Coconut Wireless
What happens when a young Solomon Islands man and a cynical London girl step out of their comfort zones? Find out in this novel about love, life and gossip in the South Pacific.
by Nicola Baird
copyright 2010 Nicola Baird
ISBN: 978-1-4661-7296-8 Smashwords edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All characters are imaginary.
Events take place in the early 1990s, in and around Honiara.
Half of any money produced by sales of Coconut Wireless will be given to support projects working with Solomon Islands women and children.
Story summary
What happens when a young Solomon Islands man and a cynical London girl step out of their comfort zones? Find out in Coconut Wireless, a novel about love, life and gossip in the South Pacific.
When Suzy overhears her on-off boyfriend Dan flirting with another girl she decides to quit her London job and take up a maths teaching post as a VSO on an island in the South Pacific. Yet again she discovers that nothing is quite what it seems to be.
At first Suzy feels like a big fish in a small pond, whereas Henderson, a charming young islander, is uneasily finding his feet in the big city - but somehow both their lives are forever changed by one chance meeting.
It’s not just a love story that keeps you guessing until the end – there’s also the chance to learn about life in Honiara, the bustling capital of Solomon Islands as Suzy acclimatises to heat, mosquitoes and serious humidity. Enjoy meeting a cast of island characters including clever Stella who has to find a way to protect herself, and her children, and the old Malaitan woman Anna who grew up during world war two, and their nemesis: an MP with an eye on making enough cash to buy Ozzie beachfront real estate.
This cracking story by Nicola Baird of star-crossed destinies mixes magic and the everyday with a tropical South Seas backdrop. You don’t get that sort of weather in the Twilight series!
Coconut Wireless is the perfect next read if you loved novels such as One Day by David Nicholls, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith or anything by Marian Keyes, or non-fiction travel books such as Pies & Prejudice, Solomon Time by Will Randall or Castaway & Faraway by Lucy Irvine.
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Author Nicola Baird has written seven published books including the best selling Save Cash & Save the Planet (Collins, co-written, 2005) and Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children (Vermilion, 2010). Coconut Wireless is her first e-novel. Nicola lived in Solomon Islands from 1990-1992 working as a VSO journalist trainer for Solomon Islands Development Trust.
Coconut Wireless Contents
Chapter 20 Soldiers’ Graveyard
Chapter 22 Life ain’t easy anymore
Info about Nicola Baird, author of Coconut Wireless
Suzy, legs-up-squashed into the bath, wonders how mad you have to be to give up baths, friends and going to the movies for two years? She’ll soon know because in a few hours she’ll be at Heathrow airport with her one-way ticket to Solomon Islands.
Things that are bad about this:
1 No one knows where this country is (actually nor did she – but thanks to a right-on Peter’s Projection map she now knows that the capital, Honiara, is on the biggest of a chain of islands just to the top right of Australia. Make that north east).
2 She may like baths but she’s not into water. In fact Suzy is a bit frightened of out-of-her-depth swimming and gets sea sick on boats. How will she cope on a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean?
3 Just a hunch but at 32C it’ll surely be too hot and humid to wear trainers or even glam up with a bit of lippy. Ever.
4 Developing such a fear about the chances of Honiara having a hairdresser that she made her stylist give her the first sensible (think short) haircut since her mum stopped having a go, around the time she was 10. The trick said her hair man is to avoid mirrors. At least that will be easy: Solomon Islands has no wine bars and no department stores. There’s probably no chance of dressing up again.
5 No one she knows lives there, has been there or wants to visit her there…
Despite these fears Suzy is also very over-excited. She’s found a great new job half way around the world teaching in a country where it is pretty much always sunny. She skilfully flicks soap bubbles from thigh to knee contentedly knowing that she won’t miss winter rain, thermostat battles with flatmates, the crush on the tube, Mrs Thatcher, or her old job in a classroom with no windows. Or the fact that everyone in London’s always busy according to their Fil-o-bloody-faxes. She especially won’t miss liar not-really-boyfriend, Dan, either.”
In fact it’s all Dan’s fault she’s doing this. She was in this very bath when the missile moment happened.
Suzy remembers how the ceiling light was off, less for modesty than to remove the irritating noise of the rented flat’s extractor fan. She’d lit a scented candle and was smug in the bubbles assuming that as Dan had come round about six o’clock he’d be staying with her for the whole weekend. She now realises she was just a convenient early Saturday evening stop-off.
Suzy and Dan are an old university habit.
He’s brown-eyed, curly haired, has a gorgeous grin and plenty of wit. He wants to see the world on an expense account. He’s happy to be around children, but not planning to have any of his own ever as he says whenever he picks up a condom. He’s loving the get it spend it whirl of 80s business. Thinks he might even set himself up as a Greed Guru, or run a nightclub.
She’s slim, dark haired and forever fussing about morals and miners. Because she’s a feminist men find her an usually cheap date – she’ll even go halves on a kebab.
It’s obvious to Dan that they want very different things in life.
Even so he likes being with Suzy, and he likes the fact that her flat practically overlooks the Loftus Road ground. That grey Saturday he’d swung by in his lucky suit after the match for a little food and fun. But after the pitta stuffed with sweetcorn and mayonnaise, a bit of cuddling and a shower, there’s still time for a better date with Cassie, the good looking blonde in advertising who wrote her number on his shirt cuff at a mate’s party.
Suzy remembers, yet again, how she heard him picking up the phone and dialling.
“You there darling?”
“Yes,” says Suzy, surprised out of her after-sex, bath time reverie, because in all the years she’s known Dan, he’s never called anyone darling.
“Do you mean me?” asks Suzy too softly for Dan to hear.
“Hey, didn’t think you’d be in. We met yesterday, remember? Do you want to meet at that new Russian place – vodka, champers and caviar – about 10pm and then go on to Limelight? Yeah? Good, see you later.” He mumbles something she can’t hear, then laughs wickedly as he puts down the receiver.
Next moment the TV clicks on. It’s Disappearing World, his favourite - he loves to watch just how far the Coca Cola brand can get. Shocked by what she’s heard Suzy slips deeper into the water, an attempt to wash away what’s going on. A few moments later the two-timing rat is lying to her through the bathroom door.
“Suze, I’ve got to go now. Need to read reports before work on Monday. I’ll give you a ring.” He edges open the bathroom door, leans in to kiss her wet head and before she can splutter any kind of protest he’s let himself out of the flat into the city that never sleeps.
Instead of crying Suzy promises herself that things have got to change. She narrows it down to three options. She could spend three months moping. She could start looking for someone better than Dan to be a real boyfriend rather than carry on with this on-off pretence. Or she could disappear and take a long trip enjoying herself while Dan learns to miss her.
And even if he doesn’t miss her, she’ll find a way of being out of London for long enough to come back a new person. She sees herself with a tan, skinny enough to wear chic size 10 clothes, with long tresses and a bunch of stories to rival anything she’s done yet in her life. She will be the sort of person men like Dan will want to call “darling” (in an ironic sort of a way). Oh yes, and she’ll be bilingual, maybe even trilingual - a woman who can teach anytime, anyplace, anywhere…
On Sunday Suzy stops crying and thinks up more professional reasons to sign up as a maths teacher with Voluntary Service Overseas. The next two years of life look set to be:
Sunny. Tick.
Long way off. Tick.
Different. Double tick.
Well paid. Not at all. Anyway who but Dan cares about that?
The doorbell buzzes Suzy out of recall mode and swiftly into comfy travelling clothes. It’s Dan. He’s come round to wish her luck with the head hunters of the Solomon Islands.
Just typical he should be so politically incorrect.
“It’s not too late to stop this you know,” he says surveying her bed adrift with last minute packing that can’t be crammed into a backpack.
“You could just not turn up at Heathrow. You don’t have to go and live in a country no one but an anthropologist or TV crew can locate. You don’t have to teach barefoot teenagers. You can stay here Suzy, near me. London’s brilliant. Ow. What on earth does a 23-year-old thoroughly modern Ms need this for?” he laughs removing a plastic box from where he’s sitting. “And why have you got so many?”
“It’s Tupperware. Someone’s mum said they are useful in the Tropics because they keep camera film, medicines, typewriter ribbons, that sort of stuff (she’s not going to mention diaphragms or spermicidal cream) a better chance of lasting in the humidity until their sell-by-date,” replies Suzy feeling as crushed as the box Dan’s holding. He’s not made a declaration of love, so go she must.
“You’ll write to me won’t you?” she hears herself saying, uncooly.
“Yes,” says Dan taking off his Ray Bans to give a wink, “but you know me, I’m better at reading…”
ONLY A STRANGER would find it odd - everyone is in the church. The dark-skinned men up by the mahogany cross decorated with flowers. Their women, soothing babies by a curious pitch and roll of breast and belly, are spilling into the aisles and out of the rough carved door searching for a breeze. A few of the more daring women whisper to each other in a language of apostrophes and laughter, raising their eyes with silent humour as the old priest talks on and on, in the grand English of the church. Every now and then he breaks into an angry splutter of Pijin English accompanied by a menacing finger point. The village women don't feel comfortable when he does that: and, lowering offended eyes, switch babies from breast to hip. They are waiting for the singing.
Impatient, one old woman - 10 children and scores of grandchildren - shuffles barefoot along the aisle to the front, eyes cheekily down, knees and shoulders dipped, and drops two large kumara and a yam into the offerings sack. Curious, everyone abandons their struggle to follow the priest's Sunday words to stare at their bold relation hurrying the service to be over as she walks back down the aisle to the rickety bench outside the church. Her husband fidgets, the old woman is just as impetuous as when he first met her. Beside him their youngest, already 18 years, is purposefully staring at a hymn book. Accidentally he brushes the boy's arm making the green-backed book of modern hymns tumble on to the floor. His son's admirable Christian concentration is exposed ... a fat novel by Sidney Sheldon.
"Henderson, what kind of person are you? Why are you reading a book on the Sabbath? In Church?" demands the old man, embarrassed now by both wife and son during church.
"Yeah," whispers a grey-haired uncle, sitting close by, and with added authority because he has been trained as a lay preacher to speak in capital letters, "and What Ever Happens in a Book Anyway? THIS is Real, Henderson, Father's Words are the WORDS OF GOD - your Book is NOTHING."
Henderson ignores both his relations. He has just reached another interesting part – and already there have been three mysterious deaths and extraordinary sex. He is hungry to live the life of the book's heroes, discover what is really happening out there, guess the villain or villains. He also knows the only peace for reading he can steal is in church. Not many of the villagers read English that well, so Henderson can take whatever reading matter he likes into the church - and always does - even though his father rebukes him, and the priest has started calling him "too proud" and pointing his long finger more often in his direction.
Henderson just doesn't care. The only drawback to Church reading is that by mid-morning services become so hot, despite the cooling views, over half walls made from long leaves, out to the blue shaded Solomon Sea. Today it is scorching. Sweat trickles down Henderson's back, as if he was playing soccer, but when the women fan their hymn books ferociously over their babies' boiling bodies a soft breeze cools his neck.
If this church service ever finishes Henderson plans to lie still and sleep, dreaming of the exciting life that must be going on in the big city right-now-this-minute. He is sick of being bossed around by old men and women, the only people who seem to live in his village any more, in fact in any village any more judging by the quietness of nearby Heranisi and Panatu. All his school mates have long gone on walkabout in town and the students don't come back for Christmas holidays for another four months. There aren't even any girls to flirt with - the single ones are working as house girls (or that's what they say) with relations in Honiara and the married ones are busy with babies - and gardening, and cooking, and cleaning, and most of all gossiping about the wild goings on of relations on walkabout around town.
Henderson bends slowly to pick up his dropped novel and is surprised by a message: "What are you doing here?" The words are on page 158, curiously highlighted by a shaft of sunshine, but they might just as well be a gift from God.
Henderson's mind races to make sense of the question. What is he doing back home at the village when every other Solomon boy is having a real life? A modern life? The village is boring: it's an old-fashioned place, its daily rhythms of work punctuated only by church bells. It's lotu, lotu, lotu as the priest would say, for he always makes his points three times.
Since he failed his school certificate, about three years ago, Henderson has helped his family run their small village store, letting his father, an untrainable teacher, spend more time with the primary school kids. There are plenty of youngsters and classes spill out of the tatty leaf building which his father calls "school". Henderson may not be a scholar (blame malaria for all that time off), but he is one of the rare ones who loves to read books. Diplomatically he stays silent about his father’s poor teaching, done in the Sunday School manner. Father tells the students to do this, or do that, and mixes English and Pijin in such a way that he's almost invented another language. The students, even the littlest ones, study torn primers of English grammar ineffectively. They learn everything in English, which most of them will later use to fail their secondary school entry exams.
In the village everyone talks their home language though no one finds this easy to read. About five years ago some overseas Christians came to stay in a nearby village to translate the Bible into their local language. Henderson remembers everyone being so surprised that they were bothering. After all most services by the old priest were in English. And then the day came when the newly translated Bible was ready and every family received a free copy. It was such a shock - inside were words everyone knew and understood when they heard them, but very few people could actually read them! And then there were the mistakes which caused so much amusement, and the fact that their own language was being used to send messages and praise God, the Big Man, (whom they thought only understood English salutations) that in the end the priest (who came from a bush village up the lagoon - and had a different home language anyway) abandoned the experiment just to keep order amongst his congregation. Some houses still have their gift copy perched in safe places away from the sticky hands of small children, but plenty too have been spoilt by cockroaches, or grown a mould which leaves an acrid dust on anyone who rashly touches the laminated cover.
The long-awaited singing begins and Henderson is side-tracked by the performance. The Sunday school kids, mostly students at his father's school, have formed a choir.
Today they are singing in a cappella style but there are plans at Christmas, when most of the villagers who don't live in the village return for a month’s holiday, to raise funds for a keyboard and guitars. His father is already rehearsing a play version of The Pilgrim's Progress. A wild looking 12-year-old will star as Christian - chosen because he owns a vital prop - a bulky backpack - and, more importantly, is a brother of the local MP.
The logic runs: make George "Christian" and the MP will then donate more money towards the music fund. The truth is: their MP is sure to stay in town during Christmas because he hates the constant demands of his relations and constituents for cash and IOUs. He also hates village life, thinks of it as boring; all time not spent wheeling and dealing (for himself) is wasted time. Many of the Honourable Members think the same.
Henderson helped his father create a simple storyline for the play. He envisages a troublesome journey for Christian, through gangs of town-based rascals (wild child types, often unmarried and unemployed) and exotic temptations of beer and loud music on the way to the Celestial City. In his own mind the Celestial City is also crowded by gangs of rascals and exotic delights of beer, loud music - and girls - but he knows better than to mention such thoughts to his father. The project has left him even more determined to try the bright lights.
The village students are excited too and have insisted a number of extra characters are introduced. There has to be a pantomime cow for instance - two of the older men, who tried to set up a cattle ranch back in 1976, rigged one up with copra sacks last Christmas and then lurched from leaf house to leaf house singing carols, shameless from potent home brew. They raised more than 50 Solomon dollars and their crazy Left foot, Right foot, Left foot, Hiccup progress is still imitated by the more playful, smaller kids.
Someone also has to be a devil, though no one is very keen to volunteer for this part - names (and reputations) after all stick for life in a village. Even primary school students are all too aware of that.
With the singing, the atmosphere of impatience dissolves. The women sway rhythmically - delighting sleepy babies - craning to see their older children perform. One little girl sings a verse on her own. It is lovely and Henderson finds his irritation at being discovered reading - yet again - ebb a little. There is a gecko busy in the leaf roof above his head. Over by the big mango tree, that marks the centre of the village, there are about 20 tiny colourful parrots feasting. A small boy is sent out to distract them - shoots a stone with his catapult into the top branches - and the marauders fly off in an angry swoop to a safer restaurant by the edge of the village. As Henderson watches the blonde haired boy come back to the church service, his eye is caught by a flash moving along the far side of the reef. He looks again - it's a motor canoe slowing up to come through the passage. The speck grows and as it judders through the reef, the sound of the surf pounding the reef is masked, a little, by the drone of the Yamaha engine. The village doesn't usually have visitors on a Sunday. Henderson makes to get up and meet the strangers, but his father stops him with a glance. In defiance Henderson turns back to his novel, this time without pretending it’s a prayer book.
At dusk, just as Henderson's mother passes out portions of rice, tinned fish and sweet potato on battered orange plastic bowls, the Capital Letter uncle comes by, very self-importantly, with the visitors. As ever his mother enables the food to stretch amply for another three mouths. No one speaks, but after wolfing down dinner, Henderson and the men move to the bamboo bench outside to story. The visitors are agricultural extension officers based at the government station about six hours canoe journey along the coast. They are due to visit spice growers in the southern part of the province, but were delayed by the taller man's daughter coping badly with malaria.
"There's so much malaria at the moment," he complains. "It used to be worse at Christmas and New Year when it gets wet, but at Auki everyone gets sick any time of the year. My wife is head of the Mother's Union and I tell her off for not making her members keep the place clean, but the truth is she does. I sometimes wonder if there is a special malaria devil going round at night planting tins of Taiyo brand tuna fish and coconut shells so the station's drainage ditches will have the perfect stagnant ponds for Mother Anopholese!"
"Yes, it's a problem here too," says Henderson's father slapping theatrically at mosquitoes busy eyeing-up his ankles. "Our village is kept clean, but the government stopped the spraying programme back in l981. In fact that wasn't too bad because the spray seemed to make the pussycats die, so then we got an invasion of rats.” He pauses to roll up a smoke.
“Then we poisoned the rats but when they were dead the women used to complain there were more snakes around - no rats to eat them I guess - and even more mosquitoes! No, the worst thing here is that when people get sick it's a long way to the clinic. There's a bush road, which goes through the mangrove swamp, and takes a fit person two hours or so. Or there's Panatu's clinic, which we can reach by canoe - but sometimes there's no petrol or the engine's broken, or some small problem," he laughs resignedly, "like no money to pay for canoe hire. We've given God two of our children early because of malaria."
The visitors nod their heads sympathetically and then switch their attention from sickness to the betel nut being offered round. Henderson goes to fetch his father's pot of lime powder and some fresh leaf for the men to take with it. He's been chewing betel nut since he was tiny and is always surprised to hear people say foreigners call it "Solomon beer". Besides a chalky, numb-mouth feel he's never had the slightest hint of being drunk - but then maybe that's because he doesn't drink or for that matter use lime. He would, but he's always been a little vain and doesn't much like the idea of staining his mouth red, like a town girl with lipstick, or worse losing his teeth like most of the adults in the village.
What does lipstick taste like? He silently guesses while the other men chew and spit, companionably watching the stars, until the other visitor starts talking again: "Have you heard that the Honourable Member for round here is negotiating with people up at 'Are'Are for bait fishing rights? I met a man who'd been at one of the meetings and the MP says if they give the go ahead he will make sure a really good clinic is built. The deal is good too, they just let the Japanese come in and pick up their fish and get paid - that's not bad development is it? I mean the work we do with the agricultural section involves hard work, nothing is as easy as bait fishing deals. Not a bad way to find money for an engine or pay the school fees is it?"
Henderson's father isn't convinced. "We had bait fishing round here for about five years. It was an awful time. The foreigners paid us well, but they only came at night and they used loud generators so the whole village was unable to sleep - except my son here, who can sleep through anything!" The crack makes the men laugh.
"Some of the fishermen would come over to my store to buy tobacco, or whatever small things they needed, but it was just a way to go off with our girls. They weren't Christian people. They left in the end, but we wouldn't want them back ..." before he can continue his wife walks out of the kitchen hut a few metres away and mutters something in low tones, before laughing raucously. She's pointing out that the fishermen also took all the small fish so that now the bigger fish don't like being caught, which is why they ate the tinned version this evening - and it is also why her son Henderson is still unmarried. She is looking forward to her youngest starting his own family and worries if a wife isn’t arranged for him soon he'll go about it the wrong way.
The conversation ebbs and flows, fuelled by betel nut, until the second kerosene light splutters out. Again Henderson's mother walks past, pretending to talk to herself but really aiming her comments at her husband. This time she seems cross. With the kerosene gone, that's the end of their fuel. There are no candles, the torch batteries ran out long ago and still their cargo, sent from town by a wantok (one talk = relation, friend or sharing same 1st language) won't be arriving for another week. "Yes that's right," says the Capital Letter uncle importantly (even though he heard it on the radio), "the Boat has Engine Problems, it's due in on Number 22 though." In the distance Henderson can hear reggae music being played at this uncle's house - if his little nephews play their tapes that often he can bet his uncle won't be hearing any more shipping reports until a supply of new batteries arrives.
It's late. Henderson leaves the older men storying and goes inside to sleep on a tightly-weaved pandanus mat that doubles as a bed and a waterproof shield during the regular afternoon downpours. His home is on the weather side of the island, down a protected lagoon. But sometimes the seas are so rough - known locally as "alive" - that the fortnightly boat from the capital cannot unload the vital village cargo even when the schedule isn't spoilt by the constant engine problems. His mind drifts: no kerosene is a worry and he doubts if his mother, despite her ingenuity, will be able to borrow some, seeing as it is their family who runs the store and usually does the lending. The village will be a bit quieter when the only light is from a waning moon.
Nearing sleep Henderson thinks again about why he's stayed home leaning on the counter of a store. Those visitors from Auki station seemed so confident about life and their jobs and what's going on in the country and government. Village life seems even more backward and boring now. This restless feeling, this fear he's missing out, his growing hatred of the traditional life of a bush boy is one that's taking his mind over. He was 15 when it started, two Christmases ago, when the wantoks come home to the village to holiday. He knows the town dwellers’ complaints about the price of food, and how they never have time. During the Christmas holidays every village house echoes with relations repeating the same two phrases: "In the village life is free" and "In the town time is your boss." The words spin round and round his head: town life has to be more ... has to be better ... has to be ... for a single boy ...
***
Henderson wakes suddenly from dreams of offices, traffic lights, big men and night clubs. Sleepily straightening his lava-lava he looks out of the unshuttered, unglazed window towards the direction of the noise. It's already first light and the sky is shifting from a ginger beer and pink streaked dawn to another blue, blue morning. Yesterday's visitors are heading back down the lagoon and out towards the reef. It's time he left too. When the ship comes in next week, he'll go - just to see - just for a walkabout.
His first ever walkabout in his country's capital, Honiara.
***
Dear Dan
I know you’ll have second-guessed this, but I really don't know what I'm doing here! Picture me, Suzy, Englishly white skin (going brown, going brown slowly) a vast-brimmed raffia hat (from tacky old Miss Selfridge) and a necklace of sweat running from my throat to my belly button so my dress could be called a sweat rag. The heat’s like a bath. And my hours have changed: it's only 9.05am and I'm at a collection of buildings masquerading as an airport. They chased PIGS off the runway before our international flight could land!! The sky's a mucky, muddy blue and I'm struck mostly by the lack of stuff. Here I am, my first visit to the tropics, and there's nothing. No sudden whack to the senses of exotic vistas and perfumed plants. No gin slung expats in sight, not even a postcard for sale. I'm just stuck at a stupid, sleepy, aid-built terminal with a handful of other jet-lagged (no, depressed) tourists.
No one to meet me of course - so I'm jettisoned into Pacific time pretty quick. And then when someone does talk to me, asking if I want a taxi, I realise I've NO IDEA where I want to go anyway - in all the hurry to fill in visas, swallow anti-malarials and buy factor 910+ sun block cream I never noticed I hadn't been sent the address of where I was going to live. So what's a girl to do? I just sit at the edge of the departure lounge, under a rapidly heating sky and wait, and wait. Where do you think everyone was? In church, maybe; out fishing, perhaps; rioting to put some life in this boring place, unlikely ... the much-talked about islanders just weren't around.
Still it was lucky I did wait - after all it kept the tension another few minutes. And then when someone did eventually pick me up from the school he decided to SHOW ME ROUND before I'm decamped at my rooms. It was the last thing I wanted to do after two days travelling (that's my calculation based on the amount of aeroplane meals I've been fed - eight, or maybe nine!) So what did I see? Well some crashed planes at the foot of a burnt out look-out tower (once used by the Japanese, or the Marines, or maybe both to shoot the other to bits during WW2 - great view on to the runway, great tourist attraction for a pacif-ic!-ist ...) Oh yes, a collection of huts, that I'm told is a typical Melanesian village, surrounded by long grass which seemed to be on fire - clearly normal as the guy driving me didn't even blink, let alone brake (which I personally feel wouldn't have been a bad idea every now and then, even if there was no other traffic).
And then suddenly it's nearly Honiara and I'm really quite panicky, stomach in knots - not because I'm excited, this is going to be home but because there's a one-lane, super-rusty Bailey bridge marking the town boundaries. And we've got to cross it (I mean I ask you would you have driven over a bridge which creaks and groans even when nobody is on it?) so I half-close my eyes, and look at my feet and to my HORROR find I'm looking through a hole in the truck's chassis, through the Bailey bridge slats, down x-thousand feet and into a swirling river. And, before I'd got over that near-death experience suddenly there's a welcome sign. Not, thankfully from McDonald's, I don't think they've even bothered to hoist burger eating habits on the islanders, which is, I suppose, one plus in the country's favour. It's a painted wooden board, that says "Welcome to the Happy Isles" decorated with what appears to my sensitive eyes to be a warrior with heads of his enemies under his arms and needless to say in my, yes, terrified AND jet-lagged state I saw more as an advert for home, sweet home.
Boy did I want out - and I still hadn't got to this mythical town of Honiara, or what turned out to be a name masquerading as a town. For instance it has one road going one way through it, and another going the other way. There's ONE traffic light, ONE 24-hour store (which wasn't open when we drove past) and ONE zebra crossing which drivers AND pedestrians ignore. The place is filthy - lots of rubbish and broken sticks (why broken sticks?) lying around. No evidence of a cinema, well you knew that. I think I saw a stationery shop, BUT there’s absolutely ZERO chance of a pub crawl to drown my sorrows: you've guessed it, there are NO pubs.
You know what, if there'd been a bus I'd have thrown myself under it. As it is I've got TWO years here - god knows what I'll write to you about. This is the sleepiest, dullest, dustiest town (whoops, c-i-t-y) I've ever seen, let alone imagined. Perhaps there’s a football league I can keep you up-to-date with?
With love, Suzy
FOR HENDERSON, HONIARA has always been a dreamscape. At night the city is lit up like a flare, throwing shafts of phosphorescence on to the dark harbour water, deep into Iron Bottom Sound. By day it is a garden of hills, with houses and shops clinging to volcanic folds. Cockatoos dare to fly in the main street, a striking contrast against the red-flowered flame trees which garland the avenues. The pad, pad, pad of the residents' bare feet disturb fine trails of dust, giving the town an unworldly atmosphere. Henderson was in love before his soles touched the wharf.
But when they did, it was a tough landing. The melee of wantoks meeting, greeting, collecting, shouting and haranguing produced a scene Henderson had never imagined possible even when the over-full boat arrived home at Christmas. Every conceivable part of the little wooden boat, MV Mali, was covered with people dragging their baskets of village food, or mattresses, or families on to the wharf. In the distance was a low roar, like the reef back home, but as it came inland he guessed it must be from traffic. And sure enough, when Henderson shielded his eyes against the midday sun he saw a snake of cars, jeeps, taxis and mini-buses crawling along parallel to the sea. These didn't seem to be moving fast at all, much to their drivers' irritation whose swearing was only masked by violent horn blasts - the sounds of city reggae.
The wharf smelt acrid from the copra waiting to be shifted by a foreign-registered container ship which dwarfed MV Mali. It also seemed very hot after the cooling breezes of the ship's deck and so Henderson slung his homemade rucksack, a giant yellow Tru Kai rice bag over his shoulder, and headed up the track to the main road in search of someone who knew the way to his auntie's Mbokonavera house.
"Hey bush boy, look out," shouted a man about his age over a squeal of breaks.
"You just be careful wantoko – there are lots of rascals out there today. It's not a good day to be in town," and with that the man drove bad-temperedly towards the boat to pick up, what Henderson guessed must be, the sisters still waiting at the wharf. After that near miss with a truck, and several others, Henderson decided to collect his bearings after a short rest. Seeing a big banyan tree up by an iron shelter, presumably a bus stop, under which a whole crowd had gathered, Henderson eased himself into a shady space and then set about slowly rolling a cigarette, just to get his bearings.
"You got a smoke?" a man with coil dreadlocks and dark shades, wearing a dirty ripped T-shirt, jeans and Australian workman boots joined Henderson. "I'm Patte. Hi! Everyone knows me, but I haven't seen you round town before so I guess you must have just arrived."
Even during such a short conversation Patte punctuated his conversations with well-aimed hisses to attract the attention of friends passing along the road. The pair shake hands. Henderson has heard of Patte (or hustlers like him anyway) much to his new friend's pleasure. Just before he left the village one uncle told him to look out for men with dreadlocks. What the uncle meant was: "Stay away from trouble" - but Henderson missed that particular subtext.
"Yeah," replied Henderson trying to imitate Patte's easy manner, "the boat just came in this morning - we left last night."
"Ah, so you're another from Malaita come to crowd up our small town?" laughed Patte with a certain good-natured menace. Henderson didn't quite know what this disarmingly friendly stranger was getting at, so feigning coolness, he takes a puff on his cigarette and waits for more clues.
"Your wantoks are causing heaps of trouble at the moment near China Town, you should probably go up and find them. I'll take a look with you if you like," suggests Patte who likes to be where the action is. Even in a small town this keeps him permanently busy.
Henderson isn’t sure about Patte’s plan. He’s tired and could do with a swim (wash). The best place to be right now would be his auntie's house, if he could just work out where it was. Timidly he tries to hold on to his schedule: "Patte, that's a good idea, but I'm quite busy right now. I should be trying to find my wantoks. Perhaps we could meet up another time?" Patte is looking blankly at his feet. "Or you could even show me the road to Mbokonavera?" says Henderson worrying that he may have lost his first friend in less time than it takes to idle his way through a home-rolled fag.
"No, no," says Patte - again waving at a passing wantok - "you don't understand! Something's happened in town now. There's a meeting that all young people should be at. It's our future, it's your future that I'm thinking about, well you guys from Malaita. I don't know where your relations live, but I'm sure you'll find someone who does know up near the market." And with that Patte throws down the butt of his own cigarette and walks purposefully off towards the dirt track that is grandly known as the pavement. Henderson feels obliged to follow.
The market isn't far away but it takes a while to reach it as so many people on foot also seem to be heading that way. The traffic has come to a stop and people are swarming over the road, standing up in the back of trucks, all eyes and ears directed the same way. Henderson never knew so many strangers could live in the same place. There are people from every province, and quite a few whites too, though mostly sheltered from the hot sun by air-conditioned vehicles.
Everyone is chatting good-naturedly, but then, just as Henderson and Patte reach the edge of the market place there is a terrific bang and the crowd starts shouting. There are fists in the air. The people's mood has switched from curious bystander to determined participation. A column of youngsters head down the road at a slow jog. Patte follows eagerly and Henderson, who by now feels completely overwhelmed, finds there is no choice but to follow - the people behind are pushing him along.
It's getting hotter and hotter as the crowd starts to chant: "The bridge, the bridge, the bridge, throw them from the bridge." Hampered by his makeshift bag Henderson again finds there is no choice but to join in. Patte is about five metres in front of him, teamed up with another dreadlocked boy. Everyone around him seems so busy shouting that Henderson cannot even ask what is going on. He would love to know what's going on.
With the same suddenness that the crowd went on the move, it stops. Henderson has a chance to look around – there are hills and houses away in the distance, craning heads in front and behind, and when he looks down he suddenly realises he is standing on the metal planks of a bailey bridge, probably "the" bridge. A middle-aged man, dressed in a dark tailored suit, with white shirt and tie climbs up a step-ladder and begins to address the crowd with a crackling tannoy system. It is hard to make sense of anything, but Henderson is anxious not to miss this excitement so he strains to hear.
"We young people," there are hisses and boos from the crowd which must have a collective age of 19 - about 20 years younger than the speaker - "yes, we young people," continues the suited man with more force, "we know there are good and evil forces in the world. We are looking for a Christian way of development, and that way means ridding our new country of all evil. Today, in the market place, we've had an example of what happens when province spoils province. When nations fight, look what happens ... "
Here the speaker makes a cautious pause for effect, a technique clearly learnt at some public speaking workshop held overseas. He has however mistimed his peace plea, the crowd is impatient, the crowd wants words, the crowd wants to do something. A stone is thrown. It hits the speaker who clutches a handkerchief to his brow. A red stain soon starts flowing down the side of his face for some reason angering the crowd more.
"He's a liar!" shouts a thin voice. "Throw HIM off the bridge," yells another, louder, and then another, and another. Soon there is a crescendo chant: "Throw him, throw him, throw him."
"They won't will they?" says Henderson more to himself than anyone else, but to his surprise is answered in his home language by a university student standing beside him, whom he recognises as coming from a village near his own home.
"That man's supposed to be an MP, but he's more like a shark. He takes anything he can for himself - government cars, other men's wives, aid money, anything. He's spoilt so many people's lives by the rent he charges for terrible houses on the Labour Line. Then there are rumours about him making our Solomon girls do porn videos. He's disgusting ...... Aye, you're from back home aren't you? Have you just arrived in town, what timing!" and with that the student resumes his bitter call for the MP to be thrown off the bridge, surprised that Henderson does not do the same after his explanation.
"What if he dies?" asks Henderson in a rash moment of bravery.
"What is the matter with you all?" he challenges the crowd around him in a far louder voice. "That big man has just pleaded for peace, pleaded for an end to violence and suddenly you young people all want to kill him."
Without a word of warning five rascal-types standing behind Henderson start to hit the new boy in town. At first Henderson laughs, he can't believe they are doing this to him. As he protests a fist hits his jaw. His head spins. Another puts a heavily knuckled fist into his belly. Henderson lets out a feeble shriek and passes out as a police sirens start up.
All attention is now turned on the scuffle in the crowd. The police, tall lean men, in long blue socks, recruited to the force for their football skills, take a side view whilst the excited youngsters sort themselves out. The siren noise is deafening, but it is the cries of confused people, pushed out of the way by the ones behind them, around them and in front of them, that drags Henderson back to consciousness. With his head pounding, he opens a cautious eye to see Patte staring at him.
"You all right man?" worries his friend, "I thought you were a gonner then. Here sit up a bit, you'll soon feel good again." As Patte clears some space for Henderson to recover, he nods to one of his brothers a few metres back. It is lost on Henderson, but the next moment the boys who hit Henderson are pushed towards the bridge's balustrade and told to jump. "Let's see if that cools them off," jokes Patte - and with the same suddenness that the riot started it dissolves into a swimming party.
The MP, on his platform, is ignored; the police radio back to the station that the trouble seems to be over, and the young men in the crowd head back to their offices, or most likely a shady spot beside an office, to talk over and over the bizarre events happening in town during the past 24 hours.
"Well, friend, do you think you could drink something? I'll sponsor you," suggests Patte encouraging Henderson on to shaky feet. "There's a cafe just near here in China Town, come on, hurry up," he takes his hand. "This way." To his surprise Henderson can now see that he was knocked down on the "symbolic" bridge. Some boys, maybe even the ones who hit him, are still swimming in the waters below. The banks of the Mataniko don't look too clean but following them down, until the river nearly reaches the sea, where Henderson notices another bridge over which traffic is now speeding. "Not a bad day for a riot, eh?" jokes Patte, unwilling to admit that it's the first he's ever seen, despite being a townie - and worse, that it took him by surprise. "You sure you're feeling all right now?"
"Oh yes, people from Mala are tough you know!" comments Henderson with bravado he does not feel. His head is sore and he hasn't made any effort yet to try and piece together the tumultuous events since he put his feet on Honiara's main wharf.
The two young men cross the bridge and turn off down a pot-holed one-way street. Halfway down Patte points out a cafe, which they enter through a ribboned doorway of multi-coloured plastic streamers. "Wow, it's beautiful," exclaims Henderson looking round with pleasure at the gingham checked cloths and small flower vases on each table. Painted across the far wall there's a huge mural of animals and plants set against a rainforest scene of trees and luminous bulldozers - clearly the artist's speciality. "Yeah, it's nice here," says Patte, non-committally, busy ordering fish, sweet potato chips and green drinking coconut for two. Taking their food they go and join two other boys, at a table in the corner, who are busy discussing the riot. Henderson gathers that it started sometime yesterday after one gang living in town picked a fight with rivals. The boys are arguing about why it went on for so long - and seem to be blaming politicians and radio journalists for their interference.
Surprisingly Patte ignores the talk, instead wolfing down his meal. He is clearly hungry and has nearly finished before Henderson opens the rather greasy brown paper bag of food Patte bought for him. Inside is a portion of cold-battered tuna steak and four thick slices of fried kumara. It's not like village food - it's not even like the fish or kumara his mother cooks in the motu earth oven on feastdays - but he’s hungry enough and bold enough to love it.
"You play football?" asks Patte eventually, after swallowing the last thick chip dipped in spicy Magi sauce. Henderson looks up, pleased. "Well, you'll have to join with the boys. We play most evenings on the ground up near the police station. Come along, it'll be a good way to get to know my mobs and make some friends. Town people are different you know, they're not as kind as people back home."
Henderson smiles uncertainly - he still has a thumping headache to prove Patte's point. He begins to think it might be better to turn his attention back towards finding his wantok's house - when Patte, almost a mind reader, suggests they head up towards Mbokonavera.
"A bush boy like you will find it easily," Patte says with a wry smile, "you just go back over the battleground, take a left along a bush road and then when that finishes, go up a big road which starts by a guava tree. There are plenty of houses in Mbokonavera, but plenty of women are paid by the council to stand around telling you where to go." Not realising he's being teased, Henderson starts to quiz his friend about signposts - he'd always thought in town they used labels - not ladies - to tell you where you were.
The guys head out of the cafe into the heat again. Temporarily blinded by the sun they are nearly hit by a long-bodied taxi that is covered with adverts. There's a squeal of breaks, dust flies, and the taxi reverses back. Inside is Henderson's wantok, a taxi driver who married his eldest sister and lives where he's heading for.
"Hey, how'z life with you then Hen?" asks his brother-in-law, Fred, leaning out of the window and removing his stylish dark glasses theatrically. "You just come to town from the airport? Yeah I guess you must have done – with a name like your’s.” It’s the family joke – how Henderson was named after his Father took a trip from the international airport for a teacher training symposium in Brisbane.
“Anyway I seez you met up with that no good Patterson too? You good Patte? Well, how'z all the folks back home then? All well I hope. You just on a walkabout? Come to get yourself an office job I guess?" In all the time Henderson has known this man, he's never had a chance to answer any of his questions. Clearly things aren’t going to change today.
The talkative man stretches his hand back through the window, opens the taxi's rear door and offers a free ride. Gratefully Henderson sinks into a seat covered with a leopard-skin print. He feels like a king. Patte gets in beside him and asks to be dropped by the bus stop. Before the Sunny Datsun's door is properly shut (which Henderson never notices isn't possible) they're off with another squeal - this time mostly from the gear department, but backed up by dust and horse-power which leaves behind a trail of rubber and dust.
Minutes later the boys are winding up the hilly road to Henderson's new place. When he sees it he is amazed - a prefab house on legs, with his aunt and uncle's AA Store just set to the side. Plenty of people are hanging around in the shade underneath, listening to radio reports of the riot whilst the Prime Minister, in a piece of sure-bet politics, is belatedly broadcasting for calm.
Stepping out of the taxi, Henderson takes a good look. A precarious-looking staircase runs alongside the house, up from a packed washing line to a cool-slatted veranda crowded by homemade sofas. From there the view is of a clover lawn hedged with a hibiscus flowering bush, endless potted plants and bougainvillaea bushes. There’s night-scented jasmine creeping up each of the house's spindly legs and posts with orchids sprouting from coconut shells dotted all round the plot. A steep hill of red ground backs on to the house which seems to be planted with all kinds of root vegetables and a tall curtain of maize. Yes, this is truly a palace, and he's going to be living in it. Henderson grins contentedly, despite his sore head.
"Good place, eh mate?" states the taxi driver, again not waiting for an answer from his young brother-in-law. "Now wait here for Matron your aunt. I think she's gone to the clinic as her youngest, Lovelyn, is sick with malaria. You eat, swim, rest, just be happy." He reverses the taxi in his customarily speedy manner, waving.
"See yous," he adds imitating the Australian accent - a year picking apples in Queensland, and countless years picking passengers from the airport, has changed his voice. And, thinks Henderson, wickedly, helped him put on enough weight to play rugby forward.
He may be away from the hurly-burly of megaphones and rioting youth but the house is packed. Henderson greets his city cousins in a mass shaking of hands. Then, leaving his sister with the sack filled with her favourite, thorn-skinned pana, he climbs the house's staircase to find a cool place to rest as he waits for auntie to come back home.
***
Dear Dan
Greetings from the islands where "Don't Worry, Be Happy" rules - after all my whinging in the last letter I thought I'd give you proof positive that it's not all bad (I mean I write this with inspiration from a scented frangipani tucked behind my ear and a chilled can of beer (I found a shop that sells beer, bliss!) in the non-scribbling hand). After 10 days or so (time does funny things here) life is improving (it's on record now ...) though I'm still not convinced living in a big-fish-small-pond capital is the right place for me. Or maybe it's my strange-looking house - anyway no evidence of sunrises or sunsets, which is why people visit the tropics isn't it? I know, I know you'll be down the travel agent cancelling your ticket before you've read the rest of this letter. Still the town's name, Honiara, is pretty enough - and economic too, four syllables translate to something like "spot buffeted by easterlies and then south-easterlies and then some and then Westerners". OK, that's not strictly true, but you'll work it out.
Besides the lack of TV (not just in this house, in the whole country!) dawn 'n dusk the house is pretty nice. It's big, full of floorboards and filtered sunbeams. The whole caboodle is raised on stilts which gives it a tree house feel. In fact this morning I was woken by a gang of parrots arguing over breakfast. Nothing else noteworthy happened for the rest of that day - not much seems to go on at all though things obviously must do, I mean there's several national newspapers; plenty of expectant mums walking around and a boat schedule for the Christmas holidays is already being advertised on the radio.
Remind me, it is September isn't it - that means Xmas is more than 100 shopping days away ... then again there might be less here as I've already found out that nothing, absolutely nothing, happens on Sundays, except “Praise The Lord” scenes. And the SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists – sometimes called the Jews of the South Pacific because they do God Friday ‘til Saturday) start 24 hours earlier. That means you can have a weekend loop of doing God.
Mind you I haven't really gone outside that much, besides the odd class (but more of that in another letter). So here's an extract from my view from the window ... There's a path just to the back of here which puts maidens' feet, nuns' feet and whoever uses feet on to my eye-level. This was more than unnerving until I realised that the dripping red stains littering the path were in fact betel nut spit, not the daily trail of a mad axe murderer!
And rather more poetically most evenings a little train of boys (all aged about six) run past with their leader pounding out some homemade march on a rusty harmonica. All in all I guess it makes a nice backdrop for the friendly voices of the World Service.
In the house's other rooms there seems to be heaps of gossip (this is paranoia I know, but maybe it's just because everyone talks in low whispers) plus some pretty odd domestic arrangements. Like: everyone in this house (bar me, a Brit-used-to-beds to the end!) sleeps on mats (!), made out of leaves (!) on the floor(!). There's NO glass in any of the windows. The bathroom may not boast a bath but it does make up for this small blip with an extraordinary range of wildlife, all of which clearly believe they have first rights to floor space. This might well mean arguments with red ants (biters); rats (need I say more) and cockroaches (yuck) but I'm not going to be the first.
Give me a letter of the alphabet and I can name you a beastie in my bathroom. This would put me off washing, or s-w-i-m as they confusingly call it here, but it's so darn humid that on the hour I feel obliged to strip and splash under a rubbish shower (as feared there’s no hot supply in this house unless you boil the kettle!). The truth is that if you don't shower often, you start to glow and before long your whole body smells malty. Believe me, it's NOT nice - remember to fumigate yourself after reading this letter. Still I've been warned that everyone develops fungal infections and malaria (despite the disgusting tasting tabs), so maybe easy-wash-off malt is the best of some bad givens.
At the moment everyone in this house is an expat. It's a proper league of nations in fact - bar that the official "residence" language appears to be Pijin. I'm not too sure on this point seeing as I haven't yet understood a thing anyone says and as far as I can see we are from the UK, Australia and Canada. All day I see people's lips move and laughter then seems to follow, but I can't get the gist of the sentences at all. I'd feel like I was deaf if I hadn't resorted to a cunning plan - taking out my contact lenses so that now I can neither see nor understand the people I share this house with! I rather suspect everyone wishes I hadn't come. Which makes six of us, those five - and me!
Anyway, enough of this witter. What's your news? Don't let me believe in my new codicil: I'm friendless in my new country; jobless in my old and feeling completely out-of-touch in both.
Love Suzy
PS I've had a phone installed in my room. It hasn't rung yet.
A TAXI HORN blasts making the old couple walking back from town’s Number Nine hospital squeeze themselves, fast, on to the dusty verge. The man, his belly fattened into a phantom pregnancy from an easy life - and beer - with his equally fat wife are returning sadly from the clinic. Their youngest daughter, Lovelyn, seems so sick from malaria that the doctor abandoned her morning's patients to drive the girl straight to hospital. They plan to keep a bedside vigil, but first must collect some food from their house and suitable clothes for Lovelyn.
The pair look as ordinary as it's possible for two grannies to look. And yet behind Anna's eyes are deep, deep secrets. The gossips still remember snatches, but lucky for her there are more up-to-the-minute scandals to share.
Anna's cheap cotton dress is stretched so tight that her breasts swing in the direction of the southerly trade winds and her hips roll south-easterly recalling the old days, when Anna was slim. It was then, when her body was literally her trade, that she'd perfected this walk. Down at the fishing boats at full moon she'd pace the wharf until one of the hungry sailors, or better still the American personnel, offered cash for a slug at her sex. Even those experienced payers of love were hypnotised by Anna's walk. Some left her alone, thinking she was hiding a disability, but for most the lure of taking a girl with Anna's handsome face left them with no problems about parting with either their money - or trousers.
Once upon a time Anna was a bush girl, living the life that generation after generation of her ancestors had lived. And then came the day when white man turned on white man and brought their deadly games to the islands. A nearby lagoon village had been burnt to nothing by a stray shot from a nervy pilot's friendly fire. The surviving villagers, mostly relations, had run to her father, the chief's home, and demanded compensation, explanation ... what had they done to deserve this?
The old, once-dignified chief was suddenly powerless. He recognised a new world where things would never be the same. There were stories of the Japanese killing innocents, the Americans trampling food gardens, the British protectorate colonials so scared they'd run away ... The sky was suddenly black with whining, tin mosquitoes that brought fire and death in the name of peace. Some nights, looking north east towards the Ngella islands, the darkened starry sky was hidden by a sinister red glow. The villagers feared Tulagi, at that time a very unassuming capital, was on fire. And it was. And then there were the stories of so many ships between Ngella and Guadalcanal that even a non-swimmer could walk blindfold safely on those metal "bridges" lying ready, stern against prow, across the treacherous strait.
That war jettisoned everyone into a different century.
A hero was recognised: Sgt Jacob Vouza, now remembered more as a stamp than a man, who knew silence was the best weapon, left for dead by Japanese soldiers' bayonets.
A hero was made: America's ill-fated president John F Kennedy, then just a man hoping for luck - and enjoying it with the aid of Western scouts, Biuku Gasa and Aaron Kumana - who suggested scratching "Bring Help" on to a coconut shell. The scouts then paddled the message to the coastwatchers HQ, ensuring the rescue of Kennedy and his crew from their stricken PT torpedo boat.
And the old heroes fell - Anna's father and hundreds of chiefly elders like him - came tumbling down, mere insignificancies amongst the new gods of dollar bills, tinned beef and motor cars.
Anna was a very young girl when she ran away to the new capital being built on the big island, Guadalcanal. And there she went wild, enjoyed clubs, took the soldiers' and then the ex-servicemen's and then the fishermen's money ... and then suddenly it all bored her. What she wanted was a man to give her children - which is how she ended up with Adam.
Time has treated Adam very badly. Once fit enough to compete for his country's national athletic squad; fit enough to bring home a meal and honed enough to coach, and train, and coach and train, he is now a greying fish left breathless on the shore. All that is left of the splendid days are a collection of rusting medals, an album of faded pictures and a fit man's brain in a fat man's body. Adam looks best sitting on the bench under the house chatting gently to his wife.
It is more than 35 years since they married, and in that time they've had 11 children. Anna never went flirting again after Adam showed his interest. He wanted this wonderful Malaitan woman, with her quirky foreign habits and entrancing, rolling gait. And to get her he paid too. But not with the dollar bills that bought hair slides and perfume. No, his money was of the old sort - string after string of shells filed into red, brown and white beads. Adam's friends teased him for taking a dewry (prostitute) for a wife, but he was without shame. Anna was going to be his and her past was going to be forgotten.
The pair are not poor. Both have a sharp wit and a talent for making money. Anna stayed barren that first year of marriage, just so no evil tongues could talk another's paternity on to her firstborn, but he's long dead now. Their youngest, truly a gift of God, is 15-year-old Lovelyn. The kids in-between are living all around the islands so it is their grandchildren, and the children of Adam and Anna's sisters and brothers that gravitate to their house in Mbokonavera.
It's a good place for dreamers.
The couple's first venture was to open a store at the squatter village where they first settled. Everyone thought that was a job for the Chinese and just laughed at their local efforts. But soon the AA Store was seeing more trade than they could have imagined. There they sold white man food - jars of coloured mixtures, bread and biscuits; packets of brown grains to change the taste of water and tins of fish that neither looked, nor tasted, like fish but were popular enough. The dollars they earned was invested carefully - first in a permanent house; then on blocks of land and little houses that could be rented. By the time their second-born had her first child, Anna and Adam were probably the richest couple of locals in that strange village Solomon Islanders call the capital. And then came the cyclone, a rare miscreant of wind and pressure over Guadalcanal, and in just one night everything was flattened - the houses, their store, everything.
They had no choice but to begin again: but they were older this time, and it took it out of them. Anna had to juggle her conscience with her custom beliefs and her Christian thinking to find the cash to rebuild their lives. It wasn't easy. And that's when the lines on the pair's faces began to show and the starchy flesh crept round their bellies. But the shock of starting over jolted the pair out of a growing selfishness.
The cyclone's sudden force made them realise money in the bank means nothing. It can't protect you from enemies and you can't eat it. Overnight it can grow or it can shrink but you still can't see it in the way you can see the good things of life. They fell back to the old way of thinking about possessions: whatever you have you share, because if times become hard your family and friends can then divide whatever they have with you. This new burst of generosity never stretched to letting customers have purchases from their store for free - behind the concrete box's counter dollars and cents talk - but it did mean that Anna and Adam now began to enjoy their endless relations' impromptu visits to town. After all they could feed these hungry village mouths - and they had enough money to settle the water bill, the power bill and transport to collect new gas cylinders: monthly accounts that many people in town found a constant struggle to meet.
They also have enough money to afford marble headstones for their dead children, three so far. It's this thought that reduces Anna to tears on the winding road that leads up to the house and the AA Store. She fears her lovely daughter may die, and there's always a nagging doubt that it's the Big Man's revenge for her own chequered past.
"Matron don't cry,” says Adam uneasily. “The Big Man will look after Lovelyn. She is sure to be all right, that's why the doctor has taken her to Number Nine (the hospital). We know she's been ill for a bit now, and she's thin and weak. It's right that she's gone to the hospital because they know how to look after her. And yes, I'm sorry that we're not there now, but we'll pick up some things and then we can go straight down there. You'll see, Lovelyn will be all right, she always is."
Anna sniffs clumsily, she's also feeling guilty for allowing that foreign doctor to take her youngest to hospital alone. She had no choice, the doctor insisted Lovelyn needed urgent treatment right now, not just a mother's patient care.
As their house comes into sight now they are greeted by the welcome committee - a motley assortment of brown dogs that mostly lie around, bodies flat to the ground, except when they see Adam. He often finds it hard to leave the house without a canine escort - only a warning shout and - sometimes - a well-thrown stone will persuade the dogs to stay on sentry duty under the house.
After the dogs comes a little four-year-old boy, known as Junior as his dad shares the same name. "Matron," he shouts excitedly, legs cannoning into his grandmother, "Matron there's a new boy come here. I've never seen him before. He looks nice, well his teeth are white, but no one has talked to him yet because he's asleep now.
"I think he's from the village," adds Junior importantly - seducing both Anna and Adam into a less anxious mood. At that moment a sleepy head walks out on to the balcony and stretches. Then looks down and, catching sight of his elderly aunt, makes a cautious welcoming wave. It always happens - the strangers turn up at their house, fall asleep, and then in a strange twist of possession end up welcoming their hosts to home! Anna gives Adam a look, does he recognise this young man? Adam shakes his head - but Anna has worked it out now. The familiar lithe body, thin frame, tall, bold eyes: that's her brother. And as it can't be her brother, must be one of his sons - probably his youngest, so that's her nephew Henderson.
Henderson, ashamed now that he's greeted his auntie wearing only a lava lava, retreats into the house to put on shorts and a shirt. He returns to the big room to find the old couple sitting on the sofa. Both look tired. Instinctively he runs water from the sink tap and politely gives them each a glass.
"How do you do Matron? And you uncle, how are ..."
"So you're Henderson are you?" says Anna happy to have solved another who-are you puzzle. "It is good to see you Henderson, one good omen on this sad day. Your cousin Lovelyn is sick. We are just going to the hospital to sit with her, so you will have to look after yourself in this town for a bit."
"What's wrong?" asks Henderson, still shy from his calico (clothes) mistake.
"Lovelyn has malaria and the doctor is making tests. It's her third positive test for malaria in the last month, it just doesn't seem to leave her" - this from Adam who has taken over the conversation while Anna fills a basket with fruit, clean lava lava and a comb.
"Here, take my book, maybe she'd like to read that," says Henderson thinking it is the only thing he can offer pushing the much-loved Sidney Sheldon novel into his uncle's hands.
“Oh, no. No books. Lovelyn's too ill to read. And besides she doesn't like any book except The Bible." Adam returns the book formally. No one reads in their house, except maybe the newspaper on a Thursday or The Bible on holy days.
Matron is busy thinking about custom medicine. Lovelyn's malaria, maybe it cannot be cured by white man medicine either. If she was younger she'd take this village boy into the bush and look for the right tree to make strong medicine to cure Lovelyn. But, she's out of practice, the only custom medicine she dabbles in these days is for the silly creatures who think it will woo them the boy of their dreams or ambitious footballers who'll do anything to get their team into the finals. No one in town uses custom medicine much, now that they can go to the clinic, or the pharmacy, and just buy what's needed in a packet with a sell-by date. Yes, forget those ideas, bush medicine is for backward, bush people - definitely not their precious daughter. But she can't let go of the idea and checks with her husband.
"No, Anna, we've tried this before," he says angrily. "We would take your special bush medicine in the old days, but this is a modern town, and in town we have all the overseas medicines we need. Besides, there are no trees nearby, or not the tree you need to make this cure. No, we must use what the doctor Mrs gives us."
Anna pretends to ignore her husband and shakes Henderson's hand welcomingly. "It is sad you've arrived when we have these problems, but you are welcome here ..." She breaks off to pick up a white handle that is ringing noisily in the corner.
Henderson is wide-eyed. He's staying in a house with what is obviously a telephone. He can't wait to try it out.
On the line is Fred, the taxi driver, ringing to check if any tourists have booked a taxi for the airport. It's a new system, doesn't work too well yet, but is perfect timing for Anna and Adam right now.
"Yes, come up to the house and take us to the hospital." The phone is put down unceremoniously and within a few minutes the roar of a Sunny Datsun announces that transport has arrived. Adam and Anna leave together, taking the toddler with them. Alone again, Henderson turns up the radio's volume and then moves to the corner of the room, tracing his fingers over the telephone with awe. What a machine! What a life he's going to have in town! Furtively he punches out numbers at random - quite the office boy.
***
Dearest Dan
Missive 101 - You know what, it really does get better here. For instance if you enjoy shopping (and yes, you'll remember how much I do!) you'd truly love it here. No chance of designer frocks, little black outfits fit to die for, clunky gold jewellery - but there is the opportunity to go to a different address for every single item. Crazy I know, but listen, I ain't got nothing to do anyway, so might as well shop-till-I-drop.
So now you can think of me cruising those Honiara stores. They are identical - it's absurd, there's obviously some kind of charter that says all shops should have a plastic counter fencing off the goods with three or four sulky Solomon Islanders standing behind it. The procedure is walk into the store, and look at your feet (dressed in what is known as "slippers" here, but to you and me hideous flip flops), then look even harder at feet on the dirty concrete floor. This seems to help (everyone else!) locate desired goods, eg, blue plastic hair slide; pink plastic mirror; two kilo sack of plastic-tasting white rice; hideous red nylon knickers. Then point using only the eyes, and if that fails add chin into the point (thank god I'm no chinless wonder)! Sullen islander then asks for money. I then count out some coins (done with horror as even these modest purchases leave me way over budget for the month) and push said coins across the counter.
Shop worker then goes to cash register and lets boss, as often as not Chinese, recount money. He (as often as not it's a he) then makes that nice ping noise on the cash register. The deal seems to be over. And I think the deal's over and go to walk out. And then there's a snake-like hiss (to attract me, the white Mrs' attention) and I come back to the counter, a bit shamefaced, to watch each of my purchases being wrapped up individually in torn strips of newspaper. It takes for ever, but the plus is a wide-range of reading matter. Have come to realise I prefer my goods wrapped in the Straits Times - plenty of horse racing results and bizarre adverts for off-the-wall aphrodisiacs. My cunning plans to acquire reading matter sometimes backfire if I end up with a newspaper in a Chinese alphabet! But then again even these scraps prove useful blocking up the cavernous holes in the mosquito net over my bed.
Shopping is about the only time I speak to anyone. You'll remember that I had a phone put in my room - well after 24 days it finally rang. On the other end was some idiot, dialling the wrong number. He mumbled an apology, but I could hardly hear what he was saying because of the blaring pop music in the background - even more ironic (well, I thought so) the voice is singing: "Now that I found you babe I ain't going to look no further". And with that promise the phone was crashed back into its socket and I'm talking to an irritating cut-off dialling tone. If there was a speaking clock facility here I'm sure I'd spend most of my time listening to it, hearing the two years counted down!
The job’s really OK, and I've worked out there are some highlights to my week too. Don't let me bore you, but here they are: Monday - post usually arrives; Tuesday - squash; Wednesday - anti-malaria pill; Thursday - swim at Mendana Hotel pool; Friday - more overseas post may come; Saturday - for surprises (ever hopeful!); Sunday - another anti-malaria pill. Please, please, please don't let the World Health Organisation doctor bods find a cure for malaria too soon, or else I'm going to have to find something else to look forward to on two days of the week!
Well that's it from me. It being Sunday I'm quite busy today, got to find my malaria pill and shove it down my throat! Stay well and happy.
Masses of love, Suze
Suzy wakes to a room of dappled light. For a moment she thinks she’s lost in a swimming pool, or a Hockney splashed painting, as she struggles to focus on the dancing light rings created by the mix of Tropical morning light filtering brightly through the big green leaves of kapok and pawpaw trees. Her bare left arm is tangled in the mosquito net but as she struggles in and out of neverland she lifts it up enough to feel a welcome breeze wisp from the louvered window kiss her properly awake. It seems that the stretch of flowered material she’d ingeniously strung across the window, using drawing pins filched from King George VI College staff room and a twisted pair of tights, has fallen down allowing anyone passing on the public path at the back of the house a good view of her. Idly Suzy wonders if voyeurs find her possessions or her person more interesting. Probably the latter, Tupperware boxes aren’t that exciting wherever you are in the world.
She can hear someone rhythmically sweeping, it must have been what woke her. Under the stilt-legged houses on the other side of the road two girls chat as they restart peeling kumara, and from the sea side of the town it’s still quiet enough to hear a faint rumble of a truck reversing down by Ranandi wharf.
Suzy has been in the Solomons for less than a month but she is delighted by the holiday-perfect mornings and achingly quick red sunsets. If she dared leave her bed, unlock the door and pad through the living space, decorated solely with one large sofa, then she could look at a the sea and out to the far away islands of Tulagi, the old capital. At this time of the day it’s a stretch of horizontal blues and silvers magical against a perfect sea, but the calmness seems to disappear as the mercury rises. Every day its 32C, which is happily hot; but the humidity is awful. Suzy can’t believe she will ever adjust to walking on the shady side of the street, very slowly or feel a need to take less than 15 showers a day. After a night like the one she’s just had – woken persistently by the stupid dogs that roam the town barking at the moon, their shadows and whatever it is Solomon dogs fuss about – she’d normally have a lie-in, especially as today’s a special school holiday. But she’s endured enough of these hot, sticky days to know that getting up now to do the jobs on her list is the better option.
Problem is, Suzy’s a bit nervous of her flat mates. They are also volunteers, sent by agencies like VSO, but from Canada, Australia and America. They’ve all lived here nearly two years and know everything she’s hoping to learn, but seem worn out by sharing it all. On paper this volunteer house ought to be a hoot, but the rule seems to be that English cannot be spoken. As a result she’s got no idea what’s going on, there’s a blur of Pijin words which seem half recognisable but make no obvious sense to her. One of the volunteers manages an acting troop and a few nights ago all the actors turned up – 11 muscled up boys, some with moustaches and dreadlocks – and they’ve taken over the room next door. Given how many people are now based in the house the Solomon guys are incredibly considerate. About 10pm they all seemed to lie down where they talked – tables, chairs, floor - wrap themselves in a cloth and fall instantly asleep. Now she also feels very guilty about having a room of her own, and unclear about whether to lock the door or not. Wherever she goes, especially on the walk to the college, doors are left open. This is clearly a town where keys don’t get used and of course there’s not much point with the leaf houses… But she’s also been advised to lock her room, and with 11 men she can’t yet understand sleeping outside her door this feels like the right thing to do.
Dressed to mop up sweat - in a bright skirt and pale Lacoste polo shirt - Suzy cautiously opens her bedroom door, expecting to queue for the bathroom. The guys are starting to turn over, as if resistant to waking up. A couple are on the verandah smoking but it’s still Church-quiet inside. By the gas stove Fabien (from Canada) in improbably short shorts stirs ferociously at a large pot.
“It’s soup. I’m making it for breakfast,” he says surprising her with words she knows. Then again she’s never heard of soup eating at this time of the day. “It’s a holiday for you isn’t it? Well, when you’re ready do you want me to show you around town – I’ve got to go up to the Post Office anyway. If we go soon we can get some fresh bread.”
Turns out Fabien is kind of nice, he just thinks women are a pain and classroom teaching inappropriate for a society where most people live in a way their great great grandparents would recognise, but who are also trying to adapt to the changes that world economics bring. Suzy lets his sniping flow past. He’s been here too long, as is all too clear when they enter the bread shop and he choose his purchases – a white loaf and a sweet roll - using his chin.
“How do you do that chin choice thing?” she quizzes as they finish up the fresh bread sitting on a surprisingly lush clover patch, which is also scattered with fish bones and greasy paper bags. The truth is that she’s not really listening to Fabien’s answer about custom, culture and direct gaze, or even that interested in his thoughts on modern development. She’s been employed to coach the fifth formers, and work up various teaching strategies, so the real teacher can finish their own training over at the University of the South Pacific campus in Fiji. It’d be good if she had counterparts to work with, train up and handover to like most of the other UK-volunteers, just so she’d feel less isolated but stuff it, she hasn’t.
Before they part – Fabien has to work on something, typical bloke excuse around her – he takes Suzy to see round the national museum, although it looks more like a plane hanger. “When you get too hot, this is the place to come,” he says, his blonde face already starting to pink up. Suzy’s starting to overheat too. In the stifling air near this part of town, where no sea breeze can reach, it is hard to breathe. She sniffs at her wrist realising that she’s starting to smell as if her body is cooking, possibly rotting, in the humidity.
“Its air conditioned to keep the exhibits tiptop,” he explains, “but I don’t like it much. Come on, let’s see what you think.”
Inside they are welcomed by a crackly tape of men in thongs and older, topless women stamping along the beach in a way that makes all of their traditional grass skirts sway violently. The background sound is a mix of grunts and shouts, not the panpipes or cultural genius she’d been somehow led to expect and is a strange contrast to the sweet acapelo singing she’s heard as she walks around town. Fabien says this was filmed in the 1930s. Apparently World War 2 changed everything. Even so most of the museum’s 10 items – skull, pipe, scary carving - are dusty, or maybe she’s just in the wrong mood, so when Fabien points out the exit sign as his favourite exhibit she laughs longer than is kind, happy to escape into the bright light of Honiara town.
“That was a great tour, Fabien, thanks. Didn’t know you can look around a capital so fast! It’s odd someone hasn’t put in blurbs about famous Solomon Islanders in that museum, I guess there must be some famous people in the local history books. Artefacts just don’t do it for me.” She hasn’t talked to anyone other than students for so long (or that’s what it seems) the words fly out. “And before you head back to the soup, can you just tell me where to go and buy things for the house, and I’ve got a few items I need…”
Fabien looks down at his left wrist checking a large, chrome waterproof watch to the amusement of a group of girls walking past with their home-plaited leaf baskets. “Give me $10 and I’ll pass it to the boys to use at the market. We’ve left it too late to get the best deals today, but they’ll have wantoks they can get a good-sized fish from. You should look round the market, it’s amazing with all these piles of cucumber, coconuts and greens that the women from the other side of Guadalcanal grow in their gardens and then bring up here to sell. But if you want treats like watercress, bush limes, star fruit, snake beans or guava,” he continues, not noticing Suzy is wondering if he’s gone back to speaking Pijin as she doesn’t recognise half the foods he’s listed, “then you need to get up earlier or make some good friends. My tip though: bananas are something else here, especially the little ones. Buy as many as you can carry.”
What Suzy wants is camera film, so decides to try the pharmacy and then the stores along China Town the other side of the Mataniko River. The pharmacy’s a pleasure – it’s air conditioned too – and there’s lots of the sort of products she recognises from the Boots counter, except most seem to be out of date, including the one film that fits her camera. The customers in the store, an ebony dark older man dressed in shorts and button down shirt and a thin, rather scruffy Australian bloke, tell her it won’t matter much, unless it does. Exasperated she asks if the store will order some. Apparently that’s possible, but not until the next but one Brisbane flight in 10 days time.
She hadn’t realised there was only one international flight in and out each week. What a shambles of a country. By the time she’s hiked hotly over to the famous China Town stores Suzy is in a bad mood. The street is built like a spaghetti Western with wooden fronted stores, each with a veranda entry up five wide steps, lining either side of a very dusty street. Admittedly there are no cowboys or horses, but there’s no tarmac either, and everywhere she looks people are chatting or staring as if nothing ever happens until Clint Eastwood (or even son of Clint) turns up.
Knowing that most of the stores stock everything, she picks the second building on the left, walks in and is happily surprised by how cool the interior is, although it is rather dark. Obviously the owner doesn’t believe in strip lighting. A few customers, maybe staff, all male line the walls. All eyes are on her which is a pity because at that moment the room starts to spin faster than the ceiling fan. Then it lurches this way, that way, until she can’t stop her scream dashing out straight into the face of a young bloke.
“You alright Mrs?” he asks slowly. The room’s settled down now.
Suzy nods. “What the hell was that?”
“Hem went up and down,” answers the stranger, eyes down.
She just keeps saying, “What?” sounding rather like the time her Walkman stuck on the scary bit at the start of Thriller.
The stranger tries again, unsure if the white Mrs is scared or missing a part of her brain. “Mrs, it’s an earthquake. It’s gone finished now. You no worry. Come, here’s your basket,” he picks up the blue plastic bag of shopping and small rucksack she’d panickingly dropped.
“Thank you. Will it come back again? Was that big? Is it normal?” Suzy has so many questions she’d like to ask. Even so she notices her rescuer is very good looking. He’s about her height, has cherry bay skin, a wide smile with white teeth and like so many of the men in this town impressive biceps. He’s wearing a sporty red vest and shorts. That seems to be it. No shoes.
“The ground shakes is normal,” he says, the English words feeling rusty. Henderson hasn’t spoken this language really since he was pushed out of school, although you can’t avoid hearing it – the radio announcers, the pastor, and here in town there’s so much more – the whitemen, the big men, the bank staff and now this Mrs. He’s met plenty of expats, back at school there were always a couple of whitemen staff but to date no woman has clung to him quite like this. It’s definitely a good feeling. And is that lipstick?
He holds out his right hand to shake, Solomon-style. “I’m Henderson.”
She’s clearly puzzled by this. “OK Henderson, let’s shake hands. I’m Suzy.”
Emboldened he tests his English: “Where are you from? Are you married? Do you have a video?”
Suzy steps back, trying to withdraw her hand from his, acutely aware how everyone is staring. It’s like being Princess Anne in a zoo. She tries to answer carefully. “Well, I’m from England,” she pauses, thinks about what the other questions might mean, then bolts out of the store door embarrassed to even try answering them, but calls over her shoulder at the red T-shirted guy, “OK, I’ve got to go now. Good to meet you. Thank you for helping me.”
It’s ridiculous to care, but she knows everyone is laughing at her.
LIFE WITH THE Mbokonavera mobs suits Henderson well. Though he found it far better when cousin Lovelyn was eventually allowed home from the hospital, malaria finally conquered. She still looked thin and found moving around too tiring to go back to school just yet, so Henderson was put in charge of her "entertainment" programme. To Henderson's delight this involved watching piles of videos.
Anna and Adam, unexpected sports fans, had paid for a large TV screen, with video set, a few years back. And it was this which became his best-loved item in the Mbokonavera house. Lovelyn, listless on the sofa sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, expressed little interest in what she watched, so Henderson decided to study every sporting video he could find. His favourites were Fiji in winning mode at the Hong Kong Sevens, closely followed by the All Blacks on tour. But despite his enthusiasm he noticed Lovelyn watched the rugby heroes with increasingly low interest, often letting her eyes shut. This only changed about a fortnight after the riot when Patte turned up at the house wondering why Henderson hasn’t joined his mobs at soccer school. “No boots,” admits the village boy, not realising yet that boots can be shared.
"It's my favourite Henderson," says Patte laughingly handing over a tape wrapped in brown paper, "and as I hear you're not keen to walkabout over bridges at the moment, thought you might like this."
Before Henderson could deny his friend's suggestion that he was a nervy village boy - or even unwrap the parcel - Patte was gone. Curious he put the cassette into the video's hungry mouth and was immediately captivated by a friendly Rastafarian face and a wicked beat: introducing Mister Bob Marley.
"Where did you find this one? It's really nice."
Lovelyn, who had barely spoken for the past two days, quizzed him intently. "I never knew a village boy like you could find music videos," she added impishly - and with that decidedly weird conclusion, or so Henderson thought, 15-year-old Lovelyn began to regain her enthusiasm for living.
The cousins had never met before and Lovelyn was as curious about life in the village as he was about her tall town tales.
They talked and talked, and Henderson found that even though he was now living in the town he never seemed to have the time to walk even the short distance to the centre or hang around with other boys.
Used to being outside most of the day he soon felt feast-full of videos. So he’d pester Lovelyn to spend afternoons by the AA Store sitting under the cool of the Banyan tree. It was quiet at the store then, almost too hot for people to come by. Not so the Hilux owners who accelerated past in a fierce storm that swirled grit over the store’s counter. Whichever wantok was on duty would then get out a coconut palm spine brush and sweep at the dust, coughing pointedly as they busied themselves.
“Why do you put up with this?” he asked Lovelyn every time a truck passed. She shrugged, it would rain soon and dampen it down.
Once when the Dr Mrs raced past in her style truck, rushing to take cash to her house girl, the dust made everyone choke so much that Lovelyn felt ready to tease her relation.
“Why do you put up with this?”
Henderson didn’t want to anymore. “Back home we make the store a place that the village wants to come, that way they spend their seleni. I think we could make the AA Store a place people wanted to come if we put up some benches under this big tree.”
“Oh you are having an idea now,” mocked Lovelyn, “I thought you didn’t school good.”
Henderson grins at her, happy to be the attention. “I did school until I was 15, not sure why it all went wrong, but if you paid more attention in your maths class you’d know that I’ve also spent four years helping at our family store. I’ll have you know that I’m a business man not an unemployed lieu.”
“OK genius – share your ideas…”
He’s not ready to do that just yet, this is something to talk with Matron about. Maybe it’s because he’s unused to town life he can imagine it better already. He wants a bus going up the Mbokonovera road so there’s no need to sweat into town. Or what about getting the women who grow vegetables to use the store as a mini market so all the people living in this suburb can buy fresh cabbage without having to go to market? And if they sold their produce here, they’d also buy the matches, Kotex and kerosene on sale. The first thing he’d kill would be the dust though – easily done by planting up a hibiscus hedge or banana tree barrier between traffic and the cans of tuna fish and packet noodles on the AA’s dirty counter.
Henderson’s devotion to Lovelyn impressed Anna and Adam who sent nothing but good reports back home to wantoks visiting his village or leaving for annual leave, or working tours in Malaita.
Clearly these stories of good-boy-Henderson were not believed by his father, who’d had the time of his life the year he went to town. Once when the MV Mali came into the wharf a terse note was passed from an uncle, to a friend, via a taxi driver's Mrs at church and then to Anna, who gave it to Henderson. It was from his father requesting him to behave, not to chase any more girls in town and, in a casual postscript, just to inform him that a large curly-tusked pig has been exchanged and Saskia was now his "wife". Henderson dropped the note in shock, which was quickly picked up, and poured over by Lovelyn.
Henderson did not wish to remember this Saskia girl. She came from a neighbouring village, and the note said she was good, went to church and could sew well. But Henderson thought nothing of her. Yes, he’d liked her once but it was just a young boy’s fun. Angrily he decided he was too busy to worry about this absurd note - busy helping Lovelyn become strong; busy understanding town life; too busy in the head.
"So my cousin-brother is to be married to a village girl! It's time for a feast isn't it?" teased Lovelyn.
"Look I'll do what I want. I don't want to be married to the village. I'm a free, single boy and that's how I want to stay. It's a hard life in the village for a married woman - what does she end up doing, just cooking and gardening and sewing and having babies. And me? What would I end up doing - watching her, that's what. No I want to be a man, use the education I've got to develop myself and then to go back to the village and help people develop the resources there. How's marriage going to help me?"
It was dusk and to Henderson’s surprise the room seemed to have filled up with the wantoks staying at the Mbokonavera house. Not all of them were young, and not all were single, but all had passionate feelings about marriage. The wantoks erupted into debate, a very formal debate that reminded Anna, as she sat chewing betel nut on the old chair under the house, of broadcast parliament sessions - each honourable member having their say and neither agreeing, nor disagreeing with anyone else, possibly not even hearing anyone else.
"Marriage does help," said a whiskery thin man whose frame denied his eight children. He worked on the fishing boats and it was well known that his wife was the boss. Or well known that the pair had been childhood friends, child-aged parents, and now saw each other (and hated each other) only at Christmas. Or that he had two wives, both living in different provinces. Or something ... "Marriage is a holy state, isn't it? It's what a man and a woman should do to have children." Everyone, except Henderson, began laughing. This was the same man who caused a scandal last year by giving his married sister-in-law a baby.
"I think Henderson is right. I’d rather look around, see what life's about and finish my studies than get married to the men here," said Lovelyn with force. "When I see you wantoks coming to town and living life up, and then going back to your wives with the whisky and Fosters beer barely washed off; turning into Sparka Masters (drunks) and sleeping in the gutter, I just feel sorry for your families. All this bullshit about seeing life means nothing - you men just come to town to be free and play around. In the town you forget your families, your pride and your self-respect. I never, never want to be a wife of people like you."
"Lovelyn! How can you talk that way to your relations, it's disrespectful for a woman to talk that way," says the whiskery thin man authoritatively.
But Lovelyn has lived all her life in town and is frightened of nothing - and especially men - and she's open too. Marriage is as much a horror for her as the prospect of marrying Saskia-from-the-village-back-home is to Henderson. Lovelyn may be child-woman, but she's seen it all. Mostly she's seen enough housegirls being sent home with fat bellies and betrayed looks. Despite her fierce feelings she's also been seduced by endless video movies to believe in love with a capital L.
Underneath the house her mother sighs, splits open another betel nut, she knows love will be her fiery daughter's undoing. But let her make her own mistakes, they'll be less painful that way. Adam, sensing his wife's thoughts, takes her hand and squeezes it shyly: the couple who followed none of the rules clearly still admire each other. It’s also clear that Lovelyn is well enough to go back to her school…
"Yes, I like Lovelyn's ideas," says a lanky cousin brother, whose ambition is to drive the bus he currently crews for, and whom everybody knows has a shine for a black American woman. "It's so much more, well modern, Western, American!" The mood returns to amusement - most of the wantoks giggle until the lanky boy has enough sense to look bashful. But he is irrepressible, lets a Peace Corps Mrs travel on his bus for free, can't see she's embarrassed by a poor ticket boy's attention. "OK, OK," he slurs into a fake American accent to amuse, "I guess I wanna say these things because I gotta in'trest in one special lady, but I'd think it anyway. The real young ones in this room, you know us - Lovelyn, Henderson, Jack, Rosie and whoever else pretends to be unmarried, we've really got to think hard. I mean is it right to live in town with your own family? How can you afford to do that unless you are rich? The thing is you've got to go home, back to the village, else you'll never be boss in your own house. Not that you girls can be anyway," he adds to try and wind-up Lovelyn.
"Yeah, life in town isn't so easy is it?" muses Henderson, who cannot admit that he hasn't left the Mbokonavera house - not even to play football - since he was bashed on the bridge, during the riot. "I mean I thought I'd be free here, could do anything I wanted, be away from the eyes of the village, but Honiara is an even bigger village than back home. If I sneeze everyone knows, and worse they talk about it shamelessly. The things I've heard now about what big men do just amazes me."
"Oh, Henderson," says Rosie, always wise and never believed, "you'll be like them all soon. You just had bad luck when you arrived. Riots don't normally happen. You should just stop your thinking and go out and look at this town world of ours. It may be small, but there's things happening here that'll satisfy your eyes: not everything is bad, though plenty is. And then maybe if you still feel like the good person that you obviously are, you'll do something to stop it all - and then us unmarried girls may feel a good deal happier about getting married to the idiots who propose, and then trick us into good natured goodbyes and a one-way trip back to the village - we'd been so crazy to leave - for the sake of their pikinini (child)!"
The bus boy has barely heard the last couple of exchanges and reverts to money talk. "If I was rich, it'd be different. Imagine, if you had some money you could have development in your village Henderson; and you Rosie needn't work as a housegirl here, you could be your own boss, and Lovelyn you could study overseas, be the university girl. And me, I'd have my own bus ..." His dreams are interrupted by another of the wantoks, Sarah who has been cooking quietly in the imitation bush kitchen behind the house, entering the room and placing heaped plates of steaming rice, noodles, tinned fish and kumara on to the table. The wantoks quieten down, and after a prayer, the room is enlivened only by the radio's current events "World Blong Iumi" (our world) presenter and the scrape of spoon on plate.
A vehicle struggles up the hill outside the house and is greeted by barking dogs. A few seconds later the taxi driver enters the room.
"Good evening oloketa (everyone)! Sarah?" He shouts for his wife, but before he can ask her: "What's for dinner?" she is at his side with a vast helping. She's never normally this nice to him so the wantoks guess it must be pay day. And they're right, the moment the talkative man has cleared his mouth of dinner, the moment his belly feels satisfied he begins his pay day lecture about money, the enormous sums of money he made this fortnight for the owner of the taxi. Out of the back pocket of his jeans he brings out a tightly-rolled wad of dollars - and throws it triumphantly on the table.
The bus boy runs his hands through the notes, feels the crisp shapes and the worn corners of the older dollar bills. He handles coins all day, every day. The touch of paper is too much - he looks half drunk, his tongue lolling to the side, his eyes a strange glow. "Yes, with this money we could have development!"
Adam disagrees. "No, that's not right at all money doesn't mean development, it's just a tool towards development."
The bus boy looks blankly at him, confused. In his short life he has learnt just one thing, dollars talk.
"Think of it like this then," explains Adam patiently, he takes his duty as head of the house, the wise head of the house that is, very seriously. "Say you have a swimming pool of money in your beautiful garden. To begin with you can take as much money as you like and there's plenty left - but if you don't share that money your neighbours will be jealous. They'll want some of it too. But if you don't want to share it, you'll then have to pay money for better security, you'll have to build fences and to close your house off from your friends and it won't be long before your swimming pool of money will be nothing, just a few dollars at the bottom of a deep pit. Useless!" He bounces his sleepy grandson, Junior, hard on his knee to emphasise the point. "We Melanesians don't understand money in the same way as that Peace Corps woman you're always talking about. For us money is a glue, it helps bring our families and tribes together. But with your Chinese and your Americans and your Europeans it's different, they use money to separate themselves from their families and tribes. For them money is a knife, used to cut family ties. We've all heard stories from those presenters, Julian and Richard WX, on this radio programme," he nods in the direction of the wireless, "about how in other countries people leave the old men and women in strangers' homes, they let them roam the streets homeless, they isolate them.
"Suppose someone gave you a chicken, what would an ordinary Solomon Islander villager do, not a chief, just a man? Or a woman," he adds after Anna. Saraj and his daughter, Lovelyn, throw him a significant, pained look. "He'd thank his luck and look after that hen until it grew fat. And then he'd slaughter it and have a feast with his wantoks and neighbours. That's our way and these overseas people will never understand it. Time and again aid donors come along with a chicken and give it to villagers, saying that they should set up a chicken project - look after the hen and get eggs, sell the eggs, sell the chicks or sell full-grown chickens for other people to use as egg machines. The Westerners, or Japanese even, it doesn't matter who gives us this money for the hen, they think this one hen is a foolproof gift. They think that this hen will give a taste of their kind of commerce, and with one bite we'll be hooked like a stupid fish into a life of struggle - producing, selling, buying, consuming. That's their way and it's why they don't understand when their aid hen is put in a pot and boiled until it is done.
"Our villager knows there are more important things than money. Yes, he needs money for kerosene and matches and the school fee, but he also needs his neighbours, his relations, his friends to feel good about him - to know he is generous and will share his hen as a soup, or as a feast and not be greedy and try to get all the money circulating the community into his hands."
"Does that mean we should go back to the old ways, forget money then if it causes so much disagreement?" Sarah asks her uncle by marriage. No one hears her, hardly anyone listened to the old man. What does he know anyway? And what does he mean saying money is bad when everyone knows he's got pots of the stuff! Why do old men turn into babies?
Tonight the taxi driver, because of those dollar bills, has a new authority in the house. He stretches out his long, heavy limbs, driving boots still on and dreams of development. He'd like to have his own taxi. Why stop with one car? He'd like a fleet of taxis, each one air-conditioned, smartly painted with the name of his business, 'Fast Fred' printed on the side. Yes 'Fast Fred' would look just top! He'd like a two-way radio fitted in each taxi, so that he can keep an eye on what's happening in town, pick up customers from their homes and not have to be flagged down by a hiss or an impatient wave. He'd like to sit quietly, in the driver's seat, under the shady branches of the giant banyan tree, and not have to cruise Honiara's dusty roads hour after hour, looking for passengers. He wants to carry passengers, not cargo in his fleet of clean, smart cars. And he'd like to demand some better roads - seeing the town from the eyes of the arrival lounge, every flight of the week, he knows visitors are not impressed by the potholed state of paradise.
His wife, a red hibiscus flower artlessly tucked behind her ear, has dreams too. She loves to cook local style and wants to set up a catering business. How often has she had to spend her days planting, growing, weeding, harvesting, carrying, scraping, stirring, watching the pot to provide a pudding for some wantok's wedding? It tires her. What she'd like to do is organise functions: parties, christenings, birthday fun for kiddies, inauguration events, church feast days. She'd like to cook for money, not just compliments. In her mind she can see the glistening spread of food, between her ears hear the "Ahh!" of good tastes touching tongues, listens to the praises of critics, glows when her friends repeat praise about "Sarah's Kitchen" they've seen written in the newspaper. Some women she knows go to the YWCA to speed up their dreams and to learn more about commercial cooking and budgeting. They say the club lets Your World Come Alive, but Sarah is too busy washing, cooking, caring for Junior and her boss (husband) and the extended family to take the first important step towards making her hopes come to life. She needs some training, her husband needs cash ...
Everyone in the room has a giant dream, a monster that rushes at them as they sleep, a green-eyed jealous devil that haunts them when they see a rich man or woman, with money in their purse, walk by ... In just that room, in that tiny plot of land tucked into the Honiara hills, there are 11 people and 1,000 dreams. There are visions of a security service - uniformed guards, alsation dogs panting on chains, saluting employees; there's the logging yard boss; the garage mechanic with a passion for racing cars he once saw on satellite TV; the seamstress who'd like to make wedding dresses but can only afford to crochet gaudy coloured cushions; the screen printer who prints nothing - but certainly knows how to stare at the screens; a nascent publisher hidden inside Lovelyn, who has first to read better, then write better, then ask more obvious questions, then keep her opinions to herself, and then become a journo or will she end up as an air hostess, she's sure to be pretty enough; small baby Junior could be a Prime Minister or a pop star? But the chances are he'll be beaten by the struggle of schooling in his third language, English, and instead metamorphosis into a fishermen (skilled: yes, happy: not sure) working the foreign-owned tuna boats around the Solomons coral seas. And there's the reality: except the taxi driver and the bus boy most do nothing, though all are expected to take turns running the AB Store - serious under-employment.
Henderson surprises them all, but most of all himself. His dream is to go back to the village and help his people improve their cash crops. He wants enough money to organise the villagers to build their own cargo boat to take the copra and cocoa, and sometimes even coffee, into town for sale to the marketing board. He'd like to have cattle grazing under the coconut trees. Things for the young people in the village to do. Fresh eggs and bush lime on sale at his family store. And an airstrip.
Town's obviously a good place to visit, but he sees it suppressing people's energy - suddenly this hunger for money turns into an obsession. People don't do what they want because they feel they can't make their dreams come true. Every day the dream gets bigger and the ability, the self-confidence shrinks. He's not sure he likes it at all. "With this money," he wrestles the cash out of the hands of its last temporary 'owner' and counts the dollars slowly, "My home place could have a boat ..." The size of the thought makes him sad. He doesn't want to go back to the village until he's become a rich man - and that's what he's going to do even if it means picking non-existent gold specks off non-existent sidewalks. He must find a job, make his fortune.
The radio winds up for the night after a string of weather warnings of lows and sudden cloudbursts round the islands. The taxi driver wraps up the dollars, then puts on a video, and after settling comfortably suddenly abandons his viewing programme to go outside for a cigarette. Henderson joins him. Right now it is another perfect starry night, blessedly cooled by breezes.
They smoke silently, until Henderson begins to quiz his wantok about how Anna made her money. He doesn't answer for a bit, puffs again, complacently idle under the house. And then just as he starts to hint at the stories of strange goings on, a Hilux wagon, the new type, as yellow as a flower, weaves down the hilly road past the house.
"That's Patte. He's done well this pay day!" For once Fred loses his cool reserve. He's so bemused by seeing Patte drive in style that he instinctively hisses at the truck. The Hilux stops, and reverses even more erratically. Patte swings open a leather-padded door. "Eh boys, I've got something here. I feel lucky. Come on down town with me. You! Henderson, you come now!" Both men head the short distance down the bush track to the road. Patte is clearly a little drunk thinks Henderson. "Like my new baby? I bought it today!"
"Bullshit, man. You stole it today, you could never buy this!" says the taxi driver angrily throwing his butt end on to the road. Patte giggles, clearly much more than a little drunk. "True. It's my cousin-brother's and he just told me to give it some exercise. You coming then Henderson? It's time you saw the bright lights of my beautiful Honiara."
"Well, he wants you to go, you better Henderson. I'm tired - got to work tomorrow there's a flight from Nauru coming in at five, but Patte you have a good time. And Patte, just look after my bro." Henderson feels the taxi driver slap him on the back and then suddenly he's on the road, a god in a truck ... the suspension disguising the bumps, the headlights frightening mosquitoes away. It's time to party - a wild, wild night to party.
***
Dearest Dan
You wrote to me at last! Thank you. Thank you. I’m glad to know you like the idea that wherever you walk I’m somewhere beneath your feet. I’m not sure that’s quite how I think about it, but I do miss you and… yes, I wish there was a quicker way of communicating…
Suzy looks at the postcard yet again. There’s a rather bad picture of a frog on one side which after several hours of consideration she’s decided was never meant to mean anything. Dan hasn’t said he’s been to a new restaurant, is working hard, has gone to the opera and misses her. Reading between the lines – he knows she will which is probably why he’s so reluctant to write anything despite her flood of airmails – she can sense he’s been having a pretty active social life. It’s time to forget him properly, but Dan’s a hard habit to break. Besides she’s got so much spare time still, or at least so few evenings when she’s asked out, and there’s no TV to eat up the hours that she might as well keep on keeping on with this letter writing thing. She goes back to her portable typewriter, grateful that despite it’s stiff little keys, she still lugged it out here.
People keep telling me (this is in the rare moments when the UNfriendlies notice I'm there) that the Solomons isn't about town life at all. Oh no, to see the real Solomons I have to go to the village. As you can imagine this involves a boat journey of inestimable hideousness to an unknown location the other side of the wickedly named Indispensable Strait.
Whichever of the 5,000 villages I visit, I'm told the food will be plain, though plentiful; I will be expected to cuddle babies (something I'm NEVER going to do, I just don’t do babies yet, that’s for when I’m 32 and the maternal alarm clock rings) and the toilets are better described as shit holes in choice zones - mangrove swamps say, or on the beach (which I guess puts paid to sunbathing). In fact almost everything in this sunny place puts paid to sunbathing - from the endless UV to the fact that the missionaries were here first & their abiding influence is to keep us girls with our breasts and thighs properly covered up! No one is going to make money selling bikinis here.
"Village life isn't too bad once you get used to washing with your clothes on," said one of the expat women I met who was having a short break from her agricultural job on the island of Makira. She said it in a consoling manner, a sort of tip for timid tourists, but I'm pretty sure she was actually boasting about her own amazing adaptability. I don’t think I’m as adaptable at that, thank goodness I’ve got a cushy college job in a town, however backwater it still seems.
Still, thinking about the letters I've sent you, this town knocking must be getting a bit dull. I have been a bit harsh on the way things are here - the hideous prefab houses and single-lane roads. It just seemed so strange to be thrown into a world I recognised (taxis, police, shops, people even) and yet looked different (old run down cars, smiling looking sportsmen, masses and masses of young boys walking up and down, and then slower up and down the main street ALL day with absolutely nothing to do, and no money to do it with).
Went on the most amazing walk the other day, jogging almost to keep pace with one of the UNfriendly housemates, Fabien. First we forded a river, so for the rest of the journey I was accompanied by the tinkling slush of squelching trainers. Then had to ask permission from a little squatter settlement (my first village?) on the far bank. Everyone seemed very friendly, especially when we parted with some dosh - enough for a big bag of rice - which I gather gave us the right to use their bush road. This started at the back of the village, amidst some very tall maize plants (which I now realise are also growing on the centre of the town's sole roundabout. Who gets to harvest the sweet corn? Who planted them anyway? Can you imagine it - at Piccadilly Circus say?!). A bush road is another great Solomon misnomer. It's no road for a start, just a whisper of track that usually heads up a perpendicular slope, and then once you're at the top disappears so you have to slither back down and start again. I notice, with some envy, that Solomon Islanders can walk anywhere and seem to have inbuilt self-righting systems despite the useless flip floppy things on their feet. I fell over a million and one times (don't say I exaggerate - I don't) but lucky I did, because it gave me a chance to notice some rather pretty colours, now at my eye level: orchids. Wild orchids growing everywhere.
Eventually, after working out the bush road ran into a sort of red-mud rill and then up some rocks, and then back into a tiddly track I was hit in the teeth by a view. My god, what a view: stout Cortes looked with wild surmise, silent upon his peak. Anyway it's what I imagined Keats imagining discoverers feel. These towering volcanic hills reducing in size, on a sort of mathematical formula, creating a v-shape for the eye to pour a seascape into were so blue, so green, so gorgeous it made me dizzy. I resented speaking, I resented the sweat making a salty trail from my forehead to my eyes. I wanted to sing, to die, to be rescued. I sailed the world; I wrote a book ... I though of you (briefly, I'm not that romantic as you know, but this view needs sharing).
And we walked on, wet gym shoes forgotten. Back now to this perfect vista, with my ears newly alert to nature: the grasshopper orchestra and the beat of wings of a sea eagle circling high above us. "Look out for the foxholes won't you?" says my companion (in my new mood I was liking him, but despite this my old days of being ever so British and actually sipping G&T with hunting colonels came flooding back). "They're not foxholes, they're earths," I replied. Too fast, too fast - they were of course very much foxholes, dug by the Japanese during the worst of the World War Two battles. How could people be made to suffer such a hellish war in this fragile paradise? It's inhumane to do this to men. I felt very small in the eyes of what people sometimes call the "Big Man" here (and you might call God) - up on that bush road protected by foxholes and lined with orchids.
And then just as suddenly as a wave of tiredness blankets the body, I wanted to be somewhere else ... and was, on the edge of the steepest imaginable valley with rainforest - REAL rainforest - running down to a river. Everything was in it, lianas, big leaves, the drip, drip of cascading waterways, insects burring, logs crumbling underfoot. Never has decay been more lovely. It was quite a struggle weaving down to the bottom of that valley, and just as suddenly as before I was struck by a view to die for - a roaring waterfall that belongs to adverts and fake scene sets. And my now not so UNfriendly friend Fabien(I like these UN United Nations jokes!) just ran to the side and dived in, a dark streak perpendicular in luminous water, comes up shrieking with cold and dives again into a white flecked froth, bubbles everywhere. A pool of happiness. And then we sat in the centre of the limestone waterfall, water quarrelling and bubbling and rushing all around us, skin damp, clothes wet, eating a pedestrian lunch of bananas and papaya (picked from a neighbouring tree). Yes I did get the sexual connotations... is it my fault that all landscape here turns into lust? It's happened to better people than me you know, Gaugin for instance!
The best comes next - make yourself a cup of tea dear man and calm down (!) - the road home follows the river. And after an undignified scramble over the coldest, darkest rocks you've ever seen and being frightened senseless by tales of the Japanese hiding in these caves and only realising the war was over about 30 years after peace was agreed; and knowing people have been so transfixed by this place that they slip and their bodies turn up five miles, [yes miles out to sea] I was ready to be home. And it happened again - the most beautiful view in the world. This time a clear river passage cutting through the rocks which you have to swim along, for something like a mile. The water's so clear that you can see your feet treading water and beneath you, about another 10ft down the peaceful, sandy bottom of the River Mataniko's birth place. I floated on my back and luxuriated in this Garden of Eden - rock faces covered with moss and creepers, trees curtseying into the river, lianas garlanding their branches and listened to the world: noisy parrots, raucous cockatoos - flashes of white and red and the soft plop, plop of fruits falling, wasted, to the ground. What a world!
Enough of this. I'm a changed woman - something happened to me on that walk. I'm not even sure I want to go back anymore! If you want to see me again, maybe come here at Christmas, the diving’s superb....
Oh no, I forgot to tell you I’ve also survived my first earthquake - with love Suzy
“Let me read this to you!” Suzy says angrily to her new friend oblivious to the sublime view. She puts down her glass of Australian treat (Chardonnay’s a good tonic!) by her cane chair. The locally made chair is not as chic as it sounds because it’s been covered in a gaudy plastic coating to protect it from the humidity. In truth the Ozzie Doctor’s colonial-style wooden bungalow, battered by tropical rain, sun and salt-laced trade winds, needs the sort of loving care and maintenance you’d give to an elderly relation. The loose boarding and peeling paint aren’t good, but the walls are covered in fragrant climbers. And the verandha, winding the whole way around the house, which looks out over Honiara’s famous ridges allowing every chair to catch a breeze and a view, whatever the time, that earns it the right to call itself the prettiest house in Mbokonavera.
Right now the sunset is kissing goodnight to the ridges, when dusk falls an explosive cicada chorus will start. “Or is it frogs?” thinks Suzy bitterly fishing into her backpack’s front pocket to remove a well-read postcard which took nearly two months to arrive. Pretty quick for surface delivery.
“It’s from Dan…”
Hey Suze how are you doing? Have you found a head hunter lover yet? Ha ha. Just read your letter about a bathroom full of Danger Mouse. Mine is full of letters. You really are a good writer for a maths teacher! Better go, but thought you’d like to know that wherever you go are somewhere beneath my feet? Love D
“I know I’ve got hours of time to misunderstand it, but this is a pretty mean note isn’t it?” she’s almost teary, blinking as if there’s a dust spec trapped under a contact lense. Her friend the doctor waits politely for Suzy to speak again.
She doesn’t.
“So you like him a lot?”
“What, Dan? Yes, known him forever, well since university. We were never really boyfriend-girlfriend. My fault I didn’t sort of specify that’s what I wanted. And I feel so angry that he doesn’t really want to know what’s going on in my life, and he’s sort of racist. God his life is boring enough, honestly the highlight is who he gets off with next, like some kind of hunt-a-shag…”
“No wonder his letters are short, he can’t really let on about that can he?” says Maylinda appeasingly. “This isn’t to make you feel better, but aren’t you on a two year contract?”
Suzy nods.
“Well you’re going to look back and laugh at that postcard. And when you get back to London Dan will be a good friend because he did write to you, as I’m sure your other friends are. You always seem to be at the post office checking the KGVI box. The thing is that you’re going to change much faster in Solo than Dan is living it up in London. You’re probably already different.”
“I thought you were a medical doctor, what’s all this psychobabble?” challenges Suzy shrewishly, but she’s smiling.
“Actually I’ve got a cheer-you-up plan tonight anyway, we’re going out and me and the old man will shout you, seeing as you are a penniless volunteer selflessly working in a far away place! And as you are a Pom you’ll like Chinese food, which is good because we do too. And that’s it on the restaurant front. Sometimes I fantasise about Thai food, or a really great Italian-style linguine, but I’ve finally worked out that if I can’t cook it myself with ingredients found in the market or town, then I’m not going to have it.”
Suzy nods, not so sure about her cooking skills. At the UN friendly house meals alternate between soup and noodles. For noodles spring onions get chopped up small with wicked looking knives. Then they are fried to death in a big pan along with tinned tuna fish and a packet of noodles riddled with monosodium glutamate.
Soup’s the same. But without tuna or the MSG dose.
Whacked out by new teaching duties and constant humidity she’s eaten this goo gratefully enough nights to have acquired a tomato sauce habit – well it’s alternative as Heinz isn’t here – it’s a Malaysian favourite, Maggi sauce that turns every serving slightly spicy. Dr Maylinda is right. The Solomons has already changed her. She never used to sit on the floor to eat, or check the water was on before using the toilet. She always used to go to bed the day after she got up, spending a good chunk of the evening on the phone pencilling friends in for weekend living-it-up. Cancelling them. And then doing something better.
Here in Honiara a highlight is staying in to sit chatting the night away – storying as it’s called. Making a sentence last a paragraph, and a paragraph a radio programme is a pleasure when the view’s so good. Last week on the east side of this verandha she followed a red balloon flare upwards until it caught a thermal and drifted off to make someone a weather report. And it was on this same cane chair, that she first had enough of a view to pick out stars, follow the visible folds of the Milky Way back lit by the constant nightly lightning displays. Here in the Pacific the skies give a grandstand opportunity to think about other worlds.
There’s a sudden swearing from the bathroom and Maylinda’s husband, another super brain on an AUSAID contract, emerges foaming in a rather too small towel. “Bloody water’s off! Bloody country. Need my leave,” he yells dripping shampoo lather across the room’s woven grass mat, down the verandah steps and out to the garden where a DIY bucket shower is rigged up for emergency rinsing. Suzy thinks it exotically brilliant, but the Ozzie couple aren’t so impressed. And why would you be after a day sweating at the agricultural research station recording coffee bush growth?
“Don’t let the mosquitoes get you out there will you, we’re out of chloroquine until the next plane comes in?” says Dr Maylinda cheerily with a wink, making Suzy giggle until Bruce chucked his wet towel up at them, knocking over an ash tray. Fuelled by wine and friendship nothing can stop the expats’ laughter as it tinkles down the ridge to the AA store.
"YOU ARE DRIVING like a crazy man! Patte are you sure you can drive?"
"No problem. You listen to this song and I'll think about the road"
"Watch out, you're mad. That old woman nearly ... NO, don't try and kill that dog. Boyce, near miss or what. Patt-er-SON, be careful, this is scarier than my classmate taking the church canoe though the reef."
Patte turns his head away from Henderson's nervous village boy commentary and at exactly that moment there is a hideous thump and the super-duper cousin-brother's yellow Hilux's front wheels come to a skidding stop at the edge of a drainage ditch.
As do the wheels of an equally expensive white jeep.
This time it is Henderson's turn to check his friend is all right, but there's no blood, not much soreness, just a rapid retreat into sobriety of sorts. Henderson jumps out of the truck to look at the damage on Patte’s side and is met by a furious figure in the shadows.
"You bastard. How dare you young man? How dare you drive like a lunatic on our public highways? What, no apology is forthcoming? Then you can be resolute that I will be suing you. You can anticipate hearing from my solicitor tomorrow morning. "Now please inform me what you are called."
The boys don’t answer.
Re-angered the man looks towards his jeep and Henderson just catches a glimpse of profile in the darkness lit just by the far away lightning strikes. As the jeep owner moves into the stronger headlight beam he lights up like the shape of everyone's worst nightmare. But this devil man’s teeth are merely anger. “You fucking idiot,” he adds kicking at Patte’s hub cap.
In all his 19 years nobody has ever spoken to Henderson like this. What's more, he knows it wasn't his fault. The strange English, punctuated by swear words so rarely used back home or at Matron’s completely throw him. In contrast Patte is pulling himself together fast in the truck’s cab. Instead of apologising he restarts the engine, double de-clutches, yells to Henderson to jump in, and then reverses the Hilux away from the ditch. With a shudder the tin beast responds.
"Who was that man? Is he mad, or what?" Henderson is shaking so much that he can't decide what he feels - furious or frightened. But Patte seems happy, his body quivering with laughter. His driving skills, not much good when he was speeding, seem to be even more doubtful now that he's laughing.
"That was your good friend, the MP, the one you stopped being beaten up when you offered yourself for sacrifice the day you came to town...."
Henderson gasps. This story can not be true, this is just Patte winding him up.
"Didn't you notice the government number plates?" demands his friend. "Who cares if his swanky jeep is smashed? He can have a new one any day of the week. This year alone they say he's managed to crash more cars than his ministry’s allocation, so then the government had to order a special consignment - about 20 new ones - to show off at Independence Day. It's good that people like us, low class people, sometimes get a chance to dent a big man's pride."
"He swore at me," puzzles Henderson, "but the accident was our fault, well yours! I don't really get why everyone seems to hate that man?"
"You will though," concludes Patte and then lapses into silence which is disguised by the loudness of the stereo and the occasional gear grating as they drive through the town and crawl up a slippery hill track. There is a well-lit, locally built house on the flat summit around which 20 or so vehicles are parked. This must be the dodgy side of town thinks Henderson shyly, the place they call Bang-cock for reasons even innocents can guess. "Welcome to the best gambling den in the Happy Isles," announces Patte with relish, "come on let's go and make our fortune before the big rain."
The boys walk towards a shadowy circle of men. All ages are there and most have the concentrated eye of people who love cards more than life.
"Hello there Patte!" It's a chorus from the even bigger circle of shadowy spectators, "Good to see the kura king!" Patte smirks, he loves kura (type of card game), although not as much as the man he squats down beside - he and his wife once played for 36 hours without sleeping. She even left her kids, and a small baby too, home alone. Everyone thought she must have died. When those two aren't playing cards they are drinking their profits. It's a life, I guess, but not such a good one decides Henderson who watches carefully half pretending he’s security for Patte. Back home cards are Church taboo, so it’s fun to watch the kura game, especially when your friend is as lucky as Patte. In a very short time, before the moon has untangled itself from the mango tree overhanging the house, Patte's winning streak has earned him a heap of money. There is resentment all round, but Patte doesn't care at all. That's cards. That's his philosophy of life absolutely - some people get everything and some are given nothing. On his tenth consecutive win, just when the others suspect he must be cheating (even his friends) Patte gathers up his winnings, nods towards Henderson and walks out of the game to groans from the players left behind.
"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred, man! Three hundred, four hundred, four hundred and fifty, five hundred smackerooneys! Yeah! With this money we could have development," says Patte piling the notes on to the bonnet of the truck. “But first let's go drinking, dancing, cruising, and find us some pretty girlfriends!"
Henderson is speechless - so much money for absolutely nothing - proud to have made a wild friend who can show him the town he imagined.
"If I had the keys to the world
"Girl, I'd make your dreams come true" (Ruddy Thomas)
The same song on the Hilux's stereo is being throbbed out by the band as the friends wind down their windows to drive through the G-Klub gates. Here by the sea the night air is potent with smells – the salty wharf, urine, end of day frangipani and the intoxicating hit of a Queen of the Night. There’s tobacco smoke too, cheap perfumes, shaving foam, freshly washed shirts and something bigger - the dusty ground waiting to marinate into a soothing earthy soup as the first storm raindrops begin to fall.
Patte with his dreadlocks and moustache is clearly well-known - the T-shirted security guards seem to be delaying him for the sake of a chat, not membership credentials. At last he is waved towards a parking place. Henderson looks nervously in the driving mirror. Yes, he's looking cool. Together the pair walk across the crunchy gravel until Patte notices Henderson isn't wearing shoes.
"My god, man, do you want us to be chucked out of this place before we’ve had fun? I know, I know you didn't know, but this is the G-Klub, you gotta look smart here. Listen I think there are some sneakers in the truck, go back and get them on those big feet of yours!" says Patte chucking the keys at Henderson so he won’t miss a moment in the club house. As he walks away the thunder claps start again. The rainy season’s been along time coming.
It might have been a pretty place in the daylight - a white-washed bar, surrounded by a bougainvillaea-covered breeze block wall. At the far end of the dance floor a live band, four be-jeaned, be-jewelled, beery Rasta guys play cover versions of reggae greats. The place is seething with dancers. And the girls! They dance so beautifully. Henderson collapses back into the innocent, village boy, staring at everything. And he's certainly rewarded when he does drag big eyes off in the other direction - little wicker tables and chairs, a swimming pool (is this the famous one Adam talked about that is stuffed with money? he must remember to check) and then a white sand beach running down to the moonlit sea.
"It's just beautiful!"
Patte, ignores Henderson, plunges to the bar and comes back with four cans of Fosters.
"Here man, let's sit here, relax, and just enjoy our winnings. Kura cards is thirsty work! Cheers!"
Patte opens the beer with a practised gesture and practically downs the can in one. Henderson struggles to do the same. He desperately wants to fit in, hopes no one can tell it's his first trip to any club, let alone the country's infamous G-Klub. It's an easy enough pretence so long as he just sits still and enjoys the place. The two friends drink in companionable silence, nodding their head to the rhythms. By the time Patte has finished off his two cans Henderson is feeling very mellow. Patte goes for a walkabout, just to see where the action is tonight, whilst Henderson opts to feast his eyes.
"Love me,
"Love me just a little bit longer,
"Our love is much to young to break, you never even try" (Susan Cadogan)
Henderson tries to make sense of what two town girls, both with soft, wavy hair clipped up, and red, red lipstick are saying too quickly and quietly in a language from back home, ‘Are‘Are.
“It’s as if he’s gone mad. He doesn’t care for me or his child anymore. Last month he nearly killed me.”
“He’s no good,” agrees the girl with blue devil eye-lidded eyes.
“I’m not lying. When he’s drunk he hits me. He’s drunk so often there’s hardly a break between bruises, bashing and baby care. I have to wear dark glasses even in the house, even now at night. And he’s gone strange, makes me wear strange sexy clothes as if I was his prostitute not his wife. He’s supposed to be an MP, I say he’s more like an idiot.”
“Take the small girl and go,” insists her friend smoothing her curls. “Go while he’s at this party. O look, I can see Patte. It is Patte isn’t it?”
The sad young woman laughs at her friend’s change of mood, quickly forgetting her own problems, she teases her “your eyes must have some kind of sickness if they can only see Patteson in here. He’s as crazy as all the others.”
"Hey girls!" This from Patte, in a smoothly-predatory manner offering his hand to shake hello. "Stella! If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?" It's an old joke, but all three laugh.
"This is my message to yooooou
"Singing don't worry - 'bout a thing
"Cos every little thing gonna be all right" (Bob Marley)
Henderson gives up the strain of listening to this nonsense from the girls, and now his friend. He positions himself at the bar. Two guys, looking fit, are discussing football, agreeing the more they drink the stronger they’ll be for their game tomorrow.
A white lady joins the two men. "Hello, hello. Nice with the rain isn't it? Sorry that I'm a little late, I was out having dinner with some friends, whom I think you know - they're over there." She points to some expats dancing.
"Suzy, good to see you. You're looking good," says one of the men and then turns back to his football talk. There's a time and place for women, but it's not right now. Suzy, suddenly isolated by sport and language, retreats to a table and hisses for a waiter to bring her a Tiger beer. She looks around, deeply regretting being there at all. The problem with nightclubs is that everyone always seems to be having a better time than you. Most certainly look happier. Suzy giggles to herself, at least she's getting some more material to write home about - Dan will enjoy this one.
"Money in my pocket
But I just can't get no love" (Denis Brown)
Henderson now turns to his left, back to the bar and tunes into some business talk, again two men – one is offering a piece of land but seems uncertain his mate will pay in Australian dollars using his Brisbane account.
“Don’t think I’d lie, this is straight plan, no tricks.” Which it won’t be, and everyone knows (except Henderson, though even he can guess).
"Ahhh
"Waiting for love won't make it happen ...
"Only heaven can wait for love" (Rudy Thomas & Susan Cadogan)
Henderson wonders if he should dance. He wonders how to dance. He studies the dancers. It'd definitely be easier with more beer. Ordering another can (thank you Mr Patte for that generous gift of dollars) he slops some into his mouth and then heads to the nearest table. He's a youth, and a youth's gotta dance. He asks the girl in the red dress, red as her lipstick, that he saw Patte flirting with earlier, if she will dance with him. It's OK. They dance.
“You look nice, what’s your name?”
“They call me Stella, Ellen’s mummy.” And although she’s dancing with him in her style sunglasses, she seems to be breathing unhappiness on to their piece of dance floor. Henderson has drunk enough to feel affronted for wasting his time with a married woman, but by holding her close he can look around at the many other women not yet paired off and know there are plenty of fish left to try. There’s a pretty girl there he’ll speak to next. Just wait until the song finishes.
"The sun is shining
"The weather is sweet now ...
"For the rescue - here I am
"Want you to know ... I'm a rainbow too." (Bob Marley)
A middle aged face that is becoming frighteningly familiar trawls up to Henderson and his dance partner. And then, before he works out it's the man who Patte crashed into earlier that night, there's a fist in his face. This is becoming a habit he could well do without. Henderson staggers back, more from surprise than pain. The dancers scatter - girls out of the way, men to join in. The MP is shouting, his posh Colonial accent now jumbled into Roviana:
"You man are just trouble. A five finger wanker. Nothing else. And the sooner you get out of this town the better. Go back where you belong - and don't ever dance with my wife again, else you will get to taste my fists another time."
The MP weaves out of the club, dragging the woman in that red dress as if she was a dog. Patte props Henderson up.
"Come on, come on, have another drink. Don't worry. The night's still young and there's plenty more drinking time, plenty of single girls." The pair go back to the bar. Henderson switches to rum. It tastes sweet after the lager. He swaggers, he is in a club, he's danced with a girl and there's been a fight - which his drunken mind allows him to think of as his great victory. After all he's still at the party, can still dance, and feels all right. Unconsciously Henderson flexes his muscles, and calls for more drinks all round.
***
Hello there Dan!
Yes, it's me again. Can’t stop writing to you, but this time I’m in a new uniform: barefoot, dressed in a slither of material, with a frangipani lei (garland) on the table beside me. Oh yes, and a can of beer, and a lit candle. I'm celebrating something big – today, this Sunday, I’ve done three months and managed to avoid going Tropo. Even so I’m half-considering a frigate bird tattoo on the left ankle!
You remember how I had a good time on that walk? Well, after that decided it was time to Go To The Village and learn how to speak Pijin (which up until now I fear I've been spelling pigeon, such was my reluctance/fear about learning another language). I can't really speak it now, other than service words like: "Would you like some food?" "Are you tired?" and happy expletives like, "That's nice!" It seems an odd vocabulary, but not bad seeing as the first phrase I learnt was: "Are you going to kill the pigs now?" (Ae, bae iu go busarem olketa pig pig dis taem?" I mean, I'm a VEGGIE. What kind of use is this going to have for me? I don't eat pigs. Maybe it'll be handy to pacify demented locals wielding a bush knife, which is a sort of short scythe. Very sharp teaching.
Anyway language learning is a wee bit different here. I was given a tutor (that's nice!) who seemed to expect me to know when he was hungry (would you like some food?) and to recognise that teaching was exhausting (are you tired?). Whenever I heard a new word I tried to write it down in a thin orange exercise book until my tutor gestured me to pass it to him. I assumed he was going to check the spelling, so handed it over (we were doing some ditch dull TEFL-style exercises which are designed for Americans who know about teaching English as a foreign language: very serious). It was rather hot, and as you're going to see I'm clearly still an innocent abroad. Wordlessly my tutor tore out that very page - the one I'd painstakingly written out my vocab lists on - rolled it up and SMOKED it! And what could I say in my useless clutch of words? Believe me, "That's nice" didn't come to mind!
Clearly Pijin isn't a written language ... Now I guess I know why the teachers back in the school staff room complain there aren't enough exercise books for the kids, their parents are probably smoking the pages as fast as the head orders the books!
Still the whole trip was pretty good fun - a definite 7 out of 10. I tried to bond with some of the women. It seems hard to apply my sisterhood is global line - without having a kid (ie, reading Dr Spock: no this is nothing to do with Star Trek) or peeling 1001 sweet potatoes (ie, mugging up on Elizabeth David) or - worse, much worse - growing and digging your own food. It's crazily hard work, mostly done in gardens with such steep slopes that you have to TIE YOURSELF UP with a safety harness (aka, bush 'rope') and hope you don't fall out of your garden, rolling thousands of feet to the inevitable roaring river at the bottom of the valley. Believe me, when I get back to Britain I'm going to get myself a well permanent job. And I'm going to stay in it, and I'm going to order my food by phone if necessary. Digging this soft tropical red soil so it stains your food, and your bare fingers and toes is not for me. Organic be damned. So I kind of hung around the coconut palms with men (dodging falling nuts) and even smoked the odd exercise book ...
I suppose the way in for me, a very untypical woman here in the Solomons - I mean I'm in my 20s and where are my kids? (argh!) - might be via beauty tips. So I tried them all. Put scented coconut oil on my hair, and though it did smell wonderful, my hair rebelled. It just collapsed into greasy brown, lank locks. And STAYED that way for about a fortnight. Flowers behind the ear are OK, though I do get confused whether left means married and right unmarried (or vice versa, or what kind of signal for singles that might give out anyway).
Some of the village women insisted I tried turmeric. Remember how I hate yellow? I mean - I hate it. It's a jealous, mean-spirited colour. And suddenly I'm being persuaded that I have to have my shoulders painted with this yellow, sticky muck. In the end I gave in (hopefully with good grace) but that was with the unspoken proviso that I could wash the turmeric off ... I couldn't then, and three weeks and four days later I still can't! Actually I was lucky, it turns out that turmeric is a brilliant sunscreen - and as I'd forgotten my sun block, and the village was a mere two-day boat journey away from the main shopping centre - that kept those rays at bay. (I know, I know I'm obsessed by UV - it must stem from all those ultra vires motions back in university days I guess!)
Back in town there's another beauty thing going on with blue eyeliner. They call it "blue devil" which rivals even a cosmetic queen's names for beauty daubs. I left all my makeup back in England (to make my luggage lighter you understand) and so had to borrow one of the UNfriendlies' devil sticks. It looked as bad as (I) expected, and even worse (on me that is) after I'd danced the humid tropical night away at this dreadful nightclub. It turns out there are TWO nightclubs in town. After the complete non-isolation of the village (I think the only place you could be alone there is in your head - babies, children, toddlers, women everywhere, though not many men - probably all migrated to the G-Klub) I felt like being alone in club land. And as predicted I was. Danced with Bruce, my friend the doctor's husband. Danced with an MP (wow, this IS the high life!). Danced towards a taxi and left well before midnight - motivated as much by a fight on the dance floor and the fact that everyone seemed to drink only to get drunk (except my doctor friend, who has a passion for malaria talk, and was doing just that - all vectors and statistics - with a woman from the ministry. Their vocab was so alien they might as well have been drunk).
Backtrack, backtrack: forgot to tell you about some curious customs of the village which have certainly turned all my right on ideas on their head. Number one: all women's wet clothes must be hung on washing lines parallel to the house in case a man accidentally walks under underwear (argh!) and spoils his manhood (argh!). I've thought about this and reckon it was suggested by women in a bid to stop those great idiots knocking the washing down every time they returned from a fishing trip. Men have of course hijacked this idea and claim it is because women are devils, creatures just waiting to pounce and suck out the power of man (this has real blow job parallels doesn't it?). Number two: any menstruating woman must stay in a special hut (14x14ft, that's stable size and with 'paddock' (read rocks) - nothing that a racehorse wouldn't have in England). I admit this is only in 'heathen', ie, non Christian areas, but from my Western viewpoint it's a real shocker. Why on earth should women be isolated for something so obviously natural? After spending two weeks in the village I know better - its SUCH hard work being female here that who wouldn't agree to a 'period' break? One of the local teachers at school told me that whenever she goes back to her village she immediately fakes a period (pregnant or not!) because she finds the chores just too much.
And on that note I might as well pen off now (as KGVI students always finish up their letters home - hideous!). I certainly hope you are well and I certainly hope to hear your news ASAP.
Very much love, stay well & happy, Suzy
THE WOMEN FROM the fishing village are delighted by today's catch. About six women, each in their own canoe, take a break from dipping and hooking their lines to stare at the fuzzy shapes emerging with the daylight, on the beach near the G-Klub. It's not really a surprise for them - the same scene occurs every payday morning - the men who didn't survive the night before. And the same jokes. "You want a new husband, don't you?" A woman in a white canoe, startlingly shaped, begins to paddle closer to the lumpy beach. "Look, choose any of them. You can have any you want. And if you want more than one that's OK with me! Look, that one looks tasty!"
"Hiya, hiya, hiya! Stop teasing now - I've had enough problems with these idiots that pass for men. But I am hungry - so let's forget the sleeping babies and go back fishing. Nau doria ia!"
She is ignored. Two of the boldest women go and investigate, more to make fun, wake the sleeping men and see how long it takes for them to feel embarrassed - caught sleeping like dogs on the beach, beside little piles of stinking vomit, and confused by very sore heads.
The pair make so much noise that their teasing remarks follow them across the bay and somewhere, far away, a voice steals out of a seashore house: "Iufela mere long Lau, iufela save toktok tumas." The words float round and round the bay until the women left behind at the Fishing Village, chatting (noisily it has to be said) over early morning smoky fires, cradling their babies, sipping at Milo (powdered malt drink), catch that phrase - about the women of Lau talking too much, and far too loudly - and weigh it down under a big rock. Honiara can sleep a little more.
But Henderson doesn't belong to Honiara, and the Lau women's chattering certainly wakes him. His eyes, closed tight behind eyelids are bathed in pink light, there's the soft sound of the sea, quiet now after a stormy night, lapping on to a shell-littered beach. The shells are uncomfortable to lie on. Over to the east a determined sun is chasing darkness and the storm clouds out of mind, helped by a streak of salmon, a palette of watercolours that fade and blend, ebb and wane, then with a suddenness, missed in a blink, explode into shocking pinks to make a dawn of beauty. It’s daytime. Henderson is curled up, his body's armour against the night. His clothes feel damp, he's no idea where he is, or why he is, or what he is or is he is. He tries to stretch, only to find his limbs aren't joined to his body. And with that movement a terrific noise starts up in his head, a thumping and sawing he once puzzled over at a logger's yard.
A shadow falls over his miserable body - it's the Lau women.
"Oh, you're sick aren't you? What's happened to a young fellow like you?" They are teasing, talking to him as if he was a little kid.
Henderson feels so terrible that he misses the joke. What's more he has felt like this before, when he last had malaria, in a haze his brain suggests that's what he's got again. It's true his arms, and legs - now they are attached to him again - feel stiff. His back aches and arches in its discomfort. A bead of sweat (heralding the new day's quota) runs down the side of his head. The women have no pity - they hate to see people drink. It's contrary to their SDA beliefs but it's also against all good sense: they know every one of the troubles it causes their sisters. The men who steal money to party, the same men who come back itching for trouble, who fight, who crash the trucks that the community has bought, who drown and are rightly ignored by their brother sharks, the ones who spoil women - force them to have bad sex, punch at the head, at the belly, clout the eyes, leave babies where babies should never be. Leave girls who are too young to have those babies.
Henderson knows none of this, and knows it all too. But made helpless by the sawmill in his head, the pins and needles in his leg, the hot and cold shivers of "fever" he whimpers: "I’m sorry to disturb you, but I need help. I've got malaria."
The women's eyes are raised skyward, they are used to helping the community's fools. "Come on, we'll take you to the hospital. Are you strong enough to get in the canoe?"
Henderson half nods, moving is an agony. He puts an arm around the neck of each woman and is jerkily walked towards the canoe. He steps in gingerly. Closes his eyes. Concentrates on the pain and thinks of home. If only he was back in the village with his family. Childhood illnesses fill his mind - the time he had a big boil on his leg and his mother made him strong with cabbage (yuck) and chicken soup (ah heaven then, but hideous thought now). He thinks of lying in the corner of the house back home in the village: his mother stroking his temples with a wet towel, singing a haunting lullaby; his grandmother bringing medicine, a mix of some bush somethings which bring back health (and all the hideous dull chores that come with health) too fast. If only he was well, then he'd be able to go home, take his mother the present he has for her. Awful thought: he doesn't have a present, that money last night .... what did happen last night? There are snatched memories of music and lipstick and drink and money, heaps of money, and Patte, and that truck - snatched breath - the crash. The MP. The fight. What a hideous, hideous nightmare. That was real. What a sorry memory. He closes his eyes even tighter behind sore eyelids. And now this, malaria!
Henderson is not heavy and the hospital close to the G-Klub by shore or road (so convenient for the fights that always break out on payday nights), so the Lau women reach the back of the public wards fast. Drop their "catch" on the black sand beach and bid him goodbye. "The casualty, the place you want to go is round the front. Walk carefully man. Get strong soon."
It's always the women who see the action: remember that story about why people settled on Foueda, back home? It was all because of those two inquisitive daughters of Lomo, Olisi and Ulufaka. These sisters were out filling their bamboo with fresh water when they came across the warrior Aubasi sleeping in a tree. Curious, it's the sign of a real Lau women (are these journalists or gossips?) they asked him what he was doing. But his answer, boss style, was I'll explain if you take me to your father. And they agreed to that - he was a warrior after all. And so they paddled him over the water to see their father, ready to give this stranger food, offer shelter. But Aubasi was impatient, and stepped out of their canoe on to some stupid rock, a real stony place, which had been used as a beauty shop - for decorating the faces of women before feasts. Aubasi seemed to like this place and in the end he got much more than hospitality for a stranger. He decided to settle there. He demanded Lomo sent leaf, and bush rope and just moved in, settled this stony place, and for want of a better name they called it just that, Foueda (fou = stone, eda = place where we paint the heads of women). But his neighbours got something out of it too, because Aubasi made a special law stopping people from hunting, or eating kokola, the eight-armed octopus. He said if they followed that law then no child from Foueda could drown because the kokola would take its fingers and place two over the ears, two over the mouth, two over the nose and with the other two return the child to the land and its mother. Since then every woman is happier when it comes to feeling safe about living with her baby on a tiny artificial island. The story would be very different if those sisters had just ignored Aubasi sleeping in the tree. For a start octopus would be the choicest feast treat!
Their ancestors, these women who've mockingly rescued Henderson (well, he could have been another Aubasi), run curious eyes over the hospital grounds - check out what's new - then paddle expertly back to their sisters. With the hot morning sun comes a hint of hunger for them, and those fish - both start to collect in the harbour over there, near that shallow reef; over there (by the drainage pipe); over there by the shadow of little ship MV Mali. Under the harbour the fish will be busy eating weed and debris, and other fish.
On the water the women will wait until one hears rain, but thinks fish. "This way, quick this way!" They speed towards a dimpled shadow of water changing from blue to black, reach it, unwrap their lines from the dummy shaped plastic iceblocks and down goes the line. Eleven untwists, two up-downs (up-down, up-down go their hands), and wind up the line (number five for this). Count those fish sister! There are 10 on mine. "Lucky."
What more could a woman want - food on the line and the freshest gossip? Didn't they see that Honourable Member's new white jeep looking crashed in the hospital car park, a small glimpse through the prefab ward buildings? Think: maybe a car crash? Maybe a broken leg after a night of cards and dice and Sol Brew? Maybe visiting his wife who is having another baby? No, he wouldn't do that so early - besides she's not due yet, though his other wife, that girlfriend might be ... The story takes shape as they mull over clues soon to be shared. No, the women of Lau, well the ones from the fishing village, couldn't possibly talk too much, or too loudly, its how news travels round the town: this is where the coconut wireless starts.
Henderson walks unsteadily towards the waiting area. It's a long veranda, shaded by a hot tin roof. There would be a lot of hard chairs to sit on, but he is put off by the scores of people sitting on them. He squats in the darkest corner, knees bent, arms folded miserably, head tucked in. All eyes are on the new arrival. A mother sends her eldest girl over. She touches his arm. "Are you all right? Can we get the nurse for you?" Henderson nods, he has no energy for speaking, his energy is for fighting this malaria. The girl gives up and goes back to her mother. "He smells nasty," she says in a surprisingly stately manner for a six-year-old. The waiting patients understand, another rascal out-rascaled by rascaldom. Instinctively the two, very overworked, nurses pick up on what's happened and delay, and delay, checking Henderson.
At last a short stout nurse with efficient look, expensive wrist watch, starched white uniform sashays over to the miserable looking young man. "Excuse me ... Are you awake?" Henderson blinks bloodshot eyes open, squints at the nurse and realises he feels even worse.
It's malaria, I think. Feel terrib .." Nurse Ahu has a kind heart, but hates self pity. "OK, give me your name and I'll check your blood." She signals Henderson to walk into the internal waiting room. Inside the small, rather grimy-looking room are even more patients, just hanging around waiting for beds, or for wantoks, or for the doctor. (As it happens the doctor is playing his regular game of early morning squash and has been asked to be contacted by bleeper only for real emergencies - not for flu, not for low positive malaria, not for first stages of labour. He'll be back by 10am anyway). Nurse Ahu is about to go off duty, after a tiring night - paydays bring out the worst in some people that's for sure. She passes her records of the night's casualties over to Nurse Pitakatai. One child coughing blood, possibly TB; an old man with a weak chest (how come he noticed only after the dogs fell asleep, didn't his chest feel sore during daylight?); two women in the last stages of labour; five flu cases; the usual run of malaria sufferers - up again from last week, about 10 came for blood tests and eight proved positive; a baby with diarrhoea, a couple of kids who wouldn't sleep because of pain in their eye (maybe another bout of Honiara’s red eye?), oh yes, and you'll like this - that woman belonging to the MP is in here again. He knocked her out after some sort of row and then must have kicked her in the head. She looks a real mess. The MP is obviously feeling bad about it (he was pretty drunk too) because he wanted a private ward, and is sitting in there waiting for the poor woman to come round.
"And there's a boy in the waiting room, who I haven't had time to deal with" Nurse Ahu points towards Henderson, "who claims he has malaria but has more likely got a hangover." Nurse Pitakatai sighs and heads towards Henderson.
"How do you feel?"
"Sore head, body aches. Want to throw up. Feel bad."
"Have you been doing anything unusual?" She asks this with sweet innocence. She was after all at the G-Klub last night too.
"No," says Henderson unsteadily thinking about the club. He's talking to a woman and he's never going to admit he'd never been to a club before. "Though someone did bash me on my head," he remembers in a sort of splutter.
"Ah," the nurse gives his head an efficient sort of glance. No fresh bruising, though there's an old one above the eye. This boy's obviously always fighting. "My colleague said you thought you had malaria?"
Henderson nods. Isn't that what a sore head, aching body, wanting to throw up means?
"I'll just give you a blood test." This nurse then slips away, comes back. "Hold out your finger. No, the other hand. That's it, look away." The quick prick is made to hurt. "Now hold this cotton wool on your finger, hold it strong. I'll get this tested. Can you wait? It'll be some time before the results come through."
Henderson nods again (he must remember not to do that, it makes his head feel worse) and then shuffles outside. By chance the out-patients area seems to have lost patients so there's room for him to lie down. He slips in and out of sleep, hearing snatches of conversation that seem as strange and disjointed as those at the club last night.
"She's in here again you know. I heard them at it last night. Either she's a very bad wife, or he's just mean-spirited."
"This must be the third time she's had to go to hospital with a broken head. Do you remember how she looked last time? I saw her down at Consumers Supermarket trying to look so cool. You know, sunglasses over the bruises. But everyone knows what's underneath."
"I think she's quite a good woman, that Stella. She's kind to her child, and when my mother was sick, that was the time she had belly run and felt too weak to go anywhere, Stella heard about it - because they're neighbours you see - and she went in, looked after my mother made her soup, helped her swim, and then when mother was recovering she took the kids off for a trip to the beach. I should have done it really, but I was too busy that week doing sewing and cooking workshops for the squatter women. Really, I think the way that man treats her is a shame. And him a big man too."
Henderson slowly begins to make sense of the gossip. Obviously there's a woman who has been beaten up by her husband. If he wasn't so thirsty he feels sure he'd want to listen to more. He sits up gingerly and is met by silence. All the women stare at him. If he goes they'll talk about him. Still they're only women, hardly an enemy.
"Where is the water here? I need to drink?" He asks this rather imperiously, hoping it'll stir someone to action. The women might even bring him a glass. The women just stare: a united front of silence. He gives up, stumbles along the veranda, down the steps and back on to the hospital turf.
Bad timing this walkabout - Nurse Pitakatai returns, looks around. "Where's he gone then, our young Sparka Masta (drunk) friend?"
The gossips point towards the back of the hospital. "Said he was thirsty . .." says one. And well he might be, thinks the nurse. Clearly the boy had no idea what a hangover involves. Next time she sees him at the club she’ll maybe share a few secrets…
Henderson has found his hearing has come back with a vengeance, the world has never seemed so noisy - but through it all, the hospital's moaning, munching, creaking, crying, there seems to be a tinkle of running water in the far corner by the wheelchairs with Number 9 printed on their canvas security straps.
Lucky for him, he's right. And that's when he finds that water has never tasted so good. Henderson drinks and drinks and drinks from the standpipe. Each sip pushes the 'malaria' out of his body. By the time he's drunk his full Henderson feels a great deal better. He stretches, wipes at his wet lips, splashes water on to his head, over his nose, his ears, his feet. Wow this is life at its best - he's alive again! Really alive. He walks back across the hospital planning his route back to the house at Mbokonavera, the malaria forgotten. If he's lucky he'll probably see Fred in the taxi and get a lift with him. This musing is interrupted by a video scene: through the window in front of him a short, dark-skinned man, that same honourable MP, is raining blows on to something lying on the bed. Its cries are terrible. Instinctively Henderson runs to see what's going on.
***
(This letter is never sent, lost in the house move)
Hey Dan
I've been having quite a time here recently. Let's see: I've moved house (phew, away from UNfriendlies to splendid isolation); I've learnt how to buy fresh fish (lucky, it's brain food and mine's clearly dissolving with only me and the mirror for company in my new residence) and I've suddenly realised just how fragile a hold us mortals have on life. No this is not going to be a maudlin letter - that's really stretching back to Oxford days (ho, ho!) - but I'm not sure how many jokes I'll be able to work in it. Perhaps we could both tally up at the end and see how far we are in agreement (I count that as a joke - OK?!)
Anyway the route to the new house - first taken in a taxi and since then by Shank's pony or the bus - involves passing a shambolic collection of leaf houses, their backs to the sea, and chattering people, their backs to the houses selling fish in a truly determined manner. I guess they've been catching them on their own, well Honiara's own, doorstep. Every kind of fish seems to be there and there's no bargaining so it's quite easy to buy, assuming you know what kind of fish you want to eat. And then assuming you know how to deal with it. The first problem is that having a fish in your hand doesn't mean I can have fish for dinner. I mean it's got a tail, a head with EYES, and worse scales (I never realised they take these off in the supermarkets back home - see what I mean about brains now?) and worse, a body with its guts still inside it - YUCK, DOUBLE YUCK. So, little innocent gal about town, me, buys her lovely fish takes it back to her lovely new house (sweet jasmine growing over the door) and finds she can't eat her lovely dinner. I just couldn't cut its head off, not in front of those staring eyes. So the fish was given pride of place beside me (this is in a bid to accustom myself to eating nature) and I ate tinned fish out of the can. All these fish smells filling up the house might explain why I now am the proud owner of a pussycat, who turned up nose wrinkling with joy and has refused to leave! I call her names at the moment, not just one.
My neighbours came round too. This was on Day Two and I was attempting to cut the grass. A task I've always thought looked quite comforting: Sunday visions of Dad behind the lawn mower. Completely, utterly wrong when you do it the Solo way - which you've got no choice about because the only tool was a long, lethal looking, sharply-hooked bush knife. Move it one way and you think you're going to cut off your right foot, move it back and the right AND left hoof are at risk. So, donning my sun hat, long sleeve T-shirt, long skirt (a bush woman!) I go out to the garden, business in mind. And I hack about a bit to the obvious delight of my neighbours, sorry neighbourhood. Soon I had about six enormous blisters erupting on my hands and a crowd of viewers. At last my rescuer, a teenage girl, just sauntered over to me, and without a word, took the knife out of my hand and started doing it right.
I went and sat in the shade of my guava tree and watched. I did busy myself occasionally - made a few of the crowd bush lime drinks, and pondered about how I'm more of a homemaker than I thought. Then when the job was done, and everyone had gone, I patrolled my estate until dusk, walking on the tightly brushed grass (yes, that's what they call it, brushing not cutting) in bare feet. It was lovely, though I anticipate another rite of passage now: malaria in 10 days.
I have to admit I'd rather hoped one of my neighbours would help me gut that fish. But still couldn't speak well enough in Pijin (I'm really going to have to borrow a small child and just chat away, or maybe a parrot would suit me better than this wretched orange cat). So the fish is now in cold storage, awaiting my encyclopaedic improvement in kitchen crafts - like butchering for example!
The first night in my new house was scary. Hang on, let me explain I'm living on my own now, in such luxury compared to London - three bedrooms, one shower room, a massive sitting room with ceiling fans (so decadent) and a balcony which is nice to sit on, though I imagine it's more of a theatre stage for the neighbourhood: me lolling on that balcony scratching at my mosquito bites etc, oblivious to the watching eyes. Anyway why scary? Well there was this terrific wail around midnight (I'd long gone to bed, eight is late these days) and then a burst of wails - a chorus of despair that you couldn't imagine hearing except perhaps in a Greek tragedy. And of course that's what it was, someone had died and the Malaitan women from Langa Langa (who live in town, in that house) were giving way to their grief. This public display of affection is so utterly alien to me that I thought there must be a murder going on at the very least and more like some sort of mass stab-in. The cries were inhuman, lasted the full night and then I suppose the unfortunate who'd died (though they were the only ones who got peace that night round here) was taken off and buried.
Dr Maylinda says I probably heard a new baby. How can babies make so much noise?
Gossip is clearly a major part of life down this part of town, everyone seems to know my name - though I can't remember telling anyone except the girl who brushed my garden. But even unseeing me did notice, on my slow walk to work, that the clinic looked impossibly crowded for 7am. I mean it doesn't open for business until nearly 9am. Thinking back on it I guess everyone collected up a child, with a minor (or otherwise) ailment and headed to the clinic first thing to catch up on what was going on the night before - you know who'd died, and why, that kind of stuff! It's more a drop-in centre than anything else. And I also notice that the clinics with a shady surround of trees are about 100 per cent better used than the others. Someone ought to be told: I tried quizzing my doctor friend about it and she just rushed at me saying, trees and long grass are the best places for that cunning, evil mosquito beast to live, best to cut everything down. Sometimes I'm not sure it's healthy to have an ambition to rid the world of malaria.
Not sure I've got anything else to tell you. If you see a book on how to deal with fish send it at once. Here I am living on an island and I never get to eat fresh fish: it's crazy!
Loads of love to you, as ever - Suzy
PS: Having a new phone installed - hope it works better than the last one.
THIS RECONCILIATION SCENE is not going as the Minister for Women, Youth and Children anticipated. He's done them before - the set up: one bashed wife, blaming herself for losing her husband's love (why else would a man hit a woman after all?). He's held bruised hands, stroked sores and healed his domestic problems with a twist and a turn of his formidable vocabulary. And back comes the battered thing, a defeated, worried woman - prone on an expensive, private, hospital bed - straight back into his control.
This is a sick way of showing love isn't it?
Stella, has been here before. She's heard the meaningless whispers, listened to this man who doesn't have the word sorry in his vocabulary, suffered the ignominy of being hit for fantastical inventions of jealousy and infidelity in his stupid head. And she's had enough. She would go to the police if she thought they'd help her, but nothing would happen. Wife beating is a domestic issue. If the police brought charges on a MP (unthinkable) she'd just shame her family (not desirable) and her brothers would be wary of giving her a place to stay (precarious).
If she was religious, she would go to the church, but those men dressed as women don't think much of her anyway - after all she's not church married to this man, just through the custom exchange of old-fashioned shell money, and she thinks wryly his wretched sperm.
The priests don't really approve of man-living-with-woman if it doesn't involve a white lacy dress, real Western get-up, and of course no sex before marriage - which in Stella's case was her absolute undoing. If the MP hadn't made her pregnant (no, she mustn't think that, she does love her daughter), then she wouldn't have been made to go and live with him by her eldest brother. If only she hadn't been lured into his world by his sweet talk (he can, he practised at MP school); by his offers (he lied, another skill at MP school); by her family (they encouraged too much, hoping for something out of it - they hadn't been to MP school); by her friends (giggling they'd leave her alone whenever he approached the basketball courts); by her teachers (she was expelled once her belly started to show). And then when things began to go wrong, about the moment Ellen was born, no one could hear her problems - although they must have done, she heard them whispering about her. Those neighbours could see all her troubles (the nightly fight, a life of dodging blows) as if it was washing hung out on the line but no, they wouldn't say they saw. Maybe they thought worse of the MP, but they did nothing.
Stella blinks back tears, she feels she's in the middle of a conspiracy, and a conspiracy come to this - another stupid hospital bedroom showdown. This time she's not going to believe his lying words, the "Come home, sweetie," the "I'll look after you if you're good". No, she doesn't want to cry about this injustice. Doesn't want the MP to think her will is weakening. She doesn't love him, she's never loved him, and she's certainly not going back to the gilded prison he's made for her up on the hill.
She turns her face towards the wall.
The MP looks at this thin dark woman - too skinny these days for his liking. Stella irritates him. She's too proud, too strong minded. The only way to control her is to beat her - at least she can understand something, too stupid for words, too ignorant to behave. Thank goodness he never married her properly. The moment this business settles down he'll send her back to his mother's house in his village, as far as possible from him. She'll be happy there cooking and playing with the children, and if she promises to behave maybe he can visit at Christmas. Better still, if scandal can be avoided he can marry his girlfriend, the sweet (fat!) girl who welcomes him with smiles and fresh soaped skin. Who asks to marry him, and promises she'll be the best wife in the world. Who thinks he's a king. Who says he deserves only the best. Yes, he misjudged this bitter woman lying prone, he'd have made her a queen if she'd played her part right, but she's too ignorant to learn. Stella questions his authority and she argues like a man. It's not right, it's not fitting for a busy MP like him. He's glad he hit her, show her who is boss.
"Come back home my sweet." It's insincere this talk, sweet - seven hours ago he was beating her with a stick, accusing her of crimes she never knew existed.
"Never!" It's venomous this reply, is it right for a woman to talk back like this?
"Your daughter misses you." That's emotional bribery - only used by emotional manipulators.
"Give my daughter back to me then." An unwise reply. That MP's going to get angry again. The room's temperature gauge starts to soar.
"I'll give you everything, but you need to behave, be a fit wife for a Big Man." He moves closer to her, gently tries to take her hand. Stella winces. Is this imagined pain? No, she sees real pain in the future. Today she knows her own mind - and she means to tell him.
"You can give me what you like, but it'll make no difference. What is the difference between you and me, between man and woman? The difference is good sense, I cherish my daughter, I don't whip her when I think she's done something wrong. You have no idea how to work with people. If you think I've done something wrong you beat me. If I see my daughter truly doing something wrong, I explain to her that some behaviour is acceptable and some isn't. She's still little, but when she is older I'm going to negotiate with her, show her there are a thousand paths in life, but the one to take is the one where you have self-respect; a road that lets you breathe; a path that doesn't mean you have to harm others; track with enough space to guide those people weaker than yourself.
"Once I thought a lot of you, I thought there's a big man, but still he takes time to talk to a young girl like me. I realised too late you were only handing around, giving my team new basketball shirts, just to take me and spoil me and then lure me into your home to be your football. Why is it that you have to kick around the thing you say you love? What kind of a man does that? Yes, you needn't answer me - because the truth is it's fashionable for men in this rotten country to think women are second rate, the worst pieces in the worst bags of stinking copra. Even though my mother's sister is a chief, my own parents are educated overseas, even though women inherit and care for the land in Guadalcanal and in Ysabel and in your own province, the West, you think women are nothing. You forget to respect me, and you forget to respect my sisters too. That is really why I hate you. That is why you are nothing to me now. Nothing! And still you think you can hit me, as if I was a dog, and that will make me obedient, follow your senseless rules. Well, you are wrong. You are so wrong you don't even know what's the difference between right and wrong anymore.
"Look at you! You are the boss of this hospital, 'Mister Honourable Minister of Health', and to test it out what do you do? You just beat up the mother of your child and send her to try the beds in your hospital wards. Do you really think the doctors don't guess? All the nurses know I didn't walk into a wall. They're professionals, they know I'm not epileptic. They know what you've done to me - and you're losing popularity, believe me. Next election you'll see, you'll be out looking for a job. You're not even good enough to sweep the streets of Honiara. And the way you treat me is the way you treat this country too. I know the lies you spin, the tales you weave, this myth of important 'official' business meetings is just a good way of acquiring new cars and private deals with these rich foreigners.
"And you're so stupid, so content in your pride, that you don't see you are selling your own birthright, just giving it away. And giving away a birthright that doesn't belong to you. It's our land you know, land is the mother of all of us: men and women.
"And then some little devil gets inside you and you think ... yes I think this is what happens, you find this glimmer of self-doubt in your belly and you ignore it, try to drink it away but it gets bigger, and bigger and bigger. So big it's squeezing at your soul. So what do you do? You turn on something smaller than you and you hit. And that something is me. Look at my eye, look at my head. You're an evil man. You're a bastard. BASTARD," Stella is screaming now, "Do you hear? I want everyone to hear. I'm sick of suffering in silence."
The MP turns crazy with rage. He doesn't even bother to shape a sentence to reply to this witch of a woman. He just picks up the bedside light (at least you get something for the money you spend for a private ward) and attempts to silence Stella by bashing her with it. She struggles back, but he's standing and hitting, and hitting again and she really is being hurt. He hears this thin, unearthly cry. Can't tell where it's coming from, and then there's a smash of glass, a yell and there's an arm being wrapped around his throat, half-choking him. Another takes the lamp away. Doesn't knock him to the floor though. Just stops him.
Stella starts to throw up as a nurse appears. She is embarrassed by the theatricals in this room - and him a big man and all. She goes to Stella, mops her forehead with a large yellow sponge, holds her as she spits out blood, and a precious tooth. She's crying now this bold woman, and the nurse holds her and lets her cry, waits until the blood stops, wipes the sour taste of sick from her mouth and then turns on the men, angry, really angry with them for disturbing the hospital's peace.
She points to the door. “You both go. And you, malaria boy, you’ve caused far too much trouble. Get out and let this woman lie quietly so she can recover.” She points to the door.
"No," says Stella to everyone's amazement. "Make him go," she points towards the man they call her husband. "That man there, he can stay. He saved me." Henderson looks embarrassed and the nurse, eyes raised skyward but still hoping for peace, agrees. "OK," she is polite now, all too aware that the MP is a big man, may even sack her for doing this. "Do you mind boss, er, Sir, if you go ... You can stay," she adds, as nonchalantly as she can, in the direction of Henderson.
The MP turns on his squeaky shoe heel, marches out of the door and away.
Stella is shaking and the nurse too busy (too angry for being duped into insulting a Big Man, these guys fund the hospital!) to stay with her - after all she obviously made the MP hit her by whatever she's being doing, or whatever she said. Stella keeps shaking; her heart races. "What's your name?" she asks between sobs, finally turning her head to look at the stranger squarely in the eye.
Henderson thinks he's going to die of shock. It's Stella, the sad woman in the red dress, the one he danced with. This woman who was so beautiful last night, is now just a dot-to-dot of cruel colour. Hair mussed, make-up streaming mourning rainbows down the highest of cheek bones. The side of her face a blur of bruising. His heart jumps from protectiveness, to lust, to he knows not what.
"Oh," says she, "I know you."
"Did you know you were going to be my wife? Come back with me?" It's a question, not an order. The words are a surprise for them both.
Stella has nothing to lose.
Henderson doesn't know where such a sentence could have come from.
Stella nods. Henderson takes her hand, a very quiet, comforting gesture. Boy, is this a reconciliation scene gone wrong thinks the nurse, a smile on her face. She passes the wet sponge to Henderson, and leaves this pair of idiots alone.
Stella is too sore to leave the hospital that day. So Henderson waits until around noon before he tells her he's going - to catch up with some sleep back at the house. She groans, turns away towards the wall, and Henderson speeds up his goodbye with a stroke of her hair and a promise to return with a home cooked meal and drinking coconuts. Stella is one of the very few patients at Number Nine Hospital who has only one - and now no - visitor. Neither bothers to think about it, but the reasons are glaring: she's a woman who has completely stepped out of line. Even the nurses treat her with suspicion, entering the room as few times as they dare for the sake of her health.
It's another hot one, far too hot even for the run up to Christmas time, but Henderson barely notices this as he dodges the traffic on the busy highway outside the hospital and heads up the main street in China Town. His head is so busy with the events of the past 24 hours that he barely notices the hoards of people heading towards the sports ground. Everywhere there is talk of who's going to win and offside debates. This is THE game of the year: the national side against Australia in the Oceania Cup. Kick-off is at 3.30pm, but the whole of Honiara, and some from the provinces too - who've made lucky trips to town or who've planned for this for months - are already searching for the perfect spectator spot. The dignitaries and ref's contingent in the stands; the employed inside the ground and the rest - a chattering, happy bunch until the first penalty Australia scores - are settling on the steep slope above the sport's ground. It's a place of free views and perfect shade from the hot sun achieved by willowy gums that are also precariously fixing the hillside to the spot town planners marked on the map two decades ago.
Henderson is greeted by a couple of friends from the Mbokonavera house on his way. They mock knowingly. Ask how his head is. Ask how much beer he drank. Ask where that rascal Patte has got to. Henderson remembers, with a sort of shame, that his bed last night was a beach - pretty stupid as he had a much better place to sleep with his wantoks up with Anna and Adam's mobs.
"Are you coming to see the game? The PM will be there you know," Henderson nods his head - it's a reluctant no.
Lovelyn is more than curious: "Were you kept in prison last night then?" she quizzes her cousin in the middle of China Town. Henderson is truly shocked. "Of course not!" And then he remembers that she's just a young girl, albeit his cousin, and there's no need to explain what he did, or why. In fact he has a great deal of explaining to do, but he'd rather tell his aunt what's what - avoid this teasing from the kids. Lovelyn comes closer to Henderson, whispers in his ear: "Listen, Matron really is cross with you for stopping out, and for going off with Patte. She doesn't think Patte is a good person. You should try sweetening her, take some of that red cordial up to the house as a gift and she'll be easier ..." Henderson pats her arm, thanks her for the tip and goes straight into the shop. Lovelyn would've added: "... and Matron knows about the jeep, the gambling, the drunkenness and the fights with the MP." But Henderson is in a strange mood - he'll find out soon enough. Her inquisitive eyes follow his progress up the street until he ducks into a green timbered building.
It's dark inside the store, after the bright street, but seemingly just as crowded. There are boys arguing about the best Nico sports shoe to buy (complete fantasy: none have money); there are boys leaning on the counter giggling - or is it staring - at underwear (complete fantasy: none have girlfriends); there is a woman holding the hand of a twin, who holds the hand of her sister, searching for the right-sized pan for soup making for the next family celebration; and that same white woman reading out loud a long list of goods to one of the store assistants - sesame oil, three large bleach, insect killer, big sack of rice, and the 'Do you have questions' - Kerosene? Colgate toothpaste? Small bottle of Southern Comfort? The assistant is moving around the store with some speed, saying yes, saying no, piling the objects into a cardboard box ready for them to be shipped to this Mrs' friends somewhere in the province. Henderson stands for a while, waiting to catch one of the assistant's attention. He looks down at the floor and sees a cockroach's antlers peeking out from behind a large flour sack: instinctively he moves his foot to stamp on it. The cockroach is not that stupid; it immediately ducks safely behind the sacks. The young man and the old insect now play a waiting game. Each alert. Each totally still, just waiting for the other's patience to break. Henderson loses, loses only because the Gilbertese assistant in the store hisses at him: "Hey, bro. Do you want to buy anything or are you waiting until tomorrow?" Henderson ignores the joke and points casually at the cordial on the shelves behind the man's head. "That's six dollars fifty." Says the employed young man. "That's very expensive," thinks the unemployed young man - but it might save his skin. He counts out his dollars very slowly and leaves with a bottle of sickly, coloured sugar wrapped in a strip of Chinese journalese.
The walk back to the house is tiring. Henderson starts to feel thirsty again and wonders if he's done the right thing. He could always pretend the conversation with Stella hadn't happened, just leave her alone in the hospital. He thinks of that beautiful woman of the night before, the way she danced, and he thinks of the broken body her husband gave her. What a wicked man! He is right to take her to a safe place. His aunt is sure to be kind to her, Anna is good to all the wantoks.
"What have you done Henderson? What have you done?" This from Anna, who is crying loudly on the balcony. Her whispers turn into daggers, cutting Henderson's ears. "How could you bring this disgrace on our family? How could you be so selfish, so thoughtless?" She hugs Junior, the only other one in the house, tighter to her ample bosom. "You have done wrong, Henderson!" Henderson looks so offended, and so surprised that Anna relents. He's just a young man, not a town sophisticate like that idiot friend of his, Patterson. She sits down, on an uncushioned chair inside the house, sobbing. Henderson climbs the stairs up to the veranda reluctantly. He's not sure he's ever had any kind of showdown with anyone. He'd rather be quiet and say nothing, but very much respects his aunt and instinctively realises it'd be best to talk about this now, while everyone is out at the soccer game, and then never, ever again.
"Henderson everyone has been talking about you. I hear you've crashed a truck, spoilt the MP's new jeep, got drunk and then gone and fought with the MP. Tell me this isn't true? It just doesn't sound like you." Henderson looks down at the ground, shrugs his shoulders. "It's true if you want it to be."
Anna tries a new approach. Or rather Anna tries an age-old approach, she cries some more. Try as he might, Henderson cannot ignore it. He comes close to his auntie's chair, kneels down, so that he's a little lower than her. He takes her arm - he can't say sorry. But he can comfort his poor crying relation. Anna is not satisfied, she pushes his arm away, notices the wrapped cordial bottle and pushes that away too.
"I never meant it to happen like this," says Henderson. "I just wanted to go for a walkabout, see what town life was like. Get used to traffic and white man fun. See the bright lights. I never meant to fight with the MP. Look at my head, there are bruises on it still, but I really haven't ever hit him: he keeps picking on me. It really isn't my fault any of this has happened."
Anna is quiet. What can you do with a village boy gone crazy? Why doesn't he just go home, take that woman his father's arranged and raise his own family in the village. It would suit him. He's a nice boy, he really is. He shouldn't be hanging around in town, getting spoilt, turning into a rascal.
"There's something else too Anna." Even little Junior ceases his wriggling as if he can sense the tension, waiting for the bombshell Henderson must surely drop.
"I'm going to get married."
Understandably Anna misunderstands. She cries again, this time with happiness - even now she can imagine the feast, the bride, the first child. She shakes Henderson's hand, shakes it vigorously up and down, all the while wiping giant tears from the corner of her eyes with a lava lava left on the side of the hardwood sofa. Sunshine fills the room, the curtains billow in a puff of pride.
"Congratulations! My bro, your father, will be so pleased you have seen good sense at last," in her happiness Anna misses the obvious confusion that briefly flickers across Henderson's grinning face, "Oh yes," continues Anna, "Many congratulations. This is very good news for us all. Very good news for our family."
***
Dearest Dan
So far you’ve sent me a letter and a postcard. I’ve written, what, 10 letters? You’ve made me unhappy when you were trying to do the right thing (I think). And don’t worry about what I’m saying, I’m just trying to work out what’s going on with my head and why I let you walk all over me that Saturday night you took colleague Cassie off to caviar and the Limelight. I’ve never been so wet before AND I DON’T INTEND TO BE AGAIN.
Living here I think I’m learning that in the Solomons nothing is as it seems. Actually maybe living in the world as a grown up nothing is as it seems – there are agendas, and subtext and confusions. There’s dreams to handle, jobs to do, life to unravel and make sense of and choices. So many choices. I hear John Major is the Tories new one. Anyway the subtext of this drama queen letter is that I'm happy and settled in my beautiful house but am beginning to see less like a tourist and learn to read this surreal landscape around me. Walking down to China Town yesterday along the reddest avenue of flaming trees I noticed herds of older women (well this is what it seems like) hacking the long grass by the river. They move in packs. Their bush knives slash in unison. Only once do they stop to mop sweat from their heads, straighten their T-shirts or wipe butchered blades of grass off their skirts. Once the grass is really short a young man, always on a diesel, ride-on mower will turn up, look disappointedly at this new croquet lawn - and the exhausted women - and then phut-phut back to the Town Council depot for a tea break.
I'm guessing I suppose, but maybe it's him (or rather those thick-tracked wheels) that run over the frogs all along the roadside. They are cane toads really, not frogs, imported to gobble up mosquitoes - misguided as cane toads don't eat mosquitoes and never did! You hear their hideously noisy mating, the "where are you going for dinner tonight?" cries from dusk until dawn but I've never seen a real, live 3-D cane toad: they are always a bloodless flattened mess on the tarmac. Each with flies as big as moths hovering around them. Anyway the toads and the women put me in mind of a Peter Greenway film, can't think which one, but know it was macabre - when I'm rushed out of my daydreams by a bunch of dogs running at me, clearly in attack mode. I'm a dog person really, but these Solo dogs I hate: venomous eyes, skinny bodies and hackles up. I anticipated this ambush, so already had a handful of stones in my skirt pockets - took aim and threw a sharp edged stone at the lead dog. Needless to say it missed, as did the next. But my third hit was on target and it's hard to say if this pebble sting, or the woman calling his name (Taxi!) made the lead dog and his cronies turn round and saunter back home. To my surprise my rescuer had just one leg. And when I shouted out thank you, couldn't resist asking what happened to her: she's too young for war crimes, too old for a wooden limb. I guessed it must be a shark attack - but no, she was injured due to a bombing incident. Or at least that's how she put it. My mind struggled back to World War Two, that was 1939-45 wasn't it? So she just couldn't have been bombed, unless she'd been really unlucky and stepped on an old, old landmine. Subsequent investigations (yes, I'm nosy!) told me she'd been fishing with dynamite (this is a brilliant technique for the lazy, as one stick produces a multitude of sizes and colours, as good as the fishmongers in Islington's Essex Road). However it's dangerous and wrecks the reef - and in her case legs as well.
Dog alert over I continue towards the Mataniko Bridge (where I hear there was a big riot recently, set off by some graffiti - strange seeing as this is a country where barely anyone can read! Though it could be a good example of the power of words?). It's such a peaceful looking place, especially that day, just right for a swim. And as I look down, daydreaming about diving into the water, imagine my horror when I see a crocodile, not a big one, true, but a proper crocodile emerge from just that spot! I'm sure it won't be long before it gets its photo in the newspaper, caught by the fisherman that I'd seen coming up the bank oh-so-elegantly with a large block of ice of his shoulder. Such a beautiful scene, the opal ice melting down that chestnut brown back - red bandanna around his head and an arrogant eye. I fell instantly in and out of lust. All this before the first bell!
After classes, on the dusk-lit journey home a well-meaning stranger warned me to bypass the bridge. But he gave no reason, which I objected to rather a lot (forgive my temper, I was hot and tired and a detour around a river involves a lot of extra steps to the next bridge). Quizzed, brutishly by me, the man explained that someone had just killed a snake there. Then the local hero, seeing I was interested, picked up its great black body (as thick as my arm!) and waved it like a lover's handkerchief. I felt totally sick (and strangely less safe than when the snake had been alive and I'd been dawdling on the rickety bridge eyeing up the ice man earlier in the day).
Hurried home, shocked, and sooner than normal - ie, about 7.30pm instead of 8pm - tried to sleep. But was roused properly awake by an unfamiliar scratching in the roof. No doubts about this noise - it was clearly the dreaded hairy caterpillar I'd been warned about. I know, I know, this sounds like a conversation between Buttons and Cinderella, but these insects are notorious for a) hating people and b) giving such terrible bites that even a grown man, even a snake slaughterer, would cry for a full 24 hours. (A woman, the inference is, would cry for a great deal longer!) So decided to play the hangman and armed with a can of insect killing spray (hopefully CFC free) I set off on the caterpillar hunt. Had my bush knife to hand and in the end used both in a frantic half hour of hide and seek and blood letting. I'd heard that the pieces of caterpillar will join themselves together and set out to victimise their killer, so to be sure of safety I took the three bits of caterpillar body gingerly out of the house - balanced on a plate I'll clearly never be able to eat from again - out to the barbecue and lit a midnight fire. Well I think that's pretty scary for a day in what I took to be a wonderfully, benign country!
Who knows what other surprises are to come - beyond the mundane marketing shocks of oranges being green for instance, tomatoes and melons yellow, bananas green (but sometimes black), green coconuts not and the best pineapples called "English"! Confused - I feel like everything I used to know has been turned upside down and given a good shaking. It won't be long before I abandon my pile of books that must be read, you know War & Peace, and other tomes and launch into the fun of reading stuff by Sidney Sheldon and co, real blockbusters.
Hope this letter finds you well, happy etc. Hope you’ve worked out I think you’re a creep for writing back to me so rarely.
Suzy x
"I'm gettin married in the morning,
Ding dong the bells are gonna chime ..."
THE RADIO STATION seems to have taken over Henderson's euphoria. Each time he closes his eyes, lies down to sleep there seems to be a meaningful song to drag him back to this world again - and in another hour it'll be solid soccer commentary. He must sleep now! Henderson puts the pillow he was lying on, over the top of his head. But it's no good. No good at all.
“And may we send congratulations to today's newly weds around the islands: the announcer is breathless with pleasure - Happy Days to you all, to you Jennie, to you Dorothy, to you Hellen, to you Theresa and to you Julia ..."
This time Henderson is perplexed, his sound blocking technique has removed all these women's husbands ... and then he wonders, what if Stella was married to the MP. I mean, she obviously was living with him so, that's married? No, it must have been custom. But then even if it is 'custom married' he's going to have to dodge the man and his gang for a long time. If a man can beat up a woman with his own fists how much easier it must be to order loyal minions to beat up the new partner of that woman? His thoughts are getting complicated, and painful. And it's at about that point that a wave of tiredness sweeps through Henderson, his eye lids turn to concrete, his limbs shudder and then lie still. At last the house (and the radio) lets him sleep.
But he hadn't bargained on those dreams: from every corner come the villagers back home, to invade his rest. "You," it's the priest, pointing with his finger a wicked five feet long, "Henderson, you have failed as a member of our community. You were always too proud and now you've done wrong. And you won't admit it." Henderson realises, with horror, that he's being sentenced together with his rival. "You, Honourable Member, no one likes you Sir, not anyone." The custom priest comes forward, white-haired, frail (long dead too, if Henderson remembers rightly): "Put these two men to the court of the albino crocodile." Henderson wants to look as unmoved as the MP, but he's shivering with fear - the albino crocodile is real rough justice. Both men will have to swim across the little pool where the beast lives (and its tail must be three metres alone, and its teeth, its double row of teeth ... double that again ...). Custom says that the one who is lying will be dragged down by the white devil. The villagers push Henderson and the MP along to the pool, a place that is lined by mossy limestone walls and down which a waterfall tumbles. It should be where lovers tryst, but who would tryst by these side gates of Hell?
Henderson sees Saskia, the girl he should have married, her matronly shape, her utterly alive shape cuddling a baby - not his, surely? A hug on a moonlit beach doesn't mean a baby, and anyway it was months ago, and she wouldn't go all the way, said he needed a condom, it's what she said, no that's not his baby! - turn away and whisper something to the old and the new priest. They laugh in unison, a hollow resonance that echoes round and round the pool. "Throw him, throw him, throw him to the crocodile judge ...." Henderson sees the MP swim across safely, triumphant on the other edge. And then it's his turn. He tries not to look as if he cares, but his heart is crying: and then he feels the slop of the cold water hitting his feet and knees, and thighs, and groin, and trunk and shoulders and head, and he sinks deeper and deeper and then - suddenly! - his toe is grabbed. It's the crocodile devil. Henderson tries to scream but nothing escapes ... He kicks out, trying to shake off the teeth and is woken up by a terrific growl. Dazed he sees that Adam's dogs have crept into the house and been playing tug chase around his sleeping body.