by Nicola Baird
"Welcome brothers and sisters of the Lord, welcome! May the Lord protect and love you and your families all the days of your life.
"Well brothers and sisters there's a good crowd of us here today and I just want to make sure we praise our Lord before I share with you my message. So let's hear your voices - Alleluia! Alleluia!" (the band, well-trained adds a chord of its own to the delight of the swelling crowd who are ready to enjoy a lotu message after the hard work of marketing). "OK, friends. Today is a special, special day. It's the day a little baby was born who can save us all. That's you and that's me. This baby was the Son of Christ, but born to a pure woman and into a poor family. He had no electric guitars," (Low Life Revival hits another chord which reverberates through the Father's next two sentences) "No home to go to, no proper bed to lie on. You'd never treat your enemy's newborn baby like that and yet when the Son of God came to live on earth he was let down by us all. And yet He still loves us dearly, loves us so much" (another chord is struck) "that he wants us to accept him and be freed of the Devil. Accept him and be able join him in the Kingdom of Heaven. Accept him into our hearts and Save Our Souls. Alleluia! Friends praise our Lord with me this Christmas Eve ..." and on cue the band start up a rousing reggae-style song of praise.
The competition is too much for Henderson. This quiet boy, the sort that thinks too much and says too little suddenly has the chance to compete with a mountebank. He starts the Wheel of Fortune for effect and then against the hypnotic spinning he tries to drown Father Lotunao's words with his own mad mix of comparison and tradition - and the aid of the megaphone.
"In this life you need three things to live well," Henderson shouts to try and recapture his crowd's interest again.
"You need physical well being, you need mental well being and you need spiritual well being. It's impossible to be a real human being, a real man or a real woman, a real father or real mother, a real brother or real sister if you are not healthy. To be healthy you must eat - and you must eat body building foods to make you strong. This is the best body building food," - he picks up a complaining chicken and holds it above his head. "This chicken has eaten nothing but the finest overseas grain and the fattest Solomon Islands grubs. It is juicy and sweet. And if you eat this your body will be strong, your family's body will be strong and then you will have the strength to fight that Devil, to accept the special love of our God this Christmas.
"But to be really strong, to have physical and mental well-being, you also need vitamins. This is where you get those essential vitamins," he picks up three English pineapples and starts to juggle them high above his head. It is such an absurd trick that the crowd begins to switch allegiance and starts to drift across the road again to look at Henderson. "Yes, you too could do this if you ate chicken and pineapple - it would make your body and your mind strong. Here, you come here, Henderson points to an incredulous looking youth. Tell me, what do you eat?"
The victim mutters incomprehensibly. His answer drowned by impatient horn blowing of through-traffic now prevented by this fickle crowd from travelling this stretch of road.
"Look I'm going to give this fit boy a challenge." Henderson turns to the guy. "You look like a sportsman. The boy nods his head enthusiastically: neither an innocent or a stoodge, just a teenager with a yearning for fame.
"So you must know how to eat properly!" insists Henderson. "Now, if you can prove you eat properly - if you know your body building foods and your vitamins - and think you have physical, mental and spiritual strength then you come up here and see if you can juggle like this too ..." The boy, game for a laugh, steps up on to the back of the truck and in full view of everyone attempts to juggle. He whoops it up for all its worth but within seconds each of the over-ripe pineapples has exploded - splat, splat, splat - on to the ground.
"Well, that just about proves it I think," shouts Henderson triumphantly. "If you want to be physically strong, mentally strong and spiritually strong then you need the right food. But sorry now! Everyone knows you need money to buy the right food," Henderson is making this speech whilst continuing to juggle the pineapples, "so if you want to make a REAL change in your life and you feel LUCKY, LUCKY, LUCKY,"
"Dube," shouts a bold female heckler to much laughter from the reggae fans in the crowd. If Henderson was less busy he'd realise it had to be his cousin sister, Lovelyn, doing last minute marketing for the Mbokonavera mobs.
"Yes, if you feel 'Lucky' then 'Du Buy' yourself a ticket and try the wheel of fortune: for just one dollar you could win yourself the best body building food there is - CHICKEN."
His speech seems to have done the trick, another wedge of arms spring up and Roland rushes around exchanging coins and dollar bills for red and blue promises.
The wheel spins at the exact moment that Low Life Revival's drummer puts in a crescendo of wicked beats, anticipation leads the crowd into a roaring frenzy: "Chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken."
"Curried," sings Low Life Revival's lead singer, pretend arch wit and tired to death of only playing Alleluia back-up chords and choruses, "Boiled, Sliced, Barbecued, In Soup, Chicken glorious chicken, Food glorious food."
And the wheel stops: luckily for Patterson's mobs on a pineapple picture. But Henderson's enthusiasm is infectious, his juggling a marvel, and it's not long before Roland starts the money-for-raffle ticket exchange and the Wheel of Fortune's big hand can be spun again.
Henderson's success on the Wheel of Fortune earned him immediate respect in the Labour Line dormitory - and plenty of new friends to help drink his more liquid earnings. Stella's Christmas gift was six chickens to turn into some kind of special dish. They were tough as a cowboy's boots and so she curried them - with a little help from her new friend Lodu.
***
SUZY’S DIARY ENTRY 27.12.90, 18.00 hours
“Hey Dan, thanks for ringing: a great surprise and the best. I've put a scratch mark on the phone's body to prove someone who loves me cares (sorry, this is getting a bit weepy - post Christmas misery I guess and Jessie – you remember her, uni friend on her travels, has just flown off for the next leg of her round-the-world look-see). Except of course you bloody didn’t ring me. I know it’s time to move on and forget you. You’re probably vegging out in front of the TV with Cassie. Well listen, I don’t care. I had a brilliant Christmas.”
Suzy writes the words fiercely, underlines brilliant. Then writes the sentence again. Her house feels empty and dull after the pleasure of having an old friend staying.
“I had a brilliant Christmas. Honiara seemed practically deserted. So many locals had long gone back to their villages and the expats off on overseas leave - or for plush diving trips with four star meals and a choice of underwater reef, wreck, cliff or cave views on the hour (I want to do this too: feel that jealousy!). But of course there are always a few dregs around town, me for instance, my friend and the second secretary of the Australian Embassy.
It’s strange how I’ve not met Australians to enjoy before. On my rucksack travels the blokes have always seemed an internationally unacceptable race: bigoted, loud-mouthed and tall enough to spoil all views (eg, race track, parade, cross-section on mountain hike) and they were always everywhere. Plenty living here are just as bad: sitting in the Yacht Club bar drinking and swearing. But some are wonderful - this second secretary fellow is as generous as it is possible to be, and I don’t think he’s trying to make a pass either. Think he’s gay, which I guess isn’t easy when men are so tactile shaking hands, hanging out in groups, but homosexuality is illegal. He claims the coconut wireless told him that two women had no plans, so he tracked me down (this is without ever meeting me before) just scooped me and Jessie up and straight into the general lunchtime Xmas alcoholic melee.
We’d already had a chance to do some snorkelling on Christmas morning. Transport laid on in the form of another borrowed 4WD and then - maybe because the Bonegi One wreck (that's the name of a wrecked Japanese transport ship: the one up the beach, also about 20m from the shore
, is imaginatively called Bonegi Two was empty of swimmers and divers - had the most marvellous time snorkelling around it. It's an unbelievable place at the best of times. Most of the freighter has long been silted up by corals and fish just love the place. You can hardly swim without bumping into the most exquisite of angel fish, dodge the cuddly looking dormouse fish, avoid the extravagant warning fins of the lion fish or the superb disguise of the sleepy stone fish, crawl (or in my case breaststroke) out of sight of the little brown and white clown fish tucked into its home of poisonous anemones. There's no point me even trying to describe this: snorkelling takes you into a water wonderland of such extraordinary beauty and interest that now I’ve done it I’m a believer. And I will. If bore the unbelievers until they die.”
Like stupid Dan for instance thinks Suzy breaking her rule. The day after the best Christmas is bound to be hard.
“There’s a beautiful poster that claims the Solomons is as beautiful above, as it is below. I love it on top, but yesterday in the midst of feeding a bunch of brown fish, with bread chunks I'd thoughtfully brought with me in an attractive pink plastic bag, and delighting at this little electric blue snip of a fish whizzing around the ship's bowels and wondering if I could ever find a party dress the same colour, Lucy taps me on the shoulder and points. And there goes the biggest, most wonderful live turtle I've ever seen. Enormous it was! What an amazing Christmas present - if I'd seen Santa Claus I couldn't have been more surprised.
“Jessie swam after it and I thought she'd probably grab it's legs and go for a ride, but the turtle was faster (incredible when you think about the weight of their carapace and that two or three people can easily stand on one of the Solomon's leather back turtles, though this might have been a green one – must look up more about reptiles). Actually I'm glad it was faster as I've heard hideous stories about turtles diving so deep that the idiot hanging on bursts their eardrums, then becomes unconscious and sooner or later drowns. And all because ... they were where they shouldn't have been. The people from Ysabel, expert turtle catchers all, have a sensible custom that if you ever catch a turtle you mustn't let go because it's the only way you'll get back up to the surface again - alive. Somehow you have to frighten the turtle into swimming back the way it went, as if it's already dived really deep then you won't be able to find your way back up, except as a corpse. I guess that's useful to know, so don't forget it my friend!
Swimming over, we retired to the beauteous home of the second secretary with gifts of pineapple. He'd got the full works for enjoyment - a video, a swimming pool, a view of sea one way and bush villages the other, a gin bottle (ah, sweet gin) and champagne too. One of the New Zealanders at the party had borrowed the Fijian way of cooking - produced an amazing raw fish dish which seems to cook itself in a marinade of coconut milk, chilli and shallots. Boy did we feast that day, and then drank champers in the pool during an almighty rain storm of such force no one could hear anyone else talk - though Billie Holiday on the CD (top volume) managed to pop in the odd mournful phrase. Yes, it was nice living the tropical high life on Xmas day.
Now I've got reality to cope with. And New Year's eve – argh. No doubt will party and make promises to myself on the black sands of Ranandi beach under the light of lost-at-sea flares, which whispers tells me are as inevitable as dusk at 6pm and another year's dawn at 6am. No idea what will happen this year to me, I’m not flying back to London until ’92. A lot’s happened this year, but I think I do have some SMALL resolutions. And they’re just as hard as each other!
1) Forget Dan. You ARE OVER HIM. OK.
2) Cure the strange looking brown and white fungal patches decorating my back.
3) Can’t think of a 3. Maybe make some more local friends… That’s a wish really. It was fun with Fred’s family.
Too knackered to write more. It’s raining again and I’m sorry for myself. Everything better be better in the…
Out of the quiet rainy night, the phone on a cluttered table to the sofa starts ringing. Suzy leaps up from her writing point on the floor to say “Hello…”
CHAPTER 16: ABSOLUTELY NORMAL
THE CITIZENS OF Honiara trickle back from their village holidays during January. Most bring yet another relation with them (it's just for a month, just to let them feast their eyes) and soon the Labour Line is as crowded as Stella had feared. Patte's dormitory is chockablock with wild-looking single boys and it becomes clear that Henderson and co will have to move out.
Stella asks her friend Lodu to nego with her husband's bro for a temporary home. Lucky this, because the brother had just persuaded his younger brother to go back to the family's smallholding and help their father with the copra. This leaves a room free in that Kukum house. The deal is sorted with a handshake once Lodu works out that Henderson is a distant relation through their mother's line. No rent is to be paid - but the informal agreement, so normal among wantoks, is that Henderson must contribute. He is making good money at the Saturday market extravaganza on the Wheel of Fortune but is amazed by how much it costs to run a house, even an overcrowded two-room squatter type cement block.
Stella has a flair for housekeeping on a nothing budget, but she wants to do this with Henderson. And so together (though Henderson – unable to shake off his Malaita roots where men and women’s jobs are so obviously separate that even in a canoe the he should stand, and the she should sit - does this with such shame that even creating a list has to be a midnight task, performed only when the rest of the household is definitely asleep).
Lodu's bro needs contributions towards power for light, Calor gas cylinders and barbecue wood for cooking, water (though that looks like being very cheap now that the supply is constantly on the blink), rice, bread and other store food (eg, oil, matches) as well as the twice-weekly market visits for vegetables and fish. They also need bigger clothes for Ellen, bus fares for trips into town, soccer boots for Henderson, the occasional New Zealand grown apple or ice cream treats from Mista B-Cool, petrol if Lodu's bro is running his car, small gifts for any wantok's wedding celebrations and "birth expenses," adds Stella cautiously.
Henderson writes this down in his careful student hand before taking in the full implications. "Are you babule (pregnant)?" he looks suspiciously up and down Stella's belly. How did he miss it thickening?
"Yes," she's smiling. But the atmosphere is tense.
Henderson is puzzled. He hopes, hopes so much it is his. He leans towards her belly, edging his hand under her loose top and suddenly notices her skin's tautness, the swelling of her breasts. On cue the baby kicks - Henderson guesses she's six months or more gone. And that means: "It's not mine is it?"
Stella cries.
It's true, it's not his and how she wishes this was different. She had the chance before Christmas to lose the MP's baby, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't drink some bitter tasting medicine and risk hurting the foetus, but not losing it properly. And there was no way she could find the money to go overseas for an abortion. Besides she loves babies, she loves their warm cuddly bodies and their daily changes and how they make you laugh. Yes, this baby may belong to the MP but she or he is also going to be half her as well. The way it kicks she reckons it must be another girl, strong-minded like Ellen, who is lying nearby - even in sleep hogging the whole of the foam mattress.
Henderson tries to calm her, but feels he needs calming too. All the wrong words arrive: "Stella, why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know how. I thought you’d leave me. And why didn't you guess, don’t women in the village get pregnant? You could have seen for yourself especially when I had that time of fainting. Anyway I've told you now." She sounds sharp, but Stella’s furious with herself. Her time with Henderson has been so differently testing from her time with the MP. Then she had comforts, was a princess with two house girls to do the cooking and cleaning… well, a princess until the beatings. Here she is safe, but daily life in the crowded room is a survival struggle. It feels like a miracle that this kind man has stayed with
her. She is waiting for the day he will go. Hoping he won’t, but knowing the odds have to be high.
Henderson is suddenly practical. "But how can we cope - the baby and Ellen to look after, no home and not much money? This family is kind but we aren't really wantoks; often I feel very uncomfortable here. If only we could go back to the Mbokonovera mobs, I could try sweet sugar on Matron." He knows this won’t work, Lovelyn’s warned him. "I know perhaps you should go back to my village?"
But Stella is aghast. Town life may be hot and expensive but it's where life is worth living. There are friends everywhere. There is a sense of change, palpable in every breath she takes. In Henderson's village she'd be ruled by Church bells and permanently exhausted by breast feeding, gardening, scrubbing, washing, cooking, worrying about things town girls take for granted, like having the money for Kotex for her next period (if she's not babule), worrying about becoming babule again as so few rural clinics make using contraception easy. And then look at the advantages of town, there's schools and clinics where she can take Ellen, no that's wrong, take the kids. There's all sorts of food always available (you can buy, you can swap, steal if desperate never having to wait for the seed to grow). And there's always electric light (as long as they keep paying those bills) to do needlework without spoiling her eyes. Most importantly there's the chance to retake the exams she missed - down at the University of the South Pacific centre - and then to go on and train as a teacher or something that would earn them money. Her mind scrabbles to find a better solution.
"Perhaps I could get a job?"
Henderson snorts.
"Yes, maybe just an easy one," she insists. "The college is close, I'm sure I could get a cleaning job there, like Lodu has - perhaps as a lecturer's house girl - to help us on the money front."