Pacific

by Judy Nunn

  As they set off for Vila, she leaned over the back and bathed his face. ‘How long have you been feeling sick, Big Ben?’ she asked, ‘I’m Jane, by the way.’

  ‘When I woke up this morning, ma’am. Didn’t say nothin’, didn’t want to let the team down, you know?’

  ‘Well, you just lie there quietly.’ The fever was upon him and he was shivering now. ‘We’ll have you at the hospital in a couple of hours,’ she kept soothing him as she bathed his face. ‘You’ll be all right, Big Ben,’ she said over and over.

  ‘Don’t wanna be no trouble, ma’am.’

  ‘Ssh, you’re no trouble at all, you’re going to be fine.’

  But by the time they’d reached Havannah Harbour, Big Ben was muttering incoherently.

  ‘Jesus, will he be okay?’ Wolf asked.

  ‘I don’t know, it depends if we can get him there in time.’

  Wolf tried to step up the speed, although he was already driving like a maniac.

  ‘Blackwater fever’s a malignant form of malaria,’ she explained. ‘It attacks the kidneys and it’s a killer if you don’t catch it in time. If only he’d reported in sick this morning we could have got the quinine into him first thing.’

  Wolf nodded, it was typical of Big Ben. Big Ben never wanted to cause trouble. Big Ben was a gentle giant from Alabama who’d joined the army as a private to fight for a country that had not treated him kindly. Big Ben was a friend to everyone.

  ‘You’ve had no cases of malaria yet?’ Jane asked, squeezing out the towel and soaking it again, continuously bathing the man’s face to keep his temperature down.

  ‘Not at Quoin Hill. I guess we’ve been lucky. Several guys came down with it at the Havannah Harbour base, but not like this. The medico gave them some pills and they seemed to be okay.’

  ‘Vivax malaria,’ Jane nodded, ‘it’s benign, it can be treated orally.’

  Until the completion of the navy hospital at Bellevue, the military had an arrangement with the French and English hospitals on the island, and many malaria cases were presently being treated, she told him.

  ‘They’re starting to pour in,’ she said, ‘it’s going to be a problem.’

  Jane had become personally involved in the malaria predicament. The medical corps believed that malaria could become a bigger killer than the enemy itself and they had urgently requested supplies of quinine. Mass malaria treatment would be necessary for both military and islanders, they said, and Jane had agreed to work with the locals, distributing tablets and stressing their importance to the natives.

  The military had recognised in Jane Thackeray a veritable gold mine. The special trust she had with the local population was proving invaluable.

  The jeep bounced and skidded dangerously along the rough, pitted road and Wolf kept darting admiring glances at Jane as she tended to Big Ben calmly, professionally, with no thought of her own safety. What a remarkable woman she was, he thought.

  ‘I’d say you got him here in the nick of time,’ the doctor told Wolf, who had been anxiously pacing the waiting-room floor of the English hospital for over an hour since Big Ben had been wheeled away, Jane, too, disappearing with the medical team.

  ‘Mrs Thackeray can take credit for that,’ Wolf said, acknowledging Jane who had reappeared with the doctor.

  He was thoughtful as he drove her home. ‘You saved Big Ben’s life, Jane,’ he said after a moment or so. ‘And I’d like to thank you on behalf of the men.’

  ‘Just doing my job, Wolf.’

  But for once he wasn’t in a frivolous mood. ‘Big Ben’s one of the best. The men are going to love you for what you’ve done.’ He smiled but he was still in deadly earnest. ‘You’re a hero to the local people, and you’re a hero to us.’

  He saluted her as he said goodbye. But he was grinning his ridiculously boyish grin as he did so, and she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not.

  He was back the following week. ‘Got a minute to visit the hospital?’ he asked. ‘Big Ben wants to say thanks.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the two of them walked into the ward.

  ‘Hello, Big Ben,’ she said, ‘I’m Jane, remember me?’

  The bare, black skin of his arms rested over his massive chest, stark against the white sheets. Big Ben was enormous, and the bed was far too small for him.

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am.’ Big Ben remembered Jane vividly. In fact she was the first thing he’d remembered when he’d regained his senses only several days previously to find himself in this little bed. The soft, soothing voice, the pretty white face, the damp towel bathing him, he remembered it all. But he remembered before that. He remembered watching her with the islanders. Even as he’d started to feel really sick, he’d kept watching her. How she spoke their language and how they respected her and called her Missus Tack. And then they’d brought their families to say hello. Missus Tack was a saint to his black brothers here in the Pacific, Big Ben thought, and she was a saint to him too.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Jane asked. ‘You’re looking good, except you need a bigger bed.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m feeling just fine.’ He wasn’t really, he was as weak as a kitten, but the doctor said he’d get his strength back. And it was all because of this itty-bitty white woman standing beside him. He reached out his hand. He wanted to say thank you. But he couldn’t call her ‘Jane’, that wasn’t respectful enough. And he couldn’t call her ‘Missus Tack’. ‘Missus’ was islander talk. He needed something special, something that came from his own people.

  ‘Thank you, Mamma Tack,’ he said as she shook his hand.

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sam awoke to the insistent ring of the telephone, and automatically picked up the receiver. The recorded voice told her it was five o’clock in the morning, her pre-arranged wake-up call. She laid her head back on the pillow, trying to recall the events of the night. There’d been the party at the pool. And then she’d been out on the verandah with Brett, and they’d been about to go to bed together. God, how had she let that happen?

  Suddenly it all came swimming back into her brain. The ecstasy pill. The overwhelming panic. The terrifying sense of imminent death as she lay in the dark. Then the hallucinations. The vision of the old woman from Fareham. The clarity of her voice. ‘We’re a team, you and I, dear,’ the old woman had said, ‘a team.’ Then the giant eye, getting bigger and bigger and finally swallowing her.

  She shivered at the memory. How bizarre, she thought, what extraordinary tricks the mind can play when it’s tampered with. Then, after briefly cursing Brett Marsdon for his stupidity, she resolved not to dwell on the strangeness of it all, but to repair the damage instead.

  She threw the light cotton doona aside and tentatively stood, surprised that she didn’t feel worse. Surely she should have a hideous hangover, but she wasn’t even tired. She went into the bathroom and turned the mirror lights on for a close inspection. How much sleep had she had, three hours, four? But her skin was tight and her eyes were clear. The after-effects appeared to be minimal, she thought thankfully.

  ‘G’day, Sam.’

  ‘Morning, Bob.’

  The Landcruiser was parked out the front, and Bob Crawley was waiting in the open, hotel reception area. Bob was always punctual. As ‘personal chauffeur to the stars’, a term he intended incorporating in his brochures, Bob considered it his duty to provide top professional service.

  He and Sam sat in the deserted lounge chatting amicably as they waited for Brett Marsdon. Bob was to drive the two actors to Mele Bay, the crew having left in their trucks and vans a full half hour earlier to set up. Simon Scanlon would arrive at location an hour and a half after the actors who, by then, would have been through the lengthy process of makeup, hair and wardrobe.

  Morning call times were tightly scheduled, strictly adhered to, and any tardiness or inefficiency met with the disapproval of all. Not only did a late start put them behind schedule, but it meant they lost the best part of the d
ay, for it was the clear morning light that was most effective on film. In fact, Simon and Kevin Hodgman, the director of photography, considered the early light so precious that they went to great pains to select which scenes and shots would be filmed first up.

  ‘Bit late, isn’t he?’ Bob Crawley said, finally breaking the silence and stating the obvious, but Sam didn’t reply. Their conversation had died down over the past quarter of an hour. They’d now been waiting twenty-five minutes, and she was angry. She didn’t want to take it out on poor Bob, however, so she strode up to the night clerk seated behind the reception desk and told him to go and knock on Mr Marsdon’s door.

  ‘And don’t stop until you’ve woken him up,’ she said grimly.

  The clerk, a young islander called Henry, checked his list of wake-up calls and said that Mr Marsdon had already been woken up.

  No, he hadn’t been woken up at all, Sam said, but Henry nodded emphatically and assured her that he had made the wake-up call himself.

  ‘Yes, I believe you,’ she replied with a touch of exasperation. ‘But, you see, he didn’t wake up, he slept through the call.’

  Henry stared at her, pleasantly but blankly.

  ‘We need to wake him up!’ Sam desperately urged.

  ‘Ah.’ Henry smiled and nodded and picked up the phone.

  ‘No, no, that won’t do!’ She curbed her annoyance, but she wanted to scream; sometimes the islanders’ incomprehension of the concept of urgency was infuriating. ‘I want you to go to his door, and I want you to keep bashing on it until he wakes up.’ She thumped her fist on the desk by way of example.

  Henry wanted to say that it wasn’t his job, that he was on reception duty. The early morning shift was his favourite, always easy, nothing to do. He didn’t want to walk all the way down the hill and then back up again. But if he rang through to William who was on security, it would take a long time – William was usually asleep. Henry sensed that the young woman was getting angry and he never liked being hassled, so he gave in.

  It was a full fifteen minutes before he ambled back, and Sam was beginning to wish she’d sprinted down the hill herself.

  ‘Mista Marsdon is woken up now,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She tried to make her smile as gracious as possible.

  Several minutes later, Brett raced breathlessly into the reception area doing up the buttons of his open-necked cotton shirt.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he panted, ‘slept through the wake-up call. Just as well for Henry here, eh?’ He smiled at the clerk, and from behind his desk Henry returned the smile, glad that his trouble had been so appreciated.

  Sam said nothing, but marched out to the Landcruiser, the other two following.

  Bob had presumed that the actors would sit together in the back seat as they usually did. He respected their passion for their work. Sam and Mickey and Louis would always listen to each other’s lines, or discuss their characters and the scenes they were about to shoot. This time was different, however.

  ‘I’ll sit in the front with Bob,’ Sam said to Brett, ‘and you take the back seat.’ It was nothing short of an order. ‘You can get a bit more sleep on the drive out there.’ He looked terrible, she thought. His skin was puffy, his eyes bloodshot, and the bags underneath them made him look ten years older. What was the man doing to himself?

  ‘Great idea, thanks, Sam.’ Brett jumped into the back and lay down immediately.

  His apology for being three-quarters of an hour late had been perfunctory to say the least, and he hadn’t registered her annoyance at all, both of which made Sam even more angry. She climbed into the car, Bob started the engine, and as they pulled away from the kerb, she leaned over the back seat.

  ‘You look bloody terrible, you know that,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ he said as he closed his eyes. ‘They’ll fix it, don’t you worry, that’s what makeup artists are for. We’re going to be great today, you and me, Sam.’ And he was asleep in a matter of seconds.

  Sam looked out the window at the dawn sky as they drove, the normally talkative Bob respecting her silence. She was probably getting into character, he thought. God, he loved working in show business.

  Brett Marsdon appeared to have no recall of last night’s events, Sam thought. Not that she would have expected him to say anything in front of Bob, but surely she should have read some recognition in his eyes, in his general behaviour. It was a worry. A very big worry, she thought. Did they really have a junkie on their hands?

  Bob drove fast, trying to pick up some of the time they’d lost, but they were still half an hour late when they arrived at Mele Bay, where the trucks and vans were all parked on the spit overlooking the mock township.

  Maz raised a critical eyebrow as Sam and Brett stepped up into the makeup van reserved for the principal actors. Which one of them was responsible for the hold-up? she wondered as she studied them for the obvious signs. Of course, she should have guessed.

  ‘Come on, Brett,’ she said. He looked a mess. ‘Into the chair, you’re mine.’ Maz was the boss, and personally responsible for Samantha Lindsay’s hair and makeup, but, recognising Brett Marsdon as an urgent case, she gave a nod to Ralph, her second-in-command. She shoved Sam’s kit and makeup charts along the bench to him, muttering under her breath with a glance at Brett, ‘This could take a while.’

  ‘Sorry we’re late, Maz.’ Sam took the onus of apology upon herself. There was none forthcoming from Brett, who’d climbed into the makeup chair and was about to fall asleep.

  ‘No worries.’ Maz winked an assurance that she was well aware of the guilty party. ‘We’ll get you both done in time.’ And as she quickly cleansed, toned and prepared Brett’s face, she talked Ralph through Sam’s makeup and the requirements of the day.

  Maz was a highly experienced makeup artist. A tough-talking, good-natured little woman in her mid-thirties, who worked hard and partied hard, she was well liked and respected by actors. She in turn liked and respected them, with the exception of a handful whom she considered spoilt brats, and Brett Marsdon appeared to be one of them. She hadn’t worked with him before, but she knew his kind.

  She lifted back his eyelids and inserted the drops that would clear the redness. His kind were the insolent little shits who partied all night, then relied on makeup artists to undo the damage. She didn’t actually mind that part of it, she thought, laying the infused eyepads over his eyes to reduce the swelling. She rather enjoyed the challenge of restoring their looks for the camera, but when they were unapologetically late, and arrogant to boot, she wanted to belt the crap out of them. A late start meant she had to rush her work, and she bloody hated that.

  To Maz, makeup was far more than a technical and artistic skill, it was a psychological affair. The relationship between makeup artist and actor was intimate. She started their day, both physically and mentally. She relaxed them with hot face towels, and refreshed their skin with toners before applying their makeup, she massaged their scalps before starting on their hair or their wigs. She liked to take her time. She listened when actors wanted to chat, and she was as silent as the grave when they didn’t. She gossiped when they wished and, if they sought her advice on personal problems, she told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Maz was very good at her job.

  And then pricks like Brett Marsdon came along and buggered things up, she thought, gently patting the elasticising cream in with the tips of her fingers and watching the skin tighten as she did so. Selfish little shits who arrived late, forced her to rush her work and thereby stuffed up her day. She invariably got them on set looking perfect and with no halt to production time, but she was never thanked for it. And on the rare occasion when it was an impossible task and the director and crew were kept waiting, the cry was always the same. ‘What the hell’s going on with hair and makeup?’

  Once the puffiness was reduced enough to apply makeup, she started under Brett’s eyes with the masking stick. She was on the downhill run. Clever masking, a spec
ial base, intricate use of highlights and shaders, the rest was easy. She’d have him ready on time, and she’d do it with good grace, but she didn’t like Brett Marsdon.

  It was all very well to be a party person, Maz thought – Christ alive, she was one herself, she could pop e’s and snort coke with the best of them – but actors had to be careful. And if they couldn’t be careful, they could at least arrive on bloody time and be grateful when she undid the bloody damage.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Brett grinned into the mirror. ‘Absolutely fantastic!’ And Maz had the distinct impression that the compliment was directed at himself, not her.

  ‘Can we have Mr Marsdon on set, please.’ Even as the first assistant director’s voice crackled over the two-way radio set, the makeup van door opened and the second AD popped his head in. ‘They’re ready to go,’ he said.

  The second disappeared and Brett bounced out of the chair, revitalised. ‘Thanks, babe,’ he said, ‘you’ve done a great job.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ He hadn’t even bothered to remember her name, she thought.

  Sam was already waiting on set when Brett arrived. They were filming at Mamma Black’s, and she was sitting beside the boathouse in a director’s chair, script in hand, the extras who had been brought out in the mini-bus milling around drinking mugs of tea.

  Brett leapt in front of her and struck a pose. ‘Looking good,’ he said, flashing his perfect smile, teeth gleaming in the crisp early light, ‘what did I tell you?’

  ‘Looking very good,’ she agreed. ‘Maz is a genius.’

  ‘Looking good yourself, Sam.’ He stepped back and appraised her admiringly. He hadn’t paid any attention to her when he’d been sitting in the adjacent makeup chair – he’d been too busy drifting off to sleep – and he hadn’t even heard her leave the van. He’d seen her as Sarah Blackston before, when he’d watched the filming at Undine Bay, but this was a different Sarah entirely. Her hair was blonder, bleached nearly white by the sun, and her skin was tanned and healthy. Gone was the restricted, demure woman he’d watched in the scene with the husband and the plantation owner. This woman was a free spirit, a very part of the environment that surrounded her.