The Islands (51 page)

‘I can't thank you enough. It's been wonderful,' said Catherine.

Abel John looked at her sparkling eyes, happy smile and pink cheeks and didn't comment. They turned back to the main buildings.

As Catherine was walking to the car she saw Eleanor in the parking lot in animated conversation with Beatrice. She called out and joined them. ‘Beatrice! Eleanor! How lovely to see you both.'

Eleanor smiled but she looked very tense and tired. ‘Hi, Catherine.'

‘Dear girl, how nice to see you,' said Beatrice kissing her cheek.

‘I've just seen the excavation down by the pond of the old . . . settlement,' said Catherine.

‘We've just been discussing it,' said Eleanor tightly.

‘It's a heiau all right. A very sacred place, which simply can't be disturbed,' said Beatrice firmly to Eleanor.

‘We've been over and over this, Beatrice. It's now out of my hands, my business partner is insistent we push ahead. I've told him we'll preserve the stones, I understand their significance.'

‘Eleanor, we've known each other for years. But I promise you, my people and this site have to come before anything else. He can build somewhere else . . .'

‘There isn't anywhere else,' began Eleanor, sounding exasperated.

‘Has your business partner seen the area? Perhaps if he came and saw it . . .' suggested Catherine, worried that she was intruding on what was obviously a sensitive discussion.

‘Of course he won't,' said Eleanor. ‘I'm the fall guy here.'

‘Then tell him he won't escape either way. Move those stones or harm that sacred site and there will be an almighty price to pay. Some catastrophe, the gods and spirits will come down on those who defy the warnings,' declared Beatrice ominously.

‘Abel John says the workmen won't touch them,' said Catherine.

‘My partner has invested a lot in this, I know that he's going to bring in mainlanders.'

‘Then as your friend, I suggest you leave this place alone,' said Beatrice firmly. ‘That is my last word.' She turned to Catherine. ‘Kiann'e said you were here, please come and see me.'

‘I will,' Catherine said as Beatrice waved to her driver waiting by her old car.

Beatrice smiled sadly. ‘Eleanor, dear, please. Listen to what I say.'

They watched Beatrice ease herself into the car, taking off her straw hat with its fresh flowers tucked around the crown and drive away.

‘The royal decree. We have been told,' sniffed Eleanor tartly.

‘Are you going to do what she says? It sounds pretty serious,' said Catherine.

‘Like I said, I have no choice in the matter. How can I give up the Palm Grove? It's my life. I'll stay with it, no matter what happens. I just don't like losing my friends to do it.'

That night, curled in bed together, Catherine described the buried settlement to PJ. ‘You don't think that the bones have anything to do with human sacrifice, do you?'

‘No, I think you're letting your imagination run away. But it could be a sacred burial place where people's ancestors have gone into the night to the spirit world,' said PJ. ‘I've heard stories from old watermen about stones that represent departed chiefs. They stand and face the sea, towards the land beyond the horizon.'

They lay quietly and Catherine suddenly recalled the images in her head of PJ, standing silent and still on a beach watching, watching the horizon.

‘Do you believe there's something out there, across the sea, the land of Hanalei, some other place?' she asked quietly.

‘I do. If the sea doesn't claim me, I want my ashes thrown across the waves,' he answered.

Catherine shivered. ‘That's awful talk.'

He held her close and they drifted to sleep and in her dreams she heard the distant roar of surf breaking on a reef and the eventual slap of a shredded wave dying on the shore.

 

Extract from The Biography of

THE WATERMAN

He sat in the shade of a coconut palm watching the surf. The sea, the sun, the sand, the brush of the tradewinds, all were the same. But everything else had changed since the Islands had been plunged into war.

It had been a Sunday morning and he had just come in from the surf when the sky filled with Japanese planes as they began their lethal attack. Noise and chaos followed. Clouds of black smoke filled the air as the American ships in Pearl Harbor were bombed. Now, around the town were sandbags, rolls of barbed wire, men and women in uniform. More warships crowded the harbour, airforce bombers took off day and night and everyone had learnt to accept curfew times and blackouts. Even some food items were rationed and produce was requisitioned from the local farms.

He regretted that his mild arthritis, a legacy from his time as a stuntman, had meant that his efforts to join the forces had been rejected. Now the imposed changes to Hawaii were rocking his way of life and his peace of mind. He debated about going back to the desert, where the vastness of the lonely prairie gave him the same sense of solitude that surfing gave him. But travel was difficult in these times and his funds were low.

As he sat on the edge of the sand, thinking about these changes, a soldier and a girl walked along the sea wall.

‘Hey, buddy,' the soldier said, ‘careful a coconut doesn't fall on your head!' They passed by laughing.

At sunset, normally a favourite time for the waterman, he got up, pulled a white cotton sweater over his navy swimsuit, slipped his feet into zoris and began walking home.

Along the beachfront he saw a pretty woman in a nurse's uniform sitting on the sea wall, holding her shoes in one hand and wiggling her bare toes in the sand. They caught each other's eye and smiled.

‘Enjoying the sunset?' he asked.

‘Trying to. If you keep looking out to sea from here, you could almost believe the world was safe. Normal.'

‘I was just thinking the same thing. Don't look behind you at the reality.' He smiled. ‘You from the mainland?'

‘Yes. I'm working here at Tripler Army Hospital.'

‘Ah. Must be tough sometimes.'

‘Yes, it can be. But times like this . . . helps put things back into perspective.'

‘Then I won't intrude. Good evening.'

‘G'bye. Good luck,' she answered.

The woman's face, her soft eyes and sweet smile, kept returning to his mind at unexpected moments. So he was only half surprised when he saw her again at sunset two days later. This time she was walking, wearing a cotton dress, her hair unpinned, softly falling to her shoulders.

‘Hello again,' he said. ‘How are things with you today?'

‘Why, hello. The world's still here, so things are good. Yes, it has been good,' she added. ‘Two of my charges have left the hospital, not fully recovered but on the path.'

‘Have they been sent home or back to their units?' he asked, falling into step beside her as they walked along the beach.

‘One has gone home on leave, the other to convalesce. So, you live here?'

They talked, their conversation covering the distance of Waikiki.

At the Outrigger Canoe Club he paused. ‘Would you like to have a drink here at the club?'

It was now a place frequented by wealthy locals and high-ranking military officers because the war had changed the Waikiki scene. Some of the young local surfers preferred to be on the other side of the island developing their surfing skills, but he was cautious when speaking of those who lived to surf when the rest of the world was fighting. And over time he found himself staying on the leeward side at Waikiki, spending more time with the gentle nurse.

It was an unspoken, informal arrangement – they began meeting at the beach on the evenings she was free. She talked of the dedicated people she worked with and her family and about growing up on the east coast. She quickly learned he was a reticent man, a good listener, but one who didn't talk about himself.

But she became fascinated, intrigued, when he talked about the sea, surfing, the Islands, the people, the culture.

So he began slowly introducing her to his favourite places. At Waikiki when the beach boys were around they talked story about growing up in Hawaii. Their graciousness and humour appealed to her and she came to understand what the aloha spirit meant.

He took her out on his board, riding tandem, but she preferred to sit on the beach and watch him, hour after hour, absorbed in riding the waves. It was as though he was reading the water until he knew every shiver and surge, every wrinkle, fold and form. He understood the waves' mood and momentum before he ventured among them.

And so they became lovers.

When they were together, they closed out the world. For them, the war, the battles happening in other places, didn't exist.

He had never let anyone intrude into his life before. Sometimes he felt afraid and vulnerable at the immensity of his feelings. Other times he was fearful that there'd be demands, a day of reckoning and that she'd expect something he couldn't give. But for now, with a war raging, they lived for the moment, wrapped in each other's arms.

One day she came to him with a sad face and he knew something was very wrong.

He tried to comprehend what she was telling him: that she was leaving for the mainland because now that victory was in sight, many of the nurses were being sent home. She wouldn't stay because she couldn't see a future for them together.

She was sad though. She said that she loved the Islands, she loved him.

He was bewildered but in his heart he knew she was right. He couldn't give up his life and the ocean here, even for her.

So it was over. She wanted no goodbyes.

All he could find to say was, ‘Well, you know where to find me.'

He came in from the dark and turned on a low light on the small table. He smoothed the sheet of paper several times, as if caressing it, before lifting his pen. He had thought long and hard about committing the right words to paper. He was unsure of what to say. But he knew he must try if he was to convince her of his love and his wish to be with her. If only she could understand and agree to a life together in the Islands. As he wrote he poured out his feelings, surprising himself. But when he reread the finished letter he tried to imagine how she would react, but what was he offering her? His heart, his love, a dream.

He walked around the room, came back and read the letter again and realised that while he offered her his love he was not relinquishing his love for the ocean and his way of life . . . an offer she had already rejected. He knew it was hopeless. Calmly he folded the letter, put it in the envelope and tucked it into the back of a scrapbook.

He went outside and the sound of the waves in the darkness comforted him.

15

H
OW EASILY AND SWEETLY
each day slipped into the next. It felt to Catherine that there had never been a time in her life like this, a time without plans or commitments, simply enjoying every minute of every day. From the moment she opened her eyes, she had no thoughts other than of PJ.

She was surrounded by beauty unlike anything she'd ever imagined, from the dramatic to the romantic, the poetic to the homespun. Kauai was a like a dream. It seemed everyone she saw gave her a special smile, tinged with a knowledge, an acknowledgment, of her joyfulness. Strangers' smiles made her pause and wonder, do they know? Do they know how free I feel, how happy I am, how in love I am?

PJ occupied all of her. She missed him when he was away from her, she felt so close to him, not only during their entwined nights, but in the things they did together. As well as surfing they'd taken to hiking through the damp, lush valleys, swimming in waterfall pools, fishing, taking Molo's little boat out to skim along the calmer parts of the coast. In the evenings they sat on the small balcony of
The Joss House
or occasionally called into Molo's for an inexpensive dinner.

If they were surfing on the north shore they hung out at
Nirvana
for several hours and while PJ worked on his boards, Catherine played with Pink and Ziggy and helped Summer and Ginger in the garden or joined them all on a picnic and a swim in the goddess pool. She took lots of photos depicting their idyllic, if unusual, life where they lived as much as they could in rhythm with nature.

At
Nirvana
everyone talked about new ways of doing things co-operatively, living on communal land, sharing the work of growing their food and raising and teaching their children, bringing in money to share with the group and allowing everyone's creative talents to blossom. There was always time to sit and make music, play with the children, bake bread and never a day went by without a surf.