Solomons Seal

by Hammond Innes

  Jona relieved me at midnight. There was something on his mind, and he was ill at ease, keeping me there, talking about nothing in particular. And then, when I said I was tired and going to bed, he suddenly came out with it: That job Hans offered you, are you going to take it?’

  ‘I might,’ I said.

  I don’t know whether that was the answer he expected, but he didn’t say anything, just stood there frowning as though working out some complicated pattern in his mind.

  ‘Why? Does it matter to you?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, not at all.’ He managed a small smile. ‘Good to have somebody I know skippering one of the ships.’ And he turned quickly away to the chart table.

  Back in my cabin I stripped, had a quick shower, then fell into my bunk, naked except for a sheet, with the luxury of a whole night’s sleep ahead of me. I dropped off immediately, the steady murmur of the engines like the refrain of a song beating out a vision of Pacific islands. At that moment I was strangely content, a new world opening up before me and a feeling that here was something that I could make my own.

  I don’t know what woke me – the door maybe – but my eyes were suddenly open, searching the cabin. A shadow moved in the pale light filtering through the porthole, and I sat up. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you.’ It was Perenna’s voice, a husky whisper barely audible. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I just couldn’t sleep. That’s all.’

  I could see her now, standing like a ghost just inside the door, a thin dressing gown held tightly round her.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Do you mind?’ And then, as though conscious of a need to explain her presence, she added, ‘I don’t know why, but I’m scared.’

  ‘Scared?’ She was so different from her brother that it hadn’t occurred to me that she could ever be scared of anything. ‘What of?’ I was still only half awake.

  ‘I don’t know. Everything. The future, what’s going to happen …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  She came towards my bunk then, moving so slowly, so silently she might have been walking in her sleep. ‘I had an awful telephone conversation with the doctor at the nursing home. Tim was worse, and there was nothing he could do. “Just a matter of time,” he said. That’s why I left Aldeburgh in such a hurry. I felt if only I could get to Buka, I might be able to do something … Stop whatever it was from reaching Tim – destroy whoever it was that was killing him, switch it off.’ She hesitated, then went on, her voice faltering, ‘Now – now that I’m on the last leg of this long journey … I don’t know what I’m going to do—’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘I’m so afraid of Buka. And Sapuru. He was there with Hans.’

  ‘I’ll switch on the light,’ I said. ‘We can talk—’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want to talk.’ And I knew then she had come to me for comfort, like a little girl afraid of the dark. ‘Can I come in with you – just for a little while?’ She was standing close to me now, and I could smell her: no scent, just her own natural female smell. She slid in beside me, drawing the sheet over her shoulders, her body close against mine. The bunk was so narrow the only place I could put my arms was round her. ‘Just hold me,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t do anything. I just want to be held.’

  I could feel her body snuggled close against me, naked under the dressing gown. She was trembling slightly. ‘I keep thinking of Mother. That’s why I couldn’t sleep – wondering whether it would be the same this time. Blood and violence, the worship of ancestors … When I was growing up in the Chimbu area there were still cases of cannibalism. And the fight leaders. There was always fighting somewhere.’ Her breath was hot on my shoulder, her body close against me. She must have felt the beat of my blood, for she withdrew slightly. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not fair.’ Then, with a sudden giggle: ‘I only brought pyjamas, and it’s too hot to wear them.’

  I tried to kiss her then, but she turned her head away, lying quite passive. ‘You don’t want to talk, you don’t want to make love, what the hell do you want?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she murmured. ‘Just don’t do anything. I’m tired.’

  ‘You said you were scared. What is it? What are you afraid of?’ I was being gentle with her then, the sexual urge in me dying. ‘Is it really what happened when you were last here? Or is it those guns, the fact that your brother is involved?’

  ‘No, it’s not Jona.’

  ‘Hans Holland, then?’

  She lay there, withdrawn, not answering. But I had felt her stiffen at the name. Pagan bad. The words came back to me. It was such an odd description. And Red Holland’s son brought up after his death in a Buka village. Did that mean a pagan background? ‘Did you know I’d killed a man?’ she said quite unexpectedly. I only just caught the words, her face close against my chest.

  ‘You don’t want to think about that,’ I whispered gently. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, and anyway it wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘I was fighting mad,’ she breathed. ‘I was covered in blood, and I didn’t care.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Stop thinking about it.’

  I felt her shake her head. ‘I can’t. There’s Tim … and Jona – he’s such an innocent.’ And then, to distract herself, she began talking about the elder brother, how the sea had been his life ever since he had left school, how their grandfather had encouraged him. ‘He thought he could mould Jona into a likeness of himself so that, when he was gone, there would be somebody left to build up the Holland Line again. He didn’t see that Jona wasn’t made that way, that it wasn’t trade and ships that interested him, but the sea itself.’ Her breath touched me in a little sigh. ‘Since I’ve been on this ship, I think I’ve become more worried for Jona than for myself. He just doesn’t understand the sort of man Hans is.’

  ‘And what sort of a man is he?’

  ‘How would I know?’ She spoke sharply, suddenly on the defensive. ‘I’ve no experience, not of men like that – ambitious, driving … ’ She was silent a long time, but I sensed that she was still thinking the question over. Suddenly, with what seemed total irrelevance, she said, ‘Grandpa had a Christian upbringing. He was a morally upright man.’ And she went on quickly, ‘I suppose I’m talking about good and evil. Grandpa was a good man. He may have done things during the war, terrible things – destroying, killing. But that was war. It doesn’t alter my impression of him.’

  ‘And Hans Holland isn’t a Christian.’

  She didn’t answer, lying very still.

  ‘What happened when he visited you in Aldeburgh?’ I felt her stiffen again. ‘Did you leave him alone with your brother?’

  ‘Yes. Tim wanted it.’

  ‘And where were you?’

  ‘Somewhere – I don’t remember.’

  ‘In the house?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So you could have heard what was said between them – if you’d wanted to.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word seemed forced out of her. And then in a fierce whisper she said, ‘I won’t answer any more questions. I don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘You’re twins, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And his illness – the reason he’s dying … it’s sorcery. That’s what you told me. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’ She pulled back the sheet and started to get out of the bunk, but my arms were still round her, and I held her.

  ‘Is that what you’re scared of, that you’ve come out here with one object in mind – to kill the man who put a death wish on your brother?’

  I heard her draw in her breath. ‘Do you think I’d kill him?’

  ‘It’s what you said you’d do, that day I came to do the sale inventory.’

  There was a long silence, and then in a whisper she said, ‘Yes, I remember now.’ She drew in her breath, speaking with sudden urgency. ‘But that was just after Tim had gone. It was
part of the nightmare. Please believe that, Roy. I was living a nightmare. It’s different now.’

  But I knew it wasn’t. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It had been real, so far as she was concerned. It was paganism she was scared of. I started to tell her that I understood, that I knew about the arrowhead and the horrible little doll and that there were ways of dealing with sorcery and evil things like that. I knew nothing about it really, thinking of exorcism, crucifixes, the Christian faith … ‘Please.’ Her hand touched my face. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more. I don’t want to think about it now. I don’t want to think about anything.’ She lay staring at me in the darkness, and the touch of her fingers on my cheek stirred me. I tightened my arm about her, and gradually the tension in her body relaxed. She murmured something, and when I tried to kiss her again, she didn’t turn her head away, only whispered, ‘Let’s get some sleep now.’

  Silence enclosed us, only the beat of the engines, and the cabin dark in shadow as she lay there beside me, relaxed now and seemingly unaware of what she was doing to me. Yet I knew she could feel the hardness of me against her. Gently I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes, her mouth. She didn’t turn away, only whispered, ‘No.’ But her breathing was quicker now, her lips responding, and suddenly she pushed me away. ‘Oh, hell – why not?’ She sat up, slipped out of her dressing gown, and then she was back beside me, and my hands were holding those extraordinary thrusting breasts as she reached down to touch and caress me.

  I had never experienced a woman like her, so total in the expression of a passionate nature, so absolutely uninhibited. And yet through it all was a tenderness, the sense of our being one. And when it was over and we lay there, drained and exhausted, I caught the whisper of a sigh as she murmured, ‘Thank you. Now I can sleep.’

  When I woke in the morning, she was gone, the sun streaming in through the porthole, steep slopes of tropical green sliding past. I washed and shaved, slipped on a pair of shorts and went through into the wheelhouse. The ship was just emerging from the narrow passage between Bakawari Island and Bougainville. Ahead was a great bay with a curving shoreline and old wooden houses half hidden in the shade of palm trees. ‘Kieta,’ Jona said when I joined him on the upper bridge.

  A big yacht lay at anchor off the jetty, some local craft closer inshore, and almost abeam of us was a dusty-looking wharf with a small cargo vessel moored alongside. But it wasn’t the port and the great sweep of its natural harbour that held my astonished gaze. It was the slopes beyond. They were emerald green in the sun, a towering vista of endless rainforests reaching up to pinnacles of grey rock etched sharp against the hard blue of the sky.

  There was still a trace of dawn freshness in the air, the sea, the land, everything sparkling in the sun, and Jona standing there with a pipe in his mouth, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and his peaked cap. That’s how I shall always remember Bougainville, the picture in my mind as vivid now as when I first saw it in the lingering freshness of that blazing morning. There was an overpowering sense of magnificence in those endless towering vistas of jungle green. ‘The copper mine is over there, beyond those hills.’ Jona pointed the stem of his pipe towards the forest-clad slopes above Kieta. ‘You’ll get a glimpse of the road they blasted up to it when we move on along the coast to Anewa Bay.’

  He ran the ship straight in to the beach, close under the main part of the town, where a little knot of islanders stood waiting. There always seems to be a sense of anticlimax when one finally arrives in port, the contact with the shore and its officials being in marked contrast to the excitement of the landfall, the sense of achievement at the end of a voyage. On this occasion the change of mood was very noticeable. As soon as the bow doors were open and the ramp down a government official came on board accompanied by a police sergeant. Jona did not go down to meet them. He left that to Teopas, waiting with his sister in the wheelhouse. The two drivers sent to take over the trucks remained on the shore.

  We watched as Teopas unfastened the back of each truck. The inspection was very thorough, the police sergeant even crawling underneath the vehicles to check the chassis. The Haulpaks, too, were examined. ‘He’ll want to see the manifests now,’ Perenna said.

  ‘Hans has the manifest.’

  ‘Then how are you going to explain the trucks?’

  To my surprise he seemed almost relaxed. ‘Teopas will tell him we shipped them to help the Co-operative. And Hans has kept his promise; Nasogo is from Buka.’

  The official was coming up the ladder now, thickset and very black with a little wisp of a beard and dark glasses. He was dressed in grey-blue trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt that was freshly laundered. Teopas stood waiting close behind him as he shook hands with each of us, murmuring, ‘Joseph Nasogo’, in a soft, gentle voice. Then Jona took them to his cabin, and we waited, the heat and the humidity growing all the time.

  At length Perenna asked, ‘What happens if he doesn’t accept Teopas’s explanation?’

  I looked at her and gave a little shrug. ‘I’m a stranger in these parts.’ I said it lightly, but there was no answering smile as she stood by the open door to the bridge wing staring down at the trucks. The drivers were getting into them now, and the police sergeant was standing on the ramp, talking to a little group that had collected to gaze at what I imagine they regarded as a pretty odd craft.

  Perenna never moved from her position by the open door to the bridge wing. She seemed totally withdrawn inside herself, the tension in her affecting me, so that I wondered whether she was still scared of something or merely locked up in her memories of the place. And then McAvoy appeared briefly, swaying slightly as he stood staring for a moment at the green hills behind the port, his eyes screwed up against the glare. ‘Kapa,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody kapa.’ He turned to Perenna. ‘I suppose you’d gone before this copper thing started?’

  She nodded. ‘There was a lot of talk, of course, and they’d started drilling. But I never saw anything of it, nothing had been built.’

  ‘Well, you’ll see a lot of changes now. Not so much in the rest of Bougainville, and nothing in Buka. But here. Aye, there’s been a great change, an’ all too dam’ quick if you ask me.’ His gaze switched to the little group framed in the open bows. ‘The Black Dogs,’ he growled. ‘Wouldn’t think it to see them now, standing there so peaceable, but this was where they came from. The Rorovana. That was one of the wantoks involved. Nasty fighters, all of them.’

  ‘This was during the war, was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye. They were the young men of several family groups, all based on Kieta. Claimed they were for the Japs, but what they were after was independence, from the British, from everybody. Caused us a lot of bother, those bastards did, and now they drive great trucks up at the mine or work in the crushing plant. No independence at all, just slaves to machines. And all in less than a decade.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured. ‘The world changed, and then again nothing changed, man being what he is and his nature just the same.’ He stood for a moment, silent, his body sagging as though bowed down by the weight of his thoughts. And then he was gone, back to his cabin and his drink without another word.

  It must have been a good half-hour before Jona came back into the wheelhouse, his manner almost jaunty as he saw Nasogo to the top of the bridge wing ladder. Back in the wheelhouse, he informed the two of us that we should tell the Immigration Official at Anewa that our visas would be issued at the offices of the North Solomons Provincial Government in Arawa that afternoon.

  A few minutes later Nasogo drove off with the police sergeant in a small Japanese car. The engines of the trucks had already been started up. We watched them bump their way down the ramp into the water and up the beach to the road. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Jona said, and there was a sigh of relief in his voice. ‘We’ll be round at the copper port by lunchtime, and tonight we can all have a good lie-in.’ The ramp clanged shut, the bow doors closing. He rang for Slow Astern, and
the big winch drum aft began winding in the anchor. The crew were so used to this manoeuvre that orders were unnecessary.

  As we headed north between the high green slopes of Bakawari Island and the Kieta Peninsula, I wandered round the ship, mingling with the crew. No solemnness now, the Buka men all smiling. But they weren’t singing at their work, and they didn’t talk. I couldn’t figure out what the mood was, except that I was conscious of an undercurrent of excitement, all of them locked up inside themselves and the bared teeth not so much a smile as a grin of expectancy. I thought I must be imagining it, but when I spoke to Luke, he evaded my questions. All he would say was: ‘Buka pipal bilong old days. For them this mine and all the great development here and up in the mountains is a kind of Cargo.’

  We cut north-west through the narrow passage inside the small island of Arovo, and then we were heading just south of west direct for Anewa Bay. Already it was too hot to con the ship from the upper bridge. We were all of us in the shade of the wheel-house, and as we came clear of the Kieta Peninsula, the broad curve of Arawa Bay began to open, with the modern township spread out on the flats behind it, a pattern of buildings and palms all hazed in heat. ‘Used to be a big expatriate plantation,’ Jona said. ‘Now it’s got the largest shopping centre and superstore in the South West Pacific’ And behind the town, merged now into the jungle green of the mountains, were the faint scars of blasting where the highway to the mine hair-pinned its way up to a gap on the skyline. ‘The mine is just over the other side. In a car it takes about quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes, from Anewa. It’s low-grade copper mixed with gold and some silver.’ And he added, ‘The taxes paid by that mine are what keep the new state of Papua New Guinea going. Without it they’d be broke.’

  ‘How do the Bougainville people feel about that?’ Perenna asked.

  He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then said, ‘I’m not sure how they feel about it down here, but in Buka they don’t like it.’