Beat Not the Bones (20 page)

‘And was there?'

Mistaking the glow in her face for greed, he nodded. ‘More than we could carry back. We put it in the boxes we had brought the presents in. That's why we took so much and so many carriers. Warwick, Sereva and me. We only had to bring it here where the carriers were waiting. It's buried underneath my hut. We can't get it out of the country. That's the snag, getting it out and converting it. But we'll find a way.'

There was a long silence. Her eyes searched his face. He met her glance eagerly.

‘Who killed David?' she said.

The hope died away. He started to cry. ‘He killed himself,' he sobbed.

‘Why?' But Washington, sobbing into outspread hands, could not answer her, and she went on, ‘Because it was beyond him? Because he was too good for it and saw this – afterwards? Yes, I can see now. He would have to kill himself.'

He nodded over his hands. ‘It's not so much,' he said in a stifled voice. He had forgotten her now and spoke to a presence within him that had waited these long weeks, patient but insistent, for his defence. ‘It's no worse than the things we do every day. It's not so bad as giving them money they can't spend, or stopping their festivals, or telling them they can't dance. It's not as bad as giving them shirts that get wet and give them pneumonia or teaching them to value valueless things. We do it all day, not only here but all over the world. We teach them to gamble and drink. We give them tools and spoil their craftsmanship. We take away their capacity for happiness. We give them our diseases …' He paused and dropped his hands. ‘We're shocked by their head hunting and blow them up in our wars. Whenever you have an advanced culture in contact with primitive peoples the same thing happens. They perish. Look at Anthony Nyall. He tried to help them and he killed them. We wipe out whole villages with tuberculosis and whooping cough!' His eyes glittered and his face was knotted with excitement.

‘That's half the picture,' said Stella. ‘Good comes out of it … or it will, one day.'

‘One day!' he said.

She was still watching him intently, but he would not meet her eye. ‘How did you get the gold?' she said. ‘It's difficult, isn't it, to get into a village long house?'

‘We frightened them,' he muttered.

‘How?'

‘With magic. We pretended we knew powerful magic. We told them the gold was bad magic, that it would hurt them if they didn't give it away.'

She turned and looked on down the path in the direction of the village.

‘You can't go!' He broke out again, ‘You can't go. It didn't turn out right. They'll kill you. They'll kill us both! We must go back quickly now, before they find us.'

Not looking at him, she shook her head. ‘That's not what you're afraid of,' she said.

He saw it was hopeless.

‘Wait for me here,' she said. Her voice was flat. He felt that she had surrendered her will, that she was as powerless to stay as he was powerless to go. She could not look at him, and without turning her head went on down the path.

Washington held out his hands. ‘Come back! Don't leave me alone!'

But the path ahead had turned, and Stella had gone. His voice died away and silence began.

CHAPTER 19

‘Don't go! Don't go! Come back!'

The high, quavering voice, pitched almost to a scream, raved on and on, growing fainter and fainter, and then abruptly stopped.

Stella, walking on deliberately, held sensation away from her, pressing it back as you press on a door that threatens to burst open and let in a battalion of enemies.

The path turned slowly left towards the river and grew wider as she advanced. But it had not been cleared as much as the entrances to the other villages they had passed through. On both sides of the path the undergrowth pressed forward, and the creepers interlacing the trees trailed down ahead, so that she had to step around them or hold them aside and stoop beneath them. It was steamy and hot, for the sun was finding its way through the thinning trees. Mosquitoes and flies with long, fine legs steamed up from the undergrowth and settled on her face and hands. The path turned again and widened still further. On either side were huge, scarlet crotons and clumps of palms with spiky grey leaves. Ahead was the village.

Stella halted. At first glance it did not look remarkable. It was built on a flat, cleared space facing the river – a collection of raised huts made from timber, cane, woven leaves and grasses. In the centre was the men's long house, its huge slanting roof thatched in soft grey leaf like the plumage of a gigantic bird. It faced the river, its swooping prow lifting up high above the roofs of the other houses.

Sunlight bathed the scene. There was a steamy thickness in the air that hung over the far bank of trees. There was so much about the place that was like other Bava River villages that a few moments passed before she realised that there was no sign of any living creature. When this understanding came on her she shrank back into the trees, and panic seemed to strain and shift the organs of her body.

She felt that the whole village had known of her coming for hours, perhaps for days and weeks, and had slunk away into their houses leaving the jungle and the village empty, and waited now in the dark doorways, turning upon her their watchful, revenging eyes. They would be capable of anything. Two white men had stolen their treasures.

There was nothing here, Washington had said. Was he right? What good would it do to step out from the trees, a target for Eola spears? The days of such deeds were not long past, and this was unpatrolled country. The arguments of fear were lucid and reasonable, but Stella could not obey them. To turn back now was unthinkable. She could not stop in the very act of completion. Anthony Nyall had seen in her ability to act some sort of salvation, and she felt vaguely that his future well-being in some way depended on her concluding what she had begun, that her own well-being depended on it too. It was bad enough to be as he was, incapable of the beginnings of action. Not to finish was unthinkable. The tears of Sylvia, the wild, mad hands of Philip clutching out for mercy would freeze into unforgettable memories if she could not raise above them the compensation of having arrived at her destination.

She took a quiet, halting step forward, but started back into cover once more. The red crotons beside her had sprung to life. They shuddered into a wild convulsed rustling. She stared in terror at the shaking, shivering shrubs. Something slid out on to the path ahead. It paused, looked sharply around and scuttled out into the sunlight. It was a fat, grey jungle rat.

She stood watching it. It was gross, obese like the sea slug and ran with a disgusting waddle. It was the only living thing visible, and she could not take her eyes off it; her skin was damp with loathing. It had reached the open clearing and the village houses. Here it paused again and looked around. It was confident, leisurely, unafraid.

Suddenly she thought, Not only are there no human beings, there are no pigs or dogs either. You could hide a man or a woman, or even a child, but it would be difficult to hide a dog unless you killed it.

The rat waddled on. It had reached the long house. Beyond were three large huts built in a row. Their doorways, with short wooden steps leading off the ground, faced directly across to where Stella stood. They were built close up against the trees behind and a long blanket of creeper with yellow flowers had fallen over the roof of one of the huts and trailed down across the open doorway. The house looked deserted, the thatch was damp, ragged and mouldy, and the creeper draping its door did not fall with the flowery lightness of garden decoration but like a shroud of cobweb fastened round an empty house that no one enters and no one leaves. In the very moment that this thought entered her mind the jungle rat scuttled up the steps and disappeared through the front door.

It was then that she knew what had happened at Eola; why Philip Washington dreaded to return and what had killed her husband. She stepped out into the jungle and followed in the tracks of the jungle rat. She was calm. She knew now that there was nothing to fear, and walked confidently. The only danger was in allowing the horror that was in Eola, that draped the village and inhabited the huts, that crawled and rotted on the ground, to invade her own body and mind. But some protective force that guards human beings at such times paralysed her senses and held her mind at a dumb, frozen level of consciousness.

She did not shirk her inspection. She made sure. She walked across in front of the men's house, looking up at the tall peak of the roof, and then on to the group of houses on the other side. She mounted the wooden ladder on to the verandah and, parting the creepers with her hands, looked into the dark room within.

Three people had died there. Their white bones shone in the gloom. She could not see the grey rat but could hear its feet rustling on the floor and the scratch and crackle of insects feeding in the thatch.

The owner of the next house had died outside. He lay under the house on his back with his arms outstretched. A tight, moving patch of ants formed a black smear on the side of his skull. She thought how white and delicate were the bones of his hands. But his feet had gone.

She looked into the next house. It was empty, did not even house a pile of bones. But under the house she found a tin. It was the type that opens by the lid peeling back round a key. It was rusty and the label had gone. She turned it over with her foot. It was empty.

She left the houses and turned back into the centre of the village. Here in front of the long house were gruesome offerings of skulls and bones, sometimes complete, sometimes robbed by jungle scavengers, and some way from it was a rough open shelter and stone ovens that showed the scorch marks of flames. Scattered about among them were more tins, one still circled by the ragged remains of the red label of a tin of bully beef.

She walked on among the empty fireplaces. Some still contained bowls of ash that had not yet blown away and clung in the crevices of the stones. She found the bones of a child and a dog, and then a tin that had not been opened. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. She noticed two small black holes – puncture marks – in the bottom.

Still holding the tin, she looked around her. There was no movement. The leaves of the trees hung limp in the stagnant air. A piece of thatch dropped from the roof of the shelter to her feet. There was no sound, but she fancied she could hear the village rotting around her – ants boring their tunnels in dry wood, the drip of thatch from the decaying ceilings and the crumble of ash in the stone ovens. The process of decay had been so swift the village almost appeared in a state of visible movement and change. She half expected it to crumble into dust before her eyes. Only the human beings, who had been the first to rot, were at peace.

She stood there, the tin in her hand. She did not move. This was her husband's murderer. Yet it was strange that at this moment she did not think of his death, but of her father's, and her eyes filled with tears.

He killed my father too, she thought. He thought me too young and innocent to face up to what he did, and so he killed my father. She dropped the tin on the ground and her heart was filled with bitterness towards him.

The force that had urged her on to this spot had abandoned her. She must move now of her own will or not at all. She felt the horror around her slide slowly nearer. She still did not move but her body was clutched and shaken with dread. A circle of insubstantial hands, from which the flesh dripped away, had reached out and touched her.

Then came a scream.

At first she thought the cry was her own, till it came again, sounding from the jungle behind her. It was a terrified sound, only just recognisable as human.

She turned and ran. She had reached the long house when the silence split and cracked. When she reached the jungle there was a second shot.

Caution did not occur to her. She knew the second shot was final. But she wasn't surprised. She understood now that when she left Washington she had not expected to see him alive again.

I killed him, she thought as she ran. I killed Washington. So many murderers. Washington, David, Anthony and I are all murderers. Trevor is the worst of all, because he never saw his victims.

Then she stopped. The path had swerved away from the river and opened into the small glade where she had left her companion. He lay sprawled across the path. But he was not alone. A boy was crouched over him.

In Marapai she had seen boys from outlying villages who had come in on their canoes, wandered painted and ornamented about the streets, dog-teeth necklaces round their throats, beads in their ears and flowers and leaves stuffed into the bands round their arms and calves. But she had never seen anyone so strangely and gorgeously daubed and festooned as this.

He was a brown man, slim, lithe and not very tall, naked except for a thin strip of bark wound round his waist and drawn between his legs. His body was streaked with brown and white and his face painted in a dramatic design. There was a splash of yellow down the bridge of his nose, white lines sprayed out from the corners of his mouth and curled down to converge in a beak on his chin. His arms and hair were decked with green and yellow croton leaves. He carried bow and arrows and looked more like a bird than a man.

He stood quite still, staring at her. He did not appear to threaten her, though there was threat undeniably evident on his face. Though he was brilliant and gay and strangely beautiful she knew he was dressed for death.

Then she saw the watch on his wrist. It was Hitolo.

They spoke simultaneously.

He looked back at the man at his feet. The birdlike painting of his face rendered it expressionless, but she saw his eyes flash in their whitened sockets and knew he was terrified. She ran forward and knelt down over Washington. His head was shattered. The pistol had dropped to the ground beside him. She could do no more than glance at him, but there was no need. She turned away. ‘What happened, Hitolo?'

Hitolo shook his head. Speech seemed to have deserted him.

‘What happened? Tell me!'

‘He tried to kill me,' he said. ‘Mrs Warwick, he shot himself. I did not shoot him. He shot at me, he shot himself.'

‘Of course you didn't kill him. I can see that. You have no gun.'

‘Why did he shoot at me, Mrs Warwick?' He looked at her helplessly.

‘He didn't know you, Hitolo. And he wouldn't expect you to come back. He thought you were afraid.'

‘I was afraid,' he said. ‘I go mad. I run away. Then I remember.' She gave him a long glance of admiration, seeing how magnificently he had acted, defying the accumulative force of panic, and returning like this, dressed for vengeance.

‘I called to him,' said Hitolo, ‘and waved my hands.'

She was beginning to see how it had happened. ‘And he shot at you and missed you?'

‘Yes.'

‘And so you came on, calling and waving your hands? He did not expect you,' she murmured. ‘He did not expect anyone. There is nobody here, everyone is dead. He knew that. He
knew
that everyone was dead. They died at a festival dressed up as you are now, for dancing.'

Hitolo blinked at her. He did not understand. ‘Poor Philip,' she said.

‘They are all dead,' he repeated stupidly.

‘Yes, there's nobody now. I expect some got away, but they would never come back. The rest died of food poisoning. Bad tins, the same that killed Sereva. He ate a bad tin. It was an accident, Hitolo. It was not meant for him.'

There was no reading his encrusted, birdlike face. I wonder how he feels, she thought. I wonder if it pains him that there is no murderer to chase, no Jobe to hate, no justice to pursue.

The ground around them was soft and spongy, and they managed to dig a shallow grave. It seemed a pointless courtesy to pay him in such a place, but Stella, remembering the clot of ants on the side of a skull and the fat grey rat, could not bear to leave him uncovered. They worked with sticks but could not dig deep – the floor of the jungle was laced with the roots of trees. They covered his body with soil and heaped the mound with leaves and branches.

It was about four when they left. Stella was exhausted. She yearned to lie down and sleep but felt that if she slept here she would never wake again.