Odette took Jimmie to bed, put her arms around him and squeezed. ‘Jimmie…’ She was scared. Albert stood in the doorway.
Calm night, soft water, the wreckage of the boat Leonard had stolen was washed up along the beach. Mynahs chattered. Jimmie sucked his thumb.
‘You want me to stay?’ Albert said.
Odette didn’t say anything.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘And I’ll take care of things in Port Louis. Don’t worry.’
‘Thank you.’ She wiped her eyes.
He shook his head. ‘Anyone would do it,’ he said.
She shook her head. She said, ‘I met men who wouldn’t.’ It was late and she wanted to lie down.
She lay with Jimmie, Albert lay on an air-bed by the door. A slight moon cast soft light into the shack, spreading and outlining the Ilois’s possessions. A saucepan. A mirror. A tea chest. A photograph of Queen Elizabeth the Second and the Duke of Edinburgh. A jar of rice and three eggs. Two bananas. A dead fishing rod.
She sniffed. She didn’t sleep for an hour, but when she did she was restless. Jimmie made sucking noises. Albert stared at the moon before falling asleep. The sea breathed.
He woke up a few hours later. Everything was quiet. Nothing moved. He looked across at Odette. She’d flayed in sleep and the blanket had exposed her legs. They were smooth and shone in the moonlight. He stood up, walked over to her and covered them.
The policeman came back in the morning. He was carrying a black briefcase, and asked Albert to sign some forms. These were official, and sad to read.
‘Where’s he being buried?’ said Albert.
‘Port Louis. You’ll be at the funeral?’
‘Yes. But I wondered…’ Albert hesitated.
‘What?’ said the policeman.
‘There’s a cemetery,’ said Albert, ‘at Souillac.’
‘Yes.’
‘A seamen’s cemetery.’
‘So?’
‘Could we bury him there?’
‘At Souillac? Why?’
Albert shrugged.
The policeman thought. It would involve re-organising, and more forms, but he said, ‘Why not? If you can pay…’
‘I can pay.’ Albert showed him some money.
The policeman looked at the cash. ‘I’ll find out. You’re M. Burnier?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’ll come back later. You’ll be here?’
‘Yes.’
Leonard was buried according to Christian ritual, at Souillac. No spirit-seeker came and chased around with a switch. Nobody mentioned Minni-Minni. Jimmie said, ‘Taxi?’
‘Ssh and sit in the back.’
The grave was dug as close to the ocean as a grave could be. Albert paid the undertakers, the priest and the diggers. Odette thanked him, and promised to make it up.
They squinted as they stood at the grave. The smoke from a rubbish tip blew around and two children carried battered tin cans through the cemetery. Their clothes were torn and dirty, and they lived under seven sheets of galvanised iron. They watched the funeral party.
Odette, Jimmie, Albert, a priest, four pallbearers. The service was solemn as the wind blew and the sea roared all around them. It pounded into a frenzy on the shore. Souillac is Mauritius’s southernmost village, and no reef protects that stretch of coast from waves born in the Antarctic. A strong wind blew clouds of sand into the sky and whirled them into the trees that bordered the cemetery. Sad words, a hymn and some verses from the Bible about fishermen waiting for storms to pass.
The cemetery stretched in every direction, the blocks of graves sectioned according to religion. Old vaults were open to the sky, their black blocks carted for a wall somewhere else. The tops of crosses were missing.
Leonard’s coffin was lowered into the ground, and handfuls of sand were tossed. Sand and tears. The priest was kind and said that he was always available. He wanted to minister to his flock, and prove that Christ died so that men like Leonard could live. No one argued, and no one waited for the grave-diggers to fill the hole.