by H. E. Bates
‘Those fellows in Africa have the right idea,’ he said. ‘They’re out to keep Africa for the white man.’
‘Pass the bread-fruit, Freddy,’ Linda said, ‘and stop yattering.’
Mr Pilgrim ignored the request for bread-fruit and picked up a rib of sucking pig, warm fat dripping from his fingers. The girl named Linda, splendidly American in rose-coloured shorts, blue silk shirt and a peach-yellow hibiscus in her fair hair, leaned across me, took the bread-fruit dish and said:
‘How are you doing? Don’t you like bread-fruit? Try some raw fish.’
‘Take the Chinks,’ Mr Pilgrim said. ‘You’re interested in people.’ He waved the rib of sucking pig at me, dropped it on his plate and picked up another. ‘Take the Chinks, now. Here in Tahiti—’
‘Anybody ready for wine?’ a man said. His name was George. He was tall, with a head like a bald domed white rock and a shirt of orange and purple design that fell outside his copper-coloured trousers. ‘Speak up. Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake. Where’s Bill Rockley?’
‘Entertaining his new vahini,’ Linda said.
‘Who said? Who said? What vahini is this?’ George said. ‘Since when? Who told you?’
‘Coconut radio!’ a dozen voices said. ‘Coconut radio!’
Everybody sucked at pig-bones, laughing.
‘Anybody seen her? What’s she like?’ George said. He moved down the long table of food, pouring red wine into tumblers. ‘Gentleman over there, I’ve forgotten your name. Have some wine? Like the sucking pig? I’m so sorry I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Matthews.’
‘Call him Morgenthau,’ a girl said. She was pert, dark, quick-tongued. ‘We all call him Morgenthau. He came on the plane with us, didn’t you, Morgenthau? He lends us money, don’t you, Morgenthau?’
‘Well—’
Shyly the young man called Morgenthau, blushing a little, was trying to cut a rib of sucking pig with his knife and fork.
‘Saved our lives, Morgenthau did, when the banks weren’t open,’ the pert, quick-tongued girl said.
‘Where are you from, Mr Morgenthau?’ Mr Pilgrim asked.
‘New Zealand, but—’
‘Take the Chinks here,’ Mr Pilgrim said. ‘You come from a white country, Mr Morgenthau. You don’t need to be hit over the head with a sledge-hammer to see which way the wind is blowing, do you?’
‘I actually work in Fiji—’
‘Another example!’ Mr Pilgrim said. ‘Worse if anything. Take the Indians in Fiji—’
‘I wonder where Bill Rockley is?’ Linda said. ‘Bill is fun. I miss Bill.’
‘He’ll be here,’ George said. ‘He knows about the sucking pig. Come to that, where’s that man of yours? Where’s Henry?’
‘Must you ask?’ she said. ‘Somewhere between here and Bora-Bora. As usual. With that damned out-board put-put. Catching tuna. One day a shark—’
‘Reminds me,’ a man said. He was hairy-chested, but otherwise bald too. His open shirt was sulphur yellow, with a design of green sword-fish across it. His slacks were pale blue, the top buttons of the front undone, letting his paunch protrude.
Beside him sat a thin, blank-eyed Tahitian girl drinking gin. She did not, I noticed, eat very much. Sometimes she took up a rib of sucking pig, held it absent-eyed for a time in her fingers and then, equally absent-eyed, gave it to the man beside her. She did not look young and the listless skin of her face, something the colour of old, faded straw, was deeply pock-marked.
‘Reminds you of what?’ George said. ‘Don’t be so damned secretive. Don’t feed the animal, Marcelle, if he won’t talk.’
The girl, Marcelle, did not smile.
‘I hear the new vahini comes from Bora-Bora, that’s all. I don’t know, I just heard—’
‘Where from? Who said?’
‘Coconut radio again!’ they all said. ‘Coconut radio!’
‘Everywhere this same pattern,’ Mr Pilgrim said to me, ‘is manifesting itself. Have some raw fish? Try the shrimps – the shrimps are delicious. Take the Indians in Fiji. Eh, Mr Morgenthau, you know all about the Indians in Fiji. What were they, fifty, sixty years ago?’
‘Coolies mostly. Indentured labour—’
‘Exactly. And what are they now? Rich. Prosperous. Prolific as flies. Outnumbering everybody.’ He helped himself to large portions of raw fish and curried prawns. ‘And the Chinks. Take the Chinks. Not only here in Tahiti, but in Honolulu. In San Francisco. And the Japs. Take the Japs in San Francisco. Three generations back—’
‘How long have you been here, Mr Morgenthau?’ a voice said. ‘Your first visit?’
‘Well, just—’
Mr Morgenthau blushed, still trying to cut ribs of sucking pig with his knife and fork, and looked mildly and shyly about him.
‘Mr Morgenthau’s too wild!’ someone said. ‘He needs taming. Can’t we get him a vahini? What about it, Mr Morgenthau? Stay here and settle down and pick yourself a nice vahini.’
‘What exactly,’ Mr Morgenthau said, ‘is a vahini?’
Mr Pilgrim, who was now cracking crabs’ claws, took advantage of the rising gust of laughter to turn round, screen his mouth with one arm and address me confidentially.
‘You know, I suppose, that among themselves they are largely infertile?’ he said. ‘You appreciate that?’
‘No, I hadn’t—’
‘The Tahitians I mean. These girls. With whites, even with Chinese, right as rain.’ Already very flushed, his eyes cooked to a deeper, moister pink, he reached out, took up a bottle and poured himself more wine. ‘But among themselves – phut!’
‘If Bill doesn’t hurry soon,’ someone said, ‘there’ll be no more sucking pig.’
‘The real truth is of course,’ Mr Pilgrim said, and again he addressed me confidentially, cracking a crab’s claw, ‘that the whole place is ruined. Travesty. You hear all this talk about the paradise? The paradise has gone, old boy. It’s finished. They’ve ruined it completely.’
‘You mean the whites?’
‘Not the whites. Good God, the French.’
Large dishes of glowing water-melon, frosty-pink, came down the table, followed by pineapple, banana and passion-fruit. Mr Pilgrim, though not yet finished with crabs, chose a passion-fruit and began to press it to his lips, giving it quick sucking kisses.
‘How do they strike you?’ he said. ‘What’s your honest opinion? Looks, I mean.’
‘Some are nice.’
‘But on the whole? Disappointing, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not disappointing,’ I said. ‘Only lost. Only very sad.’
‘Sad? Perhaps you’re right,’ Mr Pilgrim said. He sucked loudly at his fruit. ‘Though that doesn’t alter—’
‘Bill!’ someone shouted. ‘Bill!’ everyone began to say. ‘Bill! Where were you? What happened? Don’t tell! – we know. Everybody knows—’
‘Can’t a man keep anything to himself?—’
‘Coconut radio again!’ they all shouted. ‘Coconut radio!’
‘For those who don’t know this fellow already,’ George said, ‘this is Bill Rockley.’
A sombre, tallish man, brown, dark-haired, looking a little more than forty, smiled down the table and said, ‘Hullo’ several times. His shirt was blue-black check and this, perhaps, together with a dark moustache, made him seem older than he was.
‘Like to introduce Michele to everybody,’ he said. ‘Everybody – Michele.’
The girl who stood beside him smiled down at us with wide dark eyes. Her hair was plaited. It fell over her bare shoulders in two thick blue-black ropes, reaching below her hips. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen and under the vermilion hibiscus-pattern of her pereu her breasts were beautiful, taut and high. With shyness and grace she stood with one knee gently overlapping the other, one hand fingering the yellow hibiscus in her hair.
‘Fine!’ George said. ‘Get the man some sucking pig.’
Grinning rinds of melon were now littered about
the table. Mr Pilgrim helped himself to another passion fruit. The shy Mr Morgenthau fingered the last of his pig’s bones. Mr Pilgrim, unable to focus his reddening eyes correctly on the passion fruit, bit it at one edge, squirting juice, flesh and seeds down his chin. And then, as music suddenly flooded about the room, the pert, dark, quick-tongued girl laughed and shouted:
‘Good, a record. Marvellous. I love that tune. I adore that Tahitian tune. Isn’t somebody going to dance? Mr Pilgrim, dance with me!’
Mr Pilgrim, his chin still covered with passion fruit, staggered to his feet for dancing.
‘Good idea!’ Linda said. ‘Morgenthau! Dance with me! Lend me your arms!’
Soon everybody was dancing. Even the shy Mr Morgenthau was dancing.
Only the girl with the yellow hibiscus in her hair and myself were left at the table, staring at the wreckage of pigs’ ribs, the grinning rinds of melon, the crabs and their claws.
Bonus Story
The Sugar Train
Inspired by Bates’s trip to Tahiti in 1954, ‘The Sugar Train’ describes a married couple with very antithetical personalities, observed through the eyes of a man stalled at an airport rest-house. First published in the Evening Standard in 1955, ‘The Sugar Train’ now joins a cast of eccentric and contrasting characters in the The Wedding Party collection.
In the steamy sweat-box of the little airport rest-house Mrs. Meredith looked as neat, fresh and clean as a porcelain doll in a baker’s oven. Her white and pink striped dress looked as dainty as if she were welcoming guests to an English garden party in June. ‘I’m afraid the airplane for Tahiti will be at least two hours late,’ she said. ‘She’s coming in on three.’
The rest-house sat like a long bamboo crate floating in a swamp of tropical creeper. Hot rain poured down with unlimited frenzy, in a molten grey mist that hid the runways, the wide plantations of sugar cane beyond them, and then still farther away the great red-green mountains.
‘I’m in charge here,’ Mrs. Meredith said. The neat freshness of her clothes extended to a constantly neat and pleasant smile. ‘If there’s anything you want, just ask me. Make yourself at home. You have three hours at least. Probably more.’
‘I would very much like to have seen something of the island,’ I said. ‘Would that be possible?’
‘I should hardly think so. More than half the roads are flooded,’ she said. ‘And those that aren’t flooded are blocked by landslide. That’s the way here since the earthquake. The whole crust is cracked. One night’s rain and it all comes crumbling down.’
‘A pity,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we could have some tea?’
‘Anything you like,’ she said, ‘from tea to phenobarbitone. A bed if you wish. Just ask. If you want anything and we can’t provide it I’ll take it as a piece of rank mismanagement on my part.’
During tea she moved with remarkable alertness, among fifty waiting travellers, each tired and sweating under a roof of thundering rain.
Half an hour later I ran head-long into a perfect stranger coming out of a door by the wash-room.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I said.
It was Mrs. Meredith; dressed now in a silk frock of neat emerald and purple design that admirably matched her dark well-set hair.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t recognise you in that dress,’ I said. ‘You look rather different—’
‘The secret in this climate,’ she said, ‘is to have 1000 dresses.’
Suddenly, as if a tap had been turned off, the rain stopped its flood. She looked sharply upwards and then down again at her watch.
‘That’s probably the end of it,’ she said. ‘It stops and starts like that. You’ve still got three hours. If you’d like to walk along as far as my house my husband would perhaps show you a little bit of the island. Or one of the boys will take you in the car. I’d take you myself except that there’s another airplane due in at five.’
I decided to walk alone. With her customary efficiency she came out into the steaming sunlight to give me directions.
‘Just half a mile down the road. A brown wooden house with a framework shed at the back. You can’t miss it. I’ll ring to say you’re coming.’
After rain the green land swam in a batter of ochre mud. A repeated forest of sugarcane rustled in a light after-breeze of storm, the fronds still glistening with water. Alongside the sugarcane ran a railway track of narrow gauge, now a little blood-red river showing, here and there, what seemed to be two parallel strips of half-drowned rusty wire.
At the house the garden of which looked like a hen run except for a few clumps of purple orchid, I knocked on the screen door twice without an answer. At the second knock I heard voices inside. Then as I raised my hand to give a third knock a big tousle-headed man in soiled drill shorts and an open sweaty khaki shirt came and peered through the screen.
‘Been knocking long?’ he said. ‘Sorry. Couldn’t hear you for the radio.’
There was no sound of radio. The man shook my hand several times with bluff cordiality. His arms, chest and legs were a mat of gingerish hair.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Glad to see you. Nice of you to come up. Sit down. Have some lunch? We were just going to have lunch. Always a bit late on Sundays.’
It was now five o’clock.
‘Sit down. Sit down. Find yourself a chair,’ he said. ‘What’ll you drink? Gin? Whiskey? Have a beer?’
I had the impression of sitting in the middle of a junk sale. Half a dozen broken wicker chairs, two of them long, filled the outer part of the room. Two bamboo tables, each dusty, one littered with papers and glasses, the other with a woman’s hand-bag on it, stood in the centre. Overhead and down the walls went several tangled skeins of ancient electric wire, sprouting here and there a lamp, a switch or a dusty naked bulb.
‘Wife said you wanted to see the island,’ he said. ‘Tonic? Say when.’ He poured my drink and then took deep swigs at his own, wiping his mouth on a forearm of ginger bristles. ‘No can do I’m afraid. No Go. All the roads are flooded. Wouldn’t get a mile. Excuse me.’
He went out suddenly, into what I thought must be the kitchen. For the second time I heard two voices, a woman’s and then his own. He came back carrying a wooden dish of potato chips, sprinkling salt on them.
‘Have a chip?’ The chips were flabby. He threw several on the floor. A few crumbs from them stuck to his lips. ‘Never been here before then? Pity. If you’d come at the right season we could have shown you round a bit. Given you a ride on the sugar train.’
I then remembered the narrow gauge track, half-submerged in its red-ochre river.
‘Only free railway in the world.’ He said. ‘Takes 2,000,000 tons of sugar in the season.’
I asked him if he worked in sugar. He started blowing his nose on a dirty handkerchief. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Used to. How’s the drink? Ready for a re-fill?’
I was not quite ready. He was.
‘Much to do here?’ I said.
‘Damn-all in a way,’ he said. ‘Depends.’
He seemed not to want to talk about that. The conversation dragged for a moment or two. Then something, I hardly know what, made me remember the orchids. The one piece of colour in the flooded hen-run outside.
‘Orchids?’ he said. ‘Class that lot as a weed. Interested in orchids? Like to see some? Something worthwhile?’
From out of the frowsty sitting room, with its ancient grass mats now strewn with the crumbs of potato chips he had thrown down, he presently led me outside.
There at the back of the house, stood the framework shed about which the neat, impeccable Mrs. Meredith had spoken. It too stood in a swamp, like the skeleton of a derelict ship turned upside down.
‘Get a bit of fun out of this,’ he said.
His voice, I thought, lost some of its bluffness. It grew, in that moment, unexpectedly tender.
The high framework house was a creeping, drooping forest of orchid bloom. Purple mouths, soft yellow and chocolate trumpets,
dark cocoa butterflies, pure cream sprays of moth-bloom sprouted and sprayed from pots, pans, a few sawn-down oil drums, several home-made wooden baskets, and occasional biscuit tins.
‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘Very lovely.’
‘Well, keeps me out of mischief,’ he said.
He picked up a pan in which, from among what seemed to be damp, fine-crushed tree-bark, tiny shoots were sprouting.
‘That’s how I like them,’ he said. ‘The little ones. The ones that need nursing.’
Back in the house he insisted on a final drink. He slapped me several times with hairy heartiness on the shoulders.
‘Man after my own heart,’ he said several times. ‘Coming back this way? Let’s know if you come back. Might see the sugar harvest. Have some fun. Give you a ride on the sugar train.’
As I set down my glass for the last time I noticed that, from one of the dusty tables, the woman’s hand-bag had been removed.
‘Glad to give you an orchid to take home,’ he said. ‘Think it would travel? Something to remember the island by.’
‘Thanks. Perhaps if we come back this way.’
He clattered clumsily at the frame-door, opened it and followed me outside. In the sunlight he staggered in the ochre mud of the yard.
‘Any message for your wife?’ I said.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘No thanks. She can get me on the blower, if she wants me.’
I paused by a clump of orchids in the yard.
‘Mind if I take one of your weeds?’ I said.
‘Take one. Take one,’ he said. His flushed, groping face lit up. His voice was tender. ‘Nip one off. Take one. Glad you like orchids. My one passion. Passion with me.’
‘Just something,’ I said, ‘to remember you by.’
Back at the airport, four hours later, Mrs. Meredith, with her fresh, cool, impeccable high-charged efficiency, saw us to the airplane. Already, in that interval, she had changed her clothes again.
Now she was looking more composed, more assured and more efficient than ever in a dress of dark blue silk, with small white spots, white belt and a neat white collar.
