ‘No matter. We are glad you are here. So glad. All of you.’ She loudens and slows her voice as Pineki and Vilipate near us, Luka and Iakopo close behind. ‘It will make the world of difference to us to have you here, even just for a few months. A world.’

  What next? She hunts our faces. She wants to know if she can trust us with her daughters, if she will need eyes everywhere now we are here. Uncertainty hangs all around us.

  ‘Tell me your names again. I could barely take them in before. I am forgetting everything. Slowly now. Who will speak first?’

  ‘Show her,’ I whisper. I pick up a stick, and hand it to Solomona. ‘Write the names.’

  I know our names are hard for some palagi, but I do not want another’s. Everything else we have left behind, in hope of greater gain. I will keep my name.

  Solomona looks for a place to write and sees the ash patch, powdery grey. He holds a hand above, feeling for heat, then strokes it smooth and makes the first mark, a curving snake and then a circle and so it goes.

  ‘Solomona,’ he says, pointing to himself. ‘S-O-L-O-M-O-N-A.’

  ‘Like the king,’ says Mrs Peacock. ‘In Kings.’ All the children join the circle round the ashes, craning and shoving to see the marks we make. Their eyebrows bend, and their eyes round in wonder.

  Solomona says his name again, three times. An easy name to start, a Bible name. Then he smooths away his letters and begins afresh. He points the stick at me and says:

  ‘Kalala.’

  I whip the stick from his hand to write my own name.

  ‘K-A-L-A-L-A.’ My letters are straight and perfect.

  The children stare at me. I point again at my letters, and repeat my name. ‘Kalala,’ they say. A breeze reaches in between us and a silvery cloud rises. My writing dusts over. Its lines drift and fill. No matter for these children. The blankness in their eyes tells me a strange thing. They could not read my letters when they were full clear. These children do not read at all.

  Solomona passes his hand across his mouth. He has seen this too, and he is astonished. When I pass the ash-stick to Pineki, Mrs Peacock interrupts.

  ‘You know your letters? All of you?’

  Pineki nods, not because he understands her question, but because he wants to please. He scratches a slow P in the ash. Very slow.

  ‘On our island we have a school in every village,’ says Solomona. ‘And many teachers. We love the Word above all things.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ says Mrs Peacock. ‘How remarkable.’

  Solomona is a polite fellow. He addresses himself to Mrs Peacock as if her children’s ignorance does not surprise us by any means. ‘We will show you the names of all our brothers so you can learn them all. After, you will show us yours?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  Meanwhile, Solomona quickly scratches the letters for Iakopo and pulls him forward, repeating his name.

  ‘Like Jacob?’ says Mrs Peacock.

  Solomona scratches Vilipate and Likatau for speediness, and Likatau writes Luka too, and Solomona tells Mrs Peacock he has turned his name towards Jesus now. Then all we fellows bow in turn and smile and repeat our names and point, and the children say them back to us, and the girl that is not so big, not so small, talks of the missing boy.

  ‘When he comes, you’ll see. Albert can write his name—’

  Ada shushes her.

  ‘Come inside,’ says Mrs Peacock.

  One by one, we fellows follow her into the hut, where there are beds and chests and suchlike, and a table and stools, but not enough for all to sit. Sturdy, but roughly made. Nothing to delight the eye. I think of the birds and fishes of our island, gold and silver, that swim and fly and shine on Mrs Reverend’s double-seat, inlaid with pearl and tortoiseshell. The pride of our village at its presentation, and the months of making. Then I cast off these thoughts, which cause my heart again to waver.

  One girl fetches for her mother a vast book, a Holy Bible, battered and streaked white in patches, which she clasps for some moments to her swollen belly, resting it on the mound of child. A golden band, her marriage ring, bites her finger’s flesh. Then she shows us all the names inside.

  The first is the tallest girl, Ada Mary Peacock, she explains. Then comes Albert Francis Peacock. He is not here yet, she tells us, as if we had not heard the calling of him, or felt anguish in the air.

  One name, with a little change, can become another. Sidney, the Reverend’s son, my friend, who was sent away to school to England and is lost to me, who will learn to be a doctor like Dr Livingstone, we once called Sid. Fine playmates, used to say Mrs Reverend, once upon a time, until the days for play came to sudden ending.

  Elizabeth Jane Peacock is Lizzie. To say her name, you stretch your lips out twice, like when you feel a pain you cannot speak of, and in between you make your tongue like a wasp in flight. I practise saying Lizzie. Then she says my name back to me, and then begins to tune it, up and down: ‘Lalalalalalala’.

  ‘Your name is like singing,’ she says.

  I smile and she looks harder at me, a little longer than before.

  ‘You are the swimming one,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  I am surprised. I did no good by diving, except make a fool of myself, says Solomona. Thank you? My face asks why, and she replies:

  ‘You gave us hope.’

  Quickly my brother says the next name, William Edward Peacock, and the boy says:

  ‘William. Billy. That’s me.’

  ‘Me next, me next,’ says the girl who fetched the Bible, hopping and bobbing. ‘Show me, Ma?’

  She keeps her finger planted carefully under the H while she takes the Bible round.

  ‘Harr-eet,’ reads Solomona.

  ‘Harr-y-et,’ Mrs Peacock corrects him. ‘But now we call her Queenie, because she is queen of our island. Our little queen.’

  I tell her that my small cousin Vika also has a queen’s name: our Reverend Minister’s queen, who is called Victoria and lives in London. In the parlour in the Mission House there is a picture of her, sent from Sydney with the printing press. Her face is like a swollen taro and she is rich and fat like an old islander. All this thinking wings my mind again to the Mission House, now grown so big that it has doors inside as well as out, and rooms that join one to another, and lamps of glass, bright-burning. I recall my first sight of the looking glass, and my mother’s bright laughter when I jumped from myself. This hut here … so poorly furnished … I did not think palagi could live like us.

  Another name, Thomas Charles Peacock, and the air grows sudden still. This baby was Thomas for too short a time to shorten. Likewise Alfred Henry Peacock. The last name in the Bible is the longest: Augusta Emmaline Peacock. The big children all point to the smallest one and say: ‘Guess! Guess!’

  Solomona and I show empty palms. What test is this? We cannot guess her name. And they laugh, for we do not have to. They are telling us. Her name is Gus.

  Mrs Peacock claps her hands and we scatter. Billy takes us to the storehut, where the good wood lives, and tools and suchlike. Its front is wide and open. I think we are to move the wood so that we fellows can sleep under its roof this night, but no – he is looking for a sail, and rope, and from time to time behind him too, for the coming of his father, and absent brother.

  ‘Ma says to make a tent for you. Over there?’

  Head-shaking. The canvas does not smell good. It is damp and dotted black with mould. We will sleep on our mats under the stars tonight, I tell him.

  *

  Mr Peacock returns with falling shadows and barking dogs, bent by some burden on his back. Ada speeds to greet him with a falling cry. But the flesh and bones he carries is only goat meat. No Albert, he tells her, angry-stiff. No sign of him.

  ‘Then we must look,’ says Ada.

  ‘No!’ Mr Peacock is loud and sharp for all to hear. ‘Too late tonight. It’s his own fault for wandering off. I told him
to stay with the carcass. He must take the consequences.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Ada. A small sad flinching sound.

  ‘We will search in the morning. A night in the forest won’t hurt him, but it will make him think twice next time.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry, Ada,’ says Lizzie, uncertainly. ‘Albert will be fine for just one night.’

  ‘I suppose it is too dark to look for him now,’ says Mrs Peacock. The sky is turning inky, spark-scattered. ‘Joseph? Is it? But in the morning, if he’s not back – and I’m sure he will be – we will all hunt together?’ Her voice ripples like wind-blown water. ‘We will hunt over the whole island, until we find him.’

  We fellows look at one another, thinking of all the spirits and devils and unseen things that live in the high forest on our island, and nothing to keep safe this boy all alone, no dog even. We clamp our mouths. We fellows would not be in that forest in darkness for all the calico on this earth or ocean. ‘Tonight we can pray for Albert,’ says Solomon, hesitantly.

  Lizzie brings one of the new candles from the house, flame bright and strong and beckoning, and I hold it for my brother, to make amends, tipping it between my fingers so the sliding wax can fall on earth and do no harm. Solomona reads with downed eyes, always down, and the verses come slow and flat and dead. His voice does not ring like a bell. It does not rise and fall. Dark dull mumbling – a task to make out where one line ends and one begins. I think how Mr Reverend holds a chosen word, and how he sees into each body one by one, when he speaks, into each heart, with eyes you desire to rest only on your own person. When Mr Reverend sermonises, you think God is sending the words into your own head, filling each ear with holiness. You may not hear or know the words before, and yet you feel their meaning. But I know also that this is a kind of trick, which Solomona too must learn.

  Mr Reverend, he sits at his desk long time, and scratches down words in ink, and scratches them out. He tears up paper, starts again, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, always perseverant. Here on this island, there will be no desk for Solomona, no lectern for his Bible, no time to search for words. To travel far and wide to spread the Word and bring light to our heathen brethren on every island, a native pastor needs only his voice, and the Word. He has been chosen, and the Lord will take care of him. Not yet. You see, Mr Reverend say pastors need wives, to be two-handed men on their Mission. But last year Solomona became a one-handed man once more. A few weeks later, the new John Williams came to take the new teachers away to New Guinea, in new dark suits, as Pioneers of the Cross, all with their wives, and my brother was left behind, alone. God proposes and also He disposes. Here, perhaps, on this other island far away, he will fill his soul again and put aside his sadness with usefulness. This is Mr Reverend’s hope.

  As we pray, restlessness infects us all. Our ears open for sounds beyond, for noises in the dark, desiring to hear again the voice this family knows so well but we have yet to hear. Solomona’s eyes never rise. Mark. Chapter ten.

  ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God,’ he says.

  The little girl Gus has fallen asleep where she sits, head tilted, mouth catching insects. All is disorderly here today, everything out of kilter. Once more I try to fix my mind on Solomona’s words, and the fellow who comes running in the story, and kneels to Jesus, and calls him ‘Good Master’.

  ‘What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’ he says. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’ Mr Peacock lets out a growl like a guarding dog. Firelit faces turn and tighten.

  Jesus tells the man to give all he has to the poor so that he might have treasure in heaven. He goes away, sorrowful. He has great possessions, many things. ‘How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God,’ says Solomona. Camels. Needles. I puzzle how Solomona will guide us now, and tell us how we must think. For have we not come here, we six, we Islanders, in hope of great possessions? Is this not the way to enter the kingdom of God?

  ‘Let us pray,’ he says, shortcutting his service. No lesson.

  Every pair of hands is quickly clasped. Eyelids close over all the dancing flames.

  ‘Let us pray to our Lord for our safe delivery to this island, and his blessing upon the work we come to do here for Mr and Mrs Peacock.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Let us pray for fair winds for the Esperanza to return for us when our task is done. And let us pray most fervently of all that the Lord in his mercy is keeping Albert – Albert Francis Peacock – safe in his bosom.’

  ‘Amen,’ we all say again. Tears glitter on Ada’s face and, trying to hold her silence, she shakes. Her mother comforts her.

  ‘Amen,’ says Mr Peacock, a final stop, and bends to attend to the long box which lies at his feet. Two clicks. The darkness softly twangs. From a dark, silky shroud he uncovers a curved, wooden, golden thing, which glows a little, throwing back the firelight. Mr Peacock tips his head and places it beneath his beard, and stands like a tree with two new branches, one fat, one slender. He takes the thin stick and moves it across the shiny boxy thing, and right away we fellows squat down, and cover our ears with our hands.

  This noise! To see off evil spirits? But quickly he turns some twig-like part and the thing begins to sing instead of moan, and I find I know its song. So we sing together, Rock fellows and palagi family. Two languages. Luka’s eyes are shining, and I remember that although he is strong and brave, he is also very young, like me, and somewhat frightened by this place, I see, and I move closer to him.

  ‘Abide with me …’

  We fill our lungs with hope, and sing the louder, as if the unseen boy, Albert Francis Peacock, might hear our voices, take comfort in them, and find his way quickly home.

  BEFORE

  In the early days of the voyage, the Good Intent stopped often to trade and take on fresh water. They passed plenty of small islands, and Lizzie always begged to go ashore with Mr Peacock when he went to barter for seeds and roots – potatoes, maize, yams, taro, kumara. Sometimes he agreed. At Nuku‘alofa on Tongatapu, the red-whiskered Scottish storekeeper greeted them warmly and asked after Albert, and of course to be remembered to Mrs Peacock. How could anyone forget this man? thought Lizzie. When, months back, all but Ada had lost hope, and Albert’s spasms were at their worst, his fever spiking, his tongue furred, his stomach sunken, the storekeeper had searched and found an ancient bottle of Dover’s powder. It somehow eased the boy into slumber. Most likely saved his life. Pa lit up with fresh gratitude, cagily revealed something of the family’s plans and his aspirations for Albert, and accepted the storekeeper’s offer of beans, black and wrinkled. He was on the point of buying up four months’ supply of flour, salt, tea, tobacco and sugar too when Captain MacHeath stopped him. No need for that, it seemed.

  ‘We’ve fair stocks still in the hold,’ he said. ‘If the island’s not to your liking, you may not want much. But I’ll give you a good price and all you need, should you choose to stay.’

  ‘Nothing to lose,’ Pa muttered.

  ‘How kind he is,’ Lizzie whispered to her father as they settled themselves back in the ship’s gig, shaded by an ivory-handled silk umbrella the captain had produced with a flourish as they’d set off. As if she were a lady who needed a parasol!

  Ahead, the sea’s fury broke in a dull haze. Beyond, the ocean darkened. Half a day later, the Good Intent passed leeward of the last and loneliest island, and on they sailed south.

  *

  Albert spent more and more time hanging over the taffrail with every passing day. He could keep nothing down. Ada was always at his side, supporting his shoulders, dabbing at his clothes when the wind blew the wrong way. His cheeks gradually hollowed, and his skin took on a tin-glazed pallor, pockets of violet spreading beneath his sinking eyes.

  During better spells, Albert followed a pair of vast tortoises as they roamed the main deck. They had been brought on board some islands back, destined one day to become soup, salvers a
nd tureens. Meanwhile, they dragged themselves onwards, seemingly exhausted, never able to see any way round the obstacles in their paths. Whenever he could, Albert removed their blockades, quietly setting each item back in its place once the creatures had passed. Several times he found an animal encircled by laughing sailors, its head slowly hammering against a locker or mast, its claws sliding and scraping.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ he muttered defiantly, his own head lowered like a bull to hide his eyes’ betrayal. But the tortoise was too big for Albert to move by himself, and he had to call Billy to help him shift the animal onto a new and safer course.

  ‘There!’ he said, with satisfaction. The small cheer that immediately went up from his audience surprised Albert. Why hadn’t they just helped? He took a brief, blushing bow, shivered, and rushed dizzily back to his place at the rail.

  Time began to drag as one week turned into two. Again and again, their parents warned the children to stay out of the way of the crew, or there’d be consequences. ‘Keel-hauled and hung out to dry,’ Billy assured the others, thrilled by the threat. He was learning more than Ma would have liked from the deckboy, who was also called Billy. Tucked out of the way between watches with his new friend and a marlinspike, sheltered by a tarpaulin stretched over the ship’s smallest gig, Billy Peacock picked up splicing tricks along with shanties and rich language and stories of crippled mainsheet men. He showed off his Turk’s Heads to anyone who’d pay attention, and stacked other knots up in his memory, ready to amaze his father when he needed. When Deckboy Billy found out where they were bound, he taught his apprentice a song called ‘The King of the Cannibal Islands’.

  One day the king invited most

  All of his subjects to a roast.

  For half his wives gave up the ghost,

  The King of the Cannibal Islands.

  Billy Peacock sang it in turn to his family, Pa picked up the tune on his fiddle, and they all tapped toes.

  ‘I’m going to be Queen of the Cannibal Islands!’ shouted Queenie, yelling out the chorus, her favourite bit.