by Graeme Kent
Conchita sealed the letter in the envelope, said a little prayer and sat patiently waiting for Andy Russell to emerge from the rest-house.
Chapter Eighteen
‘WE WON’T STOP here long,’ said Sister Conchita reassuringly, noticing the VSO’s growing unease. ‘I’d just like to see the island properly. I’ve heard so much about it.’
Andy nodded but did not turn round. He was hunched in the prow of the canoe, staring across the water of the lagoon at Kasolo island. Not a happy bunny, decided Conchita.
Perhaps she should not have asked the boy to come with her, thought the nun contritely. Obviously he had bad memories of his enforced sojourn on the island, forgotten by the authorities. However, he would know the place thoroughly, and should be able to guide her across it. It would do him no harm to spend another hour on Kasolo.
‘I’d just like you to show me the island,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing like having a personal guide.’
‘All right, but this place gives me the creeps,’ said Andy. ‘What’s so special about it?’
‘This was where John F. Kennedy took refuge during the war.’
‘Who’s John F. Kennedy?’
‘Some people think he’s going to be the next president of the USA.’
‘Sounds like he’s got better job prospects than I have,’ said Andy gloomily. I don’t think the DC is going to give me much of a reference when my time’s up here.’
‘Believe me,’ said Sister Conchita confidently, ‘Mr Maclehose will give you an absolutely glowing testimonial. I guarantee it. What are you going to do when you get back home?’
‘I’ve got a place at Cambridge,’ said Andy.
‘So you couldn’t manage Harvard? No, really, I’m impressed. What made you want to come to the Solomons for a year?’
‘It sounded exotic.’
‘The islands are that all right, if you don’t die of sunstroke or snakebite or fever first.’
Andy laughed. Sister Conchita cut out the engine. The VSO picked up a paddle and steered the canoe through the sharp rocks of the lagoon. He stepped out into the shallow water and dragged the canoe up on to the beach, then stood looking about him without enchantment as Sister Conchita got out of the canoe.
‘I never thought I’d come back here,’ he said with a shudder.
‘I’m sorry; it must have real bad memories for you. I promise you we won’t stay a minute longer than we have to. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.’
‘I didn’t make a fuss,’ said Andy indignantly.
‘Of course you didn’t. I was referring to Kennedy and the other ten men from the PT-109.’
‘What’s the PT-109?’
‘Stop it; you’re making me feel old! I’ll explain it to you later. Do you want to give me the full tour of the island?’
‘Sure, it should take all of twenty minutes,’ said Andy.
In the event, it took just over half an hour. Conchita retraced her steps over the route she had taken when she had first gone ashore to Andy’s aid. Even after such a brief time, most of the signs that either of them had been there had vanished, a sign of how fragile human incursions into the island were. The trampled grass had sprung back into place. The fire upon which the VSO had cooked his fish was now only a heap of cold ash. Only his tent remained in the clearing.
Andy led the way through the trees and took the nun from one side of the island to the other. Conchita could see no indication that Kennedy and his crew had ever landed on Kasolo. If most signs of the VSO’s habitation had disappeared in a few days, what chance would there be of finding any references to the crew of the PT-109 seventeen years earlier? After all this time, it would have been foolish to expect to discover anything. The whole visit was turning into an anticlimax. She had been looking forward to visiting Kasolo, but it was just one island among hundreds like it.
Conchita was about to apologize to the VSO and suggest that she take him back to Gizo when she heard the sound of an approaching engine out in the lagoon. With Andy at her shoulder, she made her way through the trees until she could see the water. The tourist launch was a few hundred yards away, getting closer. It was being steered by Joe Dontate, with Imison and the two other American tourists behind him, staring ahead at the atoll.
‘What are they doing here?’ asked Andy.
‘Hush!’ said Sister Conchita. ‘Let’s wait and see.’
The launch could not get as close as Conchita had been able to with her canoe. Dontate was forced to approach from another direction and stop the vessel some way out. He lowered a small anchor and jumped over the side. The calm water came up to his chest. Imison and the other Americans joined him and started wading ashore, taking care to avoid the jagged edges of the coral reef. One of them was carrying a small box wrapped in greaseproof paper. He held the container high over his head to avoid contact with the water.
Sister Conchita watched intently as the four men reached the beach. The three Americans stopped on the shore, but Dontate continued to walk inland until he reached the trees and was then lost to sight. Imison issued orders to the other two men, and they opened the box. There seemed to be a number of small objects inside. Imison pushed the others to one side and selected one of the objects, putting it in his pocket. Then he spoke curtly to his companions, and the three men started walking towards the trees. One of them picked up the box carefully and took it with him.
‘Sister Conchita,’ said a voice from the trees. ‘The praying mary spying on others? For shame! What will the Bishop say?’
Conchita and Andy turned to see Joe Dontate surveying them with caustic enjoyment. ‘I saw your canoe from the trees,’ he said. ‘You were so busy, you didn’t hear me coming up behind you.’
Dontate called out. After a few minutes, Imison and the other two men blundered into sight through the undergrowth. None of the Americans looked pleased to see the nun and the VSO.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ asked Imison.
‘I wanted to see what all the fuss was about,’ said Conchita, trying to sound casual. ‘I’ve heard so much about Kasolo that I asked Mr Russell to show it to me.’
‘They must have seen us,’ said one of the Americans, a slim man who looked as if he had to shave twice a day.
‘There was nothing to see,’ said Dontate quickly. ‘You came ashore in a properly constituted touring party, with a well-known local guide. What can anybody make out of that?’
‘Too many things are going wrong,’ said Imison. ‘We’re not tidying up as well as we’re supposed to. Maybe we should make a start.’
‘That would be overkill,’ said Dontate. ‘This is a small place. Things get noticed. Don’t do anything hasty.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said the dark-chinned American. His companion grunted assent.
‘Lot of things I don’t like,’ said Imison. ‘Being stuck with you two, for a start. Nothing I can do about it.’
‘Well, we’ve had our little excursion,’ said Sister Conchita as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I think we should be on our way now, Mr Russell. A lot of people are expecting us.’
‘Are they?’ asked Andy.
‘Oh, yes; I have to take a consignment of medicine back to the mission hospital, and the District Commissioner is waiting for you to get back from Honiara today. We’d both be missed. Very quickly, too.’
‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said the VSO eagerly. ‘Yes, that’s right. A lot of people at the airstrip must have seen me get off the plane this morning.’
Imison gnawed at his lip, trying to come to a decision. Finally he nodded to Dontate.
‘Best be getting back to your fan clubs, then,’ said Dontate to Conchita and Andy. ‘We wouldn’t want any broken hearts on account of you being missing.’
The islander stood to one side to allow the nun and the VSO to walk away down to the beach. Imison and the other two Americans looked unhappy about the situation, but made no effort to prevent them from leaving.
Conchita said no more until she and Andy had pushed their canoe back into the water and she had started the outboard engine and was steering them back towards Gizo.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Andy.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Conchita.
‘It was almost like they were going to stop us leaving.’
‘Surely not,’ said the nun. It would not do to alarm the boy, but for a few moments back on the island it had looked to her as if Imison and his men had been contemplating killing the pair of them in case they had seen anything untoward. It was only Joe Dontate’s intervention that had saved them. Sister Conchita knew that inexorably she was getting out of her depth. It was time she brought in the bigger guns. She opened the briefcase at her feet and took out the letter she had written at Munda. She handed the envelope to the VSO.
‘When you get back to Gizo, I’d like you to look for Sergeant Kella, the policeman. You’ll find him at the District Commissioner’s office tomorrow. Please give him this.’
Chapter Nineteen
KELLA COULD HEAR the man’s voice raised in anger as he walked up from the beach towards the plantation house on the hill. He had seen the motorized barge at anchor some way out in the lagoon, and had guessed what was about to happen. He hoped that he had arrived in time to prevent bloodshed.
The path up from what was left of the wharf veered sharply. Round the bend, Kella saw an emaciated middle-aged man menacing with a shotgun two larger, younger and definitely uneasy white men.
‘Take it easy, Dad,’ said one of the younger men.
‘I’m not your dad,’ snarled the emaciated man. He lifted the shotgun, his finger curling speculatively round the trigger.
‘Easy!’ shouted Kella.
He reached the group and placed his hand on the barrel of the gun, forcing it down until it was pointing to the ground. At first the emaciated man struggled, but then he relaxed, the fight running out of him like sand in an egg timer.
‘The old bastard was going to shoot us!’ shouted one of the younger men, emboldened by the emaciated man’s obvious sense of defeat.
‘If he wanted to shoot you, you’d both be dead by now,’ Kella told him. He nodded to the older man. ‘Hello, Mr Hickey. Seeing off the scrappers again?’
‘Thieving sods,’ muttered the emaciated man. Suddenly he looked very tired.
‘I’m Sergeant Kella, Solomon Islands Police Force,’ Kella told the two younger men. ‘I take it you’re scrap-metal merchants from Brisbane?’
‘We came ashore to make the owner a genuine offer for his war relics,’ said the younger man who had done all the talking so far. ‘He charged out of the house and waved that bloody blunderbuss at us.’
‘Liars!’ snarled the middle-aged man. ‘They were walking straight past the house to start loading up without my say-so.’
‘When we saw the house, we thought it was abandoned, so we went on,’ said the younger man. ‘Well, look at the state of the place! It was a perfectly genuine mistake.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Kella. ‘This plantation belongs to Mr Hickey. Nothing on it is for sale. Go back to your barge and move on. And be careful how you behave in the lagoon. I shall be putting out a radio message warning people to keep an eye open for you.’
‘Sod him, he’s only a kanaka policeman,’ sneered the man who had not spoken so far.
‘That’s true,’ said Kella. ‘But I think you’ll find that this is a kanaka country, if you live long enough.’
The two men slouched away down the track to the beach. Hickey stooped and picked up his shotgun. He aimed it in the air and pulled the trigger. The noise of the explosion sent birds wheeling and screaming. The two scrap-metal dealers broke into an undignified run, sliding down the path to the beach. Hickey started to climb the steps into his house.
‘That’s telling ’em,’ he said. ‘Come inside, mate. Long time no see.’
They entered the living room of the planter’s house. The building was raised on top of four hardwood piles on the side of a hill five miles along the coast from Gizo. A large veranda occupied the front of the house, with a sweeping view of the sea below. The building had a galvanized-iron roof and large windows with wooden shutters. Efforts had once been made to surround the house with a lawn, but it was now a neglected and overgrown sprawl of kunai grass and weeds.
‘You’ll probably remember this place when it was at its peak,’ said Hickey bitterly. ‘Changed a bit, hasn’t it? Drink?’
‘It’s a little early in the morning for me,’ said Kella.
‘It’s never too early,’ said Hickey, refilling his glass. He was a slight, narrow-shouldered man in his fifties, bare-chested and wearing long white shorts and scruffy sandals. He had not shaved for several days.
‘When were you last here?’ he asked.
‘Not since the war,’ said Kella. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘You’re a bit young to be writing your memoirs,’ said Hickey. The planter was not drunk, but his speech was beginning to sound slurred. ‘Did you pick up any mail for me in Honiara?’
‘There wasn’t any.’
‘Sod it!’ Hickey indicated a bamboo table covered with handwritten sheets of paper. ‘You’d think that Government House would reply to at least one of my bloody letters.’
‘What are you writing to the High Commissioner about?’ asked Kella, although he already knew the answer to his question. Hickey’s vendetta with the government was common knowledge.
‘What the hell do you think I’m complaining about?’ said Hickey, indicating the view of his plantation through the open window with a sweep of his arm. ‘Compo, mate, that’s what I’m after, compo! I’m due a bagful and it’s well overdue. I’ve been asking for it for donkeys’ years. Do they pay me a blind bit of notice? Do they buggery?!’
‘Haven’t they paid you any compensation at all yet?’ asked Kella. ‘That’s bad.’
‘Bad, it’s a bloody tragedy! How am I expected to live? Planters in Papua New Guinea have been repaid in full for war damage done to their estates. Those of us unlucky enough to live in the Solomons have had zilch! Come with me and I’ll show you the state the place is in.’
As they walked out of the room, Kella noticed a box containing half a dozen sticks of dynamite stored carelessly under the table. It was possible that the planter was using the explosive to make structural alterations to his grounds, but it was more likely that he was employing the sticks to stun dozens of fish at a time in a local river or lake and thus accumulate enough to send to the market at Gizo. Hickey followed his gaze.
‘Going to lock me up, Officer?’ he asked.
‘Not if you give me what I’ve come for,’ Kella said.
He followed the other man out of the house. It had been more than fifteen years since he had last visited Hickey’s home, but the change certainly was staggering. Once the Australian’s plantation had been a byword for order and efficiency. Regimented rows of carefully tended palms had been spaced with scientific precision to allow coconuts to be harvested and the copra extracted with a minimum of fuss. The drying sheds for the copra meat had been painted. Now the area was an expanse of raw and gutted wasteland. The trees had been felled and their roots torn out by bulldozers so that the whole area could be transformed into a Japanese army camp. The camp had gone in its turn, leaving only the debris of its former occupants.
To one side of the campsite extended an airstrip of crushed coral, running the entire length of the plantation. The rest of the ground area was covered with flat concrete slabs, which had formed the bases for barrack rooms and administrative buildings. The few palm trees that had been left around the fringes of the camp had been neglected. Coconuts had been allowed to fall from the trees and lie in rotting piles on the ground.
‘The Yanks didn’t even bother to invade the place in 1943,’ said Hickey. ‘They just bombed it to smithereens and then starved the Japs out over a period of months. This is what they left—the few who were
still alive.’
Scattered over the ground were the rusted, twisted remains of military hardware. There were rusted shell casings, searchlights, barbed wire, bloated rubber wheels and gas cylinders. They had all been crudely hacked with saws and axes so that the more valuable parts of the metal could be wrenched off and loaded on to barges.
‘The Japanese didn’t leave much of any use to you,’ said Kella.
‘That wasn’t the Japs, that was the bloody scrappers,’ said Hickey. ‘As soon as the war ended, they sailed up from Australia and swarmed over the place like vultures. By the time I got back here, all the good stuff had been loaded and taken, and I was left with this useless rubbish.’
Hickey plodded on ahead, shaking his head at every fresh piece of evidence of depravations to his estate. He had had an eventful war. When the fighting had reached the Western Solomons in 1942, he had climbed into the hills behind Gizo. From there he had reported on Japanese troop, ship and aircraft movements over a cumbersome three-hundred-pound teleradio, operated by storage batteries but capable of transmitting for a range of four hundred miles. He had been so good at his job that he had been smuggled out to Townsville in Queensland to monitor and correlate all the incoming coast-watchers’ reports from the Solomon Islands. After that he had joined the Australian army and served as an infantry officer in New Guinea. He had not returned to his plantation for two years, by which time it had been reduced to its dilapidated present condition. He had been affected so deeply that he had made no effort to return his grounds to their previous effective state. Kella had no idea how he had been scraping a living ever since.
