by Hill, David
Their hotel was … a hotel. Darryl felt disappointed; he’d half-expected a thatched roof. But as they unpacked in their tiny connecting rooms, his mother called out ‘Listen, Da’. Darryl heard it: the thud and swish of waves. It sounded just a few metres away.
It was. As soon as they had showered and changed (My legs are so white! Darryl thought as he put on his shorts), they headed outside, along the shell path with the sign reading PLAGE / BEACH. Thirty steps and the Pacific Ocean lay in front of them, blue and glittering. Back home in New Zealand, we might still have the fire going! Darryl marvelled.
They ate sandwiches of thick, different-tasting bread in the hotel restaurant. Darryl kept yawning. ‘Nothing like sitting on a plane doing nothing for nine hours to tire you out,’ smiled Mrs Davis. ‘I might have a nap after this. You too, love?’
Darryl shrugged. He hadn’t come to Tahiti to have a nap! But he did feel pretty tired, so when they’d eaten, and his mother was in her room, he lay down also, pulled out his father’s postcard, and opened Deadly Cloud once more. The first French nuclear tests at Mururoa were bombs hung from giant balloons, about 1500 metres up. Only part of the fireball touched the ground, so less radioactive material was sucked up into the air. Then came tests with bombs placed on barges floating in the lagoon, and …
He half-heard a thud as the book hit the floor. He heard nothing else till his mother’s voice started calling: ‘Darryl? Wake up, love. We’ve slept almost four hours. It’s nearly time for lunch!’
‘We should try a local café or something,’ Mrs Davis said. Darryl nodded. ‘Yeah.’ But they still felt so sleepy, they got no further than the hotel restaurant. This time it was fish, rice, yellow vegetables like kumara.
They ate and yawned some more. A smiling woman with an explosion of black hair that had big white flowers tucked into it laughed as she cleared away their plates. ‘You tired from plane, huh? You go sleep.’
They did. Darryl got into bed, picked up his book again. Outside, waves murmured on the beach. His father’s first postcard from Australia showed a blue sea, too. It made Darryl remember a day at Mission Bay beach when he was little; his parents and him and Grandad Davis all wandering along the sand.
‘I used to dream of a beach like this all the time I was in that Jap POW camp,’ Grandad was telling Darryl’s father. ‘I knew the moment that first bomb went off that I’d get to see the real thing again. There’d been all these rumours about prisoners being executed if the Americans and our boys tried to invade, but they wouldn’t need to invade now. Those bombs saved a lot of our lads.’
Darryl’s dad squeezed Grandad Davis’s arm. ‘I know, Dad.’ Then he scooped up his son, rushed to the water’s edge, and pretended to throw him into the water, while Darryl’s mother and grandfather laughed and cheered. Darryl lay now, picturing that day as he sank into sleep.
Lines of shining yellow light angled across his bed. His room had wooden shutters instead of curtains, and the sun glowed through them. Where was— Oh yeah! Tahiti!
He lay and listened. The sea. Strange-sounding birds having an argument. A dog telling them to shut up. Do dogs here bark in French? Darryl wondered.
He creaked out of bed and picked up his watch: 7.22 a.m. School holidays, and he was up before nine o’clock! None of his friends would believe it. There wasn’t any sound from his mother’s room; she must still be asleep.
No, there was a note on the floor outside his room: Gone to beach. Back soon. Darryl looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, muttered ‘Man, you’re ugly!’, decided to shower later, and set off down the white-shell path.
His mother was standing by the edge of the sea, with her back to him. A few coconut palms rose further along. A green headland jutted out into the ocean; a white boat had just appeared around it.
He crunched across the gritty sand towards his mum. She turned, and he saw that she had been crying.
She smiled and shook her head at the same time. ‘It’s all right, love. Everything’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?’ She slipped her hand through his arm; it made Darryl feel embarrassed but grown-up, somehow. ‘Do you miss your dad?’ Without waiting for an answer, she went: ‘Me, too.’
Darryl couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t have to, because his mother kept talking. ‘Aren’t we lucky? Our own beach. And look – there’s a coral reef out there.’
The tide was further out than it had been the day before, and Darryl glimpsed a thin crescent of bone-coloured rock, just showing above the surface. He pictured the reefs at Mururoa, blown into white-hot powder by a nuclear firestorm. Hard to imagine in a place like this.
His mother took hold of his arm again. ‘I could eat a horse – even a French horse. Let’s go and murder some breakfast.’
Darryl ate and ate. He took his plate back to the buffet, filled it a second time, then ate and ate some more.
Mrs Davis smiled at him over her second cup of coffee. ‘Thank goodness I’ve finally woken up. I thought I might be the first speaker to fall asleep talking to an audience.’
‘We’ll go sight-seeing this afternoon,’ she suggested. ‘What’ll you do this morning, Da?’
A waitress in a dress covered with patterns of red and green birds, and with flowers in her hair, too, had begun clearing away their dishes. ‘He can help us in the kitchen,’ she laughed. ‘Be nice to have a good-looking boy there!’
Darryl stared at the tablecloth, and felt his ears go hot. The woman laughed again. ‘You should go visit the market. Only half a mile along the street; you can’t miss it.’
‘Sounds like a good idea.’ Mrs Davis glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, I’m being picked up in twelve minutes!’
Back in their room, she rushed into the bathroom, rushed out, rushed in and out a second time, then swept folders into a bag. ‘How do I look?’ she asked.
Darryl shrugged. ‘OK, I s’pose.’
‘OK?’ his mother snorted. ‘OK? This place is French – French people are the best dressers in the world. I’m supposed to be telling them how great New Zealand is, and I just look “OK”? You … you male!’
She thrust something at Darryl, and said ‘Here: buy yourself something. Enjoy looking around. I’ll be back by one o’clock. And be careful.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he muttered. When would his mother finally believe he was old enough to— But she’d kissed him on the cheek, and was out the door.
He gazed at the money in his hand. Three brightly coloured banknotes. RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE, it said on each. 1000 FRANCS, 500 FRANCS, 500 FRANCS. Pictures of tropical fish, canoes, trees, women with flowers in their hair, just like the hotel waitresses. How was he supposed to know what they were worth?
Only one way to find out. He took a deep breath, then another deep breath. Then he showered, took a third and a fourth deep breath, and set off for the market.
As he walked, he gazed around. He was relieved to see that all the other tourists were wearing shorts and a shirt like him. Shorts in August: how unlikely is that?
Trees grew beside the road, down the little side alleys. Windows and doors were open, just like the day before. It was only five past nine and already it was hot enough for him to keep on the shady side. Cars, people on bikes, shops with signs in French. What the heck was a PTISSERIE?
Throngs of people. Tourists with pale legs like him, or sunburned legs, but mainly Tahitian people with lots of black hair. Powerful-looking guys and tall women. A lot of them smiled at him as they passed.
He heard singing. A tape-recorder? No, women sitting inside a doorway, making mats or something from long leaves, and singing among themselves as they worked. Two men were washing a bus in a side street, voices raised in a hymn or something. Maybe I should do an Abba number, Darryl thought – if I want to get arrested.
A long corrugated iron roof lay ahead, people moving in and out, carrying bags and baskets. He passed some sort of office building, with two white guys in khaki uniforms standing outside. Police?
The
market was like a giant fruit-and-vege shop crossed with a giant gala day. Pineapples, straw mats, coconuts, leis like the ones they’d been given at the airport, green vegetables, purple vegetables, and still more pineapples … Darryl wandered the aisles, one hand clutching the banknotes in his pocket. How did he buy something? What did he say?
Finally, he stopped in front of a stall piled high with fruit. A woman smiled at him, and said something in French. ‘Hello, how much is a pineapple?’ Darryl pointed. The woman smiled wider, said something else in French. ‘Sorry,’ Darryl mumbled. ‘A pineapple?’
The woman laughed. (Even her laugh sounded French.) She took a pineapple in one hand, a long knife in the other hand. The knife flashed two – four – five times, and the pineapple lay on a big green leaf, neatly carved into rings and slices. The woman said something else in French, and passed it over. Darryl held out his three banknotes, one disappeared, and a pile of brown and silver coins dropped into his palm. ‘Merci, monsieur,’ the woman smiled. ‘Merci.’
‘Mercy,’ Darryl went, and she laughed again. He thrust the change into his pocket, and moved on. He’d done it – he’d bought something foreign!
Outside the market, he stood eating the first slice of pineapple. It was brilliant: so much better than the stuff in tins.
The streets were getting busier. A man with an enormous camera and a woman with an enormous handbag were talking in loud American voices. More people were singing, somewhere nearby. He’d have to tell his mother about that. Three men in uniform stood just along from him, looking down the street. Different uniforms: blue ones. Were they some sort of police, too? They stood gazing towards the sound of the singing, which grew louder by the second.
It wasn’t singing, Darryl suddenly realised: it was chanting. Chanting and shouting. What was— He stared in the same direction as the men in blue uniforms.
Then the first marchers came around the corner.
FIVE
At first, Darryl thought it was a team parade, or a church procession, or something. Men and women: nearly a hundred of them. Almost all of them Tahitians; just a few white faces.
Then he saw the signs they were holding: NO NUCLEAR TESTS IN THE PACIFIC … PAS DE GUERRE NUCLÉAIRE with a painting of a bomb with a black cross over it. And a couple of those upside-down Y signs he’d seen on the TV back home from that other march, in England.
‘Ban the bomb! Ban the bomb!’ people shouted. Others were chanting in French. A group of ten or twelve women in bright dresses began singing what sounded like a hymn. Police in khaki uniforms and blue uniforms walked on either side of the marchers, watching them and the people on the footpath.
A voice blared through a megaphone, and Darryl looked over to see a tall Tahitian church minister, in black shirt and white dog-collar. ‘Why does France test her nuclear weapons in our country?’ he called out. ‘We like French people, but we don’t like French bombs!’
The two American tourists stood watching with sour expressions on their faces. ‘Bunch of idiots,’ Darryl heard the man grumbling. ‘How do they expect people to visit their country if they behave like this?’
The woman bobbed her head in agreement. ‘They’re lucky it’s countries like ours who have got the bomb, and not the commies!’
Although he’d thought the same sort of thing himself, for some reason Darryl didn’t like it being said here. He moved away, so nobody would think he was with the Americans.
More marchers kept coming around the corner. Must be nearly 200 of them now. Those in front had stopped, and the street was packed with chanting, sign-waving figures. In front of the office building, more police stood, hands clasped behind their backs.
Some of the hymn-singing women held the hands of little kids, who sang also, or chattered to one another as if they were at a Christmas parade. Darryl remembered his mother talking about the Island girls at her school. They hoped that if any of their mothers were in protests, they wouldn’t bop anyone with a sign. Maybe he could give his class a talk after all when he got back to school; say who had been the biggest bopper. Except that didn’t seem so funny just now.
The minister was still calling through his megaphone. ‘A whole island of people lose their homes, because nuclear weapons are being exploded there. Now France destroys other islands with its nuclear tests. We don’t want this in our ocean!’ The marchers cheered and clapped.
Darryl stopped listening: he stood staring at the person holding a PAS DE GUERRE NUCLÉAIRE sign. Was it—? Yes, it was that young guy who had been on the plane from Australia. He stood silently, gazing around. When he saw Darryl watching, he looked at him briefly, then turned away. Darryl felt his face go hot. These demonstrators are just stupid, he told himself.
All the marchers seemed to have crammed into the street now. The minister with the megaphone was talking in French; the crowd cheered and clapped once more. Several people on the footpaths joined in. A couple of others looked annoyed. ‘France defends our islands!’ one called. ‘She needs nuclear weapons to defend herself!’
The demonstrators had begun pressing towards the steps in front of the office building. A couple of police were talking loudly to them – in French – but the way they were shaking heads and holding up hands in a ‘stop’ signal made it clear what they meant.
‘The ambassador!’ the minister’s voice rang through his megaphone. ‘We demand to see the ambassador!’ The crowd shouted, too. ‘L’ambassadeur! The ambassador!’
The front door of the building opened, and a European man in a cream-coloured suit came out. An older policeman was with him. Boos from the crowd, but the minister called ‘Quiet! Silence, s’il vous plaît. We listen to Monsieur L’Ambassadeur.’
He and the man in the suit shook hands. They spoke to each other; the ambassador smiled, but looked edgy. So would I if I had a couple of hundred people yelling at me, Darryl thought.
The minister passed over the megaphone. As the man in the suit lifted it and began to speak, more boos and shouts of ‘No bomb!’ rose from the crowd. But they fell silent when the ambassador began to speak.
His first sentences were in French, and the only words Darryl recognised were ‘France … Pacifique … Tahiti’. Then the ambassador switched to English. ‘My friends, France is committed to peace in the Pacific. The best way to keep Tahiti safe is to have a strong military presence. We promise that—’
The marchers erupted in jeers and yells. The young guy from the plane was booing also, and waving his sign. The front rows pressed forward, surging towards the building. The police on the steps started to shout as well. Some of them gripped thick wooden batons.
Then another young man burst out of the crowd, holding something in his hand. He swung his arm furiously at the ambassador. Next moment, the steps in front of the building were covered in blood.
Darryl’s eyes bulged; his hands were up in front of him as if he were being attacked. The ambassador staggered backwards, blood pouring from his body. A hand grenade? A gun? But—
It wasn’t blood; it was red paint. The pot lay on its side by the building’s front door, red liquid still dripping from it. The ambassador was mopping at his ruined suit, and shouting. The minister stood staring.
For two – three – seconds, everyone else seemed locked in place, frozen with shock. Then a voice bellowed an order, and the police on the steps came charging into the crowd, arms rising and falling, batons clubbing. The guy who had hurled the paint was battling through the press of bodies behind him, trying to get away.
Screams and shouts of panic arose from those on the footpath as well as the marchers. People began stumbling, fleeing, crowding towards the market or back along the street down which the protest had come. A woman fell: others tripped over her and went down, too. Darryl glimpsed scared, shocked faces. The little kids wailed and clung to their mothers.
Thwack! Thwack! Batons smacking on backs and shoulders as the police drove in a wedge through the crowd, shouldering aside anyone in their way. Their m
ouths were open; their eyes slitted. A few people hit back with fists or signs. One sign smacked down on a policeman’s head and splintered, leaving the khaki-uniformed figure wearing the upside-down Y peace symbol around his neck like a necklace.
That high school girl’s mum must be here after all, Darryl thought. A crazy half-laugh, half-snort rose inside him.
One of the hymn-singing women stumbled past him, gripping a little girl whose face was buried in her dress. A man reeled across the footpath, with blood – real blood, not paint – streaming down the side of his face. The American tourists had vanished.
In front of Darryl, a policeman tripped or was pushed, and sprawled face-down on the ground. Next second, the young man from the plane stood above him. The placard part of his sign had gone; he gripped the thick wooden handle, lifted it over his head like a club, face twisted in anger, and began to bring it hurtling down on the fallen figure.
He stopped, wooden shaft frozen in his hands, just as Darryl cried out. Another rush of fleeing, struggling bodies, and he was swept away.
Whistles shrilled. A siren wailed, speeding closer. Police in blue and khaki had hold of a twisting, kicking figure, dragging him across the ground towards the building whose steps still dripped with the red paint. The protestor was flailing and struggling as unfriendly hands hauled him away.
More police appeared, striding into the crowd, shoving at anyone in their way, kicking aside signs lying on the ground. Darryl shrank back as two blue uniforms seemed to be heading in his direction. His heart thumped; his back felt cold and crawly. He should go – he should get away. Instead, he stood there, staring.
Other people were being dragged towards a police van that had appeared up the street. The minister was talking angrily to an equally angry police officer, waving his arms and pointing.
I never knew it would be like this, a voice inside Darryl’s head had begun mumbling. He remembered the man on TV, and the march he’d been in. Were any of those people here today? He didn’t even know if they were from Tahiti.
