Four

“Mr Will, I presume?”

In which I cross over to the other side – my hosts emerge – I take the grand tour – admire my new houses, large and small – go for a swim in a stream – dine on the local cuisine – and am saved by the artful application of suntan lotion.

The following morning at ten forty sharp I left through the same red gate and climbed into a narrow, speedy fibre-glass boat with an outboard engine and a cheery driver called Reuben. I waved farewell to Gerry, Geoff and Marlene, thanking them for everything, including a bit of a headache. So off we set – ten miles of water took about forty minutes to cover in the shallow-draught ‘canoe’. It was the longest journey I have ever made. As the milky wake lengthened from our stern and small schools of sparkling flying fish zoomed ahead as a special escort, my past disappeared behind me. Rounding the first island, we emerged into a wide channel of water. Without warning, the shallow reef dropped sheer away and as if soaring over a cliff’s edge we floated out over a bottomless blue. As I looked down dark forms twisted and turned indistinct against the coral wall. The peaks of a mountain at the northern end of Randuvu towered ahead of us and what had for so long been the far distant future became suddenly and undeniably the present.

As we rode the slight swell that was rolling its lazy way in from the open sea, I glimpsed in a lightning flash of sunshine the outline of a figure sitting stiffly on the seat behind me. I just had time to catch sight of a furry green hat and the dirty white creases of a musket-proof raincoat before the light flickered again and the Commander disappeared. Just checking that I was not attempting to bale out at this late stage.

As the vaporised spray puffed up from the bow and wetted my lips, I tasted the salt. No, I was here, most definitely here. How I had allowed it all to happen, on the other hand, was another question entirely.

Twenty minutes later Reuben, who had sat silently cross-legged at the tiller, raised his arm and pointed.

“Mendali,” he shouted above the noise of the engine. I peered over the bow and surely, bit by bit, on a point off to my right, I could make out the forms of houses, a clearing, a small jetty built from coral. As we crossed back inside the reef, the water turned again to turquoise patched with the floating green shadows of clouds drifting overhead. Curious, they looked down on the thinning crown of this pale newcomer.

The picture grew imperceptibly larger and more intelligible, a slide coming into focus, until, a few hundred yards off, I could make out the village in its every detail. Every window and door was outlined, each tree distinct. I could see, even count, a few chickens pecking around the bottoms of the trees. Yet strangely, the scrawny birds apart, there was no sign of life, no one to be seen.

Reuben put the engine into reverse, slowing us down alongside the small wharf, and threw a couple of turns of rope expertly around one of the wooden uprights that acted as fenders against the sharp coral. Climbing inelegantly out, I grabbed the bags as they were dumped down at my feet. I glanced around anxiously. Still nobody. Then, from the shadow of a low building, there appeared, tottering cautiously, a naked little boy of about two or three. With one finger in the corner of his mouth he approached, gazing up at me with round, brown eyes.

“Hello,” I said and smiled. He just gazed.

Slowly figures began to appear. They came from behind trees and the backs of houses; some appeared at windows and at doorways. One little girl appeared out of a bush, leaves still sticking out of her great fuzz of hair. This all as if everyone had been hiding, waiting to see what this strange man was like before they showed themselves. I smiled, mainly because I couldn’t really think of anything else to do, and did not move. Behind me the engine puttered out of earshot. I waited, the blood pumping out a reggae beat in my temples, my tongue huge in the back of my throat. After a few minutes, gathered in front of me was a group of perhaps one hundred or one hundred and fifty extremely curious people. My smile was beginning to ache. Discreetly wiping the sweat from my forehead, I shifted from one foot to the other.

From the midst of this mêlée, the crowd parting on a muttered, indistinct instruction, there approached a man, slight in build but wiry. He wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. His curled hair was cut short, his face tattooed or rather, it seemed, carved, with intricate patterns tracing either cheek. He thrust out his hand. Clearing his throat, he said in quiet and excellent English and without a hint of irony:

“Mr Will, I presume.”

He was staring fixedly at the floor just to the right of my right shoe. I mistakenly thought that he had spotted something that I had dropped as I had disembarked. Shaking his hand, I too looked searchingly at the same spot but as I did so I became aware that he was only fixing his gaze there because, either through shyness or custom, he chose not to meet my eye. Unfortunately, when I bent down everybody else presumed that I had spotted something of the greatest significance on the ground. The assembled company shuffled forward en masse, leaning to peer at the same significant spot in search of a mythical something. Fortunately this impasse was dissolved when the man said softly, “My name is Luta. You are a friend of Commander, one of his friends in England, and we are happy that you come this long way. Now, of course, the Commander is dead, thank God.”

I managed to suppress to a small snort the laughter that threatened to break out of me at this unfortunate turn of phrase, and immediately felt ashamed of my immaturity when I looked at the genuine sentiment in the other man’s face as he went on:

“But you are welcome here in our village. Now everybody must shake hand with Mr Will.”

So, after the instruction was relayed in a language I did not understand, everybody did. Eager hands, firm ones, old ones and shy ones, even perfectly smooth baby hands that were tendered by their mothers, generally resulting in wails of terror. “Small piccaninny no look any white man before,” Luta explained matter-of-factly. Some minutes later he made a suggestion: “So now you come and look around our village.”

Turning, he started to walk back barefoot along the sharp coral of the jetty. I followed him and everyone else followed me and in a silent gaggle we wandered gently around the small settlement.

The houses were built on a narrow sandy point perhaps one hundred yards wide and three hundred yards long. Running down one edge, they were all of much the same design. Raised on stilts perhaps four foot tall, the front two legs dipping their toes in the waters of the lagoon, the houses were made of leaf. That is to say that the walls and roof were made of leaves cut and folded over a long flat stick and held in place with the bark skinned from the same stick interlacing the leaves. The whole formed a panel some ten feet long. These had then been tied with more bark, each overlapping the one below, to the wooden frame of the house and to the roof. Most houses, it seemed, were divided into two or three different rooms and each accommodated an extended family, which, judging from the number of children running around, meant that most were at pretty full stretch. Across the way from each dwelling stood a kitchen or cookhouse built from the same materials. On the dirt floor were an open fire and a pile of stones.

In the centre of the village there was a clearing, a bare area of ground that was used for meetings and feasts and special days. On normal days, someone explained, the youngsters would use it to kick a football, if they had one. If not, they would just use one of the smaller children.

We wandered to the middle of the point. The church stood in an area of its own, which was laid to grass. Every Friday from then on I would see the women religiously trimming the neat churchyard. Bent double at the waist, one arm tucked behind their backs and swinging bush knives with the other, they would advance in line from the church to the graveyard until it was all cut. The cemetery was enclosed by a low bamboo fence. In one corner small round mounds bore testament to those born in the village who were to be children for eternity. Some of the more recent graves showed signs of continued grieving – woven mats, a pile of pretty shells, a bunch of wilting flowers laid against the white of the coral that was strewn over each grave. The church itself was made of sawn planks and round trunks, roofed with sheet iron rusted brown and beige by the salt sea air. Inside, the walls were painted a fading, peeling light blue, and decorated with carvings of boats and fish picked out in red and white.

Luta and I went in. Everybody else waited silently outside. Uncomfortable, I was beginning to feel like a visiting dignitary. Yet unconsciously I was falling into the role. I adopted a measured, solemn walk, clasping my hands, fingers interlocked, across my stomach as we stepped through the open door.

“Commander build this church for us. Before we had no place for worship but in 1956 we bless this place and now we come here every day in the morning and in the evening. It is very nice for prayer.”

Twice a day…Well, it would be good for me.

It was cool and quite dark inside. Sand, carefully swept, covered the floor and down either side of the aisle stood pews of roughly hewn timber, worn smooth and shiny by the passage of time and innumerable bottoms. Following my host’s lead, I achieved an awkward nod of the head as we approached the altar. It was simple, perhaps humble – a table decorated with a white cloth emblazoned with a hand-stitched red cross. On top stood two wooden candlesticks and beside these two tall, highly polished brass containers which on closer inspection turned out to be hefty shell canisters. They served as vases for long, feathery leaves, yellow and bright red.

“Japanese forget to take these home,” Luta grinned as he held them up for the light to glint off them. I guessed he was referring to the war but as I was not entirely sure what he meant I just smiled and nodded and shook my head. Only later did I come to understand better the brief but violent role that these islands had played in the course of world history.

We turned again to leave and it was then that I noticed by the door, standing on a wooden plinth waist high, a giant upturned shell some two feet across. I looked into it. It was half full of water – the font.

We walked back outside into the aggressive heat. The others smiled and we moved on.

“Next one, we show you house for rest but first ‘smol-house’ belong you. Him number one important one.”

Led through a screen of flowering shrubs, I found myself standing in front of a child’s tree house. Built precariously in the lower branches of a large tree that grew out over the sea, my lavatory had a green canvas door and a sloping tin roof. It could only be approached by a twisting, serpentine root that, even at a leisurely pace in the daylight, was going to require an acrobatic feat to tackle. Ushered up for an inspection, I made my wobbly way to the threshold and held the sheet aside. Inside were splintery wooden floorboards into which someone had cut a neat hole. I peered down.

I had only ever peed into a tropical fish tank once before and then only rather late on at a party. It had all been a bit of a mistake, particularly as I seemed to remember that I had not made myself very popular with the owner or, for that matter, the fish. Here, though, was a positive invitation to do so. I was greatly relieved. Reversing back, I stepped out onto the root.

“So now Mr Will make nice speech.”

Speech!

Looking down at the assembled crowd I saw that all eyes were upon me, waiting kindly and patiently. To my surprise I noticed several blue pairs amongst them and shocks of blond hair set against the black and copper skins. Later it was suggested to me that this was the genetic legacy of some passing Dutch sailors or perhaps it was just a hereditary anomaly – whatever the reason they were a very striking and handsome people. Men and boys wore only shorts whilst the women were dressed in long skirts of designs best described as boisterous. Many of the younger women and girls had hitched the elasticated waistbands up over their breasts thus creating fetching mini-dresses.

“Er, well yes, very nice…” I teetered. “I am very happy to be with you and bring you greetings from your friends in England.”

I cringed at my effortless pomposity. My arms held out like a tightrope walker, I blundered on. “The Commander would have been very happy to see you all but he cannot because he is er…well…um, he’s dead.”

Suddenly a still passed over the company and I realised that all eyes were now cast down.

Bugger.

“Anyway, this is a particularly fine building…”

Turning my head slightly, I gestured slowly with one thumb, fell sideways into a small shrub and disappeared. To my relief, there was a ripple of good-natured laughter and, to polite applause, I was helped up.

Three wooden steps led up to a little picket gate that opened into my ‘house for rest’. With a great deal of excitement, my bags were dragged in and I was left to unpack and make myself at home. It was wonderful, possessing what I think would be described in a magazine as a superb waterfront location. Indeed so close was it to the sea that the high tide had left its mark on the front two stilts. A sitting room at the front looked out across the lagoon, over to the island of New Georgia and in the distance the cloud-crested, conical Kolombangara Mountain. Just outside the window between my house and the other huts there were a table and two benches shaded by a lean-to, sloping roof.

Inside, a flimsy wickerwork chair stood at a low writing desk above which had been nailed a short plank – a bookshelf. I reached for my rucksack and pulled out my brown paper parcel tied up with string. Three smartly bound hardbacks were to be the beginning of my library. I inspected each volume closely; a good deal of thought had been put into their choice. In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson told the tales of his travels in the Pacific, which was also, I noticed with a frown, described on the flyleaf as ‘his final resting place’. At least he had been correct to surmise on the first page that he ‘had come to the afterpiece of life and had only the nurse and the undertaker to expect’.

Robinson Crusoe was going to be a good long read – well, long anyway, I thought nervously, as I flicked through pages of ‘thou’s ‘thus’s and ‘Year of our Lord’s. Mind you, there were lots of illustrations.

The third book, which to my mild embarrassment turned out to be a ‘Junior Version’, was entitled A Pattern of Islands and written by a man who went by the unlikely name of Arthur Grimble. Although he sounded more like a Victorian stand-up comedian, he had in fact spent the best part of a lifetime as a District Commissioner in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which appeared to be stuck even further out into the Pacific than the Solomons. I sat down on the wobbly wooden chair and flicked through the three books to see if I could elicit what their authors’ initial reactions had been to life in the islands.

Robinson Crusoe had, I was soon to discover, an ability to make remarks of the astonishingly obvious and demonstrated an impressive, self-satisfied insouciance in making them. His comment on his arrival on his uninhabited island possesses the essence of his style:

“…I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with; no work to be done but by the labour of my hands; and I used to say I lived just like a man cast away upon some desert island.”

Disconcertingly, both Robert Louis Stevenson and Grimble expressed concerns about this island life. Grimble reckoned it took a little while to get used to. Shortly after arriving, he had discovered that the sole of one of his feet had been eaten by a giant cockroach while he slept. On waking he had been consoled by a more experienced friend: “Take it easy, son: it’s only the first ten years in the islands that’s hell.”

But even after that RLS believed that there was no escape: “Few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed and yet more rarely repeated.”

I closed the book firmly and put it away with the others on the shelf. Right, well fine, no need to worry about all that; anyway, better have a bit more of a look around; that was all years ago. Things were bound to be different now, bound to be.

I continued to investigate my new house. Through an opening at the back of the room lay a bedroom with an old enamel-topped table and a narrow bed built from wood. On the bed lay a wafer mattress, the thinnest I had ever seen, let alone planned to sleep on. I tested it with a bump. I was sure that I would get used to it – in time. I erected my mosquito net – a box arrangement advertised as being ‘for the ex-pat’. That was me. Having eventually tied its four corners to various rafters, using a system that did not look very much like the one on the instructions, I tried it out. Lying flat out on my back I looked around me. Being surrounded by this white box gave the strange, slightly discomforting feeling of being, in some curious way, interred. It cannot, however, have been that discomforting as I promptly fell asleep.

I sat up with a start as sometimes happens when you wake up somewhere unfamiliar like a hospital or a police station and wrestled my way out of bed. I looked out of the window. I could not believe it – a fat, pink sun was slung low in the sky and the evening’s shadows crept long across the village clearing. Suddenly a child’s voice called out: “Mr Will go swim now.”

Go for a swim – now? Well, I had not planned to but I supposed I could. Anyway it appeared to be a direction rather than a question. I looked out of the house down the steps, massaging my rubbery face and hoping to find some coherent thought returning. At the bottom of the steps stood a boy of about six or seven. He was holding an aluminium saucepan and a small piece of soap.

“Come,” he said.

I was mystified but, grabbing a towel, followed the instruction and we set off down a track into the trees. Along the path we met a steady line of villagers coming towards us, dripping wet, the water drops sparkling in their hair. Piles of washing balanced regally on their heads and each carried a small aluminium saucepan and a bar of soap. I smiled as I passed but each time I did so they lowered their eyes, carrying on by without a word.

“You white man,” said the small boy elliptically. We walked for about ten minutes between towering trees, parrots squawking in the high, scarecrow branches, until we came into a clearing – a narrow valley in fact – of carefully cultivated and maintained gardens in which grew a great variety of plants that I had never seen before. Many had huge, green, shiny leaves. I rubbed one between finger and thumb as I passed.

“Taro,” said the small boy whose name, it turned out, was Stanley. I was none the wiser. At the far end of the garden, a bright stream wound its way through the roots of trees, the last evening sun reflecting warmly off the surface. Knee-deep stood a beautiful young woman dressed in a lava-lava – a bright red and blue cloth wrapped about her waist. Her eyes closed, she was pouring water over her head with her aluminium saucepan. Sadly, she became aware of this new presence. She looked round slowly with one eye. When she saw me she jumped out of the stream without a word and went careering off down the slippery mud path as fast as her wet feet would carry her. Stanley chuckled and pointed at the water.

“You swim.”

Compliantly I pulled off my T-shirt and stepped into the water in my shorts. It was not warm. Some people like to tell you how wonderful cold water is, how refreshing, how bracing. I do not. I tipped water over my head in the approved fashion and had a scrub around with the soap. A fish darted between my legs, gagging on the suds as I rinsed myself. Better get used to it, I thought, stepping out again. As I dried off, a flight of huge dark forms whooshed overhead and I shivered in the dusk of the forest. The water had really been quite chilly.

By the time we returned to the village it was nearly dark but a blue kerosene storm lamp burned brightly on the table outside my house. I thanked Stanley and went up the steps into the house to change. When I emerged, a bowl and spoon had been laid on the table. There was no one about so I approached cautiously. I looked in – a fish and a potato or, at least, the head half of a fish and a potato or, to be absolutely precise, the head half of what looked distinctly like a large goldfish and a potato. Ignoring the staring, rather accusatory eyes, I picked up the spoon. I had not eaten that day but had curiously little appetite. The fish was fine if you moved the lamp away a little bit. The potato was sweet and had all the consistency of tiling grout.

I was manfully chomping my way through it when a group of women and children bustled out of the gloom and into the light of the lantern. They arranged themselves around the table.

“We are one big happy family,” they sang. “You are my brother,” they pointed. I smiled and thanked them. Without a word, they disappeared into the night.

“Evening, Mr Will. Everything good?” asked Luta as he slid onto the bench opposite me.

“Very all right, thank you very much, but just call me Will.”

“Look, I have brought something for you to see.”

From under his arm he pulled a large picture frame and, standing it on the table, turned it towards me. Black and white and water-stained, it was a photograph of a group of children who might have been any of those that I had seen that day. In their midst stood a lone white man. Although the deerstalker, mackintosh and hairy nose were gone, to be replaced by a sun hat, smart shorts and altogether more youthful features, it was unmistakably the Commander who gazed out, relaxed and smiling.

“This small boy – me,” Luta pointed to the bottom left where he stood leaning on the shoulder of a friend, “and this Commander, he was best man. With him we worked for many years. Always good times but then he was old and had to go back to England.”

Reminiscing, he tapped the Commander heavily on the chest.

“Twenty years this year he leaves us and then we hear from Charles in a letter that he passed away. We were all sad but now you have come to visit us and we are all very happy. He would be pleased that you are here.”

With this, as if enough had been said for now, he slipped off the seat and wishing me good night vanished into the dark.

What a wonderful place, I thought as I made my way into my bedroom carrying my hurricane lamp. Who would want to be anywhere else? Of course I still had to think up something ‘useful’ to do but then I had only been here a day. Certainly it would be better to get a feel for the place before making any decisions.

Despite my siesta I felt tired. I put my torch (“Be Prepared”) under my pillow, climbed under my net, blew out my kerosene lamp and closed my eyes. It was quiet in the village and I could hear the water lightly lapping at the shore. A gentle breeze blew in through the window lifting the thin curtains and bringing with it a shadowy moonlight. What a wonderful place. With a sigh I closed my eyes.

Then I heard it.

Then again.

It was scurrying and it was inside the room. I was sure it was. Yes, it was. One of the six varieties. I looked up into the near dark. No, no, probably imagined it. I listened again. Nothing. Honestly, you silly sod.

With a trampoline bounce, something landed on the top of my mosquito net and it was definitely alive.

Right…

So, what action do you take when an unidentified living object lands on your mosquito net in the middle of the night? I had no idea. I had never owned a mosquito net before. Stealthily reaching under my pillow, I pulled out my flash lamp. I aimed it and fired. Whiskers, two teeth and a black-button, twitching nose made up the front end of the biggest rat I had ever seen. I shot out of bed, landing on all fours on the floor.

Oh, come on, it’s only a rat.

Only a rat! What do you mean only a rat?

I jumped up and, leaping around, waved the beam of my torch at it like a demented duellist. It did not budge but just stared at me and wiggled its whiskers threateningly.

I picked up the first thing that came to hand – a bottle of suntan lotion, factor eight – and hurled it. I missed, the bottle hit the wall, the top flew off and a great spray of white cream caught Mr Rat full in the ear. This time he did budge, disappearing through a hole between the roof and the wall. With a final wave of a disgusting pink tail, he was gone.

Some considerable time later, my ears aching with the strain of listening, I climbed back under the net. Tucking it carefully under the edges of my toast-thin mattress, I pulled the sheet up to my chin and squeezed my eyes shut again.

It had all been the most terrible mistake.

Terrible.