Papua

by Peter Watt

  Two native police, wearing their uniform lap lap dress and short sleeved collarless shirt, stood by, their single shot .303 rifles slung on their shoulders.

  On Sir Hubert’s instructions the expedition members had been assigned into Jack’s care. The convicts had been gaoled for infractions against their labour contracts to the plantation owners. George marvelled at how shiny black their skin was. He had lived for a short time in Africa but could not remember seeing men as dark before. ‘Buka men,’ Jack had commented when George asked. ‘Good men to have. They come from the Solomon Islands.’

  A small but solidly built Oriental man stood in the boat. Isokihi Komine was the Japanese boat-builder and owner of a small fleet of coastal boats that plied the Papua and New Guinea waters with trade supplies. He recruited natives and occasionally collected beche-de-mer, the ugly sea slugs whose flesh was highly sought by the Chinese for their cuisine. George noticed that Sen and the Japanese boat owner avoided each other. ‘Monkey men,’ Sen had scowled to George. ‘True barbarians.’

  George was a little surprised. He had expected that, as both men were of Oriental descent, that they would have found common ground.

  Towards mid morning the supplies of tents, tinned food, rice, flour, sugar, salt, tea, medical supplies, guns and ammunition were loaded aboard. Despite his misgivings at leaving Iris behind, George was caught up in the air of adventure on the wharf. Curious natives – men, women and children – had gathered to see off the small expedition.

  Iris stood with her sister and brother-in-law a short distance away. She wore a dress that fell to just past her knees and held a parasol against the tropical sun. George glanced at her. Her deep and beautiful eyes were watching him with a yearning.

  ‘You will come back to me,’ she whispered in his ear as he made ready to board the boat. ‘I love you very much.’ And with an impulsive gesture she wrapped her arm around the tall man’s waist to hold him close.

  George felt a lump in his throat. He bent to kiss her on the top of her head. ‘I will always love you,’ he whispered. ‘And we will be wed upon my return.’

  Iris disengaged herself, her eyes wide with shock. ‘You would marry me?’ she gasped. ‘But I am Chinese!’

  ‘You are a woman first,’ George said gently. ‘And I don’t care whether you be Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian. All I know is that in my whole lifetime I have never met a woman as beautiful as you.’ George turned lest she see the raging emotion in his face. He had grown up in a world where such expression of emotions in public was not the done thing. He strode away to leave Iris standing alone in stunned rapture.

  Her brother-in-law glanced sideways at her. He had never seen Iris so stunningly beautiful as now. Whatever the Englishman had whispered to Iris had made her a very happy woman but he hoped it had not been a proposal of marriage. English gentlemen did not marry half-caste women if they ever planned to return to European civilisation. It was a formula for disaster.

  George stepped down into the boat and Jack grinned at him. ‘Saw what happened on the wharf,’ he said with a broad grin from under his floppy bush hat. ‘Kind of get the impression you went and did something you will regret for the rest of your life.’

  ‘I was going to ask you to be my best man when we return to Moresby, old chap,’ George replied casually. ‘Unless you have any objections to a pom marrying a Chink.’

  Jack slapped his friend on the back. ‘I would be honoured, old cobber,’ he replied as the ropes were cast off and the little wooden boat puffed up pressure in her boiler. ‘My only objection is that Iris is too good for any pom – let alone you.’

  George stood at the stern of the boat and watched Iris standing on the wharf beside Sen and his wife until she was merely a tiny figure with a parasol. He did not take his eyes off her as the boat steamed out into the wide harbour. Soon he could not see her at all. They set a course south east for their meeting with whatever would be their destiny.

  Iris was not the only person to watch the boat depart. From Ela Beach Tim O’Leary also observed the departing expedition. Beside him stood a smaller, dark skinned man with black eyes.

  ‘That pommy bastard seems to be pretty chummy with Sen’s sister-in-law,’ O’Leary grunted through split lips. ‘The time to settle with Kelly will start with that pommy bastard first,’ he added as he turned away to walk back into the tiny town of Port Moresby. The swarthy Corsican nodded and followed him. Whatever his brooding partner in business was scheming was sure to be brutal. It was the nature of the man. A nature not unlike his own.

  As evening approached Isokihi steered into shore. They could camp and leave at first light the next day. The first night of the voyage was spent on a pretty and secluded beach west of Moresby but plagued with minute sandflies. Jack gave orders to his police to be alert throughout the night. He was not familiar with the country they were now in and his vigilance was a result of years on the Western Front. To stay alive meant being careful.

  Timber was fetched from the nearby jungle and a fire lit for cooking – and to keep the overly curious giant salt-water crocodiles at a safe distance. The Japanese captain was a taciturn man however and kept to his own company. He sat away from the party eating a meal he prepared himself while the native police and convicts shared rice and tinned fish and Jack prepared a damper loaf of bread and opened a tin of bully beef.

  ‘Does it get any better than this?’ Jack asked after they had finished the meal and were lying back on the sandy beach amongst the dried rows of seaweed strewn along the shoreline. The moonless night was clear and balmy and the stars twinkled with a brilliance that almost hurt the eyes.

  George did not answer but puffed contentedly on a cigar as he stared upward and listened to the gentle swish of the tropical waters lapping at the edge of the beach. He was trying not to think about the scent of Iris’s hair as he had bent to kiss her on the wharf hours earlier. What would his family think when he returned to England with an Oriental woman as his wife? Ah, to imagine the shock on their aristocratic faces, his father all a fluster. Not since his discharge from his father’s regiment would there be a scene like it.

  But George was not the only one thinking about a woman. Jack stared at the stars and the face of Erika Mann floated before him. Why was it that she should haunt his life when he knew nothing about her? She was merely a two-dimensional image on a piece of paper and yet through the words of her letters to a long dead fiancé she was real to him. Then his thoughts drifted to the sad memory of a little boy watching him board the ship.

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me more about that chap I had the altercation with back in Moresby?’ George asked.

  ‘It was back in the year I enlisted,’ Jack answered. ‘O’Leary was working for Sen as a recruiter of native boys to work on the plantations around Moresby. He and his partner, a sleazy Frenchman, got themselves a bit of a reputation for shooting natives who refused to go with them, to be signed up as labour. Well anyway, I was staying with Sen when O’Leary turned up with a bunch of boys to be signed up. He also had a young girl with him for some reason. I got to find out why he had the girl one night when I went for a walk. He had the girl down in the bushes and was raping her. I kind of got a bit upset and told him to leave her alone. He told me to bugger off so I pulled my revolver and shot at him. When Sen learned of what had happened he fired O’Leary on the spot. O’Leary swore he would kill me one day, and I expect he will try.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Jack,’ George said. ‘But I have a feeling that Mr O’Leary may have added me to his list of persona non grata.’

  ‘No doubt he has,’ Jack agreed. ‘Just stay out of his way and everything will be okay. As it is, Sen is also on his dance card. The only thing is that Sen has some good men around him who keep an eye out.’

  ‘Why don’t the authorities here curb O’Leary?’ George questioned.

  Jack laughed. ‘This is Papua. This is what the Yanks would call a wild frontier. Here men settle their differences between
themselves.’

  George was afraid that would be the answer. But years of war in the trenches had taught him that civilisation was a thin veneer. All men had a dark side and frontiers were merely places where it could be expressed without any real fear of retribution.

  He was lulled into a sleep by the sounds of soft laughter from around the campfire and the gentle swish of the sea. But sleep did not guarantee peace. In his dreams he was with Iris but they were in the trenches under an artillery barrage. Iris was calling to him and she was covered in blood. George twitched and groaned as he attempted to fight his way through the growing piles of body parts torn asunder by the shards of red hot hissing shrapnel.

  Iris closed the picture frame on the photograph that the houseboy had taken of her and George together in the fernery. Dademo had been given a quick familiarisation of the camera and grinned self-consciously as he lined up his subjects standing side by side. The black and white moment captured in time displayed a stiff-necked, unsmiling Englishman whilst the woman beside leant slightly towards him with a shy smile.

  She sighed at seeing George appear so, but considered happily that when he returned, they would be wed. Her sister had expressed her delight at the news, although with some reservation as she knew her husband would not approve. But hopefully Iris would eventually win him over.

  It had been three weeks since George had set off on his expedition and Iris had missed his company with the dull ache of yearning that comes with love. At first she had resisted her attraction to him. But his quiet ways and his obvious attraction to her had caused her reservations to crumble. But with the Englishman’s sense of decency George had honourably controlled his lust. This enduring quality about him, and along with his slow smile, Iris remembered with a warm glow.

  Today she would take her favourite gelding for a ride into the hills to visit a little village some miles away. It was a place where she was known and liked by the native women with whom she would sit and gossip. On the way home she could search for wildflowers for the house as the dry season had been left behind and the rains of the monsoon season had transformed the brown and dusty hills into verdant carpets. Although it was still hot and muggy and she knew she would be stiff and sore from the long ride, the vibrant red colours of the poinciana trees, blooming in the hills with the onset of rains, made the discomfort worthwhile.

  She felt no fear in such a ride as she was already known to the local villagers and under their protection. Dademo saddled her horse. Dressed in fashionable English jodhpurs, Iris swung herself into the saddle. She was a good rider and the gelding sensed her confidence. The houseboy watched her ride away and returned to his duties sweeping the verandah. He was to tell Master Sen that his sister-in-law had gone for a ride to the village but would be back before sunset. But Master Sen was in Moresby with his missus and probably would not return until dark anyway. Waiting around to tell him the message would be a waste of time. He would finish early and slip away to the local village markets to buy betel nut.

  Iris allowed her gelding his head and they galloped along the flat stretches of land between green rolling hills dotted with umbrella-like, flame coloured trees. She was alone and the exuberance of the ride was a joy to experience. She did not hear the shot for a second and was only vaguely aware that her gelding had shuddered. Then a distant popping sound came to her as the horse reared with an almost human-like scream of pain. He crashed into the earth taking her with him.

  Iris grunted in pain as the wind was knocked from her lungs. She fought to get her breath back as she lay on her back, staring up at a blue sky suddenly full of a haze of floating red dots. Feeling the weight of the horse on her leg, she knew that he was dead and in stunned disbelief came to realise that the popping sound was that of a rifle. Her horse had been shot.

  O’Leary lowered the rifle with a bitter smile. It had been a clean shot, as intended. The Mauser was a beautifully balanced rifle and its high velocity bullet had been true at four hundred yards.

  ‘Let’s go and see if Miss Iris is still alive to provide us with a little amusement,’ he spat.

  Pierre grinned as he lowered the binoculars. Luck was something he knew a lot about. And it had been sheer luck that had brought the girl within the proximity of their temporary camp outside the village. He had watched her galloping closer to them and his partner had hefted the rifle to his shoulder. Shooting the horse so cleanly was a grand sport. But nothing compared to what was to come.

  Iris was struggling painfully to free herself when she noticed the two figures strolling casually towards her down the slope of a nearby hill. At a distance she could see a giant of a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a second, smaller man who seemed to scurry rather than stroll.

  Her leg came free but when she attempted to stand she cried out in pain. Blood oozed through the tight fitting jodhpurs below her right knee and she could see the unnatural bulge. She knew it was a bad fracture and that she would not be able to escape the two figures looming ever closer. She fell back against the earth. Help was not a concept she could entertain. Only prayer was any consolation.

  O’Leary rested the butt of the rifle on the earth and knelt beside Iris. ‘In a bit of pain, girlie,’ he drawled and his indifference spelt his intention. She glared up at him and did the only thing she could. Despite her fear she spat at him. O’Leary caught her with a vicious, back-handed blow across the face. ‘Thought I might remove your trousers,’ he said as he lay the rifle on the ground and drew a wicked looking knife from his belt. ‘That way we can see how bad your leg is.’

  Iris attempted to crawl on her back away from him. The movement caused excruciating pain and she screamed. O’Leary grabbed her by the waist and used the finely honed blade to slice away the jodhpurs down the front. They fell open and with a deft movement, as if skinning an animal, he flipped her on her stomach and sliced down the back of her trousers. They came away revealing her creamy white buttocks. A third determined cut sliced the trousers in two so that he was able to force her legs apart. Pierre licked his lips as he stared down at her nakedness. He knew that he would be second in line to have her, but that did not matter as the line was short.

  ‘Wonder what your pommy boyfriend will think of you having sex with a real man,’ O’Leary growled. ‘Or how that bastard Kelly will console his pommy mate after Mr George Spencer, Esquire, learns of your desire for old Pierre and meself. Ah, but he is away isn’t he? Too bad that he isn’t here to see his Chink girlie performing for a couple of real men.’

  EIGHT

  Time seemed to have lost all meaning apart from night and day for George. He guessed that it had been about three weeks since the Japanese captain of their little craft had put them ashore on a beautiful beach not far from a river mouth in the Huon Gulf. Jack had struck a deal with Isokihi to return in three months when he would pick them up to steam back to Moresby. George carefully checked his cameras and box of photographic film to ensure they were undamaged after the relatively uneventful sea voyage from Moresby into the Huon Gulf.

  One day, while they were slashing through the undergrowth of the rainforest with machetes and wading up to their necks in a soggy coastal swamp bordered by prehistoric looking pandanus palms, Jack had announced that it was Christmas. But in the deep of the jungle that meant little to the small party of twelve men and they kept moving to reach dry ground.

  Each day was much the same until they reached the majestic tall forests of quondong, laurel and oak, splashed with the beautiful red of the D’Albertis creeper which trailed brilliant colour through the monotone green. Great buttressed trees with broad leaves supported climbing vines overhead and patches of rattans made the party’s lives miserable as the clutching, razor sharp thorns ripped away exposed flesh. At the end of each day George would wonder how his friend had such stamina to forge ahead in uncharted country.

  Eventually the evergreens gave way to a rainforest perpetually wet from the chilling mists that rose in the mountains that they now cli
mbed. They were in a world of ferns and mosses, a world of exotic orchids growing from the nutrients of the trees themselves. Colourful rhododendrons covered the forest. It was a world of extreme primitive beauty but at the same time eerie in the sudden, unexpected silences that occurred around them as they trekked on. In the daily pitching and breaking of camps George wondered at the sanity in searching for his fabled Orangwoks. They had met no man in the jungle although the carriers and two police boys were nervously certain their progress was being marked by the dreaded Kukukuku tribesmen. By night all were alert to the sounds of the rainforest, listening for any subtle shift in the insect and bird calls.

  In the fourth week the jungle covered mountains peaked before them. Jack called for a day to rest and plan the next leg of the trek west into the hinterland. They set up camp in a small clearing created by the fall of a forest giant. They pitched the two tents and Jack made an inventory of supplies. George noticed that he was frowning.

  ‘Not good, old chap?’ he asked as he sat down, his back against a tree trunk.

  ‘Not good,’ Jack grunted. ‘Seems with all your money we still could not have carried any more supplies than we have.’

  ‘How long do you think we can keep going without adding to them?’

  ‘Three weeks at the most,’ Jack replied. ‘I thought we might have come across a village by now to trade some of our stuff for food, but it seems as if the place is uninhabited. Never struck this when I was here with the boys before the war. We always seemed to come across a village or two.’

  George groaned inwardly at Jack’s announcement. It appeared that they had achieved nothing – except develop stronger leg muscles. To turn back was admitting defeat. No Orangwoks to photograph for the world to learn of his great find – and no interesting and unique artifacts to take back for the British Museum. ‘What do we do?’ he asked.