Tansy had never driven round the island in a motorised vehicle before and it seemed strange to see all the familiar landmarks going past so quickly. Usually David Harland drove himself round in a small pony trap with just enough room for Tansy to squeeze in beside him, but Tansy mostly used an old upright bicycle to get from one village to another. Soon they drove down a steep road to another village where the driver blew his horn energetically to clear the way.
'Oh, you shouldn't have done that,' Tansy said involuntarily.
Blake Aston looked at her. 'Why not?'
'Because now every time the jeep stops all the children will want to do it'
The Major laughed, a full masculine laugh, that would have been extremely attractive in anyone else. Tansy just wished it had been someone else—she would rather have been anywhere than have to sit next to this particular man for hours on end. They stopped in the village and Blake and the Lieutenant got out of the jeep to go and look at the shoreline while Tansy was amused to watch the villagers, torn between following the soldiers or coming to Tansy to find out what it was all about. Patiently she answered their eager questions. Yes, the soldiers were going to look all round the island. No, they didn't need a guide—they had a map. Tansy explained what a map was, showed it to them and listened to them laugh delightedly as she pointed out their own village.
Was that really them on that small dot?
The driver, meanwhile, was having a hectic time trying to stop the children from climbing in the jeep and touching everything that moved. Eventually, of course, one child's eager fingers found the horn and they continued to sound it until the officers returned. Tansy sat blandly in the back; she could have stopped the children with a word, but why should she spoil their fun, especially if it annoyed the Major? But it didn't seem to annoy him at all, he simply smiled at the children and lifted them gently from the vehicle. Tansy watched him without lessening her dislike of him one iota; he was probably only doing it to impress the villagers anyway, she thought sardonically.
'Do the islanders do much fishing in the lagoon itself?' he asked her as they started off again.
'Yes, they net lobsters and take the canoes out to spear the big fish, or else they take a pail to catch inaa; they're tiny fish, only about half an inch long, and you eat them whole, cooked in a paste of flour and water and fried. They taste a bit like your herrings,' she told him.
He raised an eyebrow slightly at the 'your'. 'I gather you consider yourself to be an Aparoan, Miss Harland?'
'Yes, of course. I've lived here most of my life.'
He nodded and seemed to file the information away before going on to ask other things about the island. Tansy found herself pointing out the small bush clearings around the villages where taro, yams and cassava were grown. 'The taro can only be grown in those marshy pits, but yams are easier and grow to enormous sizes,' she informed him, her eyes bright as she talked eagerly of her beloved island. 'They can be stored for months too, so they're regarded as a form of wealth— like having money in the bank. Then cassava—that's tapioca—grows on hilly soils, while sago, breadfruit and bananas grow near the jungle.'
Tansy stopped for breath, expecting to see a look of derision in the Major's eyes at her enthusiasm, but he was watching her seriously, looking as if he was really interested in everything she was telling him. He told the driver to pull up on the top of a cliff where they had a good view of the southern half of the island and, helping Tansy out of the jeep, led her away from the others nearer to the cliff edge.
'That passageway through the coral reef opposite the main village—it's shown on the map as the only way to get to the island. Is that correct?' he asked, unfolding the map.
'Yes, although there are one or two smaller ones on the windward side, big enough for a canoe but not for a boat of any size. The schooners never go there. And the lagoon near the old jetty isn't very deep now, either. There was an earthquake about thirty years ago, part of the cliffs fell into the sea and the harbour has been silting up ever since. I don't suppose even the schooners will be able to tie up there soon. They will have to anchor out in the lagoon and do all the unloading by dinghy,' she added dampeningly.
Blake went to sit down under a nearby palm tree to study the map and Tansy went to stand near him uncertainly. He looked up. 'For heaven's sake sit down, woman. I don't bite,' he said irritably.
Tight-lipped, Tansy did so, wishing fervently that she had been a man with shoulders as broad as Ruari's. Not that even Ruari's muscles could have been guaranteed to overcome the ogre beside her, she admitted reluctantly.
'You paint a very black picture for our hopes of making a deep-water harbour, Miss Harland,' Blake Aston mused, stroking his chin as he perused the map.
'Oh, I'm quite certain it wouldn't be any good at all,' Tansy hastened to assure him. 'The depths given on your map are hopelessly out of date. They must have been taken from some very old charts drawn up when the jetty was first built. I'm sure that no new soundings have been taken since the earthquake.'
'And there's no other piece of coastline that would be at all suitable?'
'No, none,' Tansy replied emphatically, leaning towards him in her eagerness to convince him.
Blake turned his head and for a moment dark eyes looked deep into hazel. Tansy felt suddenly, unaccountably, breathless.
Folding up the map, Blake got easily to his feet. 'Then it's a good job that we have dredging machines and explosives at our disposal. Clearing the harbour again and widening the passage through the coral should present no problem at all.'
Tansy stared up to where he towered above her, making no move to take the hand that he held out to help her up. Incredulously she said, 'Then those questions you asked me about the depth of the lagoon; you didn't really want to know?'
'No, they were quite irrelevant. I just wanted to see how far you would go to keep us off Aparoa. From now on I shall know that I can't trust any piece of information you give me.'
'But it's true!' Tansy protested, getting to her feet to face him. 'The harbour is much shallower than it was.'
'So shallow that schooners will have to stop tying up there?' he asked derisively. 'How strange, when a schooner captain I spoke to only last week told me that there was a good twenty feet under his keel when he took a sounding on his last visit!'
Tansy stared at him in consternation. He had set a trap for her and she had walked neatly into it. Then she remembered that he had said he would use explosives to deepen the lagoon, and she caught at his sleeve as he went to turn away.
'Wait, please,' she said earnestly, and he turned back, an impatient frown on his forehead. 'You can't use explosives in the harbour. That's where the natives dive for mother-of-pearl mussels and trochus shells. It's one of the few means we have, other than copra, of raising money for imported goods. We sell the mother-of-pearl and the shells to Japan for button-making. If you use explosives it will ruin the mussel beds completely.' She raised long-lashed eyes to him pleadingly, but the Major merely looked down at her with an expression of open disbelief on his face.
'It's true, I tell you!' Tansy clenched her fists impatiently as she tried to make him understand how much this mattered. 'You can ask anyone—they'll all tell you the same.'
'But I can't ask anyone else, can I? No one else speaks English, except you.'
'I'll translate for you. I'll take you to…' Then she broke off her eager assurances as she saw the expression on his face and realised that he no longer trusted her, because she'd exaggerated about the harbour.
'Exactly,' he said softly.
Without a word, Tansy turned and walked back towards the jeep, repeatedly blaming herself for having so stupidly walked into the trap he had set so neatly for her. Now he would never believe anything she said, no matter how true or how important to the islanders. Abstractedly she got into the jeep and Lieutenant Andrews came over to talk to her.
He had addressed at least three remarks to her before Tansy roused herself enough to p
ay him any attention and she realised that he was asking her about the many shells to be found on Aparoa.
'Oh, oh yes. There are some beautiful ones. I believe that one or two really rare ones have been found occasionally,' she said with only half her mind on the conversation. 'Where would be the best place to find them?' 'Oh—on the fringe reefs after the tide has gone out, I should think.'
'Fringe reefs?' he asked in puzzlement. 'You mean the big coral reefs all round the island?'
'No, those are barrier reefs.' It was obvious that the Lieutenant hadn't been to a Pacific island before. Patiently Tansy explained that the fringe reefs grew on the shelving shoreline and were made smooth by constant wave action so that it was possible to walk on them. 'You'll see the native women out on them every day collecting shellfish from the pools and crevices,' Tansy told him. 'That's where my father always goes when he looks for shells. There, and among the rocks at the base of the cliffs.'
'That's marvellous. I'll go along there as soon as Blake gives me a bit of time off.'
Tansy looked at him thoughtfully, suddenly realising that she might possibly be able to influence the Major through his Lieutenant. She gave John Andrews a smile that had dazzled more than one man back in England. 'My father has quite a large variety of shells that he has collected over the years. Perhaps you would like to see them?'
'Would I! I say, that's awfully kind of you. When may I come?' he asked eagerly.
Tansy laughed. 'I'm busy this afternoon, but you can come to dinner this evening if you like. I'll ask our cook to prepare some native food for you. That's if the Major will let you off the hook, of course.'
'The Major will consider it,' said a dry voice behind them, and John Andrews immediately snapped to attention as Blake rejoined them.
They visited two more villages that day and Tansy did her best to allay the villagers' fears while Blake and John went off to survey the terrain, but towards noon he called a halt for the day and drove Tansy back to her home.
'Thank you for your services, Miss Harland,' he said formally, and then surprised her by adding, 'I'll call for you again tomorrow morning, if I may.'
For a moment Tansy hesitated, wondering why he bothered to ask her if he wasn't going to believe anything she said. Then she realised that from his point of view nothing had changed; he still needed an interpreter.
'Very well, Major. I'll see you tomorrow.'
'Er—Major, you were going to consider John broke in hopefully.
'Ah, yes. Very well, Lieutenant, if Miss Harland is willing to put up with you, you may as well go,' he consented.
The prig! Tansy thought, like a teacher letting a small boy have a treat. Maliciously she smiled at John and said, 'I shall look forward to that, John' emphasising his christian name. 'It will be fun to be with someone my own age.'
But if the dig had gone home Blake Aston didn't show it, merely raising a hand in salute before telling the driver to carry on.
Hastily Tansy stepped back from the cloud of dust thrown up by the jeep's wheels and went into the house to collect her sarong and go and shower under the garden waterfall again. Although she despised him, she somehow couldn't shake Blake Aston out of her mind. Was he really so insensitive to the needs of the islanders that he would deliberately destroy one of their main sources of livelihood? Somehow Tansy thought that he was not only insensitive, but could be completely ruthless if he found it necessary to achieve his own ends. From the way he had led her on to exaggerate about the silting in the harbour, it was obvious that he was a student of human nature and it wouldn't be long before he began to suspect that the natives weren't as against him as Tansy had led him to believe. They loved to see all the wonders of the more sophisticated world and would spend days on end watching other people work, especially if it required no effort from themselves. Already the few islanders that Tansy had spoken to had been not unfriendly in their attitude towards the soldiers and would have made them welcome if she hadn't intervened. They would be in for a very rude awakening if Blake did decide that Aparoa was suitable for use as a base.
But somehow she must prevent him from finding the island suitable. She cheered up slightly when she recalled that the NATO forces also needed an airstrip. Well, there certainly wasn't anywhere on the island that could remotely be used as a runway, as the Major would find out tomorrow. In the meantime, she would do her best to use John Andrews as her mouthpiece in convincing Blake to submit an unfavourable report. But she must be subtle in her approach, she realised, it wouldn't do for nice Lieutenant Andrews to know he was being used, however worthy the cause.
Back in the house she found Inara waiting with her lunch and with a barrage of questions about the soldiers. Tansy was used to this and told her as much as she could, while omitting any mention of blasting the harbour; that she would tell to Ruari but to no one else at the moment. With luck their fears might yet come to nothing and there was no sense in unduly alarming everyone unnecessarily. Before going down to the clinic, Tansy asked Inara to prepare a special meal for the evening, telling her that the young officer was coming to dinner, then smiled at the native woman's reaction. She knew that before an hour was up the news would be all over the village.
She smiled again as she remembered her dig at the Major, when she had stressed the difference in their ages. But there probably wasn't that much difference, she mused as she walked down to the clinic, which was almost hidden among a group of graceful pandanus palms. She guessed that Blake Aston was about thirty- five, but his long experience of being in charge of men, his self-assurance and air of decisiveness combined to make him appear older, especially in comparison with John.
The clinic was a busy one with lots more questions to answer until Tansy felt as if her throat was drying up, and it was something of a relief to get out the pony and trap to go slowly over part of the road she had already covered so speedily that morning to visit some patients in outlying villages who were too ill to be brought to the clinic. By the time she got back and had unharnessed and fed the pony, there was only time to change into a sleeveless blue cotton dress before John was knocking at the door.
'Hallo. Do come in,' Tansy smiled as she opened the door.
Obviously he hadn't known quite what to expect of a house on a tropical island and appeared somewhat reassured when he saw the beautifully polished antique furniture that her father had brought with him to Aparoa. 'Why, you've got electric light, Miss Harland!' he exclaimed.
'Yes, we have our own generator. But please call me Tansy. Would you like a drink?'
She poured herself a dry Martini but handed John a toddy, a liquor obtained by fermenting the sap from the flower buds of the coconut palms. He took a good swallow and Tansy had a hard job to keep from laughing at the expression that suddenly appeared on his face as the taste hit him. Manfully he tried not to let his feelings show and said, in a somewhat strangled voice, 'Very nice. Er—what is it, exactly?'
Then Tansy laughed openly. 'It's all right, it grows on you. Another couple of swallows and you'll really start to enjoy it. Come on, I'll show you Daddy's shells before we have dinner.'
She led the way into her father's 'den', a room completely cluttered with a miscellaneous assortment of items that her father had found of interest, from the jawbones of a shark to a shelf full of rootoos, grotesque native masks of jungle gods carved from coconut logs which the islanders once used to decorate the corners of their houses. Going to a cabinet-like piece of furniture, Tansy pulled open one or two of the shallow drawers and showed John the shells that shone against the dark velvet lining. The colours and intricacies of shape were breathtaking, a rainbow profusion in fragile heaps of pink, blue and mauve; round, long, with jagged spikes, striped, spotted or plain, the shells lay in glittering confusion.
'I'm afraid my father never really got round to collating them,' Tansy apologised as she pulled out more drawers for him to see. 'He just liked them for what they were. But if you're really interested he has several books on the sub
ject which you would be welcome to borrow.'
But John was already happily picking up shells to hold them to the light. 'But these are exquisite,' he said enthusiastically. 'Oh, I know this one. It's a conch, isn't it?' he asked, taking one of the largest shells from a deep bottom drawer.
'Yes, that one has a history attached to it The natives use the giant conch shells as horns and sound them as a warning. That one is supposed to have been blown when the convicts mutinied over a hundred years ago.'
Tansy went on to describe the other shells as best she could, for she was no expert, and it seemed no time at all before Inara came to tell them that dinner was ready. Inara had always been an excellent cook, but tonight she had surpassed herself. There was soup, followed by grilled freshwater shrimps caught far up the island's rivers, and a lobster on a bed of rice with an endive salad. For dessert they had tender shoots of coconut palm sliced wafer-thin.
During the meal, Tansy kept John's glass topped up with toddy, which, as she had prophesied, his palate had got used to and he was obviously enjoying. When she could steer the conversation away from shells, she tried to impress on him in a roundabout way how happy the islanders were and would continue to be if only they were left in peace, how the establishment of a base would completely wreck their present way of life. She daren't push her point too hard, but John seemed a nice enough person, with some thought to the feelings of others, and she was satisfied when she said goodnight to him later that some of her persuasiveness had made itself felt
'It's been a marvellous evening. Thank you so much. May I come again?' he asked ingenuously.
Tansy smiled. 'Yes, of course. Come whenever you have some free time. But I'll see you in the morning, won't I?'
Sally Wentworth - Conflict In Paradise Page 3
