Savages

by Shirley Conran

  When he finally returned to port, the skipper leaped off his boat and ran to claim the reward in the harbor master’s office.

  The harbor master laughed. “You’re the three hundred and seventeenth claimant,” he said. “Lots of luck!”

  * * *

  Harry was used to disappointment now, but he couldn’t help feeling depressed by the thought that he had only five more days to search.

  In front of him, Johno was silhouetted against the blue sky. The Duck droned on a northwest course back to Paui, after yet another false report.

  Well, he’d given it his best try, he told himself.

  Johno half-turned and shouted, “Kerry’s on the radio. He’s just had another dinghy reported by the coast guard; it’s eighteen miles southwest of Merauke.”

  “That coastal town on Irian Jaya, about two hundred miles east of Tanjung Vals?”

  “That’s the one, Harry.”

  “How long will it take us to get there?”

  “If we turn back straight away it’ll take about an hour and a half. I’ll tell you exactly in a couple of minutes.”

  “Okay, Johno, let’s go.”

  “Kerry wants to talk to you, Harry.”

  Harry took the headphones. Kerry’s tinny voice said, “Looks as if we’ve hit something interesting at last. Theoretically they could be in this area if they’d hit the coastal current and been swept east around the tip of Pulau yos Sudarsa into this bay.”

  “We’ll do a grid search from the southern point and follow the current,” Johno called out, tracing the area on the chart with his finger.

  Ahead of them the sea stretched empty and flat.

  Harry said to Kerry, “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  Kerry’s voice was hesitant. “If you find them, Harry, remember they’ve been at sea a long time. If you see any, uh, unusual remains, the medics always tell the survivors not to mention a word to anyone, to forget it. You get my meaning?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,” Harry said.

  * * *

  The midday sky was the usual brilliant light blue. The blinding glare from the water was as painful to their eyes as looking directly into the overhead sun.

  “Are you sure she’s dead?” Carey croaked. She had only just woken.

  Crouched over the limp, shapeless bundle of clothes, Annie nodded. Silvana’s face had the translucency of flesh beneath which blood no longer pumped. Her sightless eyes looked up, without blinking, at the sky.

  “I think Silvana has been dead for several hours,” Annie moaned. She would never forget Carey’s eyes at that moment.

  “I can’t believe it,” Carey whimpered. “Somehow, I thought we’d all make it.”

  Annie gently stroked Silvana’s hair. She said, “Now that it’s started to happen, I hope we all go fast.”

  “Of course we won’t do it,” Carey croaked.

  “Of course not,” Annie said, firmly.

  “We gave it a good try,” said Carey.

  “Fourteen days,” Annie said.

  “Don’t wake the others yet,” Carey said, looking away from Silvana.

  Gleaming black fins surrounded the boat.

  Carey whispered, “Nine of those bastards out there now. We can’t let them get her.”

  “I hope they never get any of us,” Annie said. “I hope we all drift until we dry to skeletons.”

  Annie’s choking sobs woke Patty from a hideous nightmare in which she kept trying to eat Suzy’s eyeballs. Her teeth couldn’t bite on them, they bounced off like rubber. Her mouth was too dry to swallow the globes. An eyeball was stuck in her throat. Patty couldn’t breathe, the thing was choking her …

  Patty blinked and sat up. She really couldn’t swallow, because her throat was too dry. But, thank God, there was nothing in her mouth.

  “Silvana’s dead,” Annie sobbed.

  Patty croaked, “Why are you crying? That means that we can live! Quick, cut her throat. Where’s the bailer?”

  Annie gasped, “You can’t do it, Patty!”

  Patty, on her knees, ignored Annie as she leaned a trembling hand forward to pick up the bailer. “Silvana is dead and I am alive—and I’m going to stay alive as long as possible.”

  Patty’s knife was out, and her eyes looked as fierce and determined as those of a wolf at bay.

  “Take away her knife, Carey!” Annie ordered.

  “She’d only knife me,” Carey whispered. “And a fight might upset the boat.”

  “Don’t you see?” Patty asked wildly. “God has given us this gift. Now we don’t have to do anything terrible to stay alive.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Annie gasped. “It’s cannibalism! Don’t you call that terrible?”

  “Are you going to let a primitive taboo kill you?” Patty shrieked with what strength remained to her, “Can’t you accept a gift from your God? That’s food and drink!” She pointed down at Silvana’s scrawny corpse. “Just believing what you’re told is dumb! It’s also going to kill you. But not me!”

  Carey glimpsed the flash as Patty lifted her knife. She turned away because she hadn’t the strength to stop her and she couldn’t bear to witness what was going to happen.

  And then she saw it.

  “Patty!” Carey rasped. “Look over the back, to the left.”

  Annie and Patty both looked. Her knife upraised, Patty paused. “It’s a plane!” she cried, squinting at the black speck that had appeared over the horizon to the northwest.

  Steadily, the speck traveled across the sky to the east.

  “Carey! The flares!” Annie whispered hoarsely.

  Slowly and painfully, Carey crouched to open the locker and felt inside for the flares. Both her palms were covered with broken blisters. Patty’s left hand was raw, stinking and unusable, so Carey handed the flares to Annie.

  “Careful!” Patty croaked as Annie, legs trembling, clambered onto the center thwart and stood there.

  “Don’t! You might fall,” Carey implored. “Get down.”

  With shaking hands, Annie held up the flare in her left hand, hoping that she wouldn’t get burned the way Patty had. Her fingers were clumsy and slow as she unscrewed the base of the flare with her right hand, unraveled the string from the base, gave it a couple of turns around her right hand, then yanked hard.

  The dinghy rocked violently, but nothing else happened.

  “Try another one!” Patty urged.

  The plane was nearer, they could now hear a faint buzz. But it was flying almost due east on a course that would take it away from the dinghy.

  The second flare lit with a roar, but it rocketed sideways into the water without rising more than twenty feet.

  Nobody in the boat moved as Annie tried again. She was almost too weak to stand.

  The flare rose in a twenty-second arc of light, then fell into the water and disappeared.

  The plane flew on.

  “It didn’t see us,” Patty croaked.

  They all gazed at the moving black speck.

  “Keep trying,” Patty urged. “Quick, while it’s still in sight.”

  As Carey handed another flare up to Annie, Patty shrieked, “Look!”

  The white-hot circle of the sun flashed silver on the metallic, pale blue wings of the Grumman Duck as it altered course and headed straight toward the dinghy.

  Mesmerized, not daring to hope, the forlorn women in the little boat watched the silvery blue dot grow larger.

  The aircraft flew steadily nearer and lower. It passed the dinghy about fifty yards to starboard. As it swung in a turn and circled back toward the boat, clearly preparing to land on the ocean, the women saw the strange, ungainly silhouette with its twin-strut wings and huge forward thrusting pontoon floats.

  Patty snatched off her hood and tried to wave it, but she was too weak. The khaki cloth fluttered to the bottom of the dinghy.

  Carey tried to shout through cracked lips, but couldn’t.

  Annie found herself breathing ver
y carefully, as though, if she breathed too hard, her breath might not last.

  The Duck glided down toward the sea, then slapped briskly onto it, throwing up a diamond plume of water in its wake.

  The plane slowed, but before it had completely stopped moving the figure behind the pilot had slid open the plastic canopy. He waved energetically to the women, cupped his hands and shouted, but they could hear nothing above the roar of the engine.

  The women watched in unbelieving silence as a tall, lean man wearing a white shirt and tropical shorts clambered down the fuselage to the lower port wing.

  The pilot handed down a black package to the man crouched on the wing. Then the man stood, hung on to a strut and made stamping motions with his foot. Slowly the package swelled.

  “An inflatable dinghy,” Patty croaked. “He’s coming to get us!”

  The pilot waved a jerry can.

  “Water!” Carey gasped.

  Annie whispered, “It’s Harry!” A weary happiness flooded through the limp sack of bones that her body had become.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Patty gasped. “How could it be?” She wondered if Annie was hallucinating. She wondered if they both were. Could you see a mirage upon the ocean?

  “What does it matter who it is?” Carey bent down to Suzy, who was huddled in the bow of the dinghy. “Suzy,” she croaked, “we’re going to be rescued! A plane has just landed. Can you hear it?”

  Suzy did not move and showed no sign of life. Please God, Carey prayed, don’t take Suzy too.

  Not daring to believe what she saw, Annie clutched the gunwale with skeleton hands as she watched the pilot hand down a small outboard motor and provisions to the man in the dinghy. The ugly bulk of the Duck rode the water with staid dignity, disdaining the inquisitive sharks. The man attached the outboard, then started the engine. The dinghy started to hum toward the women.

  Now Annie recognized not only his silhouette but his face. Her own gaunt face, rough as a walnut shell, tried to smile as she whispered, “I’m certain it’s Harry!”

  Patty started to weep with relief, though no tears came because her body was too dehydrated. Thank God she wouldn’t have to do it.

  Carey again bent over the pathetic little figure curled in the bow. Why couldn’t the plane have turned up a little earlier? Just a few hours would have meant the difference between life and death for Suzy. Hopelessly Carey croaked, “Suzy, he’s here. It really is Harry!” but she despaired of Suzy hearing her.

  Suzy’s eyelashes fluttered slightly, as she whispered through cracked lips, “What the hell took him so long?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Film producer Malcolm Stuart originally suggested that I write a book about a group of women put under pressure, in strange surroundings, without their menfolk. At the time, I could not have known what an absorbing research adventure lay ahead of me. I am grateful to him, and to the new friends who have enabled me to write this book and those valued old friends who accept that my work means long periods of unsociable isolation.

  In New York: I owe—as always—a great debt to my editor, Michael Korda, and to Nancy Nicholas. Once more, I must thank Morton Janklow, Anne Sibbald and Jerry Traum for all they have done for me. I would also like to thank Helen Gurley Brown, C. Z. Guest, Pat Miller, Roger Wood and Dee Wells Ayer. I am particularly grateful to my assistant Brenda Hall (The Great Brendini) and to Carol Wilson. Others who kindly helped were Christi Stenger, Rebecca Head, David Laurance, Richard Toohey, Jay Rick and Brian Salisbury of Grumman Corporation.

  In Los Angeles: I would like to thank Bill Haber, Joanne Brough, Preston Fischer, Melvin Jacobs, Pat Davis and Phyllis Wapner.

  In England: I would like to thank my sons, Sebastian Conran and Jasper Conran, as well as Mike Riketts, Sue Wickerson and Kathy Gilgunn for their support, interest and understanding. I am also particularly grateful to Geraldine Cooke and Tony Delano for their criticism of the manuscript, and to Felicity Green and Mary Quant for reading my theme.

  I am grateful to many other people and many organizations. Foremost among them are Sergeant Peter Williams, Colour Sergeant Cyril Goodhand, Captain Graham Langford and Captain Rob Need of the Royal Marines and Lieutenant Colonel Dr. John Swanston, RAMC, all of whom helped me in their spare time. I am also indebted to David Ware, Charles Pearce, Peter Russell, Dr. Keith Palmer and Chris Hinde. The late Dr. Jonathan Gould and Dr. John Cardwell were generous, informative and supportive.

  I would also like to thank the Duchess of Bedford, the Marchioness of Lothian, Alexander Plunket-Greene, Adrian Pellew-Harvey, Bill Pellew-Harvey, Denis Bateman, the late Mileva Ross, Shane Winser, Jonathan Bailey, Mary Allen, Hugh Templeton, Jill Templeton, George Seddon, Ian McAlley, Gina Stallard, Richard Calder of the U.S. Embassy, Christopher Ward, John Hemming, Arnell Kinsman, James Tuttle, Fred Heal, Pam Brown, Diana Hancock and Michael Birkett.

  I also gratefully acknowledge the help of Father Patrick O’Donahue, Terry Ayres, Anne Williams, Sheila Hayman, Edward Cavallero, Ben Gaskell and my swimming coach, Bao-ne Moe.

  For wrestling with my handwriting I must particularly thank typists Jill Beck, Kate Jennings, Shaneen Theron, Heather Morgan and Diana Burton Brown.

  In Scotland: I would like to thank Douglas Brand, and Lynn Pirie of Hot Forage.

  In Fiji: I shall always remember the late Captain Jonathan Willis of Sydney, Australia, and his wife, Louise.

  In Australia: John Hughes of Sydney was kind enough to give me his help and so did Bob O’Donahue of Brisbane.

  In New Zealand: I would like to thank Graham Beattie.

  In Pittsburgh: I would like to thank Corinne Laboon, Michele Mancini and Lori Kircher.

  In Canada: Jason Pearce of Ranger Helicopters was kind enough to advise me on aerial search procedure.

  In Switzerland: I would like to thank Peter Alexander.

  In Monte Carlo: Denis Mori gave me invaluable information and advice. I would also like to thank Juliet and Andrew Borowitz, Anne Behar, Bettina Culham, the late Jack Harnet, William Wakefield, Violet Masini, the taxi drivers of Monaco who translated Dante for me, and Jillian Robertson Hulton, who kindly lent me rare books from her library, and provided much moral support and advice.

  I would also like to thank the following organizations: the Royal Marines, the Royal Air Force, the War Office, the RAF Air Historical Branch, the Royal Aeronautical Museum, the RAF News, the High Commission for Papua New Guinea, the Royal Geographical Society, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, the New Guinea Mission, the Fiji Museum, Swiss Cottage Library, the London Library, the Alassio Library in Italy, the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Spina bifida Association.

  I am particularly grateful for the help given me by all the staff of the Eskdale Outward Bound Centre, Cumbria—particularly by Roger Putnam, Debbie Habgood and Debbie Hammett. I hope I shall never again do a simulated parachute jump.

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