One Blood (9 page)

‘And we’re not educated women ourselves,’ pointed out Sister Jean Francoise. ‘We wouldn’t know how to cope with the older boys and girls who would come to a boarding school.’

‘Give me an outboard motor and a spanner and I’ll tear the insides out of it in a quarter of an hour,’ promised Sister Johanna. ‘I’m not going to stand in front of a blackboard and pontificate about things I don’t know anything about.’

‘That’s my point,’ said Conchita. ‘We’re having problems because it’s a day school. Children have to come for miles to get here. In the end most of them give up and stop attending. We could solve that by opening a boarding school. Then the children would arrive at the beginning of each term and stay here for fifteen weeks at a time. You could teach practical engineering, Sister Johanna—to the girls as well as the boys.’

‘Impossible!’ said the German nun. ‘It would be against custom.’

‘Have you thought this through?’ asked Sister Brigid in a tone that made it plain that she had little confidence in the younger nun’s judgement. ‘There are immeasurable obstacles to having boys and girls living on the mission. Do you realize,
for example, that a woman must never live at a higher level than a man? If we built a two-storey building, for example, the girls wouldn’t be allowed to study on the floor above the boys. The whole thing would never work.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Conchita, ‘I’m sure that a change to boarding education would quadruple the numbers on roll and give us much more teaching time. It won’t be easy. We shall have to go out to the other islands in the lagoon and recruit students. Sister Brigid, I was hoping that you would lead this team and use your knowledge of the area to bring children back to us.’

‘I will not leave the mission!’ shouted Sister Brigid, her hands intertwined and trembling.

The other two sisters wailed in apprehensive agreement, glaring at Conchita as if she had made an indecent suggestion. Sister Jean Francoise put a consoling arm around the Irish nun’s shoulder. All afternoon they had been presenting a human wall of denial and rejection. Sister Conchita put down her pencil on the table before her and tried to look optimistic. ‘However,’ she said brightly, ‘this was only in the nature of a preliminary meeting. Now that we’ve broached the subjects, I’d like you to think things over and we’ll meet again later in the week to go into matters in more detail.’

And a fat lot of good that will do, she thought. From the rigid expressions on the faces of the other nuns, it was plain that none of them had high expectations of a satisfactory outcome to any such encounter. Satisfactory for Sister Conchita, that was. Every topic she had brought up over the last hour had been refuted or dismissed as impracticable by the three immovable elderly women sitting around the table in the senior sister’s office. No, it would not be possible to teach carpentry to both boys and girls: it was against custom. No, it would not be in order to dam the creek in order to power a wooden mill wheel to provide power for various projects: it would necessitate
moving the kiln, and who knows, it might inadvertently be placed on a
tambu
spot. No, it would not do to make bricks from sun-baked mud: the islanders were accustomed to leaf buildings.

‘There is one more thing,’ said Sister Brigid, initiating a topic for the first time that day. ‘What about that young man you’ve brought to the mission hospital? He’s been here for three days now.’

The Irish nun made it sound as if Conchita had smuggled the youth on to the island for her own nefarious purposes, thought the younger sister. Aloud she said: ‘I’m just going along to see him now. The last time I looked in, he seemed much better.’

‘We don’t even know who he is,’ objected Sister Brigid.

‘It is most irregular,’ nodded Sister Johanna weightily. ‘Are we even sure that he is a Catholic?’

Look who’s talking, fumed Conchita inwardly. The three of you haven’t adhered to proper church practices since Pope Pius XII was a little boy.

‘Was he wounded in a battle?’ asked Sister Jean Francoise. ‘I’ve been in to see him several times but I can’t find any signs of wounds. I didn’t know the war parties were out again.’

As usual, the other sisters ignored the French nun.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Conchita promised. It was time to make a stand. ‘I know that I am new here and that you have grave reservations about me,’ she said. ‘But I have been sent to Marakosi to do a job, and I intend to do it to the best of my ability. Your undoubted talents are not being used to the full. This mission needs a boarding school, and we are going to start to build one before I leave here. Good morning, Sisters.’

The young nun walked briskly through the mission corridors, trying not to give way to the intense, racking despair she was feeling. It was quiet throughout the building. In most missions there was only a sustained hush like this on a Saturday, when the school had closed and the nuns observed a day of
silence. Sister Conchita pined for the organized bustle of her former mission on Malaita. Immediately she chided herself for allowing herself to be discontented and ungrateful. She had been presented with a task, and she would do her best to carry it through, difficult though it might prove.

She looked at the statues of saints lining the walls. They would have known how to cope with Sister Brigid and her acolytes without breaking into a sweat, she thought wistfully. She passed the small chapel used by the sisters for their devotions, with its altar and benches; the back rooms divided into cubicles for sleeping; the refectory and reception room, and entered the dispensary. This was a small room, with a worn scrubbed table in the middle and a few shelves leaning crazily against the walls. It contained only basic supplies of quinine for malaria, penicillin and sulfa tablets for bacterial infections, mycozol for footrot, iodine, bandages and lint, yet still contrived to look cluttered and untidy. Conchita resolved yet again to clean the room up as soon as she found time.

She heard a faint cry from the hospital ward next door and hurried in. A ceiling fan wheezed lethargically overhead. There was space for three beds in the room. Only one of the beds was occupied. A tall, thin youth of about nineteen was lying beneath the sheets. Sister Conchita’s heart leapt. He was awake. When she had picked up the semi-conscious youth from the atoll, she had brought him straight back to the mission. After a few hours of incoherent rambling, he had lapsed into unconsciousness and had lain in a coma for the past two days. It was a relief to see him coming round at last.

‘How are you?’ she asked, moving quickly to his side. ‘Come to that,
who
are you? I’m Sister Conchita, by the way. You’re in the clinic at Marakosi Mission.’

‘Andy Russell,’ whispered the youth. ‘I’m a VSO from Gizo.’

That would explain it, thought Conchita. Voluntary Service Overseas cadets had only just started being employed in the
Solomons. They were male and female, around the ages of eighteen and nineteen, spending a gap year after leaving school and before going on to university helping out with government and mission projects. Because of their youth and lack of practical skills, the scheme had not yet taken off locally, and it was being found difficult to utilize a number of them. Some were being employed in teaching and clerical work, while others were more or less neglected and were to be found hanging around their rest-house in Honiara, enduring various stages of boredom. That still did not explain why she had found this one lying close to death on the tiny island in the lagoon.

‘What were you doing on that island, Mr Russell?’ she asked, moistening the boy’s lips from a glass of water.

‘Kasolo,’ he whispered. ‘It’s called Kasolo. They sent me there to build a leaf hut for fishermen calling in to the island. Only I imagine they forgot I was there.’

‘You mean they just left you there? How long were you on Kasolo?’

‘A month.’

‘But what did you do for food?’ asked Sister Conchita, increasingly horrified.

‘They left me a bag of rice and some tins of meat, but those ran out after the first week or so. After that I managed on coconuts and any fish I could catch in the lagoon. It rained enough to fill the rock pools with fresh water. I kept hoping they’d send someone to pick me up, but no one came. Eventually, I suppose, I got caught out in the sun, and I just collapsed. I reckon I’d been lying in that clearing for the best part of a week before you found me. It was lucky that you and the fishermen came along at about the same time.’

‘You’ve had a severe case of sunstroke and dehydration,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘It could have been very nasty. I think you’re going to be all right now, though. However, I’m very concerned
about the way in which you were left to fend for yourself on that island. I shall be having a word with the District Commissioner about it, never fear.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ said a panic-stricken Andy. ‘I probably got it wrong. I don’t want to be in any trouble.’

‘Believe me, you’re not the one who’s going to be in trouble,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘I’ll send a radio message to Gizo saying that we’ve found you. In the meantime, you just lie here and rest. I’ll send Sister Brigid in with something for you to eat and drink. You’ve got nothing to worry about now.’ A thought struck her. ‘By the way, what’s
painim aut
? You were delirious when I found you, and you kept repeating it.’

Andy shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.

Conchita left the sprawling mission building and walked along the beach, trying to control her feelings. It was so typical of the easy-going ambience of the administration in the Solomons. The neglected young VSO could have died on that island; those responsible for his well-being had much to answer for, and she would do her best to find out how it had happened. She passed a blue-robed local sister and asked her to tell Sister Brigid that the youth had recovered consciousness and needed looking after.

Continuing on her way, she walked through a small village built on stilts in the shallow water of the lagoon. The walls and roofs of the houses were made of large leaves, shaped and folded over flat sticks and held in place by the bark removed from the sticks. The leaves had been shaped into overlapping panels, tied into place with more bark. Children played in the water and on the sand. Their mothers would be working in the gardens inland and their fathers would be far out in the lagoon fishing from canoes. A few old men sat smoking pipes and gossiping under the fringe of palm trees.

Idly Conchita wondered why the VSO boy had been so upset when she had threatened to report his treatment to the
authorities. There had been no doubt that he had been frightened. Something struck a chord in her memory. Ed Blamire had been similarly apprehensive when she had encountered him in the church shortly before his strange death. She had felt at the time that she had let him down by not responding adequately to his unease. She was determined that she was not going to ignore a similar plea from Andy Russell, even if he was reluctant to let her know what was wrong. Could it have been a coincidence that two expatriates should have appeared at the mission within such a short time of one another, with each in a palpable state of distress? Probably not; after all, the mission was there to provide succour for the needy.

Conchita dredged her mind to remember where she had heard the name of the island of Kasolo before. Then she recalled that Joe Dontate had told her that it was where John F. Kennedy and the other seamen from his wrecked vessel had taken refuge during the war.

She saw a canoe approaching the beach. At first she could not make out who the occupant was, but then, as the craft drew closer, she thought she recognized the paddler. There were few islanders as tall or as broad-shouldered as this, and the red beret on the man’s head of thick curls made identification even easier. With a sense of relief, Sister Conchita realized that the doughty Sergeant Kella was visiting the mission.

She walked down the beach and waited for the policeman to drag his canoe up on to the sand. She was always pleased to see Kella, but was already experiencing her usual feelings of ambivalence about the burly Malaita man. She simply could not make up her mind about him. She had known him for less than a year, but already he had impressed her more than any man she had ever met. The islander was perceptive and intuitive, and she knew from personal experience that he was physically courageous. But, she worried, all these things had to be balanced against the fact that he was a pagan. More than
that, he was a high priest of the Lau gods, elected while only a child to this office, charged to spend his life maintaining peace among the Malaitans.

Her elderly mentor, Father Pierre, had warned her not to worry about this aspect of the dedicated police officer’s character until she knew more about the Solomons and its people. There were more things in heaven and earth, he warned, than she had been taught in the seminary. If she wanted to make a success of her mission in the islands, she would have to learn much more about the local religions, and perhaps even experience their true meanings and wellsprings. It was a daunting prospect.

She waited until the Malaitan had secured his canoe, and then walked towards him, her hand outstretched. ‘Sergeant Kella,’ she said warmly. ‘Welcome to Marakosi.’

‘Thank you, Sister Conchita,’ said the policeman gravely, stooping to shake her hand. The nun was aware of his sheer physical size. He towered over her. Kella was over six feet tall, with shoulders like a banyan tree.

‘You certainly took your time getting here,’ she said, aware of the severity in her tone. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t much evidence left. The visitors trampled over the ground. And any witnesses will be scattered all across the region by now.’

‘Evidence of what?’ Kella asked.

‘Haven’t you come here about Mr Blamire’s death?’

‘Who’s Mr Blamire?’

‘He’s the tourist who died here on open day. They say he had a heart attack, but I’m not so sure. And how did he get as far as the bonfire if he was attacked in the church, as the signs of a struggle there indicate? Who did he fight there? It’s all very confusing.’