Savages

by Shirley Conran

  It had been made clear by General Raki that he did not welcome the presence of foreign search aircraft, however peaceable their motives. Only Nexus aircraft already on the island had been allowed to search—which meant the Duck and the Bell 206. The helicopter had a good view; sitting in that big transparent bubble, Harry could see straight down, so it was the best aircraft for low-level searching.

  Harry’s search party had first covered a hundred-mile square, centered on the Paradise Bay Hotel, after which they had flown over the coastline of the entire island, a distance of 554 miles. For two days, the Duck in the north and the Bell in the south followed the undulations of the shoreline, droning over the offshore coral reefs, the sandy beaches and lagoons, the rocky headlands and muddy estuaries, the salt marshes and the mangrove swamps that had been such obstacles to the Allied landings during World War II.

  After the coastline search proved fruitless, they searched the lowland area, droning steadily over the savannahs and swamps, the slopes of the Victoria Highlands, Stanley Heights, and the cloud-encircled peaks of the Central Mountains, which are Paui’s highest mountain range. They searched only along rivers and lakes, or over open areas. A jungle search from the air was pointless.

  After the first half-hour of the day, Harry always had a hard job keeping his eyes focused on the scenery below him. Boredom combined with concentration and frustration to exhaust him. He was short-tempered and tried to say as little as possible to the irritatingly cheerful Johno. By the end of the eleventh search day, their conversation consisted almost entirely of grunts.

  On the evening of Monday, November 26, by which time the international ten-day air search convention had been fully complied with, the official government search for the missing Nexus party was called off, as briskly as it had been started.

  Harry knew that when the cyclone season hit, he would have to stop his own search, but he still had three days before December 1. He reasoned that fourteen days was statistically a reasonable amount of time to search for a large party. After all, Paui was not the Bermuda Triangle, where aircraft vanished without explanation or trace. Sooner, or later, some evidence would appear, a clue to the fate of the Nexus party.

  It was just a question of going on until that clue turned up….

  * * *

  In his sweat-soaked clothes, Harry climbed wearily up the wooden steps of the veranda of the Hotel Independence; he brushed away the mosquitoes that swarmed in the yellow stream of light outside the glass-paned front door. He could hear Mrs. Chang’s shrill voice on the telephone.

  Harry said, “Good evening,” and headed for his room, but Mrs. Chang’s jade-green, satin-clad arm reached out and tugged at his sleeve. “Hang on a tick, Mr. Scott,” she said.

  She put the telephone back in its ivory cradle and said, “I have your new watch, Mr. Scott.”

  The day after Harry’s watch had been “liberated,” Mrs. Chang had found a replacement watch, with expanding metallic bracelet, ten percent surcharge, but it had gone buggerupem eight days later, and not even Ronald Chang had been able to repair it, so Harry had asked for a replacement or his money back.

  Mrs. Chang leaned forward and dug deep into her jade satin pocket. “You want to watch that sore place on your upper lip, Mr. Scott. I will send Freddy up to your bedroom with antiseptic ointment, medical care fifteen percent extra.” She pulled her hand from her pocket and said triumphantly, “You will never find a better watch than this one.”

  Harry stared at the gold watch in her plump palm. He snatched it up and turned it over. There was no inscription, but Harry had often seen that slim, gold circle and whenever his mind wandered at meetings, he had idly watched the tiny celestial-blue window, crossed monthly by the miniature man-in-the-moon within. It was, unmistakably, Arthur Graham’s twenty-five-thousand-dollar, fully automatic, perpetual calendar, gold Breguet watch with the Turkish triple-dial face and the gold-link strap—the almost-one-of-a-kind present his mother had given him, and which he never took off.

  “Where did you get this, Mrs. Chang?”

  “It was brought to the shop by a street trader. It cost my Ronald two Raleigh bicycles, reconditioned but almost new—a small price for such a watch.”

  “I’ll pay you a hundred Australian dollars to speak to the man who sold you that watch.”

  “Exclusive of the price of the watch? It is a timepiece of rare quality.”

  “Get Ron here fast, Mrs. Chang.”

  The watch was in perfect condition. It didn’t look as if it had done time in a shark’s belly. Could Arthur’s watch have been stolen by a hotel servant before the trouble started? Perhaps from a bathroom shelf? But Arthur never took it off. As he waited impatiently for Ronald Chang he thought, At least it will be easy to identify. The manufacturer’s serial number will be engraved inside, so the jeweler from whom it had been purchased could be located. With any luck, their records would show the customer who had bought the watch.

  Harry did not even consider telling the Paui police about the watch. As it was evidence, they would confiscate it, which meant—in this land of the light-fingered and incompetent—it would inevitably disappear again, this time for good. Details would be laboriously recorded on some stock form in triplicate; it would cost Harry time and cigarettes to get nowhere, and make him even more unpopular with the police, who not only hated interference but also hated work of any sort. They took it as a direct insult.

  Ronald Chang hurried in, torn away from his evening meal, the napkin still tucked in the open-necked collar of his pale green polyester shirt. He told Harry that the street trader who had sold him the watch had bought it from a soldier—one of the new ones, a Filipino. The soldier took ninety kinas for the watch.

  Nicely recompensed for his trouble, Ronald sauntered back to his dinner. Harry unwrapped his waterproof money belt, which he never removed, not even in the shower, carefully tucked Arthur’s watch in it and strapped it back around his waist.

  Whoever sold that watch to Ronald Chang knew what had happened to Arthur, and perhaps what had happened to Annie and the others as well.

  17

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1984

  Patty hadn’t been able to eat any of the goat meat the previous evening. Now she refused to eat it at breakfast. “I couldn’t eat something I knew when it was alive,” she said.

  Annie, who was preparing broth for Jonathan, remarked, “You eat the fish you catch.”

  Patty thought a moment, then said, “Fish are different. You can’t see the death agony, because it goes on underwater. And when you land a fish, you’re so excited that you caught it, that you never give a thought to the fish, with its torn insides, gasping as it dies.”

  Silvana said crossly, “I worked for two hours to cook that goat. You need to eat to work properly.”

  Carey said, “The work’s done. We should finish the raft by lunchtime.”

  Once again, the argument started.

  “We should get off here as fast as possible. This evening!” Suzy urged.

  “Jonathan told us we had to be gone by the twenty-eighth, at the latest,” Carey agreed. “And that’s today.”

  “Jonathan’s got a temperature of a hundred and three degrees, and he can’t be moved,” Annie said firmly. “I don’t think it’s malaria, but it’s certainly a fever, and he’s improving. Can’t we wait just a little longer?”

  “He told me to go ahead with the plan,” Carey insisted, “and I’m going. We could take him with us. We could tie him on the deck. Maybe we could get him to a hospital within a couple of days—if we leave.”

  “He shouldn’t be moved,” Annie said firmly. “He might die of exposure.”

  “We’ll shelter him with the canvas awning,” Carey suggested. She looked around the group squatting in the firelight and said firmly, “I’m taking him to safety, along with anyone else who wants to come. Anyone who wants to stay can rot here.”

  They all knew that if they didn’t leave the island by evening, they had no
chance of reaching Irian Jaya before the cyclone season started.

  “Supposing the Long Wet is late?” Patty asked.

  “Suppose it isn’t—and the raft is swamped by high seas?” Carey replied.

  Silvana said, “It’s crazy to think that we can survive on that raft while Jonathan is ill. We know nothing about navigation, and less about the sea.”

  Endlessly, they went over the arguments for and against leaving the island, until it was eventually agreed they should finish the raft, then decide by casting votes.

  Well ahead of schedule—just before midday—the last length of plaited vine was lashed around the crossbeams. Sweating but triumphant, the women stood back and looked at the raft, almost with awe—they couldn’t believe that they had made this huge thing, or that it was finally finished.

  Patty burst into tears. “We did it!”

  “Let’s go!” Carey cried, and swung Suzy around, both laughing with delight.

  Silvana ran to tell Annie, who was up in the lookout tree. Annie, ever stubborn, called down, “I’m going to stay here with Jonathan. You can send a rescue plane for us when you land.”

  Both women knew she meant if you land.

  Silvana called up, “I’m not leaving, either, until Jonathan is well enough to take charge of the raft.”

  They argued throughout the midday meal, and later, as they rested in the shade. Suddenly, after days of toil, they had nothing to do until just before sundown. They could rest, they could swim, they could quarrel. Nobody suggested taking the vote they had previously decided upon.

  Carey and Suzy lay in the shadow of the eucalyptus tree, arguing with Patty, who couldn’t decide whether she wanted to stay with Silvana and Annie or leave with Carey and Suzy. Although the sky was cloudy, the heat was grueling, and there hadn’t been a breath of wind in days. The trees were silent.

  Carey said, “You know we’d have far more chance with three of us than with two. And we’ll have enough provisions to feed six.”

  “I just can’t make up my mind,” Patty said unhappily.

  “We’ll be leaving in order to save the others, as well as ourselves,” Suzy reminded her.

  Suddenly Patty lifted her head. “Listen! Something’s different. Something’s odd.”

  Suzy said, “I can’t hear anything except the cicadas.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Patty said. “It’s only two o’clock, and they don’t normally start singing until half an hour before sundown.”

  Suzy said, “So they’re playing a matinee, instead of waiting until five thirty. Why don’t we simply vote now whether we leave or not?”

  “Because only two of us want to leave. We’d lose if we vote,” Carey said. “But I don’t give a damn. I’m getting out of here as fast as possible. Even if I have to go alone.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Suzy said firmly. “And we should vote by four thirty at the latest. That will only leave us an hour and a half before sundown to lower the raft and load it.”

  Patty said, “I don’t … Hell, I can’t decide! We don’t know what to do if we go to sea.”

  “Jonathan told us what to do,” Carey said. “We have to paddle a couple of miles to the west, until we hit the current. We’re almost on the southern tip of Paui, so we should be carried beyond it, then taken around the headland to the east, toward Pulau yos Sudarsa on Irian Jaya.”

  Patty frowned as she looked into the jungle behind her. “I can’t understand why the cicadas are making such a racket.”

  Carey continued, “When we see land, we paddle like hell toward it. Sure, we don’t understand Jonathan’s charts, but it doesn’t much matter.”

  Patty half-turned and again peered into the trees. “There’s something odd about the jungle.”

  “Finally it feels cooler,” Suzy said. “That’s all. You’d better get back up the lookout tree.”

  Patty said, “You guys get some rest. If you leave, you’ll need it.”

  Both the other women noticed that she didn’t say “We’ll need it.”

  Since Jonathan’s illness, the women had been increasingly lax about posting a guard at all times. It wasn’t as if they’d always been able to have a guard when Jonathan was in charge, they argued. Somehow, they now felt safe in their camp. They knew every inch of it. It felt comforting.

  As Patty swung up into the tree, the jungle started to come alive with the noise of insects. This hadn’t happened since the women had been on the island; usually it was quiet during the day, especially during the torpid midday heat. Perched in the tree, Patty gratefully offered her face to a faint breath of wind that had started to blow from the sea. She wondered what it was that worried her.

  By three thirty that afternoon the wind was blowing hard. Except for Patty, the exhausted women were asleep.

  They all knew that after sunset it would be too late to leave the island, and they would be stuck on it for the next three months.

  * * *

  Annie woke up, rubbed her eyes and pattered to a small clearing in the forest, where she liked to pray. Silvana and Suzy awoke and decided to dip in the waterfall pool. Patty yawned, then crawled into the lean-to and bathed Jonathan’s chest and face with cool water, wishing she knew the difference between courage and rashness.

  The sky turned from white to gray, then an ominous silver-purple. The water of the bay shivered, the trees rustled, the wind blew harder.

  Silvana, who had pulled herself out of the water and was sitting on the wet rocks, squinted up at the sky. “You don’t think that maybe … ?”

  A drop of water fell on her face and she wiped it off. Three drops spattered on the back of her hand. Silvana looked at the cloudy sky above, then at the lagoon. The water was a soft, milky-green color. Then, before her eyes, the surface changed to a pattern of tiny, tight waves. The entire bay seemed to tremble, then go dead flat.

  Silvana heard a hiss that grew louder and louder, and a mist seemed to rise from the sea. Water suddenly fell from the skies, as if from an upturned bucket.

  For a moment Silvana couldn’t think, she was drenched and numbed. She shouted, “Get out of the water, Suzy. It’s the Long Wet. It’s arrived early.”

  In the pool, Suzy tried to call up to Silvana, but the noise of the rain was too great for her to be heard. The force of the water was as if they were standing in the way of a fireman’s hose. They could only gasp for breath.

  Protecting her face with one arm, Silvana, in her bedraggled black lace bra and torn panties, pulled the naked Suzy from the pool. They snatched up their clothes and sneakers, because the rain was slamming down far too hard for them to stop and dress.

  Together, the two women clambered up the cliff path, which had suddenly become a sliding sea of mud. They slithered, they slipped and they fell, but eventually they reached the summit. Silvana turned her head seaward. She couldn’t see the ocean, neither could she see the beach below. The view had disappeared.

  Soaking wet and covered with mud, battling against the wind, the two women staggered into the hut.

  Patty, who had almost been blown from the lookout tree, greeted them with a shriek. “I guess that’s one decision less to make.”

  BOOK FOUR

  SURVIVAL

  18

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1984

  It had been seven days since the Long Wet started.

  “Now you look like a baby Grace Jones. These scissors need sharpening.” In the sleeping hut, Annie finished Suzy’s crew cut, then stood back and looked at her.

  “Guaranteed lice- and flea-proof!” Annie said.

  “Any progress with the soap?” Suzy asked hopefully. Soap was the only thing that they really needed and couldn’t find in the jungle. They all longed for just one cake of Ivory every time they washed with coconut oil.

  “No luck,” Annie said.

  Suzy laughed. “We’re going to be real messes when we get back.”

  Annie shrugged her shoulders. Under exhausting, stressful conditions, any person
can expect to age ten years within twenty-four hours, but Suzy was the only one of the group who still cared how she looked.

  From her bamboo bed, Patty peered out at the rain. The hut entrance didn’t face the wind that blew off the sea—thanks to Carey’s architectural training. “Just as well we didn’t float off on the raft,” she said. “We’d have been swamped in the first downpour and sunk without trace.”

  “And just as well Carey did that digging,” Annie said, “or we’d have been flooded out of these huts.” Carey had deepened the right-angled trench that had been cut above and to one side of the hut, in order to channel rainwater away from it.

  Because their quarters were so cramped, they had built another A-frame hut in the clearing. It was neater and more securely built than the first hut, and they were all proud that Carey had planned it and they had completed it without Jonathan’s supervision. When Jonathan recovered, he would share the second hut with Annie and Carey.

  Heat and the moist atmosphere of the jungle resulted in rot and decay. Their huts now smelled of damp and mildew, their possessions were covered with green lines of mold, their clothes yielded even faster to rot than to wear and tear. The knees went first, followed by the seat of the pants, after which the crotch gave way and then the trouser cuffs. Shirts and jackets gave at the elbows, then at the back where they had been brushed by tree branches.

  In the week since the cyclone season had started, the women had become accustomed to the pattern of the weather. The mornings were sometimes sunny, but clouds started gathering at midday, when the close air was so oppressive they felt as if the heaviness lay physically upon their shoulders, as they waited for the downpour to start.

  The tropical rain always flooded down with a sudden crushing weight, like the battering of the waterfall. During the monsoon storms, it was impossible for the women to do anything but stay in their huts for a couple of hours until the rain stopped, as suddenly as it started.