by John Harding
William puffed out his chest and struck himself proudly on it. He’d hoped for a Tarzan effect but the sound was more like the slap of a wet fish when you dropped one into the bottom of Lintoa’s boat. Still, he was into it now. It was too late to back out. He had the attention of the whole audience. ‘I is not be American no more,’ he shouted. ‘I is be islander now!’
‘I IS NOT CAN LIVE FOR HEAR NEWS FROM ENGLAND!’
The fat woman and her friend burst into spontaneous applause. It wasn’t at all apparent to anyone not in their immediate vicinity whether they were applauding William or the play. Lintoa lifted his head from the floor of the stage and nodded and smiled this way and that by way of appreciation as the clapping was taken up around the auditorium. Onstage, Gertrude, who had been dead for quite a few speeches now, put her hands together and clapped too. William turned and bowed.
‘I is not want for be American,’ William announced. ‘I is want for live here.’
‘You is not live at all if you is not shut up soon!’ said Managua, trying to pull him down.
‘No, you is be quiet and let he speak!’ came a voice from right at the back that William recognized as belonging to N’roa. ‘This is be better than play!’
‘HE HAS MY DYING VOICE.’
Lucy looked sympathetically at Managua. She turned to William. ‘Please, you’re ruining the performance,’ she said. ‘What do I have to say to make you sit down?’
‘Just three little words.’
‘Ah, no. Don’t ask me that. It would be so crazy. I can’t. It was all so long ago. I – I don’t even know if I loved you then.’
‘I’m not talking about love,’ said William. ‘I don’t expect that, at least not yet. That needs time. Those weren’t the words I meant.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Her eyes were pleading with him now. ‘If it’s not that, what is it that you want from me? What three words are you on about?’
William lowered himself into his seat. ‘Bed and breakfast.’ He looked at her awaiting an answer. She didn’t speak. She bit her lip and glared fiercely at the stage. The audience, not convinced that the sideshow was over, kept its gaze upon her.
‘SO YOU IS TELL HE WHAT IS HAPPEN HERE.’
‘Well?’ whispered William. He reached out tentatively and covered Lucy’s hand with his own. This time she did not move. He was so nervous he could not prevent his thumb and little finger pressing her flesh in a minor right-left-left-right routine.
Lucy turned and looked at him. William shifted his gaze back to the stage where Lintoa was taking advantage of what might well prove only a hiatus in the audience disturbance to gabble out his final speech.
‘Well?’ said the fat woman behind.
William could have sworn he felt Lucy’s thumb move beneath his, lifting slightly, and then her pinkie, not once but twice, followed by her thumb again, but then he could easily have been wrong. And if he had felt it, it didn’t necessarily mean she’d read his letters after all; it could have been her fingers were merely unconsciously rebelling against the pressure from his own. Whatever, it gave him hope, but it wasn’t anything you could call an answer.
‘Well?’ he whispered again.
The fat woman behind leaned forward and spoke loudly into Lucy’s ear. ‘You is better say yes, if you is ask my advice. You is not go get better offer.’
‘Is be damn right,’ agreed her companion, loudly. ‘Specially not with they pointy breasts.’
Lucy licked her lips and everyone around her caught their breath. Lintoa lifted his great Easter Island statue head from Horatio’s arms to summon the words that in Managua’s version would end the play. Everybody was waiting to hear what Lucy would answer. Even over the distant chug-chug of generators you could have heard a pin drop.
‘Rest . . . ’
The word came out as a harsh whisper. It wasn’t very loud – Lintoa had worn out his voice shouting over the disturbance – but its very hoarseness gave you the feeling the speaker had a mortal wound, and coming out of the blue, when everyone was expecting to hear something from the Englishwoman, it was enough to remind them all that there was another drama being played out here too, down on the stage.
The audience didn’t know which way to look. The white woman said nothing. She turned and stared at the gwanga. Her blue eyes looked into his. And then, the merest flicker of her right eyelid. So fast you could think you’d imagined it, but it was there all the same. A wink, a palpable wink. A second later, more slowly now, the same with the left. Once. Twice. And then the right again.
The two fat women behind sighed loudly. That old eye thing the American always did! Now the Englishwoman had started doing it too. As if it were catching! And now he was doing it back to her. They were both doing it! Getting faster and faster! It made you dizzy just to watch. Not that there was any point. Who could understand this crazy white mans’ language? Even Managua would not be able to translate this.
The two women gave up on waiting for the white woman to speak. She was too busy with her eyes to say anything now. They got their own eyes back on the stage because there seemed to be more happening there. One by one the rest of the crowd did the same.
‘Rest . . . ’ croaked Lintoa again, sensing that he had the audience’s attention back and summoning a last effort to turn up the volume of his strained vocal cords. He paused to exchange smiles with the skull that squatted on the other side of the stage, watching patiently. No-one in the theatre made any more noise than what was left of Lintoa’s old friend. Tension hung in the air thick as smoke in the kassa house.
‘Rest,’ said Lintoa, ‘is be silence.’
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am hugely indebted to ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski’s classic book The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1929), an account of his research among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea, during the years 1914-18. Although it seems incredible, even for ninety years ago when Malinowski was conducting his research, the Trobrianders had never made the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. They practised free love from an early age until marriage and their society was matrilineal. Malinowski’s book provided the basis of much of Lucy’s descriptions of my natives’ ideas and practices, principally their sexual habits, including the institution of the bachelor huts, the natives’ reliance upon magic, their beliefs about birth and death, and their burial customs.
My other main source for background on the South Pacific islands was Paul Theroux’s wonderfully sad travelogue The Happy Isles of Oceania (Hamish Hamilton 1992).
For information on OCD I have drawn upon the following books upon the subject: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by Dr Frederick Toates and Dr Olga Coschug-Toates (Class Publishing 2002); Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Padmal de Silva and Stanley Rachman (OUP 1998); Living with Fear by Isaac M Marks, M.D. (McGraw-Hill, Inc 1978); Understanding Obsessions and Compulsions by Dr Frank Tallis (Sheldon Press 1992).
The edition of Shakespeare used by Managua is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Nelson Doubleday, Inc. Books Club Edition, date of publication unknown).
About the Author
John Harding is the author of two previous novels, the bestselling What We Did On Our Holiday, which was shortlisted for the WH Smith New Talent Award, and the acclaimed While the Sun Shines.
Also by John Harding
What We Did on Our Holiday
While the Sun Shines
and published by Black Swan
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ONE BIG DAMN PUZZLER
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A slightly different version of the essay on the role of the
island in literature first appeared in Publishing News.
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