Inheritance

by Jenny Pattrick

  I had been sent back to Samoa a year earlier, soon after I qualified, to help manage the filariasis campaign. I stayed for the first months – dosing every man, woman and child in Samoa with the filariasis vaccine. The idea was to eradicate the disease entirely from both islands. A mammoth task. My own mother, Tiresa, had a terrible swollen leg, which she hid under her puletasi, and my aunt was worse – one huge arm as well as the leg. Elephantiasis, they used to call it, which is an appropriate, if demeaning name. The swollen limb, heavy with soggy, spongy tissue, resembles the grey, wrinkled leg of an elephant. It can attack a man’s genitals. I remember an old man in our village who had to support his gigantic scrotum in a sort of wheelbarrow if he wanted to walk at all. It was said in those days, that by the time you had been bitten by ten mosquitoes, you would have the nasty little worms in your blood. Not many palagi ever got to the huge-limb stage – that took years. But I treated an old European nun and there was an English priest who always said he was too busy to come in for bandaging. I believe he couldn’t face being handled by a Samoan lady doctor.

  I was proud to help with the work, even in the difficult early times. Will I ever forget the day of the first dose! From morning to night the radio blared out ‘Inu au fualaau’, then a moment later, ‘Manatua ia inu au fualaau!’ – the message to take your pills. The Women’s Committees were out in force, handing out the pills, standing over everyone, even matai, to ensure the doses were taken. The heavier you weighed, the more pills were to be swallowed. Our patele had to down thirty-four while my mother watched sternly. In fa‘asamoa that is not an easy thing to do, even if you are a high-born woman and head of the district Women’s Committee. That was something to be proud of: we had persuaded the World Health Organization to insist on the Women’s Committees. The matai would have let themselves off, given half a chance!

  But worse was next day, when almost all of Samoa fell ill. Those pills had dreadful side effects for those who were badly infected. Stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fever, lassitude. Activity of any sort came to a standstill. Schools and offices closed; no one worked on the plantations. Everyone lay on their mats and moaned. A few older people remembered the great flu epidemic when so many died. Fear spread like a cloud of evil mosquitoes. I was shouted at for bringing such a disaster upon the islands. Oh dear Lord, it was a nightmare. How could we ever persuade the population to take the second dose? And the third? And so on.

  But we did, more or less, and the eradication was declared a cautious success. Almost the entire population was clear of the tiny worm, praise the good Lord and the WHO. Those little devil mosquitoes no longer had infected blood to sip and spread. By the time Jeanie arrived, I was back in the islands again, helping with the aftermath – setting up the clinics, calling for volunteer bandagers, constricting the sagging skin, excising extra flesh. Bringing hope.

  I could never persuade Tiresa to come in for bandaging. She had taken her pills, but now her huge leg needed to be constricted with bandages.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I would rail at her, ‘be an example! Look at the way you bullied the patele into taking his pills. After that, the bandaging is nothing!’

  But she never would. Was it Jeanie’s presence? Or perhaps mine? Was she ashamed for me to see how huge and deformed her leg was?

  So we planned to trap her. I enlisted the help of a couple of her friends who were already into the bandaging regime. ‘Come into town, Tiresa!’ they cried. ‘There’s a new shipment of hats in Hedstroms. So smart, you won’t believe!’

  My mother had a weakness for hats. She was famous for her elaborate concoctions, which started off as a smart, shop-bought hat and ended up piled high with beautiful homemade additions.

  So the three of them came to town and walked down the street arm in arm, Tiresa in the middle. Hedstroms was just past the clinic on Beach Road. As they passed the clinic, the two outer ladies, chatting and laughing, steered the unsuspecting Tiresa sideways, through the door and had her sitting between them on the bench before she realised what was up. Jeanie and I were ready to pounce with the sticky mess of bandages.

  ‘Hats after bandaging!’ the women laughed, digging Tiresa in the ribs. ‘What a clever daughter you have to make us into slim girls again!’

  Tiresa had the good grace to see the joke and allow us to work on her. The other two always called for Jeanie to do them, because they thought I was too rough, so then Tiresa had to stand up for me and we ended up in a mad bandaging race, with comparisons of legs and much hilarity. I had a big cake ready as a reward for my mother.

  ‘Oho!’ shouted the two friends. ‘We’re always coming with you, Tiresa! Such treats, we never get.’

  Later, all three came back beaming under their new hats, amid admiring cries from the women waiting for their bandaging. No trouble with Tiresa after that. And she accepted Jeanie too. She was a demanding woman, sometimes, my mother, but fair too. She approved of what Jeanie was doing; the way she joined in. Some of the palagi women never set foot outside their own circles.

  Those clinic days were such good fun! Once, Jeanie and I were sitting in the tiny back room of the clinic with our cups of tea and slices of baked breadfruit, tired and happy together. She was talking about children – about having them. She wanted a baby desperately. She and Stuart had been trying for months with no luck.

  ‘Don’t you want a child?’ she asked me, scraping idly at a last clinging patch of latex, ‘Wouldn’t you love to have a baby?’ Jeanie was like that. Never worried about the conventions. A Samoan woman would never talk about such things.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. I meant not now. Not here in Samoa. My mother of course was full of plans, but I was not ready, then, for village life, wife of a pastor or matai, organising fiafia, singing in the church choir and attending women’s committee meetings. I had already been promised a title but had found a reason to turn it down.

  ‘I will be a loving auntie to your children,’ I said to Jeanie, ‘and you will bring them to me with all their little ailments.’ I remember her hugging me then, with tears in her eyes. We thought we were planning a life together. Surely it wasn’t just me? We both felt it?

  ‘Your children will come,’ I promised. ‘Your cycle might take time to adjust to the tropics. Palagi women often have difficulty at first.’

  She looked at me with a kind of half smile. ‘Oh.’

  ‘And your husband? He wants children too?’

  ‘Yes. Yes of course.’ Jeanie gazed through the open door to the glaring yard beyond.

  She seemed to have gone somewhere else. I wanted to touch her mind, bring her back. ‘What did he do, Stuart, before you came here?’

  ‘Oh,’ she shrugged, ‘worked in a law office. Not as a lawyer but a law clerk. Then …’ She had gone again.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She spoke then with angry defiance, as if she knew she was being disloyal, but didn’t care. That’s how I read it. Her brute of a husband had lost his temper with a workmate who accused him of some kind of shady deal. They’d had an argument, he had hit the man.

  ‘It wasn’t all Stuart’s fault. The other man was a bully. But Stuart … really hurt him. Stuart lost his job. Then there was a court case. Stuart insisted on fighting it, wouldn’t admit guilt, and we lost everything – the case, our savings, Dad’s house.’

  Jeanie looked at me, tearful, but smiling. ‘Gertrude’s summons was a complete godsend. You wouldn’t believe how wonderful that day was, when Dad told us. He took us to dinner at the pub. His half-sister, Aunt Mary, was there too. We knew there was some good news by the way he beamed and urged us to order what we liked. Then he stood, quite formal at the table, to make the announcement. We were going to Samoa! I shouted for joy and hugged him there in front of everyone. Even Stuart shook his hand. A miracle just when we needed it. I know there were problems, and Gertrude was not quite the fairy godmother I imagined, but here we are! With some kind of future. Stuart is happy, in a way, I think, which helps. If only Dad …’
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  ‘He’ll adjust,’ I said. ‘Give him time.’ John’s shady paternity had ceased to be the talk of the town by then. But, according to Jeanie, he still felt the shock – the shame – keenly himself.

  Jeanie stood and stretched. She was always quick to change her mood. Dark to light; pensive to full of energy.

  ‘Come for a swim,’ she said, laughing, teasing me. I don’t swim. I will wallow, demurely clad in a lavalava, if the beach is clean (a rare occurrence), but even in New Zealand I could never see the point of swimming. Snorkelling at Palolo Deep is worse. Floating face down, gazing at coral. Waste of time. Give me a good meal any day.

  Jeanie pulled at my hand. ‘Come on. It’s so beautiful. You should, Elena!’ She was the beautiful one. I promised to walk over when I had closed the clinic. To tell the truth, I would rather watch her than the clouds of little reef fish. But she loved it. What didn’t she love about Samoa?

  I was just locking up when Giles Metford from the High Commission came waddling and calling across the road.

  ‘Elena, Elena! Is Jeanie with you?’

  Comical as ever from a distance – sweating inside his crumpled, grubby white suit, wild, faded hair in need of a cut, his red cheeks inexpertly shaved – but today so anxious and distracted I couldn’t make fun of the old gossip.

  ‘John O’Dowd’s had an accident,’ he puffed. ‘It looks bad. The police are up at the house now. Do come, Elena.’

  ‘The police?’ I asked ‘What about a doctor?’

  ‘That too, but it’s old CJ who has arrived.’

  Oh dear. Old CJ was a complete imbecile of a palagi so-called doctor who had been given the job because his Samoan wife was valuable to the administration and also high born. Everyone tried to avoid being seen by CJ. He would be worse than useless.

  I hurried to Palolo Deep while Giles brought a car. There she was, my Jeanie, floating face down out in the middle of the coral bowl, oblivious in her tropical paradise. When I called she came up dripping and waved. Oh it was a hard thing to shatter that sunlit joy. But she caught the mood quickly enough, swam to shore and came running over the path through the coral.

  ‘It’s your father,’ I said, and she moaned as if she knew already.

  She wouldn’t stop to make herself decent; tied a lavalava over her dripping bikini while running to the car. I couldn’t keep up with her and thought for a moment they would leave me behind, but Giles wanted a decent doctor on the scene and waited.

  I dried her hair and fixed it back as we drove up the hill.

  That man, her husband, was on the steps watching the drive. There was blood on his shirt. Jeanie ran past him and into the house without a word. I came up more slowly.

  As I climbed up the steps her husband shouted at me. ‘What? What are you looking at? It was nothing to do with me!’

  Can you believe it! His wife’s father grievously hurt, his wife distraught, and all he can find to do is proclaim his innocence to the whole neighbourhood. I was about to give him a piece of my mind, but Giles pushed me inside, muttering some placatory rubbish in my ear. He was right of course. I was needed inside.

  Quite a group there. The Landers, two police and CJ who wore a grave face but served no other earthly purpose. The sergeant, Salesi, was the one who had rung the hospital for an ambulance. John O’Dowd lay on a divan, flushed, semi-conscious, his breath snoring in and out heavily. He looked terrible, dried vomit on his shirt. I did the usual checks, and was immediately worried. His heart raced and his pupils reacted sluggishly. He felt insanely feverish. Mad old Simone handed me a bowl of iced water. She had obviously been trying to cool him down. She could be quite practical when it suited her. I rang the right people to alert them and made sure CJ would be sidelined when the ambulance arrived. Jeanie knelt beside her father, holding his hand, talking to him. Tears ran down her face, but she stayed calm, concentrating, willing her father, it seemed, to hold on to life.

  Stuart came into the room then. He laid his hand on Jeanie’s shoulder, quite gently, I thought.

  ‘He went walkabout, poor old man. Out in the sun all day, evidently. I had no idea; couldn’t find him. I’ve told the police.’ His voice, low and urgent, hammered away at her, giving the details, the times. He was as white as a sheet and trembling.

  Simone’s strident voice cut into the monologue. ‘I heard an argument. They were arguing!’

  Hamish raised a warning finger but she turned to him angrily. ‘An argument! Hamish you heard it too. Tell them!’

  He shrugged in a way that showed he agreed. Simone turned to us all, her pile of white hair flying this way and that. What a fiery woman she was! At times like this her French accent, which I suspect she cultivated, rolled and crashed around the English words.

  ‘Yes a so big argument! All that old gossip about John’s birth which we all have forgotten. On, on, on he hammered the words. We could hear so clearly every word in our garden. What kind of inheritance of the blood, he asked, had been passed on to Jeanie? He poured shame on that poor man – accused our John that he was knowing all along his bad blood and had hidden the facts. Then we saw John run out of the house as if stung by a bee. Hamish, Hamish we should have followed to calm the poor man! Shame on us!’

  Jeanie looked up for a moment, straight into the eyes of her husband, then back to her father without a word. Stuart gave a sort of sob.

  ‘We were talking, that is all. Not an argument.’ And then in a wild outburst, ‘Oh where’s the bloody ambulance?’

  It arrived, finally, just then. I don’t think John had any idea what was going on. He allowed himself to be stretchered out of the house, as inert and limp as a sack of flour. I rode with Jeanie and her father in the back, while CJ sat up front.

  He lay flushed and tossing for two days. Very irregular heartbeat. Slowly he regained full consciousness, but wouldn’t eat. He let Jeanie hold his hand but seemed not to hear her when she spoke.

  Tim Stokes, the surgeon, said they couldn’t get the heart to steady. ‘It should be a simple case of heatstroke,’ he said, wiping his big gingery hands on a towel, ‘but there doesn’t seem to be a will to improve. Even his daughter can’t buck him up.’

  Tim told me that the silly man had gone walking up the cross-island road, must have wandered for several hours, up and down. Eventually, a couple of the girls from Papauta School saw him. They’d been sent further up the road to look for loa. The girls use the seeds as a dye and also export them to New Zealand, I understand. Very enterprising. Anyway, they found John O’Dowd sitting on a rock in the full blaze of midday, his head hanging, blood dripping from his nose. Those strapping Papauta girls, high-born every one, and trained to be sensible, manhandled him down to the school. Sala herself rang the Landers who fetched him down in their car. Goodness knows where Stuart had been. I never heard.

  Jeanie lived at the hospital for two days. Sat on a little wooden chair beside him. I brought her food which she ate mechanically. He would never touch it. Clenched his teeth against any attempt to feed him. He was not rational. We had to put him on a drip. I stood behind her, one time, watching. She leaned her tired head back against my thigh, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘I can feel him slipping away,’ she cried. ‘I can’t bring him back!’

  John opened his bloodshot eyes, smiled at her, smiled up at me, and closed them again. That was all. I wanted to shake him; to drag his spirit into the world again. It was as if he had been cursed. Like a potent voodoo curse, that he had no power or will to fight.

  ‘He should pull through,’ I told her, but without much hope. ‘Surely the drip will give him some energy to fight this.’

  But that night his heart stopped beating. Jeanie, whose finger was there, on the pulse in his wrist, felt it stop, heard the last sighing breath, and screamed for the doctor. But he was gone.

  John was buried in the little graveyard at the plantation, next to Gertrude, which was ironic. Teo and I stood there at the back of the little crowd of plantation workers
. Our mother came too. Now that she had won (in her eyes) the case over the land, she could afford to observe the niceties. It was she who had a white concrete cross placed on the tomb and ensured that it was heaped with wreaths and garlands. Jeanie’s face remained impassive as the priest read out the rites of interment. Not many of the palagi community were there. A dozen at most. My heart ached for Jeanie, standing there with Stuart at her side, but alone – I could tell she felt alone.

  Teo felt it too. And showed it in his own careless way. In front of the husband, Teo put an arm around her, kissed her on both cheeks, then turned away without a glance at Stuart. To many there it seemed like a challenge. But Stuart was in a strangely subdued mood that day, his famous anger dormant. Tiresa, who saw the kiss too, was the one to erupt. Her face darkened. ‘Tama!’ she called, an insult to call her own son as if he were some underling. ‘Sau!’ And forcibly marched him off to help unload the umu.

  There was a roast pig and taro and breadfruit, but it was a sad little feast, and no one stayed very long. Jeanie would eat nothing. She sat on the edge of her father’s grave – perfectly proper to show such grief, but a worry or irritation to her husband. Stuart could not leave her alone, though she clearly wished it. He kept going over to her, touching her arm. Arguing, I think, that she should join the guests. He wasn’t bullying her. He felt isolated without her, I suspect; no one else was talking to him. A strange man. Weak, as many bullies are when their props are removed. Jeanie was both his prop and the target of his bullying. That day she simply didn’t notice him. Their relationship had broken in some way with the death of the father. That estrangement was, I believe, a torment to Stuart. I only saw him twice after that and both times he was a mess.