Solomons Seal (35 page)

We had started to drift. Dawn was breaking fast, a beautiful, rain-fresh, cloudless dawn, and I could see the shore trees sliding past. The tug hooted, a sudden blast of steam at the funnel, and the stern warp tightened, the propeller churning a wake as she began to stem the current, holding both ships steady. Hans Holland appeared on the catwalk below, moving with a rolling gait, his head down, his hands clenched. He climbed to the bridge wing, stopped just inside the
doorway, staring round the wheelhouse, then came across to me. ‘McAvoy tells me you've got a letter of mine.' I didn't know how to answer him, so I kept my mouth shut. ‘From a man named Lewis.'

‘The letter to your father?'

‘Yes, to my father. Where is it?'

‘Up at the house, I think.' And I added quickly, ‘I'm not sure. I know I read it. But afterwards I can't remember what I did with it.' But now I did remember. Just before I had fallen asleep I had slipped it back between the pages of
Playboy
and put the magazine on the shelf above my bunk. And the sheet of stamps, they were in it, too. ‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘It was written so long ago I didn't think it of any importance.'

He eyed me coldly, and I watched him trying to make up his mind whether I had told him the truth. ‘All right,' he said. ‘As soon as this ship has got under way, we'll go over to the house and find it.' He pushed past me on to the port bridge wing and called down to Jona Holland, telling him to take command of his ship again. ‘And you,' he said, turning back to me. ‘You come with me. McAvoy, too.' He started down towards the tug, and when I insisted on getting my things, he merely shrugged. ‘Give you five minutes.'

It was less than that when I clambered down on to the tug with my bag. I had purposely left it only half zipped up, the copy of
Playboy
visible on top of my clothes. Walking out through the wheelhouse, I found Jona sitting on the captain's chair, his long fingers nervously scooping baccy from a battered pigskin case into his pipe. He seemed more or less
himself again, but his hands trembled, and his eyes had a strangely vacant stare as he gazed straight down the length of the ship. It was almost as if they were made of glass, no life in them, and his lips moving as he muttered to himself under his breath. He made no reply when I wished him a good trip. I don't think he even saw me.

The tug's warps were let go, and the rusty box shape of the LCT was instantly swept clear of us by the current. We hung in the tideway until she had manoeuvred herself round with her bows to the west; then we headed for the wooden pier. By the time we were tied up, leaving just enough room for the ferry, the LCT was abreast of Minon Island and already turning to go out past Madehas by the North Channel. Watching her fade into the morning haze, I wondered what Hans Holland had said to Jona, what he had done to make him go back to his ship again. Had he convinced him that the independence of Buka and Bougainville was now so assured that the future of the Holland Line was in his hands? Or was it something else, something more sinister? Hans was ashore now, talking to a group of Buka men gathered in a bright huddle round an aged truck. But Perenna was still there, in the bows, her hair stirring gently in the breeze that was beginning to ripple the surface of the water. I moved up the deck to join her. ‘Good morning.'

She turned her head, a quick sideways glance, but she didn't say anything.

‘What's happened to your brother? When I left him on the bridge there, he was like a zombie.'

‘If you'd lived here—' Her shoulders lifted in a shrug which seemed to suggest I was a child and impossible to communicate with.

‘He looked as though he had been hypnotised.'

She turned on me angrily. ‘Brainwashed. That's the modern term, isn't it? But out here … Oh, you'll never understand. You've got to be born here.' She was staring into the distance again. ‘It's … it's in the genes. It's psychological. Tim, Jona, me, Hans – we kick against it – not Hans, of course, he's different – but we can't avoid it, none of us. Not here. Particularly not here.' Her voice was so subdued I could barely catch the words. ‘If you'd lived at Madehas …'

‘Mac said the house was cursed.'

‘Perhaps.' And she suddenly turned her head and looked at me. ‘What've they done to Mac? He's been beaten up. Why?'

I told her about Teopas's death, and then about the safe and the letter.

‘So you've been to the house?'

‘Yes.'

There was a sudden awkward silence. Finally I said, ‘Hans told Mac he'd kill him if he didn't get that letter back. Do you think he would?'

‘Why, do you have it?' She was staring at me dully. ‘Can I see it please?'

I glanced up the road. Hans was still there, and another truck had arrived. I got the copy of
Playboy
from my bag and gave her the letter. She read it through slowly, then read it again. And when I produced the sheet of Solomons Seal ship labels, she
sighed. ‘So that's what it's all about, why he wanted those stamp albums. He was prepared to do anything – to me, to Tim – to get his hands on them.'

‘Why?' I asked.

‘It's his father, isn't it? His reputation. That's what's at stake.' She gave a little humourless laugh. ‘His closest ancestor, his godhead if you like. And that man Lewis – he left Lewis to die. That's the same as murder.'

‘Was Hans that fond of his father?'

‘Oh, God!' she said in an exasperated tone. ‘Ancestor worship. Don't you understand? He worships him.'

‘But that's paganism.'

‘Yes, paganism. Cry to one ancestor for relief of disease and pain, to another for wealth, which is the same as Cargo. Hans isn't a man unless he has Cargo.'

‘Do you mean power?'

She shook her head. ‘No, I don't mean power. Among all these blacks, he's the dominant one. He has power already. What he needs is success and everything that goes with it. Money is what drives him. Greed. And Mac says it's greed that drove his father.' She handed the letter back to me. ‘And what about you? Is it greed that's driving you? Is that why you took over Jona's ship without a thought about what your action meant to him, or to me?'

I shook my head. I couldn't answer her, not in any way that would make sense in her present mood. ‘Where's Mac?'

‘Below somewhere, locked up I think.' She was silent then, and I returned the copy of
Playboy
to my
bag. The skipper of the tug, a young Australian with close-set eyes and a small sun-bleached beard, was in the caboose drinking coffee. I joined him, and he poured me a mug, handing it to me with a sly grin. ‘You always get the girls hotted up with
Playboy
, mate?'

I was back in a world I understood. Afterwards I went ashore. The sun had gone, the sky clouded over. There was a heaviness in the air as I stood under the solitary banyan tree, looking across the road to the line of Chinese shops with their worn wooden steps and exotic signs. They were already open, and youngsters in from the villages were gathered in chattering huddles, sucking ice cream and drinking lolly water, which is their name for a soft drink. Beyond the shops, just before the turning down to the Government wharf, where the coaster lay, was an open concrete building something like a pagoda. This was where the trucks had stopped, and as I walked towards it, I realised it was a market, the throng of people gathered there mostly stallholders setting out their produce.

It began to rain, warm, heavy drops. Umbrellas and plastics sprouted like mushrooms. Hans crossed the road to a prefabricated wooden building that looked quite new. It had a sign like the Chinese shop-fronts that read
Buka Trading Co-operative.
I reached the market just as the atmosphere became so heavy that the rain poured out of it, the noise of water drumming on the market's tin roof drowning the chatter of people crowding in. There was one white woman amongst them, a blonde with a thin, bony
face, her white cotton dress immaculately ironed. She squeezed through between the piles of fruit and vegetables to ask me whether I knew what was happening over in Bougainville. She was a Mission School teacher, and she had friends in Arawa. An aerial mast, just visible through the rain across the road, caught my eye, and I suggested she ask at the Buka Co-operative for news, but she seemed to freeze at the suggestion as though I had advised her to consult with the devil. A moment later I saw her talking to a young nun who had just stepped out of a mud-bespattered Toyota four-wheel drive, looking calm, collected and very Catholic in her habit.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, a tap turned off, and in an instant bare black feet had churned the area round the market into a quagmire. The sun's heat was filtering through, burning up the thin veil of cloud that was now so low that the futher shore of the Passage was hidden from my sight. The dirt road, running straight as a sword through endless plantations, was a brown slash of steaming mud, out of which strange shapes emerged as villagers bringing woven mat baskets of produce in to market. I bought some bananas and ate them, wandering round the concrete display counters – so much colour, so much ripe fruit, so many bare breasts – and then the nun came and spoke to me. They had heard on the radio that a Ruling Council had been formed in Kieta and Daniel Sapuru had been elected first President of the Republic of Bougainville-Buka. Was I off the tug? Did I
know Mr Holland? Could I give her any more detailed information?

I shook my head, wondering what Hans Holland's role really was, just how much he was in control. The nun knew him, of course, but only to greet, she said. She was Italian from the big Catholic Mission halfway up the island, and when I questioned her about Hans and his relations with the Co-operative, she said very coolly, ‘I have nothing to do with him. He is bisnis. Always bisnis.' She changed the subject then, very firmly, asking me about myself and telling me about the produce on the counters as she made her purchases. There were paw-paw, of course, and yams and mangoes, real bananas, small and perfectly ripe, as well as big coarse plantains for cooking, green oranges and a large pink grapefruit she called
pomolo.
There were also things I had never seen before: betelnut,
pit-pit, lou-lou
like a big crunchy apple, snake bean, Chinese cabbage, taro and cassava and the sweet potato they call
kau-kau.

It was when she was leaving, having by then in her quiet way discovered how I had come to Buka, that she told me something about the Hollands that surprised me, and not in answer to any question from me, but of her own volition. There was talk, she said, among the expatriate inmates of the Mission that long ago, before World War II, Mr Hans Holland's father had been a convert to the Catholic faith and that he had done it to make his peace with God because of some terrible transgression. ‘A man with red hair like that' – she smiled up at me, a gleam of amusement in
her eyes as she shook my hand – ‘they always have evil tempers, no? We have them in Sicily. They are descendants of the Vikings and do terrible things.' She hesitated. ‘This Hans Holland, he also has red hair. Has he done something bad? I'm told he has some island blood, but he still comes to us regularly to confess.'

‘He's a Catholic, then?'

She nodded. ‘Since last year.' And she added, very quietly, ‘There is good in all people, don't you know, my friend, so God be with you.' And she smiled as she got into the Toyota and was driven off, her head bowed, her hands on the beads of her rosary, and only the satisfaction of a quick sidelong glance to assure me of her femininity.

I ate another banana, watching the Buka Cooperative and chatting about the weather to a big-breasted sultry-looking woman selling fruit. She spoke Pidgin mixed with Mission English and assured me the sun would shine. ‘Bik fella rain tru finis'im. No rain. Sun nau.' She chuckled, her mountainous bosom heaving under the coloured cotton that did little to conceal it. ‘Bik fella rain tru, yu savvy? It mean rain all time. Not rain all time nau.' She gave me a huge betelnut smile, and almost instantly the daylight faded and the rain poured down again.

The door of the Co-operative opened, and Hans Holland peered out. He called to one of the truck drivers; then he saw me and shouted, ‘You. Slingsby.' He hesitated, glancing up the road, then made a dash for it through raindrops bouncing knee-high. ‘Where's
Perenna? Still on board?' He licked the rainwater from his lips, staring at me, his red hair plastered to his skull. ‘I saw you talking to her. Did she say anything about Highland workers up at the mine? Well, did she?'

I shook my head, wondering what it was all about. He seemed to have been thrown off balance. ‘Something wrong?' I asked, but he had turned, signalling to the truck driver, who now had his engine going. The truck drew up close to where we stood, the door swinging open. ‘I'm going up to the ADC's office. They've got a direct line to the radio station over on Sohano. You'd better come, too, unless you want to get soaked.' He climbed in, and I followed him. ‘Kiap's office,' he told the driver. Then, as we drove off into the thundering grey wall of the teeming rain, he turned to me. ‘It's Arawa,' he said. ‘They're down into Arawa, a great crowd of redskins, I'm told, all raising hell.'

‘You mean Chimbu Highlanders?'

‘Yeah. Highlanders from Papua New Guinea.'

‘What are they raising hell about?'

‘That's what I want to know. They've no weapons. Not firearms anyway, so they can't do anything. They're just making a bloody nuisance of themselves, and they won't talk to anybody but Perenna. That's what they say. I don't know what the hell they want.' He had been yelling in my ear to make himself heard above the tom-tom beat of the rain on the cabin's tin roof. Now he relapsed into silence, not saying anything till we drew up at the Sub-District HQ. A truck and two Toyota short-wheelbase land-cruisers were parked
outside, and sheltering in the corrugated iron garage was a bunch of Buka men armed with old, rust-worn rifles. ‘You wait here.' There was a guard on the door, an elderly man with close-cropped hair holding what looked like a Japanese rifle, and he had two very old grenades fastened to the waistband of his shorts. It was a wet, soggy world, the rain a steady downpour now and the light so dim it was a steaming sepia colour. Hans Holland was only gone five minutes. He came back in a hurry. ‘Tugboat.' He jumped in and slammed the door, his tanned leathery face tight-shut and frowning.