Death in the Andamans (7 page)

His voice rose until it cracked hysterically, and the elder Shilto, with one parting vitriolic epithet, turned on his heel and retired from the field of battle.

Presently Ferrers too departed, and Charles, having made a cautious survey, announced that the coast was clear. ‘An exhilarating interlude, wasn't it? Teeming with drama, passion, human interest and mystery. The works! I enjoyed it immensely. What sort of dirty work do you suppose our John is up to now? Or have we witnessed a miracle and is he a genuine victim of remorse and the Christmas spirit? A sort of latter-day Scrooge? Somehow, I doubt it.'

‘What about
“speaking no evil”
now?' inquired Valerie.

‘Ah, but that was when I was feeling somnolent and well fed. As I am now no longer either, I am only too willing to believe the worst of everyone. So let us dismiss the case of Shilto versus Shilto and concentrate instead on getting some tea before my disposition deteriorates still further. Hand me down those rugs, my love.'

They walked round the side of the house, and passing under the creeper-clad porch, crossed to the far end of the lawn to where the remainder of the party were grouped about a well-covered tablecloth spread in the shade of the frangipani trees.

‘Come and talk to me for a change, Copper,' invited Ronnie Purvis. ‘There's room for a small one this end. Move over, Hurridge, and let us grab this damsel off the Navy. Have some sandwiches: the damp ones are cucumber and the mangled and messy ones are jam.'

‘Cucumber, please,' decided Copper, inserting her slim person between the nattily yachting-suited figure of Ronnie Purvis and the large, khaki-clad bulk of Mr Albert Hurridge, the Deputy Commissioner. She was guiltily aware that her preoccupation with Nick Tarrent had had the effect of making her completely uninterested in every other person on the Islands with the exception of Valerie and Charles, and seized now with a temporary fit of remorse, she listened patiently to the Deputy Commissioner's incredibly dull and anecdotal conversation, bore equally patiently with the stereotyped flirtatiousness of that self-satisfied lady-killer Mr Ronald Purvis, and did her best, though without much success, to include his silent, faded wife in the conversation.

Ronnie Purvis was a member of that well-known genus, the compulsive philanderer, who imagines that his job in life is to brighten it for every woman he meets. Inordinately vain, he was possessed of a vain man's cheap attraction, and no one had ever quite understood how he had come to marry poor, dull, faded Rosamund Purvis. For if Mrs Purvis had ever had any claims to prettiness, the heat and fevers of the tropics had shrivelled them away long ago, and at thirty she succeeded in looking a good ten years older than her husband's bronzed and athletic thirty-six.

People were apt to refer to Mr Purvis as ‘poor, dear Ronnie', and to add that it was a tragedy that he should be tied to that limp, uninteresting woman. Few would have believed the truth: that Rosamund Purvis had been a Bachelor of Arts at twenty-two, and one of the most brilliant students of her year at Oxford. A dazzling future was prophesied for her; and then, a year later, she had met Ronald Purvis, home on leave from India, fallen helplessly in love with him, and married him. That had been seven years ago, and the loneliness of forest camps, the damp, sticky, cloying heat of the Andamans, the birth and death of two successive children, and her husband's eternal philandering, had combined to turn the once-pretty and intelligent woman into the colourless nonentity that Port Blair knew as ‘Poor, dear Ronnie's dreary wife'.

Meanwhile poor, dear Ronnie continued to flirt desperately with any and every girl he met, and to explain to them in turn, in sad, brave tones, how little his wife understood him — a phrase only too often in use, and which can generally be taken to mean that, on the contrary, she understands him only too well. He also continued, at thirty-six, to look as young as he had at twenty-five, and to conduct those of his flirtations which progressed into ‘affairs', with unblushing openness in his wife's house.

‘I can't think why on earth she stands it,' Charles had once said to Valerie: ‘If I was in that woman's shoes, I'd clear out and leave him to his messy little affairs. She's got no guts.'

‘Perhaps she's in love with him?' suggested Valerie.

‘Rats!' retorted Charles inelegantly.

But as it happened, Valerie had been right. Rosamund Purvis despised her husband and bitterly resented his infidelities. But she still loved him, and so she stayed with him: tired, disillusioned, middle-aged at thirty, knowing herself an object of pity and contempt to the settlement …

Ronnie, however, was not having his customary success at the present moment. Valerie he had failed to impress from the first, and her subsequent engagement to Charles Corbet-Carr had effectually put a stop to any romantic adventures he may have anticipated in that direction. In the position of Public Boyfriend Number One, Mr Purvis had worked systematically through the present scanty female population of Ross and Aberdeen, and was suffering from the pangs of acute boredom at the time the
Maharaja
had docked at Chatham, bearing on board Miss Caroline Randal.

One look at the new importation and Ronnie decided that the gods had indeed been kind to him, and calling up all his well-worn stock-in-trade of charm, boyishness, impudence and romantic technique had confidently advanced to conquer.

But alas for high hopes! H.M.S.
Sapphire
and Lieutenant Nicholas Tarrent had between them effectively ruined the merry season of Christmas as far as Mr Purvis was concerned. And since he was not accustomed to competition, the spectacle of Nick Tarrent cheerfully monopolizing the new importation had done much toward souring his otherwise cheerful disposition: though little towards lowering his self-esteem, and Copper found herself parrying his ardent advances throughout the meal, while one half of her mind was engaged in actively disliking Ruby Stock and wondering what she could be saying to Nick that necessitated her draping herself across one of his shoulders?

5

‘… Jarawas,' said Mr Hurridge.

‘I beg your pardon?' said Copper, suddenly realizing that the Deputy Commissioner was once again in full spate.

‘Jarawas,' repeated Mr Hurridge impressively. ‘I do not think you fully realize the fact that we are all actually sitting in Jarawa country at this very moment.'

He observed Copper's look of blank incomprehension and said in a slightly injured tone: ‘I do not believe you have been listening to one word that I have said, Miss Randal.'

‘I'm sorry,' apologized Copper. ‘I'm afraid I was thinking of something else. What were you saying?'

‘I was speaking of the Jarawas,' said Mr Hurridge with dignity. ‘They are a tribe of aborigines that inhabit parts of these islands.'

‘I thought they were called Andamanese,' said Copper brightly.

‘No, no. The Jarawas are entirely distinct from the Andamanese: they are quite untameable little people who live in the forests, and no one has ever managed to learn their language or become friendly with them. They use bows and arrows and shoot on sight, and they are as wild today as they were when Marco Polo first wrote of the Islands.'

Mr Hurridge, now well away, launched into a long and pompous account of raids made on outlying settlements and lonely forest outposts by the savage little men, and of the impossibility of successful expeditions against them owing to the denseness of the wild jungle in which they lived. Mount Harriet itself, said Mr Hurridge, was well inside Jarawa country, and a dozen paces beyond the far edge of that smooth lawn would take one into the Jarawa jungles
____

‘We could all be murdered at any minute,' said Amabel Withers with automatic pessimism: ‘It just goes to show, doesn't it?'

‘Don't let 'em scare you, Copper,' cut in Ronnie Purvis. ‘The Jarawas have hardly ever been known to come near this end of the island. And anyway they only kill for food or iron, or water in dry years; never for fun.'

‘If that's supposed to cheer me up,' said Copper with a shiver, ‘it doesn't. I thought this place was supposed to be nice and peaceful; no wild animals, not many snakes, and nice friendly Andamanese. Now I shall have heart failure whenever I hear a twig snap. Come and hold my hand, Mr Norton: I'm going to peer over the hedge at this Jarawa country, and I feel I should like some police protection.'

The tea party broke up and wandered across the lawn, and presently Valerie had taken Copper into the house and shown her a sight that was to remain clear in her memory for the rest of her life. They had mounted the staircase side by side and turned into a wide, glassed-in verandah that ran round three sides of the top storey of the house, where Valerie had pushed open a window and said,
‘There
____
!'
And Copper had found herself gazing down at what must surely be one of the loveliest views in the world.

Far below her the Islands lay scattered over a glassy sea that was so still and smooth and shining that the wandering currents showed like paper streamers straggling across a ballroom floor after a carnival night when the dancing is over and the dancers have gone. The air had cooled with the approach of evening and the Islands were no longer veiled by a shimmering heat-haze, but clear-cut and colourful: lilac and lavender, blue and green and gold in the tropic evening
____

‘Keats must have dreamed of this view,' said Copper. ‘These are his
“magic casements, opening on the foam — Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”.
'

‘Y–es,' agreed Valerie hesitantly. ‘But there are times when I wonder if the magic is white or black?'

‘Why do you say that?' asked Copper curiously.

‘I don't know. Only — well, sometimes there is a queer sort of feeling about the Islands. Oh, not in the way you meant last night. But but they seem so out of this world. As though civilization and the twentieth century had only made a little scratch on the surface, and underneath they were still strange and … And
“forlorn”
and
“perilous”,
I suppose! I believe that if one lived here for too long they might do odd things to one. To one's character, I mean. Change it, and make it different and
____
Oh, I can't explain. I'm probably talking nonsense. You know, it's odd, but all day I've had a queer feeling; rather as though I were an overwound watch-spring wondering what happens when the breaking-point is reached? A loud, twanging noise perhaps, and all my nice, orderly, civilized little ideas flying in every direction in a gloriously crude and uninhibited manner. Now I
am
talking nonsense!'

‘No,' said Copper slowly. ‘I think I know what you mean. Everyone seems to be feeling a bit edgy today. I know I am! I was even driven to exchanging a catty scratch with La Stock. And then there were the Shiltos snarling at each other, and even Mrs Purvis got quite crisp when Amabel Withers started on yet another of those gloomy anecdotes about local characters who have been drowned or eaten by sharks or caught by an octopus.'

‘I expect it's the heat,' said Valerie with a sigh. ‘We haven't had any rain for days. A really good shower, and we shall all return to normal — tempers included.
Don't do that, Coppy!
You'll stain your arms!'

Copper, who had leant far out over the window-ledge, drew back sharply. ‘Don't do what? Heavens above! — what on earth is it?'

‘Sorry,' apologized Valerie. ‘I should have warned you. It's some red stuff they stain all the outside woodwork with. We've even got it all over our house on Ross. I believe it's earth-oil, or something of the sort. It's an appalling nuisance because it comes off on everything.'

‘It does indeed!' commented Copper acidly, scrubbing her vividly coloured elbows with an inadequate handkerchief.

‘No one warned me either,' said Valerie with a grin, ‘and I well remember an awful occasion when … Good grief!
Look over there!
Hi! — Hamish!' She leant out of the window and yelled down to Captain Rattigan, the earnest and ginger-headed officer in command of the military detachment on Ross who was standing on the drive below: ‘
Hamish!
— there's a hell of a storm coming up! You sailing people had better get going pretty quickly if you don't want to get caught in it.
Hurry!
'

Copper turned and saw, far to the south-east, a low band of tawny-coloured darkness that lay along the horizon. It had a hard black edge to it, as straight as though it had been drawn with a ruler, and above it an ugly, ochrous stain was spreading upwards into the evening sky.

‘But it's
miles
away,' she protested. ‘It could miss us altogether. Or fizzle out before it gets here.'

‘Perhaps,' said Valerie shortly: ‘But I don't like the look of it at all. Come on, we'd better go down.' She turned and ran for the garden, where a discussion was already in progress as to who should sail home and who go by car.

George Beamish and Amabel Withers, Ted Norton of the police and Surgeon-Lieutenant Dan Harcourt of H.M.S.
Sapphire
having elected to return by road, Hamish was busy collecting substitute yachtsmen, and Copper arrived in excellent time to see Mrs Stock take playful possession of Nick Tarrent's arm and demand to be taken back with him in Dan Harcourt's place: ‘And don't try and put me off, Nick!' she announced gaily, smiling up into his eyes and wagging a roguish and admonitory finger. ‘I'm not a bit afraid of storms and I just
adore
sailing! And you needn't pretend that you are taking anyone else, because Dan has only this minute decided to drive back. Haven't you, Dan?'

‘Dear Ruby!'
murmured Charles gently.

Hamish's voice made itself plaintively audible above the general babel: ‘Then that's fixed, is it? Stock, and I are taking one boat, Ronnie and Rosamund and Ferrers another, and Tarrent and Ruby and Shilto will take the third. All right?'