Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

  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

  CHAPTER 7: WATER’S OFF

  “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.

  CHAPTER 8: CRAZY NIGHTS

  "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 t
he 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.