'Anyone with the imagination of a stale turd could have made it "Cakes" or "Pies" or something like that,' complained Conway, looking at the changing hues thrown upon the inky lagoon. 'Even "Cakes" might give you some romance. What sort? Iced or sugar? And you might want to know what's in his pies. But, dear God, what can you ask about bread?'
Pollet drove gymnastically, putting the elderly French car into turns and skids that carried it noisily through the contortions of the track they were now following. 'Here in Melanesia,' he said, 'they believe that the simplest mode of doing anything is the best. Bread means bread. The Melanesian girl always makes her flower designs the same way, clever but monotonous, and she will not, she cannot, move from that. It has been with her since she was a baby. She dances like that also, and makes love the same way. It has a sameness about it.'
Davies quoted: 'Young girls dancing, indecent dances, indecent songs, and the most indecent actions in the practice of which they are brought up from earliest childhood ...'
Pollet laughed: 'You almost have it correct. "In doing this they keep time to a great nicety."'
'That's right,' said Davies in the dark. 'You know it.'
'Captain Cook and his old maid's philosophy,' laughed Pollet, swinging the car through the dark. 'It is a well‑
74
known quotation in these islands. He never understood the people of the Pacific. He was murdered while telling his men not to shoot at the natives. That is always a fatal mistake, my friend.'
The car shuddered like a loose tin along the track for a few minutes more, dipping like an aged boat in a changing sea. The track became narrower and trees and bushes brushed and sometimes banged like fists against the side. Then there blinked some lights through the overgrowth ahead, yellow and red lights. 'The Café Angelique, the Moulin Rouge of the Apostle Islands,' mocked Pollet. 'Presenting ‑ for this year only ‑ the Jap Oisen Ensemble.'
They cleared the trees and ahead they could see that the lights were isolated, standing out on a jut of land that merged black with the molassic sea just beyond.
'He is a real, a live Japanese,' said Pollet. 'He was a soldier in the occupation force here and for years after the war lived over on one of the atolls behind St Mark's. He says he didn't know it was over ‑ one of that sort ‑ but maybe he did and could not be troubled to find out who won. When he at last came across here to St Peter's he was wearing the last rags of an American army fatigue suit with the name "Olsen" sewed to it. So he called himself Olsen and all the citizens called him Jap, and that is how he began.'
'And now he runs the nightspot,' said Conway.
'Well,' shrugged Pollet, 'he has an interest. Not that it pays too good. But he plays the clarinet okay because he studied it when he was over on his little atoll. He says somebody left it behind in the rush at the end of the fighting, so he sat alone on his beach and learned to play it. People leave some strange things behind in war, don't they?' Pollet paused while he skidded the car between two palms that closed in on them through the night. 'Ha!' he said, the manoeuvre completed. 'A clarinet! Imagine, an abandoned clarinet!'
'An abandoned Jap to play it,' said Conway.
Pollet half‑circled the car in the mud outside the low building, a sluggish pirouette that brought them alongside a jeep and a tethered donkey. A brilliant white light
from one of the windows was shining directly into the donkey's eyes and the animal had them screwed up in protest. Pollet considerately unhitched him and turned him in the opposite direction, tying him to the rear bumper of the jeep.
'That's a bit dangerous,' suggested Davies. 'If the people with the jeep don't notice him they'll drive off with the donkey dragging behind.'
'And that thing would never be able to keep up,' added Conway, looking at the animal.
Pollet finished securing the donkey and kindly scratched the long white patch of its face before leaving it. 'No problem,' said the Belgian. 'Jap Olsen ‑ the jeep and that bloody thing belong to him. For short journeys, and always at night, he uses the donkey. He is mean about gasoline and the headlights on the jeep don't work. Tonight when he goes home he will drive the donkey.'
They went in. Davies's immediate thought was that the room was like a Welsh working‑men's institute, oblong, depressed, boarded, just chairs and tables and a poor bar, with a slightly raised entertainment platform at one end. In a corner was a dead‑looking woman hanging on to a cello in the manner of a drunk hanging on a lamp‑post. Beside her was a florid trumpeter, a man with a permanent stare, like a fat owl rudely woken in daylight. These were supported by a young Melanesian boy behind a complex drum kit, gleaming, Davies thought, like a Welsh fish‑and‑chip machine.
'The band,' whispered Pollet, nodding towards the three. He led them to a table near the back, in the shadow. There were about a dozen other people in the dim place, hunched like poker players around the tables, drinking but talking very little. A vivid silver spotlight that would have been the pride of the ceiling of the Milan Opera House, a searing beam descending from the low roof, lit the dais. It was raised only six feet above the stage. It was obvious that the customers were waiting for something. A waiter, a Filipino, appeared and Pollet said: 'Three,' and the man brought back three beers.
'What time do they close?' asked Davies. 'It's not very exciting is it?'
Pollet shrugged. 'The place goes on until late,' he said. 'At midnight, however, the old lady with the cello always leaves because she has a long walk across the island and she has to take that heavy instrument.'
'Good God!' said Davies. 'The old crone takes it with her?'
Pollet said: 'That's a good word. Crone. What is that?'
'Old dear,' said Davies. The Belgian's English was so
assured the query surprised him. 'Old lady.'
'Old
crone,' said Pollet. 'Hmm. Old crone.' Then he said: 'She ‑ the old crone ‑ has a little cart behind this building and she lifts it on to that. She will not leave the instrument here because she says it is very ancient and valuable and she trusts no one. So every night you will see her dragging it along the jungle road to her house. She's a widow and she's perhaps a little strange, you know.'
The violent spotlight, designed for a lofty roof, still burned down on the floor, though the fidgeting semi‑silence continued to rustle in the room. No entertainer had appeared, but then through the light, briskly striding, came a fat man swinging a clarinet.
'Jap Olsen,' said Pollet. The man came to them. 'Good evening, Mr Olsen.' The Japanese wore a grubby dress shirt and a cringing bow, and one tail of his long formal coat was several inches shorter than the other. He smiled a wide smile and shook hands with the other men, bowing to each. He had far open, un‑oriental eyes, like fat boats.
'Spotlight vel' good ah?' he indicated proudly. 'Special from Blisbane. Aussie, see. Jesus it hot too. Jesus it sure hot.'
'It was making your donkey sightless,' commented Pollet. 'Burning in his eyes. I turned him around.'
Olsen blinked a long blink. 'Like cabaret that donkey,' he said. 'Like look into nightspot. He don' mind light.'
'What time is the show?' asked Conway.
'He come soon,' replied Olsen. 'Don' like change clothes here. Say it no good. Change in 'Gesima. In hotel. Here now ... I hear.' There were the lights and the sound of a car outside.
The Japanese went from their table towards the bright stage light again, vanished through it like a man magically walking through a waterfall, and reappeared a minute later to introduce his cabaret, a baritone from Fiji,
a mountainous chocolate man with high springing hair and an expansive face. He was resplendent in full dress, black frockcoat, brilliant white shirt and tie, sparkling diamond pin, and giant patent‑leather shoes. He walked into the spotlight at Olsen's introduction and the musicians struck a hesitant three‑chord greeting, joined by the owner's quickly pickedd up clarinet on the third chord. The singer's name was Samuel Smart and he made a short ducking movement as he entered the hot spotlight and felt its force, like a boxer avoiding a heavy right cross.
Bravely he tried to look into the source of the light, but turned quickly from it, his eyes screwed up painfully and water immediately dripping down from his large Fijian cheeks. Stepping smartly from the hot circle he sought out Olsen with still half‑blinded eyes and eventually detected him sitting phlegmatically almost at his feet. The singer pointed towards the searing beam, but Olsen had given the signal and the musicians were already beginning to play. Olsen joined in and the big baritone, after a moment's indecision, stepped once more into the white spotlight.
He sang well, a beautifully rounded voice, in the tradition of the best English baritones with no trace of any accent that would have sounded out of place in a Sussex palm court.
He sang I
Left My Heart In an English Garden, Rose of
England,
and Old
Father Thames.
He then collapsed very heavily on the stage, a fall as final and dramatic as a rhino caught in the brain with a powerful bullet. The trio and Olsen played on with professional gallantry. The audience were petrified into attentiveness, unsure, unable to move. Davies thought it might be part of the act. Mr Smart lay, a sorry black hump in the pulsating spotlight. After a full thirty seconds the music dragged to a standstill. Someone in the dim back of the place began to applaud, but the
singer did not move.
Olsen waved his clarinet towards Pollet and the three men went hurriedly forward and heaved the deadweight baritone across the platform. Davies was staggered by the heat of the light as he bent forward to help. Mr Smart was pumping rather than breathing, gigantic panic movements of his deep chest beneath the white shirt now soggy as papier‑maché with his enormous sweat. His black face was wet and small gasses were escaping from his open mouth and his fine big nostrils. They carried him to the back of the building where he began to revive. Suddenly he sat up and let out a great wet roar, staggered from the bench where they had rested him, and rushed towards the exit. The door banged back and forth on its hinges for some time after he had gone into the close night. They heard his waiting taxi start up. Then they heard the donkey snort.
'The bastard kick my donkey,' said Olsen.
They had been drinking for another hour, the deep, bitter beer made in the islands, when Bird came in and sat on one side of the dais bent over a guitar, playing and singing in almost whispered French. Davies did not think she had seen him. She did not seem to be aware of anyone else in the place. She played without stopping, just running from one song to another, all of a like tender tempo, her fingers only suggesting that they were touching the strings, her voice low and sometimes lost, her black hair falling in a long arm, hiding her face.
More people came in. At midnight the grey lady cellist suddenly stood and marched defiantly away with her fat instrument upright by her, side as though it were walking with her. Davies went to the window and saw her shadow trundling it through the mud on the ghostly handcart. Pollet went to Jap Olsen and they stood against the bar laughing. The girl from behind the bar, introduced by Pollet as Dahlia, came over and Conway bought her a beer. She was a tall girl, heavily framed, with a dark face coloured and creamed with thick make‑up. She said she had been in Montreal, at the exhibition, then in Mexico, then in Honoraria in the Solomons, and Vila in the New Hebrides. Then she got to Sexagesima and caught a fever. One day she was going home to Wanganui in New Zealand. One day.
Nobody seemed to drink anything other than beer. Davies had taken a lot. He could feel it swollen inside him. The place felt damp, like a cave, and dark like a cave too. There was a candle in a rose‑coloured jar on the table. He took out his wallet and spread eight photographs in the rosy light, fanning them out like a fortune‑teller fans out cards. The awful loneliness fell upon him immediately. He felt like a man who had failed to resist the recurring need for pornography. He had tried not to take the pictures from his wallet. But he always did.
What would they be doing now? A Tuesday in February at ‑ he looked at his watch and deducted ten hours ‑ three-thirty in the afternoon. She had gone to get them from school now, he thought, yes. just now she'd be at the gate to see they didn't get run over when they ran from school. Probably raining. Yes, probably. February was a very wet month in Newport. So was March and April, of course. May wasn't too good either, and August when they were away from school was always indifferent. September wasn't too bad. They'd always gone down to the sea at Barry in September because the weather always seemed to repent about then and the sun would shine decently. That was one of the reasons they were all going to leave Wales for Australia, of course, because of there being a lot of sunshine in Australia and too much rain in Newport. If it were raining then Kate would have her blue coat on with the hood. It looked nice that coat. It made her face look enclosed and good and sweet with the hood around it. By now though she had probably got a new one. It was a long time.
He pictured the children inside the glass door of the school, all pressing, waiting for the moment of the bell, the instant of freedom when they could run out into the rain and go home with their mothers. Kate would take Mag and David home under her umbrella and they would have tea in the little living‑room and watch television, and the paperboy with the
Argus
would come around in the rain, propping his bike against the lamp, and then the lights would all be splashing on the wet roads and pavements and the men would come off the buses home from their work. But not him, because he was an adventurer' in the South Pacific, working, making a new life, listening to a girl singing love songs he did not understand.
Then he realized that Bird had stopped singing. She had walked to him through the warm darkness of the room and stood beside his table, the guitar resting at an angle across the opposite chair. Conway had moved over to be nearer Dahlia, and Bird was standing looking at his spread of photographs. He laughed uneasily.