A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 7

  "You're a man now, son, in my eyes for sure. Stand on your own feet and pay your way, fair and square. You don't have to stay in that place for ever, so make the best use of the short time you're there. If the bullshit gets too much then take a run down to Brisbane and the agent will get you a ticket back here - but don't get into the habit of running, it ain't good for yer. You knows about women, I suppose? I can't tell you much, I don't know that much meself. Just remember that free fanny's normally too bloody expensive - be careful! Lookim yu, nipper!"

  George wondered what that final cryptic warning was supposed to mean. Perhaps the old fellow was going gaga, he was getting pretty ancient, after all.

  The Wet Season was long and hard that year, the land greening under the flood of water, the swamps lush, the small lakes back in the mountains brim-full - it would be an easy Dry Season. Cocoa came into its flush, the period of heaviest harvest, was picked and podded, fermented and dried and sat in sacks high in the warehouse waiting for the roads to be repaired and the culverts rebuilt. It was a sticky, sweaty, itchy, hardworking impatient time, the weeks when the bodies crawled and prickly heat lay in wait and a cold beer was worth a fortune; the time when the kerosene refrigerator broke down and the ice-maker failed, invariably, year on year.

  Ned was called from his office at Vunatobung to meet a village deputation, came out irritably expecting another long, involved discussion of the possibilities of eventually forming a village council with power and real authority. The Tolai were much better at politics than he was and he was conscious in a small, closed-off corner of his mind that they were manipulating him, setting him up as the fall-guy to be blamed if they went too far in their demands. But it was only fair - these villagers were not savages, they simply lacked the economic and military power of the Australian government. It was not fair that they should be treated as children. In a century or two they would be fit to take complete control of their own destiny and for the meanwhile they should be encouraged to grow and to hell with the people who said that because they were black they were inferior. They were at a different stage of development, was all, and would soon be as fully human as any white man.

  He welcomed the four elders, became uneasy as he saw them shifting from foot to foot in embarrassment and listened to their apologies and circumlocutions. He called to the house girl for tea and sat them down on the verandah, the nearest they ever came to the inside of a master's house and a sign of respect.

  It eventually transpired, after they had thanked him for the tea, that they had come on personal business, more intimate than their normal concerns. The girl, Derry, had a big belly. In itself this was no matter of earth-shattering consequence, or, indeed, of great surprise - young blood ran hot and rumour suggested Derry's veins to be more fiery than most. They had expected to have to arrange her marriage well away from her own village, somewhere she was not known, for she had the attributes to attract an older man who might not ask too many questions, someone who was seeking a young second wife to restore a sense of vigour to his life and who would know when not to notice her activities on the side.

  "However, boss," the spokesman returned from his flights of confidential parenthesis, "with a big belly there's nothing to be done with her at all. Even the blindest old man has got to take notice of that!"

  "Yes, I can see that, but..." Ned was puzzled, what was it to do with him?

  "It's your responsibility, boss."

  "Oh no it's not! Don't come the acid with me! I don't care what she says, I've never touched her, nor any other of your girls!"

  They were horrified that he had misunderstood.

  "No, no, not you, boss, not that way! Everybody knows you won't take any of the offers, that you stop with your missus, and a very good thing too! Even if she can't give you the children since the doctor at the mission did her after the first one, it's very good of you and the Fathers will bless you, and Master Pope as well, too, I should expect. No, it's your son, young Master Georgy - they met swimming and it wasn't only in the water he dipped!"

  "You sure?"

  "Caught him in the trap between her legs, boss!"

  "Bloody young fool!"

  Ned thought rapidly.

  He would have to pay compensation - agreement to be made now, actual delivery on production of a mixed-race baby. It seemed probable enough - the boy was old enough to perform and too young to consider the consequences. He must be generous enough to keep the respect of the village, but not so much that they took him for a fool. At least the boy was a thousand miles away - that removed one complication.

  "Right! How do we fix things up?"

  The elders relaxed - the last time this had happened had been in German days, the man a young missionary. There had been a lot of trouble and very little payment: the authorities involved right up to Governor Hahn, threats of excommunication, almost a fight. The memory had rankled and the threat of the hangman's noose, so quickly resorted to in German days, still unsettled them.

  They sat down to negotiate, already in an easier, more conciliatory frame of mind.

  "Well, boss, really he should marry her."

  "Bullshit!"

  "Strictly speaking, boss, he ought to - after all, he has made her into his woman."

  "His and how many others?"

  "Ah, well, it's all talk..."

  After an hour they agreed that Derry's reputation had been somewhat blown upon and that in the circumstances they could hardly expect a bride-price but would accept an equivalent sum in compensation - there was no such thing as a free ride, after all. The problem then arose that Ned possessed no tambu, shell money to make the payment properly, and it could not be bought. They agreed, after joyful chaffering, on canned food for two people for a year; bush knives, axeheads and hoe blades sufficient to break in a new family's garden; and ten laplaps and a small pig, not a boar to grow tusks but a sow, a simple breeding hog. Ned insisted that all was to be handed over without ceremony so that there could be no implication of custom marriage. Ned mentally resolved to add a gift, a pair of large, cast-iron stewing cauldrons, an extra to show good faith.

  The negotiators left, well content, their reputations and Ned's enhanced. Ned squared his shoulders and reluctantly turned indoors for the difficult part.

  "Jutta? Are you there, dear?"

  Explosive indignation, her Georgie would not do such a thing, it was very shocking that such should be said about him, he was a good boy!

  "Even the best boys will take a willing lass to bed."

  "But he knows better, he has been told how to behave and what is proper."

  "'A standing prick has no conscience', my love."

  Silence while she translated.

  "Disgusting!"

  "Very!"

  "The girl must be a whore, a pamuk!"

  "No, just an enthusiastic amateur."

  "What does that mean?"

  "She knows what she likes and likes what she knows."

  "Hah! She wickedly seduced my poor boy!"

  "'It takes two to tango'."

  "What? Oh!"

  "I've agreed to pay. What's to be done with the child?"

  "I neither know nor care! Wait till I see that boy. I am shocked, disgusted and ashamed of George. Disgraceful!"

  Jutta stormed out of the room and Ned retired to the office, suspecting that she would weep and knowing that he could do nothing useful if she did.

  She hardly spoke at dinner, spent the evening incommunicado on the sewing machine, went to bed with a grunt. Ned joined her, laid a tentative hand on her thigh, was relieved by her response.

  "He is his father's son, ja? I wonder, did he make her... happy... too?"

  "I hope so. She ought to get more than just a bellyful of arms and legs out of it."

  Jutta was seized by a fit of giggles, suddenly buried her head in Ned's chest.

  "He is a man now, my love, cannot be my baby more."

  "Better leave school this year, eh?"

  "I think, unless
he much wants to stay."

  "A job over on the mainland, do you think, or would you rather he was under your eye a while longer?"

  "He should not stay here, I think. How do you say, 'sow his wild oats', ja? On another person's doorstep, I think, not here. When he comes home to take over the plantations, better I believe he should not have a clan of his own to call, 'papa, papa'!"

  "Life will be easier if he makes his youthful mistakes elsewhere. Mine are all ten thousand miles away, in England."

  "I never had any."

  "Well you're not that old, there's still a chance yet!"

  "Is not good to joke about!"

  "Sorry!"

  A pair of amorous flying foxes put an end to conversation for the while, chasing each other round the corrugated iron roof, clattering and squawking, long preliminaries to brief action.

  "Do think he might want to join up? The forces?"

  "No, he is not the making of a soldier - he has too much of brain for the Army."

  "Yeah, from what I saw of them, you're right. He's too old for the Navy anyway. Are you tired?"

  "No."

  "Well do something about this then." He guided her hand to the troublesome area, ignoring her comments about youthful stamina and emulation of his son and proceeding to demonstrate that life did not end at forty.

  Down in Queensland George was also planning his future. He had decided that education would play little further part in it. He concentrated in science lessons, taught himself basic chemistry, read geology in the library and bought some of the texts on mining. His teachers were pleased at this evidence of academic interest and maturity, offered their assistance, which George turned down; he would not be there in the following year. He had decided to make a fortune, thought that cloistered schoolies would have little to supply in that direction.

  Later in the year Derry delivered a very fair skinned boy with definite non-Tolai features and the relieved elders called Ned to look. Both parties had more than half expected her to produce a full blooded Tolai, doubting whether she could have kept to a single partner who was only occasionally available.

  Ned delivered his payment and her parents made grateful acknowledgement of his generosity while the villagers nodded wisely, saw nothing and knew less. The baby did not breathe well from the very beginning and died in its second night, to be buried without fuss and with little public display. A fifth of babies died in the first six months, twice that number before their sixth year, so there was little of surprise and grief for another waif, misbegotten and out of place.

  Jutta wept - desired or not it had been a child of her child, flesh of her flesh.

  Ned was relieved, a problem solved for him. He had worried for months whether to leave the child in the village, to foster it out to parents in Australia or take it into his own house. There had been arguments for each course; now all were unnecessary.

  No coroner sat over the baby, no cause of death needed be certified - legal formalities were for whiteskins only. Local conversation turned to newer scandal, juicier topics.

  Ned and Jutta decided reluctantly that they must tell George the whole truth, though it would embarrass him and them. But not by letter. They chose in the end to take a holiday out of schedule, to visit the school for his end of year Speech Day and final farewell.

  It was possible now to take ship to Brisbane directly from Lae and they flew across to Lae, to save time. The flight cost sixty pounds, part refundable if the pilot, who was also owner and mechanic, found a return cargo. New Guinea, the world's least explored land, was also the major centre of commercial aviation; more cargo was carried by air in the Trust Territory than in the whole of the rest of the world put together. For many and many a Stone Age clansman the first wheel he ever saw was on an aircraft pottering low overhead seeking tracks and passes to contact his village. In a land where a walker did well to average five miles a day, where every valley was precipitous and every mountain was swaddled in rain or moss-forest and bonneted with a knife-edge ridge of bare rock, the aeroplane was a hazardous necessity.

  They climbed into the closed cabin, sole passengers in the four seats, admiring the patches on the biplane's wings, and strapped in tightly while they climbed slowly up to five thousand feet and reached one hundred and ten knots. Three hours of bumping, of discovery that air is not that empty, simple stuff that people breathe and take for granted. It has lumps and dips and sliding, slippery rivers to skid along, enough to upset any nervous stomach.

  Jutta was not nervous; Ned, to his disgust, found that he was. He grunted monosyllabic agreement to Jutta's cries of delight and amazement, feasted his eyes on the coast and coral in awful abhorrence and sternly ordered breakfast to stay down and behave itself in its proper place. Jutta eventually noticed and forbore to comment, merely telling him how much more agreeable sea travel was.

  Aboard ship was another matter - the best cabin theirs by right, deference from passengers and crew alike. Their name was familiar to those in the know, was rapidly given to the ignorant - he was one of the oldest hands of all, was on speaking terms with every man who counted.

  Arrived at the school and he was just another parent, not unimportant, indeed quite well regarded as one of the minority who even in the worst year of the Slump had paid his fees upfront in cash, but essentially an outsider. George's housemaster carried an empty sleeve, a memento of the War and tended to be aggressively defensive in his dealings with the hale. The boys respected him, however, and George had predisposed Ned in his favour.

  "Hawkins? You're a planter up in New Guinea."

  "Twenty five years all told. Papua first then went up to Rabaul with the expeditionary force and never left."

  A week of fighting as opposed to three years and a life-threatening wound - but there was no gain to a confrontation.

  "Your boy says he won't be coming back next year?"

  "He doesn't want it, and there's no point to fighting him. Better he should work if that is what he wants."

  Jutta agreed - he had a brain but must use it as it suited him.

  "You are probably right, Mr Hawkins. He's not brilliant but he could take a very respectable degree if he wanted. But he's grown up this year. Too old in his own mind to be a schoolboy any longer - unlike some of them!"

  He noticed the glance they exchanged; wise in the ways of teenage boys he could guess what it signified.

  "Going to take him into the plantations, Hawkins?"

  "Not yet. Not until he wants to, if ever. I think he likes the life, hope he wants it, but I ain't going to force 'im. I'll not keep him in idleness, either - not that he wants me to! He'll work for a living, but at something he wants, not what I try to push onto him."

  "Good. You are wise, I think. That's a boy to lead, not drive and you're right to be easy with him. I'll tell you something, Hawkins, and I don't say this to every parent, not by a long way, but that boy's sound! You get a feeling for the good ones in this job, and that lad's one of them. Pleased to have met you, Mr Hawkins. And you, ma'am."

  He ushered them to the door, their five minutes up, nodded affably to them, jerked his head to the next couple, forgot them.

  "He did not once speak to me, Ned. He never looked at me."

  "Frightened, I expect. He is a cripple and probably hides away from women. Pity!"

  "Perhaps he does not like the Germans who chopped his arm off?"

  Ned shrugged resignedly - it was possible.

  They listened to speeches and orations, saw George awarded his certificate, drank tea and ate a curling sandwich in duty bound before escaping the ritual cricket match on the grounds that they had far to go and a ship to catch.

  First class to Brisbane, a train compartment of their own, solitude for the first time in the day.

  "George?"

  "Yes, Dad?"

  "Uh... last leave, holiday, that is..."

  Ned was stuck, did not know what to say next. Colour started to creep into George's face; he glanced sideways at his mo
ther, saw nothing to encourage him.

  "Ah... you met a girl, from the village..."

  George swallowed, decided to confess all - it was obviously known anyway.

  "Derry."

  "Yes. You know what I'm going to say."

  "I think so. It's what," hurried counting. "Ten months ago, isn't it."

  "Yes. The baby was born a few weeks since. Died almost at once."

  "Was she alright?"

  Jutta was pleased by the reaction. Careless he might be, but not uncaring.

  "Ja. Was bad luck, no more. It happens sometimes."

  There was a silence then George asked what he must do.

  "Nothing. We have paid compensation and the village is happy. Don't make it a habit, though."

  "No, Dad."

  Half an hour later after fierce study of the scenery slowly passing outside, having apparently committed every gum tree and sheep to memory, George spoke again.

  "Does everybody know?"

  "Yes."

  "The villagers will laugh at me."

  "Some will."

  Jutta tried to comfort him.

  "You are not the first to be caught, my son. Nor, I do not doubt, will you be the last."

  He pondered the significance of 'caught', decided to leave questions for another day.

  "What we're going to do is spend two weeks on holiday in Brisbane, do a bit of shopping and see the sights, take in a show at least. Then we go on up to Lae on the twenty-sixth, put in a few days there, see what's what and hire an island boat across to Rabaul if there's no steamer in. Plenty of time to talk things over."

  "Is there any chance I could stay on in Lae or Salamaua? Get a job there?"

  "Not Salamaua, mein son!"

  Salamaua was the small port at the head of the track up to Edie Creek, the big gold strike in the hills behind Bulolo.

  "What do you think you could do, George?"

  "Dunno, for sure, Dad. Learn merchanting, maybe. I can pull me weight somewhere, that I'm sure of!"