To the Islands (3 page)

Heriot sat up and lowered his feet to the floor, slow in all his movements under the weight of his years and tiredness. Walking to the shower, his feet brushed the ground, his head was bent and his eyes lowered from the wounding light. Yet he was a tall man, stooping there under the overhanging thatch, a big man with his wild white hair, his face carved and calm. The lizards scattered from his path, the crows cried. Under running water, coursing the furrows of his face, a little of his weariness was washed away.

Deep in fading grass the country stretched away from the hut, between the rocky ridge and the far blue ranges, dotted with white gums, yellow flowering green-trees, baobabs still clinging to their foliage. And from the grass, which harboured also goats, creepers and all rustling reptiles, rose the Mission, the ramshackle hamlet of huts and houses, iron and mud-brick and thatch, quiet below the quiet sky.

So still, so still in the early heat. Standing at the door of the shower, pulling on his shirt, he watched Mabel walking through the grass, Djimbulangari slowly following. They moved as he did, loosely and tiredly, two old women with their hair tied in kerchiefs, their dresses hanging straight on their thin bodies. Looking at Mabel he thought that he had never seen her in any clothes but these, the dirty coloured skirt sewn to a flourbag bodice on which the mill brand was still bright green and legible. Picking their way like cranes through the grass, talking occasionally, not looking at one another. Old, dried-out women, useless and unwanted.

The guitar began behind one of the huts, plunk, plunk, plunk, while he was shaving, and he accompanied it with his mumbled singing:

‘There was a little nigger

And he couldn’t grow no bigger

So they put him in a Wild West show—’

The boy Arthur passed outside, straight and springy, absurd in the vanity of his youth. Sitting in the dust beneath a baobab an ancient man, Garang, with grass caught in his long and filthy hair, watched him expressionlessly.

‘You know, Garang,’ Heriot reflected, ‘and I know, how short a time this game can be played. Soon no girls will look when he goes past, soon the girls themselves will be black and dry as Djediben. Blessed,’ said Heriot to his face in the shaving mirror, ‘are the arrogant, for they have the gift of innocence.’

He smiled at himself in the mirror. But it was wrong, the muscles of his face were stiff, and the twist of his mouth was no smile. How long, thought Heriot, covering his mistake with lather, it must be since I have laughed.

And the mirror was broken, the wooden shutter of the window broken. Broken, broken. He saw himself as a great red cliff, rising from the rocks of his own ruin. I am an old man, an old man.
J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans
. And this cursed Baudelaire whining in his head like a mosquito, preaching despair. How does a man grow old who has made no investment in the future, without wife or child, without refuge for his heart beyond the work that becomes too much for him?

Because his despair grew on the cracked face in the cracked glass he turned away and finished dressing. And hurried then—because it was six o’clock and Harris was coming out to ring the rising bell—to the office to tune in the wireless to the morning schedule.

‘...Listen to medical calls,’ said the voice, and the bell rang, clamorous and prolonged, under the baobab outside.

Then the early-morning static, and a woman’s voice, far away and unintelligible. Heriot, seated beside the set with a pad in front of him, sketched a crumbling cliff with the profile of the Sphinx.

‘...Lie up a few more days,’ said the voice. ‘Get him to take it easy. And keep in touch, let’s know how he’s getting on. All right?’

‘Righto, thanks, Tom,’ said the woman in the static.

‘That’s the lot,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll read the traffic list. I have traffic on hand for—’ But the static caught him as he read the call signs. Heriot, twiddling with the controls, listened for Don L, but there was nothing. Only further away, through worse static, another voice began: ‘D J, D J, D J, good morning, Tom.’

‘Nothing,’ Heriot said. ‘Nothing.’ He crumpled the paper with the drawing in his fist and threw it away, and turned off the wireless, and sat there for a moment, his chin in his hands. Then his eyes fell on the mailbag inside the door, reminding him that in the night, while he had lain quiet in a sleep of sedatives, the boat had come back with communications from the other world.

Kneeling by the bag he ran his old hands, darkly blotched on the backs, steadily through the pile of letters, searching for the envelope with his typewritten name, his freedom. But when he found it and had torn it open and read the short message, every part of him went suddenly still, his mouth was still, only the room and the crows and the late, pestering mosquitoes seemed to echo: ‘Nothing.’

Before Bob Gunn’s path a snake whisked its black length into the grass.

‘
Ali!
’ shouted the children outside the church. ‘
Ali, lu!
Brother bin see
wala!
’

‘Go away,’ Gunn told them as they gathered round him. ‘
Bui!
’

‘
Ali!
’ cried the girls, seized with laughter. ‘He say
bui!
Brother talk language.’

‘You look out,’ Gunn said. ‘Might be cheeky feller, that one.’ But they were all round the grass, and the snake somewhere in the middle. He poked cautiously in the thick growth between himself and the bare brown feet of the girls poised for flight at the edge.

Ruth had a stone in her hand, Amazonian, her big white teeth showing. ‘
Ali!
’ she shouted, ‘there, look.’ The line of girls dispersed, screaming, as she threw the rock. For a moment the shining snake appeared, then vanished with a flick into the freedom of the denser grass.

‘He take off, all right,’ Ruth said. ‘He no monkey, that one.’ And the girls, always ready to laugh, giggled and cried: ‘
Ali!
’ around and behind her.

‘Well, we lost him,’ Gunn said. ‘
Mire badi
, never mind.’ He abandoned his stick and walked away, while behind him they screamed to one another: ‘He say
mire badi
! Brother talk language.’

Behind the church, in his cassock, smoking a last cigarette before the service, Father Way gazed absently at the new sun overhanging the distant blue hills. He looked round as Gunn came up. ‘One thing you have to give this country, it’s colourful. Look at those hills, like a bad watercolour.’

‘The trees are greener up here, too,’ Gunn said. ‘Leaf-green. Trees down south are going to look pretty drab after this.’

‘And the cliff—see that.’ Together they looked at the high cliff across the river and found it burning red with the morning light, rising above the bright green of gums and mangroves and baobabs on its banks. ‘Now, and at sunset,’ Way said, ‘you can see that for miles.’

Gunn had rolled a cigarette and was squatting on one heel. ‘Just missed a black snake,’ he said. ‘The girls scared it. They like their
twala
hunts.’

‘We’ve got everything,’ Way said. ‘Everything you could possibly wish elsewhere.’

‘These crows—twice as big and loud as any civilized crow.’

‘And the damn cockatoos. They tore up my peanuts and ate them. I thought I was going to do something for the agriculture of the Kimberleys.’

Gunn said, looking across at the cliff: ‘By the time this country’s ready for agriculture the rest of the world will have blown away in fine dust.’

‘Things are working out,’ Way said, ‘I think. There are plans for opening up more country, running some more cattle. Not,’ he admitted, ‘that I’m any less concerned, but I’m more optimistic. Once Heriot’s affairs are fixed up and the new man comes we won’t feel so uncertain about everything.’

‘Did the council find a new man?’

‘They said in their last letter they had two candidates.’

‘The mail came last night. Mr Heriot probably knows by now.’

‘It’ll be a relief,’ Way said. ‘To him as much as to anyone. He’s too old.’

‘Harry’s older.’

‘But more stable. Less to worry about.’

Picking at the grass, Gunn said slowly: ‘I wonder whether, when he’s dead, people won’t think again about Mr Heriot.’

‘I’m a charitable sort of bloke,’ Way said with a faint smile, ‘as a clergyman. I’ll just say I prefer people who have a certain warmth about them. Especially on missions.’

‘He’s one of the old school, though. It was tough for them, they didn’t have time for warmth. And he has achieved something, you can’t take that from him. I don’t see how we can sit in judgement on him, now, when it’s so much easier.’

Way said dryly: ‘You’re young, Bob, you make me ashamed of being so old and inflexible. But I stick to this: a man who goes round spreading civilization with a stock-whip gets no admiration from me.’

Gunn, staring at the ground, pulled out his tin to roll another cigarette.

‘No time for that,’ Way said. ‘I’m two minutes late already. My wife has a trying time waiting at the organ with the girls whispering, “
Ali
, Mana wipe her nose, Mana scratch her neck,” all round the church.’

‘I’d better take off,’ Gunn said. He got up and walked round by the grass half-walls to the open front of the iron church where the men stood waiting under a baobab.

Murmuring: ‘Good day, brother.’

‘
Nandaba grambun, abula?
’

‘You talk language, brother?’

‘
Jau
,’ Gunn said. ‘Little bit.’

‘Good day,
abula
.’

Good day, Michael; good day, Justin; good day, Edgar; good day, Richard; good day to all my brethren.

Kneeling on the ant-bed floor, rock-hard under her knees even through the thin hassock, Helen Bond watched Heriot at his rigid prayers near the front of the church.

Thinking: What does he say, morning after morning, kneeling up so straightly? How does he go on, with always the same day ahead? Is it the prayer itself that gives him strength?

He had raised his head now, his neck was darkly burned below the white hair. His mind is somewhere else, Helen thought. What does he think about, what has he been thinking to himself for all these years and years?

From a rafter above his head a lizard dropped to the floor, stood in the aisle waving one forepaw. She, watching it, became aware of a sort of rustle of attention among the people, and found that they too were watching, with the amusement and the tenderness they kept for the eccentricities of wild life. But Heriot had not noticed, his eyes were fixed on a distant tree showing over the half-wall of the church, and his body still had that tensity of concentration that belonged to his prayers, so that she felt suddenly ashamed that she could be so easily distracted, and covered her eyes with her hands. But could think of no prayer, having already said everything that seemed necessary.

Afterwards, standing outside with Gunn, she watched Heriot walk stiffly back to his office, and said: ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He let me examine him, and he seemed to be in wonderful condition for a man of his age. Yet sometimes he seems too tired even to say “Good morning”.’

‘Terry thinks he’s going troppo.’

‘Troppo?’

‘It’s not in the
Nurse’s Encyclopedia.
Means going queer from being too long in the tropics.—Do you remember, in the war, the cartoons about going troppo and drinking jungle juice?’

At the end of the road, where the trees met, ‘There’s Djediben in her new dress,’ said Helen. ‘She looks ready for a garden party.’

Gunn laughed. ‘Gosh, what a figure. She could be sixteen.’ They watched the slim, middle-aged woman advance down the road in her almost fashionable dress. Her body with its long lines had the grace of a girl’s, she walked delicately on her gross bare feet.

‘
Ali!
real pretty fellow now,’ Helen called to her.

The small black face split open with a screech of laughter. ‘You pretty fella, sister, yeah, you.’

‘No, you, Djediben.’

‘
Ali
, sister!’ screeched Djediben, convulsed with laughter, and came and embraced her with thin black arms, touching gently with her palms Helen’s breasts and shoulders, circling her waist with a spider arm. ‘Sister,’ she sighed lovingly, hiding her face against Helen’s neck.

‘You old smoodger,’ Helen said.

Gunn asked: ‘Where’s Dambena, Djediben? Still camping in the bush?’

‘Eh, Nambal—that way.’

‘He likes the bush, eh?’

‘
Jau
, ’im like ’im budj.’

‘You’d better go and see him. He’ll be getting off with another old woman pretty soon.’

‘
Jau
,’ screamed Djediben, ‘’nother old woman. Brother.’

As she stifled her amusement against Helen’s neck a wad of chewed tobacco dropped from behind her ear and fell in the dust. With a wail she fell on her knees to search for it and having found it sat crouched in grief over her thin hand. ‘
Worai, worai
,’ she lamented, rocking slowly with desolation. ‘
Mundju
all binidj!’

‘It’s only dusty,’ Helen said consolingly over the keening, ‘and this is ration day, you’ll get more this afternoon.’

‘Aaaah,’ crooned Djediben.

‘
Mire badi
,’ Gunn said. ‘Never mind.’

Suddenly, as if a tap had been turned off, all lamentation ceased. The woman got to her feet, put the tobacco in her mouth, and walked silently away.

‘Funny old thing,’ Helen said. ‘So many moods in one little woman. It’s a wonder she didn’t stay. She must have known if she kept wailing long enough I’d give her a cigarette to chew.’

‘Eldritch is the only word for Djediben.’

‘That sounds a bit sinister.’

‘She is, I think. Intelligent and inscrutable. Lots of dark depths under the smooth manner.’

‘She’s Rex’s mother. You know, the famous Rex.’

‘Rex’s mother?’ Gunn asked sharply. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I found it in an old file. It might explain some things about Rex.’

Looking along the baobab avenue to where, in the shade-stippled dust, Djediben had sat herself down, Gunn said slowly: ‘I’m feeling a bit worried.’