by Hill, David
A small bus waited on the runway. The other passengers were filing on board. A man called to the Davises. ‘Please, you come. We are taking you to the hospital, and then to a hotel. You come.’
On the bus, they found seats and slumped down. I could sleep for three days, Darryl told himself.
A movement in the doorway of the plane made him look up. Alicia and Raoul were being brought out, men with rifles ahead of them and behind them. The young man seemed to be trying to say something to the girl, who twitched away from him. Darryl watched as they started down the steps; he tried to decide how he felt.
A van waited, doors open, more uniforms and rifles beside it. The officer who’d been first on the plane began talking to another. Alicia and Raoul stood nearby. The cousins who had started the flight as allies had ended it as enemies.
As Darryl kept gazing, Raoul turned, murmured to his cousin. The girl’s head came up. What was he blaming her for now?
He wasn’t. The tall, young figure bent suddenly, kissed Alicia on the forehead. Then he took a step backwards and reached a hand inside his shirt. Darryl’s breath stopped, and his stomach clenched.
Alicia screamed. The police wheeled around, flung themselves forward.
Too late. As Raoul raised the long-barrelled pistol and placed it to the side of his head, Darryl knew there had been one bullet left in it after all.
TWENTY-SEVEN
All of the passengers and crew, except Alicia, were taken to the hospital first. They had to shower, washing their hair and their bodies, even the soles of their feet and inside their mouths and noses, with chemical-smelling soap. Then they were given green hospital gowns, and sat around in a big bare room where police stood guard at the door.
After half an hour, boxes of clothes arrived. Not theirs. ‘You will have return of your clothes sometime,’ the officer from the plane announced. ‘We must be made sure that no radioactive from bomb is on them.’ The replacement clothes looked as though they’d been grabbed from a second-hand shop or something. But they were clean, and they sort of fitted, and Darryl was too exhausted to care.
Another twenty minutes, and two men in green overalls came in, nervous expressions on their faces. One held a small grey metal box with a dial like the one Darryl had seen his dad use to see if their car battery was flat. A cord ran from it to a heavier box that the other man held. The smaller box was passed over their hair, their hands and feet, down their backs. Passengers shut their eyes; some began to sob again as they were examined. The pilots stood rigid. Darryl felt himself tense as the grey metal rectangle skimmed his body. His mum stood calmly. Her hair was still wet from the shower; she looked young.
Finally, the two men relaxed, went, ‘OK, all OK.’ More sobbing from passengers and from Françoise.
They were kept sitting there. Voices murmured in the corridor. A siren wailed in the distance. The police watched from the doorway.
Darryl stared at the cream-painted walls. He wasn’t seeing them. He was seeing Raoul’s body collapsing to the ground, Alicia struggling in the grip of shocked policemen as she tried to reach him, screaming her cousin’s name over and over and over. He saw more police cars speeding towards them, lights flashing. His mother, rushing from the bus, shoving aside the policeman who tried to stop her, thrashing her way into the knot of yelling, pointing figures around Alicia, and taking the weeping girl in her arms again. He saw the body crumpled on the tarseal of the runway. And the blood.
He’d sat frozen, gripping the seat in front of him, while his mother was bundled back onto the bus, and other passengers gabbled or moaned around them. As they finally began heading towards a gate on the far side of the runway, he saw a tractor slowly towing their plane away, heading for a different corner of the airport as well. He supposed it would have to be decontaminated, too. When he twisted his head back for a glimpse of Alicia, the cars, the flashing lights, the crowd of uniforms and other people hid any sign of her. Where were they going to take her? What was going to happen to her? He couldn’t imagine.
It was dark by the time they arrived at the hotel – a square, concrete place in a side street, where the staff all stared at them as they were brought in.
Darryl had to share the hotel room with his mother that night. It was her hands that held him when he started screaming at Raoul slowly putting the gun to his head, while the sky flashed white, a black and red pillar of smoke poured upwards, and a blast wave he could see in the air raced towards them, flinging Noah and others from a boat far below. He jolted awake and clung to his mother, sobbing and gasping for breath as the new nightmare faded.
‘What’s going to happen to Alicia?’ he mumbled. ‘What will they do to her?’
He felt his mother shaking her head as she held him. ‘I don’t know, Da. I don’t know.’
‘She didn’t realise, did she?’ Darryl said then. ‘She didn’t realise what Raoul was ready to do?’
His mum sighed. ‘No, son. If she had … The poor, poor girl.’
They weren’t allowed out of the hotel next day. Nobody told them why. Nobody told them anything. Mrs Davis spent a lot of time on the phone in the lobby. ‘I’ve got things to fix up, love,’ she told Darryl. Yeah: school meetings about her report, maybe; different flights. It was hard to believe stuff like that still mattered.
For a while he sat on a chair and half-watched as she waved her arms around at an operator somewhere who obviously didn’t speak much English.
That afternoon, after a lunch in the hotel dining room, where the pineapple juice tasted only half as good as the juice he’d had before, and where the hotel staff never smiled once, they sat talking for a while to a few of the other passengers. Then they were called, in turn, into an office where a voice could be heard asking questions.
When it was their turn, Darryl and his mother found themselves sitting opposite yesterday’s police officer and a man in a cream suit. Darryl stared: he’d seen that suit before. He’d seen the same man wearing it, or one exactly like it, splashed with red paint, at the anti-nuclear demonstration just … was it really just ten days ago?
The policeman went first. Names, where they were from, why they’d been in Mangareva, had they ever met Alicia and Raoul before. But he didn’t call them Alicia and Raoul; he called them ‘the terrorists’. When Darryl’s mother explained how they’d stayed at the lodge where Alicia lived, how she’d talked with the girl about maybe coming to school in New Zealand, the other man – the ambassador, if that’s who he was – butted in. ‘So you were friendly with this stupid girl and her criminal accomplice?’
Mrs Davis gazed at him. ‘No. We were friendly with a promising, fine young woman and her cousin.’ She kept her eyes on the two men. ‘A young woman who did everything she could to save us.’ Darryl had never felt more proud of her.
When they came out of the room, a few more unfriendly questions later, a new figure was talking to the other passengers. A tall man in a minister’s collar. Darryl recognised him, too. He’d been in the demonstration as well. Darryl wondered if the ambassador knew he was there. He wondered how the minister felt about Raoul.
Their suitcases were outside their rooms when they went up to rest. Darryl suddenly had to sleep; his eyes kept sliding shut. His mother couldn’t stop yawning. But first he changed into his own clothes. Hope my undies aren’t radioactive, he thought. Too bad if they are.
He sat and watched TV for a while. A music programme, with Abba singing ‘Waterloo’ in English while the French words kept popping onto the screen at the bottom. Weird.
‘Mum?’ The question was suddenly in his mouth. One he had to ask. ‘Why did Raoul do it? Why did he … kill himself?’
Mrs Davis was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching the TV with eyes that kept closing. She turned to look at him, and rested a hand on his. ‘I don’t know that, either, son. Maybe he felt he was a failure. Or maybe he wanted to do one last thing to make everyone listen to them. I wonder if he wanted to take some of the blame away from Alicia?
No easy answers, I’m sorry.’
Darryl nodded. He’d already started to understand that. And he remembered all those things on the island: the paint, the dummy, the painting on the fallout shelter. Raoul had been set on his path. Nothing could have stopped him.
‘You were wonderful,’ his mother added. ‘The things you said to Alicia on the plane – you saved her life, I’m sure of that. Raoul? I don’t think any words would have stopped him.’ A pause. ‘He loved his cousin: I’m sure he was saying that at the end.’
Darryl sat, staring at the carpet. The collapsing body. The wailing girl. He made himself nod again.
His head jerked up at his mother’s next words. ‘They are taking Raoul’s body back to Mangareva.’ She watched her son. ‘One of the pilots told me. The whole of the island is helping pay for it, I think. They are going to bury him on the mountain.’
Darryl remembered the high, rocky slopes of Mount Duff. Huge, pure sweeps of sea and sky; trees and perfect beaches below. He swallowed.
His mum spoke once more: ‘He was that little girl’s uncle, did you know?’
As Darryl stared, she nodded. ‘The sweet little one who wanted you to dance with her. Lannya, wasn’t it?’
Darryl pictured the young man laughing with the excited small girl and her mother as they flew to Mangareva. He said nothing. If he tried to speak, he knew he’d start to cry again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
On the way down to breakfast next morning, he asked the second question he had to have an answer for. ‘Mum? Will Alicia go to prison?’
His mother put a hand to his cheek. Was the corridor empty? Yeah: phew. ‘I doubt it, love. She’s too young. Françoise says there’s a priest or a minister who’s asking for Alicia to be taken back to Mangareva, too. She’ll be put under the care of the Church and others there. I’m going to write to her, tell her not to give up hope about coming to New Zealand sometime. You can send her a letter too, maybe?’
Darryl mumbled something. He didn’t know if he wanted to. He didn’t know what he could say.
They were halfway through breakfast, served by waitresses who had started to smile a bit, when a loud voice spoke. The officer from the day before. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, ladies and gentlemen: those of you leaving Tahiti, your flights will happen tomorrow. You are free to go where you wish today. We thank you for …’
Relieved looks, and some clapping. As the other passengers finished their meals, a number came over to shake hands with Darryl and his mother. ‘You are kind to the poor girl,’ a woman said. ‘We are thinking like her about the bomb. But what she and him do on the plane …’ The woman shook her head.
Mrs Davis had still more phone calls to make, so Darryl headed out into the streets. He didn’t feel like any sight-seeing. He just wanted to go home and get a whole lot of things off his mind. Where’s Alicia now? he wondered again, as he made his way past more cafés and shops. The hard Tahitian sunlight was creeping down their sides. What’s happening to her? Maybe I will write … I dunno.
Darryl took one turn, then another, not really caring where he was going. Doors and windows were open. Singing came from some of the alleys; cars and bikes passed by. Everything was the same as when he’d walked streets like this the first time. Yet nothing would ever really be the same, not for a long time, anyway. He wondered whether there would be anything in the papers or on TV about what had happened to Flight 766, or if the government was keeping it all hushed up. Had Raoul made any difference? Had all his schemes, all his lies to his cousin, changed anybody’s mind? Like his mum said, there were no simple answers.
He stopped. That office building ahead, with the open space in front. That low corrugated iron building over to the left. Wasn’t that them? Yes, the market and the square where he’d seen the protest marchers pouring in, and where he’d seen Raoul carrying his sign. He could make out traces of red paint on the building’s front steps.
Without warning, he saw the other red stain as well. The pool of blood spreading as Raoul’s body sprawled on the runway. He heard himself make a moaning sound; clutched his arms around himself. Two women passing by glanced at him in alarm. He wheeled, and stumbled away.
They had more visitors at dinner. The two pilots and Françoise, all in uniform. They shook hands with the few passengers who hadn’t already left. When they reached Darryl and his mother, the older pilot said, ‘We thank you for your helping. You are good for – to – the girl and the young man.’ He turned to the other pilot, who produced a small wrapped box. ‘For you. Au revoir.’
When they opened it in their room later, they found a little carved canoe, like the one Noah and the others had given them at their farewell party. Now I’ve got two to show my friends, Darryl thought. The Mangarevan one was better.
Only one other passenger was in the dining room when they and their bags came down to the dining room next morning. ‘You have seen the news?’ he asked. ‘The French government – they say that from now there will be tests only under the ground at Mururoa. It is good, non?’
Yeah, it’s good, Darryl thought. Maybe Raoul had got what he wanted after all. That’s what Darryl wanted to believe, anyway.
Nobody placed flowers around their necks as they boarded the flight to Sydney. Nobody took any notice of them, and Darryl felt glad. His mother had bought him a book at the airport shop. He might read it. Or he might just look out the window.
He felt flat. He wanted to be home, see his friends again, even sit his exams. With any luck, there might be a letter from his dad. Would his parents really try to get back together? He hoped so: he really did. But at the moment, it was just another thing to think about.
He felt panicky as they found their seats on the big plane. He’d had bad dreams the night before as well, trapped inside another aircraft as great walls of fiery air charged at them. Now he sat, breathed deeply, and began to feel a bit better. He pictured Flight 766 and all the incredible things that had happened on it. Would he ever meet the pilots or the passengers, or any of the people from Mangareva again? And Alicia? He wondered for the hundredth time what was happening to her.
The book stayed untouched. He slept, for hours and hours. His body seemed to have grown fifty years older suddenly; every time he lifted up his head and tried to look around him, he felt it flop down again. Not until they were a couple of hours away from Sydney did he wake up properly. He found himself gazing across the aisle as if he expected to see someone he knew. Raoul, he realised: that’s where he’d been sitting on the flight to Tahiti.
Darryl saw the young man again, as clearly as if he were actually there. He saw him smiling and talking to his little niece as they flew to Mangareva; whispering to Alicia by the lodge; watching at the party; fighting desperately in the cockpit. He saw the kiss on Alicia’s forehead, and then the gun raised to his own head.
All that anger. All that determination and courage. Darryl realised that he was trembling. No, he was sobbing. When his mum’s hand reached out and held his, he didn’t care this time if anyone saw them.
They went straight onto the flight to Auckland. It seemed like some force was pulling them home as fast as it could. As they hurried from one gate to another, Darryl glimpsed the same newspaper stand he’d seen just thirteen days before. DEATH TOLL RISES IN YUGOSLAV TRAIN CRASH, the poster read this time. SHOCK CHOICES IN EMMY AWARDS. He’d told Alicia on the plane that people would take notice of what she’d done. Now? Maybe they would, maybe not. The world was already moving on; what mark had she and Raoul left on it?
And what mark was he going to make on it? he wondered, as the plane’s nose lifted and he felt wheels come up for the final time. At least he’d have something to write about in his English exam – and to say to his social studies class, if Mr Reidy asked him.
Yeah, he was OK with words; he’d realised that in the past couple of weeks. Maybe he’d try and do something for the school magazine about what had happened. Deadly Cloud was in his luggage, along with the model canoe – the goo
d, Mangarevan one. He would re-read the book, and use some of it. Raoul and Alicia wouldn’t be completely forgotten.
And he’d learn French, or something like that, as he’d promised himself. He’d start over the summer holidays. He’d talk to his father about it, if – when – his dad rang. He wanted to talk to his father about a whole lot of things.
He was going to do something good with his life, and he wanted his dad to be part of it. He didn’t know what it was yet, but he’d find something he believed in, and he’d go for it. Just like the two people he’d met, the two he couldn’t stop thinking about.
Beside him, his mother sat silently. She hadn’t said much since they’d left Tahiti. She’d be thinking, too – about her work, and the Tahitian girls coming to her school. She and Darryl had to go for more hospital tests when they got home, to make sure there was no radioactivity in their bodies. The checks might have to go on quite a long time, they’d been told. He should be scared at the thought, but he wasn’t.
His mum stretched and smiled at him. ‘Not long now, Da.’
Darryl nodded. ‘How are we getting home from the airport?’ he asked. ‘We getting a taxi?’
His mother smiled again. ‘No, I think we’ll get a lift. With your dad.’
Darryl’s jaw sagged open. His mind skidded in five directions at once. ‘Dad? You mean he’s—’
Mrs Davis’s smile grew wider with each second. ‘He’ll be waiting for us there, son. He’s had a job offer, driving something in the Huntly or Waihi mines. Plus I told him about our adventures and he wants to make sure we’re all right. We’ll see how things go. Let’s just try our best, OK?’
So that’s who she was speaking to on the phone, Darryl realised. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Yeah, OK. OK!’ His mouth kept wanting to turn up at the corners. His heart seemed to be glowing inside him. Yeah, he told himself over and over. Yeah, OK!
He gazed out the window. Blue sky and sea. He hadn’t realised there was so much of them in the world before. He saw again the sky from four days ago, the huge shaft of fire and darkness surging up through it. He’d write about it. He would. He’d work out properly how he felt.
