The Love Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  'That's their idea,' said the British Governor, indicating the kilt‑laden Mr English and other members of the town council in a clique at one fringe of the lawn. 'All they have to do now is to find an Unknown Soldier. I gather they've sent search parties out into the jungle to try and get one. Frankly it floors me, old man. They'll go out en masse to find a mouldy skeleton but if some poor devil is genuinely lost out there you can't get the so‑and‑sos away from the whist drive at the British Legion. Don't you remember that idiot who came down from Honoraria last year who got stuck in the bog ten miles up the coast? Fool had a native guide who had no sense of direction whatever. He nearly got drowned in the mud before anyone could be raised to go and look for him. What was the excuse then? Oh yes, it was August Bank Holiday.'

  'It is not a holiday the French celebrate,' said M. Martin piously.

  'One of the few,' grumbled Sir William. 'I can never get any of your people for half the year. Always some saint's day or other.'

  'But you have a holiday without even the excuse of a saint to bless it,' returned M. Martin. 'By the way, do you like Mrs Flagg's little pissens from St Mark's?'

  'Not the best choice of words,' said Sir William. 'Your colloquial English lets you down sometimes, old man. You could hardly call what they have got "little", now can you?'

  M. Martin laughed. 'A very funny way you have with you, Governor. They are most strange at a garden party, are they not? I understand Mrs Flagg is making a study of them.'

  'So is every other frustrated female here,' mumbled Sir William.

  Mrs Minnie Turtle at the fringe of a group of clinking teacups was saying: 'Fancy displaying yourself like that at a garden party.' She wriggled half around and glared at Bird and Dahlia.

  'What goes in Europe is not always in the best of taste here,' agreed Mrs English. 'I hope they keep their wretched mini‑skirts in their wardrobe when Her Majesty arrives. I want her to see that we preserve some standards in the Apostles.'

  George Turtle was saying: 'It's a tragedy that the Queen won't be here long enough to make a broadcast. Now that would be a marvellous thing. And we've got our new microphone now.'

  Rob Roy English, his kilt rubbing a little sweaty red seam like a garter across the top of his leg on this hot day, said to Conway: 'The people will all line the pavements and give the royal lass a fine cheer.'

  'Pavements?' asked Conway, rudely sucking in his tea. 'Which pavements?'

  'Well, the sides of the roads,' said the council chairman reacting to the slight. 'We're not a wealthy authority, you know. We can't have everything in Sexagesima.'

  Conway smiled agreeably. He said: 'Why don't you get some of the natives from St Paul's over for the visit? Say a dozen. A sort of guard of honour.'

  'Good idea,' said Mr English. 'We'd have to ask the Governor, of course. But it's not a bad notion at all.'

  The mention of the Governor depressed Conway immediately. 'I shouldn't worry,' he said. "Fhey're a bit unusual, the boys over there, it might spoil things.'

  Mr Livesley said to Davies: 'Do you like the buns? I think they're very good. They're mine.'

  Davies said: 'You should put a new neon sign up saying

  "Buns". That would be dramatic.' Bird, who was standingwith them, nodded: 'That would be a most effective switch in your advertising campaign, Mr Livesley,' she said.

  The baker regarded them with a narrow look. They drank their tea and Bird accepted another syrup bun from one of the St Mark's natives who jolted by with a tray. Mr Livesley decided they were serious.

  'I've had thoughts about extending the sign,' he puffed. 'The trouble with this royal visit is that it will be all over by the evening and the ship will have gone. My neon advertisement, I'm the first to admit, looks nothing in the day. I'd like to have a similar sign put on the top of the mountain. Perhaps in just one continuous colour. Not flashing. In red, I think. At night when you could not see the mountain it would look as though it were hanging in the sky. That's what happens with the statue of Christ the Redeemer at Rio de Janeiro, you know. So I've read. At night you can't see the mountain but the statue is floodlit and it looks just as though the Saviour is floating above the city.'

  'Interesting,' commented Davies. 'What will your advertisement say?'

  'The one on the mountain? Oh, I haven't thought about it yet. It's all in the air. Ha! That's a joke isn't it!'

  'Yes, it's a joke,' agreed Davies. Bird nodded.

  Mr Livesley reverted to his big business voice. 'Bread,' he said decisively. 'That's what it will say ‑ "Bread".'

  'Bread of Heaven,' suggested Davies. 'That would be good stuck on top of a mountain.'

  'That's got something about it,' admitted Mr 'Livesley. 'A sort of ring.'

  'It's a hymn,' said Davies. 'A Welsh hymn tune. They

  sing it at rugby matches.'

  Conway walked over the lawn, his feathery teacup balanced ridiculously in his big hand. He nodded to Mr Livesley. 'Why don't you switch that sign of yours off after midnight?' he asked. 'No one wants to buy bread at three in the morning and the thing keeps people awake.'

  'Now wait a minute,' argued Mr Livesley. 'I don't consider that sign merely a commercial value. It is, I believe, something of a landmark for this town and, indeed, these islands. It can be seen for miles across the sea you know.'

  Davies burrowed in quickly. 'Mr Livesley was telling us about the statue of Christ at Rio de Janeiro. It was very interesting.'

  'Yes, fascinating,' confirmed Mr Livesley. 'At night when it is illuminated and the mountain is hidden by the darkness the statue seems to float in the air. I read about it in Reader's Digest. I gather it's very sobering.'

  :It doesn't have that etfect on Rio,' said Conway.

  1 suppose you can get used to anything,' said Bird helpfully. Then with relief: 'Ah, look. The Scottish dancing is to start.'

  Davies had thought that nothing more could surprise him in the Apostles. But now Rob Roy English had seized a squealing set of bagpipes and imprisoned them like a pig under his arm. His pallid wife had roped a side‑drum around her neck and was rolling the sticks with fine competence over the skin. The big crowd divided and backed away, making a space in the centre of Mrs Flagg's lawn, a green sunlit space, hot in the afternoon, topped by idle palms and breadfruit trees and a huge Pacific sky. Into this tropical arena came the Highland Dancers.

  Four were women, middle‑aged, dry women, with set faces and hard necks. Three were thin, two short, one tall, and one was red and big and fat, bursting from her Stuart Hunting Tartan, pounding up and down on her buckled shoes, her calves like footballs in her woollen socks. Four more were British colonial office personnel, clerky men with inky expressions all puffing with overweight and the heat, except one who had a bristled ginger moustache, and a white worm of a body.

  The other eight members of the Highland dancing group were Melanesian natives, four men and four women, shining ebony people with great arms and trunk legs. Their kilts and tartans lay about and over them in giant folds and they winced with the pair. of the buckled shoes as they danced.

  'Good God in the sky,' whispered Conway. 'I don't believe it.' Davies nudged him silent. The piper was playing the lament The Flowers of the Forest and the sixteen dancers, black and pale, pawed their way through the dirge dance, a sad look upon each face, large and small, and powerful wooden grace in the way they swung arms and legs.

  The lament was followed by a reel performed with dedication and vivacity, the tribesmen bounding, bouncing, and whirling with the rest and emitting guttural Highland exclamations. When it came the time for partners to be swung the watchers became tense. One of the big native women clasping the stringy man about his little waist with a mighty arm, and being clasped by his white hairless forearm, swung with energy and it seemed that the European would be catapulted away.

  Strangely it was the natives who sweated. The white dancers whirled and swayed, stepped daintily in the vivid sun, without discomfort. But the Melanesians, hung about wi
th their Scots trappings, encased in shoes, socks, kilts weighing pounds, bouncing sporrans, and hairy hats, ran floods of black perspiration and stood heaving at the conclusion of each set.

  At the finale the hundreds on the lawn applauded, the little baloot‑clad men from St Mark's applauding too for they had never known music and dancing like it. Mrs Flagg stepped into the bright green circle and thanked the puffing natives and the sedate white dancers, then called for AuId Lang Syne. There were too many guests for one circle, so those who could cross and join hands did so around the lawn and the others clasped hands where they stood and lent their voices to the famous old song. Mr English fought the pipes, Mrs English rolled her side‑drum, and the voices, of all manner of shades and accents, joined in. Sir William and M. Martin self‑consciously crossed hands with the ghostly ADC, Cooper, on Sir William's right and M. Martin's aide to the right of his chief. It was a moving display of comradeship far out in a remote place. Some eyes glistened and the words did not come easily to many a throat. The sun, now late in its path, lit the colonial sight, the people, the trees, the tropical flowers all about Mrs Flagg's lawn, and the full‑coloured sea in the background.

  One of the joiners, an elderly man called Albert Coxly who had retired to Sexagesima from missionary service in Wallis Island, died while they were singing. The people on either side of him, clasping his friendly crossed hands, did not know he had passed away. He was very light and fragile and they hardly noticed his moribund weight. When, on the second verse, all the people moved inwards to the centre of the circle, in the traditional way, the dead Mr Coxly was dragged with them, and then when they moved out again he was trawled back. Nobody noticed. The circle expanded and contracted half a dozen times as the song was louder sung. And he went with it. To and fro, to and fro. Eventually they stopped and laughed and applauded and walked away leaving Mr Coxly lying dead on the lawn. They returned to him, of course, when he was observed, and the doctor pronounced him extinct. 'Heart,' he grunted professionally. 'Couldn't stand up to it.'

  Davies turned to Bird and saw she was crying. 'He was a nice old man,' she said. 'It is a pity he had to die. And like this.'

  'It's a pity anyone has to die,' said Davies. He said to Conway: 'What a way to go.'

  Conway said: 'More queer things happen around here than at King's Cross on a Saturday night.'

  Nine

  Conway walked into Davies's room at the Hilton without knocking. Davies was having an early evening sleep, transfixed on his bed, snoring mildly. A gecko ate some flies petrified on the ceiling, sticking them to his tongue like a man wetting stamps at a post office. The blind was down but there was a dagger‑shaped tear in it that admitted a slice of late sun. Conway walked around, like a connoisseur at a gallery, pulling faces at Davies's paintings which were standing around the walls. Davies rolled and woke.

  'What's that supposed to be?' asked Conway, hearing him wake and not turning round. He pointed his toe at one of the canvases. 'This one.'

  'Let's have a look,' said Davies, he did a neat movement off the bed and looked down. 'Can't you see?' he said. 'It's The Love Beach. I would have thought even you could see that. It's plain as anything.'

  'Sure,' agreed Conway with politeness. 'That's it. The Love Beach. It's the ... it's the ... well, you got a different angle to it, that's all. Maybe you'll get that in the Melboume Art Gallery. That's a good one, that is, mate.'

  The Welshman looked at him suspiciously. 'Do you think so?' he asked, unsure. 'I'm very keen on that one myself. It's about the best that I've done.'

  'Got any beer?' asked Conway.

  'Two left,' said Davies, reaching under the bed. He opened them. 'What's doing, anyway?'

  'I want a bit of help. A good sort like you can help me out.'

  'I thought you didn't come in just to look at the art work,' said Davies. 'What kind?'

  Conway drank from the bottle. His profile was against the light coming through the blind. He looked a hard man. 'Well,' he started, then drank again. 'In the first place, whether or not you decide to give me a hand, what I'm going to tell you is between you and me and nobody else. You've got that?'

  'I've got it,' said Davies, starting on his bottle.

  'If you spout about it, mate, I'll not only have to clobber you something terrible, but if and when you ever get back to Aussie they'll put you in the nick for about ten years on top. Now you've got that?'

  'I've got that too,' confirmed Davies. Then he said: 'It's about Vietnam.'

  'See,' said Conway angrily. 'You've already worked out more than you should know. How did you get that far?'

  'You shouldn't get pissed,' said Davies simply. 'When we were on The Baffin Bay you came out with all this Vietnam stuff which you later denied, and then, over on St Paul's the other day, you kept asking what's ‑his ‑name, you know Joseph of Arimathea, whether he and his lads would like to go to Vietnam. And you didn't come here to pick daisies.'

  'How's the butter and fats business?' asked Conway.

  'Lousy.' admitted Davies. 'Nobody wants to know about it. That idiot English, who's in charge of the big warehouse here when he isn't frigging about in his kilt or looking for Unknown Soldiers, turned it down flat. And if he won't take the bulk orders and store them in the deep freeze I'm wasting my time. And he won't.'

  'Vaat will Trellis and Jones of Circular Quay say?' asked Conway, grimacing at a painting of a coconut.

  'They'll say "Get out" I expect,' admitted Davies. 'I'm not surprised it's all buggered up. Nothing's ever worked out for me yet.'

  'Everything works out for me,' said Conway. 'Generally it does, anyway. Help me and maybe you'll get some of my Aussie luck. You can also come on the government pay‑roll as an assistant. I can authorize that.'

  'That makes it sound a lot more attractive,' said Davies. 'Except I'm not going to Vietnam. Not for you or anybody. Okay?'

  'You won't have to,' said Conway. 'I wouldn't need to rope you in at all if the British Governor hadn't been so obstructive. He even cabled to get Canberra to haul me off. But they told him to shut up, which annoyed him a bit I bet.'

  He drained the beer and put the bottle back under the bed. 'But I've got to have someone to give me a hand. Someone I can trust. You're not perfect, but you're about the best bet.'

  'Thanks,' said Davies. 'Abe. Why don't you try him? He'll do anything for shekels.'

  'No, I'd thought of Abe, and we may need him yet, but he's too much of an operator. I don't think he'd keep in line. You will. Abe might sell us out., he wouldn't mean it but he would never be able to resist his business instincts.'

  'What is it then?' asked Davies.

  'Well, the guts of it is ‑ I want to get a dozen of those nuts on St Paul's to Australia. I want them seconded to the Australian Expeditionary Force in Vietnam as jungle scouts.'

  Davies whistled. 'Mad,' he said, 'raving mad. That lot in Vietnam!'

  Conway said, 'It's just a publicity stunt. The British used Dyaks in Malaya and we thought if we could get some of our savages in with our boys fighting the Viet‑Cong it would be great public relations. You know, the old crap about the Empire coming to the side of the Mother Country.'

  'But you're not the Mother Country,' protested Davies. 'Typical of you. We're the Mother Country.'

  'Well, St Paul's is our dependency so Aussie is mother to them. Anyway you can see what a job it is. Like rounding up lunatics. And the Governor says they'll all die of TB or homesickness or something.'

  'They probably would too,' said Davies.

  'They won't. We'll protect our investment. We couldn't allow that to happen and spoil the bloody image. Mind you, that didn't stop the British carting the Gurkhas all over the place for ninepence a day, and sending them home to Nepal when they'd got TB.'

  'That's another Australian lie,' said Davies. 'So how are you going to save this lot from extinction?'

  'I doubt if they'll ever get as far as Saigon. We just want to dress them up a bit and parade them around back home, ju
st to focus attention on what we're doing in Vietnam.'

  Davies said: 'What do I have to do?'

  'Got any more beer?' asked Conway, bending to look under the bed.

  'No. I told you I only had two.'

  'So you did. Well, at the moment you do nothing. Because I don't know what there is to , I've got to find out a bit more about that mob before making a real move. I can't ask Abe too much or he'll jump to conclusions ‑ he's bright, that Abe ‑ and that won't do. I was thinking of going to pay a social visit on Mrs Flagg. She seems to know as much about the islanders as anyone, and if she can get those little blokes from St Mark's to run around with their things done up in banana leaves at her garden party she may give me some ideas on how I can work on the St Paul's tribe.'

  'Why don't you just go over to the island again, keep away from their beer, and ask them if they would like to go to Vietnam. Make it friendly but official. You might impress them.'

  'I hadn't put that out of mind,' said Conway. 'As a matter of fact I thought I might suggest to them that it's some kind of Holy War, a sort of Crusade. They might fall in with that.' He pondered then stood up. 'To tell you the truth I had even dreamed up a way of taking it one stage further.'

  'How?' Davies stood up and began rearranging his paintings around the wall.

  Conway opened the tear in the blind a little farther and looked out into the hot street. Two Melanesian women were talking with the Chinese hardware merchant across the street. 'It was the thing that old fool Livesley said at the garden party,' Conway said. 'About Rio and the Christ being illuminated and looking as though it was floating in the sky. That's an idea that could be adapted for St Paul's.

  They're waiting for Dodson‑Smith to appear, so let him appear.'

  'Riding the motor bike?' suggested Davies.

  'Why not? That would give them the message. If he told them to send a dozen warriors over the sea to war then they would.'

  'You couldn't do it,' said Davies, shattered with the thought. 'It's the riskiest thing I ever heard.' He looked hard at Conway. 'You didn't have any idea of casting me in the role of Jesus, did you"' Conway shook his head. 'You're too short for Jesus. No, if we did this thing it would be your job to keep the escape route open.'