Robert started to drum his fingers on his knees and he cleared his throat loudly to compete with the rain. Nothing. No thing. Bugger. Dinah would be waiting in the library reading some historic gossip in their ancient magazines and getting restless. He got up to knock on the door and noticed through the hinge crack that the desk was vacant. Strange. He looked around the door and there on a woven mat was the officer sleeping soundly, his face resting on one hand.
‘Blimey,’ said Robert under his breath and he suddenly felt tolerant all over. That was one of the charms of the place - to understand that physical needs should be met as is, where is, so to speak. There was something passive and unthreatening about the sleeper too. Another case of mañana he thought, as he walked down the rickety staircase and out into the rain.
His story reminded Dinah of an incident she had seen once when shopping at the market and she told Robert he should have tried the same tactic.
‘I wanted a particular item from one of the stalls but the woman in charge was sound asleep and as I stood for a moment of indecision the adjacent woman stall-holder who seemed to be amused, biffed a lettuce at her head and woke the poor soul up. Haven’t I ever told you? It was the funniest thing because both women cackled like harpies and there were no hard feelings it seemed. Can you imagine that happening at home?’
Robert laughed at the thought and said it probably wouldn’t have helped his cause in this case.
They stood in the doorway of the library wishing the rain would stop. As Dinah began to put up her umbrella Robert put his hand on her arm.
‘Look - I think you at least should book your ticket and we’ll see how things work out for me. Come to think of it - it would be easier if you packed up first and then I disposed of the rest of our belongings.’
‘OK - if that’s what you want. It’s no big deal if we leave a couple of weeks apart. In a way it would make life easier - for me, anyway.’ She gave him a damp kiss and told him she’d be ‘troo.’ He always liked the way she said that word.
They half ran under the one umbrella to the airline office a block away. All the booking clerks were busy so they sat down to wait and looked at each other fondly for the first time for as long as he could remember. He would miss the girl and would do all he could to be reunited even if it had to be in Australia.
While Dinah was making her travel arrangements he took out his diary to peruse dates. It occurred to him that the cargo of timber should have arrived at its destination by now and that would be his first question to the officer when he made his next trip to the holy of holies. He noted what he was doing around the time he was supposed to have been exporting the stuff and he thought it would be a good idea to ask Ekeroma to confirm his alibi. After all they saw each other almost every day except when he escorted his replacement number to introduce him to the Big Island. Ekeroma for a reason Robert was not privy to, seemed fairly sanguine about his chances of proving his innocence and that gave him comfort.
‘What a good bloke he is - I’ll miss him, come to think of it.’ His thoughts were interrupted by Dinah asking him to confirm the date she had chosen. It was strange how their way of life for so long, was coming to an end with a sort of inevitability which had overtaken them. First, it was Michael/Lucky - man of mystery - then Polly and Jim, furthering their Pacific odyssey, Yushi and Fanua, a two-person melting pot off to serve in a Japanese tourist ghetto and now Dinah minus Robert, back to her familiar territory to develop the relationship with her niece/daughter. That left Min the stalwart loner who had chosen to hang in and see a cohort of students graduate. Funny how she and Michael had seemed like two sides of the same coin, Dinah said. Cerebral products of that strange phenomenon called Irish Catholicism, Robert told her. Right? Right!
Dinah turned to smile as the clerk was filling out the ticket and Robert felt his appreciation of her mane of blond hair and slim body, sharpen. How often he’d looked at her without really seeing her. When she sat down beside him with her ticket in her hand he kissed her.
‘It’s not goodbye yet,’ she said as she patted his knee and stood up. It was then that she noticed that there were tears in his eyes and she stroked his cheek and said he needed a nice strong drink.
‘And a very nice fuck,’ she muttered through a pursed mouth. He blew his nose, cleared his throat and growled,
‘Earthy Sheila,’ as they walked out into the warm and endless rain.
Chapter 75
The regular downpours and the sticky heat were a reason for frequent plunges into the sea to cool off at the interface between the fresh and the salt water. Perfunctory attention to artifice in matters of grooming released Min’s energy for relaxed physical activity. During his delivery visits to the college Gerard often arranged to meet her later at the lagoon and although negotiations were in French, Min was tense with embarrassment feeling sure that his meaning would be clear to any onlookers. He however, revelled in his blatancy.
Her ligatures of guilt were loosening thanks to the ludic nature of their encounters. They had found a sheltered and unfrequented area where they could risk speedy skinny dipping which was spiced by breaking a double taboo. Min found Gerard inventive and frivolous in the water which was a medium she was not very adventurous in and she rationalised their friendship as therapy. She often wondered how he interpreted their connivance but for her it was about innocent playfulness. Had they taken themselves more seriously guilt might have interposed itself between the fun and her conscience.
She thought often about Michael and wondered if their relationship could have developed if they had been able to shed their inhibitions mutually. He had not been in touch since she had made her decision to stay on and she regretted his not knowing. But her overriding feeling for him was concern for his welfare. If only she had a contact address and why was he unable to give her some connection, no matter how tenuous?
A side-effect of her encounters with Gerard was increasing fluency in colloquial French to the point where she sometimes dreamed in the language. She had told Gerard who had assumed that her dreams were wildly erotic and when she recounted one that she could clearly remember, he pronounced her boringly prosaic. She countered by telling him that she had a taste for narrative.
She was travelling on a train in France and she had not punched her ticket in the platform machine to print date and time so when the ticket collector saw this omission he told her she had incurred a fine. Her claim to being a non French- speaking tourist was rejected in spite of her gesticulations and pleas and then she began to speak in French to try and help her cause. The dream had ended when she was surrounded by other passengers who were explaining in a righteous chorus, that it was the LAW.
‘You lack fantasy,’ Gerard had told her. ‘New Zealand must be a very prosaic place.’
Why she endured his constant cultural put-downs she had no idea. Was it a case of her incurable francophilia? Something gave him what she called a licence to strut and she came to the conclusion that he might be compensating for his shortish stature. This explanation would do in the meantime.
One afternoon when she called into a petrol station on her way home from her swim she saw Robert talking to the manager. He saw her and gave his trademark salute. Her salty rats’ tails made her feel ugly.
‘You look frisky,’ he said. ‘What have you been up to?’ She blushed slightly and said it was obvious.
‘More to the point - have you got your exit visa?’
He told her that his illegal export business had been dropped for want of evidence and once he had sold his van he’d be leaving. He was trying to do a deal with the petrol station owner.
‘Tell you what - when you’ve finished come to my place and fill me in on the details. I’ll take a shower meantime and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
First, he described the abortive meeting with the sleeper and then said that his third visit to the office had been quite an anti-climax. He told the officer how he had avoided waking him a few days’ before and this was a
bit of a circuit-breaker, because said officer laughed and sat down to shuffle paper on his desk while he chuckled every so often. When he finally found a single sheet duly stamped from what Robert could see, he read it briefly and then looked up and said that when the ship docked in Auckland the name on the bill of lading was not Robert’s and therefore it was a case of mistaken identity. Robert would have liked to know whose name it was but chose discretion in the circumstances.
‘So I asked him when I’d get my exit visa because we were booked to leave in ten days’ time and he said I’d need to come back in a couple more days.’
‘What? Is that true?’ Min sounded doubtful.
‘Well, not quite. Dinah is booked but I’ve been waiting and we decided that I’d pack up after she’s gone and follow in a couple of weeks after that. Y’know I feel like a dog who’s been following a bone on a string and I won’t relax till I hear those plane wheels sucked into the wheel housing.’ Robert shook his head slowly. Min was sympathetic.
‘I hope I don’t have to go through this at the end of next year. Did
Dinah have any hassles?’
‘No - after all she’s blond and perhaps Aussies get a smoother ride - I
dunno.’
‘You mean their aid cheque’s bigger?’ Robert told Min about Barnaby at the High Commission and she said ‘Ugh. He must have replaced Ronan McInerney and be living among the bougainvillea on yonder hill.’
Their mutual understanding was very comforting and when Robert was on his way home he recalled how Min had changed and become quite cynical. He wondered if she realised.
‘I should have asked her if I could borrow her car when I sell the van,’ he thought. He was sure she’d say yes - she was a good sort and they seemed to understand each other.
Chapter 76
Jim thought he noticed a change in Polly’s attitude to marriage after she had received her mother’s letter insofar as she often mentioned her sister’s up-coming wedding. Finally he pointed this out to her and she was surprised at first but after some thought she admitted that she was thinking about the subject more these days. Her parents would not consider it proper if they married in a weird and wonderful place which they had no idea of. Jim said that was the nub of the issue - was marriage an event of more cultural significance than a sign of commitment?
‘After all a quasi-religious commitment can take place anywhere surely?’ The subject kept intruding into their conversations so it sounded quite logical when Jim said one night after particularly flagrant delight, as he called it,
‘Let’s beat your sister to it and get married. The folks might object but it will be too late.’ Polly didn’t think they would after all and she said,
‘Yeah! Let’s!’ She added, after a moment that it would be a good excuse to say a last goodbye to Dinah and Robert as well as to Yushi and Fanua. Just a plighting of troth on the beach and a champagne knees-up back at the house would be nice for everybody. She’d ask Min and Robert to be witnesses.
She asked Min to wear a coronet of frangipani and she wanted Eturasi to be the celebrant. He declined because secular weddings were extraordinary in his culture and he suggested instead someone from the Peace Corps. Jim was sorry that it wouldn’t be a truly local affair but he understood and arranged the Country Director to coordinate things. Polly said the hardest part was to pick a time when it wasn’t pouring with rain. So far no one else knew about the pregnancy because as Polly said she wanted the ceremony to stand on its own rather than look like an act of social necessity. Min asked Semese if he had any idea if they could get in touch with Michael but he said he hadn’t heard a thing. Jim wanted a poetry reading and he asked Min for some ideas. In default of a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets she said that one of her students wrote some good poetry. He thought that was a great idea so Min arranged a meeting and Polly asked if one of the poems could be read in the local language. Of course. There were several excellent guitarists available and Jim requested the tune they had heard on that magical evening up at the poet’s grave, way back in the beginning.
Although all the arrangements were made in haste because some of the friends were on the verge of leaving, it was a jolly affair fitted in fortuitously between showers. “No shoes” was a general request which everyone observed and the variety of colourful lava lavas along with perfumed leis woven by Fanua and her mother made them feel like celebrities, Jim told the gathering. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was the anthem which nearly everybody knew - even Yushi - and it was sung several times with Semese and Eturasi spontaneously providing a rich bass counterpoint. Polly was moved to tears and as she went round the friends and thanked them for making her day she asked for everyone’s address. They would receive a photo souvenir if Robert’s camera worked in the overcast conditions.
No sooner had they all returned to Polly and Jim’s house than the heavens opened briefly and rain came in torrents. Gerard and Yvonne with little Monique were already there and had spread out lots of French baguettes cheese and salads. Polly put her coronet on the Monique’s head and she went around the company telling everyone in French that she was a bride. Gerard regretted that there was no “champagne” (too dear he said) but the “vin mousseux” from Australia was not bad. He looked at Min who lifted one eyebrow ever so slightly.
She had mixed emotions about the day remembering her own wedding ceremony which had caused such friction. Polly and Jim had stumbled on the ideal she thought - to avoid the political machinations of family interest groups and just to have a unique communal rite surrounded by well-wishers. It would be remembered for the right reasons. She stayed after everybody else had left and confessed to them how much more she had enjoyed their wedding than her own. It was then that Jim realised how little they all knew about each other’s past lives and the stresses which for most, were inevitable. When Michael’s name came up Min was careful to honour her promise to him to respect his confidence; when Jim hinted that their highly successful wedding formula should be repeated Min agreed with a smile.
Going back to her temporary home that night Min felt an acute loneliness for the first time since her early months in the new environment. How much she would have liked to end the day with Michael just as everybody else was returning to their place feeling the glow of contentment, she thought. There were times when she appreciated her solitude for the time and flexibility it gave her to think and to act but this was not one of those times so when she got home, she picked up the phone and rang her parents. They would be in bed probably and might think it was bad news but that would be a momentary thing. (They thought that any telephone call after nine o’clock at night was bad news.)
‘Heelloo’ Her father’s voice did sound sleepy.
‘Hi dad. It’s me - Min.’
‘Has something happened, Min dear?’
‘I’ve just got back from a fabulous wedding. I just called to say hello.’
Her father took a while to understand that it was not her wedding and her mother took the receiver from him so she started all over again to explain why she had rung. She was sorry that she had disturbed them and when she put the phone down she burst into tears. There was no comfort to be had anywhere and even the stars were unavailable, behind the rain-laden clouds.
Chapter 77
Michael stood and watched the fountain playing in the Exhibition Gardens and tried to recapture the phantom optimism of his earlier days when as a student he had often gone to read over his notes before an examination. The tranquil setting in the heart of the throbbing city used to reset his perspective while the hospital nearby stimulated his commitment to understanding and alleviating illness and misery. Now when he looked over at the unadorned façade of what was a squat cube baking in the sun he could think only of a lost ambition thwarted by a misguided act of mercy and of the many patients lying there with hope and trust in the power of medicine to relieve them. He felt deeply conscious of the weight of suffering and went further still to cons
ider the symbiosis between that and the elevated social status of the doctors. He had travelled a road from idealism to cynicism in a few short years and now he was at the end of that road.
How proud his parents had been when he graduated even though his mother had been shocked when she realised that he no longer went to church. She refused to listen to his reasons and reproved him for rejecting the faith that his forebears had suffered fire and sword to defend. When his father died from a heart attack she asked him why he had not seen the symptoms in time and the rift which had developed was not healed before she died about a year later.
His last visit to his lawyer had been particularly discouraging and all he could do now was wait and then suffer the scrutiny of the medical council. His lawyer was in a very difficult position and had to prepare a brief based on motives with which he agreed as a private citizen but which he knew the council would disavow as a plea in mitigation. It was an open and shut case for them and Michael faced being struck off the register of practitioners and a possible prison sentence.
On his way home from the lawyer’s office he visited the tourist office to find out about transport to and accommodation in the mountains. There were plenty of options. Escape from the heat and hysteria to the cool sanity of untrammelled heights was for him a staging post, so that he could to some extent blot out what lay ahead. More and more he was feeling like a tourist among the other travellers in the hostel but the difference was that he had no other home to return to. Unlike them too, he had become obsessed by the well-heeled tribes of his home town who nestled into the bedrock of wealth as much as the town itself was bedded into its basalt geology. A concordat had been established between these two and was maintained by strong family ties, religious and political affiliation, allegiance to manic sports teams and infinite plenty. His exclusion was as complete as his disillusion was pathological. Two days before he was to leave for the bus trip he once again overheard some of his fellow hostellers talking - this time about a cyclone in the Pacific. The young people who were interested, apparently had plans to visit some of the islands which from their European perspective were in the neighbourhood. The source of the information was a very brief reference on the television news to a warning which had been put out by the meteorological office in Fiji.
Another Throw of The Dice Page 25