Solomons Seal

Part Five

The next few days became increasingly difficult for us as the PNG government moved quickly to restore its grip on the island. Two airlifts of troops were followed by police reinforcements, and the Civil Administration was strengthened with the arrival of a senior government official and extra staff, together with a judge and two political officers to enquire into the cause of the insurrection. Screening of personnel began immediately, and all whites, other than mining company employees, had their passports confiscated. In our case, we not only became for the time being prisoners-at-large in Bougainville, but were subjected to endless questioning as a result of a statement made by Shelvankar.

It was from this statement, passages from which were read out at various times when I appeared before the Court of Enquiry, that I learned the full seriousness of Jona’s position. In no sense was he Hans’s partner; he had simply borrowed money from him. As managing director of the Holland Line, a private limited company of which he and Perenna were the sole shareholders, he was responsible for the fact that it had been operating so consistently at a loss over recent years that its sole asset, the LCT, had become totally committed as security for loans the company could not repay. As a result, he had been forced to agree to the cargoes Hans had arranged through Shelvankar, and in the case of the voyage from Sydney to Anewa and the lifting off the Queensland beach of the two truckloads of automatic weapons that had made the establishment of the Bougainville-Buka Republic possible, he had known very well that he was becoming involved in something highly illegal.

All this came out in the first two days of the Enquiry, so that on his return from transporting troops and police reinforcements to Buka, Jona was arrested, and the LCT impounded. Later he was released on his undertaking not to leave Bougainville. I thought at the time stronger action might have been taken against him if it had not been for his sister’s part in persuading the Chimbu workers to parade their strength and so save the lives of the hostages. Also, something quite unexpected occurred the day after his return. This was the death of Sapuru.

He wasn’t executed. Nobody had arranged his assassination. His body was quite unmarked. And I can vouch for that as I saw it in the hospital when I visited Perry, who had been roughly handled trying to escape back to Paguna. And it wasn’t a heart attack, or cancer, or any identifiable disease; it was sorcery. Witness after witness swore to the fact that he had just lain down and died. And the doctors found nothing wrong with any of the organs. Rumour had it that it was a case of pay-back, that Tagup was a great sorcerer and could call upon spirits more powerful than Sapuru’s island ancestors. Logic, on the other hand, suggested that it was probably a case of extreme dejection following the failure of his coup, a complete moral and physical disintegration resulting in total lack of the will to live.

But if that is the explanation, something occurred immediately afterwards that is totally beyond rational explanation. However, I didn’t know about it at the time. All I knew was that Sapuru had died suddenly and mysteriously, and that Eddie Wurep, the senior government official, had ordered a post-mortem to be carried out in the presence of Joseph Nasogo and one or two other Buka islanders who had worked at the government HQ. This was to forestall any rumours that he had been eliminated for political reasons. The pathologists were from the hospital in Arawa, a black doctor and a white surgeon assisted by two black nurses. A government medical officer was also present.

By then I was told it was generally accepted, even on Buka, that responsibility for his death did not lie with the police or with any government agency, that nobody had physically assaulted him. But what he had died of, neither of the medical experts was prepared to say. I made a point of talking to them afterwards, and both of them admitted they had experienced cases like this before, cases where a man — it was men, rather than women — had just lain down and died for no apparent reason. Sorcery? They agreed it was a distinct possibility, though the word ‘sorcery’ was mentioned with reluctance as something that by their training and profession they should have outlawed completely from their minds.

The white surgeon was a New Zealander, and he took me to his home in Arawa, where he gave me a drink and to make his point clear produced an encyclopaedia. This bracketed sorcery with witchcraft, and under Witchcraft in Australia and Melanesia it said that, as in Africa, death or illness was seldom thought to be due to natural causes, adding that the chief function of sorcery was to discover the person who had caused the illness or the death. Vengeance must then be taken on the enemy. This it referred to as payback and said it could be done by pointing a stick or bone. When, saturated with the sorcerer’s curses, it was pointed at the victim, belief in its potency does the rest. And of Melanesia, in particular, it said, Belief in the possession of supernatural powers by certain men is universal and these powers are feared and sought by all.

That evening Tagup came to the motel to say goodbye to Perenna. He was flying to Port Moresby and on to Goroka in the morning. Dressed again in his white shirt and shorts, the silver Councillor shield glinting over the breast pocket, he looked very different from the near-naked fight leader who had pranced and taunted and brandished his axe at the head of the black howling ranks of his Highland people. In twenty-four hours he would be over 5,000 feet up in his grass-thatched house, with his wives and his many grandchildren, wearing nothing but a few broad blades of grass. No, he said, smiling in self-derogation, he was not really responsible for Sapuru’s death. But he had warned him that a death wish had been put upon him by a man he had tried to harm, a man who was injured and was a kiap. ‘He knew at once,’ he said, looking directly at Perenna. And he added that an old curse, one that had not been powerful enough to destroy a man like Sapuru, who was himself a sorcerer, until after he had been defeated, could well have brought about his death when his vitality was at a low ebb and the will to live so reduced that he had become vulnerable.

That I think is the nearest anybody will ever come to a solution of the mysterious death of Daniel Sapuru, the two-day President of Bougainville-Buka. Shortly after that, Perenna and I had our passports handed back to us, and we were told we were free to leave whenever we wished. By then we were into the second week of August. The LCT was still in Kieta Bay, empty except for a police guard. The three RPLs were anchored nearby and up for sale. The government had confiscated all Hans’s property, together with that of the Buka Trading Co-operative. Everything, land, trucks, ships, was being sold to provide compensation for the cost incurred by the government in reestablishing their authority in the island. Jona and Perenna had been informed that the LCT was being held as the property of Hans Holland and would be sold under the terms of the compensation decree already issued, unless they could repay all loans made to the Holland Line by Hans Holland before the end of the month. And it was made very clear that this concession, and the leniency shown to her brother, were in recognition of the part she had played in saving the lives of the hostages and bringing the insurrection to a speedy and bloodless end. Unfortunately, the concession as it applied to the LCT was of little help to us. The amount outstanding now totalled 38,000 kina, which was the equivalent of just on A$47,000. This was almost exactly what enquiries through the kind offices of the mine management indicated the ship might fetch for scrap in the open market.

It was the end of any hope I might have had of taking over the running of the ship and trying to make the Holland Line profitable. And it had been profitable until Hans had started undercutting the two coasters Jona had originally operated with his more economical, more practical ramp-propelled lighters.

It was the end of the Holland Line, and for Perenna a bitter blow. She felt it much more than Jona, for whom the Line meant very little. It was only the ship that mattered to him, and even that wasn’t very important since he didn’t anticipate any great difficulty in getting command of a vessel belonging to one of the major shipping companies, which would have the advantage that he would no longer have to worry about the business side.

The day I left for Australia we drove down to Kieta early in the morning, just before sunrise when the world was still fresh, and walked along the beach hand-in-hand under the palm trees. All the eastern horizon was a blaze of red, and against this flaming dawn sky the slab-sided, boxlike shape of the LCT rose black in shadow, a cut-out silhouette of a ship, the sea so still and red it might have been molten lava.

She was an ugly vessel. At least I suppose she was, being totally functional, with no concessions to anything other than the purpose for which she had been designed. But to me she had the beauty of an unattainable dream. I don’t know whether it was the dream or the ship I had come down to say goodbye to, but there it all was — a ship of my own and a line to run … and I was taking the flight to Port Moresby later that day.

For Perenna it was much more than the end of a dream, and she was in tears as we stood looking at the familiar shape of the little vessel standing so clear-cut against that translucent sunrise sky. And then the red elliptical curve of the sun’s rim inched up over the horizon right behind her, so that the shape of her became framed in the thrusting orb and Perenna gasped in astonishment, for it appeared as though she were being consumed in fire. I could feel her fingers digging into my hand, sensed her feelings that the ship represented something that had been a part of her all her life. That was all that remained of the trading schooners, the old post-war coasters and MFVs, the long line of vessels stretching back three-quarters of a century to the Holland Trader, and in a few weeks’ time it would go for scrap … ‘Carlos, my grandfather, Jona, us’ — her grip on my hand had tightened, her voice more husky than usual — ‘Red Holland, too, I suppose — Carlos in a new guise — and Hans.’ She paused, thinking back to her childhood. ‘Mac, all those skippers — I can’t remember their names now, there must have been half a dozen of them — and the crews. So many people, all involved in keeping the islands supplied and taking their crops to market. And now it’s finished — up for sale. Scrap.’ There was a catch in her voice as she said that final word and she let go of my hand, turning abruptly away.

Halfway to the car, in command of herself again, she said in a small, tight voice, ‘When I came on board, that first day, in the evening, standing in the wheelhouse — I watched you at the chart table, working out our position — I thought then, knowing something of your background, conscious of the way you had dealt with those stamps and got money out to me when I needed it, I thought, This is the man to get the Holland Line on its feet again.’

‘Is that why you fell into my bunk?’ I said it lightly, an attempt to lift her out of her mood, though deep down I was hurt, knowing there was a calculating streak in most women.

She stopped, turning on me quickly. ‘Don’t be silly, Roy. It’s just that I never thought to fall in love with a man who could match my own background — my own needs, if you like. Not physical, I don’t mean that … ’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I’m not putting it very well.’

‘You’re putting it very clearly.’ Suddenly I wanted to hurt her, test her reaction, and I couldn’t stop myself. ‘You wanted a man with certain business and technical expertise to put the Holland Line back in business. You think I’m the man, so you fall in love with me — to order.’

She looked at me, her lips trembling, the scar over her left ear white in the sun’s blaze. I thought she was going to burst into tears. Instead, she suddenly gave that explosive little laugh. ‘If that’s what you want to believe, maybe it’s true. Maybe women do fall in love — to order, as you put it — when they meet a man they think can turn their hopes into reality.’ And she added, ‘It’s as good a basis for mating as any, very practical.’ She turned and walked quickly back to the car.

But later, when she drove me to the airport, her mood had softened again, and it was I who was thinking about the future. All morning I hadn’t been able to get the sight of those ships out of my mind, and now, standing in the shade of the airport building, waiting to board the Fokker Friendship shimmering out there in the hot sun, I told her about my arrangement with Chips Rowlinson. ‘As soon as the sale is over, I’ll have some idea what my ten per cent of the increased value of the property will amount to. It won’t be enough, but I should be able to borrow the rest of it on the scrap value of the ship.’

She stared at me unbelievingly. ‘Are you serious? You’re ready to throw everything you hope to get … ’ She was suddenly laughing, almost crying, her arms round my neck, her lips on mine. ‘Darling! You’re incredible. I love you.’ Everybody was staring at us, passengers, ground crew, everybody, white teeth bright in the dark faces.

They looked as though they were about to cheer as I took hold of her arms rather self-consciously and said, ‘There are conditions.’

She leaned her head back, her hair in the sun now and shining like fire, her eyes narrowing against the glare. ‘What conditions?’

‘First, that I take over the business management of the company. And get paid for it. I’m looking for a job, remember. Second, that the company is re-organised, and only those who put new money into it hold shares. Third, you contribute anything more you get from the sale of the Carlos Holland stamp collection.’ I didn’t tell her about the single sheet of the Solomons Seal labels in my briefcase, and I warned her that I might make nothing out of the Munnobungle sale, and even if I did get something out of it, it might not be enough and I might not be able to raise the rest of the money. ‘So just keep your fingers crossed. Oh, and there’s another condition,’ I told her as the boarding announcement was made and I kissed her goodbye. ‘You and the LCT go together. Is that understood?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she called after me.

‘That we get married,’ I said, waving to her as I joined the passengers moving out to board the aircraft. And as we turned at the runway end, I could just see the brightness of her hair moving through a crowd of islanders to the parking lot.

Next day I was in Brisbane, and Cooper was facing me with a decision I didn’t want to take. He had received two offers for Munnobungle. The first, from a neighbouring station owner on the Burdekin, had been made shortly after I had sailed for Bougainville. The second was from an agricultural company and was the result of his having advertised the sale. Both offers were close to the figure he had thought the property should fetch. The private buyer had now matched the company’s offer so that I had the choice of two certain buyers at a price that would put almost $9,000 in my pocket. Just enough, I thought, to make up the difference between the amount the Holland Line owed and the loan I could expect to raise on the scrap value of the ship.

‘Two birds in the hand,’ Cooper said. ‘Better than I’d have expected on the figures.’ He advised acceptance. The policy of the company was to buy privately, never at auction, and with the present state of the market he thought the best we could hope for at auction would be something around the present offers, and it might well be lower.

I said I would have to cable Rowlinson, but he had already done that and handed me the reply. It was terse, and addressed to me personally: Decide for yourself it’s what you’re there for — Rowlinson.

Auction or private treaty, it made little difference to the agents’ commission, so I accepted Cooper’s advice as being impartial and left for Munnobungle the next day. I felt McIver had a right to some say in the choice of purchasers, and both he and his wife seemed quite touched that I should have thought of consulting them. I had expected them to prefer the local station owner, but as soon as they knew who it was, they opted for the company, one of whose directors had already visited Munnobungle and had indicated that if the company’s offer was accepted, the McIvers could stay on.

I phoned Cooper in Brisbane, told him to close with the company, and with that settled, I was free to take a trip north to Cooktown to locate Minya Lewis. I wanted to find out what had happened to his father, if he really was the Merlyn Dai Lewis who had shipped as stoker aboard the Holland Trader in July 1911. Also, I had a feeling I might discover the reason Hans had been so determined to get his hands on anything connected with those Solomons Seal ship labels. It was almost as though they were some damning piece of evidence that had to be acquired at any cost.

Cooktown from the air was a straggle of neatly laid-out clapboard buildings facing on to the muddy estuary of the Endeavour River and its mangrove swamps. The memorial to Cook was clearly visible as we came in over Grassy Hill, and there were wallabies bounding through the long grass at the edge of the airfield where we landed. We were met by a minibus, and as soon as I mentioned the name Lewis the driver said, ‘You want the Old Timers’ Hotel. They’ll get Dog Weary Lewis for you.’

We passed the gold rush cemetery, and shortly afterwards he dropped me off at an old wooden hotel building. The big bar room that occupied most of the ground floor was almost empty, only a few old men propping up one end of the counter and the barman talking to them. Silence fell as I dumped my things and enquired for Lewis. ‘Old bastard’s usually here by now,’ the barman said, coming over to me. ‘Want to buy him a beer and hear his story, do you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Okay, mate.’ He looked across at the little huddle of habitués. ‘Go fetch him, Les.’ He came and joined me, leaning hairy arms on the counter, the pale dome of his head with its few hairs carefully slicked down outlined against one of the gold rush murals that decorated the walls. He had a beer with me while we waited, and when I asked him where the Dog Weary mine was, he said it was on the edge of the Simpson, way over beyond the Georgina. ‘Helluva long way from here, and what’s so bloody silly, he can’t get it into his thick woolly head that it was worked out years ago, before he was even born, I reck’n.’

He wouldn’t tell me anything about Black Holland, only that Lewis had killed him because of an argument over the mine. ‘Ain’t fair to spoil his racket for him. That’s how he pays for his drinks, telling Pommies and others like you about the Dog Weary and how he killed a man over it. Except for one time when he got some sort of a legacy, or maybe he stole something. Anyways, he was flush with money for the better part of six months.’ I asked how long ago that would be, and when he said about three years, I knew it must have been the cash from the sale of the Solomons Seal cover.

Frosted glass windows, and mirrors advertising plug tobacco I had never heard of, gave the place an Edwardian appearance. ‘Custom-built for the gold miners,’ the barman said over his shoulder as he dealt out beers to the old men at the far end. ‘All red plush. You wouldn’t believe it, looking at the town now, but there were sixty-five saloons and a score of eating houses then, that’s what they say. And the cemetery full of kids dead within months of being born. You have a gander at the gravestones. There’s men there that were brought in by ship at the turn of the century dying of blackwater fever.’

We were on to our second beer when Lewis finally arrived. God knows what age he was, his hands gnarled and trembling, his shoulders stooped, the muscles of his neck standing out like cords, wiry hair turned grey. He was small and tough-looking, his face so creased and wrinkled it looked like the face of a mummy dried and preserved in the hot Queensland sun. ‘Heard you’re gonna buy me a beer.’ His voice was deep and husky, barely intelligible. ‘Then I tell you about Dog Weary mine.’ He wore a dark serge suit that hung loosely on his thin frame, and the bulging eyes that stared at me greedily were blue like sapphires in a bloodshot yellow setting.

I bought him a beer, and straight away he began talking. It was a long, rambling tale about his father being left to die in the desert by his partner. In essence, it was what I had already read in that letter.

‘What was your father’s name?’ I asked.

‘Him Lewis.’

‘I want his Christian names.’ The blue eyes stared uncomprehendingly. ‘Was his name Merlyn Dai Lewis?’

He nodded, the black wizened face without expression.

‘And the partner, what was his name?’

‘Him take water, gun, everything. Come back after, dig gold.’

‘Who? Who was his partner?’

‘Holland.’

‘The man you killed?’

He looked puzzled. ‘Him Black Holland. This man his father. Red Holland.’ And he went on to tell me how his father had been rescued by some aborigines on walkabout, how he had travelled with them back across all the deserts of Australia. He had married an aborigine girl and had worked in the gold fields around Kalgoorlie. ‘Me born in the desert, and sometime we live in Ora Banda.’ Then they had come east, to Cooktown, where he had been brought up, and his father had gone off to find the man who had left him to die in the desert and get his share of the gold.

‘What happened then?’ I asked.

‘Him never come back.’ And he added, ‘Mama spik me. She very sad papa no come back, she very poor, so me go look white fellow. But white fellow him dead, too.’ There was something I couldn’t follow then, about being shot and put in a hospital. The name Black Holland was mentioned. And then suddenly with a sweeping gesture of his hand: ‘Sometime me hear him working Queensland, find him and he laugh at me. Him very drunk, say many things — say Dog Weary bilong him. So me kill him, an’ now Dog Weary bilong me. Savvy?’

The barman laughed, coming towards us and leaning his elbows on the counter again. ‘Same old story, is it? Can’t get that bloody mine out of his head. Talks of going there, but never has. Lazy bastard.’ He looked across at Lewis, smiling and tapping his forehead. ‘Yu longlong. That’s Pidgin for crazy. Reck’n it was the war.’ And without my asking he got another can of beer out of the fridge.

‘You mean he was wounded in the war?’ I asked him.

‘That’s right. Something I reck’n he didn’t bargain for since he was in the Pioneer Corps. Got sent to Bougainville, an’ the Black Dogs put a bullet through his neck. Got it through there, din’t you, mate?’ And he pointed a dirty finger at the old man’s neck. ‘Well, never mind. Drink that.’ And he put the can down in front of him.

Lewis filled his glass and drank half of it in a single swallow. Then, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he began telling me how he had found Black Holland working on a sugar plantation near the coast. His voice was already a little slurred, and it was difficult to follow, but I thought what he was saying was that this was the man who had shot him during the war. There was an argument over his father and who owned the Dog Weary mine, and Black Holland had suddenly drawn a knife. Then, quite clearly, he said there had been a fight, and in the struggle he had seized the knife and ripped the man’s belly open with it.

‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

It was the barman who answered. ‘A long time back. In 1952, and this murdering old bastard gets away with manslaughter.’ The barman’s face cracked in a grin that showed sharp brown-stained teeth. ‘The way he tells it you’d think the other fella started it. But I’ve heard it said it wasn’t like that at all, and the old-timers here, they say it was pay-back, that after the war he went looking for Holland. That’s right, ennit?’ And he glanced along the counter to the old men drinking and listening, and they all nodded.

‘Because he was wounded in Kieta?’ I asked.

‘No. Because of the mine and what happened to his father.’

It seemed incredible that this shrunken, wizened little black man should have gone looking for the man and killed him because of what happened out there on the edge of the Simpson so many years ago. ‘What happened to your father?’ I asked him. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? When did he die?’

The old man stared at me, and when I repeated the question, he buried his face in his beer and didn’t answer.

‘Always the same,’ the barman said. ‘Tells his story the way he wants, but start slinging a few questions at him and he shuts up.’

‘In July 1911,’ I told him, ‘your father was in Sydney and signed on as a stoker on the Holland Trader. That’s right, isn’t it?’ The old man nodded almost imperceptibly, but when I asked him what had happened to the Holland Trader, he just stood there staring at me out of eyes that had suddenly become frightened, his black face puckered and worried. He knew I wasn’t a tourist, and when I asked him about the letter his mother had received, at almost the very moment the Holland Trader had disappeared, he seemed to confuse it with the envelope, those blue eyes of his darting this way and that as he said, ‘Bilong me. Yu speak Father Matthew. He get stamp money and take forty dollar for the Mission.’

I tried again, explaining that I knew about the stamps and the money he had been paid, but what I wanted was the letter that had been inside the envelope. But all he said was, ‘Yu polis?’ And he gulped down the rest of his beer like a man about to flee.

‘I told you,’ the barman said with a grin. ‘Start asking him questions and he clams up.’

But I got it out of him in the end. I took him by the arm and more or less frog-marched him to a table; then I bought him another beer, sat him down opposite me and began talking to him, asking him the same questions over and over again. I wasn’t police, but he must have thought I was giving a pretty good imitation. How did he know it was Red Holland who had been his father’s partner? Had his mother told him, or was it in the letter? But hadn’t she shown him the letter?

It was a silly question. He’d had to go to Father Matthew to have the letter about the stamps written, so it was obvious he couldn’t read or write. ‘Were there any other letters from your father?’

He shook his head. ‘No. No more letters.’

‘So why did you kill Black Holland? He wasn’t your father’s partner. He had nothing to do with it. Why did you kill him?’

‘Him say things against my papa.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Bad things.’

‘Accusations, lies, taunts — what? What sort of things?’

Those sapphire blue eyes were wide and staring. He was drunk now. He didn’t care, and suddenly it all came out, the whole terrible story. It was pay-back and the avenger blown to pieces, obliterated, sunk by his own weapon of vengeance. And he hadn’t got it from a letter or from his mother. He had got it direct from the drunken mouthings of Red Holland’s illegitimate half-caste island son, the man who had become notorious during the war as one of the chief leaders of the Black Dogs of Kieta.

The way he told it I found great difficulty in piecing it together into a coherent story, but the first thing to emerge clearly confirmed that Carlos Holland and Red Holland were the same person. It was Carlos Holland who had left his partner to die on the edge of the Simpson Desert. It was Carlos who had formed a mining company and developed the Dog Weary mine, and with the money from that he had founded the Holland Line of schooners and made himself the uncrowned king of the islands around the Buka Passage. And in Sydney, in July 1911, the past had caught up with him, his one-time partner shipping as stoker on his newly acquired vessel. Lewis was an experienced miner. He had time fuses and explosives concealed in his personal belongings, and with these he had mined the ship.

But it hadn’t been his intention to blow it up. It was merely a threat, his son assured me, the means by which he hoped to force Carlos Holland to give him the compensation he had so far refused. Instead, Carlos Holland had drugged him and had him carried on board the Holland Trader as a drunk. He had put him in his own bunk, where he had smothered him with a pillow. He had then gone ashore again — ‘Him spik Kepten big bisnis in Port Moresby. After, ship sail and finish downbilow sea when bombs explode. All men die.’

When he said that, I knew it was true. It explained something that had been worrying me since Mac had described Colonel Holland’s reaction to that letter we had found in the safe. If Carlos and Red Holland were one and the same person, Colonel Holland would have known it at once. After all, Carlos was his younger brother. He might pass himself off to the islanders as a distant cousin who bore a close family resemblance and who had inherited the Holland Line, but he couldn’t possibly have fooled his brother, Lawrence. Presumably he had been able to produce some specious and very convincing reason for his behaviour — debts, for instance, something as impersonal as financial difficulties that would explain his leaving the Holland Trader at Port Moresby and assuming another identity. Colonel Holland may have had his suspicions, but if he had, doubtless he had put them aside, making allowances for his brother and giving him the benefit of the doubt. But that night, when he had raided Madehas and opened the safe, reading the letter that had begun Dear Red and discovering for the first time that Carlos’s wealth was built on the abandonment of his partner to a slow death, that he had lied and lied again, that he was a pitiless monster, that sudden opening of his eyes to what his brother was capable of doing had come as a great and appalling shock — shattering, Mac had called it. Not only had Carlos Holland killed Merlyn Lewis, his one-time partner, but he had sent the Captain and his entire crew to their deaths, and he had done it without pity, without a thought for their families. This was what his son, Hans, had had to live with ever since he opened the safe and found that letter, those sheets of stamps. Ever since then he had known his father was a pitiless murderer. And he had known, too, that the money he had inherited, the basis of his little fleet of RPLs, was blood money, stemming from those murderous actions.

It was then that an idea came to me — if I could show in a court of law that Hans Holland’s assets were based on money his father had obtained from the sinking of the Holland Trader, then the insurance company, not the PNG government, would have the prior claim. At least it might delay things until after the stamps had been sold. Even if I could raise a loan, interest rates were high, and an extra £2,000 or £3,000 would make all the difference to our ability to keep the ship operational.

I wrote out a statement for Lewis to sign right there in the hotel, then took him along to a solicitor and had it typed, signed and witnessed as a statutory declaration. I think he was so frightened and confused that he barely knew what he was doing.

Next day, in Sydney, I checked with the newspaper offices, but to turn up any story they might have run on the amount of the insurance paid out on the Holland Trader meant searching page by page through the file copies for the last months of 1911 and probably most of 1912 as well. They suggested I contact Lloyd’s agents. This I did, and within the hour they phoned me back to confirm that the Holland Trader had been insured with a Lloyd’s syndicate. The claim was for £8,900, and it had been met in full. Payment, however, had been delayed owing to the owner having been on board and the need to wait for his will to be proved. Settlement had finally been made on January 4, 1913. And they added that, since the ship was a total loss, the Lutine Bell had been rung for her.

I got the name of the Lloyd’s syndicate from them and turned the whole thing over to the solicitors who were looking after the Munnobungle sale for me. The information was sufficient for them to get an injunction in the High Court in Port Moresby restraining the government from impounding any of Hans Holland’s assets pending proof of ownership. That was on August 18, and two days later the LCT was loading copra off a beach in the north of Bougainville for delivery to Rabaul. She sailed with Mac as Master and Perenna on board to keep an eye on him.

It was, in fact, most fortunate that we were successful in freeing the vessel without immediate payment, for I had by then discovered that it was impossible for us as foreigners to obtain a loan in Australia. A few days later I had another piece of luck — quite by accident I was able to arrange a cargo for the ship at Rabaul, a consignment of road-building equipment urgently needed in Guadalcanal. If I hadn’t been invited to the City Club sauna, I wouldn’t have heard about that cargo, and it occurred to me then that Sydney was probably the key to the successful operation of an LCT in the South West Pacific. I rented a room in Strathfield, between the Parramatta Road and the Hume Highway, installed a telephone and within a week I was in business, booking cargoes forward.

Booking them was one thing; however, getting paid for them quite another, and it didn’t take me long to realise we had a cash flow problem. Fuel bills and running costs had to be met, and by the end of September the ship was in Lae and unable to proceed to Madang for her next cargo because of an unpaid fuel bill. By reducing the freight charge, I was able to get payment in advance, but with legal charges to meet and the bank insisting we clear our overdraft, there was only one thing to do if the Holland Line was to survive. That was to return to England and sell everything we had. For Perenna it meant the wood carvings as well as the stamps, also a few other mementoes she had kept out of the Aldeburgh sale; for me it was my boat, my car, my own collection of stamps and the Solomons Seal sheet I had taken from the safe at Madehas.

I had already been notified that Josh Keegan’s big autumn stamp auction was fixed for the two days commencing October 24, and when I phoned him to say I now had a full sheet of sixty of the Solomons Seal ship labels, he said he would decide whether to include them in the auction when he had seen them; he advised me to bring them in my hand luggage, packed flat and in cellophane, and to take great care of them. He had sounded sufficiently interested for me to think we might just scrape together enough to give us the working capital we needed.

Perenna arrived in Sydney on October 20, the day before we were due to fly to England. Those few hours we had together should have been a carefree, happy interlude. The LCT was at sea, Mac was still sober and I had booked sufficient cargoes to keep the vessel going for three months. Also, Perenna had at last got some good news about Tim. The nursing home had written to say that he was much improved, had quite suddenly thrown off his lethargy and was now getting about with the aid of a frame support. But though we did our best, a sense of happy abandon was difficult to achieve, our mood overshadowed all the time by the knowledge that we were both of us putting everything into pawn for the sake of a single aged and rusting ship. We discussed it endlessly. We couldn’t help ourselves.

To my surprise we were met at Heathrow by Tubby Sawyer. I didn’t need to ask him why he was there. Almost the first thing he asked me, after I had introduced him to Perenna and she had gone to phone the nursing home, was whether there were any more sheets of the Solomons Seal, and when I told him all the rest were burned, he said, ‘Marvellous! That’s marvellous! You can tell me all about it as we drive down to the country. But first Josh wants to see you. He’s made the sheet a separate lot and included it in the catalogue.’

Perenna came back radiant. ‘I spoke to him. He even came to the phone himself. He’s so much better.’ Tubby was leading us out to the car park. ‘I’m to ring up again this evening. They say I can see him tomorrow. And to think at one time I despaired of ever seeing him alive again!’

At his office in the Strand, Josh Keegan greeted Perenna as though she were some sort of princess. ‘I have to tell you, dear lady, you’ve made my first big auction. I’ve had acceptances from just about every dealer of importance. I don’t know what it’s going to fetch, that little collection — your great-uncle’s, isn’t it? — but there’s no doubt about the interest it has aroused. I’m serving champagne. There! I’m a businessman, Miss Holland, and I don’t do a silly, show-off thing like that unless I’m on to a winner. And we will have a bottle right now. It’s the best thing after a long flight.’ And as one of the girls came in with a bottle and four glasses on a plastic tray decorated with Penny Blacks under Perspex, he turned to me and in quite a different voice said, ‘Now, where is the sheet? I want to see it.’

While I was getting it out of my briefcase, he picked up a copy of the catalogue, which was lying on his desk, and held it up for us to see. ‘There you are. I’ve taken a chance on what you told me on the phone from Sydney.’ And there it was, on the cover — a reproduction of the two Solomons Seal proofs under the heading: The Incredible Has Finally Happened, and then, below the facsimile of the proofs: The only remaining sheet (60) of the blue Solomons Seal Ship Label is being delivered to the J. S. H. Keegan offices from Sydney in time for this unique auction offering — design collection, proofs, and resulting sheet of the most startling transplant ever perpetrated. ‘There!’ he exclaimed again. ‘You can’t say I haven’t done you proud, eh?’

It was Perenna who asked him what it was all about, but he laughed and shook his head, looking like a learned professor in a relaxed moment as he toasted her, raising his glass and smiling. ‘Commander Sawyer — Tubby — he’s driving you down to Essex, I gather. He’ll explain it.’ And he added hastily, ‘But I think I must say this: The fact that it has aroused a great deal of interest doesn’t mean they’ll bid the price up to a ridiculous figure. They’re businessmen, all of them, and a glass of champagne or two won’t stop them keeping their feet firmly on the ground. We’ve got them to the auction. What happens then … ’ He shrugged. ‘Now, that sheet please.’

By then I had got it out of my briefcase, and he stood looking at it in silence for a long time, the magnifying glass screwed in his eye. Then he shook his head. ‘Pity! All those blotches, and only part original gum. Pity it isn’t mint. If it were in mint condition … ’ He hesitated. ‘But then, I don’t know. Maybe it’s better like this. It’s so obviously been in the heat and humidity of the Solomons. Yes, better perhaps, more real-looking, more genuine. And a nice shade of blue, a genuine Perkins Bacon blue.’ And he winked at Tubby, laughing quietly to himself. ‘It really is quite humorous. He’ll tell you. Very funny indeed. Perkins Bacon, of all people. Such a stuffy, banknote sort of outfit. Theft, forgery … you tell ‘em, Tubby. That’s what I said to Mr Slingsby here when he came to see me months ago, I said I wouldn’t spoil it for you, so you tell ‘em — later.’ He re-filled Perenna’s glass and said, ‘You’ll be attending the auction, I hope, Miss Holland? It could make quite a bit, that sheet.’

She glanced at me, and I nodded. Nothing would stop me being there after what he had said. Five thousand pounds … if that sheet made £5,000, I thought we could manage. That would about double the total capital we could raise. It should just be enough. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mr Keegan — I’ll be there, listening with bated breath.’

Tubby, with a proper sense of the dramatic, held off from telling us until we had reached his house. He needed his books, he said, to explain it all properly, but that was just an excuse to get the story of the Solomons sheet out of me first. Once we were in his comfortable black-beamed living room with drinks in our hands, and Perenna had phoned the nursing home again to arrange a time to visit her brother next day, he took down from his bookshelves the larger of the two blue-covered volumes of the Perkins Bacon Records. As he stood there, holding it out to me and saying, ‘Ever browsed through these books?’ I knew we were in for one of his lectures. But this time, with so much at stake, he had my full attention.

‘You should,’ he said. ‘To anybody interested in printing, any British collector, they’re fascinating. They don’t cover the GB printings — that was dealt with by Sir Edward Bacon himself in his Line-Engraved Postage Stamps of Great Britain. I’ve got a copy of the 1920 first edition here somewhere. But all the other printings … This first volume deals with British Colonial issues; the other one deals mainly with printings for foreign countries.’ He opened the larger of the two, turning to the end where he had marked it with a slip of paper. ‘Here it is, five-o-nine — the last chapter. That’ll give you the background.’ And he turned it round so that we could read it. It was headed The Beginning of the End.

The Home Government exercised the strictest supervision over the production of the postage stamps of Great Britain, but the Agents General of the Colonial Office, first George Baillie and then Edward Barnard, as also the Agents for the various Colonial Governments, in no way controlled the production of the stamps ordered. The quantity was merely checked on arrival in the Colony. Perkins Bacon classed postage stamps in the same category as needle, soap and tobacco labels, and although the firm usually produced only the supply of stamps ordered, in some cases the quantity printed was greatly in excess of the number immediately required.

This method continued until Penrose G. Julyan was appointed Agent General for Crown Colonies towards the end of 1858. The following documents make it clear that he considered that the dies, plates, paper and other material for the production of stamps ordered and paid for by his department should be under his control.

‘It was back in 1851,’ Tubby went on as we both looked up to indicate we had finished reading, ‘that Perkins Bacon were invited to tender for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia labels. Up to then the only stamps they had printed were the GB Penny Blacks and Red and the Twopenny Blues. During the next seven years they printed stamps for some twenty-five or thirty of our colonies, including Western Australia, and since they were really banknote printers, regarding stamps as much the same as tobacco labels, they probably were a little slack. On Julyan’s appointment as Agent General a running battle began, de Worms recording pages of correspondence interspersed with his comments. What the Agent General was complaining about initially was late delivery, colour discrepancies and other technicalities. Then, in April 1861, he discovered the printers had been approached by Ormond Hill on behalf of two or three stamp collecting friends of his and had released specimens of everything they had printed, six of each stamp. Julyan blew his top over that, switching his attack to security.’

He began refilling our glasses. ‘Well, there you are, Roy. That’s the background. But you’ll never guess what it led to.’ He was smiling, enjoying himself. ‘Ormond Hill, you see, was Superintendent of Stamping at the Inland Revenue. He was also Rowland Hill’s brother. In the circumstances Perkins Bacon’s protest that they’d seen nothing wrong in sending him cancelled specimens seems reasonable enough. But Julyan took a different view. In the end, he demanded that all dies, plates, stocks of watermarked paper and stamps printed in excess of orders, everything in fact relating to each colony should be delivered to the Agent General’s offices.’ He put down the decanter and came back to the desk. ‘Now turn to the end of the book, the last page but one. Perkins Bacon had argued that, if not stored by experts, the plates would rust or otherwise deteriorate. And they’d been fairly dilatory in meeting Julyan’s demands.’ He leaned forward, pointing halfway down page 525. ‘Now read those two letters. Then you’ll begin to understand why I wanted that collection, why the auctioning of the Solomons Seal die proofs is attracting so much attention.’

The letters read:

Office of The Agents-General

for Crown Colonies,

6,Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.

2nd June, 1862.

Gentn.

I beg to draw your attention to my letter of 12th ultimo requesting you to forward to this Office the Postage Stamps, Paper Moulds, and facsimiles in your possession, and shall be obliged by receiving a reply to that communication.

I am, Gentn,

Your obedient Servant.

P. G. Julyan

Messrs Perkins, Bacon amp; Co.

This was the end of the struggle, but up to the last Perkins Bacon were able to produce an excuse, a strange admission for a firm of Security Printers.

69 Fleet Street, E.C.

June 3, 1862.

Dear Sir

We beg to apologize for the delay which has arisen in sending you the P Stamps, Envelopes amp; Moulds in our possession, but the loss of time on other matters forced upon us by the discovery of a thief in our employ, has occasioned the apparent neglect. We hope to be able to send all by the beginning of next week.

We are Dear Sir

yr obdt serts

Per Proc. Perkins Bacon amp; Co.

J. P. Bacon

P. G. Julyan Esq.

Agent General.

I looked up at him, not entirely sure what it meant.

‘That’s all we know about it,’ he said. ‘We don’t know who this thief was or what he stole. Maybe it was banknotes. Perkins Bacon were banknote and bond printers long before they started printing the Penny Blacks in 1840. If you look at the top of that page, you’ll see a letter from the Agent General referring to delivery of fifty facsimiles for preparing Natal Bonds. It could have been notes the thief stole, or bonds or some of the excess sheets or printed stamps. As you will have gathered, Perkins Bacon were in the habit of running off extra sheets. At their best they were very meticulous printers, always concerned about colour, which was sometimes liable to fading, and they found it difficult to get paper with the right depth of watermarking.’ He glanced at Perenna. ‘The watermark is achieved simply by a slight thinning of the paper. And gum — gum was a problem, too, particularly when the order was for the tropics.’

He hesitated, a significant pause as he turned back to me. ‘On the other hand, it could be that the thief had been borrowing material for a friend of his, a would-be forger, say. He could have borrowed dies, plates even. Copies could have been made of them, and then the borrowed dies or plates returned. It might have been going on for some time.’

I realised what he was suggesting then, that the use of Perkins Bacon dies and plates need not have been confined to just this one label.

‘A nasty thought,’ he murmured. ‘It would raise doubts about the authenticity of some of the rarer mint-condition stamps. After all, the mania for stamp collecting goes back even further than the Ormond Hill controversy.’

‘But it would surely have been easier to steal printed stamps.’

‘I don’t think so. Perkins Bacon’s security wouldn’t have been that bad. Any stamps the thief could have got his hands on would have been from cancelled sheets. They would have been overprinted with the word SPECIMEN. But it’s very doubtful whether they would have regarded Colonial stamp dies as objects liable to be stolen. Josh says security at Perkins Bacon was very strict for GB dies, but probably quite negligible as regards the dies for foreign and colonial issues, and a print shop like theirs would have been full of stored plates and dies.’

But by then I had remembered something he had said to me here in this room, so long ago it seemed now. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘The seal — that’s from an early Newfoundland stamp. Didn’t you say those stamps were printed in America?’

He nodded. ‘That’s quite correct. The 1865-70 set was a completely new issue printed by the American Bank Note Company of New York. The Seal-on-Icefloe die was used for the five-cent brown, also for the two later issues, first in black, then in blue. After that the seal was re-designed, and the printing switched to Montreal.’

‘You’re surely not suggesting there was a thief at the American printing house, too?’

‘No, of course not.’ He sounded quite shocked. ‘The seal was designed by Jeens on the instructions of Perkins Bacon, and the die was made by them here in London and sent across to New York. In addition to the seal, Perkins Bacon engraved and cast a die of the Jeens Codfish design. But that design was used for banknotes only. The Jeens Codfish has a straight tail; the codfish on the two-cent stamp a curled-up tail. The seal, on the other hand, was used for both banknotes and stamps.’ He picked up the Records book, turned back the pages and, having found what he wanted, pushed it across to me again. ‘There’s de Worms’s account of what happened.’

It was a long note headed Seal and Codfish at the end of the chapter on Newfoundland, and a few pages back there were illustrations of both the seal and the codfish designs. It confirmed that the die for the Jeens seal had been engraved in London by Perkins Bacon, probably for the banknotes first, and this die was presumably stored there in 1862, when the thief was discovered.

I was still reading when Tubby went on, ‘Well, there you are, Roy. That’s the mystery that has puzzled all the experts ever since the results of Percy de Worms’s painstaking research into the Perkins Bacon files and letter books was published. On the face of it these two volumes appear quite straightforward, a fascinating, but very mundane day-to-day record of correspondence, meticulously copied and filed away by the Perkins Bacon clerks. We know how many stamps they printed of every colonial issue, how many they dispatched, every detail of the advice they gave on design, paper, ink, gum, perforation, how the sheets were to be preserved in transit, all their costings. And then, in the midst of a protracted battle with the Crown Agents, that laconic statement that there was a thief in the print shop. No details, nothing — just the bald declaration to excuse a delay. As de Worms says, a strange admission for a firm of security printers to make.’ And he added, raising his glass to us with a slightly wry smile, ‘Here’s to you and the Solomons Seal collection. We’ll have some idea of what other experts think when the bidding starts on Thursday for Lots Ninety-six and Ninety-seven.’

The auction was still a full day away, so that Perenna and I had two nights together at Great Park Hall before driving across country to Birmingham. Keegan had given us copies of the catalogue, and I looked through it that evening. The first seventy-two lots were GBs, including some very good Seahorse issues and, of course, the block of four £5 orange. Lots 73–95 were collections of GB and Commonwealth stamps; then came the Carlos Holland ship label design collection, followed by the Solomons Seal sheet. There were estimates of what each lot was expected to fetch, but not against ours, the blank at the right of the page making them very conspicuous. Presuming the lots were disposed of at about the same rate as at Harmers or other London auction houses, Lots 96 and 97 would come up sometime around 3–3.30 p.m. It was sensible timing since the wealthier dealers, who might have come down specially for those two lots, would have plenty of time for lunch, and if the Carlos Holland collection fetched about £5,000, which is what Keegan had originally suggested, how much, I wondered, would the full sheet fetch?

We talked it over during the evening meal, finally settling for a figure of £10,000 for the two lots. Afterwards I showed Perenna my own collection. Keegan, knowing roughly its contents and quality, had said it could fetch somewhere between £2,500 and £3,000 in view of the high prices now being paid at auction for second-rate material. But sending it to auction meant a delay of three months at least, and the same was true probably of Perenna’s wood carvings. What we needed was cash, now.

Wednesday I spent a miserable day arranging the termination of my lease of the Hall and the sale of my boat, having first delivered Perenna to the nursing home near Colchester. When I picked her up in the evening, our moods were very different — where I was depressed, she was buoyant, bubbling over with the extraordinary progress Tim had made. ‘It’s unbelievable. And not at all gradual. It happened just like that, quite suddenly he was a different man. They can’t understand it. The matron even phoned the doctor so that I could have a word with him. He couldn’t explain it either.’

It had been one of those glorious, still October days, and I still had the hood down, so that we had to shout at each other to make ourselves heard. ‘So what do you think? That the curse was lifted?’

‘Yes, of course. But I couldn’t tell them that.’

‘When did he snap out of it?’

‘August fifth. You’re thinking of Hans, are you?’

I nodded, glancing at her quickly sitting there beside me with the red-orange hair blowing in the wind. I was remembering the log book and Jona’s neat entry recording his death and the burial of his ashes in the cove to the north of Madehas. The date had been July 30.

‘It wasn’t Hans who put that curse on Tim,’ she shouted into the wind. ‘It was Sapuru. Sapuru died on August fifth. Remember? And Tagup, remember what Tagup said that evening he came to say goodbye to us at the motel? He said Sapuru could have been killed by an old curse, one that his weakened vitality was no longer able to resist. Tim spent weeks fashioning things out of driftwood and all sorts of bits and pieces I scavenged for him off the seashore. He’d sit for hours staring at them, his lips moving. He knows all about sorcery.’ And she added, ‘Funny, isn’t it? Sapuru puts a curse on Tim after he’d discovered what the Co-operative was planning. But it wasn’t strong enough, and in the end it’s Tim’s curse that kills Sapuru.’ She laughed, not humorously, but a little wildly. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? But it’s true, I tell you. It fits. It must be true. The only possible explanation. Oh, my God — how little this civilised world remembers or understands.’ She put her hand on my arm, a quick, urgent gesture. ‘Forget it, will you? Please. You don’t have to believe it. I see you don’t, so forget it. And when you meet Tim, don’t ever let him know what I said. Please.’

That night we fell into bed still arguing about the future and whether we shouldn’t just give up, forget about the Holland Line and that battered old LCT. No point in destroying ourselves and losing everything we had for the sake of a ship. It was pride, too, of course. But I think both of us had by then come back down to earth and knew bloody well we couldn’t make a go of it on the sort of capital we could hope to raise. The cost of ship repairs alone was such that the first major breakdown would see us broke.

We fell asleep in the end through sheer exhaustion. The next morning we were up with the dawn and on our way by eight. The auction was being held in what appeared to be an old corn exchange. Two doves, left over from a Fur and Feather Exhibition, fluttered noisily through the ornamental iron roof girders. I was tired; I had had no lunch and had lost my way on the outskirts of Birmingham. We were asked whether we would be bidding, and when I said no, we were ushered to the stairs leading to a sort of gallery. But then Keegan saw us and waved us over to seats on the right of the auctioneer’s dais. ‘Reserved specially for you, dear lady,’ he said, taking Perenna by the arm. ‘You see, hardly a seat left except those we have reserved.’ He seized two glasses of champagne from a loaded tray on a nearby table and thrust them into our hands. ‘Drink that and don’t worry. We’ll be starting any minute now.’

There must have been about 150 to 200 seats in this partitioned-off section of the hall. All those who were bidding had been issued with a large numbered card and a drink. The murmur of conversation was already loud. We had only a few minutes to absorb the atmosphere of the place before the auction started, prompt on 1.30. Keegan was sitting a few feet from us. The auctioneer, a smiling, slightly florid man with a habit of pushing his glasses up into his thick greying hair, was seated on a tall chair with a desk in front of him on the dais. ‘Lot One, gentlemen please — ladies and gentlemen.’ He had a strong Midlands accent. ‘Lot Number One. I am bid eighty pounds — a hundred, a hundred and twenty, forty, sixty, two hundred — two-twenty? Going for two hundred.’

I began timing the bids: just over a minute for each lot. Prices seemed high, but then I hadn’t attended an auction for more than two years. By two o’clock every seat was taken and we had reached Lot 22. I was beginning to identify the more active dealers and the different nationalities — German, Japanese, French, Italian. Berners was there, sitting very still, not bidding. ‘I can’t follow it,’ Perenna whispered. ‘It’s so fast. And I can’t see who’s bidding half the time. A nod or a slight lift of the pen-’

‘Just concentrate on the final bid figure given by the auctioneer,’ I said, showing her my catalogue with the final bid entered on the right. In almost every case it was way above the estimate, in the case of a perfect block of six 1870 Three Halfpence over twice the estimate.

‘Why didn’t he put an estimate against our lots?’

‘He couldn’t. It wouldn’t have meant anything.’

One of Keegan’s staff, an elderly woman, was standing close beside the auctioneer. For most of the lots it was she who started the bidding. Keegan had a big mail order business. So probably had the Birmingham firm he had taken over. These were the postal bids. We reached the first of the Wyon embossed of 1847-54, an assistant displaying a single Die 2 of the 1s. deep green in mint condition. ‘Starting at four-fifty- five, five-fifty, six, six-fifty, seven — seven I’m bid, seven hundred, seven-twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty- seven-sixty. At seven-sixty.’ The little ivory knocker fell. I was waiting now for the £5 block. The estimate was £3,800. It made £5,500. ‘Lot Seventy-three-’ We had reached the collections. They went equally fast. At 3.27 the auctioneer announced, ‘Now we come to the Lot many of you have been waiting for — Lot Ninety-six …’ And he glanced across at Keegan, who jumped to his feet.

‘I think I must say a word about this Lot and also the next Lot.’ He was speaking quickly, a little nervously. ‘We offer them both as seen, of course, with no guarantee that they are what we all think they probably are. I don’t have to tell you, but I will’ — a ripple of laughter that was more a release of tension ran round the enclosed area — ‘how Perkins Bacon excused their dilatoriness in delivering stamps and moulds to the Crown Agents. There was a thief in their print shop, and as Percy de Worms said, that’s a strange admission for a firm of security printers accustomed to holding banknotes and bonds. They didn’t say what he stole. It was an age when property was sacrosanct, so they probably felt they had said too much already. And now-’ He waved his hand to the assistant who was holding up the two albums, the vital one open at one of the die proof pages. ‘Now, you have this Solomons Seal ship label. You have examined it and taken the same view that I have, that this is the Jeens engraving for the five-cent Newfoundland popped into the 1854 Western Australia Penny Black Frame — otherwise you wouldn’t be here. May I simply add this, the Holland Line, for which that label was printed, is still in existence, and Miss Holland herself is here today. The two albums, originally the property of her great-uncle, Carlos Holland, are now her property, and she is selling them to provide additional finance for the Holland Line, which she now runs with her brother and Mr Slingsby here.’

He looked so distinguished, such a born showman as he asked us both to rise, that I half expected them to applaud. And then he called for Lot 97 to be displayed, adding, ‘And this is the finished label, printed from a plate cast from those borrowed dies — I say borrowed because we can’t be sure the thief stole them. Also, we do not know what happened to the plate, whether it was thrown away or melted down, or even whether it is still in existence somewhere. I can, however, assure you that this is the only surviving sheet, the others having been destroyed in a fire at a house on the island of Madehas in the Solomons. Both Miss Holland and Mr Slingsby witnessed the fire, and it was Mr Slingsby who managed to preserve this — the one and only sheet. And as regards the fire, its cause and what it destroyed, he has made a sworn statement before a judicial enquiry set up by the Papua New Guinea government to probe the cause of an insurrection on the island of Bougainville. So, here you have it, something unique in the history of stamp collecting, something that can never be repeated, with a background story of extraordinary fascination and excitement, and all of it supported by sworn testimony, which is in itself most unusual. I now leave it to you to decide what these two valuable items are really worth. Thank you.’ And he sat down abruptly, the silence suddenly electric.

‘Lot Ninety-six.’ The quiet monotone of the auctioneer’s voice seemed very ordinary and matter-of-fact after Keegan’s flamboyant piece of tub-thumping. ‘The Carlos Holland design collection, including the die proofs, at five thousand pounds I’m bid. Six anybody? Thank you, seven, eight, nine, ten — ten thousand — eleven, twelve.’ The auction area was very still. One of the doves flew over with a noisy clapping of wings. ‘Twelve thousand.’

‘And a hundred.’ It was Berners’s voice, and the bidding started again, going up first by hundreds, then by fifties. At thirteen thousand seven hundred there was a sudden silence in the hall, no movement anywhere. ‘At thirteen seven hundred then …’ The hand holding the knocker was poised for a moment, then fell. Carlos Holland’s albums — the proof of his murder of a whole ship’s company including his one-time partner — had gone to a German dealer.

‘Lot Ninety-seven. The only remaining sheet of the Solomons Seal blue ship label. Starting at five thousand pounds again — six, thank you, seven, eight, nine, ten …’ And it didn’t even pause there; it went straight on up to fifteen thousand in a matter of seconds. It was as though everybody there had been seized with a feverish determination to outbid everyone else for this second item in the Holland collection. ‘And five hundred? Thank you — sixteen, and five, seventeen-’ Suddenly there was a silence, a wary stillness where they all waited, wondering whether it was too much, the bidding too wild.

A card was raised. It was Berners. ‘And two-fifty,’ he said in his sharp, rather acid voice.

‘Seventeen two-fifty, seventeen thousand two-fifty, I’m bid … ’ The knocker was poised. ‘Five hundred, seven-fifty, eighteen thousand — and a hundred? Thank you …’ The bidding crawled upwards, then came to an abrupt halt with Berners jumping several hundreds to nineteen thousand. The auctioneer waited, his eyes searching the room. ‘At nineteen thousand pounds — to Mr Berners.’ The knocker fell, the sound of it sharp in the stillness.

Perenna and I looked at each other, smiling. In less than ten minutes, allowing for commission, everything, we had raised some £30,000. It was fantastic. Keegan was suddenly standing in front of Perenna congratulating her, and she was so excited she leapt to her feet and threw her arms round his neck. We went out then to the little office at the back, where Keegan produced a bottle of champagne. And after that we drove slowly back through the late afternoon sunshine, stopping at an hotel near Cambridge to linger over dinner, discussing all the various possibilities now that we had the capital we needed. It didn’t matter now whether it was the PNG government or a Lloyd’s syndicate that finally established prior claim on the LCT, we could afford to buy it, and with the ship as security we could raise the loan as and when we needed it.

That evening, back at the hall, we walked beside the moat hand-in-hand in the moonlight, still talking it over, dreaming dreams of ships and islands, a world I think we both knew in our hearts would take a deal of sweat and blood to translate into reality. And then Perenna suddenly stopped and turned and faced me, holding my hand tight as she said, ‘That day you left Bougainville — remember what you said as you walked out to the plane?’

‘What?’ I asked, teasingly.

‘You know bloody well.’

I nodded, laughing and lifting her off her feet, carrying her in my arms. ‘For tonight,’ I said, ‘you’ll just have to be content with this.’ I was kissing her as I carried her across the threshold. ‘Tomorrow I’ll think about making an honest woman of you.’ We were both of us laughing as we went up to bed. The moon was very bright that night and there were owls hooting — Bougainville and the Pacific seemed a million miles away, and so did reality. What fun life is! What a glorious everlasting struggle to survive and to build something worthwhile! And as I fell asleep, I was thinking of that indomitable old man, her grandfather, sailing out in his canoe towards the horizon and infinity.