The Love Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  'Decorate the streets! Decorate the streets!' exclaimed George Turtle's quiet wife Minnie excitedly. Her husband whirled to her in astonishment, as though she had suddenly been struck with a fit. Other people looked and pointed at her.

  'Decorate the streets,' repeated Mr English politely. '"at a good idea. Now who would have thought of that?' A ripe plum colour had gathered on Mrs Turtle's face. People were still stretching around their neighbours to see her.

  With a borrowed feminine movement Mr English smoothed down the pleats of his kilt. 'There will be committees formed,' he said smugly returning to his theme. 'But we must get moving. There is not much time before Her Majesty ‑ a bonnie Scots lass, of course ‑ arrives.' The chairman allowed a proud smile to work across his little face. Then his expression fell with seriousness. 'But,' he warned, 'one thing must be decided even earlier than anything else.' He stopped, his body remaining dramatically still and his head moving fore and back with a regulated clockwork nod. 'Yes,' he repeated, pleased with the suspended silence and the bated looks of all the people from the twin governors down. 'There is one thing.'

  'What is it?' It was Mrs Turtle once more bouncing in her seat. George swung on her again, gaping at her public boldness, examining her face closely as though seeking a twitch of drunkenness, some symptom of malady. She smiled timidly at her husband and wrung her fingers.

  From Mr English came a bleak Highland smile. 'I was just going to tell you,' he said, 'when you interrupted. Where was 1? ... oh yes, one thing we must do.' He looked about him as though ready to repel another interruption. Then he scurried on: 'We must arrange for the Queen to open something. We must have a wee something that she can unveil or name, or at least there must be a foundation stone she can lay. Anything would do.' He looked threateningly at Mrs Turtle. 'Don't ask me what,' he warned, 'because I dinna' know.' He stared about him, his face up, travelling around like a searchlight to every part of the assembly. 'I ken we could do with a new building to replace this one,' he said. 'But we hardly have time to get that going in six weeks. But there must be something. We canna'allow her to be awa' without some permanent memento of the occasion.'

  The chairman sat down. The silence came back like something on a string. Nobody moved. Half the audience pretended it was thinking, others fidgeted arid looked towards the doors. Davies and Conway looked inwards at Pollet who shrugged as if to say it was nothing to do with him.

  When the vacuum had become so thick that it seemed it would explode, the Chinese doors were flung open and the two governors, the members of the Condominium, and their staffs, started up and thankfully marched out. At the door, Sir William half turned towards the seated Mr English and said in a shouted whisper: 'We'll get her to plant a tree. She's used to doing that.'

  'Plant a tree!' hooted Mr English, displayed, kilt astride, in one of the toffee‑coloured wicker chairs at the Sexagesima Hilton bar. Then, in a reduced voice, a groan: 'Plant a tree.'

  Davies said: 'Well, it's easy, I suppose. I mean you won't have any difficulty in getting a tree, will you?'

  'A Welshman,' stated Mr English, tilting his small, pointed face, as though explaining the inanity of the statement.

  Men, all men, no women, were wedged in the bar following the Governor's meeting. They filled the walls, crammed the chairs and tables and hung sweating across the barr while Seamus worked on the drinks. The place was stuffed with heat, night heat so oppressive that even the two senile electric fans moving on the ceiling felt its weight and slowed in their turns.

  'Yes, I'm a Welshman,' admitted Davies. 'Davies.'

  Mr English sniffed with apparent suspicion. 'At least ye've got a Welsh name,' he said. 'Ye're not doomed with a handle like "English". D'ye no' think that's a terriba' thing?' Davies noticed that, when he took thought, he plunged into deeper Scots vowels and consonants.

  'I don't think it matters, does it? Especially out here,' shrugged Davies. 'We're miles from Wales or Scotland.'

  Mr English looked as though he considered springing out of the chair. 'But that's the point, laddie!' he howled. 'Miles away. But we ken them, don' we. We sing about them. Think about them. Aye, even here.' He was getting a bit thick and drunk. He changed his posture in the chair, pedantically rearranged the kilt, and glared into his glass. 'Plant a tree,' he said. 'No, Davies, there's no great trouble in getting trees, as you so well point out. The one thing we've got in plenty on this bloody island is trees. So when the Queen comes we get her to plant another. Ho! Plant a tree!'

  Rain began coming down on the windows and walls of the bar, playing at first but then so violent that the men's voices had to be raised above it. English turned his head to the sound. 'We might as well get the lass to inaugurate a rain‑making machine. That would be useful, Mr Davies.'

  Hassey had been standing to the right of the councillor's chair, his live old eyes fixed on the far wall where two teams were clumsily playing darts. With a disjointed, almost a robot movement, as though he had been awaiting a cue, he turned on Davies and thrust out a hand that seemed to Davies to be all bones. 'Hassey,' he introduced himself. 'Came out here thirty‑eight years ago. Just to ascertain the fucking natives, old boy. Still here.'

  Hassey looked around and down at English mooning lower in the chair, his drink still held out in front of him like some suspect specimen. Carefully, like an analytical chemist, he tipped a thread of whisky over the side of the glass and watched its yellow contact with the coconut matting.

  'I'm still here, too,' English said to Hassey without looking up from the floor. 'We all are. Every one of us.'

  Davies took a quick drink of his beer. Hassey said steadily: 'Better than a tree‑planting I thought we might get Her Majesty to perform a launching ceremony. I always think they're damned impressive. Whoosh, down the slipway, flags and bands and everybody cheers like hell. Very good for the workers too, I always feel, even those communist devils in the shipbuilding yards. They may have their strikes and their sabotage, but when it comes to the launching and the ruddy bottle breaks, they all cheer with the rest. I suppose it shows that under the skin and all that. . .'

  'Shut up, Hassey,' said English sourly. 'For God's sake, man, I suppose ye ken that we neither have a ship to launch nor a place we could even build a ship to be launched, even supposing we had six years instead of six weeks. Talk sense, will ye?'

  'Ah,' said Hassey cleverly. 'I'd thought of that. The Governor's pinnace is only a few months old, hardly got its bottom wet. If we could get it out of the water, hoist it up on a slipway, give it a lick of paint and a bit of spit and polish, then the Queen could launch it, couldn't she?'

  English seemed to consider this. Then, bitterly, he said: 'No she couldn't. Everyone would know it wasn't a new boat, ye damned fool.'

  'But,' argued Hassey, 'only the people here know. None of the visitors would know. The Queen wouldn't, for a start. Everyone would have to keep mum about it...'

  'It's cheating,' said English, firmly swigging off the last of his scotch. He stared at Hassey who obediently took the glass from him and went towards the bar. 'Native of Northamptonshire,' English said to Davies, nodding his head at Hassey. 'Launch a boat! Ha! Old Livesley is putting it around that the Queen should inaugurate his measly neon sign, that "Bread" monstrosity. Says it's encouraging local industry.'

  Hassey returned with the chairman's glass. English grunted low and tasted it, stared into the amber, and resettled himself in the chair. He looked at Davies seriously. 'The trouble wi' a place o' this nature,' he said, once more deeply Highland, 'is that the longer ye stay the more ye lose ye bearings. There's wee lunacies planted in the mind by islands and places like this. Ye suffer some awfa' imaginings, ye ha' strange bogy ideas. An' yet here ye are, stuck in the middle of an ocean, and here, as sure as God, is where ye'll be buried unless ye get out while ye can. We're all like Hassey says. We all came to the Apostles to ascertain something. I meant to be awa' and so did Hassey here and so did almost every man steaming in this room. But then ye thin
k there's time enough tomorrow to be goin', and then ye leave it until perhaps the next day or the next year, and that's how it accumulates. Nothin' to be done about it.' He shook his head and flopped his sporran up and down like a heavy fly‑whisk. 'Gradually ye go a wee bit crackers. We all do.' He nodded across the floor. 'There's a man over yon, George Turtle, a native of Isleworth in the County ofMiddlesex, who would like the Queen to inaugurate a system of parking meters in the centre of our town. He's read about them in the papers from home, ye understand, and he wants to have the same benefits here. He'll be after having us blow up this beer balloon plaything next. How many motor cars on the island Hassey?'

  'Twenty,' said Hassey immediately, 'and two motor-assisted bicycles.'

  'Parking meters,' repeated English sourly. He looked quickly at Davies. 'What's your business here?'

  'Butter and fats,' said Davies. 'Selling butter and fats. Trellis and Jones, Circular Quay, Sydney.'

  'How long have you been there?'

  'Oh. only a year. Since I came out from home.'

  The final word seemed to move some thought in English. 'Have ye seen a lot o' the Queen ?' he asked.

  'Me?'

  'Don' be flustered man. Nobody wants you to curtsey with a bouquet.'

  'Well, no. I lived in Newport, see, and she wasn't down our way that much. In fact, I've only seen her on the pictures and on the television news and that.'

  'We'll have the television out here some day, so George Turtle says,' said English gloomily. He had now dropped the Scots voice almost completely. His tone was flat and, Davies thought, with a touch of Lancashire. 'God knows how or when. The batteries only allow the radio to work for two hours a day as it is. One English, one French. What is it like?'

  'Television?' said Davies. 'All right, I suppose. The kiddies like it.'

  English said, slowly at first but then brightening and quickening: 'We could have a tomb of the Unknown Soldier! By Jesus, that's it!' He seemed, once again, to be bound to leap up from the chair, but he fell back and took reassurance from the whisky. He turned on Hassey. 'Now that is something we could really manage.'

  'They do find them now and again,'admitted Hassey.

  Davies was aghast. 'Unknown soldiers?'he said. 'By the dozen, old boy,' said Hassey. 'Jungle is full of bones, full of 'em.'

  'Not full,' argued English patiently. 'But it does happen that people going pig hunting or something come across skeletons in the jungle. There's only a few miles of it but it's very thick and the fighting in this part of the world was very fierce. It's a good idea, isn't it?'

  Hassey looked worried. 'But they're only bones,' he said. 'It's not often you can tell whose side the bones were on. They could be Japanese for all you know.'

  English sighed. 'That's the whole bloody point of an unknown soldier. You don't know who he is. He's a symbol. That's all that matters.'

  'Even if he's a Jap?'

  'Even if he is.'

  English finished his whisky, looked towards Davies, then changed his mind and handed his glass to Hassey again. It was as though he were locked in an invalid chair. 'What a bonnie idea!' he hugged himself. He had reverted to north of the border again. 'What a fine wee notion. We'll have a grand memorial made and a bright everlasting flame...'

  'I can sell you the oil for that,' said Davies cynically. 'Trellis and Jones sell some good Everlasting Flame oil.'

  English, still savouring his idea, missed the tone. 'We might do that too, young man,' he said. 'Local volcanic stone, and flowers all the year round. Hee! Hee! All we want now is a body.'

  Hassey gulped on his glass. His eyes jumped. 'Where could we have it?' he asked. 'In the square'? By the harbour? Where do you think?'

  'On The Love Beach,' said Davies. He was surprised to hear his own unforced voice, and how readily the words came to him.

  Hassey and English both cried out: 'The Love Beach!'

  'My God, laddie, that's a marvellous notion,' enthused English. 'What better place than among the machines and the trappings of war. The Unknown Soldier! The Love Beach! It's grand! It's really grand!'

  'Get three of the invasion barges moved into three sides of a square,' said Hassey, his eyes screwed up but brightly shining through the cracks. His words began falling over each other. 'Make a chapel from them. Have the open side facing the land so that one of the barges can be like a breakwater!'

  English began to shiver with laughing excitement. 'I know! I've got it! We'll get the Queen to open the chapel or whatever you do with a chapel...'

  'Consecrate it?' suggested Davies.

  'That's the word. Consecrate it. Religious, you Welsh. Well, when she's done that we'll have another ceremony and she can rename the beach!'

  'Rename The Love Beach?' whispered Hassey.

  'But it's ancient, isn't it?' added Davies. 'Traditional. It's been called that for centuries.'

  'Time for a change,' said English firmly. 'It will be renamed Sandringham Beach, or Buckingham Palace Beach, Balmoral Beach. Something after that fashion, anyway. Especially to mark the visit.'

  Davies blamed himself for starting the thought. Many of the others had crowded about English and his wicker chair now, leaning forward, asking what it was all about. English finished his drink and held up both hands.

  'Wait! Hold it, all of ye,' he said. 'I have come up with a wee idea for Her Majesty's visit.' He told them all about it. Davies watched them, sweating in the humid bar, listening like children caught with a fairy story. When he finished, English added: 'All we need now is a body, or at least a skeleton. And that should not be too difficult.'

  'I still think the inauguration of a parking meter system would be better,' observed George Turtle to those close about him. He made sure his voice did not carry to English. But louder he said: 'How can we be sure of getting an old body? They are not found that often now. They used to be, I know, but the source seems to be giving out.'

  English eyed him. 'We'll send out search parties. We'll find one. There must be plenty still in the jungle.'

  Hassey said: 'I think it is also essential that we cheek to

  make sure it's a proper genuine body. Last year, you'll remember, some fool brought a skeleton back and it was all but buried with full honours before we spotted it was a damn monkey.'

  Davies began to laugh and he saw Conway, on the fringe of the crowd, laughing too. But the islanders grimaced at him so he stopped suddenly.

  'Instead of searching for a body,' said Kendrick, the bicycle dealer, 'why don't we use an old one. I mean one that's previously been brought in and buried. We can dig it up. reverendly, of course. . .'

  'Disinter it, laddie,' said English.

  Kendrick bowed. 'Yes, disinter it, and use that. I mean, one lot of bones is much like another.'

  'That idea appeals to m‑,,' said English. Kendrick looked pleased. 'Mere's the telephone? What's the Reverend Colin Collins's number? He's the clergy.'

  The telephone was handed across the bar by Scamus. Little pocket diaries were consulted and someone shouted the number. English asked the Sexagesima operator to connect him and breezily greeted the voice of the missionary. He explained his idea with bubbling enthusiasm, then waited. His face descended and set into a miserable frown. Eventually he put the one half of the telephone back on the other half.

  'He won't hear of it,' he said to the men all around him. 'Damned nuisance. He says if we want an Unknown Soldier we'll have to go and find one. We're not digging anybody up.'

  Misery seemed to settle about them. 'I didn't think he would take that attitude,' admitted Hassey. 'After all, it's in a good cause.'

  Six

  It was a heavy night, lumpy with clouds, hot and uneasy. The ocean, dulled and depressed by the closeness of the sky, moved wearily against the reef, and the island trees bent like tall hunchbacks. There were not many lights left on in the town when Pollet drove Conway and Davies out through the eastern street, although 'Bread' was still sending its coloured message across the Pacific from Live
sley's shop.

  'Anyone with the imagination of a stale turd could have made it "Cakes" or "Pies" or something like that,' complained Conway, looking at the changing hues thrown upon the inky lagoon. 'Even "Cakes" might give you some romance. What sort? Iced or sugar? And you might want to know what's in his pies. But, dear God, what can you ask about bread?'

  Pollet drove gymnastically, putting the elderly French car into turns and skids that carried it noisily through the contortions of the track they were now following. 'Here in Melanesia,' he said, 'they believe that the simplest mode of doing anything is the best. Bread means bread. The Melanesian girl always makes her flower designs the same way, clever but monotonous, and she will not, she cannot, move from that. It has been with her since she was a baby. She dances like that also, and makes love the same way. It has a sameness about it.'

  Davies quoted: 'Young girls dancing, indecent dances, indecent songs, and the most indecent actions in the practice of which they are brought up from earliest childhood ...'

  Pollet laughed: 'You almost have it correct. "In doing this they keep time to a great nicety."'

  'That's right,' said Davies in the dark. 'You know it.'

  'Captain Cook and his old maid's philosophy,' laughed Pollet, swinging the car through the dark. 'It is a well‑

  74

  known quotation in these islands. He never understood the people of the Pacific. He was murdered while telling his men not to shoot at the natives. That is always a fatal mistake, my friend.'

  The car shuddered like a loose tin along the track for a few minutes more, dipping like an aged boat in a changing sea. The track became narrower and trees and bushes brushed and sometimes banged like fists against the side. Then there blinked some lights through the overgrowth ahead, yellow and red lights. 'The Café Angelique, the Moulin Rouge of the Apostle Islands,' mocked Pollet. 'Presenting ‑ for this year only ‑ the Jap Oisen Ensemble.'