Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

  Delighted, Henderson helps Stella out of the bed. She looks weak still, shocked as much by the rapid changes in her life as the blows of yesterday. Her eye is still swollen and bruised, but she knows how to clamp her cheap dark glasses over the problem. Then Stella looks at her reflection in a tiny square of mirror that the woman in the next door bed has lent her. To her critical eyes she looks very unbrushed and very battered. There's a hunt for a comb and then they are ready to go - the new model family: one caring man, one enchanting woman and a daughter. Stella takes Ellen's hand and follows Henderson out of the ward into a sunlit world.

  "Welcome to freedom, darling!"

  Stella shuffles uncomfortably, in her memory sweet words come before and after beatings. But Henderson can't stay still enough to trap her into saying the wrong thing.

  "Anna, she's my father's sister, my aunt, but we call her Matron up at the house, lives in Mbokonavera. Do you know the AA Store just up past the clinic?" There's no pause for an answer, it wasn't really a question. "Well she lives there with my uncle, Adam. The two of them run the store with the wantoks. There's such a gang of wantoks too, you'll have to meet Fred - he's a typical talkative taxi driver - who is married to my sister, Sarah. And there's my cousin who works on the buses. And there's Matron's youngest, a really nice girl, Lovelyn and my small nephew, Junior, who is brilliant, dances like Bob Marley and he's only three ...." The description, meandering as it does from relation to relation soothes Stella's nerves.

  "But will they like me?"

  Henderson is halted mid-flow. "Like you? Of course they'll like you. They have to like you, you're with me." It's not really a reason, but Henderson certainly seems convinced and his confidence is infectious. "Anyway, I've said enough now," this point comes into Henderson's head only after he has talked non-stop (normally he's such a quiet man but life in town is giving him something to say) for close on 15 minutes of strolling towards Mbokonavera. They are about half way along the main China Town road. "Yes, sorry for talking so much, Stella. But please, you continue, there are things I'd like to know about you."

  Stella can feel a pin prick of fear, an emptiness in her heart. She looks at the ground and to her surprise focuses on her toes, encased in nothing but pale blue slippers (flip flops). What could he want to know? Does he guess about the baby? This Anna person is sure to guess, women can always tell.

  "Wh-what do you want to know?"

  "Well, where do you come from? Where's your family? How old are you? You know, things like that - are you an older woman?" Henderson grins wickedly, "that'd be good!"

  "My birthday is in April, so that makes me coming up to 19. My dad is from Malaita, my mother from this island. I lived in Malaita when I was little, and then when I went to school moved to my brother's house in town. I met Ellen's daddy when I was just 15 and he sweet talked me into doing things with him. When the teachers at school realised I was babule (pregnant) they just told me to pack up my things, gave me my caution fee in a pale brown envelope and told me not to come back.

  "I'd hardly walked out of the school grounds when my bro drove past in his old run-around. He saw me, saw it was school time and stopped the car. I tried to run away, but he is big, and fast and he ran on to the school's soccer pitch after me. He caught up and started shaking my shoulders, shouting: 'What are you doing Stella? I've paid your fee since you were a little girl, you've got all your education because of me. Don't think that I can't see that you're running away. I know you've done something wrong! Don't you understand the only way forward is for you to get your exams, get a job, go out and earn some money and to pay me back. But instead you're shaming everyone in the family, making a fool of us all.'

  "I was really frightened because my bro is big, and he can be a bully. It's so confusing, he's kind-hearted too, willing to pay for things he thinks are important, and he really believes in education. He's a lecturer at the college now, but he’s away at USP – the university in Fiji else we would need to look out for him again. I was so ashamed, and so scared, that I just couldn't answer him. It didn't take long before he guessed, and he guessed right - that I was pregnant and I'd been expelled from the wonderful KGVI School's fifth form. And so he hit me, and while he hit me he just ranted: 'How can my sister be a prostitute? How can you have fooled around like this? Believe me - I'm not paying for this baby, it's your problem, not mine. You're going to have to tell me who the father is, and the boys and I will see to him.'

  "I just stood there, let him hit me in full view of the traffic speeding along the road, in full view of my classmates staring from the form room out on to the soccer field, because I knew I'd messed up. It was hard to tell him that I didn't want this baby at all, that I'd been stupid enough to believe that MP when he told me he couldn't have children, and it wouldn't hurt, and he loved me and like a fool I let myself be bowled over by the feeling of being special.

  "When the fists stopped, I still wasn't crying. I turned my face, letting him see what he'd done to me, watch the blood run down from my eyebrow, along the cheekbone and drip slowly on to the soccer pitch. Then I told him who the father was: that was my second mistake. If I'd just lied, told him it was one of my classmates, there'd have been no problem. Some unfortunate boy would have had a midnight visit, denied ever touching me (rightly) been given a few manful punches and then I'm sure my bro would have sent me back home to our village, to live with my mother and I'd have had the child and everything would have turned out all right. I'd have had a peaceful life, been with the family I love and maybe started my studies again when Ellen was old enough to be left with her gran.

  "But when I said: 'The man who gave me this problem is that MP from the West,' my brother's eyes suddenly lit up. He changed his whole reaction, started fussing over my cut eye, telling me he'd take care of me, and he was sure the Big Man would want to do the right thing. And yes, the Big Man, did sort of do the right thing - he was dying to take me into his house, the back of his car wasn't enough for him at all. His real wife had been dead for a year or so, people hinted at mysterious circumstances but the MP slammed that wicked talk, said it was malaria, nothing more. He didn't want a scandal, and I was really too young to be married in church. He just wanted a toy to take to bed, so making me pregnant was the answer to his needs. Sexual needs I suppose," here Stella grimaced, straightened her dark glasses uncomfortably, adding: "and his anger too." I hadn't been living in his house a week before I realised he had a terrible temper, and that temper made him crazy, and when he got crazy he used to hit me. At first I thought it was because I was doing something wrong, that I deserved to be punished, but he hit me right up until I was due to deliver, and he hit me the day after I came back from the hospital. He hit me so often that if a day ever went by without a beating I was frightened what damage he'd do to me the next day.

  "The worst thing was that I couldn't do anything about it. I told my brother, and he advised me to be a better wife. I tried to run away to my mother at her village - I was frightened for little Ellen's safety - but she just insisted I go back, saying I'd have to get used to my husband's ways. The priests felt uncomfortable because I was living in sin. The police worried about their jobs. There was absolutely no place for me to go. Even my neighbours, who knew what was happening - saw it, heard it - refused to listen to my story. The MP told them I was crazy, had epilepsy, and if they heard any strange noises (like him beating me, or raping me) not to interfere. I bet they all knew he was lying, but they were frightened of him. So they left me there.

  "I was so frightened that after a while I stopped being frightened. I started doing the things the MP drunkenly accused me of. Well not all of them, I mean I never went with any other man - but I did go out shopping on my own, I did like to meet my old school friends and go to their unofficial HQ, the G-Klub. I was going to be hit anyway, so what did it matter if I got hit in public? The worst of it was that no one would help me free myself. My girlfriends called him a rotten man, but they couldn't do anything - they are o
nly women after all. You, Henderson, are the only person who has ever tried to rescue me.

  “I don't know much about you it's true, but you seem to be kind. No one could be as bad as that man. But I tell you something, and I know it's not right for women to talk like this to men, but I tell you that if you ever hit me, I'm leaving. I've had it with men and violence. I know it's wrong to hit God's creatures, and I know it's wrong for brothers and husbands to hit women. I'm not taking it anymore, ever. If you hit me then I'll drink chloroquine. I'd rather be dead than go on the way I've been living."

  Stella hadn’t fallen in love with him, that was clear. But Henderson loved her more for this honest story. She was brave, clever and looked good. He liked the idea of being a rescuer. And he liked the way her story was going to make life complicated. He didn’t want to be a village boy who went to town and saw stuff, he wanted to be Henderson who went to Honiara and rescued a beautiful woman. He’d never seen his father strike his mother. His mother is not exactly the boss in the house, father leads the pray before meals and twists off the kerosene lamp when it’s time to sleep, but he knows his mother runs the family - grows the food, looks after the kids, makes the meals, delegates the chores and runs the budget so father can look after his students.

  He knows there are some men in the village who hit their wives, but people whisper about them, say they are bad men. Is that really the truth? He thinks again, yes, they do whisper, but it's true, they slander the woman too even though they know the man is bad. But isn't it a woman's role to sort out the badness in her man, to make him sweeter by her sweetness? What would he have done if his sister Sarah's story was the same as Stella's? Would he have listened? No, probably not. Would he now? He's not sure. But Henderson does realise that his passion for this fragile-looking woman might get him into big trouble. Oh well, that's life he thinks boldly. He's only got one, he might as well live it to its fullest, and already Stella has opened his eyes to things he never knew - things that start under the cover of darkness and behind closed doors.

  "Stella, you're not to worry anymore. I'll look after you. And I'll look after your daughter, as if she was my own child. I promise you that you are free to do what you want, to be as free as me, and that I will always be a friend of yours." His testimony is spoilt by the arrival of Fred's taxi.

  "Henderson, and whoever this 'sister' of yours is," he stares quizzically at the thin woman in her badly fitting shades and the skinny kid beside her, "let me take you all where you're heading."

  "Good to see you," says Henderson genuinely. Despite the company he's sick of walking up the road to Anna's place. When he’s made some money he’s buying a car – let the wheels do the sweating. "We're going up to Matron's ..."

  "Get in then. Hurry up, I've got to meet the evening plane. Hey, Henderson you sit in the front with me, right, off we go."

  For the first time in his life Henderson realises he'd been missing something - something he'd never realised he'd been missing - a beautiful 'wife', a child and that going-home-together feeling. "Stella I have something for you," says Henderson twisting his head round, like a pigeon, to look at her. Grins wickedly and then pushes a scrap of toilet paper into her hand. She unwraps it tentatively, almost persuaded to take off the dark glasses, and then chokes out loud. Her noise is topped by Henderson's declaration: "Stella, whatever happens, I'm really glad I met you, and I just want to say that I'll never leave you alone again - I'll be more faithful than that tooth of yours." A big grin crosses her face - it's the tooth that the MP knocked out during the fight the day before. They both giggle, sillily and she moves her hand putting it in Henderson's - both oblivious of Fred cursing that the Sunny Datsun's gear stick is now blocked and complaining aloud about: "How these two love birds expect the best taxi driver in Honiara to drive”, when 'certain things' - like affection - is going on in his vehicle?

  "So you're married now then Henderson?" Fred baits his passengers good-humouredly.

  "So it seems, but only if the lady is willing ..."

  Stella looks shy, like the teenager she should be. Her answer is hesitant: "Yes, I'm willing because, because, because ... you're a good man." It's enough for Henderson. It would be hard for a man to look happier.

  Lucky for the pair of them that they'd had that good moment, because the second Anna sees Stella stepping out of the taxi with Henderson, and catches sight of Henderson's outrageously broad smile she realises something has gone hideously wrong - and worse, that the coconut wireless was obviously right again. Clearly her nephew is not going to marry the girl his father wants him to, he's gone and got himself involved with that crazy wife of that MP. And there is no way she can face the trouble that's going to happen if this silly young couple -and the MP's little daughter too - stay at her house.

  Henderson has never seen storm clouds grow so dark and so fierce as fast as the expression on Matron's face. There is no argument, no explanation. Just the quiet order that the house is now too full for a married couple to stay there, so perhaps Henderson would prefer to find somewhere else to live? Henderson doesn't understand what's going on, but sees his aunt is deadly serious. Minutes later he's collected his things into his basket and is driving back down the road with Fred: with a family and without a home.

  The only place he can think of going is down to the Labour Lines and see if his friend Patterson can offer a temporary space in one of the dormitories there. And so that's where Fred takes them - it's on the way to the airport anyway. No worries for him, and plenty of gossip to swap with what he rather grandly calls the Taxi Drivers Association members as they wait for those taxi-loving tourists to deplane.

  ***

  SUZY’S DIARY 15 December 1990

  The Guardian Weekly has a horror story about the floods in Britain. I think of friends sloshing along the winter streets of London imagining the ruined shoes, the chilblains, the filthy germs on the tube. Cold comforts as apart from the bursts of sunshine we are in the wet season so it's the same in the South Pacific. Striking difference is that there's water, water everywhere - and not a drop to drink without serious fetching, collecting and carrying because the diesel, needed to pump the water up to the grand residences on Honiara's steep hills, has run out.

  That’s what the cleaner at school told me and she had it from her friend's brother who works at the water board. A good source, albeit dry. "There is no problem," claims the Town Council spokesman on Radio Happy Isles, but the NGOs are going on about a cholera threat (a bit over the top this I think) though perhaps their dire warnings worked. Twice a day an unbearably slow truck pads along my road and each householder is allowed to collect all the water they want from a grubby looking hose. Often we have to do this in the middle of a major cloudburst. It feels like someone’s taking the piss, but is worth the effort just to store enough water to keep my toilet flushing... I’m such a princess.

  Despite water in the saucepans, water in the kettle, water in my gumboots even (if Madonna was a house guest, then I'd use her steel coiled brassiere), buckets collecting the stuff gushing-off the roof) there's never enough water around to do the washing. Great heaps have grown and worse, they are growing mould. When I picked up one malodorous pile to ponder what to do next five little white eggs rolled out. Apparently a ghekko’s new home. Anyway problem solved when I accepted a trip down to the river from a taxi driver who lives just up the road from me in Mbokonavera.

  Fred’s quite a big guy for a Solomon Islander, a sort of forward rugby build - though he claims soccer is his sport. His taxi is outrageously painted with loads of adverts all over its body. These are mostly for rival stationery shops and late-nite party places but clearly represent the best the world has to offer for the new kids in town who you see staring at it with wonderment, still with the mud from the mangroves clinging to their legs. Fred's dream is to run his own fleet of taxis. He's even planned the company name - Fast Freds. Meanwhile he works for a wantok who runs two cars under the very grand title of Kitaza Heights: people's r
eading is so useless here (despite my best efforts in my maths classes!) that these bush kids, tracing the individual letters into words tend to read 'Heights' as 'Hates' and are visibly shocked by such an aggressive name. Fred seems to have the car all the time, to work his own hours and to be able to take time off for trips - like this one to the river. I’m glad I know him, especially when he offers me gratis trips back home when he sweeps by on the way to his mobs.

  I’ve been a child-free city girl for so long that when I tried to play Pooh Sticks with bits of bamboo, to entertain their small son (also called Fred, so known as Junior - sweet, eh?!) it was a disaster. I didn't even have time to whisk Junior across to the other side of the Bailey bridge for a photo finish before the sticks had been rushed out to sea. The water’s icy (well compared to the sea) and the current so strong that when I put my toe in the water I found my leg was dragged about five feet downstream leaving me in a very compromising position, similar to splits.

  Sarah then grabbed my hand and dragged me, very reluctantly, into the centre of the river where there was a gravel island. She plopped the clothes and Junior safely on this. Then led me back to the river shallows and flung herself face down in the river so she floated, at Grand Prix speed, down and across to the other bank. Immediately Fred Junior burst into hysterics thinking his mother was dead, and I had similar hysterics thinking I was now a surrogate mother of a toddler. She was playing though (great game this! Cry wolf comes to mind). I have to admit that I dared myself to try it and it was lovely - after months of endless hot, hot, hot suddenly I was floating free (the other way up so eyes on the sky). Happy. Next time we come Sarah says we need to bring an inner tube, that way you float safer in this giant bath. It was lovely getting to know her, she’s got all these dreams for her boy, but babule (pregnant) again and yet she’s still a year younger than me.