by Judy Nunn
‘Indeed,’ Martin agreed.
Jean-François had quickly cut to the chase regarding Christian names. ‘Please call me Jean-François,’ he’d said as he’d warmly shaken Martin’s hand. ‘Your wife and I have already achieved first-name basis through our mutual involvement with the Poilama family. I am deeply indebted to Jane,’ he’d added with a smile in her direction, ‘for all the help she has offered my good friend Savi and his family.’ Thackeray would respond well to the idea that he had a personal relationship with his servants, Jean-François thought contemptuously. Just like Godfrey Tomlinson, the man was a native-lover.
‘I look forward very much to meeting the Poilamas,’ Martin said.
‘Fine people,’ Jean-François replied vociferously, ‘fine people. A sherry? Or would you prefer Scotch?’
Jean-François was bent upon impressing both the Thackerays this evening. He would establish a man-to-man relationship with Martin, he’d decided, which would be easy; men were always flattered when he made them feel they were his masculine equals. Particularly when, like Thackeray, they were not. The impression upon Jane would be of a more subliminal nature. The table was indicative of his opulence, and he’d already hinted at the trips abroad, all of which would represent an enviable lifestyle to the wife of a missionary doctor. But he was sure, as the evening progressed, the message would become even stronger. Jane Thackeray would recognise not only the difference in the world he could offer her, but the difference between her husband and a real man.
‘This is Sera,’ Jean-François said to Martin as Sera entered from the kitchen with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. ‘Sera is the wife of my good friend Savi.’
‘How do you do, sir.’ Sera put the tray down and addressed Martin with grace and assurance. ‘I am most pleased to meet you.’ Then she darted a quick sideways glance at Jane, who smiled her congratulations. Sera’s English had been faultless.
Martin was struck by the woman’s poise and beauty, and enchanted by the fact that she had obviously rehearsed the phrase. Even more so that she had rehearsed it in preparation for meeting the husband of her good friend Jane; he had noticed the women’s exchange.
‘How do you do, Sera,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I have heard so much about you and your family.’
Sera’s assurance faltered. She looked at the outstretched hand, then at the Masta, fearful and unsure what to do.
A flash of irritation surged through Jean-François, but he covered it in an instant. ‘Go ahead, Sera,’ he said with an encouraging smile, ‘shake hands with Dr Thackeray.’
‘I look forward to meeting your husband and children,’ Martin said as they shook.
‘Thank you, sir.’ She didn’t dare look at the Masta, but stared at the floor before disappearing once again into the kitchen.
‘I must apologise,’ Martin said to Jean-François.
‘Why, my dear Martin? Why must you apologise?’ The Frenchman gave a bewildered shrug, although he knew why Thackeray was apologising, and so the man damn well should.
‘My behaviour was not within the boundaries of the protocol established in your house,’ Martin said formally. ‘It was wrong of me, and I sincerely beg your pardon.’ He didn’t really wish to beg Marat’s pardon; he wished to beg Sera’s. It had indeed been wrong of him to adopt such a casual manner with a servant in another man’s house, but Marat had professed to a personal friendship with the Poilamas. If such had been the case, Martin thought, then his own untoward behaviour would have caused merely a minor embarrassment. But he had seen the annoyance in Marat’s eyes, and he had seen the fear in Sera’s. The man was lying, Martin realised. The Poilamas were no more to him than servants. Why was he pretending otherwise?
‘Sera’s English was perfect,’ Jane said, wishing that Martin would relax. He was being so stiff and formal and typically British. ‘She’s been practising that phrase to impress you, my darling. I’m sure Savi has had her saying it over and over.’ She turned to Jean-François. ‘Savi’s English is excellent these days.’ Savi had called in at the boathouse with little Pascal only three days previously and they’d had an extensive lesson. Jane didn’t notice the flicker of interest in Jean-François’s eyes as she continued. ‘He has the most astonishing ear for languages.’
When had she seen Savi? he thought. And where? ‘All due to your excellent tutelage, Jane,’ he said.
‘Oh no, he’s a natural,’ she laughed. ‘I can claim no credit for that.’
The meal was superb, as was to be expected. Jean-François had gone to great pains to ensure it.
‘The beef is home-grown and of prime quality,’ Jane parroted and she and Jean-François laughed.
‘You must take your wife in hand, Martin,’ the Frenchman said, ‘she is making fun of me.’
‘Oh really? In what way?’
‘I have a tendency to boast of my livestock,’ Jean-François admitted, ‘as Jane well knows. And indeed Mrs Bale,’ he said, wary of appearing too exclusive. He looked to Jane who gave a smile by way of confirmation. ‘Our good friend Hilary has also been witness to my … what is that wonderful English expression …? To my “bragging”.’ He smiled. But Martin didn’t return the smile, he simply nodded politely, and Jean-François was aware that, despite his best efforts, he wasn’t winning the Englishman. Not that perhaps it mattered. He sensed that Thackeray was coming off second best in his wife’s eyes this evening, but strangely enough he would have preferred the man to admire him.
‘Oh yes,’ Jane agreed, ‘Hilary thought the ham was the most delicious sensation she’d ever experienced.’
‘That may be going too far,’ Jean-François replied with a modest laugh.
‘The beef is certainly excellent,’ Martin said.
The conversation turned to the war. The Guadalcanal campaign raged to the north and casualties were arriving in increasing and alarming numbers at the Bellevue Hospital. It was malaria, however, which could well prove a bigger killer than the Japanese bombs, Martin remarked. ‘Malaria is currently at a crisis point and most urgently in need of address.’
‘The Americans are fortunate to have you and your lovely wife at hand during such a time,’ Jean-François said.
‘Yes, I am very proud of Jane and her work.’ For the first time since he’d arrived Martin appeared to relax, smiling and clasping Jane’s hand. ‘My wife is an extraordinary woman.’
‘She most certainly is, Martin. You’re a lucky man.’
Then, as if to avoid any topic that touched upon the personal, Martin introduced the subject of the government’s relationship with the military.
Throughout the evening Jean-François was at a loss as to how to approach the Englishman. His attempts at masculine camaraderie met with little success.
‘You must come riding with me, Martin,’ he said. ‘In the plantation at dusk.’ He waxed rhapsodic for Jane’s benefit. ‘The moon through the coconut trees, then out on to the flat at full gallop, nothing before you but the sea.’
‘I don’t ride,’ Martin said. ‘I’m rather frightened of horses actually, I have the feeling they don’t like me.’
Jean-François was amazed by the man’s admission. Didn’t he realise what a weakling he sounded? Didn’t he care how he must appear in the eyes of his wife?
Jane wanted to laugh. It was just like Martin, his sense of humour was so unpredictable, and she waited for him to share the moment. But he didn’t, and it fell rather flat. The Frenchman hadn’t realised he was joking, she thought and then she wondered herself whether he had been. She sensed that Martin didn’t like the Frenchman, and she decided that he was being deliberately impolite. It was so unlike him, she thought.
‘I must admit I’m a little fearful of horses myself,’ she said, simply to fill in the awkward pause. She’d had no experience of horses at all, apart from the days when she and Phoebe had ridden with Maude Cookson in Titchfield, all three of them perched on the old white pony, and she’d had no fear of horses then. ‘I suppose it’s just a la
ck of experience,’ she said, and the conversation then turned to the safer and more impersonal subject of the Americans and the tumultuous effect their presence had had upon the islands.
It was the after-effects that were of far deeper concern to Martin. ‘The war cannot last forever,’ he said, ‘and I fear for the islanders when the Americans leave.’
To Jane’s relief it appeared that Martin and Jean-François had finally found a topic upon which they were in mutual agreement. They were both of the opinion that the disruption to the islanders’ lives would leave them in chaos when the American forces finally withdrew from the New Hebrides.
‘It will be difficult for them to adjust to their old way of life,’ Martin said. ‘The government will be unable to offer them the luxuries afforded them by the Americans.’
‘Nor should the government attempt to do so,’ Jean-François adamantly replied. The islanders had become greedy in his opinion, and the sooner they returned to the old status quo, the better. But he added, in case he’d sounded uncaring, ‘It would be a corruption of their basic lifestyle and values.’
‘I agree,’ Martin said, although he suspected the Frenchman’s motives were far from altruistic. ‘However, their lives were corrupted well before the arrival of the Americans. The colony owes the local population education on all levels and the chance to achieve, should they wish. Certainly they are owed the opportunity to have a say in their society, instead of being subjugated and used merely as a labour force.’
‘Oh yes, indeed,’ Jean-François nodded. Thackeray was not only a native-lover, the man was an idealist. The worst kind, he thought.
Jane said nothing, aware that Jean-François’s views on the islanders’ education did not concur with hers and Martin’s, and that the Frenchman was agreeing simply to keep the peace. But she couldn’t really blame him. Martin had been far from personable all evening.
An hour later, when they took their leave, Jean-François shook her hand instead of kissing it. Had Martin inhibited him that much? she wondered, and she felt a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment.
‘Thank you, Jean-François,’ she said, ‘I have had a most enjoyable evening.’ A quick glance to Martin. ‘We both have.’
‘The pleasure has been all mine, Jane.’ She was annoyed with her husband, he thought. Excellent.
The evening had not gone as Jean-François had planned. Martin Thackeray was not as impressionable as he’d assumed. But perhaps the outcome would serve an even better purpose than his original intention, he thought, revising his tactics. He would continue to be gracious towards Thackeray at all times, and the more the man closed off, the greater would become his wife’s annoyance. The seeds of discontent had been sown.
‘It has been an honour, Martin,’ Jean-François said as the two men shook hands. ‘I have for so long admired your work.’
‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ Martin replied. Not once had he called the man by his Christian name.
‘What on earth is the matter with you, Marty?’ Jane asked as they drove away from the house. ‘Why were you so insulting to Jean-François?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Yes you were.’
‘In what particular way?’
He was being pig-headed in demanding specifics, she thought. ‘You were so remote,’ she said.
‘That’s hardly insulting.’
‘And you didn’t call him Jean-François once all night.’ There, she thought, that was specific enough.
‘Which is surely my prerogative. Where’s the insult in that?’
Jane was silent as they turned onto the coast road. It was a glorious still night, the sky was cloudless and the moon nearly full, its light rippling across the ocean’s surface. Under normal circumstances she would have been leaning out of the car window, drinking in the balmy air and admiring the view, but she was studying her husband instead. His profile in the moonlight was quite clear to her, and she knew that he was deep in thought. He adopted the same furrow-browed intensity when he was solving a problem, and she usually left him alone and waited for him to come up with the answer, which he invariably shared with her. But this time she didn’t leave him alone.
‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she demanded.
‘No.’
‘Why? He was charming to you the entire evening.’
Martin ignored her question. ‘Godfrey was right, Jane. I don’t want you to see Marat again, except in the normal social course of events.’
‘Good heavens, Marty, why on earth …’
‘Promise me,’ he said, his eyes not leaving the road, ‘that in my absence you will not be alone in that man’s company.’
‘Very well,’ she said stiffly. Never before had he given her an order. ‘Of course I promise.’
They said nothing for quite some time, both staring fixedly through the windscreen at the road that dipped and wound its way around the coast, eerily illuminated by the car’s headlights.
After five minutes or so, Jane stole a glance at him. His face was still stern, deep in thought. What was it? she wondered. Her initial annoyance had faded and she wondered what problem he was trying to solve. Then she sat back and waited for him to share the answer with her, as he always did.
But Martin had no answer. Only questions. Questions that reared themselves in his brain, one after the other, relentlessly. Why couldn’t Jane see the Frenchman for what he was? Jane, who was normally such a fine judge of character. Her initial reaction to the Frenchman had been one of dislike. So what had changed her opinion of the man? Many women were susceptible to flattery and charm, but Jane had never been one of them. Her lack of vanity, refreshing in one so beautiful, prevented it. Was she attracted to the man, perhaps without knowing it herself? And then the questions became a torment.
Martin remembered how they had made love on the day of his return to Vila. It had been when they’d come home from their drive in the late afternoon and Jane had initiated it. They’d been hot and sweaty and they hadn’t even washed, but she’d aroused him with her desire. There, in the living room, the sleeping child in his cot, she’d whispered, ‘I’ve missed you, Marty,’ and her open mouth had been against his, her body pressing close, and then suddenly they’d been in the bedroom. They’d never before made love during the day. It was not modesty, but rather mutual consent that dictated their lovemaking take place under the cloak of darkness. Then they would caress each other and whisper their endearments and share their bodies as they shared their very souls.
Martin had presumed Jane’s urgency, and his own arousal, had been the result of his long absence and their mutual desire. But they had made love twice since, both times initiated by Jane, and both times she had been more intense, more sexually urgent, than in the past.
Martin had noticed many changes in his wife, all of which he respected. The growth of her independence, her strength of character and command, all a result of her work with the Americans and her deep commitment to the islanders. He had presumed the emergence of her sexuality might also be a result of this change. But now a far more ominous question presented itself. Was she dissatisfied with that aspect of their marriage?
She was a young woman, barely twenty-three years old, and he was the only man she’d known. Did she need more than he had to give? He’d not been a virgin himself when they’d married, but his fumbling sexual experiences as a young man had left him feeling guilty, sinful. And then his life had been devoted to his studies, to the church and medicine. Sex had meant little to him until it could be shared in a loving union. He had found that union with Jane. He loved her with all his heart, as he knew she loved him. But had a man like Marat aroused a need in her that could not be satisfied by their marriage?
He remembered her saying she’d felt guilty, disloyal even, for having dined alone with Marat. He’d been surprised at the time. Why should she feel guilty? he’d wondered. Unless, he now asked himself, she was aware of a sexual feeling between herself and Marat. The Frenchman was handso
me, virile, masculine. A potent mixture. And Martin had been aware of the man’s attraction to his wife. Had Jane fallen victim to his allure? Was that the cause of her newfound sexuality and her restlessness?
Martin was overwhelmed by his own sense of disloyalty at such a notion. How dare he question his wife’s honour and veracity. He didn’t, he told himself. He didn’t for one moment. He trusted Jane implicitly. But the questions kept whirling like dervishes in his brain.
Her voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Did we just have our first fight, Marty?’ Jane was now worried by his preoccupation. Was he angry with her?
He took his eyes from the road for the first time since they’d left the plantation and, in the half light, she was looking up at him like a worried little girl.
‘No, my love,’ he smiled reassuringly, ‘we did not.’
‘Oh good.’ She relaxed. ‘So what is it exactly that you don’t like about Jean-François?’ she asked, genuinely interested.
‘You really wish to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I found him rather vulgar.’
Jane was surprised. Vulgar? The sophisticated Jean-François Marat? How horrified he would be to hear such a term applied to him.
‘Now really, my love,’ Martin said playfully, ‘were you impressed by that show of excess? Three people dining and the table laid for royalty. Who was he expecting, King George?’
Jane laughed. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said, ‘it was a bit excessive.’
‘And the horseback riding. Galloping out onto the flats in the moonlight. Didn’t you find that a little much?’
She hadn’t at the time, but she supposed she did now and she was getting a fit of the giggles. ‘Well, you certainly did. Oh, Marty, you were so rude, I didn’t know where to look.’
‘Neither did Marat. The man thought I was totally spineless and despised me even more for admitting it.’
‘Yes, he did, didn’t he?’ The giggles overtook her as she recalled the look on Jean-François’s face, which she hadn’t really understood until Marty had explained it.