The Love Beach (28 page)

'That's me,' agreed Conway.

'Setting the hulk on fire was a bastard's trick,' said Davies. 'And a lousy bastard's trick at that.'

'Yes, it was,' nodded Conway. He seemed to find the nodding painful and stopped. 'Have you got any beer?'

'Haven't you?' asked Davies.

'Not a trickle. Get us a beer, mate.'

Without answering Davies got up and went back to his room for a bottle of beer. He hoped it would make Conway as sick as it had made him. But it didn't.

'I couldn't believe it when you did that,' said Davies. 'Honest, I didn't think even you would do such a lousy trick.'

'I did,' said Conway evenly. 'I know me better than you know me. There's no getting away from it, I am an unscrupulous bastard.'

'That's all they had to live on, that copra,' said Davies feeling hopeless at arguing with the man. 'I thought you were just going to do the Dodson‑Smith act.'

Conway smiled like an actor recalling a favourite and famous part. .’ I was very good,' he said. 'Terrific, in fact. I really put the fear of God into that mob.'

'The bike worked all right?' said Davies miserably. He decided not to argue any more. He still felt sick.

'A beaut. A real beaut, that bike. And the bell went like mad until the bloody clapper flew out. Ha!'

'So now they know they've had the sign from their Messiah telling them they've got to go to war? 'said Davies.

'That's too right, son,' said Conway. He moved carefully around on the bed so he could hold the beer bottle in the other hand. 'No beer for you?' he asked.

'I had some,' said Davies. 'I only kept it down for thirty seconds.'

'And you hoped the same thing would happen to me?'

'Yes, I did.'

'Well, it won't. I feel sore, not sick.'

'You'll go over tomorrow, well I mean today now, and do your recruiting?' asked Davies.

'They'll be waiting with the old kitbags all packed,' said Conway. 'I'll pay in advance, of course, and they'll be needing some army pay now the piggy bank is at the bottom of the lagoon.'

Davies shook his head slowly. 'It really was a bastard trick,' he repeated.

'You're in it too,' said Conway. 'We've got a written contract remember?'

'Don't worry, I won't go to the United bleeding Nations about it,' Davies assured him bitterly. 'I don't want any more trouble. But you won't get me involved with any hokey‑pokey like this again.'

'Quite right too, sport,' said Conway. 'You leave that to the professional shits like me. You sell your butter and fats.'

Fourteen

A marmalade dawn spread over the sea. The islands and the hills and trees, the coloured palettes of the lagoons, the white houses, the red earth, and the ocean itself changed their tones with every new moment of the growing day.

People began moving about Sexagesima early because it was easy to do the things that had to be done before the air became swollen and hot in the streets. Abe slept only for an hour and then walked along the cool waterfront to his boat. The Melanesian women were already spreading out their fruit baskets for the day's selling and Abe bought himself half a melon for breakfast. He bartered about the price and got it reduced. He ate the melon as he went towards the boat, letting the juice fall down his chin and on to his thrustful belly, hardly noticing it because it always fell down like that, anyway, and he was full of the thoughts of how much to charge for the damage to the boat.

He stood on the jetty and shook a sad head at it. The motor cycle was still spectacularly embedded in the debris of the cabin, the boat's steering wheel was hanging like a fallen star, the planks and plywood stuck out like buck teeth. Carefully he performed some subtle rearrangement of the wreckage, putting a plank here and a section of shattered plywood there. The result of these touches was that the damage looked even more violent, a device which Abe excused on the grounds that he had needed to do a certain amount of clearing up when they were at sea during the night, so that he could stand and steer the boat back to Sexagesima.

Having posed the subject to his satisfaction he produced a German camera which he had stolen from a busy Dusseldorfer in Paris and which he considered as part of German reparations to the Jews. It was an excellent camera, although he told himself not nearly as excellent as his

grandmother who had died in Breslau. He took an entire reel of pictures of his boat to be used as evidence in any future litigation and then proceeded to clear away the wreckage. Sections of the cabin, stray planks from the deck, and bulwarks, and finally and spectacularly the St Paul's motor cycle, all went over the side and into the pale blue harbour.

On the following day Her Majesty would be arriving in her royal yacht and Abe needed his boat to take sightseers who couldn't wait a moment longer out to meet the arriving vessel. He was already fully booked at two pounds a ticket and he could not countenance losing a commission like that. Indeed, he thought, the removal of the cabin meant that he would probably be able to sell another five or six places on the deck.

The whole of the forgotten fetid little capital was making itself ready for the great tomorrow. The sagging buildings and gritty streets seemed to feel the excitement as much as the people. Coloured bunting streamed along the paintless sun balconies of the waterfront. The streets had been swept twice that week and would be done over again quickly a few hours before the arrival of the royal party. The imitation Christmas tree which flashed on and off every year in the window of the Chinese Emporium in the main street had been produced out of season and was on display with all its little lights. Chairs from the British Legion hall had been brought down to the quayside and arranged in ranks for the accommodation of the distinguished British and French residents and the tribal chiefs from the outer islands, the banana‑clad leaders from St Mark's being cunningly accommodated in the back row.

Tame flowers from the gardens had been carried in baskets, pots, and handfuls to the arrival point. They sat up in tubs, fell dizzily over balconies in long brilliant trails, climbed posts and the masts and rigging of the little boats in the harbour. The copra hulk in the lagoon was dressed overall, the Governor's pinnace shone like a regal swan as it made its orthodox steady journey across the harbour, the crew in their virgin uniforms and set faces performing theirpattern of six familiar navigational movements.

From the peak of the Condominium headquarters on the waterfront stood out two new flags, the Union JJack and the Tricolour, flank to flank, heads down in identical limpness in the breathless, breezeless air. It was expected that the Queen would deliver at least three sentences in French somewhere towards the end of her speech.

Children's tea parties had been arranged for the school and the mission hall and there would be Highland games on the town sports field in the cool of the evening followed by a special performance of
Judas Maccabeas
given by the Sexagesima choral union at the Chinese Assembly Hall. Speeches had been prepared, wires spread out, cars and children washed, and the police band threatened with certain dismissal if they didn't get it right this time.

Down at The Love Beach, by its caretaker ocean, the chapel of the Unknown Soldier stood in metallic solitude, set, into the sand, the concrete tomb having received the poor bones, the crucifix of gun and helmet fixed. Flowers would be brought that evening by the children from the beach village and garlanded about the rusting shoulders of the landing barges. It was Bird who had suggested to the children that they should bring the blossoms and cover the sides of the invasion craft. They would go out in the evening, a few hours before the arrival of the royal visitors and gather thousands of flowers for the barges on the beach. So that the Queen and all the important people with her would not see the shame of the Apostle Islands.

Like everyone else George Turtle was awake that lucid morning. His. wife had experienced a bad night dreaming about fainting while curtseying to the Monarch and she had kept waking him up to tell him her troubles. His eyes felt sore as he left the house with his green Morris Minor to go to the radio,station. But the brilliant early scenery of the island, the overflow greenness, the darting colours of the birds, the blue sheeted ocean beyond the trees, revived him. This was a splendid place. He was never so glad he had left Isleworth.

He was pleased too with the new paint on the radio
building, a fine
cricket white so that it looked like a nice pavilion.
The aerials looked high and powerful. The Queen would come to visit the station after all, although she would not have the time to broadcast. He would have some impressive pictures to send home to his brother for the local paper. Christ, wasn't it marvellous to be
somebody!

The station had been in contact twice daily with the

approaching royal yacht and he knew it was steaming

placidly two hundred and thirty miles or so to the south.

Leaving his Morris on the gravel drive in front of the build‑

ing he walked out to the small garden headland and looked

over the sea to the saucer edge of the horizon, pointing his

blank Isleworth face due south and trying to imagine he

could see for ever, or two hundred and thirty miles at least,

and focus that grand vessel approaching these fine islands '.

Had he looked south‑west towards the rising pudding of st

Paul's Island he might have seen a few hairs of smoke no

thicker than a Melanesian poisoned arrow, standing over

the brow of the island.

At the South Seas Hilton Scamus stood outside in the street and nodded his approval at the final efforts of a Vietnamese boy, the sickly son of the shopkeeper across the road, to tie the cord of a large flag of the Irish Republic above the door. That was fine. As long as they were in no doubt where he stood. One day he wanted to go back to County Wexford and he wanted to make the journey with a clear conscience. It was all right to sell beer and spirits to the British, feed them, accommodate them, even be friends with them. But never let them think that you approved of them. One of the older ground‑floor rooms of the hotel had collapsed that morning. It had been sagging for some time and that part of the building had not been very safe since 1948 and was let at half rate because of the risk. But no one had been hurt. These things happened, Seamus thought, even in the best‑run places.

At the pavement café next to Bird's salon Mr Hassey, Mr Kendrick, and Mr Livesley met in the full ten o'clock sunsh;ne for their first drink. Each sported a patriotic rosette which Abe had been selling on behalf of a French firm at Papette who had over‑manufactured when General de Gaulle visited Tahiti. Since the national colours were the same there was no embarrassment.

'Never thought I'd live to see a time like this in the Apostles,' beamed Mr Hassey. 'My God, thirty‑eight years in the islands. Thirty‑eight years, you know.'

'Ascertaining the natives,' Mr Livesley finished for him. Hassey stared at him in an aggrieved way. 'That's why I came,' he agreed. 'Been doin' it thirty‑eight years.'

Mr Kendrick said: 'Every bicycle in the place, white and native, is going to be decorated with coloured streamers. From the handlebars, through the spokes. Every single bike.'

'Some people might think I had a lot of foresight with my neon sign,' commented Mr Livesley, drinking pedantically. 'It's in the most patriotic colours don't you agree?'

Some Tonkinese children, bright yellow in the sun, jumped along the dry street waving paper Union Jacks, jostling each other as they ran. The Chinese shopkeeper opposite threw a mild firecracker into the street to frighten them but they laughed and ran from it. The Chinese threw another behind them.

Mr Hassey turned, annoyed. 'For God's sake,' he said. 'That old fool is for ever throwing those things. Chinese New Year, his birthday. his kids' birthdays ‑ well, his son's, anyway ‑ and any other excuse he can think of. I hope he doesn't chuck them tomorrow. He'll scare the shit out of the police band.'

Bird came from her salon and looked at the three men at their drinks, at the wisp of smoke from the dying firecracker, then down the yellow light of the street of bunting and flags to the Irish banner that Seamus had flown outside the hotel. From over the house‑tops, already seeming lower under the growing heat, she could hear the muffled band practising on the quayside. It would be a wonderful day tomorrow. She was sure of that. Something they would always remember.

Rob Roy English went to The Love Beach very early and stood contemplating the shrine he had caused to be made from the landing craft. He seemed relieved that it was still there. He grinned savagely at it, pushing out his jaw and projecting his false teeth with the grin. It looked starkly impressive, like one of those modern art masters they sometimes showed in
The Scotsman.
The thought of newspapers made him remember that
The Baffin Bay
was due to arrive in three days. Its appearance, always the great hinge of the month to life in the islands, had been almost forgotten in the anticipation and excitement of the royal visit. Yes, the papers would be arriving,
Scottish Field
too. What with that and Her Majesty dedicating the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier it was going to be a tremendous week.

Across the sheeted lagoon, on the terrace of her house, where the red roof projected like a sharp tongue, Mrs Flagg composed a letter to the British Governor protesting at the placing of Tom Ya‑Ya, the St Mark's chief, in the back row of the official reception stand on the quayside. She made the point that since Her Majesty had desired to see the islands she ought to see them in all their aspects. It was too late to do anything now, but she felt she ought to make a protest.

Her lawn rolled down luxuriously to the indolent lagoon, touching it with diffidence as though afraid the colours would not mix. Water sprinklers danced a splashing ballet over the green, the drops splintering in the sunlight as they fell. Somewhere in the overblown thicket at the side of the garden the St Mark's natives were polishing their family skulls.