by Hill, David
He swallowed as he remembered, but said nothing.
They were flying out of Tahiti early the next morning. ‘To the Island at the End of the World,’ his mother said, as they headed for their café.
The waitress who’d been so upset smiled when they came in. The police had let her son go, with a warning to behave himself, she told them before they’d even sat down. He had a cut head from where something had hit him, but he was all right. ‘The young people!’ she said to Darryl’s mum, and ruffled his hair, too. Darryl forced a smile.
‘It’s our last night in Tahiti,’ Mrs Davis said. ‘What should we eat that’s really special?’
The waitress beamed. ‘You try poulpe. Poulpe is very lovely.’
‘All right,’ Darryl’s mother laughed. ‘We’ll try two poulpes. OK?’
Darryl began to say ‘What are—’, then just nodded.
A few minutes later, the waitress came back. She carried two tall glasses, brim-full of golden liquid. Slices of orange and pineapple sat on top. ‘For you. Is cost nothing.’ Darryl grinned.
‘What is “poulpe”, by the way?’ Mrs Davis asked, as the waitress turned to go. The woman beamed again. ‘How you say it? Octopus.’ Darryl gulped.
But it tasted good. Chewy, but good.
‘Mangareva?’ the waitress exclaimed when they were leaving. ‘Oh, it is beautiful! It mean Floating Mountain. There is lovely high hill. Good happiness to you.’ She kissed them on both cheeks. Darryl decided he didn’t hate it too much after all.
The sun was just up, but already warm through the shutters, when they dragged their suitcases down the corridor to the foyer next morning.
Sunlight between the palm trees threw stripes like zebra coats across the road to the airport. They checked in, ate a chocolate croissant and then another chocolate croissant in the café, and just fifteen minutes later, an announcement told them to board through Gate Six.
‘It’s a much smaller plane,’ Mrs Davis said as they walked. ‘Only about twenty people. Twin engines, it said on the brochure.’
Darryl remembered the announcement on the flight from Sydney. ‘So it can climb on one engine and fall down on the other?’
His mother giggled. ‘It’s going to be special, Da. I’ve been really looking forward to this part.’
Me, too, thought Darryl. Excitement lifted inside him once more.
Their plane was smaller, all right. Smaller, but sturdy-looking. A dozen or so people stood queued at the steps leading up to it, while a guy in black trousers, a white shirt and a peaked cap checked their tickets.
His mum began handing over theirs. The man was young and slim; he looked only twenty or so. He passed the tickets back to Darryl’s mother, and smiled. He glanced at Darryl, and looked puzzled.
Darryl knew he was gaping: the uniformed figure was the young guy who’d been on the flight from Sydney. The same one he’d seen brandishing a sign in Friday’s anti-nuclear protest march.
EIGHT
‘Bonjour, monsieur. Good morning, sir. Welcome aboard.’ The young man smiled at Darryl. It was the sort of polite smile people gave to morons with their mouths hanging open.
Darryl quickly shut his. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘OK. Mercy.’ The guy nodded, then turned to the next person in the queue. I definitely, totally don’t like him, Darryl decided.
The cabin seemed narrow after the big planes that had brought them to Tahiti. Just two seats on either side of the aisle. ‘You have the window seat,’ his mother told him. ‘I’ve got more speeches and things to prepare.’
An Island woman and an excited small girl in a pink dress were sitting across the aisle. Well, the woman was sitting, but the girl was standing, chattering, pointing in four directions at once. Up ahead, through the open door of the cockpit, Darryl could see two pilots side by side, checking dials and switches. So what was the young guy?
At that moment, he appeared, and spoke to one of the pilots, who nodded. There was a rattling from outside, the steps being wheeled away. The young guy swung the cabin door shut. Above their seats, a speaker crackled. A voice began speaking in French. Next time we come, I’ll learn some French, Darryl decided. ‘Next time’?
‘Welcome aboard Tahitian Airlines Flight 774 to Mangareva,’ the voice said next. ‘This is your captain, Someone French. Our co-pilot is Someone Else French, and we welcome trainee pilot Raoul Dupuy.’ A chuckle came into the voice. ‘Raoul will be your air hostess today.’ Laughter along the cabin. The young figure in uniform grinned.
‘Our flight time is approximate six hours. We will be flying a slightly different course as we become nearer to Mangareva, because the French government has declared a 210-kilometre exclusion zone around Mururoa Atoll. We apologise for … Please fasten … We will soon be …’ The engines started.
Darryl had never realised there was so much blue in the world. The sea below them; the arch of sky above them; even the air around them was all shades of blue. Deep, glowing navy blue, or pale blue, or sparkling, glittering blue. He pictured August back home: grey and dark. Hard to believe it was the same planet.
Somewhere ahead of them was Mururoa Atoll. Another nuclear test, on the day they were returning to Tahiti, his mother had said. Cool! Maybe they’d be able to see something. Be brilliant if he could tell his friends back home about that.
Far beneath, the Pacific Ocean crawled past. Darryl opened Deadly Cloud once more, gazed at his dad’s postcard, then read on.
In 1956, an American plane had accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb in the sea off the coast of the United States. The trigger mechanism fired, but there was no explosion. In 1961, another American aircraft developed engine problems while flying overland with two atomic bombs on board, and made an emergency landing. Both bombs were damaged, but again there was no explosion. Just thirteen years ago. What do they do with damaged nuclear bombs? Darryl wondered. Take them to a panelbeater?
Beside him, his mum was asleep, folder in her lap. Across the aisle, the little kid finally lay silent; her mother smiled drowsily at Darryl.
He wasn’t going to waste time sleeping. This was all too special to miss. But even as he thought this, his head lolled to the left. Then it lolled to the right. Then it lolled forward, while the sound of the plane’s engines moved further away.
A drink – hey, hey – with pineapple in it! They were in their café in Tahiti …
Darryl’s eyes twitched properly open. The young guy in the pilot’s uniform – what was his name? Raoul – had just placed the drink on a fold-down tray in front of his mother, who was wide awake and talking to him. A sandwich lay there, too.
The young man glanced at Darryl. ‘Monsieur? Some lunch for you?’ Darryl nodded, tried to swallow his yawn at the same time, and ended up giving a jerking grunt. A drink and sandwich appeared on his tray.
‘I see you on the flight from Sydney, yes?’ Raoul asked Mrs Davis. ‘You are holiday-making on Mangareva?’ He pronounced the name differently: Mahn-ga-rahyvah. ‘It is a lovely land. I have family on there.’
Darryl’s mum explained what she was doing, while the young man listened closely. He nodded. ‘Good that you give the young peoples a new chance. There are many changes for them now.’
Darryl opened his mouth to say something about having seen him on Monday’s protest march, then closed it again. His mother was asking Raoul about becoming a pilot. ‘I have been to training school in Sydney,’ he told her.
‘Was it hard?’ Mrs Davis asked.
Raoul smiled. ‘The training is sometimes hard. Understanding the Australian people’s talk is always hard!’
They all laughed. Raoul nodded at the ocean far below. ‘It is beautiful, non? Clean sky, clean sea. But—’ He hesitated, then: ‘Excuse me. I must serve to others. Enjoy the rest of your flight.’ He moved on.
Maybe I don’t totally not like him, Darryl decided.
Another two hours of blue all around them. He’d wondered if he might see Mururoa or one of the other islands in the distance
, but there was nothing. Raoul wandered down the aisle again, spent quite a bit of time talking and joking to the small girl and her mother, but no more drinks or sandwiches appeared.
‘Glad you came?’ His mother smiled at him.
Darryl nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘We’ve got five days here,’ his mum went on. ‘You can explore as much as you like. From what I’ve heard, it’s all beaches and sea. You’re welcome to come along to the school and other places with me again.’
Darryl thought of the boys’ high he’d spoken at. Then he thought of a girls’ high. ‘OK.’
For a moment, his mother seemed to be grinning.
They were getting lower; he could make out the surface of the sea now. The speaker above Darryl’s head crackled once more. The usual French, then ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly land in Mangareva. Would you please …’
A white line on the water below, with a black dot at the end of it. A ship.
‘Did you know there was a protest boat sailed from New Zealand up to here a couple of years back?’ his mother said suddenly. ‘From that Greenpeace organisation that’s just started up. They were trying to land on Mururoa, but the French navy stopped them.’
No, thought Darryl. I didn’t know that. He said nothing.
A different colour out the window. A flicker of green, edged with white. An island. More sea, then a second island, a bigger one, bays and beaches and headlands all along it. A high hill rising from the middle. Another line of white where another boat was sailing. The plane began turning in a wide curve, lower and lower.
Still more sea, pale green and shallow-looking now. No sign of any town. A thin, thin island with sand and surf on either side. Not an island, really: more like a wide reef, with palm trees on it.
A thud, and a shiver through the plane. Darryl tensed, then realised it was the wheels coming down. The sea was only about thirty metres below them. Lower still, they sank. Palm tree tops stirred and sparkled. They were landing on the reef? They couldn’t be.
They were. Tarseal flashed into sight underneath. The engine note changed. A couple of buildings sped past, sea just behind. A bump; the engines roared; brakes went on, and Darryl was pushed forward against his seatbelt as the plane slowed.
‘Welcome to Mangareva,’ said the pilot.
The air outside was warm and smelled of salt. The sunlight made him screw up his eyes. Two men with springy black hair pushed a luggage trolley towards the rear of the plane.
‘We getting a taxi into town, or a bus?’ Darryl asked his mother, as they waited to go down the steps.
‘Neither,’ Darryl’s mum said.
Darryl glanced over at her. ‘We walking?’ His mother just smiled.
What’s going on? Darryl wondered.
The young guy Raoul stood at the bottom of the steps. ‘Enjoy your time,’ he told Darryl’s mother. ‘Perhaps I will see you; it is not a big place.’ He pointed. ‘The boat is over there, where the others walk.’
Boat? Darryl stared around. On one side, the sea sighed and sparkled. On the other, it did the same. Halfway to the horizon sprawled a long island. Darryl recognised the high hill they’d flown over just a few minutes ago.
‘Coming?’ asked his mother. ‘The boat’s waiting for us.’ She pointed to the island. ‘That’s Mangareva. If you’re lucky, they’ll serve pineapple drinks there.’
Darryl said nothing. Forget nuclear tests, he thought, as they followed the other passengers towards a jetty where a white boat lay waiting. Mum’s right: let’s just look forward to this.
NINE
The sea is so clear, Darryl marvelled as a triangle-shaped shadow glided through the depths below. He looked harder. A fish: a stingray. He lifted his head to tell his mother, but she was pointing at the approaching island.
‘Isn’t it wonderful? Only about eight kilometres long, so it won’t take long to explore it. And that must be Mount Duff. Amazing!’
Darryl gazed at the crooked, craggy crest of rock. He remembered the woman in the restaurant in Tahiti talking about it. It made him think of a stump of bone.
‘Fantastic,’ he murmured. Again he wished his dad could be here. And Grandad Davis. They could climb Mount Whatsit like they’d climbed the volcanic peaks in Auckland.
The others on the boat laughed and chattered. The little girl in pink stood, holding her mother’s hand and jumping up and down.
Darryl could make out buildings now. White walls, roofs of orange or brown. Not many of them: some along the beachfront where they were headed; others scattered among the trees. ‘How many people live here?’ he asked his mother. She laughed. ‘About 800, that’s all.’
Just 800? His high school had more people than that. This place was miniature!
Miniature, but amazing. Coconut palms, other broad-leafed trees. Dazzling flowers in purple and pink, growing up the sides of houses. A tall church with two towers. A pile of stones like a ruin of some sort. The water was getting shallow; the seabed was turning to dark-gold sand.
Yeah, they were here for only five days, but he was going to enjoy every one of them.
‘It’s nearly two o’clock!’ his mother exclaimed as the boat eased in beside a concrete jetty. ‘I’d forgotten all about the time.’
The woman with the little girl laughed. ‘On Mangareva, time has different speed.’ She smiled at them both. ‘You are the lady who will visit our school?’
She laughed again at the surprise on Mrs Davis’s face. ‘Every person knows every other person here. You are welcome. Life is different for our young people today. One time, the sea was all we needed. Not now.’
Once more she smiled, then turned to the little girl, who was calling to someone on the jetty. There were hugs and kisses as the passengers stepped off the boat. ‘Do you feel sort of … pale?’ Darryl’s mother whispered.
He glanced at the dark faces around him. ‘Yeah.’
A big man in khaki shorts and a white shirt appeared in front of them. ‘Mr and Mrs Day-vees?’ He looked uncertainly at the woman and teenager.
Darryl’s mother laughed. ‘I’m Jacqueline Davis. This is my son, Darryl.’
The man gave a half-bow. ‘Now I am understanding. I am Napoleon.’
Napoleon? Darryl knew he was gaping. The man chuckled. ‘There are many French names on Mangareva. Welcome, welcome. I take you to our lodge.’
He picked up a suitcase in each big hand, and led them to where an open-topped Land Rover stood a few yards away. ‘It is not far. Nowhere is far in our island.’
Napoleon was right. Two loops up a skinny grit road, past outcrops of black rock with spreading trees above. Three loops back down, towards the glittering sea. A glimpse of the tall white church Darryl had seen earlier. They pulled up in front of a little group of thatch-roofed, white-walled buildings that stood cool and quiet in the brilliant light.
Napoleon parked the Land Rover at the roadside. Little ripples stroked the shore, just twenty metres or so away. ‘If very high tide comes, we float out to airport!’ He waved his hand at the buildings, from one of which a smiling woman in a yellow dress was emerging. ‘Welcome again, Mrs and Darryl. Welcome.’
Their rooms were side by side: small, square, quiet. The woman – ‘I am Lily. Welcome, welcome.’ – showed them the shutters of pale brown wood: ‘This is your air-condition. Pull down when it is hot, pull up when it is cold.’
‘You will eat dinner at five o’clock?’ Lily asked. ‘I am sorry if the time is early, but dark comes quickly here. And the generator for electricity costs petrol. But we have lamps and torches for you. Please do not fall over and hurt yourself.’
Darryl’s mother smiled. ‘I’ll be careful. Darryl is a teenage boy, so he doesn’t know how to be careful.’
Both women laughed, while Darryl went Boring, Mum, to himself.
‘We thank you for coming,’ Lily said. ‘Alicia is excited that you are here. My niece. She is at the trade school.’
‘Trade school?’ asked Darryl, after
the other woman left.
His mum sighed. ‘I told you back home! Mangareva just has a primary school, about eighty kids, up to Form Two. After that, they go to Tahiti, or to a little trade school that the Church runs. They learn English and book-keeping, and how to work in hotels at Tahiti. But now there’s money from the French government, some parents want more chances for their young people. That’s why we’re here. Why I’m here, anyway.’
They unpacked, then they lay down to rest for five minutes … and woke up nearly an hour later! After he’d washed his face and yawned for a bit, Darryl gazed out the window just in time to see a big, white-winged seabird slide sideways down the sky, and wandered outside. The sea sighed in, then whispered out. So I won’t be talking to any girls’ high, he told himself, and felt grumpy.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ His mother had arrived at his side. The dark-blue flower was in her hair. ‘Let’s—’
‘Excuse me.’ A figure stood on the shell path leading to where Lily had told them the dining room was. A girl, about Darryl’s age, in a white blouse, dark skirt, with open sandals on her feet. Her skin was lighter than Lily and Napoleon’s, a smooth brown. Wavy black hair was tied at the back of her neck.
‘Hello,’ went Darryl’s mother. ‘Are you Alicia?’
The girl nodded, looking shy. ‘Welcome. Welcome.’ (Why do people say everything twice around here? wondered Darryl.) ‘My auntie says to tell your dinner is ready.’
‘This is my son, Darryl,’ Mrs Davis went, as they walked towards the other building. The girl gave him a polite smile. ‘Welcome.’ Darryl gave her a mumble.
‘The pupils are eager for to see you tomorrow,’ Lily said as they sat down at a table where a big bowl of fruit stood. Darryl quickly checked: bananas, some sort of purple plums, something like oranges. What? No pineapple? ‘There is a performance for you.’
‘A performance?’ Darryl’s mother repeated. ‘Sounds wonderful. What about?’
