Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

“Is that what you and Stella have? You saw her once, twice and couldn’t stop yourself following her. I saw your eyes soften and focus. You fell in love Henderson, instantly, not many of us are lucky enough to do that. But falling in love is the easy part. Learning how to live with your girl is another game entirely. And then learning to live with your girl and the children. And that, Henderson, I’m really not equipped to tell you about - but my guess is that girls find it as tough as us boys.”

  “You are in a wise mood today friend,” says Henderson admiringly, wanting time to think Patte’s theories through. “Come, give me some calico and let me help you clean this truck so your wantok will be willing to lend it to a rascal like you again.”

  As they scrub a plan is born. One that will humble the Minister without endangering anyone. Problem is there are two sticking points – Stella and Patte’s almost girlfriend who works at the Ministry for Youth, Women & Culture. The boys aren’t sure their women trust them enough to do what needs to be done. But sweet talking the girls is surely going to be a better option than hacking the man down with a bush knife?

  CHAPTER 24: "Pantomime"

  WHEN THE BABY fell asleep, around midday, Suzy persuaded Lovelyn to show her the way to the Labour Line where Stella is apparently based. "I always thought white people walked fast," Lovelyn muttered surprised by Suzy’s slow pace. "Well I do walk faster normally," agreed Suzy wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist, "but as small as this baby is, he's still pretty heavy. And the sun's too hot as well".

  "Yeah, it's really hot today. And we're stupid to be out now," added Lovelyn hoping that chat would delay the inevitable confrontation with her cousin when she turned up with a white lady and an alive version of his sick wife's "dead" child.

  "Look, over there!" shouts the teenager excitedly.

  Suzy spun round expecting to see a taxi, but can see nothing but a large brown dog lying at full stretch on a scrap of grass by a spilling over dustbin. "Someone's cold," continued Lovelyn with an ironic smile, "look at the way that dog’s sunbathing, obviously crazy – or maybe he's got malaria." Suzy laughed, her mind haunted by the knowledge that she'd insisted on going looking for Henderson the moment the baby had fallen asleep. She could have waited a bit and at least not turned herself into a target for the international truth that: "Only mad dogs and Englishmen (well women too) go out in the midday sun."

  But time can be a good friend sometimes, and the slower the pair walked, especially along the shadier part of the pot-holed road - down near what ought to have been a tinkling, clear brook running out to the sea, but was in fact a stretch of stinking stagnant scum haunted by mosquitoes - the lower the sun crept. Yes it was still going to be a hot afternoon, but the blistering intensity of high noon had gone.

  Suzy was shocked when they reached the Labour Line about an hour later. To her eyes it looked a miserable place, and every half-hearted wisp of wind set a surreal stream of litter flying. Half-naked kids ran in all directions, barefoot and laughing at their games of tag. Then as her own eyes adjusted to the half-light created by Labour Line's shade trees she could see the settlement was crammed with people. And all those people seemed to be looking at her.

  The whispers gathered momentum: "Look! A white Mrs, and with a baby too." Some rascal types, boys who lived in Patte's house were whipping up false terror amongst themselves: "It's your girlfriend, coming to give you the baby you gave her. Ssssss - eh, Mrs, over here, your boyfriend, your boss, your husband, your man, he's gone out - gone for a walkabout down the law courts ..." Suzy felt anxious, but not enough to stop her laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Clearly the Labour Line residents were having a good time with their own impromptu pantomime. All having a good time - except for a young man, eyes cast downward as he absentmindedly whittled at a piece of bamboo stick with a short, sharp bush knife.

  "Don't mind them," Lovelyn told Suzy, embarrassed by her compatriots, "that's just typical Solomon Island men. Useless people!" Lovelyn spoke with a lot more venom than she felt. If she'd been with any of her wantoks she'd have laughed just as loudly. It was fun making fun: nothing cruel was meant by it.

  Henderson looked up from his stick when he heard a sort of splutter, very foreign. It was Suzy snorting (with irritation, with agreement, nobody knows - even her) at Lovelyn's last remark.

  "Hey, cuz is that you? What are you up to? Shouldn't you be learning lessons and all that schoolgirl stuff?"

  "Er," Lovelyn is nervous with her wantok today, "Henderson, I brought someone, a Mrs, who wants to talk to you. She's a VSO from England, teaching up at KGVI."

  Henderson sees Lovelyn gesturing to a white woman to go forward. Suzy, who'd wanted to be there, on that very spot talking to Henderson, now has no idea what to say. She shifts her position a bit, hoping Henderson will notice the baby. He has of course, but just assumes it's hers.

  "Do you want to sit down," says Henderson, in less than a whisper – whenever he’s around this woman his English feels rusty. "Tangio tumas (thanks)," says Suzy replying in Pijin. Both relax.

  "How are you liking the weather here?" he says aware that Lovelyn is listening.

  "Oh, it's very good, I like it," says Suzy stuck in a Q&A ritual unique to the Solomons.

  "You like this humid, hot climate of ours?"

  "Yes, very much!" replies Suzy, still too embarrassed to know how to start saying what she wants to say. She’d like to talk about that kiss, but first she has to explain why she’s holding his wife’s baby. Unwittingly Henderson makes it easy for her.

  "And what about your baby, how does she cope with the heat?"

  "She's a he - and he's yours actually." There, she'd blurted it out.

  Henderson is aghast: "No, there must be some mistake. I'm just a poor man, a bush boy. I don't have any children - that's not mine." Then he's angry: "How dare you come here and make fun of me, and just at a time when we have had a bereavement in our family." He stands up, throws his knife and stick contemptuously to the ground and walks off. Lovelyn runs after him and explains it's not like that at all. Henderson comes back, reluctantly. Still angry, still proud: "OK, what's going on?"

  Suzy explains all that she can to him.

  "I don't know why this has happened," finishes off Suzy, "but I do know that I'd like to give your wife back her child." Henderson nods slowly, "Yes, I think that's the right thing to do. She's inside the house," he gestures towards a ramshackle hut, "you go in and tell her - babies are women's business." He leans forward, picks up the fallen knife and abandoned stick and resumes his carving - but it's an idle gesture now, one done to make himself feel centred, feet securely planted on Solomon soil. It's no good, the distraction of carving is still not enough to rid himself of that eternal question machine in his head: "What is going on?"

  Lovelyn leads Suzy into the squalid little house and points at the half-open bedroom door. Through it they can see Stella lying on the mat, in the same corpse-like position that she was placed there. She's alive, but her breathing is wretched and her eyes, though open appear glazed. "Stella? Stella are you awake?" quizzes Suzy cautiously. "Stella, I'm a friend. Something strange has been happening - but this little boy is your baby. He’s alive. He never was dead. Here, you take him." The baby, with perfect timing, wakes up and as Suzy places him on his mother's stomach he lets out a hungry cry. Stella jolts into an upright position.

  "It's not true, this can't be true! This is my baby?" Her child answers by struggling to latch on to Stella's nipple, desperate for the cosy warmth of the breast he's never yet tasted. And in what must be a miracle, succeeds. Sucks, sucks again and then feels his mother's gift – a spray of sweet milk.

  "Is my brother an angel?" asks a confused Ellen, who's been keeping watch by her mother.

  "No!" says Stella, with more energy than she's had for several months now, as the baby's rough hunger makes her wince with pain. "He's definitely no angel - he's better than that, he's alive!"

  For a few wistful seconds, Suzy j
ust wishes the baby was hers again, surely she could have given him all that he wanted? She fights off self-pity by telling Stella how she was given the baby on the bus. Story over, Stella has many questions - but they're aimed at Lovelyn, who has skilfully manoeuvred herself out of arm’s length by resting behind the only chair in the dark room.

  "It wasn't my fault. I had to do what I did. I was told to. Matron made me." Lovelyn is jabbering, half-crying with fright. She thinks her wantoks will whip her.

  To her surprise Stella doesn't seem to care about Lovelyn's involvement, she is so happy to have her baby brought back from the dead that any of Lovelyn's past crimes (if indeed she's done anything wrong anyway) are absolved. Stella asks for Henderson to come closer. He hurries inside the house, then stands leaning against the doorway, failing in his bid to look nonchalant. He is pleased to see that Stella suddenly isn’t sick anymore.

  "What are you going to do now?" asks Suzy, impatient always for action.

  Lovelyn doesn't dare speak. Stella is absorbed in a silent breast-feeding prayer. But little Ellen wants to know more: "If my brother is alive, why did you all go and bury him?" No one answers her at first, each adult trying to work out the reason why ... Why did Matron pretend the baby was dead? Lovelyn is the only one who can answer that - but her explanation is vague. She seems too frightened, of imagined beatings, to say much. "I don't really know, except Matron was frightened by that big man -"

  "You mean my ex-husband?" interjects Stella.

  "Yes, the MP. He rang Matron up just before you arrived at the house ready to deliver. She was really frightened that he knew you were coming ..."

  "But," says Suzy, "why did Matron, Anna, whatever you call the woman, get involved in this cruel trick?"

  "That's what I've been wondering," says Henderson puzzling, "there's something we don't know yet - and it's time we found out."

  "But before anyone does anything," says Stella eagerly - after all she has barely tasted food for far too many days and nights," let's eat something. Let's just welcome this baby home in the proper way."

  "You mean a feast!" Ellen shouts excitedly.

  "Shush Ellen, you'll wake up the ancestors if you shout like that! Yes, a feast. Let's eat something special - let's barbecue a bonito, a king fish, some real nice fish. Make popcorn for the little ones. Mix up some cassava pudding. Serve cake and ice cream. I just want to welcome this baby home, let him know he's loved."

  Suzy is embarrassed by the spontaneity of these plans, the family don't look rich and the feast they're planning sounds like it's going to break somebody's bank. She tries to slip away, but Henderson is sent to fetch her back.

  "Please, don't go just yet. We'd like you to join in with us. You are one of the baby’s mothers,” it’s meant as it’s said, but Suzy can’t help blushing – this man’s just so good looking."

  "Oh thanks," replies Suzy feeling slightly dizzy with a mix of lust and demob fever. Without a job she’s like some tourist again, wanting to dip into local life for the few remaining days she’s here, then go, perhaps never thinking of her time in the Solomons again. Suzy doesn’t want to be like that. "I would stay but I've got to .... (go to school, no that’s not right) ... got loads to do (she can't think of anything but it's a conditioned reply)."

  Henderson nods his head wisely, "Well, you do what you want to do, but we all want you to join with us. You can be the godmother," Henderson sees this has won her over (still all the while thinking these expats have some weird ways, that's for sure). And certain in this knowledge he starts to joke. "In fact as you're the godmother we have to name the baby after you: Sue like in that cowboy song. Definitely, Sue."

  "No, not that!" Suzy starts to protest, before she realises he's teasing. "OK! You win. Yes, I would like to stay on for the feast. I’d be glad to too seeing as it is also my birthday. But if I stay please let me help towards it." She thinks fast, fishes into her pocket and finds the airline ticket Ewan gave her. “Look here’s something you could use – just cash in that section to Brisbane. I’m going home very soon anyway – long story, not for now, oh my God I’ve told it to you already,” she gabbles, catching Henderson grinning. “Anyway my point is I can purchase that bit again.”

  Henderson knows how to take the gifts the gods provide. You don’t thank them too much. Instead he leads Suzy towards the bush kitchen, to help her belong.

  "Now the mobs will look after you all right if you can set up the motu, peel kumara, scrape pana, grate coconut ..." He'd put money on the fact she can't. Suzy releases a deep sigh, she's no idea how to do such things and is not keen to admit it. Feast food for her is chosen from a restaurant menu. As if from nowhere Lovelyn appears by her side. "I'll help you," she reassures Suzy, "women's work is not that hard, it's just boring. But it's not boring if we all do it together and story as we work."

  Lovelyn then introduces Stella to the intricacies of a bush kitchen whilst Henderson sends Ellen and Stella's friend Lodu off to the market to buy up feast kaikai. And though no one seems to have said anything officially: there are no gold-edged greeting cards, no frantic phone calls, no dial-a-dish caterers, word speeds round the coconut wireless. Everyone living on the Labour Line is invited to the lost baby's naming feast. And everyone plans to be there.

  CHAPTER 25: THE FEAST

  BY THE TIME Suzy had split and peeled two sacks of cassava she reckoned she was at last a professional Solomon woman. Her wrist just bent back and flicked off the skin in a kind of rapid gesture rivalling the best squash player - though she did worry that kitchen work might give her RSI. Suzy's love-struck head was filling with the women's stories - endless tales of how the MP had done wrong, and got away with it. But she was most impressed by the way the women had a natural sense of drama. The first story was good, she'd heard it before in fact, the one where an MP (probably the MP) had done some crooked land deals earning himself a whacking cut from a logging licensee. The next woman topped the story - a complicated tale of overseas time wasting with government funds. And the next knew he'd been involved in the blue movie trade.

  Lodu, the chief gossip of the Labour Line, was not going to be outdone when she arrived back from the market. "I heard something once too. I heard that when he worked in Fiji with the South Pacific Commission he was caught stealing money and ended up in prison. Luckily for him he was overseas, because otherwise everyone would know, it'd be another open (Dean) Solomon secret! The women end up laughing so much that they decide the business of cutting, chopping and preparing is now - officially - over. Lodu checks the motu stones, pulling out a couple with bamboo tongs, to see the heat. In the murky afternoon darkness of her kitchen the stones throw a fiery red glow. She nods - the signal that the oven’s ready for the women to place their giant puddings, a mush of cassava flesh and coconut milk wrapped in banana leaves on to the stones. Some sacks are thrown on top, then more hot stones, and more sacks. The cooking's begun!

  Hands at last free of tasks, Suzy stands up, stretches arms to the pandanus leaf roof and then heads outside. Seeing an empty bench by the house, she sits down for a well-earned rest. Within seconds she's surrounded by another group of women, most of whom have been preparing fish for tonight's feast. "Are we going to have pork?" she asks. The women shake their heads - "it's a devil food," says a woman with a beautiful face. Suzy looks sceptical and the women explain that there are going to be some Seventh Day Adventists at the party and for them pork is a forbidden food. Suzy reckons the taboo excuse is just that, an excuse and there's probably another reason: maybe pig is expensive or it takes too long to cook. It's a pity, she thinks, because she would like the chance to finally use the very first Pijin language phrase she learnt. "What the hell," says her brain, she'll run it by them anyway: "Sori nao, mi laek fo lukim iufela mere go busarem pigpig distaem, bikos tingting blong mi iufela mere worka had fo gud - en mi save lo hia ota worka blong mere hard fo finis." (I wanted to see you women butcher the pigs - because then I'd know that women's work is never done.) Again the w
omen collapse in laughter - feast preparation may be hard work but it seems to bring out the best in everyone.

  It will be hours before the motu food is ready, so a bunch of women kill time by a riotous game of tag. In the dappled late afternoon light they look like young girls again, these women who run homes, raise such enormous broods, grow their families' food and share these skills with their daughters, who in turn share them with their daughters - and so it goes. The game continues, louder and more boisterous by the minute, with new women joining as they arrive at the Labour Line, ready for the party.

  A taxi draws up - it's Fred with some of the mobs from Mbokonavera. His wife Sarah, has her son Junior's hand firmly held in hers; there's Lovelyn with a video machine; the bus boy is carrying a large cardboard box of popcorn but he’s also hidden a carton of unchilled beer on the back seat, bought on a lengthy detour past the Hibiscus Hotel's bottle shop. Henderson goes to meet his wantoks.

  "So where's the baby then?" demands big sister Sarah, taking charge of the popcorn box .

  "He's with his mother - she's resting in the house, but go and see her. She asked that you did."

  "Henderson!" Fred calls from the driving seat. "Henderson I'll pick up any of the mobs you want." Henderson nods, there's people dotted all round Honiara who'd like to be at this feast, it's really something to celebrate - a lost newborn safely making it home. "But Matron, she said she felt ill, sore belly or something, and was sleeping when we left the house."

  "That's all right," says Henderson, "she's an old lady. If she wants to come, she will. There'll be no recriminations. One day I know she'll tell me why what happened happened. We don't need anger tonight. Tonight is a happy night."

  Lovelyn starts to set up the video. Henderson goes to assist and is amazed by his cousin's ability to match red plastic something to white plastic something else and find a power supply. "How did you learn this?" he asks. "Oh, long hours of being laid up in the house with malaria," jokes Lovelyn. "No, I just know because I like the video, so I wanted to learn how to use it properly. It's easy when you know what to do! I brought some cartoons to show the kids, that's all right isn't it?"