A Lesser Dependency

by Peter Benson

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Port Louis, Tombeau, Grand Baie. Ask anyone.’

  Raphael asked. He had to know. The ocean, fish, a slack sail on flat water. He wanted to feel salt caked into the lines that covered his face; he asked people at Port Louis docks.

  ‘You need a worker?’ and he’d point at the sea.

  ‘Not today, old man.’

  Old man? He shook his head and said he wasn’t, but no one believed him.

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘I can do everything those men are doing.’ He pointed across the wharf to where a gang were grappling a bale of cotton.

  ‘Not today. Okay?’

  He set out for Tombeau. He walked slowly, dodged traffic and begged water along the way. He found bananas in a tree, and though they weren’t ripe he was hungry enough to steal and eat three. They sat in his stomach but he walked on until he reached the bay and the first decent shore he’d seen since leaving the Chagos.

  He strolled along it, wandered into the ocean and picked up shells and seaweed. He smelt the air. It was fresh and reminding. He wanted to stay so he found a grassy place, sat beneath a tree and watched fishing boats trace erratic wakes between the shore and the reef that broke in a dangerous line beyond them.

  ‘Hey!’

  Raphael didn’t look up. He had watched the boats for an hour and would watch for another.

  ‘Hey! You!’

  Tombeau Bay was a good place to be. It didn’t come close to home but was closer than Port Louis. He took a deep breath, held it and closed his eyes.

  ‘Off! Move, go on!’ A man shouted at him. He was angry and yelled, ‘What’s the matter with you? Deaf?’

  Raphael was startled. He stood up and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Then sit on the beach, not in my garden. I’m not a hotel for people like you.’

  ‘Your garden?’ Raphael didn’t understand. On Diego Garcia, everyone’s garden belonged to everyone else.

  ‘Yes!’ said the man, and pointed to a sign. ‘It’s private! Go on! Off!’

  ‘But I was only…’

  ‘OFF!’ The man pointed again. Raphael stood up and shook his head as he walked away.

  He walked around the bay and asked some fishermen if they needed help. ‘I can work,’ he said, but none of them believed him. ‘I lived in the Chagos. My own boat…’

  They shook their heads, coiled ropes and pointed up the coast. ‘Try Grand Baie or Perybere,’ they said. ‘Plenty of work there. It’s better fishing.’

  Raphael sighed. ‘How far?’

  ‘Fifteen miles,’ said one.

  ‘Ten by the road,’ said another.

  ‘You’ll make it…’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Easy.’

  The morning turned into afternoon. The fishermen began to eat lunch. They offered Raphael some fish and bread. He thanked them, ate, and when they’d finished and went back to work, he watched them for ten minutes before taking the road to Grand Baie.

  The air was clammy and full of exhaust fumes. Fields of sugar cane lined the roads. He passed through villages full of saried women and men outside shops talking about other men. Corrugated shacks, washing on bushes, barefoot children chasing dogs through gardens.

  Adverts he couldn’t read for Fanta and Coke. Buses, bicycles, more sugar cane.

  Some goats. A mosque. Schoolchildren in clean clothes carrying baskets and exercise books.

  A garage with a pile of bald tyres for sale, all marked ‘NEW!’ Men working at sewing machines in back yards. Ginger dogs.

  Night fell before he reached Grand Baie, so he spent the night in a ditch beside a tobacco field outside Triolet, stole a pineapple in the morning and ate it as he walked the last few miles.

  He liked Grand Baie caught in its first clip with morning. Fishing boats, tourist yachts, glass-bottoms and motor boats rode a falling tide. Some men stood on the sweep of coral sand, scratched their heads and looked at the weather.

  A few clouds moved by inches as the sky billowed with warmth, and the sun rose. The smell of breakfasts cooking and coffee, blinds going up in boarding houses, curtains being drawn in some big hotels. A cow sitting in the road.

  Raphael asked a dozen fishermen for work until one didn’t say, ‘No.’ ‘Why?’ the man said.

  ‘Because…’ Raphael didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t used to questions.

  ‘Can you clean fish?’ the man said. ‘I can’t stop to show you. It’s busy here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tie lines? Bait hooks?’

  Raphael nodded. ‘I was in the Chagos. I had my own boat; lines and everything.’

  The man scratched his head. He knew about Ilois, and though he had heard they were unreliable he believed Raphael’s story. He saw black in the man’s eyes, and he did need help with his boat, his catches and his tackle. His brother had been helping him, but had got work on a glass-bottom. So he said, ‘Yes’, shook hands with Raphael, said, ‘Maurice’, and Raphael said, ‘Raphael’.

  ‌9

  A rainstorm forced Maude, Leonard, Odette and Georges to shelter in an abandoned copra store; the noise of a dumper truck drifted across the lagoon, and chainsaws whined in the jungle. American naval construction workers (Seabees) had arrived on Diego Garcia. They yelled, palms split, rats and the rain ran in streams through the store.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Leonard.

  ‘We’re all hungry!’ Maude snapped.

  ‘We’ll find something later,’ said Odette.

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘Yes. We always do, don’t we?’

  Maude thought about that. ‘No we don’t. And I can’t see why.’

  She had lost weight and her patience. Her powers of intuition had been warped by the circumstances. When she narrowed her eyes and closed her mind to everything around her all she could see was a mist swirling around screaming people. She couldn’t see their faces and didn’t recognise their voices – they were familiar – but she preferred not to know who they were.

  The rain gave up after an hour and Georges said, ‘Let’s see what they’re doing.’ He pointed across the lagoon to where the Seabees were working. He wanted to see their machines. Diego Garcia’s tractors and lorries were old and rusting. Some of the diggers the Americans owned were yellow and shone in the sunlight. They were greased and fast across the beaches and into the jungle after all the trees. ‘You coming? We’ll get close to them.’

  ‘Alright.’

  He entertained the children with a song as they walked around the lagoon. They smiled, but not like they used to. They couldn’t understand why life was so different or why their mother had changed; she lagged behind and kicked stones into the sea.

  The palms dripped as the clouds rolled away and left a washed, pale sky hanging across the horizon. An American supply boat rode at anchor. The sun glittered its fittings; a chainsaw stopped, a tractor hauled trunks out of the jungle and dumped them on damp fires.

  Smoke filled the air. Maude and the others sat on palm stumps and watched the work. A Seabee saw them and waved them over.

  ‘Howdy!’

  The Ilois nodded.

  ‘Bob!’ The American held out his hand. The Ilois shook it. ‘You wanna drink?’ He smiled. ‘Cigarettes?’

  The Ilois shook their heads.

  Bob made a motion of hand to mouth. ‘Drink?’ he said again.

  Georges understood. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled back.

  Bob went to a hut and came back with cans of beer and Coke, and bars of chocolate. Maude took one of these without a word and peeled its wrapper carefully. She folded the paper and the foil separately, tucked them in her skirt and divided the chocolate equally.

  The last time any of them had tasted chocolate was so long gone it was barely memory. They ate with their eyes closed, swigged the drinks and thought, for a second, that things could change back to how they had been be
fore. Peace, cultivated vegetable gardens, laying chickens, the copra factories working. Enough food. Maude opened her eyes and watched another palm topple into the lagoon. The fires recovered from the rainstorm and threw massive spitting flames into the air.

  Bob looked at the Ilois. He didn’t know anything about them. All he was doing was clearing jungle and laying concrete. Thin natives were unexpected.

  ‘Have some more,’ he said, and, ‘You’re hungry.’

  ‘Cigarettes?’ said Georges.

  ‘Better than that!’ He left and came back with more food. More chocolate and some other rations. Beef stew in packets, macaroni cheese in bags and a bag of oranges. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take it.’ And he rolled a joint.

  He smoked. Georges watched. ‘You wanna toke?’ He offered. ‘Philippino,’ he said.

  Georges smiled. It was months since his last cigarette. He thanked Bob and took a drag. It tasted and rushed to his head. It banged his ears together, said ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ at the same time and shrunk his eyeballs to the size of peas. He coughed and smiled.

  ‘Grass,’ said the Seabee, and curled a finger against the side of his head.

  Georges swayed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  ‘You know?’

  Georges nodded.

  ‘We bought a few lids over – if you want some you know where to come…’

  Georges nodded again and said, ‘I’ll stay and watch you,’ but when Maude said, ‘Come on!’ he went quietly. ‘You don’t want to watch this!’ Maude spread her hands and shouted, ‘Come back!’

  ‘Don’t forget!’ Bob yelled after them, ‘Anytime.’ And he went back to his work.

  Other Seabees wanted to know who the natives were. A prefabricated building was erected on a rectangle of cleared land and beside this butterflies tumbled through the smoke.

  Maude and the others sat in their hut and sucked beef stew out of foil packets. It was cold, and the meat gristly. Georges rolled his eyes and spilt some on his trousers. He was hungrier than ever, ate two packets and wanted more.

  ‘No,’ said Maude.

  ‘Why not? I’m starved and there’s plenty. He said we could go back for more.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have to.’

  ‘But we do. Go on.’ He held out a hand and fingered a piece of meat from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘We’ve got to save it.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Odette looked in his eyes. ‘Stop looking like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ Georges stared.

  ‘Like that!’

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything!’ He shrugged and looked away.

  The air was thick with the sickly smell of burning jungle. A piece of tin blew across the beach and onto the sea. The supply ship blew a cloud of smoke into the sky. Georges stood up and walked to the ruins of his hut and pissed behind it.

  He’d enjoyed the joint, and a month later went back for another. Bob met him on the seaward shore beneath the runway and they watched birds swooping over the surf.

  Tractors hauled trees, new lorries with working doors hauled sheets of galvanised iron as other Seabees erected fences. Frightened chickens watched from thickets, made gurgling noises and pecked at the ground. No corn, no old vegetable leaves. Dust. Fires plumed into the sky and a breeze ripped strands of smoke away. Bob rolled up, lit up and rested his head against a stump.

  ‘You know you’re not meant to be here,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our boss…’ Bob pointed at a prefab.

  Georges grunted. He took the offered joint.

  ‘We’re taking the island over,’ he said.

  Georges took another toke. His brain collapsed into his stomach, he needed a drink, he tried to speak but his tongue was glued to the top of his mouth.

  ‘Dynamite blow, huh?’

  Georges nodded, and when Bob went off and came back with some more rations, he nodded again but couldn’t say anything. He had to sit where he was until the feeling passed, and he could stand up and walk back to the others.

  Maude went to the shop and heard that bombs were going to be exploded on the island. She told Georges. He went to meet Bob to find out if it was true, but couldn’t find him. An Englishman met him instead, and told him to leave the site.

  ‘Leave the site!’

  Georges shook his head. He wanted some food. The Englishman had a red face and sweated.

  ‘Leave the site! Go on!’ He raised his voice. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Georges hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Bob’s here?’ he said.

  ‘Look!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you people understand?’ The Englishman wiped his brow. He waved his hands. ‘You have no right to be here.’

  Georges shook his head and pointed across the lagoon to where the last Ilois huts stood.

  ‘No right.’ The Englishman had a pen. He took it out of a pocket, ticked a piece of paper and walked away.

  ‌10

  In September 1971, all Ilois left on Diego Garcia were called to the plantation manager’s house and told that they had two weeks to pack. The manager was sad and embarrassed but he had orders. Americans had come for good. They had to have room but everything would be taken care of.

  ‘What’s to take care of?’ Maude shouted.

  An official looked at her and ticked a sheet of paper. ‘Take it easy,’ he said.

  ‘No! The sky’ll take me!’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sky. It’s watching you!’ She pointed at the man. He held a clipboard to his chest. ‘It’s watching me too, and it’s remembering all this. You don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You?’ said Maude. ‘Oh yes, you have to worry. You means me,’ she said.

  ‘Look,’ said the man. ‘Talk sense.’

  ‘I do!’ Maude turned to Georges. ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘Yes. Please,’ he said to the official. ‘She’s a bit…’ He shrugged. ‘You know?’

  ‘I don’t!’ said Maude, and stalked off. ‘No, I don’t.’ She sang a snatch from a song, stopped in her tracks as if she’d heard someone else singing before realising it had been her, and walked on. ‘I don’t!’ she shouted again, and waved her hands over her head.

  ‘Touched?’ said the official.

  Georges shrugged.

  ‘NO!’ Odette shouted.

  Bob went to visit Georges. He wanted to buy a boat. He was contracted to a long stint on the island and wanted to do some fishing. He was keen and gave the Ilois a joint. ‘Smoke it later.’

  Georges nodded and put it behind his ear.

  ‘We can smoke this one now, while you tell me all about it.’ He smiled and pointed at some boats on the lagoon. ‘How about one of those? You won’t be able to take them.’ He passed the joint. ‘There’ll be new ones for you in Mauritius.’

  ‘Mauritius?’ said Georges.

  ‘Sure.’ Bob coughed. ‘So how about it? There’d be dollars for it.’ He waved some notes. ‘Dollars?’

  Georges didn’t know about money. He shrugged and pointed to Maude. She was sitting on a tea chest. Leonard and Odette were tossing stones at a dead dog that floated in the lagoon. Other Ilois were sitting in groups around fires. Some of them drank beer. All of them had holes in their clothes.

  Bob asked Maude if she wanted to sell a boat. She followed his finger when it pointed to some redundant pirogues. ‘Dollars?’ he said, and he rubbed his fingers together and raised his eyebrows. ‘Buy yourself some clothes.’

  She looked at the notes when he showed them. They were greasy and wrapped with a rubber band. ‘How many?’ she said.

  ‘This many?’ Bob smiled.

  ‘You want to look?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not?’

  Raphael’s boat was beached beneath the hut. Its paint was flaking and a section of gunwale had come away from the hull. The sail was wrapped around the mast. Holes had appeared in the ca
nvas, but after Bob had circled it three or four times, booted it and poked a knife in some of the planks, he said, ‘Not bad. Not bad. Needs work but I’ve seen worse. Far worse…’

  Maude sold Raphael’s boat to Bob. She took his money without a word. She didn’t know how much. She looked through the American. He was unnerved but forgot the feeling.

  On a night in September 1971, Maude, Leonard, Odette, Georges and all remaining Ilois left Diego Garcia for ever. They leant on The Nordvaer’s rails and watched their island disappear and glow with lights unlike lights they had seen before.

  Arc lights, strings of spotlamps. Men ran to generators and aimed excavators at huts and piles of earth. A string of heavy lorries piled hills of sand beyond a spot where pumpkins had grown best. Leonard asked, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You ask that again and I’ll throw you over,’ said Odette. ‘Mauritius! Mauritius!’

  ‘I left something.’

  ‘You didn’t have anything.’

  ‘I had my shells.’

  ‘Those old things!’ She laughed.

  ‘My collection.’

  ‘Forget them.’

  ‘They took me years to find. I went everywhere. They were beautiful.’

  ‘They were just shells,’ said Odette and she sat down on a box of tractor parts.

  ‘MY SHELLS!’ Leonard shouted.

  ‘Ssh the boy,’ said Maude.

  A chilly wind rattled loose fittings on the deck as Odette put her arm around her brother’s shoulder. She bent her head towards him and said, ‘I didn’t mean to laugh.’

  Leonard didn’t move or speak.

  ‘I didn’t know they meant so much.’

  Maude closed her eyes.

  ‘You should have told me before. I would have brought them for you.’

  Two centuries of Ilois life slipped away as the Indian Ocean heaved in massive black swells and spat over the passengers. Women cried and held their children. Men stared at the sky, gobbed and opened bottles. The few possessions they’d been allowed to keep sat in small heaps on the deck. A warship slunk past, The Nordvaer rolled and hooted – no reply.

  Maude stayed on deck until the sky had stopped glowing with the orange and white lights that burnt on Diego Garcia. She found Georges and lay down with her head on his chest and the children by a sack of clothes. She thought about Raphael and whispered that she was, ‘Coming,’ before falling asleep and dreaming about winged ships crewed by donkeys and birds.