A rainstorm forced Maude, Leonard, Odette and Georges to shelter in an abandoned copra store; the noise of a dumper truck drifted across the lagoon, and chainsaws whined in the jungle. American naval construction workers (Seabees) had arrived on Diego Garcia. They yelled, palms split, rats and the rain ran in streams through the store.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Leonard.
‘We’re all hungry!’ Maude snapped.
‘We’ll find something later,’ said Odette.
‘Will we?’
‘Yes. We always do, don’t we?’
Maude thought about that. ‘No we don’t. And I can’t see why.’
She had lost weight and her patience. Her powers of intuition had been warped by the circumstances. When she narrowed her eyes and closed her mind to everything around her all she could see was a mist swirling around screaming people. She couldn’t see their faces and didn’t recognise their voices – they were familiar – but she preferred not to know who they were.
The rain gave up after an hour and Georges said, ‘Let’s see what they’re doing.’ He pointed across the lagoon to where the Seabees were working. He wanted to see their machines. Diego Garcia’s tractors and lorries were old and rusting. Some of the diggers the Americans owned were yellow and shone in the sunlight. They were greased and fast across the beaches and into the jungle after all the trees. ‘You coming? We’ll get close to them.’
‘Alright.’
He entertained the children with a song as they walked around the lagoon. They smiled, but not like they used to. They couldn’t understand why life was so different or why their mother had changed; she lagged behind and kicked stones into the sea.
The palms dripped as the clouds rolled away and left a washed, pale sky hanging across the horizon. An American supply boat rode at anchor. The sun glittered its fittings; a chainsaw stopped, a tractor hauled trunks out of the jungle and dumped them on damp fires.
Smoke filled the air. Maude and the others sat on palm stumps and watched the work. A Seabee saw them and waved them over.
‘Howdy!’
The Ilois nodded.
‘Bob!’ The American held out his hand. The Ilois shook it. ‘You wanna drink?’ He smiled. ‘Cigarettes?’
The Ilois shook their heads.
Bob made a motion of hand to mouth. ‘Drink?’ he said again.
Georges understood. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled back.
Bob went to a hut and came back with cans of beer and Coke, and bars of chocolate. Maude took one of these without a word and peeled its wrapper carefully. She folded the paper and the foil separately, tucked them in her skirt and divided the chocolate equally.
The last time any of them had tasted chocolate was so long gone it was barely memory. They ate with their eyes closed, swigged the drinks and thought, for a second, that things could change back to how they had been before. Peace, cultivated vegetable gardens, laying chickens, the copra factories working. Enough food. Maude opened her eyes and watched another palm topple into the lagoon. The fires recovered from the rainstorm and threw massive spitting flames into the air.
Bob looked at the Ilois. He didn’t know anything about them. All he was doing was clearing jungle and laying concrete. Thin natives were unexpected.
‘Have some more,’ he said, and, ‘You’re hungry.’
‘Cigarettes?’ said Georges.
‘Better than that!’ He left and came back with more food. More chocolate and some other rations. Beef stew in packets, macaroni cheese in bags and a bag of oranges. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take it.’ And he rolled a joint.
He smoked. Georges watched. ‘You wanna toke?’ He offered. ‘Philippino,’ he said.
Georges smiled. It was months since his last cigarette. He thanked Bob and took a drag. It tasted and rushed to his head. It banged his ears together, said ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ at the same time and shrunk his eyeballs to the size of peas. He coughed and smiled.
‘Grass,’ said the Seabee, and curled a finger against the side of his head.
Georges swayed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘You know?’
Georges nodded.
‘We bought a few lids over – if you want some you know where to come…’
Georges nodded again and said, ‘I’ll stay and watch you,’ but when Maude said, ‘Come on!’ he went quietly. ‘You don’t want to watch this!’ Maude spread her hands and shouted, ‘Come back!’
‘Don’t forget!’ Bob yelled after them, ‘Anytime.’ And he went back to his work.
Other Seabees wanted to know who the natives were. A prefabricated building was erected on a rectangle of cleared land and beside this butterflies tumbled through the smoke.
Maude and the others sat in their hut and sucked beef stew out of foil packets. It was cold, and the meat gristly. Georges rolled his eyes and spilt some on his trousers. He was hungrier than ever, ate two packets and wanted more.
‘No,’ said Maude.
‘Why not? I’m starved and there’s plenty. He said we could go back for more.’
‘We shouldn’t have to.’
‘But we do. Go on.’ He held out a hand and fingered a piece of meat from the corner of his mouth.
‘We’ve got to save it.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Odette looked in his eyes. ‘Stop looking like that.’
‘Like what?’ Georges stared.
‘Like that!’
‘I wasn’t doing anything!’ He shrugged and looked away.
The air was thick with the sickly smell of burning jungle. A piece of tin blew across the beach and onto the sea. The supply ship blew a cloud of smoke into the sky. Georges stood up and walked to the ruins of his hut and pissed behind it.
He’d enjoyed the joint, and a month later went back for another. Bob met him on the seaward shore beneath the runway and they watched birds swooping over the surf.
Tractors hauled trees, new lorries with working doors hauled sheets of galvanised iron as other Seabees erected fences. Frightened chickens watched from thickets, made gurgling noises and pecked at the ground. No corn, no old vegetable leaves. Dust. Fires plumed into the sky and a breeze ripped strands of smoke away. Bob rolled up, lit up and rested his head against a stump.
‘You know you’re not meant to be here,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Our boss…’ Bob pointed at a prefab.
Georges grunted. He took the offered joint.
‘We’re taking the island over,’ he said.
Georges took another toke. His brain collapsed into his stomach, he needed a drink, he tried to speak but his tongue was glued to the top of his mouth.
‘Dynamite blow, huh?’
Georges nodded, and when Bob went off and came back with some more rations, he nodded again but couldn’t say anything. He had to sit where he was until the feeling passed, and he could stand up and walk back to the others.
Maude went to the shop and heard that bombs were going to be exploded on the island. She told Georges. He went to meet Bob to find out if it was true, but couldn’t find him. An Englishman met him instead, and told him to leave the site.
‘Leave the site!’
Georges shook his head. He wanted some food. The Englishman had a red face and sweated.
‘Leave the site! Go on!’ He raised his voice. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Georges hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Bob’s here?’ he said.
‘Look!’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you people understand?’ The Englishman wiped his brow. He waved his hands. ‘You have no right to be here.’
Georges shook his head and pointed across the lagoon to where the last Ilois huts stood.
‘No right.’ The Englishman had a pen. He took it out of a pocket, ticked a piece of paper and walked away.