‘You are my friend?’ he said, with his eyes on my eyes.
‘Yes, truly,’ I said, and with one finger I stroked his arm, till he closed his hand around my finger and held it. ‘Alistea,’ I said.
‘Salib’,’ he said, smiling because I had called him by his other name that I had never said before. And we stayed like that, very quiet and friendly, for a little while, until the door that was half open creaked all the way into the room, and Misa Makadoneli cried out: ‘O! Pardon me, old man.’
Saliba sprang into the air like a wallaby, tearing away her hand from Cawdor. ‘Peeping man!’ she screamed in my ear as she thudded past me at the door.
‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ I said to Cawdor. ‘I had no idea, old man, no idea at all.’
‘Nothing was happening, Mak,’ Cawdor said. ‘Relax. You haven’t missed a thing.’
‘You might be civil,’ I said. ‘She is my servant.’
‘Yeah, and she’s in the house after sundown,’ he said. ‘I could Court you for that.’
‘She’s in the house because she was born and bred in the house,’ I said. ‘God knows who makes these ordinances. Some withered old nancy at Konedobu. The whole country’s going to pot. If I could still do it I’d be doing it, and not think of your Court, old man.’
‘It would make a lovely trial,’ he said.
In the hot room the scent of the girl’s flowers still hung on the air. I let him see me sniffing at it. ‘Like a whorehouse in here,’ I said.
‘Mak,’ he said, picking up a book from the bed, ‘isn’t it after lights out for you? I’m not really tuned in for this kind of chat.’
‘Well, of course, old man,’ I said, ‘I know nothing was going on, really, it was just my joke. The girl’s a good-natured girl, but she’s plain, they’re all plain nowadays, and you’ve got other things to think about. I don’t know why you don’t bring her with you, she’d certainly be most welcome in the house.’
He put down the book and faced me from the pillow, very hard and level. ‘Bring who?’ he said, sounding sharp and tired at the same time.
‘Why, your sinabada, old man. Quite a doll, that’s what young Johnston from Muyuwa said.’
He went on looking at me for so long that I began to know that something was up. Then he said: ‘Have you really not heard?’
‘Heard what, old man?’
‘No,’ he said to himself, studying my face. ‘No, you haven’t. Well, Mak, my doll of a sinabada shot through two months ago with the Osiwa doctor.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘They went out on the same plane. He was going on leave, she was going to the dentist in Moresby. So she told me. They wrote from Tokyo. They were having a honeymoon.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, all I can say is it’s a pretty poor show.’
‘Sometimes I think so,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I feel a bit restless. A bit taken for granted—you know the feeling? When I write to my wife, for instance, Mrs Alistair Cawdor, and have to address it to Mrs John Philipson. She gets worried about her reputation. Well, you wouldn’t know, but neighbours can be beastly.’
I went and sat on the bed, so as to see him better. His face, filmed with sweat, looked stiff, and very dark.
‘You’ll divorce her?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll get round to that, in time.’
‘You wouldn’t take her back? Just supposing.’
‘She wouldn’t come. It’s not her kind of place, the Territory. Especially not Osiwa. She never went much on tennis or Scrabble.’
‘Cawdor,’ I said, ‘I’m very sorry, old man. Never been married myself, but it must make a man feel—’
‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. I shall have mistresses. Like you, you historic old ram.’
‘That’s what you should have done in the first place,’ I said. And out of politeness he smiled, still with the stiffness in his face. ‘You’re young, you’ve plenty of time. How old are you, by the way?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ he said.
‘And she?’
‘Thirty-two. Which was the point, maybe.’
‘I don’t quite read you, old man.’
‘Of marrying me,’ he said. ‘At least, I sometimes wondered.’
He rolled over, so that his cheek was on the pillow, and began to talk past me, into the corner of the room. ‘In my second stint up here,’ he said, ‘I was twelve months alone on a patrol post. I never saw anyone to talk to, it was just me and the locals. Everyone said how can you stand it? I thought I stood it pretty well, I thought I was happy, I guess I was. But when I went South on leave, first of all I couldn’t stop talking, it was like a disease, but there was no one to talk to. So I shut up, and then I couldn’t talk at all. I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t know anybody. I went South to have a good time, spend my money, but I couldn’t know anybody. So I went to ground in my father’s house in Sydney, because of that—because I knew him, more or less. Then this girl, this woman, started coming. He asked her to come, I think. And I could talk to her, and she talked to me. So I asked her to marry me. You won’t understand this, but it was
that
that I wanted, to be married. So we did marry and came to Osiwa and it didn’t work and she went and it’s finished. Now you know. It’s going to be my leave again soon, but this time I won’t take it. I’m not going to take any leave again. I’m going to stay here, in these islands, and if they transfer me I’ll resign and be a trader or something, but I’m not leaving. I can’t know anybody. I only ever knew her, and she never had any idea what she wanted, and she wouldn’t try. Christ, Mak, I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear this.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘But don’t let’s have any more of it. You get too excited.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a kind of laugh at the corner of the room. ‘I do. I get excited.’
‘And you’ve drunk a fair bit tonight.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do that too.’
‘I’d change my mind about that leave, if I were you.’
‘Ah,’ he said, into the pillow. Then I saw that his eyes were closed, and he looked to have fallen, really fallen, asleep, still with his mouth open from making that sound. It seemed to bear out how young he was. And I thought he will get over this, perhaps, and Dalwood is a Samaritan happy in his work, and at this end of my life it is only humility to say it has nothing to do with me. So I turned to go, but when I was at the door he said quietly after me: ‘Tomorrow, Mak, you never heard me, understand?’
I called to Naibusi: ‘Very well, I will go, I will sleep now.’ And I went down the steps from the veranda and was on the path to our house, Naibusi’s and mine, when a voice from the dark whispered my name.
I did not see him at first, I did not see him for a long time. He was underneath the house, where the boxes and the kerosene drums are, sitting on a drum. I would not have seen him at all, but two thin lines of light were on him, the light of Alistea’s lamp, shining through cracks in the floorboards in Alistea’s room above his head.
‘You come, Salib’,’ he said.
He had waited very long, since he had been under the shower, and still had a white towel wrapped around him like a rami, stained with rust from the drum.
‘Salib’,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, taubada. I am afraid.’
But he did not understand that word, and stood up, very tall, with the lines of light on him, expecting.
‘I do not know,’ I said.
He said again: ‘You come,’ and one would not have thought that his voice could sound like that, so deep.
Then slowly I did go to him, not truly understanding my own mind, but because he said. And under the two lines of light he seized me and held me against his skin, which was hot and cool.
‘You are good, Salib’,’ he said, because those were all the words he knew. ‘Salib’, you are very good.’ He kissed me on the mouth, and I held his back, and felt him trembling.
And then I knew that he too was afraid, this Dimdim, he was afraid that I might hurt him. And when I knew that, there was no difference and no strangeness any more, there was only like one person there in the dark, whispering: ‘Timi,’ and ‘Saliba.’
Of course, if you have the Government to stay with you, for a while you can’t call your house your own. All those boxes, all those people: policemen, houseboys, boat-crew. And without fail that pain in the neck Osana, making sure that he doesn’t pass unobserved. He had been busy somewhere all that weekend, daunting the maries with his high office and his keyhole-glimpses of Dimdim life. But before I was out of my bed on that Monday morning he was back, shouting orders in the village. And so I decided to stay where I was, till the organizing would be over, the patrol ready to set out.
And besides, they tire me nowadays, white men. I liked young Dalwood, and even Cawdor, but they tired me. To deal with white men—here, at my age—takes thought, a lot of thought.
When most of the shouting had died down I came out on to the veranda. Osana and the bearers, surrounded by their baggage, were milling around among the huts below, and Saliba, on the back steps, was watching them and playing a bit of a tune on a pawpaw-stalk, bending and slackening it to get the notes. An irritating noise, I’ve always thought. I said to her: ‘You have no work today?’
She looked at me, surprised, and then shouted: ‘Today I work for the Government.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Then the Government can feed you, I think.’
She pulled a face at me, and went back to her aimless piping, through the green tube.
On the other side of the veranda Cawdor was still at the table, finishing a mug of tea. Dalwood leaned on the rail and was studying the
Igau
, like something that he had made himself and in time would get perfect. In his clean white clothes, he could have been bound for an operating theatre. But on his back, I saw as I came nearer, were little red-brown stains; and you needn’t have been fifty-one years on Kailuana to know what that means.
He turned as I came up, and said: ‘Ah, ’morning, Mak.’
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Turn round.’ And as he did, not wanting to, but not quite sure that he hadn’t a tarantula on him, I ripped his shirt out of his shorts and showed Cawdor the claw-marks running down his back.
‘Dear me,’ I said.
Cawdor had his mug in front of his mouth, I could only see his eyes over it, fixed on mine. ‘That’s what I’ve been saying to myself,’ he said.
‘Jesus,’ Dalwood muttered, and backed off from me, tucking in his shirt again, too fast not to do some damage to his houseboy’s ironing. I saw his eyes move towards the steps where Saliba had been, but they came back. She was gone, apparently. He turned on me, hot in the face, and demanded: ‘What did you get out of that? That was pretty sick, in my book.’
‘Now don’t be so puritanical, old man,’ I said.
But already he had decided to transfer his indignation from me to Cawdor, and in a couple of strides was at the table, his fists on the plastic cover and his shadow, in the early sun, darkening the slighter man, who was already dark, and cool.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘what have
you
got to say about it?’
‘Not a thing,’ Cawdor said, looking up at him. ‘What were you expecting?’
‘Nothing,’ Dalwood said. ‘Not a thing will do.’
For a moment he had seemed to be spoiling for a row, a tremendous row, there was lightning in the air around him. But Cawdor, who had drained his mug and put it down, only looked at him with his usual detachment; which was taking, I thought, a certain amount of concentration.
‘Right, then,’ he said, standing up. ‘You ready to go?’
‘I’ve been ready for half a fucking hour,’ Dalwood said.
‘More fool you,’ Cawdor said. ‘You only start getting paid at a quarter to eight.’
‘It’s twenty-five to now, old man,’ I said. ‘Are you leaving already? What did Saliba mean about working for the Government today?’
‘She wants to be a bearer,’ Cawdor said, ‘if that’s all right. She’ll be back at midday.’
‘Well, why not?’ I said. ‘Let’s be kind to them. I must tell Naibusi to cut her nails. Nasty habit, that. It’s called
kimali
.’
‘There you are, Tim,’ Cawdor said. ‘You’ve learned a new word.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ the boy said, and he strode off. At the steps on the village side he called back: ‘Thanks, Mak, I’ll see you in a few days.’ Then he sank out of sight, and I heard him shouting among the huts for his houseboy.
‘It’s all very sudden,’ I said to Cawdor. ‘Do you think it was the first time?’
‘Mak,’ Cawdor said, ‘in your studies have you come across the word voyeur?’
‘Well, of course,’ I said.
‘I’m not one,’ Cawdor said. ‘So let’s pull the chain on that subject.’
‘I say, Cawdor,’ I said, ‘that’s a bit offensive. And besides, I’m responsible for that girl.’
‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘She’s been responsible for herself a good four years now.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I said, ‘but what if there’s a child? What if she’s in love with him?’
‘You know there’s never a child,’ he said. ‘And never much love, either. All there is is curiosity, and that doesn’t leave any complications.’
‘Well, let’s hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘She thinks you’re her friend now. We’ll see if she has reason to change her mind.’
‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said, ‘if I have to. But I don’t think there’s anything I can do. The news will be all over the island by tomorrow, and at Osiwa by next week. The ADO’s easy-going, but if Osana turns nasty he could force his hand. I think the kid will be in another district by Christmas. He won’t mind, she won’t mind. And it’s no business of yours or mine.’
‘In the old days,’ I said, ‘ADOs knew what to do with characters like Osana. What he needs is a hiding, old man. Why don’t you drop him a hint?’
‘That’s what he’s waiting for,’ he said. ‘For me to hit him. It’s been very inconvenient for Osana, having a PO who speaks the language. His prestige is falling. For six months now he’s been trying to drive me out, and he’s still waiting for the moment when I overhear something that goes just a bit too far, and turn round and paste him. Then I’ll probably be finished here, and he’ll be back where he was: Prime Minister of Osiwa, the man the Paramount Chief comes to for favours.’