Killman (24 page)

The old man had also made a pointed reference to the fact that it was impossible to judge a race without customs against traditional Melanesian standards, by his yardstick almost a direct accusation of chicanery on the part of some white man. When Giosa had given the policeman his opinion that it would be worthwhile examining the expatriate in question at work immediately, the remark had been tantamount to a hurry-up call. The old man had even mentioned dolphins when he had compared the mammals vaguely with Tikopians.

Giosa had been right, thought Kella as he started walking again. Boehrs and Schuman may not have been breaking the white man’s laws by attempting to export live dolphins from the island, but they were offending against local customs, an equally heinous and potentially much more dangerous crime. All around him he could sense bloody payback.

Sister Conchita was studying a map of North America in the mission lounge and realizing how little she knew about the geography of her own country when Sergeant Ha’a called in at Ruvabi Mission shortly before noon. He was rotund and jet black, his uniform shorts and shirt straining threateningly over his haunches and stomach.

The globular, sweating police sergeant was too exhausted to say anything until he had collapsed like a small avalanche into a chair and drunk two glasses of lemonade, hardly pausing for breath. Ha’a came from the laid-back western islands. His main ambition in life was to be sent on as many overseas attachments as possible. He had once spent three months in the north of England, where he had moonlighted at the local working men’s clubs as the lead singer of a group of other Pacific Island sergeants and inspectors, ignoring geographic and ethnic niceties, under the title of Curly Ha’a and His South Sea Island Serenaders. It was an experience that the sergeant was desperate to repeat.

‘Going on your holidays?’ he asked indifferently, indicating the map, when he had recovered his breath.

‘Improving my knowledge of my native land,’ said the nun. ‘Take it easy; it’s a long walk from Auki.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ said the sergeant miserably. ‘There should be a map with
Here be dragons
printed on it. Three days of purgatory: mosquitoes, leeches and scorpions everywhere; and then the constant screams of agony echoing through the bush at all hours of the night and day, and that was just me! I’m not built for bush walking, I can tell you. I’m more an ideas man, and my idea at this moment is to get back to Honiara just as fast as I can.’ He paused and frowned. ‘How did you know that I’ve just walked across from Auki?’

‘Your fame precedes you, Sergeant.’

‘You mean those jungle drums have been announcing my arrival for days.’

‘I thought you were a bit off your usual beat,’ said Sister Conchita calmly. ‘What are you doing here on Malaita anyway?’ She folded up her map and put it away in a drawer. You learn something new every day, she thought.

‘Looking for Kella, what else,’ Ha’a said. ‘The untold grief that man has caused me since I’ve known him! You don’t know where he is, do you? Nobody else on Malaita seems to. Or if they do, they’re not telling me. My boss wants him back in Honiara.’

‘I’m afraid not. The last time I saw him was a couple of days ago. He said he was going on patrol.’

‘We all know what that means,’ said Ha’a with a shudder. ‘The man’s a masochist. For another month now he’ll be going out of his way to climb the highest mountains he can find and ford rivers that frighten even butch crocodiles. Well, I’ve done all I can. I’ll go back to Chief Superintendent Grice and admit failure. He’s used to me doing that. It will reinforce his colonial-native serf mentality. Anyway, I’m not on my own. Fifty Vella Lavella constables and three expatriate inspectors are climbing the central mountain range as we speak. Since the ark was destroyed, Chief Superintendent Grice has been convinced that a Japanese survivor is still fighting a one-man war up in Kwaio country.’

‘Will they find him?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘I doubt it. They’ve got battery-operated loudspeakers to hail him with and leaflets written in Japanese explaining that the war ended fifteen years ago. I hear they’re thinking of offering a reward of a hundred dollars to any islander who gives the Japani up. Waste of time! It will be the Exhausted Army all over again.’

‘What’s the Exhausted Army?’

‘Haven’t you heard of it? Back in the 1920s, when a district officer was murdered in Kwaio country, the local expatriates founded their own vigilante force, armed themselves and went looking for his killers. It was a real ragtag and bobtail lot; traders, prospectors, labour recruiters, beachcombers, you name it, they were there.’

‘What happened?’

Ha’a laughed. ‘You could write the script! They climbed one small hill and found they were so knackered they gave up and went back to their homes. The whole expedition lasted a couple of hours. They had to wait for an Australian warship to be sent for to blast the hell out of the Kwaio. Anyway, if you don’t know where Kella is, I’d better be moving on.’

‘Hang on a minute, Mr Ha’a. While you are here, there’s something you might be able to do for me.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Sergeant Ha’a, who had showed no perceptible sign of moving anyway. ‘And what could that possibly be?’

‘What do you know about pidgin songs about the war in the Solomons?’

Ha’a shook his head and sucked his teeth reflectively. ‘They’re not very commercial,’ he said. ‘They’re all about fighting. If you’re thinking of hiring me for a mission concert, and incidentally my rates are very reasonable, my version of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” goes over much better.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘But you do know any pidgin World War Two songs?’

Ha’a tried to concentrate. ‘Oh, sure, there’s “Knife Bilong Me”, “Japani No More”, “Bushman Kill-kill”—’

‘That’s great!’ said the nun, already heading for the door. ‘Come along, Sergeant Ha’a. We’re going to pay someone a visit. I have to go to a couple of bush schools later in the day, but I want you to meet a friend of mine first. I can drop you off on the way.’

‘But I’ve only just sat down,’ complained Ha’a.

‘Regard this as being in the nature of an audition,’ said Sister Conchita.

The sergeant reacted manfully to the spur of ambition. ‘Really?’ he asked hopefully, lumbering after her. ‘In that case, if your contacts, may they be blessed eternally for their taste and discrimination, are thinking of letting me cut a disc, tell them that I want to be billed as Johnny Ha’a, the Singing Cop.’

‘Sergeant Ha’a, I think you are going to be the answer to my prayers,’ said Sister Conchita.

When they landed on the small artificial island, Florence Maddy was sitting at a trestle table outside her hut going through a pile of books in a desultory manner. Each of the volumes was wrapped in transparent cellophane. The musicologist looked bored and forlorn and, as usual, sunk in apathy. She was wearing a drab pink dress.

‘I don’t have a great deal to do,’ she said wanly, indicating the books. ‘Mr Wainoni let me borrow these to while away the time.’

‘Dr Maddy, this is Sergeant Ha’a,’ said Sister Conchita. She resisted the temptation to shake the other woman and order her to snap out of her obvious depression. Florence Maddy did not initiate events; she reacted to them, usually adversely.

The musicologist nodded, but her habitually downcast expression showed no sign of thawing. Silently she went into her hut and returned with a pitcher of lemonade and several glasses. She poured each of the visitors a drink.

‘What are you reading?’ asked Sister Conchita, searching for something to say.

‘They’re books by some of the academics that Mr Wainoni has guided over the islands.’ A tincture of self-pity entered Florence’s voice. ‘I must say, they all seem to have been eminently more successful with their research than I have so far.’

‘I’m sure it’s just a matter of being patient,’ said the nun soothingly. ‘Your time will come.’ She hefted some of the volumes in her hands. Their contents seemed as uniformly dull and dispiriting as their covers. The very titles growled with ennui at her.

‘
The Stone Structures of Small Mala
,
A Treatise on Molluscs of the Lau Lagoon
,
Friendship Patterns of Maquata
,’ she read aloud. ‘
Custom Beliefs of the Kwaio People
,
Folk Tales of the Western Solomons . . .
’

‘Wainoni never guided him,’ yawned a bored Ha’a, speaking for the first time since he had landed on the island.

‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘That last title you read out was about my island in the western Solomons. My father and some of my uncles helped the writer gather his stories before the war. I remember them talking about it. Wainoni would only have been a baby then; he wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. What was the American’s name?’ Ha’a closed his eyes as an aid to concentration. Reluctantly he opened them again. ‘Cardigan, that’s it. Professor Cardigan.’

Sister Conchita glanced at the front cover. ‘James Cardigan,’ she said. ‘Snap!’

‘He was a real pioneer of Pacific anthropology,’ said Florence. ‘Such a determined man, to overcome so much prejudice and continue with his work.’

‘I’ve brought Sergeant Ha’a along because he might be able to help you,’ said Sister Conchita.

‘I might?’ blinked Ha’a.

‘Look, this is very kind of you both,’ said Florence, ‘but I’ve made my bed and I must lie in it. I should not have chosen this subject for my study. I’ll never be able to collect enough songs for my purposes. I’m going to book a passage back to the States next week.’

‘Suppose’, said Sister Conchita, spacing out her words with a flourish, like a gambler laying down a royal flush, ‘I was able to provide you with a living compendium of what you are searching for? Would that help?’

She looked almost proudly at Sergeant Ha’a. Florence followed her gaze without enchantment. ‘I don’t understand,’ said the musicologist.

‘Sergeant Ha’a is a man of many parts,’ said the nun. ‘Police officer, intrepid bush walker and troubadour.’

‘Well, two out of three isn’t so bad,’ said Ha’a, shifting from one foot to the other and wincing.

‘Hardly a concert goes by in Honiara without Sergeant Ha’a giving his versions of songs from the shows, or a tribute to Ray Charles, to great acclaim. I haven’t been privileged to see it myself yet, but I’m told that his cover version of “Whispering Grass” puts even the Ink Spots to shame.’

‘Not their fault; it’s not an ensemble song,’ said Ha’a.

‘I’m not sure . . .’ Florence said.

‘What’s more, the sergeant also has a collection of pidgin songs about the war,’ concluded Sister Conchita, like an artist unveiling her latest portrait.

‘Not one of my better ideas,’ Ha’a said. ‘Lately we’ve started getting ex-GIs who fought here in the war coming back with their families. I thought they might be interested in hearing some of the old war songs I’d collected. I should have stayed in bed! If it wasn’t Johnny Ray or Frankie Laine they didn’t want to hear it.’

Florence was looking at Ha’a in a way that no woman had ever looked at him before. ‘Have . . . have you written these songs down?’ she asked with trepidation.

‘No need,’ Ha’a said. He tapped his forehead complacently. ‘They’re all up here.’

‘How many of them have you got?’ pressed Florence, almost before he had finished speaking.

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe thirty or forty. I could find more if you want them. In 1942, at night, when they stopped killing Japs for the day, there wasn’t a lot for the local scouts to do except sit around campfires swapping lies and making up pidgin songs about how brave they’d been. Would you like me to sing you one?’

‘Yes please,’ breathed Florence.

Ha’a looked surprised but did not ask twice. He placed one hand beneath his ear and hummed speculatively to find the right pitch.

‘Well, there’s always “Japani Ha Ha!” for starters,’ he said. He took a deep breath, expanding his chest to a spectacular degree, and started singing rather well:

Me fulae olobauti, longo isti, longo westi
.

Me sendere olo rouni keepim Solomoni
.

Me worka luka luka longo landi long sea
.

Ha ha! Ha ha! Japani ha ha!

‘And you know more of these?’ asked Florence, sounding as if Christmas had come almost too early for her.

‘Try me,’ said Ha’a confidently.

As Sister Conchita tiptoed away, the sergeant was singing to the enraptured musicologist “Knife Bilong Me”, about two brothers who had scouted for the coast-watcher Martin Clemens on Guadalcanal. The nun was confident that she would not be missed. She untethered the canoe, started the engine and headed contentedly for the mainland of Malaita.

It took her ten minutes to reach the shore. She felt in her pocket to make sure that she had her miniature version of the Bible with her. She was about to drag the canoe up above the high-water line on the beach when someone splashed out through the shallow water to meet her. It was Brother John. He grasped the prow of the canoe and dragged it effortlessly up on to the sand.

‘This is quite a coincidence,’ said Sister Conchita suspiciously.

‘No coincidence,’ admitted the missionary. ‘I asked around and I was told that you would be teaching at Bethezda today. There’s someone up there I’d like you to meet. I want to get something off my conscience. I haven’t actually told you all I know about the Church of the Blessed Ark.’

They had met on one of the more depressing sections of the coast. Great forests of mango trees swept down to the narrow strip of black sand. The mangled roots of the trees festooned with oysters jutted out from acres of stinking mud. They walked into the trees and began the climb up the track into the forbidding dark interior of the island. Brother John offered no further explanation as to his sudden arrival and Sister Conchita asked him no questions. When he was ready he would tell her. She devoted her time to thinking about what she would teach that morning. Now that she had persuaded the people to return to their villages, most of the small one-teacher schools up in the bush had opened again. Sister Conchita was doing her best to resettle the teachers and make sure that some sort of basic curriculum was once more being followed, so that at least the young pupils were beginning to learn English.