They Met in Zanzibar (4 page)

It would be easy for Steve Cortland and the other young men to adjust to a new regime. They were in copra for the profits, but her father wasn’t. His crops had bought the cottage in Kent and comfortably kept the three of them in two different establishments. They had paid his fare home, and covered the cost of dozens of expensive gifts, and made sure there was always a comfortable balance at the bank. But for Jim Maldon they had done much more; they had given him a reason for living.

He had loved her mother; of course he had. But he would only have been half alive without the plantation. Her mother had known it, suffered perhaps, but placed his happiness above the pleasure of having
him
always near.

But if Jim lost his plantation, all his wife’s willing sacrifice went for nothing. He might as well have given up long ago, and spent the years, albeit less excitingly, in England. There had been times, since she had grown out of her girlhood, when Peg had questioned her parents’ relationship. If you loved a man you wanted him near, within touch. You had to watch his movements, listen to the cadences of his voice, smell his tobacco and tweed, cherish his scuffed slippers lying beside his chair, become exasperated with his calm maleness but dependent on it. And you had to feel the physical pangs of need and satisfaction. It had seemed impossible that Jim, of the abrupt and loving letters, should have found it necessary to place his plantation above his family.

Now, though, she was beginning to understand him. For him, too, life was meant to be lived; but he was tough and seeking, and he had found what he wanted and become immersed in it before he was sure that his wife could never join him. He must have had some hard times, reconciling the man he was with the man he would like to have been.

He was what he was, and Peg loved him that way. Even if all the planters sold to the company, Jim would hold out ... and he wouldn’t be alone. Peg would be there, helping him wherever she could.

With the sudden exhilaration of the young, Peg felt she was already tensed for battle with that attractive egotist, Steve Cortland.

It was Steve who drove them out to the airport next morning. The plane hadn’t arrived, and because the tiny public lounge was crammed with Zanzibaris the three of them walked up and down outside, in the narrow shadow of the building.

Steve was normal with Jim, cool with Peg. She got the impression that he regarded her as just an impulsive kid who’d have to give in and might as well do it gracefully.

“So you’ve another two
m
onths’ holiday,” Jim said. “That’s one of the things I admire about you, Steve - the way you take your three months’ leave regularly every other year and still have a bigger crop per acre than anyone else. You’re one of the young, organised types. Me, I’m just an old copra grubber, but I wouldn’t be anything else.”

Steve said distinctly, “You may change your ways now that your daughter’s joining you. You might even go in for a social life. Look in on young Foster for me, once in a while.”

“I’ll do that. No need to tell you to enjoy yourself.”

The plane touched down, and people wearing fezes and turbans and saris descended from it, followed by three Europeans, two of whom were women, both well-dressed though the younger was the more spectacular. She wore white, a simple sleeveless dress and a tiny round hat upon abundant dark hair, and she carried a white leather cosmetic case. Something made Peg look at Steve. She saw a startled smile on his lips, his hand lifted to wave to the vivacious, gesticulating creature as she disappeared into the door of the customs end of the building. Peg wished she had been close enough to see the woman’s features.

Jim caught his daughter’s glance and gave her a wink which said, “There’s the woman he’s been waiting for!”

There were fifteen minutes of waiting, while the luggage of the new arrivals was wheeled into the customs department and that of those about to depart was loaded into the plane. Then came the summons for those leaving to take their seats. When Steve said goodbye to them he was already glancing often towards the door through which the new arrivals were gradually appearing, followed by their luggage.

“Have a good trip,” he said. “See you in Motu.”

Peg had gone about a dozen paces across the grass when she looked back. She saw Steve greeting the young woman in white, holding both her hands while he looked at her. Then the girl flung her arms about his neck and kissed him; Peg could see him laughing at her enthusiasm and taking her elbow to lead her out to his car. The two of them were all set for great times together in Zanzibar.

Peg felt chilly and lost. A knife-like draught seemed to be blowing about her golden plans for a few months with her father followed by marriage with Paul Lexfield, and somehow it was caused by Steve. She was glad to be getting away from him for a while.

She sat beside her father in the small plane, smelled the spicy sweetmeats that other passengers were chewing and watched the take-off. Zanzibar became a fuzzy green coast patched with white and then it disappeared from her window.

Five days later Peg and Jim Maldon arrived on Motu Island, in the South Seas.

CHAPTER TWO

From J
im’s description of it, Peg knew the house intimately before she saw it. He’d built it himself, with island labour, in the style that stood up best to the climate; plain and square, with a palm-thatch roof extending right over the veranda and sloping out a good three feet beyond the walls all round, to guard the stucco from rain. When Peg first saw the house the walls were red with mud to about window level. The rains did that every year, Jim explained philosophically; as the dry season began you sluiced them down and repainted them. No trouble at all.

Inside, the house was bare and neat, though it was doubtful whether it would remain so with Jim in residence. There was a living room with a small dining table in the window and a bulgy little three-piece suite in black and red flowered cretonne which had faded to brown and plum colour. A low cupboard which no doubt held drinks and table accessories, an extra armchair and a primitive carved stool made up the rest of the room’s furnishings. There were no curtains, only a reed blind through which the air could filter day and night.

The bedrooms held even less. Jim’s had the bare essentials in local wood which had been re-va
rn
ished d
u
ring his absence and looked sticky, and in Peg’s room there was only a wooden bed with a net spring and a coir mattress, and a cupboard full of junk and fish moths.

As Jim said: “Never had much use for a second bedroom - just kept an extra bed here in case it should be needed. I wasn’t sure you’d be coming out with me, but you can have my room till we get things fixed up.”

“Not I,” said Peg. “You’ll battle with that varnish yourself! I’m going to have a wonderful time furnishing my room.”

“You do that. And don’t be stingy about it just because it may be temporary. Even if you go back to England and get married, I shall like to have the room there ready for your visits.”

Peg answered him with a smile. With Steve Cortland and his advice five or six days away, she was feeling almost as her father did - that nothing on earth could dislodge him from his own green stretch of the island.

And what a glorious green patch it was! The house stood in a clearing with a vegetable garden at its back and thick emerald grass in front. There were mango trees to the right, huge, thick-leaved things with hundreds of small green fruits for
ming
along the boughs, and to the left of the house there were thickets of bananas, a few tall papa
y
a trees and some orange bushes which again were laden with small green fruit. And straight behind all the fruit trees were the coconut palms, thousands of them reaching their shining green tops into the heavenly blue sky. Peg never quite recovered from her first delight in beholding the great fat coconuts clustering way up there just under the waving frond, with their little brothers a bit higher and the newest arrivals tight against the heart of the palm. Three generations on every tree, Jim said. With copra such a valuable commodity, you couldn’t lose.

Though Peg hardly left the house and garden during those first days, she was completely enthralled with Motu. Each morning she awoke with a sense of astonishment, and gaily she went through the day, mostly in shorts and a shirt, tidying up and pl
anning,
cooking a bit, strolling between the potato patch, which was all tops and no potatoes, and the beds of yellow tomatoes, egg-plant and Malay beans.
She got to know the houseboy and his foibles.

His name, he told her, was Ngai, which the tuan had changed to Nosoap - he couldn’t think why, though he had no objection to the name. Privately, Jim had explained: “I didn’t name him. When he first came to see me, several years ago, he started begging - literally begged the shirt off my back. I said no soap - had to say it a good many times - and the next thing I knew he’d told everyone he was Tuan Maldon’s cook-boy, Nosoap. It so happened he did know how to cook, so I let him stay.”

Peg laughed. Nothing was quite normal in this place and yet the men here had become so used to the abnormal that to them the outside world was lopsided. All the men she met during her first couple of weeks on the island had that one thing in common; Motu was real, the rest of the world nebulous, its inhabitants to be pitied.

There was old Stebbings, who owned a mere three hundred acres and a one-roomed house; Mr. Gracey of the military moustache, who lived in the old style, wearing trim whites all day and a dinner jacket every night whether he dined out or in his own latticed veranda with a stiff white cloth on the table and a good wine several times a week; the little Professor, who had come to Motu twenty years ago to study and eliminate rat-infestation and stayed to farm copra and potter in a laboratory that was an outmoded shambles of a place. Others whom Peg did not meet till later were a little more ordinary because they had wives living with them; though Peg gathered, from her father, that the older women struck him as slightly cracked; they played bridge together and it was a great day for them when they received an invitation from an official’s wife, in town.

Peg met none of the younger element till the doctor came to the plantation for the regular check-up. This was a government regulation and Dr. Passfield carried it out meticulously, using all the red tape at his command when necessary. He was a thorn in the flesh of several planters, of whom Jim was one, but he was respected nevertheless. Peg rather liked him.

Evan Passfield was in his mid-thirties but already balding. When he came into the house for a lunch-break in the routine of blood-counting and injecting, he told Peg she was what they needed more of, on Motu.

“Believe it or not, my wife, at thirty-two, is the youngest woman here at the moment. She’s the Sister in charge at my little hospital, the only white nurse there.”

“Wouldn’t like to train one who already knows a bit, would you?” Peg asked
him.

“You?” he queried, and when she had nodded, “We can’t train anyone - no facilities - but you can do a good job right here on your father’s plantation. My wife will be only too happy to give you a few tips on medical care in the tropics, and your boys and their f
ami
lies will be glad to come to you for
min
or ailments. If only there were someone on every plantation who could be depended on to dole out laxative and fever tablets, we’d be in the wonderful position of being able to deal with all out-patients on the day they arrive.”

“You mean they have to wait over sometimes?”

“Not often - we work on till they’ve all been attended to. But when there’s someone on the plantation to deal with the lesser ills it does lighten our jobs. Two or three of the planters do it themselves, but there are some - like this father of yours - who just give the boys a day off for a visit to the clinic.”

Jim shrugged and grinned. “I pay my taxes - that means a mite towards your salary, Doc. I reckon a sick labourer needs the day off and the mental stimulus of a
gossip outside the clinic.”

“That’s humane towards the boy but inhuman to us. It’s you old die-hards who give us most work.”

Peg didn’t think it over, but the doctor’s remark reminded her, fleetingly, that the day of the older individual planter was nearing its end. She said quickly, “All right, Dr. Passfield, I shall be coming along for a lesson from your wife. From now on we’ll do all we can for the boys right here.”

“You’re taking it on, Peg - I’m not,” her father commented. He had finished his coffee and was
ex
aminin
g
his after-lunch cheroot when he asked, “Doc, did you see those blighted representatives of the company while they were here? Seems they came while I was away, sounding everyone about selling out to them.”

The doctor nodded. “It was done with government sanction. Nothing concrete yet, though. As you say, they were taking soundings.”

“Must have been quite recent - after Steve Cortland went on leave. I saw Steve on my way back and he didn’t mention it, so he couldn’t have known.”

“I don’t remember just when it was. We had another outbreak of enteritis and it kept us busy. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to the job. Perhaps your daughter would like to come out and watch.”

Peg jumped up. “I would! I might even be able to help.”

The doctor drove a utility van which was fitted up inside as a small dispensary. His folding table and chair were pitched alongside the van, and when he visited the plantations that was his surgery. His assistant was a Malay orderly who kept the records and acted as interpreter when necessary. The whole outfit was a model of official cleanliness and organisation. Peg spent an hour with the doctor and waved him goodbye.