Solomons Seal

Chapter Nine

Hans took the ferry, the Barreto Chebu, across to Sohano, one of his Buka guards going with him, and while he was away, a truckload of armed men came in from Queen Carola. Their weapons were World War II rifles, and they sat nursing them in the back of the truck, staring out at the rain, none of them doing anything except relieve themselves against the banyan tree. The Barreto stayed moored to the Sohano jetty, which was only just visible through the rain.

The rest of the morning passed slowly. The tug was primarily a harbour tug, and the quarters, entered by a companionway at the back of the little caboose of a wheelhouse, were cramped and pretty basic. Perenna and her brother, as well as Hans, had spent the night dozing with their clothes on in the tiny saloon. Now she was lying curled up on the bench beside the small mess table. I don’t think she was asleep, but she didn’t speak to me. The incessant rain and lack of sleep had affected us all, the rain particularly.

About 10.30 we moved to the bunkering wharf close by the market and took on fuel. With no truck-load of armed men to stop me, I thought it an opportunity to slip ashore, but I was stopped by the fair-bearded Australian skipper. ‘Much as my job’s worth to let you go wandering in the bush, mate.’ He wasn’t armed, but there were armed men at the Cooperative he could call upon, so I stayed with him in the caboose. He was aiming to make his fortune backing the new Sapuru regime, and Holland he regarded as a guy who was going places. ‘Got it all planned, finance for ships, everything. Stick with him, mate, and you won’t go wrong.’ Half an hour later we were back at the jetty.

At midday we picked up a news bulletin on the radio. The Australian government had ordered the frigate Dampier, on fishery protection duty off the Barrier Reef, to proceed at once to Bougainville to stand by to evacuate Australian civilians. Papua New Guinea was reported to have sent an ultimatum to the rebel Council of the Sapuru regime giving them until noon to release all prisoners and hand over power to the legitimate administration; if not, the forces at present standing by would be ordered to take the necessary action to restore the legal government. Since the time was now four minutes past midday and no reply had been received from the rebel regime, it was presumed that military action would be taken. Preparations for such an eventuality had already been made. There followed an eye-witness account from Port Moresby of troops embarking in the harbour, also an announcement that Air Niugini Fokker Friendships were being requisitioned to act as air transports.

Then, right at the end of the news, there was a news flash:

A report has just come in that security forces of the PNG administration in Bougainville recaptured Buka airfield in the early hours of this morning. The time limit for surrender of power by the rebel regime having expired, we understand that the airlift of troops to Buka, the island to the north of Bougainville that is virtually a part of the mainland, has already begun. We will keep listeners informed as soon as we have further news.

Within minutes of that announcement the little Barreto had cast off and was sidling across the tideway towards us. Somewhere in the distance a shot was fired. I thought it came from the direction of the airfield, but then there were more shots, a sporadic outburst of firing that clearly emanated from the rising ground in the vicinity of the Administration buildings.

Hans Holland had already seen the truckload of men waiting, and he was shouting somebody’s name as the ferryboat bumped alongside and he jumped on to the jetty and went running towards the truck. A stocky jet-black man, bare-chested and with a great shock of hair, climbed out of the cab. They stood there for a moment, the two of them in the rain, Hans’s voice loud and angry, the other’s soft and sullen. Finally the man from Queen Carola got back into the cab, and the truck drove off. ‘They should’ve moved on the airfield an hour ago,’ the tug skipper said. ‘Looks like they’ve lost the initiative now.’

Hans was walking back towards the tug, his head bent, oblivious of the rain. He was walking slowly, pausing every now and then to turn his head and listen to the sound of firing, which continued very sporadically. He reached the bulwarks and climbed on board, then stood there a moment as though undecided. The skipper stuck his head out of the caboose window. ‘You heard the newscast, did you, boss?’

Hans nodded. ‘Yes. And the stupid bastards have got themselves cut off-’ He seemed to take a grip on himself, his mouth shut, his lips a hard line. Water poured off him as he came slowly down the deck. The firing had ceased now, everything quiet except for the sound of the rain and the faint hubbub of voices from the shops across the road. He stood listening for a moment outside the caboose door. ‘That firing — from the Sub-District office, wasn’t it?’

‘Reck’n so.’ The Australian pushed open the door for him. ‘Sounds like the police have captured it now.’

He nodded, still listening intently, his shirt and trousers clinging to him, his head lifted and his eyes staring at nothing with great intensity. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Still plenty of time. If those aircraft really did take off … What is it — five, six hundred miles? They’ll be nearly two hours yet.’ He looked at the pair of us, and suddenly that cocky jauntiness was back. ‘Come on. We’ll grab a truck and some arms and get out to the airfield. Three trucks. That should do it. Three trucks parked on the runway should stop them, and in this rain …’

He was already heading back along the jetty, and such was the magnetism of the man that we were both out of the caboose and actually running after him when we heard it. At first we didn’t stop. It was coming from behind us, out of the west, a soft whisper like a line squall whipping up the sea. It grew steadily, swelling to a solid, high-toned cacophony of sound that we must have identified at the same instant, for we stopped in our tracks, all three of us, standing there listening, our eyes searching the leaden overcast beyond Sohano, beyond Minon. And suddenly, there it was, coming in low over Madehas, the roar of its engines getting louder and louder.

It was the first of four, and already it had its wheels down. It was so low they seemed to brush the marker posts. It came straight down the Buka Passage, sweeping close over our heads, the Air Niugini bird of paradise insignia bright against the low-hanging cloud, and by then the others were in sight, coming in like dragonflies low over the water.

‘The bastards! The bloody, cheating, sodding bastards!’ Hans’s voice was strangely shrill. ‘They were in the air,’ he cried. ‘They must have had them in the air … ’ His voice was drowned in the scream of the engines close over our heads as they peeled off to circle the airfield, and we stood there, rooted to the spot, as all four of them were lost to sight beyond the plantations.

The market was in turmoil, people standing staring up at the sky, others running. And down at the Government wharf the crew of the freighter were throwing off her warps, pausing every now and then to glance up at the overcast sky, as though expecting bombs to fall, for the sound of engines was growing again. Then one by one the aircraft reappeared to make the approach run. We watched them descend in quick succession, the sound of their engines dying to a gentle murmur as they completed their landings and began to taxi.

The Australian was the first to speak. ‘Well, mate, I guess that’s it.’ He was looking at Hans. We both were, and in that moment I was sorry for him. He had taken one hell of a gamble, and now … ‘Looks like those bastards in Port Moresby have called your bluff.’ The skipper’s face was sour with disappointment.

Hans turned and stared at him, anger in his eyes, and something else — ‘I wasn’t bluffing,’ he said, his voice a hard whisper of sound that was more implacable than if he had shouted.

‘You mean …’ The Australian gazed at him, open-mouthed. ‘Christ! I believe you would, too.’

I didn’t know what they were talking about, but the words had a curious effect, the Australian with a shocked look on his face and Hans actually smiling. ‘We lose Buka, it doesn’t matter. So long as they can’t land at Kieta-’ He began walking back to the tug.

The last of the aircraft had cut its engines, and in the sudden silence the sound of human voices from the shops and from the market seemed very loud. The freighter had pulled out into the stream. She was very high out of the water, and the slowly revolving prop was making a steady thumping sound as it flailed the surface.

Hans reached the end of the jetty and turned to the skipper. ‘We’ll go across to Sohano now. They’re arranging radio contact with Sapuru for me. President Sapuru! He likes the sound of that. And now that he’s in a fix I guess he’ll do it.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I think so. He’s no alternative now. And you,’ he added as he climbed on board. ‘While you’re waiting for me at Sohano, see if you can raise the LCT on VHF, tell Captain Holland to dump the prisoners anywhere he can and return here immediately. Madehas. We’ll meet him at Madehas. By then we should’ve stopped those bastards in their tracks.’

The tug was manned by one Mortlock and two Shortland islanders. The engineer was from Buin in the extreme south-west of Bougainville. They knew their job, all of them, so that a shout from the Australian skipper and we were cast off with the engine turning over almost before our feet touched the deck. And on the other side we didn’t stay at the Sohano jetty after Hans had leapt on to it, but backed off and anchored out past the first of the water loos that stood like a little wooden bathing machine with its legs in the water. ‘Nobody’s going to rush me, I tell ya.’ And then he was looking at me closely as he said, ‘You think they’ll do it? You think Sapuru’s got the guts? Or will they just lay down their arms?’

‘Do what?’ I asked.

‘Start killing them. Do you think he’ll do it?’ And when I asked who Sapuru was expecting to kill, he stared at me as though he thought I was trying to be funny. ‘Why, the whites, of course. The expats. And don’t pretend you didn’t know. You heard what the boss said. I thought he was bluffing, that’s true, mate. I really did think it was a bluff. But it isn’t, is it? He’s gone to get Sapuru on the air, tell him to go ahead, to start killing. And that frigate, the Dampier, hasn’t a hope of getting here in time to stop it. Do you think Sapuru will do it?’ He was staring at me, nervous and excited at the same time.

‘How the hell should I know?’ I was appalled, aghast at the thought that I had got myself into a position where I could be accused of complicity. ‘I’ve never met the man.’

‘Never met him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, he’s not much to look at, I can tell ya. A dried-up little mummy of a man, a sort of elder-cum-wizard, and very much feared by his people. ‘Fact, they’re dead scared of him, so if he tells them to start killing, the odds are they’ll do it.’

Murder! What else could you call it? It wasn’t even indiscriminate bombing, as in Northern Ireland. True, the motive was political, and almost anything, it seems, can be justified these days if that’s the motive. But to hold people hostage and then shoot them down in cold blood … Or was a revolution the same as war? Did the writ to kill cover innocent civilians? We were still arguing about it when the distant whine of aircraft engines started up again.

By then the sky had lightened and the rain had eased up, a breeze blowing down the narrow tideway, wind against current so that the surface of the Passage was ruffled with little breaking waves. The noise of aircraft engines was steady for several minutes so that I guessed they were taxiing out to the runway. Then, suddenly, the noise increased as, one after the other, they took off and rose above the palms like insects on a string. I thought they’d taken off to fly back to Port Moresby for reinforcements, but instead of heading out to the west, they banked and came straight across Chinaman’s Quay and the Buka Passage heading south-east. ‘Kieta,’ the Australian murmured unbelievingly. ‘They’re headed for Kieta.’ He turned and stared across the water at the Sohano jetty, which was deserted. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he muttered. ‘Kieta should be blocked.’ He reached for the radio, switched on and began fiddling with the tuning as he slipped the headphones on. ‘I’ll try the normal air channel. See if they’re talking.’ His fingers checked, his face concentrated as he listened intently.

Then he nodded and switched the loudspeaker on: ‘ … just hear you. Over … That’s better. ETA over Arawa thirteen-twenty-five. Have your helicopter in position a thousand feet above the downwind end of the chosen section. Okay? … Yes, as a marker. We’ll come in below him. If the road is not clear he’s to switch his nav lights on and fire red warning flares. Okay? Over … Yes, as soon as the boys are out, we’ll turn straight round and take off downwind … Thanks, Paguna. If the rain stops, the road surface shouldn’t be too bad. We’ll contact you again as we approach Arawa. It’s important about the vehicles, remember. They don’t want to footslog it in the heat. Over and out.’

He switched off. ‘Something Holland never thought of, them using a road.’ He shook his head. ‘He should’ve. A road surface would be a damned sight better than some of the fields I’ve seen those Friendships land on in Australia.’ He got up and peered out of the window. The time was 12.52. There was nobody on the jetty, apart from two kids playing tag in the light drizzle, and the path down to it from the radio station and the hospital was deserted. ‘Well, he’d better hurry up, or I’m off back to Anewa. Think they’ll give me a medal for bringing their tug back safe and sound?’ He grinned at me, running his fingers through his blond beard. ‘Pity. We might’ve finished up driving ships as big as tankers, with nice cosy quarters, a bar on board and women. Oh, well … ’ He gave a little shrug, reaching for the packet of cigarettes lying on the window ledge. ‘No sweat as far as I’m concerned, but Hans Holland now — wonder what he’ll do? Finished here, ennee? Be lucky if they don’t stand him up against a wall and shoot the-’ Footsteps sounded on the companionway, and he turned. It was Perenna.

‘Shoot what?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’ And when we told her, she stood staring out at Sohano, her face pale and dark shadows under her eyes. ‘So it’s all over. He’s lost. Lost everything. He’ll be sent to prison.’ She turned, groping for the helmsman’s chair, and sat down. ‘Oh, my God! It’s no place for a man like Hans.’

It struck me as odd at the time, and it still does, but in that moment her thoughts were not for the men who had been killed to no purpose, or the expatriates in Bougainville whose lives were threatened if Sapuru didn’t capitulate, or even for her brother. They were for Hans Holland, as though he were some sort of exotic butterfly that couldn’t exist in the strict confines of a prison cell.

I can’t remember what we talked about, the three of us huddled together in the wheelhouse, waiting for the arrival time of the planes over Arawa. I don’t think we said very much, the time passing slowly as the rain finally stopped and the sun began to burn through the thinning cloud layer. At 13.15 we were tuned to the same VHF channel, but hearing nothing except static, the skipper switched to the shortwave frequency used locally. On this we caught disconnected snatches of talk. The reception was very bad, but a scattering of words came through: ‘Opposition’ was one of them, also ‘good landing’ and ‘cars at the bridge, thank God … ’ And then at 13.34, very clearly, came the words ‘four of us airborne now, course two-four-five and climbing to sixteen thousand. Our ETA … ’ The rest was lost, fading into a crackle of static.

The Australian switched off. ‘Course two-four-five, that means they’re headed back to Port Moresby, don’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Papua New Guinea, anyway.’

‘And just time to get back to Kieta again before nightfall with another eighty or so soldiers.’ He was on his feet, calling to his crew to get the anchor up. ‘I’m not hanging around here any longer. I’m on my way.’ He winked at me, his teeth showing brown nicotine stains against the bleached hairs of his beard. ‘A good law-abiding citizen, that’s me, bringing the company’s property back where it belongs. And don’t you say anything different, mate, or I’ll shop you for a gun-runner.’

The engines were throbbing away, the anchor coming up, and Perenna was on her feet, saying, ‘You can’t just leave him.’

‘Can’t I?’ He laughed. ‘Look, miss. He had it all sewn up, the future, everything. But now it’s all fallen apart, and he’s in the shit, ennee? Right in it up to his neck, so I aim to put as much space between him and me-’

‘He’s coming down to the jetty now,’ I said.

He turned, staring at the shore.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Oh, hell!’ he said. ‘I dunno. Take him to Madehas, I guess. That’s where he said.’ And he swung the wheel over, turning the tug’s bows towards the Sohano jetty. ‘Can’t leave him on Sohano to be picked up by the Army. They’re bound to commandeer the ferry and send a section over to grab the radio station.’

‘Where’s Mac?’ Perenna asked.

‘That little monkey-faced man with a bladder full of liquor? He’s coiled up in the big hawser aft, sleeping it off. You coming back to Anewa with us, miss?’

Her head jerked up, her expression suddenly changed. ‘Yes,’ she said sharply. ‘Yes, of course.’ Then she was silent, looking straight ahead, watching as the bows sidled towards the jetty where Hans stood facing us, very still and watchful as though events had made him suddenly suspicious of everyone and everything. The Australian slid the tug alongside so that its bulwarks barely touched the wood, and almost before Hans had stepped on board he had the prop in reverse and we were backing out into the Passage, the bows already swinging so that when he went ahead, they were still turning towards Minon. ‘You still want to go to Madehas?’ he asked.

Hans didn’t answer immediately, standing just outside the open door to the caboose, his eyes not seeing anything, only his thoughts. At length he turned his head and said, ‘Did you manage to raise the LCT?’

‘Yep. Passed on your message.’

Hans nodded. He had his shirt outside his trousers. It was almost dry now, and like that it was only when he moved I could see the shape of a gun stuck into his waistband. ‘Another hour then, and Jonathan should be back.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Perenna breathed, and the Australian said, ‘Depends what he decides when he’s heard the news, doesn’t it? He might head straight back to Anewa like I’m going to do soon as I’ve dropped you.’

Hans looked at him, his silence and the contempt in his eyes saying more than words. ‘Put me ashore at Madehas,’ he said finally. ‘The north of the island, below the house.’ He turned to me. ‘And you’ll come ashore with me. I want that letter.’

That he should have remembered it, with all that had happened — that really did strike me as very strange. Then, as we passed through the narrows between the Minon and Buka Island markers, I forgot all about it, Perenna pulling me to one side and saying, ‘Have you seen his eyes? He’s desperate. I’m afraid he’ll do something terrible.’

‘Nonsense,’ I whispered.

‘You just look at his face. That shut look. And he’s got something under his shirt. A grenade?’

‘It’s a gun.’

‘You can’t be sure. It could be a grenade-’

Her voice had risen slightly, and he turned, quick as a cat. ‘What’s that you say?’

‘Nothing.’ The freckles on her face showed very clear against the pallor of her skin, her eyes wide as she stared straight into his face.

He smiled, but it was more of a grimace, reminding me of ancient gargoyles. ‘Who put the curse on us, Perenna? Eh? Who was it? My father, your grandfather — or somebody further back, some devilish Holland we don’t know about? And Red Holland — my father — murdered by your grandfather. Nothing went right for them, did it?’ His voice had risen, the words spat out between clenched teeth. ‘And now, ten years’ work, ten years’ preparation, coaxing, organising, building for a big future, and what happens? It goes sour on me, a ghastly failure, and just because a gorilla from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a man who should be back in the Dark Ages living in a goddam cave, comes down from Paguna with two or three hundred followers armed with pangas, telling Sapuru he’s magicked their jobs away and for that he’s going to put a bigger magic on him. That’s what he said, a bigger magic — because he’s more than a fight leader, he’s a sorcerer and capable of bigger magic than Sapuru. And you know what?’ He thrust his face close to Perenna’s, staring at her, his eyes gone wild. ‘It was you they wanted. Yes, you. If I didn’t bring you back to speak for them, they’d tear every Buka man in Arawa limb from limb and eat them at the biggest sing-sing since before the first missionary came.’

He had been talking so fast spittle had formed on his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and turned to me. ‘You think you’re going to marry this little bitch and make the Holland Line your own, eh? Oh, I heard all about you and what happened on the trip over. But you’ll never do it, not if you’ve any sense. Let the ships, the name, everything, sink into oblivion — like the old Holland Trader.’ His voice had quietened as though he were beginning to come to terms with what had happened. ‘Maybe that’s the answer.’ He had turned away and was staring for’ard towards the house, which was just coming into sight on the high ground at the north end of Madehas.

Nobody spoke after that, the only sound the swirl of water at the bows and the background hum of the engines. Perenna looked very shaken, almost cowed, and suddenly I was seeing her in quite a different light, not as a highly attractive, sensual woman, but as somebody with very real problems that made her vulnerable. The broadened nose, the fullness of the lips, the thrusting breasts, the way she walked even and the way her hair fitted her head like a cap — it was all there, traces of a mixed blood, the people I had seen in the market and at the quayside shops.

She saw me staring at her and half reached out her hand, a timid gesture that was retracted almost before it was begun. I felt a sudden surge of emotion — pity, love, compassion, I don’t know what it was. She lowered her head as though in embarrassment, and for that moment the sensuality of her body, its ability to arouse me, all my previous feelings for her were quite lacking. And then she lifted her head again, her eyelids, too, so that our eyes met, and something passed between us, something deep and personal. She lowered her eyes again, but squared her shoulders as though strengthened by some resolve. ‘Are you going up to the house with him?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

Hans heard me and said, ‘You haven’t any choice. I want that letter.’

‘I’ll come with you then,’ she said.

He turned on her. ‘You’ll do as you’re told and stay on board till your brother arrives.’ We had left the last marker astern and were approaching North Madehas. ‘You wait here for the LCT,’ he told the Australian. ‘As soon as you’ve put Miss Holland aboard, then you’re free to head for Anewa.’

‘You’ll remain at Madehas, will you?’

Hans nodded.

‘So what do I tell them down at Anewa?’

Hans gave a quick, humourless bark of a laugh. ‘Don’t reck’n you need me to coach you. You were coerced. I brought you up here against your will. At gunpoint, was it?’ He smiled. ‘You’re a two-timing sodding bastard, aren’t you?’

‘Just impressionable.’ The Australian’s teeth showed brown in his beard as he reached for the engine controls. I never did discover the man’s name. A relief driver, that’s how he described himself. The revs dropped, and we slipped through between the shallows to the north and the reef arm reaching out from Madehas.

I didn’t see them anchor. I was down below, getting the letter from my bag and slipping it in with the dollars in my hip pocket. If Perenna hadn’t been there, I could have said I’d made a mistake and handed it straight over to him. I didn’t want to go back to that house, and certainly not with Hans Holland. There was something evil about it. I had felt it when I was there with Mac, a brooding menace hanging over it. And to go there now with a man whose world had collapsed … but I had no alternative. I had said the letter was still in the house, and if I produced it now, he would know I had shown it to Perenna. Pagan bad. Mac’s words came back to me as the chain rattled out and I climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse.

The dinghy was already over the side. Perenna looked at me, a wide-eyed stare. But she didn’t say anything. No last-minute appeal to me not to go, and I knew then she was scared — scared of what he would do if he discovered she knew the contents of that letter. And neither of us understood why it mattered so much to him. ‘You ready, Slingsby?’ He was waiting for me out on the flat rounded stern where the Mortlock man with the jet-black skin was holding the painter. As I went to join him, seeing the bulge of the gun under his shirt and myself unarmed, I wasn’t feeling all that confident. And what made it worse, the sun was coming out, everything fresh and sparkling after the rain. For the first time since I had arrived in the Buka Passage I was glad to be alive and in such a place.

Never having fought in a war, or seen a man in total defeat before, I had no yardstick with which to gauge Hans Holland’s state of mind. The fact that he had mixed blood, some of it, like Perenna’s, of Melanesian origin, did that make him more, or less, fatalistic? And to be worrying about a letter written in 1910 when the Papua New Guinea government would almost certainly blame him for what had happened and seek some form of retribution, a public trial, an execution even … I watched him as the Mortlock islander rowed us ashore. He was bareheaded, his red hair gleaming in the sun. Even his bare arms had a reddish glow. He didn’t talk, sitting silent in the bows, a small canvas grip at his feet and his eyes staring into space. What was he thinking? I wondered.

What the hell was he thinking?

The bows touched the landing pontoon where the oil drums on which it floated were still intact, and he stepped out of the boat, the painter in one hand, his canvas holdall in the other. It was then that I got the letter out of my hip pocket and slipped it into a side pocket where I could get at it easily. He held the boat for me, and as soon as I had joined him on the pontoon, he tossed the painter back on board, and the boat headed for the tug. I should have called the man back, told him to wait, but I was afraid that might be taken as provocation. I was treading warily, as though dealing with a psychopath, and I was very conscious that Hans was aware of my unease. He seemed to be smiling to himself as we reached the shore and started up the path together.

The houseboy appeared as mysteriously as before. Hans said something to him, and he fell in behind us, a silent shadow. I saw no sign of the woman. ‘Have you remembered where it is?’ Hans asked abruptly.

‘In the safe, probably.’

‘That isn’t what McAvoy said. He seemed to think you’d taken it with you.’

It was very hot, the air humid despite the sparkle. ‘It’ll be there somewhere,’ I said. And then I asked him what he was planning to do now. ‘Where will you go?’

He turned his head, a hard, angry stare. ‘D’you think I’d tell you, even if I knew?’ His tone was hostile as though he thought I was gloating. It was a sharp reminder of the delicateness of my position, alone with an armed man whose mind might well be unhinged, and only his own houseboy, a native of Buka, witness to anything that happened. We walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, passing the little flyblown summerhouse, the houseboy drawing level and plucking at Hans Holland’s shirt. But before he could make his ritual offer of coffee or Coke, he had been silenced by the coldness of his master’s gaze.

We reached the entrance porch with its unswept pile of winged insects. Hans trod them underfoot, not apparently noticing, pushed open the door and then stood back, motioning me to enter. From that moment he contrived always to have me in sight as though he were afraid I’d try to rush him. The sun was streaming in through the cobwebbed windows high above the halfway landing of the double staircase, dust motes shimmering in the air, and there was a lazy buzz of trapped insects. Where it had been gloomy before, it was now positively macabre, the stuffed crocodile, the carving, the panelling, everything brilliantly illuminated like a stage set. Hans closed the door. Then, watchful now and still keeping behind me, he pointed to one of the chairs against the wall at the foot of the staircase. ‘You sit there,’ he said.

Now that we were alone in this dreadful room his voice had an edge to it that I didn’t like. ‘You’ll need some help-’ I began.

‘Sit down.’

‘If you don’t mind-’

‘Sit down, damn you — where I can see you. I told you you were lying, remember? Go on, pull that chair out and sit down.’ His voice was calmer now, the chair he had indicated was by the table with the old newspapers. I dropped the letter on top of them as I picked up the chair. He was already standing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sit down.’ He watched me until I was seated, then he bent down, felt for the catch and, with both hands under the outer edge of the bottom tread, gave a quick heave and raised all four treads, folding them back in one easy movement. ‘Did you take anything else?’ He was already bending over the safe, his fingers turning the combination lock.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything was put back just-’

‘What about McAvoy?’ He glanced up at me. ‘Are you saying he put it all back, neither of you took anything?’

‘Yes, it was all put back, money, gold, everything.’

‘Except that letter.’ He straightened up. The door of the safe was opening slowly to the leverage of his body. Quickly he checked the contents, finally pulling out the envelope marked LEWIS, taking a quick look at the Solomons Seal sheets, then putting it back and turning to me. ‘All except the letter,’ he said, the sunlight glinting off a cracked wall mirror making patterns on his face. ‘Where is it? What’ve you done with it?’ And when I started to tell him I couldn’t remember, he laughed a little wildly and said, ‘Don’t give me that crap. You took it with you and showed it to Perenna. I told you you were lying. I saw you on the tug this morning. But why did you take it? What made you think it so bloody important that you had to show it to Perenna?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, conscious of my tongue on my lips, moistening them nervously. And then I thought, No point in not telling him what puzzled me. ‘It started off Dear Red, so I took it to be addressed to your father, and it’s dated July 1910. In it Lewis says he’s coming to get his share of the ships that were purchased with the gold from the Dog Weary mine. That’s what I didn’t understand.’

‘Because Red Holland didn’t inherit the Line until over a year later?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Perenna know what it meant?’

‘No, she didn’t understand it either.’ Looking at him, so tense, so wary, a thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did Timothy Holland know?’

He didn’t answer.

I got to my feet. ‘Well, did he?’

‘Sit down,’ he shouted, his voice suddenly out of control and the gun in his hand, a heavy revolver, the muzzle pointed straight at my stomach.

‘So it wasn’t an accident. And at Aldeburgh, after months of nursing … ’ I had said too much. At that moment I expected him to fire, and every muscle in my body was tensed in expectation of the bullet’s slam. But then he said in a quieter, more reasonable voice. ‘And McAvoy. What did McAvoy think?’

‘About the letter?’

‘Of course, yes. The letter. What else?’

I hesitated, wondering what he was after. ‘He was just as puzzled as I was,’ I said carefully.

‘But you told me he came ashore here yesterday for the specific purpose of opening the safe and reading the letter. Why? What made him think it that important?’ And when I told him about the wartime raid on Madehas and how Mac had described Colonel Holland as being shattered when he had opened the safe and found the letter, he said in a slow, almost unbelieving voice, ‘So that’s why he attacked Carola and murdered my father. He burned him alive. Did you know that?’

I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t quite like that, not according to Mac.’ I wanted to mitigate the horror of it for a man already under great mental strain. ‘There was a shot, from inside the house. He killed himself before the flames reached him.’

‘Shot himself? My father shot himself.’ He said it reflectively as though the idea were new to him. ‘Yes, of course. He would have had a gun, and outside they would have been waiting for him, like a bunch of hunters round a foxhole.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, his head bent slightly, staring at the gun in his hand. And then slowly he seemed to relax, a conscious, deliberate unwinding of nervous tension. ‘So he doesn’t know. That little drunken bastard doesn’t know. And now …’ He hesitated, seeming to give the matter careful thought. ‘Now nobody knows.’

‘Knows what?’ I asked, wondering if this were a form of madness, his mind wandering.

He shrugged, the gun forgotten, staring into space. I think I could have rushed him then, but I didn’t; I was held in my chair by the look on his face, the way his whole body seemed frozen into immobility. ‘Doesn’t matter now, does it?’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t matter how it all started, or what happened to the Holland Trader. Tim knew. Old Colonel Holland knew. Now nobody knows but me and-’ He gave a little laugh. ‘This morning it mattered. Now it doesn’t.’

There was a rattling sound from beyond the windows leading to the veranda, and he crossed the room to stand staring out towards the cove. ‘That’s the LCT just arrived.’ He looked at me, slowly putting the gun back into the waistband of his trousers, his mood altered. Suddenly he seemed in need of companionship. ‘I don’t remember my father, you know. Not really. I was only three when that old bastard moved on Queen Carola and fired burning arrows into the palm thatch of his house. His death didn’t mean anything to me, not then.’

‘But it does now?’ He had fallen silent, pacing slowly.

He stopped and looked straight at me. ‘You thought about death, about what it really means, or’ve you been too busy trying to make something of your life?’

‘You sound like Mac,’ I said. ‘He started thinking about death.’

‘So he should. But I’m not talking about drink and cirrhosis of the liver. That’s something you bring on yourself. I’m talking about external forces, things you can’t control and what it’s like when it all blows up in your face.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, and then stood quite still, staring at nothing. ‘We destroy people, like Red Holland going off and leaving that poor bugger to die of thirst, without giving a thought to what it means. Bombings, famines, executions — it’s other people, isn’t it? Never ourselves. And life — the fight to exist, the struggle for power — and then suddenly you’ve had it. That’s what I mean by it all blowing up in your face. That’s when you suddenly start wondering what the hell it’s all in aid of. A mine collapses, a ship goes down, somebody shoots somebody, they’re all expendable, all except oneself. That’s right, isn’t it? We form alliances, live in groups, get married, anything to conceal from ourselves the one terrible truth — that we’re alone in this life.’

I got to my feet. ‘You’re being morbid,’ I said, alarmed that in this sort of mood he might be capable of anything. ‘You’d better start thinking about how you’re going to get yourself out of the mess you’re in.’ I couldn’t make up my mind whether his mood was suicidal or if he was now intent on destroying others. ‘Are you staying here or coming back to the ship with me?’ I couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to stay in this empty, abandoned house.

He didn’t answer, pacing slowly.

‘I’ll go back, then.’ I picked up the letter. ‘You wanted this.’

He stared at it, frowning, as I held it out to him. He seemed to have forgotten its existence. Then he suddenly laughed. ‘He’s dead, too, isn’t he? They’re all dead now, just Perenna and Jonathan left.’ He nodded. ‘Okay. You go back. The LCT is right there, waiting to take you to Anewa, where you’ll make long statements to satisfy government officials. But I tell you this, Slingsby.’ He was suddenly leaning forward, the red hair blazing in the slanting sunlight, his eyes staring into mine. ‘You marry Perenna, you marry the Holland Line.’ He came towards me, smiling. ‘You do that, and you marry a curse. It was built on hate and fear and disaster, and it’s done for every one of us — every man that has tried to make his fortune out of it. My father started it, and he died an unnatural death. So did the old Colonel and Perenna’s mother; now Tim’s dying, he’s given up and he’ll die hating me, hating his sister, hating everyone, the whole world.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘You, too. You try and succeed where I failed, and you’ll never know a minute’s peace. I’ll haunt you, Slingsby. Even as my father has haunted me, I’ll haunt you.’

He was silent a moment, breathing heavily, his eyes almost popping out of his head. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Get out now. Go back to the world of trucks and ships and transistors. I’m taking a different road.’ He walked with me to the door almost in the manner of a host in his own home. ‘But just remember what I said. There’s enough evil in the world without you going looking for it.’

He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t offer me his hand or say anything more. He just stared at me, his face set in harsh lines, the hair no more than a dull reddish brown in the gloom of the passageway, but the freckles visible against the dark leather of his skin.

The last I saw of him was when I reached the summer house and some compulsion made me turn my head. The house was in shadow, and he was standing in the main entrance, just his face picked out in a shaft of sunlight striking through one of the tall palms so that I saw it as a disembodied face staring after me, the bones picked out in sharp crease shadows so that he looked suddenly older, the skin stretched taut like parchment, a death’s head almost, except for the hair, which shone bright red as though it had been dyed.

The tug was already fetching her anchor as I started down the slope to the cove. The Mortlock islander was leaning over the blunt bows, and framed in the open window of the caboose was the bearded face of the Australian. There was no sign of Perenna. Beyond the tug, looking unnaturally large by comparison, was the rusty boxlike hulk of the LCT. The sun was already falling towards the west so that the two ships and their shadows seemed to fill the tiny cove. The water lay placid between the reefs, and everything wilted in the hot humidity that lay like a haze over the Buka shore. It was enervating but nevertheless comfortingly real after the house with its strange atmosphere, its sense of being entirely remote from the world outside Madehas.

Walking slowly, I tried to recall exactly what he had said. But though I can remember the words, it is not so easy to convey the impression they made on me. It wasn’t only that I was surprised at his need to unburden himself, but at the same time I was conscious of a deep sense of uneasiness, and this uneasiness remained with me all the way down to the half-submerged pontoon. By then the tug was under way, steaming carefully past the LCT’s stern out round the end of the reef. I watched her till she was lost in the haze of the Buka Passage beyond Minon, still thinking about Hans Holland, remembering the words he had used and wondering at their meaning, wondering whether Perenna would be able to make more sense of them than I did.

The silence of the cove was shattered by the busy roar of an outboard, and the rubber dinghy came away from the LCT’s side, swinging in a tight arc, heading for the pontoon. Five minutes later I was climbing the rope ladder and Perenna was standing there, saying, ‘What happened? I was afraid you weren’t coming back.’

‘Would it have mattered?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She said it without any trace of feeling. ‘But why did you go?’ She was frowning, and in that moment I was oddly reminded of Hans, the same vertical crease between eyes that had narrowed.

‘I had to. I thought it was important. But apparently not.’

‘You’re being very mysterious. What has he told you? What did he say?’

‘Nothing.’ But that didn’t satisfy her, so I said, ‘He talked about his father’s death … I don’t know, a lot of things.’ She was still frowning, and though her eyes were looking straight at me, they had a strangely faraway look. At that moment she didn’t seem conscious of me at all, so that I was reminded of what Hans had said about her, about all of them, wondering whether it was true that there was a dark, primitive side to her nature.

She walked with me up to the bridge in a sort of daze. Jona was there. ‘Hans is staying on, is he?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Then there’s nothing to keep us here.’ And he started giving orders to man the foredeck and get the anchor up. They had picked up a brief exchange between one of the Fokker Friendships and Port Moresby. All four had landed safely on the roadway just beyond the Bovo River bridge. Cars had been waiting for them the other side of the bridge, and the first troops were already moving on their objective by the time the planes were airborne again. ‘Hans will have a lot of questions to answer.’

I thought he would, too, but all I said was: ‘What made you come out to Buka with him in the tug?’ He was looking more himself now, which was doubtless the effect of being in command of his own ship again. But he took a long time considering my question, and just as he seemed about to answer it, he was called out to the bridge wing. Luke, on the foredeck to see to the anchor, was pointing to the shore, where the houseboy stood calling for the boat to come in. He was waving what appeared to be a letter in his hand.

So we stayed there in the heavy afternoon heat, and Luke took the rubber dinghy in. Clouds were building up over Bougainville, the sun hazy now, the glare from the water very trying. I was sleepy, too, physically and mentally exhausted. Luke reached the pontoon, and I saw him talking to the houseboy. I was out on the bridge wing with Jona, trying to imagine there was a little breeze and thinking about a cold shower, when there was a sudden shout up for’ard, and then, as heads turned shoreward, a prolonged A-ah. ‘Lukluk, Kepten!’ Somebody was pointing, up beyond the palms and tall ferns, up to the house. For a moment I didn’t see it; my mind just didn’t register. I thought it was haze.

But then Luke yelled from the pontoon. ‘Fire!’

I saw it then for what it was, smoke drifting lazily above the sloping roof. Suddenly there was flame added to the smoke, flames flickering yellow tongues out of an upstairs window. The ship was still and very silent, everybody staring. We could hear the crackle of the flames now. ‘Why?’ Perenna whispered. ‘It’s such a pointless thing to do.’

And then, as though to answer her question, came a shot. It was just one crack of sound, muffled, but very distinct, as though trapped and magnified by the sultriness of the atmosphere. ‘Oh, my God!’ Perenna reached out her hand, gripping mine so hard I could feel her nails biting into my palm. ‘Did he have to do that?’

I didn’t answer, merely put my arm round her shoulders. It was one way out, and I understood now his need of companionship in those last minutes when I had been alone with him in the house, understood the drift of his talk, too, his concern about death. I was just sorry I had told him how his father had really died. But though that might have influenced the method, it wouldn’t have affected the intention. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling Perenna’s hand trembling. ‘Such a waste. A man with such big ideas …’ What else was there to say except that he had been responsible for a number of deaths, including now his own.

The ship had erupted into violent activity, full of shouts and movement, so that I barely caught Perenna’s words as she said, ‘Are we all going to die — violently?’ Her eyes were wide and staring, full of fear — a fear that was inside her, part of her being. ‘Did he say anything about a curse?’ she asked. And then, more urgently: ‘Well, did he?’

‘He wanted the letter, that was all.’ And it was there in my trouser pocket, a crumpled piece of paper that was of no importance to him now he was dead.

Luke came back with the dinghy, loaded men and ferried them ashore. But even in this humid climate a few hours’ sun was enough to bake wood dry as tinder. The house burned with an unnatural fury, and nothing we could do about it with only fire buckets from the LCT and water from a rain cistern. And when the roof and the internal gallery collapsed in a roaring inferno of sparks and flame, that was the end, great billowing clouds of yellow smoke hanging over the north of the island like an enormous bonfire. In less than an hour there was nothing left of the main house but a great heap of grey ash from which a few smouldering beams and bits of buckled iron protruded. All we saved was some of the outhouses. We dampened everything down with countless buckets of water, then searched the debris. The safe was there, standing like a low tide rock in the ash, marking the position where the staircase had once been. The door was still open, everything inside it destroyed by the heat. No sign even of the little gold ingots. We found the gun, a blackened revolver, its barrel and chambers buckled by the heat. But no trace of Hans’s body, which was really what we were looking for, to give him burial.

I don’t think any of us was surprised not to find even a single bone, the heat had been so intense, the fire so furious. In the end, Jona scooped up two or three handfuls of the damp ash from the tangle of charred beams where we had found the gun, and these he took on board with him carefully wrapped in his handkerchief and there transferred them to a round chromium-plated cigarette box with rope and anchor decoration that was part of the wardroom furnishings. Then we went out with him into the middle of the cove in the rubber dinghy — just Perenna and myself with Luke at the outboard — and he read the burial service, then dropped the cigarette box into the water.

I remember thinking, as I watched the bright round metal of the box disappearing slowly from sight in the warm plant-green water of the cove, Surely that’s the end of it, the finish of what had begun so long ago with a man abandoning his partner at a place they had called Dog Weary in central Australia? I was looking at Jona then, and at Perenna. Surely the malevolent effect of it couldn’t go on for ever?

Luke had re-started the outboard. By the time we were back on board it was almost six, the sun set and the light fading. The Buka islanders were demanding to be put ashore. A gentle rain began to fall as we weighed and steamed out of the cove, out through the narrows between the Minon and Buka marker posts, past Sohano, past the jetty and the shops of Chinaman’s Quay, past the market to the Government wharf, where we lay alongside just long enough for Hans Holland’s men, still armed, to scramble ashore. Then into the channel again, with the Barreto ferry sidling over from the mainland, and down the whole length of the Buka Passage until at last we were into the Pacific. It was only then, when we had turned southeastward towards Cape L’Averdy, seeing the dark green slopes of the Emperor Range rising into a thick mist of cloud, only then, with the old ship rolling slowly to the long ocean swell and the open sea ahead of us, that I felt myself free at last of the strange, haunting and at times, it had seemed, positively evil atmosphere of Buka and the Buka Passage.

But then I remembered the note the houseboy had handed to Luke. The envelope, addressed to Perenna, was still in his pocket. He had forgotten all about it. But when I took it to her, she refused to read it, insisting that I read it for her. And when I had done so, I didn’t know whether to tell her or not. Hans had scribbled it moments before setting fire to the house. He had known what he was going to do, and he had done his best to ensure that the person most vulnerable should feel the weight of the past hanging over her. She was looking up at me, very tense; she must have seen my reaction, for she suddenly changed her mind. ‘What’s it say? Read it to me.’ And when I had done so, she said hotly, ‘It’s a lie, a stinking, bloody lie.’ And she added quickly, ‘I’ve heard it before. Tim mumbled it in delirium. But it’s a lie. My grandfather would never have done a thing like that — his own daughter-in-law. It’s unthinkable.’ And she told me to tear it up and throw the pieces overboard and not to say a word about it to Jona. But I doubt whether it would have mattered very much to him, not then. He had other problems on his mind, for Simon Saroa, back in the signals office behind the wheelhouse, had picked up a message from Port Moresby instructing the LCT to proceed with all speed to Kieta to embark government troops being airlifted in the following morning.

The situation, however, had changed by the time we had rounded Cape L’Averdy. Kieta airport was unserviceable. Before retreating, the insurgents had blown the runway. Moreover, there had been heavy rain during the late afternoon, and visibility had been so bad that the second airlift, which would have had to use the road again, had been postponed until the weather improved. We ourselves were then steaming through a drizzle of rain that was so thick and humid it was virtually cloud.

Dawn broke grey and miserable, the humidity thick and the rain still falling. We had been ordered to Anewa, Kieta town still being held by the Sapuru regime, and we were coming in on radar with the tug just ahead of us as we steamed through the northern channel between Takanupe Island and Bougainville. It was almost nine before we were alongside the loading wharf, where we were met by the captain in command of the PNG airborne force. He was pale black, almost coffee-coloured, dressed in jungle combat gear with a parachute flash on his arm, and he was asking for Perenna. Apparently his men had virtually no ammunition left. Most of it had been handed over to the police at Buka airfield, and the rest had been expended in driving the insurgents out of Kieta airport. With no further airlift from Port Moresby to re-supply them they were now very vulnerable, the mining people having no weapons and being under orders not to become involved. But what Hans had said about the Chimbu mineworkers was true. There were several hundred of them in Arawa. They had already mounted a massive demonstration against the illegal regime which had effectively cut the insurgents off, so that they were now sealed into the Kieta Peninsula, except for a few key buildings they still held. However, the situation was still precarious, since the Highlanders refused to support the government forces without some guarantee for the future. This had been the situation for the past twenty-four hours, Tagup, their leader, insisting on speaking with Miss Holland before his people took any further action.

It was a strange situation. For that moment, it seemed, the fate of Bougainville lay in Perenna’s hands. ‘I think it is because the name Holland still means something, both here and in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea,’ the captain said to her as we drove out of Anewa in a requisitioned company car. ‘I refer, of course, to your grandfather, Colonel Holland. The Chimbu mineworkers need to be reassured that support of the legitimate government will secure their jobs at Paguna.’

Tagup was waiting for us at the sports centre where the Chimbu were camped in the stand and the changing rooms. On their way down from the mine they had found a red clay, and with this they had decorated their bodies so that now they no longer looked like a labour corps, but like the warriors they really were, and they were armed with whatever they had been able to lay their hands on at the mine — pangas, steel bars, giant spanners that they held like battle axes. Some had even made bows and arrows from wood cut from the rainforest.

The captain took Perenna alone to meet Tagup, then left the two of them talking together in the Chimbu tongue. The tribesmen were gathered round, but still leaving a space, so that they remained a little apart, and everyone waited.

Finally Tagup raised his hand in parting, smiling now. Then he turned abruptly and went towards his men, his face set and determined, his eyes flashing as he gave the order to march. Perenna, rejoining us, said, ‘I told him what had happened at Madehas and in the Buka Passage. He realised the driving force had gone out of the insurrection, the organisation, too. Now he’ll settle it in his own way.’

The battle that followed was a most extraordinary affair, a very noisy, blood-curdling, colourful non-event. The insurgents were concentrated in the new government office building and in the police station. Cut off from Arawa, they had only been able to grab some half-dozen expatriate whites, whom they were holding as hostages on the top floor of the police offices. No attempt was made to storm either this building or the government HQ. The Chimbu labourers advanced in serried ranks, their bodies half naked and freshly daubed with paint, crayons, cosmetics, anything they had been able to get hold of, but each advance was no more than a mock attack to be followed by withdrawal and a wild yelling of taunts. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat, the noise increasing, the distance lessening. Half Arawa, expatriate whites included, came out to cheer them on. Occasionally a shot was fired from the government HQ, but more in warning than in anger. Nobody was hurt.

The rain had lessened to a light drizzle, the clouds were lifting and it was hot when Tagup, dressed in nothing but a few broad green leaves, his body painted with an intricate pattern in red and wielding a brand-new fire axe, came out to stand a dozen yards or more ahead of his Chimbu battle groups, all drawn up in line. Here he called upon Daniel Sapuru to come out and fight, challenging him to single combat.

They were two men of uncertain age, but both of them elders and certainly not young; this was politics, not mortal combat. At first, there was no reaction from the other side, the white concrete walls of the government offices standing blank and silent in the hot glimmer of misty humidity that lay like a blanket over the scene, Tagup standing there, shouting taunts that were echoed by the black, glistening lines of bodies behind him. Perenna, translating for me, suddenly said in a quite different voice, ‘He’s changed it. He’s challenging Sapuru, not as a fighter — as … he’s challenged his power-’

‘What power?’ I asked.

‘They’re not just political leaders, they both have-’ But a door had opened, and a small, very dark man in a light blue suit came out. He stood there for a moment, his head held high, the black halo of his hair framed in the arch of the entrance. The ranks of the Chimbu swept forward, a tide of glistening bodies uttering a low menacing roar. Tagup raised his hand. The ranks of his men halted, the roar fell to a murmur, then a sudden silence, and Tagup walked forward, moving very slowly, very deliberately. Sapuru, too, was moving forward. A shot was fired. It came from one of the ground-floor windows, sounding very loud in the stillness. A howl of fury swept the Highlanders’ ranks. Sapuru half turned, his face clouded with anger, his hand raised.

Silence again, and the two men walking towards each other. Sapuru was unarmed. The Chimbu leader discarded his axe. They met halfway between the black ranks of the Chimbu and the white blank face of the government offices. They talked, and while they talked, the glimmer of sun heat in the mist increased. Tagup turned, shouted something to his followers, and they answered with a roar, fanning out on either flank and moving forward, stopping suddenly when he raised his hand. This movement was repeated three times, each time the black mass of men spreading out to encircle the offices, moving steadily nearer. And then, suddenly, it was over, Sapuru turning and walking back into the building, Tagup calling to the PNG captain, who came marching forward at the head of his men to take up a position facing the government HQ.

There was a moment’s hiatus then when time seemed to stand still, no sound, no movement, everybody waiting, tense and expectant. And the glimmer turned to sunlight, the mist burning away to reveal the high green interior of the island still wrapped in cloud, pinnacles of grey rock appearing and disappearing. Then Sapuru reappeared. A great a-ah of released tension went up from the crowd as the hostages came out behind him. They hurried to the safety of the jungle-green uniforms, and then the Buka insurgents were coming out of the building, some of them men I recognised, who had been part of the crew of the LCT coming across from Australia, all of them carrying their weapons and laying them down in front of the captain.

There had been no fight, no last-ditch stand. The insurrection was over, and the defeat of the insurgents had been achieved by bluff, by a show of strength. And something else, too — some inner power. He’s more than a politician, Perenna had said, and I could only guess at the secret trial of strength that had gone on between those two men. And now suddenly it was over, no bloodshed, not a single hostage harmed. By evening more troops had arrived, and the LCT was under charter to the PNG government to take the insurgents back to Buka, all except Daniel Sapuru and a dozen or so leaders of the Buka Trading Co-operative.

That night I lay between fresh-laundered sheets in a bed that was rock steady and did not move with the motion of the ship. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep, thinking of Perenna just a few doors down the cement walkway of the motel where we had found accommodation, wondering what she would do now, whether she would accept Hans Holland’s advice or whether she would ignore it and try to run her brother’s life and the Holland Line, the two in harness. The torn pieces of that last letter of his were drifting soggily somewhere in the dark depths of the Pacific, and though it was that first line of his to which she had reacted so violently — My father and yours were brothers, each destroying what the other built — I could remember every line. It had gone on: Take my advice. Let the Holland Line founder. It has cost too many lives. Or else burn the stamps so that nobody else can ever know. And he had added, Goodbye, Perenna. I was cursed before ever I was born.

It was that last line, in conjunction with his opening — My father and yours were brothers — that my mind fastened on, and Perenna’s reaction, her statement that it had been blurted out by Tim. She had leapt to the instant conclusion that he was saying her grandfather, Colonel Lawrence Holland, had been her natural father. His own daughter-in-law … It’s unthinkable. But unthinkable or not, if it was Colonel Holland, then the only brother he had ever had was Carlos of the Holland Trader and the wooden masks and stamps. Carlos Holland! If it was Carlos Holland who was Hans’s father, then he must have survived the loss of the Holland Trader, must have known what had happened to it, and had then spent the last thirty years of his life masquerading as a distant cousin. It would explain Colonel Lawrence Holland’s reaction on finding that letter from Lewis in the safe at Madehas. No wonder he had been filled suddenly with such demoniac anger that fratricide became the only answer. A man who could leave his partner waterless … I was thinking of the Holland Trader then. Christ! Lewis, that letter, the stamps … The thought that had leapt into my mind was enough to bring curses upon any family.

There was a gentle tap on the door, and Perenna came in. ‘Roy.’ She was a dim shape in the darkness, feeling her way towards me. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I think I’m too tired to sleep. I keep thinking …’

‘About what?’

I pulled back the sheet, and she reached down to me. ‘About Hans — that letter chiefly and what happened to him.’ I could smell the warmth of her as our bodies met and I held her close. ‘Do you think he’s really dead?’ she breathed. ‘Or was the letter, the shot, the fire … was it all a stupid game?’

‘He’s dead,’ I said, but with more conviction than I felt. ‘He won’t trouble you again.’

‘No?’ She lay very still. ‘Then that’s the end of Carlos Holland. Hans was the last of his blood.’ She was trembling slightly as she said that. ‘Where’s Mac? Is he all right?’

‘He’s sober again, if that’s what you mean. He’s gone north with your brother.’

‘I’m glad. But I ought to have gone with them. As long as I’m with Mac … He’s getting old now.’

‘You think you can keep him off the drink?’

‘I could try. But not now.’ She pressed her body close against me.

‘What about the stamps?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to take Hans’s advice — burn them, forget all about the past and-’

‘No. I want to know the truth now. If I know the truth, then I can face it and that’s the end of the curse, isn’t it? If only Tim-’ She stopped there, burying her head in my shoulder. She stayed like that, very still for a moment; then she whispered, ‘But that’s for tomorrow. Let’s forget now.’

So we forgot, leaving the truth for the morrow.