Fishing for Stars (59 page)

‘Fuckin’ nigger. Dey gonna make him da king! Where our profits gonna go den? You tell me, buddy. Every piccaninny got hisself a scholarship ta Yale!’ Kevin would shout down the phone from Brisbane. His last words invariably were, ‘Nick, ya gotta do sumthin’ ’bout dat nigger! Dem Uncle Joe’s, dey eatin’ us outa da house ’n’ home. Bren Gun gotta ask can she buy another pair a shoes, ferchrissakes!’

Kevin’s wife Brenda must have already rivalled Imelda Marcos in the shoe department, and after Uncle Joe, her love of designer shoes was Kevin’s greatest worry. ‘She live a hunnerd years she ain’t gonna wear all dem Froggy an’ Wop shoes. Some ain’t even outta da fuckin’ wrappin’ after two years already, already!’

I had made my initial approach to the senior local public servant in the Chief Minister’s Department knowing that, strictly speaking, protocol demanded I go through the British expatriate Department Secretary, but I was pretty sure I’d be forgiven my transgression. Gerald Fitzgerald (why do parents do that double-name thing to their kids?) was a good bloke who was doing everything he could to bring the new breed of island public servants up to the mark in the best British tradition. I knew he had high hopes for Joseph Abraham Minusi, whom I’d met on one or two previous occasions on shipping business, finding him both pleasant and efficient. It was common knowledge that he was being groomed for higher office and was a shoo-in for the first local head of the public service.

There are plenty of expatriates happy to tell you that the locals couldn’t run a chook raffle. While I admit over the years since independence there have been more than a few disastrous appointments, this certainly wasn’t true of Joseph Minusi, who seemed born to be a top administrator and a good one. He was honest, extremely hardworking, loyal and highly intelligent, alas, characteristics that are almost impossible to find today in independent island politicians and civil servants. I expected that Joseph Minusi would get tired of venal and incompetent politicians and would end up as prime minister himself. I trusted him completely.

As the 727 burst through the heavy cloud on its final approach, Anna and I had fastened our seatbelts for the landing at Henderson Field. We swept low over land before our final turn to approach from the sea, the lush green plains of Guadalcanal visible through my left-hand window. ‘Look!’ I yelled, pointing at a rocky mountaintop sticking up out of the jungle. ‘That’s where I captured Gojo Mura!’ Moments later we came in low over Bloody Ridge, where I could so easily have died in combat and where so many marines gave their lives. I was reminded how precarious is our hold on this planet and that I’d had more than my fair share of luck. Anna and Gojo Mura had also come as close as a whisker to death, Anna at the hands of the Japanese
kempeitai
and Gojo at my own. My orders had been to shoot him on sight and I could easily have done so had he not been seated on a log painting a butterfly. Anna’s extraordinary beauty had saved her, Gojo Mura’s talent had saved him, but my salvation was just plain luck – the bullet that missed me by a hair’s breadth hit someone else’s beloved son.

The long contrails of moist air streaming from the flaps as we came over the end of the runway showed that the atmosphere was as humid as ever. I recalled arriving here for the first time and landing on the bumpy marsden matting that had since been replaced with asphalt. I had stepped off the plane wearing the full blue serge uniform of a naval lieutenant and felt as if I had walked directly into a foundry furnace.

We were met by Jimmy, our local manager and a relative of Ellison, who you will recall was once the native leader of my coastwatch gang during the war and still worked as my indispensable right-hand man. Jimmy had attended boarding school in Brisbane, compliments of an Uncle Joe Scholarship. Ellison made sure that all his relatives were educated and employed by the company, a system that worked well because any slack-arse amongst them was dealt with by the family, so there was seldom any trouble. In fact, between Joe and Ellison we probably had the best labour relations in the islands.

We loaded our bags in the Toyota four-wheel drive and I noticed that Jimmy had washed it in our honour. I visited Honiara often enough that the way into town was as familiar to me as the roads around Port Vila, but when you have someone with you who is seeing everything for the first time – Anna had never visited the town – it’s as if you see things in a fresh way yourself: Chinatown on our right, a motley collection of buildings of every type of construction with a predominance of corrugated iron and an insufficiency of paint; the pot-holed tarmac; the one-lane Bailey bridge across the Mataniko River built by the Yanks to last a year or so, now unpainted and weary-looking but still doing duty more than twenty-six years later. We approached the sprawling markets, at this hour relatively quiet after the early-morning mayhem where each islander seems to generate twice or three times the noise and laughter that Europeans in a similar environment might create. The morning market is a happy, generous-spirited place, attended as much for its fraternity, laughter and gossip as it is for shopping for food and the miscellanea of domestic life. Groups of locals were still standing around as if reluctant to go home to their villages to tend their vegetable gardens.

Anna knew and loved the islands but had only passed through Honiara and never seen beyond the airport at Henderson Field. She immediately noticed the three distinct racial groups – Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian – remarking on the Western Islanders, said to be the blackest people on earth, whose skin was blue-black, almost purple. I explained that there were over eighty ethnic and cultural groups on the island, and Anna, noticing people with light coffee-coloured skin and blond hair, said dryly, ‘Yes, and I can see that the Europeans have been having a good time fraternising with some of them, Nicholas.’

‘Not so,’ I laughed. ‘That red-blond hair occurs naturally amongst the Malaitan Islanders; it’s a sport, that is a genetic mutation. It’s common enough to be accepted as quite normal, even typical.’ I pointed to another group of Asiatic-looking people and explained, ‘They’re Gilbert Islanders, transported from barren and unsustainable islands by the British after the war, who had unsuccessfully attempted to settle them on the Line and Phoenix Group in the mid-Pacific before the war.’

Jimmy pulled up outside the Mendana Hotel on the waterfront, where our bags were taken to our beachside suite. I could be transported blindfolded from anywhere in the world to a hotel room with the blinds drawn and I would immediately know I was in the Pacific Islands just by the smell of mould and mildew mixed with the sharp taint of a spent mosquito coil. I explained as a matter of no possible interest to Anna that the hotel was named after Alvaro de Mendana, who had discovered the island group and claimed it for Spain in 1568. She sniffed, moving towards the drawn curtains. ‘And they haven’t opened the windows since then?’

We grabbed what we could find from the smorgasbord counter at the late end of lunch in the hotel dining room and then set off down the street to one of the few two-storey mildly imposing buildings in town for our two-thirty appointment with Joseph Minusi.

‘Look,’ Anna cried, pointing to the pavement, which was stained with hundreds of red splatters from betel nut, the mild narcotic chewed by Solomon Islanders. ‘Must have been a big gathering.’

I looked down at the vivid red blotches on the cement. ‘Nah, you see it outside every public administration building, people spitting as they wait outside.’

‘It’s not a pretty habit, but when it comes to narcotics, who am I to speak?’ Anna conceded.

‘Damned nuisance, if you ask me. When one of our ships does the Solomon Islands or New Guinea run, the streaks of red running from the scuppers over the white paint make it look as if there’s been a massacre on board. Takes some getting off the deck as well.’

We entered the building and were greeted by a pretty light-skinned young Malaitan receptionist who’d taken her fuzzy blonde halo several shades lighter at the local hair salon. ‘Mr Duncan, the Department Secretary Mr Fitzgerald wishes to see you before your appointment with Joseph Minusi,’ she smiled.

‘Uh oh, trouble is it, Olive?’ I asked, having met her on several previous visits.

‘No, I just think he wants to say hello,’ she laughed.

I glanced at my watch. ‘Will you let Joseph know where I am?’ I asked, not wishing to be late, even though island time is fairly lax and a delay of fifteen minutes wouldn’t be regarded as rude.

‘Oh, he already knows,’ Olive said, thus indicating that Joseph had been circumspect enough to discuss my appointment with his expat superior.

Gerald Fitzgerald was a lanky, freckled Englishman whose thinning ginger hair was peppered with grey. He had an easy smile and, unlike many of the other expatriate civil administrators, was invariably well-mannered and agreeable. He liked the islands and the islanders and they him, and he seldom stood on ceremony; he was just as likely to grab a couple of kids in his arms when visiting a village as not. ‘Him belong England also belong Solomon Island,’ they commonly said about him.

‘Nice to see you again, Nick,’ he said, rising from behind his desk, then turning to Anna he said admiringly, ‘And you’re Nick’s partner, Miss Til? Well, well, how nice, welcome to Honiara.’ He indicated two chairs. ‘Have you a moment or two to spare? Tea?’

‘No, no, we’ve just had a late lunch, but thank you,’ I declined. We sat and he took a third chair, crossing his lanky Ichabod Crane legs.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ He lit a cigarette, leaned back, took a puff, exhaled and said, ‘Fish, eh?’

Anna glanced at me and I nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Fitzgerald, we —’

‘No, no, call me Gerald, and may I call you Anna?’

Anna gave him one of her knockout smiles that leave men’s knees rubbery. ‘Yes, please, Gerald, I’d like that very much,’ she said in a throaty voice, then, ‘As I was about to say, we hope to apply for a licence to fish in your coastal waters on behalf of a Japanese syndicate I represent.’

‘Yes, so Joseph tells me. Jolly good. Don’t see too many problems there. One small thing, though . . .’ We waited. ‘The island government’s share . . . forty-nine per cent?’

‘Oh?’ Anna asked, smiling.

‘We thought it generous,’ I said quickly. ‘I am aware that no foreign-owned businesses working here have partnerships with the island government – our own shipping line for instance, or Levers with their vast copra plantations and their timber operations at Kolombangara.’

Gerald Fitzgerald took a casual puff, squinting through the smoke as he exhaled. ‘A British company, Levers, have been here a long time,’ he said lazily. ‘Things are changing fast as I feel sure you are aware, Nick. It won’t be long before we Brits are gone. First Fiji and then I imagine here. My job now is to lend a helping hand.’

‘Of course,’ Anna replied. ‘That’s why we are determined to set a precedent. We have built in a significant share beyond the separately negotiated initial licensing fees so that any future government has a continuing source of income.’

‘Extremely generous, my dear.’ He paused and looked up at the ceiling, then, as if thinking aloud, ‘It’s just that one little missing unit, the one per cent difference. In my experience it’s small enough to seem insignificant, but on the other hand large enough to cause a great many future problems.’ Before either of us could reply he straightened up, seemingly in sections, and rose to his feet, indicating that the interview was over. ‘Very well then, I’ll leave you in the more than capable hands of Joseph.’ He smiled, extending his own hand. ‘I feel sure you’ll sort it out between yourselves. Perhaps you’d like to join Maggie and me for a drink. The Resident Commissioner has invited us to his home and has asked that we bring you along. Shall we say I pick you up at your hotel at six o’clock?’

We duly agreed and said our goodbyes at the door. ‘Well, what was that all about?’ I ventured to Anna.

‘The forty-nine–fifty-one split in favour of the Japanese, he’s gently warning us it’s not on. It’s equal shares, so that Konoe Akira’s people don’t have the majority in future if there’s a disagreement,’ Anna replied.

‘And the invitation to the Resident Commissioner’s place? Can’t say I’ve had too many of those before.’

Anna grinned. ‘That very much remains to be seen, but it’s a good omen, I should think.’

We walked the length of the long corridor to Joseph Minusi’s office, where his serious-faced secretary rose to greet us. ‘Mr Duncan, Madam, Mr Minusi is waiting; to follow now please,’ she said formally, indicating to me that she was already rehearsing for independence. It was unusual for island-born secretaries to refer to their native-born boss formally, the friendly islanders usually called their own people, even their superiors, by their Christian names. She took the three or four steps to the door, knocked and opened it immediately.

Joseph must have heard us arrive because he was already halfway to the door. ‘Nick, welcome, come in!’ he called, his hand extended. Then to my surprise he dropped my hand, looking surprised and delighted to see Anna. ‘Missus Anna! I didn’t know it was you who was coming with Nick!’ he cried enthusiastically.

I glanced at Anna, who looked equally surprised. ‘You two know each other?’

‘Of course!’ Joseph laughed, ‘I don’t think Missus Anna would remember.’ He turned back to her. ‘It was fifteen years since you came with Uncle Joe to Noro.’ Joseph took Anna’s hand, holding it in both his own. ‘You paid my school fees through King George School.’ He turned to me. ‘If it wasn’t for her generosity I wouldn’t have won a scholarship to university in New Zealand. My brother, Wilson, she paid for him also. He went to Queensland University, now he’s Deputy Secretary of Finance.’ He released Anna’s hand. ‘This is a very nice moment for me, Missus Anna,’ he beamed.