The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

  With one eye on Aren, playing a juggling game in the distance with Lisia’s younger daughter Joy, Miss Winifred said, “And do you expect this home-return to make him happy?”

  Kay did not know what to answer.

  Mr. Brimner saved her. “Casus ubique valet,” he said. “Semper tibi pendeat hamus . . .” He gave Kay a bright glance, as one prompting a star pupil.

  She laughed. “All right, that is enough for me.”

  Miss Winifred said testily, “What, what? You must not speak in secret languages!”

  Kay translated, as Mr. Brimner had meant her to. “It is a tag from Ovid: Chance rules everything. Keep dangling your hook, and in an eddy where you least expect it—a fish!”

  Miss Winifred was not much mollified. “That is only ordinary sense. I will speak in Tongan and then you will be the ones who cannot keep up!” After a moment, she said, “It will be an expensive trip, Henry.”

  “It will cost a certain amount, but I have some savings—I have not been able to spend any money at all in these last few years, except for postage and my clerical collars, which are sent from London at hideous expense.”

  Miss Winifred laughed, but Kay shook her head sternly at Mr. Brimner. “It will be all right. I have received my inheritance, and Aren has money of his own. My brother Francis will wire us the funds.”

  “Well, I am a passenger, and will contribute my share,” Mr. Brimner said.

  Miss Winifred hauled herself out of her chair. “I leave you and Henry to quarrel it out,” she said. “From the kitchen smell, dinner is either ready or ruined—I will investigate.”

  The household was not exactly what they were used to, but warm and comfortable. Lisia and her daughters Eponie and Joy lived with Miss Winifred, mostly as friends, Kay thought, and very slightly as live-in help, except that Lisia was more like an unmarried sister than a poor relation. But it was Miss Winifred who had never married. She did not understand the relationships, or Miss Winifred’s complicated history, and she thought (congratulating herself on thinking this, then scolding herself for thinking she was so wise) that perhaps she had better just listen and wait and not jump to any conclusions.

  As the night wind cooled, she adjusted the louvres in her window and settled herself into the comfortable bed Lisia and Eponie had made up for her. Grateful for this peaceful room, and for not being on a ship for a little while, she said her prayers, asking God to keep Roddy and Francis and Thea safe. She would write tomorrow and tell Thea everything, everything.

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think, but just to listen to the far-off singing.

  Next morning, Aren went out searching for Seaton, who Miss Winifred confirmed was an off-and-on inhabitant of Nuku‘alofa. He had most likely been out odd-jobbing farther down Vuna Road, and might be there again today.

  “He is a codger,” she declared. “Well known throughout the region, an easygoing fellow of regular habits, kava-drunk in the same place every Saturday night—I will point you to it if you have not found him by then, but he will not be hard to find. He is a knowing man, if he will not move faster than he pleases.”

  Kay would have liked to go with Aren, but this seemed to be his own quest. She stood on the gingerbread porch looking after him as he strode down the road toward the town.

  After breakfast, Mr. Brimner left too, saying he might be gone most of the day; it was his bounden duty to visit the Nuku‘alofa priest-in-charge, Mr. Hill’s replacement, whom he had not yet met.

  Miss Winifred waved him off without regret and said that Lisia and Kay should find their hats and they would go into the country to see the sights without him, since Henry had had his fill long ago, and Kay must have forgotten everything by now.

  Jouncing down the dirt road, coming back from the rather unimpressive and marshy site of Captain Cook’s famous landing on Tonga, the cart gave a wild swerve, as Lisia manoeuvred to avoid something tiny—what? Oh, it was a puppy, lost on the road, looking half-starved.

  She pulled up and Kay jumped down to gather up the little bundle. So small, so new! His breath smelled like a skunk, even here where there were no skunks. She turned him up in her arms so he could look at her. His fur was mixed black and cream, a dark mask over his face giving him a rakish look. He was nothing like her dog Pilot, of course, but he had a bright, curious eye. He nipped her finger gently with his sharp little teeth, and then licked her hand to make up for it.

  Then another came romping out from a hedge, and another, and soon there were six pups playing in the road, and the mother nosing after them.

  A bright-eyed child ran out into the road, entirely without caution, but Kay supposed there was no motor traffic to be careful of.

  “Whose is this puppy, child?” Lisia demanded.

  “Our puppy!” the girl said.

  “Will you sell him to me?” Kay asked.

  Her sister had come out behind her. “We get you a good one!” she shouted, running back to where the litter had returned to their food.

  “No, no,” Kay protested, but the younger girl tore the pup from her arms, and then both children were gone back to a house a little way removed from the road.

  A woman came to the door then, and Lisia went to speak to her, and Kay saw her hold out some notes, which the woman counted quickly with her fingers. Then she let the door hang while she went back into the dark interior, and in a moment one of the girls came out carrying two hastily brushed puppies, fatter than the one from the road.

  “Are they old enough, do you think?” Kay asked Lisia, and she nodded, shrugging.

  “Close enough, anyhow.”

  The girl lifted the two pups by the scruff of their necks and said, “Choose!” and Kay did not know what to do. Then a third pup—oh, it was the dark-faced, inquisitive one she had picked up on the road—wormed his way through the girl’s legs and yipped, demanding to be picked up.

  “This one,” Kay said.

  Of course, he was flea-ridden. Kay ought to have realized, before hugging him close to her bosom all the way home to Nuku‘alofa. Lisia did the debugging. Sitting wide-legged on the back step, she tore the brown, fibrous part off a coconut, and with her big knife hacked at the nut to get at the white meat of it, and grated that against a rough board to shred it.

  That took a long time, so Kay went off to change and wash her dress, arriving back in time to watch Lisia pick up the fibrous mass she had discarded and make it into a kind of sieve for the grated coconut, wringing out the milk into a large wooden bowl. The grated coconut went in there too, and last of all the puppy. He did not like it! As the women scrubbed, he tried to climb out, over and over, hooking one paw over the edge and mewling piteously, but they would not let him out until Lisia pronounced the treatment complete. When Kay asked her about it, she said only, “It is somehow antiseptic is all I know, the old women tell us to do it.”

  Whatever the cause, the milky liquid in the bowl was soon speckled with myriad fleas, which were at least no longer on the puppy. They washed him in clean water and towelled him dry, and then combed him all out again. He was too young to bark, but only expressed his dislike and disapproval by opening and closing his wedge-shaped mouth with great melodramatic stretches in a soft, yowling song, interspersed with mild, piglike grunting.

  “Si‘i mafu,” Lisia said, bending to kiss one clean paw, and stroked his fluffing fur. “Sorry we have been so rough with you, little heart!”

  Kay asked, “Mafu is heart? Little mafu . . .”

  Back from his adventures, Aren came around the garden gate. When he saw the pup curled in Kay’s arms, he laughed, and recited, “When Ann had a bun or cake, she would give some to Dash. That is a large dog for you to be fond of, Kay!”

  So he was Dash.

  ——

  Kay took little Dash with her to her bedroom, although the idea of a dog in a bedroom was clearly incomprehensible to Lisia, who courteously said nothing, but looked a little shocked.

  In the distance, the funeral singing came win
ding out of every church of every denomination, as it did all day and all night. And there were so many churches. Whenever she paused to think, Kay became aware of that contrapuntal continuo. She did not dislike it, but it made her a little anxious.

  The third time she was woken by Dash’s whining, Kay stumbled to the door to let him out and found Aren coming up the white stone path from the lane behind the house.

  “Where have you been all this time?” she asked, surprised.

  “I have been with Seaton all this time,” he said. He had a strange, flattened expression, and she thought he must have been drinking kava with some of the men. He picked up Dash and petted the little dog until it curled into his arm and went back to sleep. “Sit out with me for a little,” he said.

  They found a low stone bench along the path and sat together, nestling the dog between them for warmth.

  “Seaton is not—” Kay began, but she did not know what she meant to say.

  Aren turned his head. “A good influence?”

  She laughed. “No, that is not what I was thinking. But maybe not reliable?”

  “I needed to see him. I needed to talk to someone like him. Like me.”

  She sat quiet, waiting. She did not like that he thought he was like Seaton, a sea-crazed wanderer, jetsam of the waters.

  “He gave me good advice, he gave me a Tongan proverb to live by: Tā ki tahi, tā ki ‘uta. It means, Perform in the ocean, perform in the land.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That—that the person who acquires the tā, the rhythm, to perform or work or do things in many places, the ocean and the land, is a well-rounded person.”

  “That is only ordinary sense,” she said, as Miss Winifred had said to her and Mr. Brimner about Ovid. She ran to help Dash negotiate a stile, where he had got caught, and then came back to sit beside Aren on the bench, cradling the puppy in her arms and stroking his soft nose.

  “Have you considered,” Aren said, forming the words carefully, “have you thought, what if they do not want me on my island? What if—”

  She moved, wanting to speak, but he stopped her with a look.

  “What if I cannot speak to them, and I am not one of them anymore?”

  The singing around them swelled up to the end of some hymn.

  “Seaton says maybe I should stay here—he will find me work and teach me how to fix things in the town.”

  Gathering her courage and remembering that Aren was perhaps quite drunk, Kay said, “They will want you. Of course they will want you. And you will learn to speak to them again. Look how quickly you learned to speak to me.”

  “That is true,” he said. He seemed quite struck by that. “I am a fast learner. And I am very brave, as you recall.”

  She nodded. Then she took his arm and helped him up the stairs and into bed, and let him sleep it off.

  9

  Pangai

  The time had come to set out. Because Queen Salote was visiting the island group of Ha‘apai—“Or I would have introduced you at the palace,” said Miss Winifred sadly—the ferry schedule was upset. The boat left Nuku‘alofa at midnight, stopping at Nomuka at five, at Ha‘afeva at nine, and reaching Pangai wharf on the large island of Lifuka before lunch.

  “This is not one of your New Zealand boats,” Miss Winifred cautioned them. “There will be no pleasant cabin, only a bench. But you are hardy and young, and you know the Pacific, so I am not concerned.” Kay took this as a serious compliment.

  Aren sat on the top of the cart, Mr. Brimner on the bench. There had been a slight pother about Dash and how to transport him, easily solved by making a cloth lid for a market basket; Kay sat in back with him to soothe him if he was afraid. “Dash, little mafu,” she whispered through the cloth. “It will be all right.”

  They bundled into the boat—which, being much smaller than the Tofua, had moored right at the wharf—and, moving through the crowd of Tongans (who had to be distributed carefully by the sailors, or their mass might make the boat list one way or the other), found some spare acreage of deck and made themselves partly comfortable. Mr. Brimner was greeted with joy by many of the passengers and exchanged pleasantries with them in Tongan. Kay held the basket on her lap, one hand inside to stroke her little dog. Leaning against Aren, guarded by Mr. Brimner on her other side, she managed to sleep most of the way to Nomuka.

  There she darted off to let Dash have a run, worrying in the heavy tropical darkness that she might miss the ferry leaving—though she knew perfectly well that Aren and Mr. Brimner would not let it leave without her. She looked up for a moment into a sky so dazzlingly starred that she forgot to worry, and only picked up Dash when he came to nibble at her shoe.

  It was bright daylight before Ha‘afeva, so that was an easier stop. They got off with the crowd of passengers to buy a cup of fruit juice from the vendor by the pier, and Kay took Dash down to the beach to let him run and play. When the ferry whistle blew, he came eagerly at her call and settled back into his basket. It was good that he was so young, because he slept a lot and only chewed one of the handles of the basket beyond repair. She was proud of him.

  At noon, as promised, they reached Pangai. The jetty and the trees and houses in the village were hung with bright bunting and banners as if to welcome them—but it was for Queen Salote’s visit, of course. John Giles was the first order of business, but Aren and Mr. Brimner would see him; there was nothing for Kay to help with there.

  “Mrs. Fruelock lives in the same house you will remember, down that angled road,” Mr. Brimner said. “Would you care to go there for the afternoon? I think she would be grateful for a visit, and her daughter Pansy—only a little younger than you—is a kindly person too.”

  Kay was ragged around the edges from the overnight trip, and it would only be sensible to let Dash run free in the walled garden she remembered between the house and the schoolrooms. Since their route to John Giles’s place went past the Fruelock house, she had company for the walk; she felt quite wilted by the sun, for the first time in this hemisphere.

  Mr. Brimner waited by the gate while Kay knocked at the Fruelocks’ door. At the sight of the young woman who opened it, he lifted his hat and waved and shouted an introduction. “This is Miss Ward, whom you may remember—please tell your mother I’ll be back to visit when our business with John Giles is done.”

  Kay turned back to the girl, whose golden-brown hair hung loose in waves over her shoulders. She tried to resolve that open, bright face with the little girl she had met long ago, but could not pull the child back to mind well enough.

  She put out her hand anyway. “I think you are Pansy? I am Kay. We met long ago, when we both were children, while I was travelling with my sister and her husband on his ship, the Morning Light.”

  The girl turned to call over her shoulder, “Mother! Mother! Thea’s sister has come!” Then she took Kay’s hand, gently pulling her in. “We are so happy to see you! If you knew how few white women come to visit—not that it makes you odd or anything, but it will be a great excitement in the town. Everyone will come to take a look at the papalangi!”

  Kay blinked a little, unsure what was required of her. “Well, I am not very interesting,” she said. “But my brother—Well, Mr. Brimner said I ought to wait here for them, if that is all right. May I take my little dog into your garden?”

  The girl, Pansy, stood back to show the way. “Of course! Right through the passage, there, all on the flags, and you may leave the door unlatched—I will find Mother and come right out to you. Let me take your bag—oh, no, that is the dog! Well, this one?”

  Kay gave up her blue valise and took the basket through as she had been directed, out into the sunlit square of paving stones. In a shaded area at one end, assorted chairs had been set round a long table. She set down the basket and opened the lid, and Dash climbed cautiously out, and made for the edge of the garden to lift his leg—which he was not yet very good at, sometimes overbalancing and landing in a confused heap.

/>   This was a pleasant, quiet arbour. Leaves and vines covered the lattice over most of one end, and the variegation of light and dark, mixed with a slight trilling from the birds overhead, made Kay feel more peaceful. She sat for a moment in one of the wicker chairs.

  From a doze of rippling light she woke to Pansy coming out into the garden, her mother in tow. Dorothy Fruelock came forward gladly, with a hand stretched out.

  “Why, Miss Grant—no, Miss—I ought to recall!”

  “Ward,” Kay said, “It is Ward. But I hope you will call me Kay, everybody does.”

  Kay had half-expected widowhood to have left Mrs. Fruelock wan or listless. But she was herself, looking no older, no different in any way. Her black skirt made an elegant swish as she settled into the wicker chair nearest to Kay.

  Pansy sat in the rocking chair, poised on its edge as if for flight. She said she’d left the kettle to boil and would run in and out and not to mind her—then hearing the whistle she jumped up and ran back to the kitchen regions.

  With the same calm vitality Kay remembered, Mrs. Fruelock talked first of her husband and his death. “It was a sudden infection, one of the ordinary, terrible things that happen in the tropics, and we must not repine,” his widow said. “We became more used to dying during the war; perhaps that makes the ordinary deaths less desolating.”

  “My sister said the chief difference, after the war was over, was coming to realize that the young men around us would continue to be there—in the town instead of in foreign graves—and we would have to get used to their presence and learn to live with them again.”

  “She has a deep store of wisdom. You must be missing her.”

  Kay said, “I miss her very much.”

  Returning with a tray, Pansy put a cup of tea beside Kay, and gave another to her mother.

  Mrs. Fruelock said, “All my daughters have married, did you know? Your sister must have told you—all except my dear Pansy.”