The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

  One little boy came directly to Thea, and stood beside her, patting her knee with his hand. Five or six, perhaps. He was serious, and looked up into her eyes with complete trust, as if he already knew and loved her. “Mālō,” he whispered, leaning closer.

  “That is Sione, don’t let him bother you. Be good, Sione!” said one of the Fruelock daughters, Thea did not know which.

  She laughed and said, “He is perfectly good, are you not, Sione?”

  He lifted his eyebrows several times, such a funny little man, as if trying to tell her something secret.

  “That means yes, he is saying yes, yes,” said the Fruelock girl, and Thea bent and raised her own eyebrows back at him, yes yes yes! Refreshing to see her look less forbidding than usual.

  She and Kay clapped with as much vigour as they could, and were swarmed with more children come to give a special mālō before they ran off and out the green wooden gate.

  Mrs. Fruelock waved them away and set her daughters to tidying the schoolrooms, and said that after such a strenuous morning she felt the need of her dinner, did not Mrs. Grant? She called her daughters to order and they came at once, the youngest one slowly, because she had skinned her knee and was weeping a little, but still with good nature.

  Dorothy Fruelock ran both the school and her household with such efficiency and lack of fuss that Thea felt ashamed of her own efforts at Blade Lake. No emergency fazed her. While attending to the daughter whose knee was skinned and needed ointment, she directed other daughters to the putting on of the kettle and the setting out of linens and cake tins, so that very soon the midday dinner was spread out neatly on the board, although Mrs. Fruelock’s attention had remained fixed on her task and she had never raised her voice or become cross, as Thea might have done. Knee mended, she patted the daughter off to the garden with her sisters and Kay, and settled back in her chair for a cozy and leisurely visit with Thea while they waited for the gentlemen to join them.

  Mr. Fruelock’s wife was lovely, Kay thought. Her name was Dorothy, the same as Thea’s name Theodora, but backwards, and much more modern. And she was a teacher too, but with all those girls of her own, identical in white smocks, identically well-scrubbed except for the bandaged knee of the littlest one.

  Kay did not mind being sent away with the girls. Mr. Fruelock had Mr. Brimner closeted in his study anyhow. In a little while he would go down to the wharf with them and board the Morning Light again for the short trip to Ha‘ano. The mission boat, upended in the back of the garden awaiting repairs, looked like it would be some time till it was seaworthy, but Mr. Brimner would not be trapped on the smaller island: Mr. Fruelock said he could borrow a Wesleyan boat for the asking, and promised he would be out himself within the week to see how things were going on. So that was all right. And it was only for two years—he had only promised to stay that long in mission.

  Some of the girls were younger than she was, their names all flowers, hard to remember. Rose was the eldest, four years older than Kay; she had been teaching the native children. Then Violet, Lily and Pansy—or was it Daisy? It must be Pansy. In former years, when Kay had sometimes made lists of the children she would have, there was always a Daisy on the list; sometimes she had a twin, called Buttercup. The girls were undemanding company, sufficient in themselves, content to continue a long-running, complicated game involving a pattern scraped in the dust and the tossing of a stone and jumping to and fro. Kay stood at the edge of their marked-out turf, looking away into the gardens. Small birds flitted through the trees, twittering to each other, mālō, mālō e lelei.

  Mr. Brimner had sent a message to Francis, asking if he could be ferried on to Ha‘ano, and Francis himself came in answer. He had discovered a minor leak on the Morning Light, a matter of caulking that should be done before setting out for Fiji, and had left Mr. Wright to oversee it while he came ashore to fetch Thea. The Fruelocks offered beds for the night, but there was no need for that, Francis said. The work would be done today, and they might as well wait till morning to take Mr. Brimner on to Ha‘ano; but he intended to take Thea back to the ship for a proper rest, if she was willing.

  Looking at Kay, who shook her head violently, Thea laughed a little. “You may spirit me away, dear Francis, but I think Kay would like to stay and spend the day with the girls, if she may?”

  Mrs. Fruelock said of course, and that they would undertake to get her back to the ship with Mr. Brimner after supper. Kay loved her even more.

  “I am grateful, Captain,” Mr. Brimner said. He looked pinched about the eyes, tired perhaps from the indisposition of the previous night—perhaps from the strain and delay in reaching his destination. Anybody might find it difficult. He did not know the language yet, and was to be sent to a separate island without English company at all or anyone to talk to. Kay would be frightened, if it was her, going there all alone.

  Mrs. Fruelock smote her hands together and said they must go to market now, to send provisions with Mr. Brimner. The girls took the plates. Swept up in their industry, Kay was given a tea towel to dry with. When they came back to the sitting room, the adults were ready to walk out.

  Taking a little pull-wagon, sufficient for Mr. Brimner’s needs, they walked to a market lot where trays were laid out in the sun with a straw awning over them and a woman or man sitting behind each; there was a shack with shelves inside it, on which were two or three jars and a few canned goods. Mrs. Fruelock spoke in Tongan to each person, warm fluid syllables, beginning each conversation with mālō, mālō e lelei, mālō aupito. One of the older women asked them “Na‘a ke kai?” which Mrs. Fruelock said was a very traditional greeting meaning have you eaten? From an olden time when perhaps you might not have, Kay guessed. She wished Francis had brought Pilot ashore. With a rope to keep him, he would find this market interesting, and there did not seem to be any wild dogs to worry him.

  Mrs. Fruelock told Mr. Brimner she could provide flour and sugar from their own store, and the people of Ha‘ano would give him white sweet potatoes and fish, but he would need sorghum, corned beef and various other things—tea, and tinned milk, for there was no fresh milk on the islands. Mr. Brimner declared he had no need for milk, being a plain man who took his tea in its natural state, so (murmuring, “But guests!”) Mrs. Fruelock contented herself with two cans, and went on heaping bananas and melons into a bushel basket. She promised him a brace of good-laying hens before Christmas, and he said he would be glad of eggs. So they continued in a bantering promenade around the various stalls.

  Kay and Rose followed along, the younger girls darting off through the market to see their own friends.

  Rose said, “Is he your father?”

  “Mr. Brimner? No! He is my teacher.”

  “Oh. I thought he might be—I knew the captain could not be.”

  “No, he is married to my sister.”

  Rose looked at Kay through her lashes. “He is very handsome.”

  Kay was startled.

  “Captain Grant, I mean,” Rose said. Her mouth pulled into a considering moue. “Your sister is quite old.”

  People had interior selves, Kay already knew. But this secret wickedness was a surprise.

  “She is no older than he,” she said. “They were engaged for ten years, because he was at sea and she was teaching the Indians.”

  Rose shrugged. “She looks old. Many captains stop here. Many of them have lovers here, so perhaps that is why your sister travels with him now.”

  Kay turned away from that girl without saying anything more. She walked back along the dusty road to the jetty and stood there for a time, waiting for a boat. But it came to her that they could not know on the Morning Light that she wanted a boat yet, and might not see her standing there. Eventually, after walking a good deal farther than she might have, she found the Fruelocks’ house again, recognizing it by the green wooden gate into the schoolyard. She stood about in the back garden a while longer, watching through the window where Mr. Brimner and Mrs. Fruelock were carrying o
n a laughing conversation, while Mr. Fruelock worked irritably at a desk. She did not go inside when the girls carried the supper dishes in, either. Rose was as sleek and proper as always, her eyes down-turned.

  Kay decided to wait until Mr. Brimner came out to walk to the jetty. Mrs. Fruelock must think she had already gone back to the boat. Perhaps Rose had told them so.

  You cannot know what is inside people’s heads, Kay thought. And Rose was older than she was, fifteen or sixteen. Kay could not fault her for it, though she did dislike her. Girls thought of love at that age, and in this strange missionary landscape she had no one to think about but the visitors.

  Kay told herself she would not treat Francis differently because some girl thought him handsome. It prickled her, though, that Rose had not asked about Mr. Brimner, who was much younger than Francis and, if not precisely handsome, a very good sort of person.

  Dusk had fallen as it did here, too early and too fast, and the night garden became soft and strange. Birds flew above—or, no! They were bats, great bats flitting in the branches in black silhouette. Nothing was wrong with bats, anyhow, but that they had a wrong or a different tempo, when you were not expecting them.

  A feeling of unreality settled over Kay, the human part of life shown up as unreal, unreliable. Or merely unimportant. The bats moved quickly, shadows in the sky. Like voles in their movement, going swimmingly across the patches of dark-blue sky.

  In an hour or so, Mr. Brimner came out, trundling the wagon of supplies behind him, and Kay fell into step beside him. He did not seem surprised to see her.

  “There you are. Found the company of all those biddable girls trying, did you?”

  Kay nodded in the darkness.

  They went on in companionable steps, not speaking, the moon giving enough light that they could have walked all night. But they soon reached the jetty. Mr. Brimner lit the lamp to signal the boat to come out for them, and they arranged themselves on the stones to wait.

  “October the fourth. This is the anniversary of my ordination,” Mr. Brimner said. “I therefore indulged in a tot of rum, in lieu of the venerable sherry in the MCR. It makes me friendlier, I do notice that.”

  Was he unfriendly, usually? He seemed to Kay to be an entirely serious person, separate, solitary. But easy to work beside.

  “I am rather reticent in the social niceties. Not shy, only restrained. But I must tell you, my dear Kay, that I will miss your good company.”

  His face burst or blossomed into his beaming smile, the excessive beam that broke his face in half and stretched his mouth—a great many large teeth showing, caught in the moonlight. His forehead was damp, but the smile was sweet, refuting the glistening jumble within.

  Kay smiled back, or tried to; she was not much good at it. She had dreamed last night, she now remembered, that it was possible to love someone who is conventionally ugly. (But it was not Mr. Brimner in her dream, it was a larger man, with a bald head and a tender face.)

  “Most beautiful,” he said—and the words hung for a moment in the air. “Most beautiful I leave: the light of the sun. Second: bright stars, the face of the moon—but also: ripe cucumbers, apples, and pears.” He bowed in some vague easterly direction. “Praxilla, a poetess! The shades in the Underworld asked her what was the most beautiful thing she left behind . . . Most beautiful I leave: the light of the sun.” He paused for a moment, and then recited it in Greek. “κάλλιστον μέν έ γώ λείπω φάος ήλίοιο, δεύτερον ἄστρα φαεινά σεληναίης τε πρόσωπον, ήδέ καί ώραίους σικύους καί μήλα καί ὄχνας.”

  Kay nodded. No cucumbers in this place. No apples, no pears. The boat came toward them out of the inky water, and they descended the stone stairs to meet it.

  In the morning they set off for Ha‘ano. A mere jaunt, as it turned out: an hour’s easy sail along the in-curving western coast, with a light breeze to make it pleasant. Kay and Mr. Brimner did not open a book, but leaned together on the port-side railing. At the near horizon, a perfect triangle of a mountain rose, occupying a whole island.

  “A volcanic isle,” Mr. Brimner said, pointing it out to Kay. “I believe that must be the island they call Kao. The one to the left, that is Tofua, an extinct volcano, with a crater cutting off the top. Mr. Fruelock tells me there is a lake within, and that someday we will take an expedition there, to visit the sole resident.”

  So he would have an excursion to look forward to; Kay was glad to think that.

  “Not to convert the old person—of course not,” Mr. Brimner added. “Nor to school him. I suppose he must have learned everything he needs to know already about how to live in these parts.”

  Seaton pushed his frowsy head up out of the lifeboat behind them, saying, “There’s some as have not enough to do and must rouse workingmen too early.”

  Mr. Brimner touched Kay’s arm to bring her attention back, and pointed out over the sea. “There,” he said.

  She looked. Nothing. The water was calm, a mirror for the sky.

  Jacky Judge came pelting down the deck on silent feet, waving an arm. He reached them and pointed too, mouthing there!

  Again she turned to the sea, and waited.

  The volcano in the distance, the quiet motion of the ship. Nothing.

  And then, there.

  A huge shape melted upward out of the water, and another behind it, melted into air and back into water in a rounded, elongated gleam of wet black skin.

  Nobody spoke.

  Two of them, one large, the other immeasurable. Black gloss in blue gloss.

  Kay looked and looked, until her eyes were stretched.

  Out of the nothing, out from under the ship and out into the water that was all the water always, up came another great shape in a thundering rise, twisting into white underside, falling into a great foam—breaching—breaching, that was the word.

  “Are you afraid?” asked Jacky Judge, and Kay looked scorn at him.

  Francis, coming to watch, told her, “I started out on a whaler, twenty years ago—lucky to come safe out of it.”

  “But they are so—gigantic, so beyond our ordinary scale, I do not see how the first person decided to kill a whale.”

  “Fear! Some are afraid of anything larger than themselves, and want therefore to kill it. The world is full of bad apples,” Francis pronounced, and went back to his work.

  The women in Ha‘ano had made a special mat for Mr. Brimner, of white straw with the word T E A C H E R spelled out in darker fibres. They were standing at the stone jetty when the Morning Light sailed into view. How had they known to come out? Someone must have been keeping lookout for the stranger arriving.

  The stone jetty was just thirty feet long, and as they followed the welcoming people up the slight rise beyond, they saw that the village held only a sprinkling of little houses. Straw roofs, tiny windows, garden plots around them. One house near the shore was a little larger; beside it, a long, low building stood with windows open to the air. That was the building that was waiting to be the school, but it had no tables or desks yet. The floor was dusty, and in one corner a broken crate bled sea-swelled Bibles. Every book, every piece of paper in that place was salt-damp, soft and swollen, almost unreadable.

  Kay stood in the doorway while the women showed Mr. Brimner over his house—two plaster rooms, with a small roof out back over a cooking place. A dirt floor, but the sandy dirt was well packed down. The first room held a table and a chair, and the women were evidently very proud of them.

  They opened the door to the other room, revealing a long bed, fit for a Tongan, with a long white net over it to cheat the mosquitoes. It was clean and pretty. This would be his place, for as long as the bishop said so. The wooden step outside the door was covered with slippers. The women had taken theirs off as they went in. Only Kay and Mr. Brimner still wore their boots.

  They all went back out to the schoolhouse, where more women and men had gathered, bringing food. Always food w
hen somebody visited, in this place. Children kept appearing round the corner of the house or climbing the low stone fence, interested, and trim in worn, well-laundered white shorts or dresses. Ten or fifteen of them, and a trickle more. With ceremony, the gift mat was pinned to the schoolroom wall.

  There would be some difficulty, living in a place where nobody spoke your language and you did not yet speak theirs.

  Mr. Brimner gave a short speech anyway, mounting the one step to the long porch of the school building. “Mālō e lelei, mālō aupito,” he said (they laughed with pleasure at this brave attempt). “I am sorry not to speak your language yet. I am told there is a man in another village—Fakakakai, or perhaps in Pukotala?—who speaks English, having lived in New Zealand. But we will not rely on him. I have my Tongan dictionary and am eager to learn. I am fortunate to have come home to this place, mālō, mālō aupito.”

  The little crowd clapped their hands, although they could not have understood him very well, and then they ate, and drifted away into the fields again about their usual business. Each person a person as much as Kay was, as much as Mr. Brimner was. Each one thinking his own thoughts or singing an unknown song inside her head. Maybe, in the two years he spent there, Mr. Brimner would come to know what the people were thinking, maybe he would find someone else to teach Ancient Greek to, or to teach him Ancient Tongan.

  The sailors brought Mr. Brimner’s trunks up to the house. The last mothers shooed the children out and helped unpack; even though each item must be exclaimed over, it was quickly done. The women looked at the neat house with satisfaction and left them alone.

  Mr Brimner hung his plain silver-and-ebony crucifix on a nail on the wall, and set four or five books, including Meditation and Mental Prayer, on the table.