In September 1971, all Ilois left on Diego Garcia were called to the plantation manager’s house and told that they had two weeks to pack. The manager was sad and embarrassed but he had orders. Americans had come for good. They had to have room but everything would be taken care of.
‘What’s to take care of?’ Maude shouted.
An official looked at her and ticked a sheet of paper. ‘Take it easy,’ he said.
‘No! The sky’ll take me!’ she whispered.
‘What?’
‘The sky. It’s watching you!’ She pointed at the man. He held a clipboard to his chest. ‘It’s watching me too, and it’s remembering all this. You don’t have to worry.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘You?’ said Maude. ‘Oh yes, you have to worry. You means me,’ she said.
‘Look,’ said the man. ‘Talk sense.’
‘I do!’ Maude turned to Georges. ‘Don’t I?’
‘Yes. Please,’ he said to the official. ‘She’s a bit…’ He shrugged. ‘You know?’
‘I don’t!’ said Maude, and stalked off. ‘No, I don’t.’ She sang a snatch from a song, stopped in her tracks as if she’d heard someone else singing before realising it had been her, and walked on. ‘I don’t!’ she shouted again, and waved her hands over her head.
‘Touched?’ said the official.
Georges shrugged.
‘NO!’ Odette shouted.
Bob went to visit Georges. He wanted to buy a boat. He was contracted to a long stint on the island and wanted to do some fishing. He was keen and gave the Ilois a joint. ‘Smoke it later.’
Georges nodded and put it behind his ear.
‘We can smoke this one now, while you tell me all about it.’ He smiled and pointed at some boats on the lagoon. ‘How about one of those? You won’t be able to take them.’ He passed the joint. ‘There’ll be new ones for you in Mauritius.’
‘Mauritius?’ said Georges.
‘Sure.’ Bob coughed. ‘So how about it? There’d be dollars for it.’ He waved some notes. ‘Dollars?’
Georges didn’t know about money. He shrugged and pointed to Maude. She was sitting on a tea chest. Leonard and Odette were tossing stones at a dead dog that floated in the lagoon. Other Ilois were sitting in groups around fires. Some of them drank beer. All of them had holes in their clothes.
Bob asked Maude if she wanted to sell a boat. She followed his finger when it pointed to some redundant pirogues. ‘Dollars?’ he said, and he rubbed his fingers together and raised his eyebrows. ‘Buy yourself some clothes.’
She looked at the notes when he showed them. They were greasy and wrapped with a rubber band. ‘How many?’ she said.
‘This many?’ Bob smiled.
‘You want to look?’ she asked.
‘Why not?’
Raphael’s boat was beached beneath the hut. Its paint was flaking and a section of gunwale had come away from the hull. The sail was wrapped around the mast. Holes had appeared in the canvas, but after Bob had circled it three or four times, booted it and poked a knife in some of the planks, he said, ‘Not bad. Not bad. Needs work but I’ve seen worse. Far worse…’
Maude sold Raphael’s boat to Bob. She took his money without a word. She didn’t know how much. She looked through the American. He was unnerved but forgot the feeling.
On a night in September 1971, Maude, Leonard, Odette, Georges and all remaining Ilois left Diego Garcia for ever. They leant on The Nordvaer’s rails and watched their island disappear and glow with lights unlike lights they had seen before.
Arc lights, strings of spotlamps. Men ran to generators and aimed excavators at huts and piles of earth. A string of heavy lorries piled hills of sand beyond a spot where pumpkins had grown best. Leonard asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘You ask that again and I’ll throw you over,’ said Odette. ‘Mauritius! Mauritius!’
‘I left something.’
‘You didn’t have anything.’
‘I had my shells.’
‘Those old things!’ She laughed.
‘My collection.’
‘Forget them.’
‘They took me years to find. I went everywhere. They were beautiful.’
‘They were just shells,’ said Odette and she sat down on a box of tractor parts.
‘MY SHELLS!’ Leonard shouted.
‘Ssh the boy,’ said Maude.
A chilly wind rattled loose fittings on the deck as Odette put her arm around her brother’s shoulder. She bent her head towards him and said, ‘I didn’t mean to laugh.’
Leonard didn’t move or speak.
‘I didn’t know they meant so much.’
Maude closed her eyes.
‘You should have told me before. I would have brought them for you.’
Two centuries of Ilois life slipped away as the Indian Ocean heaved in massive black swells and spat over the passengers. Women cried and held their children. Men stared at the sky, gobbed and opened bottles. The few possessions they’d been allowed to keep sat in small heaps on the deck. A warship slunk past, The Nordvaer rolled and hooted – no reply.
Maude stayed on deck until the sky had stopped glowing with the orange and white lights that burnt on Diego Garcia. She found Georges and lay down with her head on his chest and the children by a sack of clothes. She thought about Raphael and whispered that she was, ‘Coming,’ before falling asleep and dreaming about winged ships crewed by donkeys and birds.