‘Where’s Mac?’ Perenna asked.
‘That little monkey-faced man with a bladder full of liquor? He’s coiled up in the big hawser aft, sleeping it off. You coming back to Anewa with us, miss?’
Her head jerked up, her expression suddenly changed. ‘Yes,’ she said sharply. ‘Yes, of course.’ Then she was silent, looking straight ahead, watching as the bows sidled towards the jetty where Hans stood facing us, very still and watchful as though events had made him suddenly suspicious of everyone and everything. The Australian slid the tug alongside so that its bulwarks barely touched the wood, and almost before Hans had stepped on board he had the prop in reverse and we were backing out into the Passage, the bows already swinging so that when he went ahead, they were still turning towards Minon. ‘You still want to go to Madehas?’ he asked.
Hans didn’t answer immediately, standing just outside the open door to the caboose, his eyes not seeing anything, only his thoughts. At length he turned his head and said, ‘Did you manage to raise the LCT?’
‘Yep. Passed on your message.’
Hans nodded. He had his shirt outside his trousers. It was almost dry now, and like that it was only when he moved I could see the shape of a gun stuck into his waistband. ‘Another hour then, and Jonathan should be back.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Perenna breathed, and the Australian said, ‘Depends what he decides when he’s heard the news, doesn’t it? He might head straight back to Anewa like I’m going to do soon as I’ve dropped you.’
Hans looked at him, his silence and the contempt in his eyes saying more than words. ‘Put me ashore at Madehas,’ he said finally. ‘The north of the island, below the house.’ He turned to me. ‘And you’ll come ashore with me. I want that letter.’
That he should have remembered it, with all that had happened – that really did strike me as very strange. Then, as we passed through the narrows between the Minon and Buka Island markers, I forgot all about it, Perenna pulling me to one side and saying, ‘Have you seen his eyes? He’s desperate. I’m afraid he’ll do something terrible.’
‘Nonsense,’ I whispered.
‘You just look at his face. That shut look. And he’s got something under his shirt. A grenade?’
‘It’s a gun.’
‘You can’t be sure. It could be a grenade—’
Her voice had risen slightly, and he turned, quick as a cat. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘Nothing.’ The freckles on her face showed very clear against the pallor of her skin, her eyes wide as she stared straight into his face.
He smiled, but it was more of a grimace, reminding me of ancient gargoyles. ‘Who put the curse on us, Perenna? Eh? Who was it? My father, your grandfather – or somebody further back, some devilish Holland we don’t know about? And Red Holland – my father – murdered by your grandfather. Nothing went right for them, did it?’ His voice had risen, the words spat out between clenched teeth. ‘And now, ten years’ work, ten years’ preparation, coaxing, organising, building for a big future, and what happens? It goes sour on me, a ghastly failure, and just because a gorilla from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a man who should be back in the Dark Ages living in a goddam cave, comes down from Paguna with two or three hundred followers armed with pangas, telling Sapuru he’s magicked their jobs away and for that he’s going to put a bigger magic on him. That’s what he said, a bigger magic – because he’s more than a fight leader, he’s a sorcerer and capable of bigger magic than Sapuru. And you know what?’ He thrust his face close to Perenna’s, staring at her, his eyes gone wild. ‘It was you they wanted. Yes, you. If I didn’t bring you back to speak for them, they’d tear every Buka man in Arawa limb from limb and eat them at the biggest sing-sing since before the first missionary came.’
He had been talking so fast spittle had formed on his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and turned to me. ‘You think you’re going to marry this little bitch and make the Holland Line your own, eh? Oh, I heard all about you and what happened on the trip over. But you’ll never do it, not if you’ve any sense. Let the ships, the name, everything, sink into oblivion – like the old Holland Trader.’ His voice had quietened as though he were beginning to come to terms with what had happened. ‘Maybe that’s the answer.’ He had turned away and was staring for’ard towards the house, which was just coming into sight on the high ground at the north end of Madehas.
Nobody spoke after that, the only sound the swirl of water at the bows and the background hum of the engines. Perenna looked very shaken, almost cowed, and suddenly I was seeing her in quite a different light, not as a highly attractive, sensual woman, but as somebody with very real problems that made her vulnerable. The broadened nose, the fullness of the lips, the thrusting breasts, the way she walked even and the way her hair fitted her head like a cap – it was all there, traces of a mixed blood, the people I had seen in the market and at the quayside shops.
She saw me staring at her and half reached out her hand, a timid gesture that was retracted almost before it was begun. I felt a sudden surge of emotion – pity, love, compassion, I don’t know what it was. She lowered her head as though in embarrassment, and for that moment the sensuality of her body, its ability to arouse me, all my previous feelings for her were quite lacking. And then she lifted her head again, her eyelids, too, so that our eyes met, and something passed between us, something deep and personal. She lowered her eyes again, but squared her shoulders as though strengthened by some resolve. ‘Are you going up to the house with him?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’
Hans heard me and said, ‘You haven’t any choice. I want that letter.’
‘I’ll come with you then,’ she said.
He turned on her. ‘You’ll do as you’re told and stay on board till your brother arrives.’ We had left the last marker astern and were approaching North Madehas. ‘You wait here for the LCT,’ he told the Australian. ‘As soon as you’ve put Miss Holland aboard, then you’re free to head for Anewa.’
‘You’ll remain at Madehas, will you?’
Hans nodded.
‘So what do I tell them down at Anewa?’
Hans gave a quick, humourless bark of a laugh. ‘Don’t reck’n you need me to coach you. You were coerced. I brought you up here against your will. At gunpoint, was it?’ He smiled. ‘You’re a two-timing sodding bastard, aren’t you?’
‘Just impressionable.’ The Australian’s teeth showed brown in his beard as he reached for the engine controls. I never did discover the man’s name. A relief driver, that’s how he described himself. The revs dropped, and we slipped through between the shallows to the north and the reef arm reaching out from Madehas.
I didn’t see them anchor. I was down below, getting the letter from my bag and slipping it in with the dollars in my hip pocket. If Perenna hadn’t been there, I could have said I’d made a mistake and handed it straight over to him. I didn’t want to go back to that house, and certainly not with Hans Holland. There was something evil about it. I had felt it when I was there with Mac, a brooding menace hanging over it. And to go there now with a man whose world had collapsed … but I had no alternative. I had said the letter was still in the house, and if I produced it now, he would know I had shown it to Perenna. Pagan bad. Mac’s words came back to me as the chain rattled out and I climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse.
The dinghy was already over the side. Perenna looked at me, a wide-eyed stare. But she didn’t say anything. No last-minute appeal to me not to go, and I knew then she was scared – scared of what he would do if he discovered she knew the contents of that letter. And neither of us understood why it mattered so much to him. ‘You ready, Slingsby?’ He was waiting for me out on the flat rounded stern where the Mortlock man with the jet-black skin was holding the painter. As I went to join him, seeing the bulge of the gun under his shirt and myself unarmed, I wasn’t feeling all that confident. And what made it worse, the sun was coming out, everything fres
h and sparkling after the rain. For the first time since I had arrived in the Buka Passage I was glad to be alive and in such a place.
Never having fought in a war, or seen a man in total defeat before, I had no yardstick with which to gauge Hans Holland’s state of mind. The fact that he had mixed blood, some of it, like Perenna’s, of Melanesian origin, did that make him more, or less, fatalistic? And to be worrying about a letter written in 1910 when the Papua New Guinea government would almost certainly blame him for what had happened and seek some form of retribution, a public trial, an execution even … I watched him as the Mortlock islander rowed us ashore. He was bareheaded, his red hair gleaming in the sun. Even his bare arms had a reddish glow. He didn’t talk, sitting silent in the bows, a small canvas grip at his feet and his eyes staring into space. What was he thinking? I wondered.
What the hell was he thinking?
The bows touched the landing pontoon where the oil drums on which it floated were still intact, and he stepped out of the boat, the painter in one hand, his canvas holdall in the other. It was then that I got the letter out of my hip pocket and slipped it into a side pocket where I could get at it easily. He held the boat for me, and as soon as I had joined him on the pontoon, he tossed the painter back on board, and the boat headed for the tug. I should have called the man back, told him to wait, but I was afraid that might be taken as provocation. I was treading warily, as though dealing with a psychopath, and I was very conscious that Hans was aware of my unease. He seemed to be smiling to himself as we reached the shore and started up the path together.
The houseboy appeared as mysteriously as before. Hans said something to him, and he fell in behind us, a silent shadow. I saw no sign of the woman. ‘Have you remembered where it is?’ Hans asked abruptly.
‘In the safe, probably.’
‘That isn’t what McAvoy said. He seemed to think you’d taken it with you.’
It was very hot, the air humid despite the sparkle. ‘It’ll be there somewhere,’ I said. And then I asked him what he was planning to do now. ‘Where will you go?’
He turned his head, a hard, angry stare. ‘D’you think I’d tell you, even if I knew?’ His tone was hostile as though he thought I was gloating. It was a sharp reminder of the delicateness of my position, alone with an armed man whose mind might well be unhinged, and only his own houseboy, a native of Buka, witness to anything that happened. We walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, passing the little flyblown summerhouse, the houseboy drawing level and plucking at Hans Holland’s shirt. But before he could make his ritual offer of coffee or Coke, he had been silenced by the coldness of his master’s gaze.
We reached the entrance porch with its unswept pile of winged insects. Hans trod them underfoot, not apparently noticing, pushed open the door and then stood back, motioning me to enter. From that moment he contrived always to have me in sight as though he were afraid I’d try to rush him. The sun was streaming in through the cobwebbed windows high above the halfway landing of the double staircase, dust motes shimmering in the air, and there was a lazy buzz of trapped insects. Where it had been gloomy before, it was now positively macabre, the stuffed crocodile, the carving, the panelling, everything brilliantly illuminated like a stage set. Hans closed the door. Then, watchful now and still keeping behind me, he pointed to one of the chairs against the wall at the foot of the staircase. ‘You sit there,’ he said.
Now that we were alone in this dreadful room his voice had an edge to it that I didn’t like. ‘You’ll need some help—’ I began.
‘Sit down.’
‘If you don’t mind—’
‘Sit down, damn you – where I can see you. I told you you were lying, remember? Go on, pull that chair out and sit down.’ His voice was calmer now, the chair he had indicated was by the table with the old newspapers. I dropped the letter on top of them as I picked up the chair. He was already standing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sit down.’ He watched me until I was seated, then he bent down, felt for the catch and, with both hands under the outer edge of the bottom tread, gave a quick heave and raised all four treads, folding them back in one easy movement. ‘Did you take anything else?’ He was already bending over the safe, his fingers turning the combination lock.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything was put back just—’
‘What about McAvoy?’ He glanced up at me. ‘Are you saying he put it all back, neither of you took anything?’
‘Yes, it was all put back, money, gold, everything.’
‘Except that letter.’ He straightened up. The door of the safe was opening slowly to the leverage of his body. Quickly he checked the contents, finally pulling out the envelope marked LEWIS, taking a quick look at the Solomons Seal sheets, then putting it back and turning to me. ‘All except the letter,’ he said, the sunlight glinting off a cracked wall mirror making patterns on his face. ‘Where is it? What’ve you done with it?’ And when I started to tell him I couldn’t remember, he laughed a little wildly and said, ‘Don’t give me that crap. You took it with you and showed it to Perenna. I told you you were lying. I saw you on the tug this morning. But why did you take it? What made you think it so bloody important that you had to show it to Perenna?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, conscious of my tongue on my lips, moistening them nervously. And then I thought, No point in not telling him what puzzled me. ‘It started off Dear Red, so I took it to be addressed to your father, and it’s dated July 1910. In it Lewis says he’s coming to get his share of the ships that were purchased with the gold from the Dog Weary mine. That’s what I didn’t understand.’
‘Because Red Holland didn’t inherit the Line until over a year later?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Perenna know what it meant?’
‘No, she didn’t understand it either.’ Looking at him, so tense, so wary, a thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did Timothy Holland know?’
He didn’t answer.
I got to my feet. ‘Well, did he?’
‘Sit down,’ he shouted, his voice suddenly out of control and the gun in his hand, a heavy revolver, the muzzle pointed straight at my stomach.
‘So it wasn’t an accident. And at Aldeburgh, after months of nursing … ’ I had said too much. At that moment I expected him to fire, and every muscle in my body was tensed in expectation of the bullet’s slam. But then he said in a quieter, more reasonable voice. ‘And McAvoy. What did McAvoy think?’
‘About the letter?’
‘Of course, yes. The letter. What else?’
I hesitated, wondering what he was after. ‘He was just as puzzled as I was,’ I said carefully.
‘But you told me he came ashore here yesterday for the specific purpose of opening the safe and reading the letter. Why? What made him think it that important?’ And when I told him about the wartime raid on Madehas and how Mac had described Colonel Holland as being shattered when he had opened the safe and found the letter, he said in a slow, almost unbelieving voice, ‘So that’s why he attacked Carola and murdered my father. He burned him alive. Did you know that?’
I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t quite like that, not according to Mac.’ I wanted to mitigate the horror of it for a man already under great mental strain. ‘There was a shot, from inside the house. He killed himself before the flames reached him.’
‘Shot himself? My father shot himself.’ He said it reflectively as though the idea were new to him. ‘Yes, of course. He would have had a gun, and outside they would have been waiting for him, like a bunch of hunters round a foxhole.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, his head bent slightly, staring at the gun in his hand. And then slowly he seemed to relax, a conscious, deliberate unwinding of nervous tension. ‘So he doesn’t know. That little drunken bastard doesn’t know. And now …’ He hesitated, seeming to give the matter careful thought. ‘Now nobody knows.’
‘Knows what?’ I asked, wondering if this were a form of madness, his mind wandering.
&nb
sp; He shrugged, the gun forgotten, staring into space. I think I could have rushed him then, but I didn’t; I was held in my chair by the look on his face, the way his whole body seemed frozen into immobility. ‘Doesn’t matter now, does it?’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t matter how it all started, or what happened to the Holland Trader. Tim knew. Old Colonel Holland knew. Now nobody knows but me and—’ He gave a little laugh. ‘This morning it mattered. Now it doesn’t.’
There was a rattling sound from beyond the windows leading to the veranda, and he crossed the room to stand staring out towards the cove. ‘That’s the LCT just arrived.’ He looked at me, slowly putting the gun back into the waistband of his trousers, his mood altered. Suddenly he seemed in need of companionship. ‘I don’t remember my father, you know. Not really. I was only three when that old bastard moved on Queen Carola and fired burning arrows into the palm thatch of his house. His death didn’t mean anything to me, not then.’
‘But it does now?’ He had fallen silent, pacing slowly.
He stopped and looked straight at me. ‘You thought about death, about what it really means, or’ve you been too busy trying to make something of your life?’
‘You sound like Mac,’ I said. ‘He started thinking about death.’
‘So he should. But I’m not talking about drink and cirrhosis of the liver. That’s something you bring on yourself. I’m talking about external forces, things you can’t control and what it’s like when it all blows up in your face.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, and then stood quite still, staring at nothing. ‘We destroy people, like Red Holland going off and leaving that poor bugger to die of thirst, without giving a thought to what it means. Bombings, famines, executions – it’s other people, isn’t it? Never ourselves. And life – the fight to exist, the struggle for power – and then suddenly you’ve had it. That’s what I mean by it all blowing up in your face. That’s when you suddenly start wondering what the hell it’s all in aid of. A mine collapses, a ship goes down, somebody shoots somebody, they’re all expendable, all except oneself. That’s right, isn’t it? We form alliances, live in groups, get married, anything to conceal from ourselves the one terrible truth – that we’re alone in this life.’
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