EIGHTEEN

A man’s voice called suddenly from further up the hill. A moment later, others began yelling. A woman screamed.

Darryl scrambled to his feet. His mother stood, too. Alicia, still carrying the tray, spun towards the rising voices.

A flurry of movement, and a figure burst out of the trees. The man who had given him the orange on Wednesday afternoon. He plunged towards the dining room, shouting. Napoleon appeared in the doorway.

A crash as tray and glasses hit the ground. Alicia’s hands were clamped to her mouth. ‘What’s wrong?’ Darryl asked.

Napoleon and the other man began running, sprinting towards the beach. ‘You come!’ Lily’s husband shouted to Darryl as he charged past. ‘We need people!’

Alicia was running, too. ‘What’s wrong?’ Darryl went again, as he raced to catch up. ‘What’s happened?’

The girl’s eyes were stretched wide. ‘The fishing boat sink. Plane sees it and radios.’ She half-wheeled to where Lily was calling out to Mrs Davis. ‘Your mother stay; help my auntie. They need blankets.’

The plane, Darryl realised as they ran on. That’s why it was circling.

Ten metres ahead, Napoleon and the other man galloped towards the far end of the beach. More men and women rushed from the trees, all running in the same direction.

‘Noah,’ panted Alicia. ‘He is on the boat!’ Darryl’s back crawled.

They pounded past where the reef reached out into the sea. At the furthest point of the beach, people had begun thrashing their way into the water, hauling at a canoe and a dinghy with an outboard motor. Within seconds, both craft were heading out to sea. The yelling went on. Fingers stabbed at the horizon.

Darryl shaded his eyes, trying to see. It was 300, 400 metres out, a speck on the heaving blue. A boat? Too small. A life raft, he realised, and his skin crawled again.

Women wailed. Men yelled. More canoes were being dragged towards the water.

‘How many people?’ Darryl gasped to Alicia. ‘On the boat?’

She didn’t answer; her eyes were fixed on the distant, tossing speck, hands clenched into fists. Then Darryl remembered what Lily had said about the fishing boats being damaged by having to sail further, in dangerous waters.

Two more canoes surged out into the waves. Napoleon was crouched in one, driving a paddle into the water, teeth gritted. Alicia stood silently, hugging herself, biting her lip. Her father. She’s remembering her father, Darryl thought.

Men and women waded into the surf, staring out towards where the little rescue flotilla sped. The canoes and dinghy were just specks themselves now. They seemed to be clustering together, Darryl saw. What was—

‘They come back!’ Alicia shouted. She must have eyes like binoculars, Darryl marvelled. Then he saw that she was right: the far-off specks were slowly growing larger. Were the crew safe? Was Noah …?

Those on the beach had gone silent. On the sand and in the water, everyone stared wordlessly.

A voice boomed across the water. Napoleon’s: Darryl recognised it instantly. A storm of cheers and more crying erupted. ‘They are safe,’ Alicia sobbed, and Darryl saw that she was weeping. ‘All are safe!’ Relief flooded through him.

Men waded into the surf, seizing the prows of the arriving boats. Darryl flung himself in, too, clutching a dangling rope, heaving with all his strength, helping haul it onto the sand. Drenched figures tumbled from the rescue craft, mouths open, bodies shaking. Darryl seized one as he stumbled, kept him upright.

His eyes searched for one figure. There he was – Noah – climbing over the side of the dinghy, and wading ashore. Alicia rushed at him, wrapped her arms around him. They stood, gasping words at each other. Then a tall woman in a blue dress seized the boy in a fierce hug. ‘Mon fils!’ she was crying. ‘Mon fils! My son!’

Alicia watched them, then turned to Darryl, where he stood with water dripping from him. ‘Thank you. Noah say the engine break up. The propeller make hole in the boat, and it sinks.’

Darryl remembered the stop-starting vessel he’d seen from the beach. The bomb tests had caused this. Alicia was right. The tests had killed her father, and now they’d nearly killed more.

Along the sand, tears had given way to laughter and more embraces. People wrapped blankets around the shoulders of the sunken boat’s crew. Darryl’s mother and Lily were there, handing out more blankets. Noah managed a shaky smile; his mother’s arms were still around him.

Darryl glanced at Alicia. Her face was set. She looked as though … as though she’d made her mind up about something.

At least I won’t have to worry about that party tonight, Darryl thought as he and Alicia began a slow walk back towards the lodge, with his mother and Lily, twenty or so minutes later.

He jerked as Napoleon called from behind them: ‘Now we really have the party, my friends! We have so much to celebrate!’

Lannya came, as Alicia had said she would. So did Principal Kara, and Father Pierre, and the other teachers, and an exhausted-looking Noah, and the girls from the trade school, and Lannya’s mother from the plane, and women and men whom Darryl recognised from church, and what seemed like a hundred kids.

The only person missing was Raoul. Darryl remembered what Lily had said about his being in a bad mood. He and Alicia must have had a real fight. Probably just as well he wasn’t here: he and the principal might have another row, too.

After Father Pierre had led a prayer, giving thanks for the afternoon rescue, everyone settled back to enjoy themselves. The adults sat or stood, talked and laughed. The little kids ran shrieking in one direction, then ran back shrieking in the other direction. A whole pig was roasting on the spit over a fire – Darryl hoped it wasn’t any of the ones he’d met.

Darryl talked to Noah, who wanted to know all about New Zealand schools. Could pupils swim in the sea? Would there be snow at school? Alicia helped with the English. The other girls listened and giggled. Darryl realised he was laughing, too. The near-tragedy of the afternoon had been left behind.

They ate. They ate, and ate, and ate. Amazing, Darryl told himself, between mouthfuls of pork and fish, and the fruit and vegetables they had gathered this morning. Amazing.

A voice called for silence. Principal Kara. ‘We say goodbye to our friends. To Alicia for a little while. We hope she has a best time. To Madame Day-vees and Monsieur Dah-reel. You are bringing good hope for our young people. Please come back to Mangareva. We wish for you both a happy life. Au revoir.’

Noah stepped forward, holding a little carved wooden canoe, which he handed to Darryl’s mother. Hey, my friends asked me to bring one back, and now I am, Darryl realised. He realised also that there were tears on his mother’s cheeks once more. Alicia was crying, too, for some reason. Heck, she was only going for five days!

Drumming burst out. One of the men was sitting and beating. Instantly, some of the women were on their feet, arms out, moving from side to side. Small kids rushed forward to join in. Men were there, stamping feet, smacking hands. Alicia, Noah, the other girls, all laughing and exclaiming.

Hands seized Darryl’s. Little Lannya, face lit with excitement, was tugging at him to join in.

Darryl sat stiff. He couldn’t. He hated— Then he remembered his mother’s words, about adventure and his father. He saw Alicia watching. Suddenly he was up, holding Lannya’s hands, stamping his feet like the men, swinging from side to side. The little girl crowed with delight. There were shouts of ‘Allez! Allez! Vive la Nouvelle-Zélande!’ from the others. A storm of clapping burst out when the dance ended. Lily and his mother hugged him. Over their shoulders, Darryl glimpsed a new figure, standing by the trees and watching. Raoul. When he looked again, the young man was gone.

People left quite early. Some of them still looked shattered from the afternoon’s rescue. They had church the next day, of course. And he had a plane to catch, to start heading home. The men all came up and shook his hand. The women embraced him. Lannya gave him more sticky kisses on each cheek, and crowed again when he lifted her up and swung her around. The other girls from the trades school kissed him too. I could get to like this, Darryl decided.

When everyone was gone, and Lily, Alicia and Napoleon were cleaning up in the kitchen from which his mother had been shooed away once more, Darryl stood at the edge of the beach and gazed at the sweep of stars and the curve of ocean.

The people here like me, he thought. I won’t ever forget them, or their island. And I’ve learned to think differently about things here …