‘HAS ANYONE SEEN Sister Brigid?’ asked Conchita.
She was sitting at the evening meal in the refectory with Sister Johanna and Sister Jean Francoise. Brigid had not joined them at the table, a most unusual occurrence for her. So far the simple meal had been conducted in silence, with each nun occupied with her own thoughts. Earlier that evening they had listened to the local news programme on the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. That had been followed by a recorded episode of a Paul Temple thriller supplied by the BBC Transcription Service. Unfortunately the series had been supplied on half a dozen separate discs, an occurrence almost guaranteed to confuse the various local announcers on duty each night. Over the last five weeks the episodes had been played in the order of one, four, two, one again and three, a pattern which so far had rendered a fairly simplistic story positively labyrinthine, and had even led to a number of Honiara’s expatriate community sending a delegate to the studios to request that the serial be started again from the first episode.
‘I thought I saw her on the beach looking out at the lagoon earlier,’ said Sister Jean Francoise.
Conchita folded her napkin and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ll just make sure she’s all right.’
It was a cool, refreshing night out on the beach. Earlier in the day it had rained, and the leaves of the trees and bushes gleamed like unsheathed swords in the half-light.
Sister Brigid was standing on a small escarpment of rocks with the placid water lapping at her bare feet. She nodded as Conchita joined her.
‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘Who would think that the lagoon has suffered so much bloodshed and misery?’
‘Are you all right?’ Conchita asked.
‘Why should I be anything else?’
‘I was hoping that you would tell me that,’ Conchita said.
Brigid looked away. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I know that that doesn’t make me a good nun, or even a good woman, but I can’t talk about it.’
‘It must be something very painful,’ said Conchita.
‘You don’t know how painful,’ Brigid said.
‘Suppose I tell you what I have put together about what happened seventeen years ago,’ said Conchita. ‘Mr Evans, the coast-watcher on Kolombangara, put out an all-points radio message that an American patrol boat, the PT-109, had been sunk in a collision with a Japanese destroyer in the Roviana Lagoon. No one knew if there were any survivors. In fact, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy and ten of his crew, some of them wounded, had managed to swim to the island of Kasolo. Later they swam across to a larger neighbouring island called Olasana, which had more food. Evans asked for all available coast-watchers and their helpers to scour the area to find Kennedy and his men, before the Japanese got to them. Soon the area was buzzing with activity. At that time, the Japanese occupied Gizo, Munda and Kolambangara, while the US forces were preparing to launch a campaign to dislodge them. In the middle of all this, eleven American seamen were trying to hide from the Japanese and contact the Americans.’
‘It was chaos,’ said Sister Brigid. ‘There were ships and aeroplanes everywhere, and you couldn’t be sure which were American and which belonged to the Japanese.’
‘You had been taking incredible risks helping to smuggle crashed American airmen back to the Allied lines ever since you had arrived at Marakosi mission.’
‘Wasn’t I the feisty one?’ said Sister Brigid.
‘You heard over the mission radio schedule that Coast-watcher Evans was recruiting everyone he could get his hands on to rescue Kennedy and his men, and you wanted to join in.’
‘I’d left it a bit late,’ said the Irish nun. ‘I’d only been at Marakosi for a year or so, and I didn’t know the lagoon too well. By the time I got myself organized, most of the islanders I’d worked with before had scattered all over the place in their search. I needed a guide, and I was told that the only ones left who knew the area were on Kolombangara.’ The nun shuddered. ‘It was a dreadful place. I knew as soon as I got there that I’d made a terrible mistake. That island was evil incarnate.’
‘But you found an islander willing to guide you.’
‘Kakaihe, yes. He was very young, but he seemed keen. He begged me to let him paddle us both across to Olasana. That was the first island in the area that we chose at random.
‘So you actually landed on Olasana while Lieutenant Kennedy and the others were there?’ asked Conchita.
The other nun ignored her question. ‘I was in such a hurry to get away from Kolombangara. You see, when I arrived there, I discovered that a detachment of Japanese soldiers had been stationed on the other side of the island. I think the islanders had invited them; I wouldn’t put it past that treacherous lot. So I picked up Kakaihe and we paddled away for dear life.’
‘And three days later you brought his dead body back home.’
‘The Japanese had left by then, recalled to defend Gizo. I helped with the poor boy’s burial service and came back to Marakosi.’
‘You were in a pretty awful state by then,’ said Conchita. ‘What happened during the three days that you were away looking for Mr Kennedy?’
‘You mean you won’t tell me.’
‘Put it that way, if you like. Things were told to me during those three days, and I made promises myself. I shall keep those promises until my death, no matter what.’
‘You’re protecting someone, aren’t you?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘If it were only that, I wouldn’t give a damn!’ said Sister Brigid with a flash of feeling. ‘But it’s much more. I have been charged with saving a man’s soul!’