A tractor hauling guano stalled and spilt half its load on the road behind Maude’s hut. The driver shrugged, said, ‘Suppose I’ve got to fetch a shovel,’ and began to walk back the way he’d come. Maude watched him go before shouting, ‘Fetch some bags! And buckets! Quickly.’ She pointed at the guano. ‘We’ll have some of that, RUN!’
Many people collected the guano and carried it home for their gardens. Leonard threw some at Odette. When he showed Maude, the woman didn’t say anything. She was carrying a wild donkey. She was small, but the donkeys were small too, more like big dogs.
She was digging the garden and waiting for guano. She heard a donkey in a ditch, so she climbed into the ditch and began to heave the animal out. Leonard and Odette came back to find her walking out of the jungle with it in her arms, and when they asked her what she was doing she said, ‘Giving it a lift.’
The children laughed and said something stupid, but they couldn’t see their mother’s expression. The donkey was in the way. Small donkey, small face, a big laugh for the children. But the animal had broken a leg and couldn’t walk on its own. It struggled but Maude could restrain it. A rooster crowed.
‘He’s broken his leg,’ said Maude.
‘Will it mend?’ said Odette.
‘In the end. He’ll need tending.’
‘I’ll help.’
‘I know you will.’
‘Me too,’ said Leonard. He was quieter than his sister, and often left out. Not this time – he arranged some leaves under a propped sheet of galvanised. ‘He’ll like this bed,’ he said.
‘It’s better than ours!’
‘Or mine!’ Maude laughed and pinched him, and when the tractor driver arrived with a shovel she laughed as the man scratched his head and stared at the sky, as if the guano had been sucked up and into the clouds.
Like her children, her parents and her grandparents’ grandparents whose bodies had been mourned with the spirit-seeker and the story-teller present at Minni-Minni, Maude had been born on the island, dropped in the sand and tuned to the rhythms of tiny island life or twisted like a lemon in a drink. Doing the same things for years. She felt messages in her bones.
Presentiment. She felt a spasm, just sitting on the veranda. A girl had gone into labour, three miles away. No relation, it was evening, Maude ran all the way without telling anyone where she was going. Leonard and Odette watched her go and sat down to wait for their father to come home.
The girl was lying on coconut mats with women all around. The atmosphere in the hut was warm and relaxed; a chicken sat on the bed and blinked.
Maude acted as reassurer to the girl, who trusted the woman. Maude’s reputation had aged to myth; the best counsellor, confessor and soother. A dog barked, some men hung about outside with bottles, back early from the plantations and wanting food now; they drank, smoked cigarettes and listened for the girl to take long, deep breaths.
She did. The sun bent flowers out of clouds and the girl went ‘woo woo woo’. ‘Woo woo woo!’ Maude held her hand and made her count ‘One, two three, four… count sparrows in the trees!’ she said, and patted a damp cloth across the girl’s forehead.
When the contractions quietened and the girl rested her head to one side and gazed at the lagoon through gaps in the walls, Maude dampened her own forehead and remembered her children coming. They had been easy births, and both times Raphael had helped. He was an unusual Ilois man, and took time off from work in the plantations to be there. His big hands were cut but gentle when they wrapped themselves around one of hers and he told her to count. ‘Count sparrows in the trees,’ he’d said, ‘or wagons on the coconut train.’ It had been trundling through the jungle as Leonard’s head appeared and when Raphael yelled about ‘a boy!’ Maude sat up immediately, took the child, wiped his face and said, ‘Pass me a cloth. Just look at the mess! I can’t do it with my hands…’
She was shaken out of her memories when the girl moaned from her belly and let the sound build through her body to a yell that shocked the chicken off the bed, out of the door and into the sunlight.
‘Steady,’ said Maude.
The midwife said, ‘It’s coming now; don’t push… push… wait…’ Maude said, ‘Listen to her,’ when the girl shook her head. ‘Do as she says.’
The baby was born as Leonard and Odette, bored at home and curious to know what their mother was doing, came and stood by the door to watch.
‘He looks like a fish,’ said Leonard.
‘He’s a girl, fool,’ said Odette, and ‘it’s only because she’s slimy.’ She shook her head. Her brother related everything to fishing, and didn’t stay long enough for anyone to ask what he was doing there. He went and sat on the beach to count boats as they tacked across the lagoon; the evening was cool. When Maude was thanked, she said, ‘Fetch him,’ to Odette, and the three walked home as the sky ripened like a fruit and spat last pips of light into the night.
Raphael was waiting for them at home. He had been in the plantations late and, tired, stretched across the veranda to doze. Work had been hard… he wished he could fish all day. Generations of Ilois had bred absolute knowledge of the lagoons and waters around the island; every reef and headland was traced into his genes. The strength of the currents there, the depth of water here. He was thinking, as he dozed, about a reef in the north, beyond Simpson Point.
Maude tapped him in the side with her foot and said, ‘Elaine had a little girl.’
He opened his eyes. ‘It wouldn’t have been a big one…’
‘It could have been. Look at the boy.’ Maude pointed at Leonard. ‘He was big; long. Remember?’
Raphael thought about that. ‘I suppose so,’ he said, and went to fetch a bottle his friend Georges had given him.
Georges was a massive man with massive biceps and a broken nose. He could split a coconut with a light tap, and stare birds to death. He lived with his mother. She was old and mumbled about spirits from Madagascar, but was happy when she was sat in a chair with a whisk to keep flies off and a piece of string. She’d fiddle with the string and let Georges drink at crossroads or passing places along the tracks.
‘We should ask him to eat,’ said Raphael. ‘And his mother. She never gets out.’
‘She doesn’t eat.’
‘She must!’
‘Raw eggs. That’s all.’
‘She could come anyway. Georges can carry the chair over. She’d like the change. All she ever does is sit and stare at the same thing every day.’
‘She’s old.’
‘I know that.’
‘Good. Then catch something different. There’s ripe aubergines; we’ll eat something special.’
Raphael laughed. ‘Different? What you mean? I catch different every day!’
‘I know,’ she said, and touched his knee.
Georges came to eat on a Saturday. He carried his mother over and then her chair, and set her up on Maude’s veranda. She was amazed to see the lagoon from a different angle, and complained that spirits had come and were spreading salt in everyone’s eyes, when everyone knew spirits avoided salt. They were deceiving them before something happened.
‘Nothing’s going to happen, Mother,’ said Georges. ‘Look; here’s eggs, and in a bowl. You don’t normally get a bowl, do you?’
‘No.’
‘It makes a change, doesn’t it?’
She didn’t like a change. She shook her head, ate the eggs and dropped the bowl. He stuck his broken nose close to her face and smiled. He had three teeth and patted her head. If anyone hurt her he would strangle them.
He said, ‘I’ll be over there,’ and pointed to a fire on the beach. ‘I’ll watch you.’
‘Good.’
He had brought a bottle of calou, a dangerous drink made from the sap of coconut trees; he poured cups and played with Leonard and Odette. He let them hit him but they couldn’t hurt him. They punched his chest, his legs and his arms but he just roared with laughter and wouldn’t fall over. He picked them up and tossed them into the lagoon.
‘There!’ he shouted. ‘That’s what I do to children.’ They laughed. He let them have a sip of calou.
Maude cooked aubergines in a sauce of coconut juice, onion, chillies and tomatoes, and served them with lobsters. Georges told a story about a broken tractor, Raphael threw a rock at a rat, and after the food had been eaten and the children put to bed, the adults lay on the beach, poked the cooking fire and drank. The moon rose and veined the lagoon with phantom, still light.
Georges’ mother grunted.
‘I’ll fetch some more,’ Georges said, went to his hut and came back with two bottles of wine. ‘You’ll like this,’ he said. ‘It’s fresh.’
‘Fill mine,’ said Raphael.
‘Women first. Maude?’
‘Go on.’
Georges drank fast, lit a cigarette and slurred, ‘You know… I have a secret.’
‘What’s that?’
Georges looked at his mother. She was asleep but he whispered when he said, ‘Something no one else knows. Only her and me. We kept it from everyone.’
‘Did you?’
‘So if I tell you, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. It’s very…’
‘Promise,’ said Raphael.
‘And me,’ said Maude.
‘Good,’ Georges whispered. He belched and swayed in his seat. ‘Good. Then I’ll tell you…’
‘What?’
He lowered his head and mouthed the words first before saying, ‘I’m a German,’ and drinking some more wine.
Maude laughed. Georges looked at her. Her eyes reflected the moonlight on the ocean, and when she brushed a fly away he felt an unusual quiver in his stomach.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that you’re…’
‘German. At least half.’ And he amazed Raphael and Maude with a story that was a lie. They knew it, but he’d told it to himself so many times that he didn’t doubt a word of it. He spilt some drink and said, ‘But don’t tell anyone.’
‘You said that.’
Georges claimed that his father had been a sailor on a German warship that visited Diego Garcia ‘a long time ago’. Raphael didn’t laugh. It was true about the warship. Sailors had come ashore and mended some Ilois boats, but everyone knew Georges’ father had gone to Peros Banhos and not come back. Georges trying to convince people with stories didn’t do him any good.
‘German,’ said Maude, when he’d finished. ‘Maybe I should tell you a secret.’
Raphael sat up. He didn’t know his wife had secrets.
‘What is it?’ said Georges.
‘Me and him are British.’
‘But not real Britons,’ said Georges. ‘There’s real German blood in here.’ He tapped his arm. ‘Pints.’
‘Yes!’ said Maude and she reminded him about the doctors, teachers, policemen and administrators who called on the island. She had a paper Union Jack to wave at administrators and could yell, ‘Long live the Queen!’
Raphael watched the tide and only half listened to the argument. Instead, he thought about fish he’d surprised in past nights. Night fishing was often more successful than day fishing – he turned this thought over, looked at it from all angles and stood up when Georges said, ‘And you can’t make oil from books…’
‘I’m going fishing,’ he said, and clapped. The fire died down. ‘I’ll take a lamp. You can help push out.’
‘Me?’ Georges finished a bottle and squinted.
‘You can do it.’
‘I don’t know.’ Georges had had enough to drink. He wouldn’t bother to work in the morning.
‘I can’t do it on my own,’ said Raphael, and he carried a lamp to the boat, tied it in the stern and coiled some lines into a bag.
Georges nodded. ‘Right,’ he said, put his shoulder to the stern of the boat and pushed.
‘Harder, German!’
‘It’s stuck!’
‘No, it’s not. Nothing’s ever stuck! You’re not trying!’
When the boat was floating, Georges gave Raphael a shot of wine, waved him over the lagoon and watched until the stern lamp was a pin-prick. Then he walked back to the fire and sat next to Maude.
‘No,’ she said.
On Diego Garcia, other men sometimes took the place of absent husbands at night. Not Maude’s bed. She had enough to do, and when he tried to kiss her she said ‘Take her home,’ and pointed to his mother. She had slumped back in her chair, and was snoring. ‘Go on.’
He shrugged and said ‘One day, Maude.’
‘One day never!’
‘We’ll see,’ he whispered.
She heard that but didn’t say anything else. He staggered around and moaned about ‘a headache now’. It was his fault. If he was always going to be stupid she would treat him like a child. ‘Go home now, German,’ she said, and pinned a canvas sheet across the door of her hut. ‘Good night.’