Elianne (10 page)

‘Go to your room, Ellie,’ he muttered; and leaving the door open behind him, he crossed to the table.

Elianne moved off towards the arch that led to the east wing of the bungalow, but she did not go to her room: she stayed to watch the proceedings.

André rose and pulled another chair up beside his. Drunk though he was, he adopted a façade of courtesy and waited for James to sit, but he was ignored. Instead, James stood glaring across the table at the two Frenchmen. Thickset, with rough beards and ill-kempt, matted hair, they wore open-neck shirts and scarves knotted at their throats. They looked like the thugs he knew them to be.

‘In passing the stables on my walk, I noticed no strange horses or drays there,’ he said coldly. ‘How do you intend to return to Vila?’

‘I shall drive them back in the morning, James.’ André was drunker than his friends and had failed to read the warning signs, but Yves and Alain were fully aware of the Englishman’s hostility. They couldn’t fathom the reason for it, however, and exchanged mystified shrugs.

James turned to André. ‘And where exactly do you plan they should stay the night?’ he demanded, although he already knew the answer.

‘Oh, you need have no fear,’ André said with a laugh, ‘they shall not impose themselves upon you. The guesthouse is yours, my friend, as we agreed.’

‘That does not answer my question. Where do you intend they stay?’

André finally registered that something was not quite right. ‘Why, here of course,’ he replied, puzzled, ‘here in my house. They are my guests.’

‘They will not stay in this house,’ James said. ‘They will not stay under the same roof as my future wife.’

‘Ah.’ André was befuddled. Did James mean that Yves and Alain should stay with him at the guesthouse? If so, what a surprising suggestion; it was the last thing he would have expected. What in God’s name am I to do? he asked himself. He could not afford to offend his benefactor and future son-in-law, but surely he must make some sort of stand. He was master in his own home, and these were his guests after all. He started to dither.

‘Well, perhaps when we have dined and played cards –’

‘These men will not dine with my fiancée,’ James gazed directly at Yves and Alain, ‘these men will leave this house now.’

Yves, the bigger of the two, held his hands out in a gesture of innocence; he was genuinely bewildered. ‘Why is you anger,
mon ami
?’ he said, ‘what is we do?’ Beside him, Alain nodded. Yves was always the spokesman; Alain’s English was not good.

‘I am not your
ami
,’ James replied tersely, ‘and you will do as I say. You will leave right now.’

‘But James.’ André felt he really must say something by way of protest. ‘This is my house. These men are my guests –’

‘And they are leaving.’

Yves stood. He was a big man. Not as big as James, but, sturdily built and handy with his fists, he took orders from no one. He did not like the Englishman’s tone.

‘This house is not your house,’ he said. ‘You hear what André say. This house is his house, and we is his guests. You do not tell us we go.’

‘Yes I do. You will go now or I will throw you out.’

Yves gave a bark of laughter and glanced down at Alain, who rose to stand beside him. Together they confronted the Englishman.

‘We is two,
mon ami
,’ Yves sneered, ‘you is one.’

James made no reply, but, taking a hold of the heavy wooden table that separated them he flung it aside with ease, two of the chairs crashing to the floor. Then he grasped the scarf that was knotted at the Frenchman’s throat and before Yves knew it he was being barrelled towards the open door.

Caught by surprise and off balance, the Frenchman would have been hurled out on to the verandah, but as James released him he managed to grasp a hold of the doorframe, where he steadied himself and turned, prepared to do battle.

In that instant, Alain charged. He sprang onto James’s back, clinging like a monkey with his legs wrapped around the Englishman’s waist and one arm about his neck in a choker hold.

James reached up behind and, grasping fistfuls of the man’s hair, he bent forwards in one swift movement, hauling Alain over his head and slamming him down on the floor in front of him.

Alain lay on his back, winded and wondering how he’d got there. He gazed in bewilderment at the Englishman towering high above him. It was the last thing he saw before James’s boot found its mark. The sound of his skull cracking was clearly audible.

Yves looked down at his dead friend, at the eyeballs that stared up in such wide, comic surprise. He too was astounded. Alain was dead, and in only a matter of seconds.

The fight having left him, the Frenchman would have gone peacefully, but it appeared he was not going to get off so easily. Even as he looked up from the body to the Englishman a fist slammed into his face, breaking his jaw.

He started to slide down the doorframe, but hands grasped him around the throat, holding him up, taking his entire body weight as fingers of steel began steadily to throttle him. He struggled to prise the fingers free, but their grip was vicelike. He struck out at his assailant, landing blows to the body, but the blows were meaningless: he could have been punching the air.

Yves looked into the eyes of the Englishman. They were cold, emotionless. The Englishman was killing him effortlessly and without a qualm.

Both André and Elianne had been struck dumb by the speed of the events. They’d remained frozen where they stood, barely able to believe their eyes. Now galvanised into action, they begged James to stop.

‘No more, James, no more, I beseech you,’ André pleaded, desperate and terrified. ‘
Non, non, oh mon Dieu
. No more. No more, I beg you.’

‘Stop it,’ Elianne called out. ‘Leave the man be, Jim, leave him be.’

It was the sound of her voice that brought Big Jim to a halt. He hadn’t known she was still in the room.

He released his grip, but as the Frenchman once again started to slide down the doorframe, he held him up by his neck scarf like a rag doll, and Yves, already gasping for breath, was forced to remain on his feet or risk being choked to death.

James leant his face close to the Frenchman’s. ‘Do you want to live?’ he asked quietly.

Hauling the air back into his lungs, his shattered jaw a bloody mess, Yves was unable to talk. He nodded.

‘Then I shall tell you what you will do. André will drive you and your friend back to the outskirts of town where he will leave you both. You will then have the option of inventing some accident that befell your friend or, if you prefer, you can simply leave him to be discovered tomorrow morning. The choice is yours.’ James knew only too well the choice the Frenchman would make. Yves would have no wish to be embroiled with the law. He would leave his dead friend on the roadside. There was no honour among men such as these. ‘Are you happy with that arrangement?’

Yves nodded.

James released his hold on the man’s neckerchief. ‘André, fetch a horse and dray,’ he ordered. ‘Ellie, go to your room.’

Both obeyed instantly.

The following morning, no mention was made of the incident. It was as if it had never happened.

Elianne’s eighteenth birthday came and went with little fanfare, for the main celebratory event was to take place two days later, when she and James Durham were to be wed by the Reverend Pidd.

The Reverend Pidd had had a long-time connection with the Desmarais family, particularly Elianne’s mother. A staunch follower of the Scottish missionary, John Gibson Paton, Raymond Pidd had been a regular visitor to the plantation during Beatrice’s time, no doubt believing his presence served some significant religious purpose, although Elianne rather doubted that it did. She strongly suspected Beatrice encouraged the Reverend’s visits as a welcome excuse to socialise at close quarters with a fellow countryman, the majority of her husband’s friends being French.

The marriage took place in the garden, the ceremony conducted beneath the arbour while the twenty or so guests congregated about the small central fountain – an intimate affair, as planned, in a picturesque setting.

Elianne looked out at the gathering, pleased to see the faces she knew, and most particularly pleased by the mixture of brown and white. None of her father’s riff-raff gambling companions were present and alongside the several English and French expatriates, businessmen and their wives whom she and her mother had befriended over the years were a number of islanders and their children. These included the house servants, with whom Elianne was extremely close, several of the senior workers whom she considered her friends, and of course Pavi Salet and his family.

André had raised no objection when his daughter had expressed a wish that her islander friends should be present. He hadn’t dared, for Elianne had had James’s support.

‘Whatever you wish, my love,’ James had said. ‘A wedding day belongs to the bride. Do you not agree, André?’

‘Yes, yes, indeed I do.’ André would have agreed to anything James Durham said. The man put the fear of God into him.

André Desmarais was still haunted by that night. He hadn’t arrived back at the bungalow until four o’clock in the morning after dumping the body by the roadside and watching briefly as Yves skulked off into the darkness. He’d been living in dread of discovery ever since. The sooner the Englishman left Efate the better.

As the Reverend Pidd read out the vows, Elianne couldn’t resist stealing an occasional glance at Pavi, who was standing to one side directly in her line of vision. He was with his father and mother and his little sister, twelve-year-old Simone. His fiancée, Mela, was beside him, and they had their arms about each other’s waists. When Elianne first glanced at him, Pavi did not catch her eye – he and Mela were too absorbed in each other. But from the looks the two exchanged it was plain that neither was inattentive to the ceremony. Every word of the vows held a special meaning for Pavi and Mela, who were to be married themselves in barely a fortnight.

How in love they are, Elianne thought, how perfectly in love.

Then, as she repeated her own vows, she looked up into the eyes of the man she was marrying. Soon I will have a love like Pavi and Mela’s, she thought. She was glad to be married to such a man as Jim Durham, regardless of the rumours that surrounded him, regardless even of the brutality she had witnessed. He excited her. She wanted to be his. And he loved her; she could feel it. Her glance darted once again to Pavi and this time their eyes met. He smiled and beside him, so did Mela. They were happy for her.

The Reverend Pidd made the pronouncement, Elianne heard the words ‘man and wife’, and as the gathering applauded, James Durham kissed her.

The reception was informal, guests milling about the garden and the front verandah where a lavish buffet was provided. James had spared no expense, importing the finest champagne and gourmet fare.

It was now that the schism between black and white became truly evident. The house servants returned to their duty, serving drinks at the buffet table, clearing away plates and fetching fresh ones, while the expatriate and other islander guests kept very much to the company of their own kind. That is with the exception of Michel Salet and the Reverend Pidd, both of whom mingled freely, particularly the Reverend. He always delighted in socialising with converted islanders, whom he considered a part of the giant Christian family personally bound by God’s love.

The one who mingled with the greatest of ease, however, was Elianne, who insisted upon serving her guests. Standing beside Mela at the drinks table, exquisite in her lace bridal gown, Elianne poured champagne for the expatriates and fruit juice for the islanders, none of whom drank alcohol. She chatted away in English and French and shared a joke in Pidgin with several of the islander children. People were drawn to her, comfortable in her presence, unaware that they were gradually mingling with those who belonged to a different social stratum altogether.

James watched his new wife with pride. He was mesmerised, unable to drag his eyes from her. Beside him, someone was offering congratulations, but he paid them no heed and he or she drifted away. She is magnificent, he thought. She is magnificent and she is mine. Look how they love her, every single one of them. That is how they will love her at the plantation. I have found my perfect queen.

Elianne felt his gaze and, turning to him, she saw clearly the naked pride and elation, which he made no attempt to disguise. Instead, he raised his glass in a tribute to her. The smile she returned him was radiant.

The wedding festivities did not last into the night. With the need to travel either back to Port Vila or to their neighbouring properties some distance away, the expatriates were keen to leave while there was still daylight for at least part of their homewards journey, and those who lived on the plantation, aware of a sense of propriety, slowly drifted back to their cottages.

It was approaching dusk as the last farewells were made by Michel Salet and his family. Michel shook James’s hand and embraced Elianne, wishing them both a long and happy life together. The couple were to be leaving early in the morning, André driving them into Port Vila where they would board the ship bound for Bundaberg.

Michel’s wife, Sera, a shy woman at the best of times, stood behind her husband, bobbing a form of curtsy to James, whom she obviously found daunting, and nodding her best wishes to Elianne.

Elianne, however, was not prepared to let Sera, of whom she was extremely fond, go unrecognised. She hugged her warmly, Sera returning the hug. Then Elianne hugged young Simone, and then Mela, and then finally Pavi.

André cast a wary glance in James’s direction, wondering how the Englishman felt about his new wife embracing blacks in so unashamed a fashion. But it appeared the Englishman had no qualms whatsoever. In fact to André’s utter surprise, the Englishman offered his hand to Pavi Salet.

‘Congratulations on your own forthcoming nuptials,’ James said as they shook hands, ‘I wish you both every happiness,’ and he smiled at Mela.