To the Islands (5 page)

Heriot turned on him savagely and seized his arms. ‘Who brought him here?’

‘Brother Terry—’

‘Who told Brother Terry he belonged here? You did. Didn’t you?’

‘Brother, I—’

‘Who did you steal for?’

‘I di’n’t steal for nobody.’

‘Oh yes you did,’ Heriot said quietly. ‘Rex told you. Didn’t he, Stephen? Rex is your
djuari
, isn’t he? Your devil-devil, you do what he tells you.’

With Heriot’s veined eyes boring into his, Heriot’s thumbs boring into his flesh, the dark man weakened, dropped his calm, and became a frightened boy, begging: ‘Brother—’

‘You ought never to have seen him again, you ought to have hated him for what he did to Esther. Oh, I’m not afraid to say her name, I’ll say it again, Esther, Esther, Esther, and hope her spirit comes back to curse you for a bad brother. Rex killed Esther, you know that.’

‘No, no, brother—’

‘He killed her. In spite of everything I could do. And God knows I tried hard enough to stop it, tried to send him away, tried to talk her into sense. But there wasn’t anything I could do, was there?’ demanded Heriot, suddenly pleading. ‘Not when she was pregnant. I couldn’t stop it then. And he took her away, and she died. From neglect and hunger and his beatings. I know that, I know it from a white man. And yet you, Stephen, her own brother, you do what he tells you, you follow him round—’

‘He my brother,’ Stephen protested shakily.

‘The man who killed your sister. And will ruin you yet. I hear more than you think, Stephen. I’ve heard Rex talking about the wicked white man and the smart black man, and how to talk to the white man and how to get money from him without working. But Rex isn’t clever enough for that, and nor are you. You’ll end up in a filthy camp, like Rex, like Esther. Stephen,’ said Heriot, with grief in his voice, ‘don’t forget Esther.’

Down the road the tall man came forward from the tree and stood watching them, trying to hear some words of the dispute which was indubitably about himself.

‘Brother, I go now,’ Stephen murmured.

‘Yes, go,’ Heriot said remotely. ‘I’ll talk to Rex.’

He stepped forward down the road to the bright-shirted man. The sun stung his eyes bitterly, but he no longer felt old, only angry and grieved, and very strong. The man’s face, looking towards him, was bearded, and both beard and hair had been trimmed with moderate care. As he was tall and had features fairly fine for one of his race, and as there was arrogance in every line of his lean body, Heriot could see with his dazed eyes something of the force in him that had captured the dead Esther.
Ai lewa, walwal
, Heriot whispered; dog, foul man.

Rex said quietly: ‘Good day, brother.’

‘You’ve come back,’ Heriot said, turning away from the sun and fixing his eyes on the man’s.

‘Yes, brother.’

‘The boat will probably go in again on Sunday night. You’ll go with it.’

‘I bin told I come here, brother.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Mr Henryson say if you don’t tell me I can come after them letters I write, I better go down and ask the white man on the boat when he come next time. And Brother Terry, he say all right.’

Heriot said with contempt: ‘I know you get your reputation among your people from pretending to find all the white men at one another’s throats. But you’re not clever enough to make mischief between the Department of Native Welfare and Brother Terry and me.’

‘One time Harry and Maudie come here and you send them away, brother, and that Department Native Welfare, he real wild.’

‘Listen,’ Heriot said, ‘Mr Henryson is my friend. He knows me. He doesn’t know you. But I know you. I know you’re a troublemaker and a woman-stealer and a lazy, lying blackguard. When you go back I’ll write to him and ask him to keep an eye on you, for your people’s sake.’

‘Might be I make trouble now. All this people here, they my friends, they don’t like you send me away.’

‘Not many of them, Rex. Why did you come, anyway?’

‘This my country, brother.’

‘That’s not the reason. You’re looking for another wife.’

‘Might be, brother.’

‘Don’t call me brother, you’re no brother of mine. You killed my little girl, my daughter. I wish to God,’ said Heriot, ‘Stephen had killed you.’

The tall man, who had been standing partly stooped, hoping to placate Heriot a little with this attempt at humility, straightened and looked at him uneasily.

‘I know,’ Heriot said softly, ‘that sounds strange from me. But I’m very bitter, I’m very bitter, Rex. And I’d see a thousand of you dead if it could bring back Esther. Yes, Esther! Why shouldn’t I say her name? I gave it to her.’

In the sun they looked at one another. The light made brown glints in Rex’s beard and in his black hair, laid a polish on his skin. Under lids heavy with trachoma, his always wary eyes watched Heriot darkly.

‘You’re very well dressed,’ Heriot said, looking at the scarlet shirt open over his chest, the loose flannel trousers miraculously supported by his hipless body. ‘I advise you to go to a station and concentrate on cutting a fine figure of a man on horseback. This place is too poor to keep men who can keep themselves.’

Rex said tensely: ‘Thank you, Mr Heriot.’

‘Irony doesn’t become you,’ Heriot murmured, and turned, and began to walk towards the Ways’ house. He felt that if for a moment he lost the consciousness of his rocky dignity he would soften and crumble and become an object of pathos and ridicule, calling laughter from the defiant figure behind him; and therefore he kept his shoulders stiff and his stride long and sure.

But in the Ways’ garden, which was a jungle of poincianas, pawpaws, frangipani, bougainvillaea, and white-flowered creepers, haunted all day by minute finches as bright as any flower, he unveiled to himself his awakened grief for Esther, his disappointment in Stephen, his fear of Rex’s influence in the village. He remembered his age and his captivity. ‘I could lie down like a tired child,’ he said to the birds, ‘and weep away the life of care—’

He laughed rustily.

‘Any,’ asked Djediben, ‘dea,
abula?
’

‘You’ve got your tea,’ Harris said irritably. ‘Go away, now.
Bui!
’

She whimpered at him. ‘No dea. More dea,
abula
.’ Holding out to him her well-filled tea bag.

‘You’re a greedy one, Djediben.’

‘Ah,
abula
,’ she said, grinning hugely with her few tobacco-brown teeth, ‘money ’ere,
aru
’ere.’

From the dirty kerchief round her neck she produced a St Christopher medal, the gift of a Roman Catholic mission far away.

‘That’s not money.’

She became angry then, and muttered savagely to herself of the avarice of white men, her fingers meanwhile working at a knot in the corner of the kerchief. It gave at last, and two shillings fell on the concrete floor.

‘
Aru!
’ she shrieked, chasing them, and now happy again. ‘I give you,
abula.
’

He took them, hot from her flesh, and weighed out more tea. ‘You’ve got plenty this week,’ he said. ‘Better give some to the other people.’

‘Eh,
nurumal, abula
,’ she complained, rubbing her stomach. ‘Me ’ungry fella.’ But he knew she could be generous.

He looked away from her and wiped his sweating forehead on the back of his hand. ‘You go now,’ he said. ‘You’ve finished, you’ve got everything.’

‘Djob,
abula
.’

‘Soap for how many fella?’

She held up her fingers and counted: ‘Midjel. Old man Wunda. Old woman Ganmeri.’

‘Yourself, Wunda, Ganmeri,’ he muttered, wearily counting out the little blocks of soap. ‘That’s all now.’

‘Grimadada,
abula.
You put ’im in blour.’

He wandered across to the bins and brought back a mixture of cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda, sprinkled it over the flour in her dirty white bag, and asked hopefully: ‘Now we’ve finished?’

‘
Abula
,’ she murmured in her throat, drawing out the last syllable blandishingly.

‘Well, go away,’ he shouted at her. ‘
Bui!
’ And she, without loss of dignity, gathered her bags and went.

In the tin store the heat was stifling. He leaned sweating against his ant-eaten shelves and breathed deeply, longing for a cigarette but not having time, longing for a shower but having to wait till noon. A man of seventy, lean and dry after twenty years in the country, he longed at times for death, but could not die until someone had been found to replace him.

Across the counter Mabel, tall and regal, watched him. She was as old as he and, when tired, sometimes stumbled carrying firewood on her back to the camp. ‘
Abula
,’ she said gently.

When he looked at her he smiled faintly. Her dignity was striking, and on such days, coming to her after the demanding Djediben, he loved her very dearly.

‘Good day, Mabel,’ he said, taking the bags from her. ‘How’s your old man?’

‘Ah, ’im good,
abula
.’

He gave her flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, working through the list of the indigents’ allowance. Potatoes, onion, a tin of milk, some jam, rice, dried peas, porridge, soap. Outside he could hear the other women coming, two dozen of them about to descend on him
en masse
. ‘I’d better be quick,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something for you. You like
wana
, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

So he brought her his half-bottle of honey and put it in one of her bags. ‘You got matches?’ he asked, knowing how much they were prized, how much labour they saved these old women.

‘Madja,
abula
,’ she said, holding out her hand.

He gave her half a box from his pocket, and she, gathering up her bags, smiled in her stately and reserved fashion. ‘Dang you,
abula
,’ she murmured. ‘Good day.’

As she went out the crowd gathered at the door, the many old and pathetic, dignified or comic, grateful or parasitical women of his herd, waiting for the weekly rations. Now he would have to run from bin to bin, flat out, in a stream of sweat, for an hour or more in the sweating morning.

He must remember to give them salt to share around, it was the small things that were forgotten on the list. And he would serve the blind woman first.

‘Come in, you
ngalis
,’ he shouted at them. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

Outside the meathouse, under the wheeling crows, an old stork-legged man was attacking a cow’s head with an axe. He hacked uncertainly at the bone below the horns, one foot on the muzzle, while the beast’s eyes gazed as placidly as in life towards the old women gathering up its less edible organs from the grass.

‘Here, Wandalo,’ Heriot said. ‘Give me the axe.’

He held out his hand, and Wandalo, ancient and hesitant, gave it to him. Deadening his senses to the thud of the axe, the feeling of bone shattering under it, Heriot opened the head.

‘Now you’ve got him,’ he said, standing back and leaning on the axe.

Wandalo pulled back the top of the head. He squatted with the brains in his cupped hands, dripping blood. The old women in the grass shouted to one another that Abula Arriet had clubbed the beast’s head and got the meat.

‘You ’id ’im dat bulaman longa
bandi
,’ Djediben remarked conversationally.

‘Yes,’ Heriot said. ‘Strong fella me.’

From the hospital rose, suddenly, the sound of singing, the song wild and high, shouted from a strong throat. The old women sat up and listened, screaming excitedly.

‘Old man Galumbu,’ said Djediben around her grinning teeth. ‘’Im djingem now.’

‘What’s he singing?’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘Derby djong.’

‘About the time he was in the leprosarium?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Derby djong. All time ’im djingem now.’

‘Till he gets tired, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ she shrieked, ‘’im tired fella by-’n’-by.’

Slowly the crows circled. In the heat the stench of guts struck Heriot a blow in the stomach. ‘I’m tired fella myself,’ he said ‘I’ll go and talk to him. Talk to that old man. And sit down.’

‘Ah
abula
,’ Djediben crooned automatically.

The singing rising and falling tragically in the air, Heriot walked along a narrow path in the grass. Ahead of him a black snake, shining like brand-new pebbled leather, slid across the strip of dirt and disappeared. With each step he took, beads of sweat rolled down the crags of his face and into the damp handkerchief knotted at his throat. ‘Tired fella, all right,’ he told himself, standing at the gate of the hospital and watching the old man roar his songs from the bed on the veranda. ‘Weary, weary fella.’

The old man stopped singing and looked towards him. He had the face of a pleasant child, happy and rather helpless, with his white hair cut by Helen in a fringe, his wide-set eyes staring innocently from below tangled brows. The innocence of the eyes was their emptiness, for he was three-quarters blind, whether from trachoma or from leprosy Heriot no longer remembered.

‘
Bungundja?
’ demanded the ancient child. ‘
Gui!
’ He was mistrustful of the still figure at the gate.

Slowly Heriot advanced to the veranda, watching the milky eyes for recognition. ‘
Ngaia
,’ he said. ‘I. Abula Arriet. How are you, old man?’

Galumbu laughed, gently, a child’s laugh. ‘Good, bodj, yeah. Good now.’

‘You always call me “Boss”. You worked on a station once, eh?’

‘Yeah, wargam dcidjin, bodj.’

‘Long time ago?’

‘Ah, long dime,’ the old man mumbled, his face touched with sadness. ‘Binidj now.’

‘You’re not finished yet. You’re good fella, strong.’

The old man lay back with his cheek to the pillow and stared into the light. ‘No good. No good now.’

‘You’re not finished. You’ll live a long time with Sister Bond to look after you. Why, I,’ said Heriot, with an attempt at humour, ‘I’ll go to the islands before you, old man.’

Galumbu was silent.

‘
Mudumudu
,’ Heriot translated. ‘
Mudumudu-gu ngarambun wanggi ngaia
.’

With a sudden twist of his thin body Galumbu hid his face in the pillow and lay still.