Inheritance. Part 10

I had a feeling that he would have dashed her spirits. I wonder now whether she was pregnant and had told him. At any rate he pulled a face at me and wandered away. We were free to laugh and dance with the women, to drive out to the Masiofo's house for a magnificent celebratory supper-c.u.m-breakfast. I drove Jeanie back to her big old house as dawn was breaking. We fell into bed there, exhausted.

Perhaps the happiest day of my life. Surely one of hers too?

PART FOUR.

Tapalolo.

Ann / Jeanie.

Ann enjoys the warm fug of the staff-room. It smells of coffee, apple cores and the peculiar pungency that much-used exercise books give off. Her own office is tidier, the air fresher, but today she prefers to do her marking at the big table along with the other teachers. She writes what she hopes is not too d.a.m.ning a remark at the end of a particularly silly essay, then looks up at a touch on her shoulder. Laurel Manning, the registrar, wants a word. Laurel jerks her head in the direction of the door. A private word.

'That man has been around again,' she says when the door to her spotless little cubby hole of an office is closed. 'He was hara.s.sing poor Dawn for information about you. She came to me and I sent him away with a flea in his ear.' Laurel rolls her eyes. 'I told him it would be the police next time. Should I call them now, do you think?'

Ann shakes her head, smiling. She doesn't trust her voice.

Laurel watches her over the top of her famous flamboyant gla.s.ses. Ruby red rims today. 'Ann, I advise calling the police at once. He looks an unpleasant sort. Dawn couldn't manage him and she's usually pretty brisk.' Laurel herself can be more than brisk and knows it. 'Quite apart from anything else, we can't have a nutter snooping around the girls.'

'You're probably right.' But Ann feels uneasy. What would the police want to know?

Laurel lays a large farmer's hand on Ann's shoulder. Laurel had run a dairy herd single-handed before she took on office work. This big blowsy woman is surprisingly competent at everything she tackles. Backstage at the school shows she performs miracles. 'Leave it all to me,' she says. 'Police don't need to know all the details. I'll just report the nuisance, ask them to check his record, and inform them that they'll get a ring if he comes here again. You don't know his name do you?'

Ann shakes her head. 'No idea. He came to the house too. Thought he knew me from the past. Michael and his dogs sent him off.'

Laurel laughs. 'That'd be right. He won't be back there again then.' She eyes Ann shrewdly. 'Don't let him get to you, Ann. That's what gives them kicks, the sad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. b.l.o.o.d.y stalkers. There was someone once started following one of my daughters ...'

Ann can't concentrate on Laurel's story. She's wishing she could dismiss Stuart as a sad loser. This wretched persistence! Why, after all these years, does he think he has any hold any rights over her? Any normal person would have got on with his life and forgotten her.

And, if he is so persistent, has he found out about Francesca? She has a sudden picture of the night of the palolo rising, and breaks out into a sweat.

'Here you'd better sit down,' Laurel says. 'You've gone white as a sheet.'

The memory of that night the tapalolo the beauty and horror of it, always comes back to Jeanie as a series of vivid pictures that jerk one to the next like a badly cut movie. Pieces of what happened have disappeared from her memory; other moments have recurred randomly and often, sometimes terrifyingly, always unbidden.

She remembers the scene on the beach in the dark a few hours before dawn. The heavy scented air, the pulsing cicadas, the excitement of the gathered crowd. Her own tension. Surely there is no need for this expectant quiet palolo won't have ears but all the same people are keeping their voices down; children are cuffed if they fool around. Then a cry from somewhere and they all light their lamps and torches and head out into the lagoon a bright moving river of reflections, fanning out right and left until the river becomes a miniature lighted city. She has seen glow-worms on a dripping bank trick the eye in the same way; the close blue lights looking like a distant city. Here the lights are warm and yellow in the velvet night. Out on the reef the thin white line of surf breaking is faintly illuminated by a low half-moon. The water of the lagoon, which a few moments ago was utterly calm, is now a boil of people wading, bending low over their lanterns to peer, then moving on, searching for the first wriggling palolo.

She remembers Elena urging her forward and Stuart holding her arm, pulling her back.

'Who cares about fishy worms?' he whispers in her ear. His wet hands slide around to feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her crotch. 'Leave the poor palolo to their mating. We can have our own fun.' He points to a secluded patch of scrub back on the beach, where canoes are tied up. 'Come on, then.'

But Jeanie pulls away and wades after Elena, who is steaming through the water like a tank, heading for the reef.

Did Stuart follow then? Jeanie doesn't remember. She looks for Teo surely he'll be here but how would she recognise him among all these bare and glistening brown backs? Ma'atoe wades past in a dream. Teo's fiancee. Elena pointed her out earlier. Then she was surrounded with her group of attendant unmarried girls. Her aualuma. Now Ma'atoe is alone. She carries no light, seems more interested in dipping her arms in the water, wetting her hair and throwing it back in a glistening arc of droplets. Is she trying to attract Teo? It would seem not. This is not flirtatious behaviour, but rather self-absorbed. She doesn't look around to see who might be following. Jeanie watches her with interest perhaps jealousy? Teo's fiancee is a large woman, her big b.r.e.a.s.t.s showing clearly through her plastered lavalava. She wades along slowly, humming to herself. Perhaps, thinks Jeanie, she is enjoying a few moments of freedom, without the aualuma, before the duties of a married woman rein her in. Ma'atoe looks up at the sinking moon. Jeanie has always remembered that dreaming face so innocent, so unsuspecting.

Then what? Elena, her broad face and beaming smile coming and going in flickering torchlight. Elena favours flaming rags soaked in pitch. A Samoan Statue of Liberty, knee-deep in the lagoon. She hands Jeanie a mess of translucent spaghetti. 'Try, try! The females are best! Try the greeny ones! Try, Stuart!'

Stuart must have returned. He spits his palolo back into the water. Jeanie tries a couple, tentatively, and is surprised by the salty, creamy taste. Like caviar, but also like oyster. She laughs as Elena picks out another and holds it to her lantern. It still wriggles. 'Look, a male! Taste this dull fellow too.'

Jeanie obeys, but can't taste a difference. Now Elena is bending with her torch over the water and Jeanie gasps to see a ma.s.s of illuminated wriggling forms, thinner than pencils and about as long, twisting and curling their way towards the light.

'Scoop! Scoop!' cries Elena, wading forward and away. Stuart takes Jeanie's arm again. He wants to go back. Wants more from her. But she is enjoying herself and shakes her head at him. She bends to net the little wriggling things, and remembers netting whitebait on the river banks back home. But this haul is far more plentiful. This richness, this exuberance, she thinks, it's why I love it here.

Later, Teo is there. He has crept up behind her and, giggling, slides a handful of palolo over her shoulders. They slip down under her shirt and over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She gasps, looking around, but no one is watching. The feel of those palolo is almost unbearably s.e.xy. 'Teo,' she laughs, 'you're outrageous!'

He dangles a single palolo over her mouth and she puts out her tongue to accept it. 'Turn off your torch,' he whispers. She turns it off. The moon has disappeared below the horizon. There is a faint pale line to the sky in the east, but for the moment they are in blackness. Teo comes in close behind her; slides one wet arm around her and nuzzles her neck. 'Delicious,' he says, laughing again, as he licks off a palolo. She can feel him hardening against her and would like to turn around, but they are both enc.u.mbered with equipment. He sings something softly, pulling away again to dance around her in the water, showing off, showing his erection, careless, it would seem, of anyone or anything. Jeanie peers into the dark but can see nothing but the points of light some distance away now.

Teo moves in close again. 'Tapalolo is a night of love for everyone,' he says giggling into her neck. His jittery excitement puts Jeanie on edge too. She knows this shouldn't be happening, but perhaps on a night like this it's acceptable? He pushes up against her b.u.t.tocks and Jeanie moans. It is beautiful there, far from the sh.o.r.e, deep in the water of the dark lagoon, beautiful. Jeanie remembers that sharp pleasure as a moment of mad sweetness before the storm. Did he lift her up? Did he come inside her? Jeanie remembers only the excitement, the sweetness.

And the horror that followed. Stuart's face, lit by his own lantern, silent and intent, watching them. Watching with enjoyment. Could it have been that? Yes, a queer mixture of fury and triumph. He nods at Jeanie then, a threatening, brisk little dip of the head. She understands that look. It means trouble for you later on my girl.

And then the image disappears. Suddenly Stuart's face disappears as if it has been an apparition a warning born of her own guilt. But no, she felt no guilt. He must have dowsed his lantern.

Did Teo see him? If so he paid little attention. He bites her neck and dances away through the water, still, it seems, in a state of high excitement. Jeanie smiles to see him prance. That wild, lovely boy. Is he after further conquests? Perhaps Tapalolo is Teo's stag night!

Was there a gap then, or did the next frightful scene follow immediately? Jeanie only remembers being back near the beach, near the group of canoes. Attracted perhaps by m.u.f.fled cries. Under a clump of bushes she can just make out her husband struggling on the sand, lying on a woman: his shorts down and bare white b.u.t.tocks gleaming. The brutal silent heave of his body. The woman's legs thrash. His hand is clamped over her mouth. Everything about this scene is ugly; Jeanie's heart beats hard when it replays in her mind as it does often, both in dreams or when she's awake.

Teo is suddenly there, growling like an animal. He tears Stuart off Ma'atoe, heaves him back against the solid side of a paopao. Jeanie hears the crack and Stuart's curse. Ma'atoe is crying out, but now it is Teo who holds her and places a hand (more gently) over her mouth. He says something quietly to her and she nods; her cries reduce to soft, desperate moans. Teo speaks again, more urgently. He looks up to see Jeanie, but motions her away. In his face a savage fury. Suddenly the dancing show-off has become serious, capable. Dangerous. He leads Ma'atoe down to the water and begins to wash her carefully. There is blood on her face. When he reaches her private parts Ma'atoe pushes him away and cleans herself, moaning with the pain.

Stuart laughs then, makes a remark that infuriates Teo. Jeanie can't hear what is said, but Stuart's tone is scornful, taunting. Again that triumphant edge. She's sure he doesn't see her. Teo leaves his fiancee and stands facing Stuart who has his shorts up now and seems bent on a fight. He half runs over the sand, kicking over a bucket of palolo, barrelling into Teo and throwing him bodily into one of the paopao. Jeanie is terrified for Teo Stuart is very violent when angry. He stands now over the sprawling Teo.

'Think twice before touching my wife again,' Stuart growls, 'or I'll do your precious village virgin again. And again! She's very tasty.'

Jeanie closes her eyes in shame.

There is no need to fear for Teo. He rises from the canoe in a red rage, brandishing a bush knife. Silently, but with a fine accuracy, he slashes at Stuart, slicing at an ear and then a hand, grunting with each cut, before tossing the knife high in the air and away. The rising sun catches the turning b.l.o.o.d.y blade.

Teo stands over the stricken Stuart. His eyes are bright. He pants out his words as if he's been running.

'You have raped the taupou of this village,' he says, every word clear in the early dawn light. 'If they hear of this, they will kill you. Without doubt they will kill you. I should kill you and would probably be excused by any Samoan jury. If you breathe one word of this, I will certainly denounce you. And so will she. One word!'

Jeanie remembers thinking how quick he was to recover; how quick to plan ahead. Stuart groans on the sand, his face a sheet of blood, holding the ruined hand with his good one.

And then, somehow, she's further away, sitting on a log, watching the villagers decant the glistening palolo into bowls, laughing and dancing their pleasure. The dark violence a dream that perhaps never happened.

But there is Teo and the other men shouting and dragging the wounded Stuart. No sign of Ma'atoe. Jeanie can't move. She doesn't want ever to move again. Elena goes to the b.l.o.o.d.y man, calls out instructions, tears at material and binds. Those two brother and sister seem able to manage anything. Jeanie is shaking. She cannot seem to manage even her own emotions.

Teo goes to the sea and slowly washes Stuart's blood from his own body. He comes up and sits near her on the log.

'I only spared your husband's life,' he says, breathing through his nose, 'to save Ma'atoe from dishonour. And the girls who should have been attending her.' His hands are shaking. 'Those girls would be punished severely for forgetting their duty.'

He talks on, but Jeanie can't remember the words. The villagers would be thinking he was comforting a palagi whose husband has had a nasty accident. He's explaining something about his being a modern Samoan, not like Ma'atoe's 'aiga. About being prepared to accept the fact that she's no longer a virgin. He will try to hide what happened from her family. Jeanie is still seeing the rage on Teo's face; the spiteful triumph on Stuart's.

His too bright eyes search her face. 'Try to forget it all.' Jeanie recognises the fear in his voice. 'Stuart must forget it too. Persuade him if you can.'

'Will you forget it?' asks Jeanie. It all feels wrong to her. 'Will Ma'atoe?'

'We will try,' he says, looking down again at those violent hands. 'It will be the best thing.' As he stands he says, pointedly, 'For all of us.'

A few days later Ma'atoe and Teo were married very successfully, Elena reported. Many fine mats exchanged, many expensive gifts paraded, proclaimed and duly applauded, much food consumed.

Jeanie stayed at home.

Jeanie visited Stuart twice in hospital. The first time was when the police came with their questions. Stuart grumpily corroborated Teo's report agreed that it was all an accident. The police were clearly puzzled about the extent of his injuries. The traps were lethal, certainly, and should be outlawed, they said, but to almost sever a hand?

'He'd been drinking,' Jeanie said, as if that explained everything, 'and he's a heavy man. Perhaps he struggled too hard.'

Stuart glowered at her, but made no further comment. The police nodded approvingly and left with good wishes for recovery. Jeanie thought they suspected a fight, but were relieved to have no complaint laid. Teo was about to be married after all.

Her second visit was a few days before Stuart was to be flown to New Zealand for reconstructive surgery. Jeanie told him flatly that she was staying in Samoa.

'What?' he cried. 'You can't do that!' His colour was high; his skin a sheen of sweat; the wound infected. 'What will people think?'

A whirring electric fan wagged its heavy head slowly back and forth, back and forth.

Jeanie steeled herself. He looked so desperate. And so ill. 'I don't want to live with you any longer, Stuart,' she said as firmly as she could manage. 'I don't respect you any more.' When he said nothing she added, 'Or love you.'

'Jeanie,' he cried. 'What's this nonsense? We're married.'

'Not any more,' she said. 'I'm sorry Stuart, but you must surely see why.'

'Are you out of your mind?' he shouted. 'That monster attacked me!' Tears were pooling in his bloodshot eyes. Jeanie wanted to cry too.

'Ssh, ssh,' she whispered. 'Go back home and forget it all.'

'But why? Why, Jeanie? I've been a good husband, haven't I?'

'No,' she said sadly. 'No you haven't, Stuart. I realise that now. Not even before the ... the other night.'

He shifted uncomfortably, moaned with the pain (or was he putting it on?) and looked at her again. Tears ran freely down his cheeks. She wiped them for him.

'Jeanie,' he said, his voice rising, 'can't you see how it is? You are my one good thing. The only worthwhile thing I have. I can't lose you, don't you see that?'

'I'm not a possession,' said Jeanie.

'Yes you are! We possess each other. We're married. You can't change that!'

Jeanie tried to keep her thoughts steady against the torrent of his need. 'I can change it, Stuart, that's why I'm not coming with you. You mustn't come back here. Our marriage is over.'

It must have cost him a great effort, sick and weak as he was, but he managed to rein in the panic then. He smiled at her. Reached a hand towards her. 'Sweetheart, this is just a bad patch we're having. Everything will come right, I know it will. You won't be able to cope on your own here all alone. And you deserve a break. Please come with me to New Zealand. I love you Jeanie.'

He was so definite, so sure of the rightness of what he was saying. Jeanie could think of no further argument.

'Goodbye,' she said, moving to the door.

'Wait! Who will look after me back there? Jeanie, wait!' The raw panic was back in his voice.

Jeanie turned. 'Your mother will. She knows when you're arriving. She'll meet you.'

'Oh G.o.d,' whispered Stuart, 'you're inhuman, Jeanie.'

She felt inhuman too, running crying to the car. But after he'd gone; after the ambulance had taken him to the airport; when she heard the drone of the plane lifting him away from the islands across the Pacific, south to New Zealand, Jeanie felt a sudden stab of pure joy.

Elena noticed the lightness in her step when she turned up to the filariasis clinic. 'Don't tell me it's Christmas already?'

'Stuart's gone,' said Jeanie.

Elena straightened up. Looked at her shrewdly. 'Want to talk about it?'

Jeanie couldn't stop smiling. 'Not really. I should never have married him. I've told him it's over.'

'Ue! Strong lady!' Elena did a little admiring dance, swaying around Jeanie. Then sighed and looked at the tub of warm plaster. 'Can the new free lady still get her arms dirty I wonder?'

They laughed together. Jeanie supposed she should feel bad, but the sense of freedom was intoxicating. She looked out, those next few days on a different, clear world full of possibilities. Colours were brighter, sounds gentler, the world seemed warm and friendly. She didn't mind being alone at the big house, or up at the plantation. No task was too difficult. Often she thought of her father. He should be here now to share this. But also, she realised, with a new clarity, that he had laid other burdens on her. His dark times had sometimes been difficult, his reliance on her, stifling. It was not easy, even now, to admit that.

Jeanie looked over the plantation one day and thought, I can put all that behind me now. Stuart. And Dad. I can live for myself now. Make a good life here.

The wonderful Women's Committee show was the beginning of that new life.

Jeanie saw Teo after the show at the Tivoli Theatre. He stood a little apart, searching the chattering, excited crowd. Looking for her? For Ma'atoe? He was dressed casually in a flowery shirt and lavalava. Most of the men palagi and Samoan were in white shirts; ties even. This was a formal evening. Teo looked somehow downhearted, distracted. He talked briefly to a triumphant and resplendent member of the cast, but obviously didn't express sufficient enthusiasm for the performance. Jeanie watched the woman drift away and Teo stand alone again.

In the months since the palolo rising, she'd hardly seen Teo. A couple of times he had come to the plantation with his family's cacao for drying. But she had been busy and so had he. They had not talked about that night. Jeanie wanted to forget and supposed Teo felt the same. This evening, so full of pleasure and excitement, she had no desire to speak to him. She walked in another direction when she saw him approach.

Then, a week later, he walked quietly into the room that was now her office, up at the plantation. The day was stifling. The big ceiling fan made no impression on the sluggish air. Jeanie had left the desk and was standing at the window, flapping at her face with a piece of paper.

Teo smiled at her, a little uncertain, she thought. 'Yes,' he said, 'let's hope the rain arrives soon.' He mopped at his brow with a snowy handkerchief.

'Would you like a drink? Tea? Something cold?' Jeanie couldn't find the right tone. Wanted him to go.

Teo sighed, shrugged. 'Whatever you're having.'

While Jeanie went to give the housegirl instructions, Teo stood at the door, looking out.

'The boys have brought up twenty sacks of beans,' he called to her. 'Can you handle them just now?'

'As long as they stack them under cover. Here comes the rain.'

All so formal. 'Shall we go out on the verandah?' asked Jeanie.

But Teo preferred to stay inside. They sat facing each other across the desk, the tray of tea and sandwiches between them.

With the downpour came an ease in their tension.

'How have you been, Teo?' Jeanie asked. He was different. The old bravado gone.