Inheritance (11 page)

I have never been one for acrobatics, but Teo was out of the truck with a whoop, bounding up the rocks, securing his lavalava as he ran. At the top he raised his arms, dancing and showing off, then hurled himself at the slide. Down he came on his backside, leaving little
of his body to the imagination, twisting with the natural chute to crash into the cool water of the pool. That Teo! How different he is now! He burst, then, from the water, sleek and brown as a trout, laughing and inviting Jeanie to join in.

And she did of course. Jeanie would try anything. Down she came sliding, out of control, twisting to land back-first, feet in the air. Teo, naturally, was on hand to scoop her up, make sure she was unhurt; to hold her for longer than necessary, smoothing back her wet hair. They laughed together, almost kissing I thought. I scolded Teo in our language, called to Jeanie to join me where I floated, more decorously, in the shallows. But she pleaded for another turn and ran up with Teo. They came down laughing and shouting, hand in hand. Well they were young. We all were.

Teo felt it too – that special closeness with Jeanie. With Teo, of course, sexual attraction was part of the mix, but it was not only that. We two were newly returned to Samoa after years away; were easing back into fa‘asamoa. Jeanie was completely new to it, but open as the breeze and eager to learn. Her freshness and excitement, her questions – and her friendship – helped us accept, when we had both tended to be critical of the old ways, of the conservative outlook, of the strict hierarchy. We had come back feeling like outsiders, but in some way that is difficult to explain, Jeanie helped us bridge the two cultures.

We are an odd mixture, Teo and I. Our palagi education
sitting like a smart coat on top of our Samoan upbringing. I suppose you might say that I have kept my smart coat, changed it perhaps for an even smarter one, while Teo has shrugged his off. Or has he? Perhaps he has been more successful in integrating the two. Back in those days when we first returned to the islands, he could be so angry against palagi ways. At others he would rail against our own antiquated customs! He was just a wild lad.

We were brought up to respect and love our own ancestry. Our father, Samuele, was a very proud Samoan, proud of our heritage, our customs and our ways. I think now that perhaps he was very intelligent, though he had practically no palagi education. He knew all the old stories, though, and the legends of our ancestors. Teo and I used to love listening to him in the evenings, in the big fale, with all the ‘aiga, listening while he told the stories. He would lean his back against his particular pole, the low light from the hurricane lamp above him shining on his oiled skin and handsome face. We only knew him young and handsome. But even in his forties he could bring those old stories to life better than any older matai. He would use a high voice for the women, and drop his voice down for the dramatic bits. Oh we loved it! Teo is five years younger than me but Samuele could hold us all – little children and old women – with his tales. Some nights the patele would take over the storytelling and try to bring the bible tales to life. He didn’t have our father’s knack, though. Of course we listened politely, and then yawned, and then fell asleep on the mats, with Tiresa our mother giving us the odd slap with her fan if we wriggled in our sleep.

Sometimes Samuele would tell of more recent times. We never asked for the flu epidemic story – it was too horrible – but my father would raise a finger at our complaints and say it was part of our family’s history; that loss and death must be honoured as much as the happy times. I would lower my head and try not to hear his words. The picture he drew was too clear. I could see – smell even – the dead bodies. Whole families lying dead together in their fale. One of Samule’s ‘aiga, a high-born matai, had died in Apia while visiting there. My father almost chanted that part of the story. From that village – close to ours, the people sent a fautasi to collect his body. Forty-eight strong men set off, rowing the funeral boat, slowly so that villagers could send their prayers and blessings with them. None returned. All dead, chanted my father, real tears rolling down his cheeks, every oarsman dead within one day or the next. So quickly did the flu strike. Some of the women would wail as they do at a funeral, crying for their own family deaths. I would put my hands over my ears, and Teo would try to run away.

But Teo would always hang on every word of the Mau stories. Samuele told those with vigour and pride. His father, our grandfather, was killed on that dreadful day of the march. No one was allowed to forget that! Teo loved to hear of the shootings and the anger of it all. We all did. Old and young grew silent when Samuele told it. He made us see the great column of marching people, upright and dignified in their Mau uniform – a purple lavalava with a white stripe, and, for the Mau police, a purple headband. Samuele had been a young man of nineteen, marching proudly alongside his father
down Beach Road. The march had been banned, but the people felt so strongly, said Samuele, that they felt they must march, in peace, to show their dismay. Many of their matai had been deported – sent away from their own homeland to a cold and lonely place, or even imprisoned in New Zealand! (A gasp of horror from the audience.) Many respected matai had been stripped of their titles! My father would pause for the groan of outrage; would perhaps give a single heavy clap to show his respect, and we would all follow suit. Then, on with the story. Sometimes he would use little stones to create a map of the roads. Here were the marchers; here the soldiers, waiting in a side road; here the gunmen on the verandah of the police station, with their deadly Lewis gun. In my father’s version the marchers were all peaceful, and perhaps they were. The Mau movement was determinedly a passive-resistance one. He made us see the pandemonium, the fear of the marchers when the gunfire rang out, the bullets raining down from above, the women and children who had simply been watching the march, showing solidarity with their men-folk, screaming and rushing to hide in the market only to be trapped there and wounded themselves.

It was such a widespread movement, the Mau, and so heartfelt for so long, that I suppose every child in Samoa was brought up on that story, as were Teo and I. And the tales of the men hiding in the bush. Of the women organising the passive resistance. And the funny story of the time some Mau members were arrested and then hundreds more came forward to offer themselves for arrest! The prisons couldn’t cope. The men were put into a fenced corral which had the sea
on one side. They would swim home to see to their gardens and harvest the bananas, and spend time with their wives and then swim back again! We all laughed at that one!

I remember one special night when Samuele told this story of Black Saturday. He had just reached the part where the great leader Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III walked into the angry crowd with his hands up, beseeching them to be peaceful. The New Zealand police force shot him in the back. And when our grandfather, with others, rushed to cradle the dying man, they shot him too. My father told it with great sadness, not in anger. But young Teo jumped to his feet, in front of the whole family and shouted. ‘We should kill them back! Why didn’t you kill them all?’

My father gave his son a slap, then, for interrupting the story and for showing anger.

‘Tupua Tamasese was not of our family as you know, son,’ he said. ‘We are Malietoa, but we are related through our noble blood. We respect Tupua Tamasese’s sayings as of our own. Remember his dying words.’ And he looked at all his family expectantly. We chanted the words with him. ‘My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.’

I loved my father. He was a gentle and wise man. He was among the many who were wounded that day – a bullet to his leg – but I never heard him call for revenge for his father’s death or his own wound. Certainly he spoke sternly about that time; about the stupidity of the New Zealand administrators, and his earnest hope
for independence. Alas he never lived to see that day. A simple scratch from live coral; a neglected infection from the poison; a fever from the infection, which was wrongly diagnosed as flu. He died in our own fale when he should have been in hospital. It was his preventable death that encouraged me, I think, to become a doctor. Perhaps his desire for independence and his telling of the story of our grandfather’s death led Teo towards political science and gave him a taste for political activism in those early days.

I asked Tiresa why she let us both go to New Zealand to study. I would have thought she harboured some anger against that country. But even my feisty mother was pragmatic on that point. She looked up from her plaiting – she and a group of friends were working on a fine mat.

‘Your father would have wished it,’ she said, ‘and also you won scholarships. Why waste good money?’ And after a few more tiny strands had been painstakingly incorporated, ‘And also what would all my friends here say if I kept you at home? Such an honour, such clever children and I turn it down? Eh? Their fans would be slapping me all day!’ Laughter all round, and agreement, then on with the weaving. ‘And now here you are,’ she said with a proud wag of her head, ‘at independence time, all ready to take over from the palagi! Your father and grandfather will be looking down from heaven and praising me for my good sense!’

Such hopes riding on our education. It was a burden as well as a gift. No wonder we felt a little adrift, in those early days of our return. It took Teo some time to lose that palagi student-style outrage and settle into fa‘asamoa. In a way, I suppose I have always fought
against the pull. Yes I work for the Samoan community, but I do it from the comfort and stimulation of a larger and more sophisticated New Zealand. Perhaps if Jeanie had stayed, I might have too.

Hamish

Y
esterday Simone came into my study with a cutting from the newspaper.

‘Remember that awful Stuart Roper?’

I actually dropped the book I was reading in shock. Simone is uncanny the way she can pick my thoughts. But this, it seemed, was pure coincidence. A friend of hers had sent an article about gardening from the
New
Zealand Herald
– some plant Simone was interested in growing. On the back of the cutting was a photograph of a fattish, seedy-looking man at a business function, glass of champagne in his hand, suit jacket undone and stomach bulging. A drinker’s red face under a shining bald head. Something cosmetic must have been done to his ear – it looked normal. So did the hand that held the glass. The other didn’t appear in the shot. Perhaps that was the missing one. Stuart Roper.

Only part of the article was included. It seemed
this was a retirement party put on by the bosses for railway workers who had accepted voluntary retirement. Something like that. So he was still around. I wondered if he had ever remarried. The same self-assured smile; the same belligerent stance.

I nodded, reluctant to speak in case Simone found some clue.

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Jeanie got away.’ She looked at me sharply. ‘We never heard from her.’

‘No.’

‘I was so fond of her.’

I said nothing. The topic had been explored many times in the past, but Simone hadn’t mentioned Jeanie for years.

‘I expect she needed to move right away.’ Simone continued to watch me. My stomach lurched at the thought that she might know something. I had warned Elena off, but that woman could not be trusted to act in good faith.

‘Indeed,’ I said at last, ‘yes. I expect she went overseas. Jeanie was a competent nurse. She could work anywhere.’

Simone made that rumbling in her throat that means she is not satisfied with the answer.

I needed a drink. While Simone prepared our meal, I watched the news. But I was remembering that dreadful time in Apia, over the affidavits, when life began to disintegrate for John and his family.

Was it Jeanie or Simone who bought that huge tuna down at the fish tree? I fancy it was Jeanie, though Simone was equally foolhardy. A whole tuna! I can still see it bulging out of the boot of our car (so perhaps it was Simone?), the tail drooping into the dusty road, the mouth gaping sadly at the sky, the boot lid tied with a piece of cord. The women laughing in triumph at their prize. Usually the fish tree was festooned with little flamboyant reef fish, strung like beads on a strip of pandanus, all bones and little flesh. That day a whole tuna hung there among its tiny relatives, truly a whale among minnows. A young fellow I didn’t recognise stood proudly beside it, flapping at flies with his fan. Proud indeed. Not many would take a paopao beyond the reef to fish. In the old days of course …

We had come down to buy meat as this was WESTEC’s killing day, but the sight of the tuna had the women in raptures. We had to buy it. And despite my protestations, buy it they did, Simone doing the bargaining, Jeanie egging her on. What did they pay for it? Perhaps a whole pound. A bargain anyway, they crowed, as they helped the fisherman heave it into the boot.

‘We’ll have a party!’ cried Jeanie, ‘You must come to us this time. Stuart will butcher the beast, we’ll freeze what we can, give a piece to the housegirl, and then we’ll gorge ourselves on fresh fish till it’s gone!’

Jeanie was radiant that day. I remember clearly her dark eyes shining at the fun of such a daring purchase, she and Simone giggling like naughty schoolgirls at a midnight feast.

‘Father loves fish,’ she said, ‘and so do I. He’ll be so pleased.’

This would be a month or two after Gertrude’s death. John was enjoying getting to grips with the finances of the plantation – often came to me for advice. I wondered how he managed with the workers. His manner would have surprised them after Gertrude – so quiet and tentative. Perhaps he left that part to Stuart, or more likely Samasoni took charge. I had heard things were not so happy up at the plantation, but hoped the rumours would fade.

The night of the tuna feast, Stuart and John were both in town. Thankfully, it was only a small dinner party, given the way it ended. Simone and I, a lady doctor friend of Jeanie’s and a newcomer – a man from the World Health Organization who had come to help with the aftermath of the hurricane. All palagi. Simone took over a large platter of whatever we had in the garden and we all supplied a bottle from our liquor ration. I fancy Stuart had been down to the liquor shed and pleaded an important party because he definitely had more than the monthly ration.

We sat on the verandah drinking. Stuart began as a good host – attentive, friendly, flirting with the lady doctor, but not outrageously so. Simone told me later that there had been some incident at the plantation earlier which had rubbed John and Stuart up the wrong way. A difference of opinion over future directions. I remember her scorn that I hadn’t spotted it. They spoke not one word to each other the whole night, she insisted. John was quiet, I noticed
that
. Even at the dreadful end, he spoke only the once, and to devastating effect.

Stuart drank whisky all through the meal. Appalling bad taste, given that delicate, meltingly tender flesh.
Jeanie had baked a large section of it – as much as she could fit in the oven – and dressed it with coconut cream and lime juice. Simple, fresh, utterly delicious. Most of us drank lime juice or beer with it; Stuart downed tot after tot of neat whisky. His attentions to the lady doctor became loud and embarrassing; he crammed the fish into his mouth without comment. He could have been eating tough WESTEC beef, instead of this gift from the sea.

Simone, I could see, was becoming dangerously irritated. ‘Is the fish not perfect, Stuart?’ she asked, ice in her voice. ‘Hasn’t Jeanie dressed it beautifully?’

‘Hmm?’ He turned to her with his mouth full. When he laughed, morsels of fish flew onto the table.

‘Your wife,’ Simone continued dangerously, ‘has cooked us a beautiful feast and you do not compliment her?’

Stuart stared at her. Jeanie, coming back from the kitchen, passed behind my wife. I saw her shake her head – a small rather hopeless movement – as she laid a gentle hand on Simone’s shoulder.

‘She knows I hate fish,’ said Stuart, too loudly. Now everyone was listening. ‘She bought the damned thing to annoy me.’ He turned to the lady doctor again and laughed, leaning towards her intimately. ‘She lives to please her father, you see. I don’t come into the equation.’

In the silence that greeted this pronouncement, John cleared his throat and said mildly, ‘Stuart you have had enough to drink. You are embarrassing our guests.’ Then he turned quickly to the World Health Organization expert and asked some diversionary question about the
hurricane relief. It was skilfully done and I thought the awkward corner had been turned. Perhaps I was too interested in the expert’s reply to notice Stuart. Simone told me later that he became absolutely still, his face ‘swelling dark and purple like an aubergine’, as the conversation became animated and he sat, ignored even by the lady doctor.

Suddenly he banged his fist on the table, strongly enough to make the glasses jump and bellowed, ‘Here’s a good riddle: What do you get when a Chinese man rapes a half-wit girl? Eh? What do you get?’

He laughed into the silence he had produced. The rest of the guests were merely embarrassed. I was the only one there who knew where this was leading. If only I had been quick-witted or brave enough to intervene. But I remained as tongue-tied as the rest.

‘John O’Dowd, that’s what you get!’ the dreadful fellow shouted. ‘John O’Dowd!’ He raked us all with his bloodshot eyes. For a moment we were all mesmerised. Then the idiot fortunately flung a full glass of whisky into the lady doctor’s lap, jumped up to repair the damage, lost his footing and crashed to the floor. In the ensuing mayhem the drunken outburst was, I hoped, forgotten or at least discounted. Jeanie helped her wretched husband out of the room, while Simone mopped at the lady doctor.

‘What a so rrrrude man!’ she cried. ‘He will regret every word in the morning. Hamish, it is time we went. It’s time we all went.’ She embraced poor, petrified Jeanie, who had returned to the room, loudly praised the meal, hooked an arm under the lady doctor’s elbow and sailed out, leaving me to follow with the hurricane
expert. Alas, we were all glad to escape.

Back home, we drank our nightcap – Simone’s concoction of fresh coconut milk and some other secret and no doubt horrifying ingredient – in the dark on the verandah.

‘You knew something about that,’ Simone said. ‘I saw your face.’

I told her then. Described Gertrude’s outburst before the O’Dowd’s arrival. The secret of John’s unconventional birth, of which he seemed to know nothing. Simone, predictably, was aghast. She stormed to her feet, threw the remains of her drink over the railing and stood listening in the steamy dark. For the moment all was silent next door. ‘But there will be storms ahead,’ she warned, as if I were in some way to blame, ‘What broken souls might I need to repair tomorrow? You should have warned me, you stupid man!’

Next morning we were both on the verandah drinking our morning lime juice and reading the
Samoa Times
. News about the hurricane was still trickling in – it was worse than we had feared. Apia had not taken the full force of the storm. Other areas had suffered dreadfully. Whole villages completely flattened. The majority of both islands’ banana crop destroyed. In the next few months lack of food would become a major problem.

But our attention was soon diverted to the sounds from next door. We could hear the shouts quite clearly. Stuart was in a rage; Jeanie answering defiantly. No word from John O’Dowd. Some accusation we couldn’t
catch – not the Chinese rape theme this time. His rage was directed at Jeanie. Surely the man was demented? Then Jeanie’s high voice pleading. ‘Don’t Stuart! Why say such things? Haven’t you done enough? Please!’

A crash and a scream followed. Jeanie’s scream.

‘Hamish, go over there! That monster is beating her!’ cried Simone.

But you can’t interfere with someone else’s domestic life. Or I can’t. What could I do? Stuart is a big, heavy man. In any case we saw him run out of the house a few minutes later, slam the jeep into gear and roar out onto the road, leaving a red dust cloud hanging in the still air.

We watched the house for signs of life. I wouldn’t let Simone storm over there with offers of help. Privacy is precious. ‘They know we’ll help if they need it,’ I said.

‘She could be lying in a pool of blood. He could have killed her!’ Simone stood vigil on the verandah, staring across. ‘I must go to her.’

Then we saw John come out and sit on the cane settee, a glass of something in his hand. The fallen tree partially obscured him but even so I pulled Simone away. He would not be so calm, I said, if anything dreadful had happened to his daughter. Much later, as we ate our meal in the shade of our own verandah he was till there, staring out at nothing in particular. We saw Jeanie bring him a fresh drink, speak to him quietly, but he waved her away. She went back inside. When night fell he was still there. Stuart had not returned.