Their presence irritated Monique, who found the feckless young men a distraction from the serious business of establishing the camp. Kimo laughed at them, while to the Saitos they were scarcely visible at all. But to Canine they were a constant aggravation. Guarding the storage tent as Kimo swept the runway, he warned Dr Barbara that the hippies’ food supplies would soon run out.
‘I can see them rustling a chicken, Barbara, and spit-roasting it on the beach. We may have the beginnings of a security problem.’
‘They’ll leave eventually.’ Dr Barbara rested in her tent, accepting a mug of tea from Neil, and refused to be worried by the Germans. ‘We can’t fence the island, and I can hardly expel them.’
‘I could draw up a guard roster,’ Carline suggested. ‘And maybe build a look-out post on the beach.’
‘You sound like the French.’
‘The sanctuary has to be defended, Barbara. A lot of rare species are going to be landing here soon.’
‘There’s one already. Listen to him, Neil…’ When Carline strode away to test his padlocks she sipped the tea and stared at the sky. ‘He’ll go one day, then Kimo and the Saitos. Sooner or later I’ll be alone here. I wonder if you’ll leave me, Neil…?’ For once Neil decided not to reassure her. Sustained by little more than the cups of sweetened tea, Dr Barbara lived among the clouds with the great albatross. More than a hundred had returned to Saint-Esprit, after crossing an ocean as wide as Dr Barbara’s dreams. Her spirits soared on their wings. She refused to take part in the earnest debate about rationing their food stocks, as if deliberately forgetting that they depended on the larity of the Dakota. Neil noticed that she had not read a single of the letters in the mail-bag beside her bed.
‘Neil, I’m off to work,’ she told him. ‘Make sure David doesn’t play the fool with that pistol.’ She devoted her time to helping Professor Saito set out the plant and animal terraces on the hillside. Taking a stout spade with her, she climbed among the cycads and ferns, stabbing at the dusty undergrowth as she began the laborious task of clearing the first of the terraces.
Two hours later, when Neil took the spade from her cxhausted hands, she sat beside him on the lower section of the rdio mast and watched the white birds wheeling in the sky. She iriiled at them like a wistful parent, as if already accepting that one day they would leave the island. Massaging her shoulders, Neil realized for the first time that she would only be happy hen she was alone on Saint-Esprit, when Kimo, Monique and the Saitoc had gone iiid even the ilhatros had abandoned her .8 The Gift Mountain THE WORLD, HOWEVER, had no intention of leaving Dr Barbara alone. Three days after the psychedelic sails of the Parsfal brought their lurid spectrum to Saint-Esprit, a white seaplane appeared in the sky over the island. Neil, glad to rest from the back-breaking task of forest clearance, threw down his machete and set off for the runway, ignoring Monique’s irritated calls.
‘Neil, you’re so lazy,’ she shouted after him. ‘No-one ever taught you to
work.”I’m just someone to nag, Monique..
Carline was sitting in the radio-cabin, head-phones over his pale hair, enjoying his new role as air-traffic controller. He cleared the two-engined seaplane, owned by a charter firm in Papeete, and watched it circle the lagoon. It touched down, cutting the calm water in a bravura display of racing foam.
‘I always wanted to manage a small airport,’ he reflected as he removed his head-phones. ‘You get to be a kind of harbour master. There are tides in the sky, Neil.”Where are they running, David?’
‘Deep inside our heads, but you’ll never see them. You’re swimming in your own little sea. Now, check out our visitor Captain Garfield, Inter-Island Air Charter. A fresh pomelo would kick-start the day…
The seaplane taxied towards the pier and moored beside the landing-stage. The Australian pilot, a sixty-year-old Queens lander with a beard as white as his aircraft, hailed Neil through the cockpit hatch.
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Sanctuary Island? The Barbara Rafferty show? Laddie, you ok like you’re saving the albatross.’ Neil stepped under the starboard propeller, an icy spear that rembled above his head. ‘If you want to join us you’ll have to Dr Barbara. Who are you, anyway?’ I ither Christmas, by the feel of it. I’ve got everything here except sleigh bells and a sprig of mistletoe.’ Garfield shouted to his two native crewmen waiting by the open cargo-hold. ‘Right, cart unloading the gift-shop.
The dark cavern of the cargo hold resembled a cut-price laddin’s cave, crammed with wooden crates and cardboard irtons. Neil was suspicious of the old pilot’s facetious tone, ‘ensing that some elaborate practical joke was about to unfold.
‘Gifts - from where, exactly?’
‘Lad, never ask. I’ve more than half a mind to start saving an i’batross myself. As it happens, donations from the good peoples)i lPeete Sydney III(‘I Hoii@liihi.
X lien Garfield took oft-two hours later, after respectfully shaking hands with Dr Barbara and Mrs Saito, a cornucopia of cuipment sat on the pier, the first instalment of a gift mountain cing assembled from all over the world in the gymnasium of a v ipeete lyc e. A consortium of local businessmen had chartered he
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seaplane, and a twice-weekly shuttle would continue as long the gifts arrived.
For the rest of the day all work on the sanctuary ceased. The iites had been lovingly packed by the school-children, decor-ed with coloured ribbons and goodwill messages. There were rtable radios and cassette-players, cartons of wine, soft drinks d mineral water, battery-powered video-games, barbecue ills with a year’s supply of briquettes, flippers and wet suits, H ck-chairs and sun-umbrellas.
They must think we’re on holiday… ‘Dr Barbara handed oique a spangled swimsuit still in its sales-wrapper. ‘They’vein sacked every department store and patio on the Pacific rim. I iv wish we’d had their support in the early days.’ ile picked her way among the knick-knacks with the disdain of a French housewife inspecting an inferior street market. ‘It’s unfair of me, Barbara, but I resent all this… it’s such a weird idea of what we need.’ Kimo settled his huge body into a sun-lounger, polishing the bright chromium with his thumb. ‘Nothing says we have to be uncomfortable, doctor.’
‘These video-games make me uncomfortable.’ Dr Barbara pressed a button and frowned at the bizarre electronic images, the treasured realm of some concerned teenager in a Sydney suburb. ‘Monique, I’ll be working on the terraces with
Professor Saito. Neil, we’re still waiting for you and Kimo to clear the ferns above the aqueduct. There’s far too much to do..
Nevertheless, Dr Barbara’s plans for the sanctuary were soon interrupted. As promised, the seaplane returned within three days. Nursing an uneven port engine, Captain Garfield left it running as the crew unloaded the sections of a prefabricated plant laboratory, donated by a manufacturer of scientific equipment in Florida. A maze of pumps, condensers and cooling circuits would maintain the right temperature and humidity for any rare plants sent to Saint-Esprit from their endangered habitats.
The Saitos were enthralled by this palace of glass and aluminium, and even Dr Barbara was mollified, treating the sceptical Garfield to a rare smile. After moving the heavy sections away from the airstrip and its flying grit, Neil and Kimo spent the rest of the day assemblng the laboratory on the level ground beyond the mess-tent. Ready now to catalogue creation, Professor Saito took up his tenancy of this new domain, and watched proudly as Mrs Saito carried his camp bed from their tent and set it up among the sinks and specimen trays.
They were barely rested the next morning when the supply Dakota appeared through the clouds. It touched down in the mist of coral dust that now hung permanently over the airstrip.
The largest part of its cargo was a desalination plant donated by an American chemical company in Ohio. The gleaming complex of reaction vessels and separation chambers filled with ion exchange resins sat under the trees like a machine deity, its bowels emitting curious noises and a few drops of rusty water.
The air-traffic in and out of Saint-Esprit was now so intense at Carline moved his sleeping bag to the radio-cabin, where Neil brought him his meals. The unsettled albatross strutted mong the dunes, beaks testing the wind for the scent of some ss popular island. Taking pity on them, Canine turned away a ourist turbo-prop with a party of American sightseers, but Allowed in an executive jet carrying two field representatives of a Japanese travel company. The Saitos declined to speak to them, they climbed the dusty hillside to the forest clearing among the taro and breadfruit trees, where they tried to negotiate with a distracted Dr Barbara, describing the working holidays they ere eager to arrange for ecologically minded Japanese volun ers. A coolie army of accountants, dentists and computer opcrators was waiting to serve the sanctuary.
Too busy to consider this, Dr Barbara hacked away at the uiidcrgrowth, and at last Monique took pity on them and told diem to consult the desalination plant, which she described as the -Jand’s oracle. For ten minutes they stood patiently beside the niachine, listening to its throaty grunts, and then were guided by a silent Mrs Saito to their jet.
But the first serious test of Dr Barbara’s temper occurred when large hydrofoil anchored within the reef a few hours after the tear’s wheels left the runway. Chartered by an Italian media unglomerate, it carried a film unit ready to make a documentary ccord of the sanctuary island. Dr Barbara and Monique refused to cooperate, and shouted abuse at the Italian director when he inproached them, holding his light meter to their faces. Carl’ Jd his best to calm Dr Barbara, brushing the dust from her irehead and trying to ease the machete from her fretful grip. ‘Barbara, maybe just one interview… or a shot of you Jigging? We’re short of diesel fuel for the bulldozer. If they reed to transfer a thousand gallons from their reserve inks..
Dr Barbara slashed at the undergrowth near the Italian’s feet.
Are we short of fuel? You unloaded a dozen jerry cans from the)ikota.’
Gasoline, Barbara - for the two water-scooters Club Med ” nated. Now if you gave an interview…?’ i’ for the last time. Blonde hair speckled with forest debris, sweat drenching her shirt and mud streaking her forehead, she raised her machete and waited until Carline and the Italian had backed down the hillside and taken refuge in the radio-cabin.
Finally Professor Saito agreed to be interviewed about the first endangered species to be air-freighted to Saint-Esprit, now occupying temporary quarters in
the plant laboratory - a pair of slow loris from Indonesia and a dwarf lemur from Madagascar displaced by a logging project. But this scarcely satisfied the director. As Neil rested in a sun-lounger on the pier, admiring the angular lines of the hydrofoil, he overheard the Italian talking earnestly to Kimo and offering to become his literary agent.
‘It’s a fascinating story,’ he insisted, ‘maybe the greatest of our time.
There should be a book about it, written by someone on the inside. The struggles, the passion, the romance..
‘That’s not for me.’ Kimo sucked his blistered hands. ‘If anyone writes a book it should be Dr Barbara.’
‘She’ll never write anything. She only wants to dig her forest - Mother Teresa has more fun. You’re an American, the story of Saint-Esprit could lead to a co-production deal with a big Manhattan publisher, you’d have money for other projects. You could buy an island of your own..
Pondering all this, and the funds that might be generated for his swim across the Kaiwi Channel, Neil Joined Dr Barbara in her tent. Impatient with herself, she sat on the camp bed, face in her hands, the sweat from her thighs staining her sleeping bag.
‘Did you hear Professor Saito’s interview, Neil? I hope he was sensible.’
‘He was fine, Dr Barbara. His English is better when Mrs Saito isn’t around.
He’ll make people understand.’
‘Good. But I don’t think they’ll ever understand. I remember all I hoped for… we had it in our grasp but now Saint-Esprit’s becoming a media toy.’ She took Neil’s hand and weighed it in her palm, as if testing its resolve. ‘Sometimes I think we ought to leave Saint-Esprit altogether.’
‘Leave the island? Dr Barbara?’
‘Yes, we need to tackle the world head on - demonstrate outside Downing Street and the White House. It isn’t just the plants and animals we need to look after. We have to think ourselves.’ You’re right, doctor,’ Neil agreed, taking his cue. ‘Tell me, o you think I need an agent?’ An agent?’ Dr Barbara sat up and stared at Neil. ‘What sort of i ent, good God? A press agent?’ A literary agent.
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Being serious, Dr Barbara.
Serious? If you’re thinking of getting a literary agent it’s a rcat deal more serious than I thought.’
1 o l Dr Barbara’s mounting despair, the world continued to tbrce its attentions upon Saint-Esprit. The seaplane piloted by Captain Garfield made its bi-weekly landings on the lagoon, disgorging a medley of stores, gifts and equipment.
A Tokyo manufacturer of solar panels promised to provide enough units of electricity to light a native village, but made the mistake of insisting on regular maintenance reports. An airfield construction company in Seattle offered a free second runway in return for becoming an official)nsor of the expedition.
Iwo anthropologists from the University of Southern Call- -iiia arrived with their own camping gear, ready to observe the social and behavioural patterns of the sanctuary community.
They set up a hunter’s blind on the camera-tower beside the airstrip, where they sat behind a screen of camouflage netting with their stop-watches and binoculars. After four days of this, Kimo lit a fire of palm fronds on the staircase of the tower and, in hour later, escorted the smoke-blackened pair to Garfield’s ulane.
Despite these interruptions, the work on the sanctuary con-and a week later, when Garfield returned with a group of c; reenpeace observers, they were impressed to find a secure settlement in the open clearing between the plant terraces and the lagoon. There were half a dozen tents linked by duckboards, the inimal pens and plant laboratory, a kitchen and mess-tent, and a two-roomed prefabricated cabin that served as Dr Barbara’s: Hc and medical store.
Itilcr. tlic uied Ren Didier, had joined the flight from Papeete after a
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long journey from France, determined to visit his daughter, though much against Dr Barbara’s wishes.
Sharp-eyed and resolute, despite his advanced years, the old animal rights
campaigner clasped Monique’s shoulders and raised his cane in astonishment.
‘My God, Monique, it looks like Bora Bora - you have everything here except a Hilton..
‘We’ve worked hard, Papa, all of us. Even Neil here,’ she added as Neil carried the old man’s suitcase. ‘He’s lazy and I have to trick him, but he’s done his best.’
‘The young angel of Saint-Esprit.’ Didier stopped to inspect Neil, evidently approving of his mosquito bites and skinned knuckles. ‘It’s thanks to him that you’re here at all. And to the good doctor. You know, I’d like to be buried here -
just my ashes, I wouldn’t want to pollute your animal haven.’
‘Papa - nothing dies that comes to Saint-Esprit..
Before resting in his daughter’s tent, Didier insisted on seeing the albatross. After the long walk down the runway, he stood smiling among the dunes, counting the great white birds still flying in from the sea, all the vastness of the Pacific in their solemn eyes.
But for Neil the most problematic of the visitors drawn to Saint-Esprit were members of his own age-group. A second piratical craft had joined the psychedelic Parsfal, a dishevelled ketch with scarecrow sails and a rotting shark’s head lashed under the bowsprit. A squatters’ camp of a dozen hippies British, German and Australian - occupied the beach where Dr Barbara, Kimo and Neil had first landed.
They wandered up from the shore and helped themselves to the supplies and equipment sitting in the open air beside the runway, and carried away a dome-shaped greenhouse intended to house a colony of bonsai
trees.
This glass structure became their tribal wigwam, around which they gathered in the evenings to smoke their pot. Once their food supplies were exhausted they returned to the runway and searched the stocks of canned goods and wine. Mrs Saito and Monique, now in charge of the catering, protested to their leader, a pockmarked Scot with an oily pony-tail springing 9 11 the back of his bald head. He waved them away, claiming diat he and his companions had an equal right to the supplies. At night a wild music drummed through the trees, and an acrid inoke rose from the palm logs drenched in gasoline from the tanks of the water-scooters. Their shallow latrines fouled the forest floor, and the beaches were soon littered with empty cans and broken wine bottles. runaways and college drop-outs - drifted around the camp, irritating Dr Barbara and Professor Saito with their requests for drugs.
One of them, a San Diego psychiatrist’s daughter with s’ky pink hair and needle-punctured arms, asked Dr Barbara topi perform an abortion, offering to pay with her father’s stolen: ledit card.
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