by Judy Nunn
It certainly was, he thought. ‘Nonsense, I’m pleased that they have been granted such an opportunity to learn. And it’s Jean-François, don’t forget,’ he prompted with a smile. ‘Did the children get along?’ he asked, looking at Ronnie who was chattering away excitedly.
‘Oh yes, he and Marie became great friends, but she’s thoroughly exhausted him. She’s further advanced in the toddler stage, and he kept falling over trying to keep up with her. He’ll sleep like a log this afternoon.’
How convenient that will be in the future, Jean-François thought.
‘Allo, Missus Tack.’ Selena greeted Jane at the front door of the big house, taking Ronnie from her and making a fuss of the child. She was pleased to be serving lunch for Missus Tack and her baby; Sera usually waited table when the Masta entertained. Selena had even made a special dish of mashed banana and papaya for Ronnie, just the way baby Marie liked it.
The interior of the house was simple but elegant, designed for life in the tropics. A huge, timber-floored living space was surrounded by shuttered windows, which remained open to the verandah on hot, still days, and locked firmly shut when the monsoons threatened. To the right was a solid, twelve-seat dining table, to the left a miscellany of sofas and lounge chairs in rattan and bamboo, and two ceiling fans whirred continuously from the exposed beams overhead.
The bedrooms and bathroom were through to the rear of the house, Jean-François said, and he sat on a rattan sofa bouncing Ronnie on his knee whilst Jane visited the bathroom.
‘What an extremely amiable child,’ he said when she returned, and he continued to play with the baby whilst Selena served luncheon, Ronnie chortling away all the while.
Jane was touched to discover that Selena had prepared a special dish for the baby.
‘But of course,’ Jean-François said, as if he’d personally instructed it. For once Selena had done something right, he thought.
‘It was hardly necessary, Jean-François,’ she laughed, ‘I did bring my own supply of baby food.’ The name sprang quite easily to her lips as she watched him dandling her son on his knee. Indeed ‘M’sieur Marat’ would have sounded quite ridiculous under the circumstances.
‘I wouldn’t hear of it, I invited you both to luncheon, if you recall.’
The food was simple but delicious, thinly sliced rare roast beef and a salad with an exotic lime juice dressing.
‘In the heat of the day,’ he said, ‘I presumed that you would prefer something light. And the beef is home-grown,’ he boasted. ‘We rear prime cattle on the plantation.’
Jane congratulated Selena on the meal, but Jean-François corrected her. ‘Selena doesn’t cook,’ he said. ‘Sera prepared the meat last night and the dressing is of her own invention.’
Selena left the room scowling. It had been she who had prepared the meal. She had taken great pains to slice the meat thinly, and she had made the salad herself. Why did Sera always get the credit?
For Jane, the luncheon at Chanson de Mer proved a most pleasurable experience, and the drive home equally relaxing. She said as much to Jean-François as he bade her farewell at the front door of her cottage, the Frenchman having refused the offer of a cup of tea.
‘Thank you, Jean-François, it has been a lovely day.’
He noticed no reticence as she said his name.
‘Perhaps we should make it a weekly event,’ he suggested. ‘I wouldn’t want Savi and Sera to miss out on their lessons.’ In the slight hesitation that followed, he gestured to the child fast asleep in her arms. ‘Besides, Ronnie and Marie have obviously embarked upon a lifetime friendship.’
She laughed and agreed to the same time next week, and he wondered, during the drive home to Chanson de Mer, whether he might accomplish the seduction before her husband returned. Not that it really mattered, Martin Thackeray’s work would always require his absence. But it was an interesting possibility to contemplate.
Jean-François’s pursuit of Jane Thackeray was rudely interrupted, however, when the very next day Vila was reduced to a state of utter confusion.
They arrived unannounced, in the dawn light of 4 May, and the local population awoke in terror at the sight. The vast, peaceful waters of Mele Bay were massed with warships.
Many islanders fled to the hills in fear. The Japanese had secretly invaded and were about to attack, they thought, and it took some time to convince them otherwise.
Of the five huge warships, surrounded by scores of naval escorts and attendant vessels, four bore the US flag and one the Dutch. The Americans had finally arrived in Vila.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The US Navy Advance Base TF-9156, under the command of Brigadier General William Rose, was code-named ‘Roses’ and, the very day of the troops’ arrival, headquarters were set up in the large, two-storey, red-roofed building on the hill overlooking Vila which had once been the home of the British judge.
The vast task force set about its work immediately. An entire infrastructure was needed to support the military population and its tens of thousands of tons of machinery. There were roads, wharves and airfields to be constructed; barracks, depots and a hospital to be built; refrigeration units, support installations and defences to be organised, and all with lightning speed.
The mammoth undertaking was carried out with all the efficiency typical of the indefatigable US Army Construction Battalions, affectionately known as the Seabees, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Within days, it appeared, the Americans had taken over not only Vila, but the whole of Efate.
Airstrips were being constructed on the north-east corner of the island at Quoin Hill; the safer anchorage of Havannah Harbour had been selected for the fleet; a naval camp had been set up at Malapoa Point; and a road, intended to circle the entire island, was already under construction.
Local labour was required by the military to assist the Seabees, principally in the clearing of land for the airstrips and roads, and for the never-ending task of unloading cargo as fresh troops, supplies and machinery arrived. Over one thousand islanders were recruited, many of them travelling from neighbouring islands when the word spread like wildfire that they could get rich working for the Americans.
The US military, displeased by the inefficiency of the colonial agents, quickly undertook their own recruitment and supervision of labour, which in turn displeased the government.
If the islanders were to work directly for the American forces, the colonial authorities maintained, then they must be paid no more than one and a half shillings a day. The standard rate of pay was twenty shillings a month at most, and it was feared that any more would cause postwar inflation.
Whilst agreeing amongst themselves that the strange Condominium government was a joke, the Americans adhered to the rules, but they also lavished upon their new native friends gifts of US food rations, clothes and cigarettes.
The islanders became eager recruits, despite the fact that they were unaccustomed to working so hard and that the labour was difficult and tedious. The Americans fascinated them in every way. They could do God’s work. To the New Hebridean natives, the bulldozing of trees could not be comprehended as the work of man. And there were black soldiers, just like them. The Negro servicemen were a source of great interest, and the apparent equality they shared with their white brothers was astounding. And the American bases were places of huge excitement. In the domed quonset huts of corrugated iron that had sprung out of nowhere, loud music played from speakers in the walls and food was kept in iceboxes. To the islanders, the Americans represented a whole new magic way of life.
In turn, the Americans, upon discovering the poor living conditions of the natives, became even more lavish in their generosity, their gifts extending from food and tobacco to radios and iceboxes and furniture. The colonial authorities strongly disapproved, but there was little they could do about it.
‘Jane!’
Jane was coming out of the post office with Hilary Bale when she heard her name called, and she looked across the roa
d to see Jean-François waving at her through the chaos.
The main thoroughfare of Vila, with its cacophonous noise and seething activity, was barely recognisable these days. Crowds of off-duty American servicemen competed for bargains, teams of labourers marched by on their way to work, and a constant stream of trucks and machinery laboured its way through the centre of town, swirling dust in the air and scattering the jostling hordes in its wake.
She watched as Jean-François crossed the road, narrowly avoiding a jeep, to arrive breathless beside her.
‘If the Japanese don’t kill us, the Americans will,’ he laughed. ‘I haven’t seen you for over a month, it has been far too long.’
‘Hello, Jean-François.’ Jane was about to introduce Hilary, but Marat had already grasped the woman’s hand in both of his.
‘And Madame Bale, how lovely to see you.’ He hadn’t noticed the storekeeper’s wife; he’d had eyes only for Jane Thackeray. ‘I had the pleasure of your good husband’s company over a card game last night at Reid’s,’ he said as he kissed Hilary’s hand.
‘I know, Harry told me,’ she beamed, enjoying the experience. Jean-François Marat was devilishly handsome and he made her feel so attractive. ‘He also told me that you won as usual.’
‘Only a harmless amount, I assure you.’ He always flirted with Hilary Bale, he knew she enjoyed it. In her mid-thirties, a little overweight, with an easygoing manner and a New Zealand accent slight enough not to be grating, he found her quite attractive. Prior to the war in the Pacific, her husband had often been out of town on purchasing trips, and Jean-François had had his eye on her for a while. It would have been so easy to lure her to the little apartment above his office in Vila, where he conducted most of his casual liaisons. But he was no longer interested in Hilary Bale, just as he was no longer interested in casual liaisons. He turned to Jane.
‘Savi and Sera ask after you constantly. They miss you, and so does little Pascal.’
‘Yes,’ Jane said. She’d been thinking a lot about the Poilama family, and felt that she’d let them down. They were her friends and she’d promised them regular English lessons. ‘Do tell them how sorry I am,’ she said, ‘but my work with the US medical corps has left me so little time to spare.’
Something had happened, Jean-François thought. When she had cancelled their previous arrangement, saying that she had offered her services to the Americans as an interpreter and that she would contact him after the chaos had settled, he had respected her wishes. But as the weeks had passed, he’d wondered whether she was avoiding him. He had thought of calling upon her, but had decided that an accidental meeting would better serve his advantage, and he knew that she regularly visited the post office.
‘How is Dr Thackeray?’ he enquired, making pleasant conversation as he studied her. Yes, she had been avoiding him, he thought, her manner was different, she was once again on her guard. Why? Jean-François was puzzled. What had turned her against him? ‘He has not yet returned, I hear.’
‘No, he’s staying a little longer to assist the Americans. There are some health problems with the native recruits on Espiritu Santo, just as there are here.’
A second American base had been established on Espiritu Santo, the 100,000 troops that had arrived doubling the island’s population almost overnight, and five hundred native workers had been employed to assist the Seabees.
‘We’re in regular contact,’ Jane continued, ‘and we both agree that much of the illness is due to the issue of military rations and the islanders’ change of diet.’
‘How very interesting,’ he said. It was. He could use the information as further ammunition to keep his workers. If they went to the Americans, they would get sick, he’d tell them. ‘It is fortunate then, for my own workers’ sake, that they have remained loyal to me.’ They hadn’t remained loyal to him at all, they’d remained loyal to Savi, and at Savi’s suggestion he’d even started paying them. A pittance in comparison with military pay, certainly, but enough to keep most of them. Savi had been right when he’d said a bullock a month was no longer enough. Jean-François was sick to death of the Americans, they were disrupting his life.
‘The Americans have a lot to answer for, do you not agree, Madame Bale?’ He smiled at Hilary, taking care to include her in the conversation.
‘They have certainly taken over Vila,’ Hilary agreed. Not that Harry was complaining, she thought, business was booming, and she personally loved the presence of the Americans. Vila had never been so exciting.
‘I think the dietary issue will resolve itself,’ Jane said. ‘The medical corps are aware of the problem.’
She didn’t go into any detail about the role she had played, but Jane Thackeray had been indispensable to the Americans, firstly as an interpreter, then as a medical authority on the New Hebridean natives and their dietary habits. Captain Porter, Commander of the US Navy Base Hospital Unit, and his team had decided a vitamin deficiency was causing the outbreak of diarrhea and, more worryingly, beri-beri. Jane had suggested, just as Martin had done on Espiritu Santo, that the islanders be returned to their traditional staple fare of fish, yams and coconuts. Captain Porter’s team had followed the advice, also adding unpolished rice to the natives’ rations and, already, the beri-beri rates were dropping.
‘I am to visit the base at Havannah Harbour tomorrow,’ Jane said, ‘to address the labour recruits on the importance of avoiding American rations.’ She felt the need to stress how busy her itinerary had become, aware that Jean-François was wondering why she’d avoided him. And she did owe him an explanation, she thought, since they had parted on such amicable terms. But what could she say? She couldn’t very well tell him about Godfrey.
‘You were alone with Marat in his house?’ Godfrey Tomlinson had been openly shocked when she’d told him she’d lunched with Jean-François at Chanson de Mer.
‘Not exactly alone, Godfrey,’ she’d replied, amused by his outrage. ‘Selena, his maid, was there and Ronnie was with me. It was just a simple luncheon.’
‘A housegirl and an infant hardly qualify as chaperones. It was most unseemly of you to accept such an invitation.’
She’d laughed out loud. He sounded so quaintly Victorian that she’d even wondered for a moment whether he might be joking. ‘Why unseemly? I’ve dined alone with you in your house.’
‘I am not a libertine, Jane,’ he’d said, ignoring her flippancy. ‘Marat is. And he has designs upon you.’
Although he still sounded old-fashioned, she was no longer laughing.
‘I never spoke of it at the time,’ Godfrey continued, ‘because, frankly, it was embarrassing, but Marat’s intentions were evident the night you first met him. You felt it yourself. Do you not remember?’
Yes, she remembered. She remembered feeling confronted, but she had dismissed her reservations. She’d decided that she’d been wrong. The Frenchman was considerate. He was charming and thoughtful, his company was interesting and his conversation stimulating. She felt defensive. Godfrey’s intense dislike of Jean-François was colouring his argument.
‘He drove me to the Poilamas’ house so that I could give Savi and Sera the English lesson I promised them,’ she said rather primly. ‘It was quite natural he should offer me lunch.’
‘And I presume these English lessons are to become a regular ritual?’ Godfrey asked with more than a touch of sarcasm.
‘Yes,’ Jane answered rebelliously, the lecture beginning to annoy her. ‘Savi and Sera welcome the tuition, both for themselves and for their son, and as they are my friends, I’m more than happy to oblige.’
‘And have you asked yourself, Jane, why Jean-François Marat would welcome his servants learning English?’ The old man’s steel-blue eyes glared into hers as if he was trying to drill commonsense into her skull through the sheer force of his will. ‘It is the very last thing he would want.’
Godfrey had left without drinking his tea. And he’d left disappointed, perhaps even disillusioned. Were Jane’s
behaviour and defence of Marat a sign of her naivete, as he’d initially thought, or was she perhaps welcoming the Frenchman’s attentions? He told himself it was none of his business, but the sooner Martin Thackeray got home to his wife the better, he thought.
And Jane was left in a state of confusion.
‘Well, Jane, if you are to visit Havannah Harbour tomorrow,’ Jean-François said, ‘we should make the most of today.’ He turned the full force of his charm upon Hilary Bale. ‘Can I tempt you ladies to an early lunch at Reid’s?’
‘That was exactly our intention,’ Hilary replied before Jane could answer. ‘We’d be delighted if you joined us, wouldn’t we, Jane?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I have an even better suggestion. Why don’t we lunch at Chanson de Mer?’ Again the invitation was directed to Hilary. ‘Perhaps Harry could join us, we could make it a party?’
‘Oh no, Harry is working at the store, we each have one day off a week.’
‘How sad for Harry,’ he smiled, ‘but not for me. It means I shall have the ladies’ company all to myself. I insist you agree.’
‘It’s a wonderful idea,’ Hilary applauded, thrilled at the prospect of a visit to Chanson de Mer. She’d been hoping for a long time that Marat might ask Harry and her to dine at his house, but Harry had said that the Frenchman was exclusive with his personal invitations.
‘Mainly Frenchies, Hil,’ he’d said. ‘He’s good company at Reid’s but he only invites his own kind back to the plantation.’
‘We accept,’ Hilary said, ‘don’t we, Jane?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Jane apologised, much to Hilary’s horror. ‘It’s a long drive to Undine Bay and I promised Mary she could have the afternoon off. Mary is looking after Ronnie,’ she said to Jean-François.
‘Then Mary and Ronnie must come too,’ he answered. ‘I’m sure Mary will welcome the opportunity to see her good friend Sera. And even better,’ he said as the idea hit him, ‘you can give Savi and Sera their long-awaited English lesson. That is,’ he added, turning again to Hilary, ‘if Madame Bale can put up with my company for an hour whilst you do so.’