the Last Place God Made (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  I said, 'I don't understand.'

  'Oh, I think you do. You were being polite to Sister Maria Teresa down there in the bar. About my sister and the other girl, I mean. You were letting her down lightly.'

  'Is that a fact?'

  'Don't play games with me, Mr Mallory. I'm not a child. I want the truth.'

  'Who in the hell do you think I am?' I demanded. 'The butler?'

  I'm not sure why I got so angry - possibly because she'd spoken to me as if I were some sort of servant, but there was more to it than that. Probably some weird kind of defence mechanism to stop me from grabbing her.

  'All right,' I said. 'I was asked if it was possible your sister and the other girl were still alive and I said it was. What else do you want to know?'

  'Why would they take her? Why not kill her straight away. Even the older nuns were raped before being killed, isn't that so? I've read the report.'

  'They like to freshen the blood,' I said. 'It's as simple as that.'

  I started to turn away, tiring of it suddenly, wanting to be away from her, aware of the strain finally blowing through the surface.

  She grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me round. 'I want to know, damn you!' she cried. 'All of it.'

  'All right,' I said and caught her wrists. 'It's a pretty complicated ritual. First of all, if they're virgins, they undergo a ceremonial defloration in front of everyone using a tribal totem. That's Huna custom with all maidens.'

  There was horror in those eyes now and she had stopped struggling. 'Then for seven nights running, any warrior in the tribe is allowed to go in to them. It's a great honour. Any woman who doesn't become pregnant after that is stoned to death. Those outsiders who do are kept till the baby is born, then buried alive. The reasons for all this are pretty complicated, but if you have an hour to spare sometime I'll be happy to explain.'

  She stared up at me, head moving from side to side and I added gravely, 'If I were you, Miss Martin, I'd pray she ended up in the river in the first place.'

  The rage came up like hot lava and she pulled free of me, the left hand striking across my face and then the right, helpless, impotent anger and grief mingling together. She stumbled to the door, wrenched it open and ran into the corridor.

  *

  I walked to The Little Boat, a dangerous thing to do after dark, especially along the waterfront although such was the rage against life itself that filled me that I think it would have gone hard with any man who had crossed my path that night. I needed a drink and perhaps another to use one of Hannah's favourite phrases and a woman certainly - a dangerous mood to be in.

  The Little Boat was not particularly busy, but that was only to be expected on a Monday night. The rumba band was playing, but there couldn't have been more than a dozen people on the floor. Lola, Hannah's girl friend from that first night was there, wearing the same red-satin dress. I rather liked her. She was an honest whore, but she was crazy about Hannah and made it obvious, her one weakness.

  Knowing that he wouldn't be in that night she concentrated on me and she knew what she was about. Strange, but it didn't seem to work. I kept thinking of Joanna Martin and when I did that, Lola faded rapidly. The message got through to her after a while and she went off to try her luck elsewhere.

  Which at least left me free to drink myself into a stupor if I was so inclined. I went up to that private section of the deck where I had dined with Hannah on that first night, ordered a meal and a bottle of wine to start with and closed the sliding doors.

  My appetite seemed to have gone. I picked at my food, then went and stood at the rail, a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other and stared out over the river. The reflected lights of the houseboats glowed in the water like candle flames. I was restless and ill at ease, waiting for something - wanting her, I suppose.

  Behind me, the sliding doors opened, then closed again. I turned impatiently and found Joanna Martin standing there.

  *

  'Do you think we could start again?' she said.

  There was a spare glass on the table. I filled it with wine and held it out to her. 'How did you find me?'

  'Old Juca at the hotel. He was very kind. Got me a cab with a driver who bore a strong resemblance to King Kong. Gave him strict instructions to deliver me here in one piece.' She walked to the rail and looked out across the river. 'This is nice.'

  I didn't know what to say, but she took care of it all more than adequately. 'I think we got off on the wrong foot, Mr Mallory. I'd like to try again.'

  'Neil,' I said.

  'All right.' She smiled. 'I'm afraid you've got the wrong impression of me entirely. Joanna Martin's my stage name. Originally I was just plain Joan Kowalski of Grantville, Pennsylvania.' Her voice changed completely, dropped into an accent she probably hadn't used in years. 'My daddy was a coalminer. What was yours?'

  I laughed out loud. 'A small-town lawyer. What we call a solicitor in England, at a place called Wells in Somerset. A lovely old town near the Mendip Hills.'

  'It sounds marvellous.'

  'It is, especially now in the autumn. Rooks in the elms by the cathedral. The dank, wet smell of rotting leaves blowing across the river.'

  For a moment I was almost there. She leaned on the rail. 'Grantville was never like that. We had three things worth mentioning, none of which I ever wish to see again. Coalmines, steelworks and smoke. I didn't even look back once when I left.'

  'And your sister?'

  'We were orphaned when she was three and I was eight. The nuns raised me. I guess it became a habit with her.'

  'And what about you?'

  'I'm doing fine. Sing with some of the best bands in the country. Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, Sammy Kaye.' There was a perceptible change in her voice as she said this, a surface brashness as if she was really speaking for an audience. 'I've played second lead in two musicals in succession on Broadway.'

  'All right.' I held up both hands defensively. 'I'm convinced.'

  'And you?' She leaned back against the rail. 'What about you? Why Brazil?'

  So I told her, from the beginning right up until that present moment, including a few items on the way that I don't think I'd ever mentioned to another living soul, such was the effect she had on me.

  'So here we are,' she said at last when I was finished. 'The two of us at the edge of nowhere. It's beautiful, isn't it?'

  The moon clouded over, sheet lightning flickered wildly, the rain came with a sudden rush bouncing from the awning above our heads.

  'Romantic, isn't it?' I said. 'We get this every day of the week at sometime or another. Imagine what it's like in the rainy season.' I refilled her glass with wine. 'Bougainvilleas, acacias and God knows how many different varieties of poisonous snakes that can kill you in seconds. As for the river, if it isn't the alligators or pirhanas, it's water snakes so long they've been known to turn a canoe over and take the occupants down. Almost everything that looks nice is absolutely deadly. You should have tried Hollywood instead. Much safer on Stage 6.'

  'That comes next month. I've got a screen test with M.G.M.' She smiled, then reached out to touch me, her hand flat against my chest, the smile fading. 'I've got to know, Neil. Just to know, one way or the other. Can you understand that?'

  'Of course I can.' My hand fastened over hers and I was shaking like a kid on his first date. 'Would you like to dance?'

  She nodded, moving against me and behind us, the sliding door was pulled open. 'So this is what you get up to when my back is turned?' Hannah said as he came through.

  *

  He was dressed in flying clothes and badly in need of a shave, but he was a romantic enough figure in his leather coat and breeches, a white scarf knotted carelessly about his neck.

  He smiled with devastating charm and rushed forward with a sort of boyish eagerness, hands outstretched. 'And this will be Miss Joanna Martin. Couldn't very well be anyone else.'

  He held her hands in his for what seemed to me no good reason. I said, 'What in t
he hell is going on here?'

  'You might as well ask, kid.' He yelled for the waiter and pulled off his coat. 'A lot happened since you left this morning. Alberto got through to me on the radio in the middle of the afternoon. Wanted me to pick him up at Santa Helena and fly him straight down to Manaus. We got in about an hour and a half ago. Met Miss Martin's companion at the hotel. When I left, she and the colonel were having quite an argument.'

  'What's it all about?'

  'That half-breed of Alberto's, the guy who'd lived with the Huna. Well, Alberto put him over the river last evening and by God, he was back at noon today.'

  'You mean he'd made contact?'

  'Sure had.' The waiter arrived at this point with a couple of bottles of Pouilly Fuisse in a bucket of water. 'According to him, all the tribesmen along the river had already heard what had happened to that village we visited and were scared stiff. A delegation of head men have agreed to meet Alberto a couple of miles up-river from the mission day after tomorrow.'

  'Sounds too good to be true to me,' I said and meant it.

  But Joanna Martin didn't think so. She sat down beside him and said eagerly, 'Do you think they'll be able to get news of my sister?'

  'Certain to.' He took one of her hands again. 'It's going to be fine. I promise you.'

  After that, to say that they got on like a house on fire would have been something of an understatement. I sat in the wings, as it were, and watched while they talked a lot, laughed a great deal and finally went down to join the small crowd on the dance floor.

  I wasn't the only one who was put out. I caught a flash of scarlet in the half-light, Lola watching from behind a pillar. I knew then what the saying meant by a woman scorned. She looked capable of putting a knife between Hannah's shoulder blades if given half a chance.

  I don't know what was said between the two on the floor, but when the band stopped playing, they moved across to the piano and Hannah sat down. As I've said before, he was a fair pianist and moved straight into a solid, pushing arrangement of St Louis Blues and Joanna Martin took the vocal.

  She was good - better than I'd thought she would be. She gave it everything she had, a sort of total dedication and the crowd loved it. They followed with Night and Day and Begin the Beguine which was a tremendous hit that autumn and all one seemed to hear from radios everywhere, even on the River Amazon.

  But by then I'd had enough. I left them to it, negotiated the catwalk to the jetty and walked morosely back to the hotel in the pouring rain.

  *

  I had been in bed for at least an hour, had just begun to drift into sleep when Hannah's voice brought me sharply to my senses. I got out of bed, padded to the door and opened it. He was obviously very drunk, standing with Joanna Martin outside the door of what I presumed must be her room at the end of the corridor.

  He was trying to kiss her in that clumsy, unco-ordinated way a drunken man has. She obviously didn't need any assistance because she was laughing about it.

  I closed the door, went back beneath the mosquito net and lit a cigarette. I don't know what I was shaking with - rage or thwarted desire, or both, but I lay there smoking furiously and cursing everyone who ever lived - until my door opened and closed again softly. The bolt clicked into place and there was silence.

  I sensed her presence there in the darkness even before I smelled the perfume. She said, 'Stop sulking. I know you're in there. I can see your cigarette.'

  'Bitch,' I said.

  She pulled back the mosquito net, there was the rustle of some garment or other falling to the floor, then she slipped into bed beside me.

  'That's nice,' she said and added, in the same tone of voice, 'Colonel Alberto wants to be off at the crack of dawn. Sister Maria Teresa and I have strict instructions from Hannah to be at the airstrip not later than seven-thirty. He seems to think we'll be safer with him.'

  'You suit yourself.'

  'You're a good pilot, Neil Mallory, according to Hannah, the best he's ever known.' Her lips brushed my cheek. 'But you don't know much about women.'

  I wasn't going to argue with her, not then, with the kind of need burning inside that could not be borne for long. As I pulled her to me, I felt the nipples blossom on her breasts, cool against my bare skin.

  The excitement she aroused in me, the awareness, was quite extraordinary. But there was more to it than that. I lay there holding her, waiting for some sort of sign that might come or might not - the whole world waited. And in that timeless moment I knew, out of some strange foreknowledge, that whatever happened during the rest of my life, I'd never know anything better than this. That whatever followed would always have the savour of anti-climax, just like Hannah.

  She kissed me hard, mouth opening and the whole world came alive as lightning flickered across the sky and it started to rain again.

  EIGHT

  The Tree of Life

  I awakened to sunlight streaming through the window, the mosquito net fluttering in the slight breeze. I was quite alone, at least as far as the bed went, but when I pushed myself up on one elbow I discovered Juca on the other side of the net placing a tray on the table.

  'Breakfast, Senhor Mallory.'

  'What time is it?'

  He consulted a large, silver, pocket watch gravely. 'Eight o'clock exactly, senhor. The senhorita told me you wished to be awakened at this time.'

  'I see - and when was this?'

  'About an hour ago, senhor, when she was leaving for the airstrip with the good Sister. Will that be all, senhor?'

  I nodded and he withdrew. I poured myself a coffee and went to the window. They'd be well on the way to Landro by now. Strange the sense of personal loss and yet, in a way, it was almost as if I was prepared for it. I didn't feel like any breakfast after that, but dressed quickly, had another cup of coffee and went about my business.

  There were several calls to make before going out to the airstrip so I caught a cab in front of the hotel. First of all there was the mail, then some dynamo parts for one of the mining agents at Landro and Figueiredo had asked me to pick up a case of imported London gin.

  It was close to half past nine when I finally arrived at the airstrip. A de Haviland Rapide was parked by the tower and seemed to be taking up all the ground staff's attention. The Bristol was still under cover. I opened the doors and the cab driver followed me in with the crate of gin.

  Joanna Martin was sitting in the pilot's cockpit reading a book. She looked up and smiled brightly. 'What kept you?'

  I couldn't think what to say for a moment, so great was my astonishment. I was only certain of one thing - that I had never been so pleased to see anyone. She knew it, I think, for the face softened for a moment.

  'What happened?' I said.

  'I decided to fly with you, that's all. I thought it would be more fun.'

  'And what did Hannah have to say to that?'

  'Oh, he wasn't too pleased.' She pushed herself up out of the cockpit, swung her legs over the edge and dropped into my arms. 'On the other hand, he did have rather a bad hangover.'

  The cab driver had returned with the mail sack which he dropped on the ground beside the case of gin. He waited, mouth open in admiration and I paid him off and sent him on his way.

  The moment we were alone, I kissed her and it was rather disappointing. Nothing like the night before, her lips cool and aseptic and she very definitely held me at arm's length.

  She patted my cheek. 'Hadn't we better get moving?'

  I couldn't think of anything that would explain the change although I suppose, on looking back on it all, I was guilty of simply expecting too much, still young enough to believe that if you loved someone they were certain to love you back.

  Anyway, I loaded the freight behind the seat in the observer's cockpit and found her an old leather flying coat and helmet we kept for passengers. Three ground staff turned up about then, having seen us arrive and we got the Bristol outside.

  I helped Joanna into the observer's cockpit and strapped
her in. 'It's essential you keep your goggles on,' I warned. 'You'll find a hell of a lot of insects about, especially as we take off and land.'

  When she pulled the goggles down, she seemed more remote than ever, another person altogether, but that was possibly just my imagination. I climbed into the cockpit, did my checks and wound the starting magneto, while the three mechanics formed a chain and pulled the propeller.

  The engine broke into noisy life. I looked over my shoulder to check that she was all right. She didn't smile, simply nodded, so I eased the throttle open, taxied to the end of the runway, turned into the wind and took off feeling, for some unknown reason, thoroughly depressed.

  *

  The trip was something of a milk run for me by now, especially on a morning like this with perfect flying conditions. I suppose it must have had some interest for her although she certainly gave no sign of being particularly excited. In fact we only spoke twice over the voice pipe during the entire trip. Once as we turned up the Mortes from the Negro and I pointed out Forte Franco on the island below and again, as we approached Landor and I made preparations to land.

  One thing did surprise me, the Hayley which was parked by the hangar. I had imagined it would be well on the way to Santa Helena by now.

  As we rolled to a halt, Mannie came to meet us with a couple of labourers. He grinned up at me. 'What kept you? Sam's been like a cat on hot bricks, isn't that what you say?'

  'I didn't know he cared,' I said and dropped to the ground.

  'He doesn't,' he replied and elbowed me out of the way as I turned to help Joanna down. 'The privilege of age, Miss Martin.' He held up his hands.

  She liked him, that much was obvious and her smile was of that special kind a woman reserves for a man she instantly recognises as good friend or father confessor. No strain, no cut-and-thrust, someone she would never have to surrender to or keep at arm's length.

  I made some kind of lame, formal introduction. Mannie said, 'Now I understand why Sam's been acting as if he's been struck over the head with a Huna war club.' As I took off my flying helmet, he ruffled my hair. 'Has the boy here been treating you all right? Did he give you a good flight?'