Tropic of Guile

By Sue McCauley

(There is nothing more precious than ones own children. There is nothing as dangerous as ones own spouse. There is nowhere as deceptive as a tropical island with the appearance of paradise)

The tropical South Sea islands that make up Fiji are both beautiful and politically explosive. Despite colonisation and an ever-increasing Indian population, the once-were-cannibal Fijians have retained their land, their cultural traditions, their political power and the Ratu feudalism that underpins it. Shrugging aside democracy, the native Fijians have sought to retain their heritage by fair means and foul.

This battle began in April of 1987 when, for the first time, the citizens of Fiji elected a predominantly Indian government. Fijian soldiers ousted the government, democracy gave way to dictatorship, racial violence erupted in the streets and fearful Indians fled (or attempted to flee) the islands they considered home. Tourism ceased, property prices fell, the legal system was in chaos...

It is precisely the opportunity Vicky Mason's wealthy husband has been waiting for. He has a wife who has overstayed her welcome; he has two children he doesn't wish to share with that wife; he has money and property he is loathe to divide up, and he has a yen to live on a tropical island.

Alex Mason hastily buys property, at bargain-bin rates, on a small Fijian island, and widely proclaims his intention of building a state-of-the-art tourist aquarium. To the self-appointed coup government, beleaguered by international disapproval and a rapidly collapsing economy, Alex's aquarium project could be a much-needed feather in their cap. Eagerly they grant Alex residency permits for himself, his American wife and his two New Zealand-born children.

Vicky Mason is an optimist. That's why, despite the disapproval of her parents and friends, she married the dashing, mature and much-married New Zealander and let him take her home to Auckland. In the eight years since, she's been waiting for her marriage to 'come right' - when Alex gets used to her American ways, when the children are older, when Alex doesn't work so hard, when he learns to trust her, when he comes to terms with his temper...

Now, in a handsome home on a palm fringed beach how can they not be happy?

Thus it takes Vicki some time to realise that Alex's increasing contempt and cruelty is designed to drive her away. Under Fijian law 'desertion' would give him grounds for divorce, and custody of the children. If Vicki leaves without her beloved son and daughter she may never see them again. And Alex has removed the children's passports. She cannot, will not, leave.

A battle of wills begins. Vicki soon comes to understand how powerless her position is. Who can she turn to? Not her island neighbors, nor the Fijian police at the nearest mainland town. For Alex is the man with the multi-million dollar project that will provide work for the locals and kudos for the Fijian authorities. Everyone wants to be his friend.

Everyone, that is, except solo expatriate Val Cooper, who gives Vicki support - until Alex retaliates.

Licensed to abuse, Alex forgoes all restraint. His methods of psychological torture become sadistically inventive. At the point of choosing to die, Vicki is saved by Val, who packs her friend off home to the stunned family in Portland.

But within the month Vicki is back in Fiji to contest the custody claims Alex has set in motion. Little does she know that this is just round one of a battle that will take her four years and seventy-nine court appearances. In the one corner - Alex Mason, backed of the Fijian hierarchy; in the other corner, Vicki, with her In

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483683201

Sue McCauley

Sue McCauley is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers. Her works include four novels (Other Halves, Then Again, Bad Music and A Fancy Man) a volume of collected short stories (It Could be You¬) and a true-life story (Escape from Bosnia – Aza’s Story). All of her books have been very well received by both critics and readers. Other Halves won two major literary awards and was made into a film of the same name, from McCauley’s own screenplay adaptation. She also writes for TV, stage and radio and publishes reviews and essays in New Zealand periodicals. Her books have been sold throughout the world, and her radio plays have been widely broadcast.

Book preview

ONE

We are sailing into a dream; sand the colour of camel hair stretches smooth and empty in front of the ever-present palms. A gull circles above us, water crumples and sighs against our boat. Liam is trailing his arm in the sea, elbow deep. Is this advisable? But I say nothing.

The conversation I am intent on avoiding takes place anyway, in my head. I am turning his son into a soft marshmallow of a child. I am over-indulgent, over-protective and under-productive.

So I say nothing but keep a watch on the clear, curling water in which my son’s wiry arm hangs. I see jagged white teeth set in jaws that could swallow a phone booth (thank you S. Spielburg) and blood spurting from a small severed stumps of forearm. This, because I kept my mouth shut, intent on protecting myself.

Liam raises his arm to point and I am saved from a future of self-flagellation. His finger aims at the houses that can now be glimpsed, their windows blinking reflected sunlight through the palms. Not many houses, three I count… no, five… six. One of those houses is ours.

‘Which one, Daddy?’ Liam’s sister, Amy. A beautiful child, blond curls tied back from cherubic features and big brown eyes. This is not maternal bias, strangers comment on my daughter’s beauty. Just like her mother, men will sometimes add. I don’t tell them that my blond locks, intricately interspersed with golden strands, are the expensive handiwork of Jonno. (‘Don’t go, honey. They don’t have hairdressers over there. Don’t even have scissors—just a bit of sharp bone.’)

Liam is also a beautiful child, though his father would hastily amend that to handsome. It pleases me that I have given my children the advantage of good looks, just as it pleases me that I have given them a father who is able to provide them with everything they need. I consider these things are greatly to my credit. They have come at a price, of course, but one must expect to pay for quality.

If I had taken heed of my own dad my children might have been sad little bucktoothed, squinty-eyed creatures in hand-me-down clothes. What greater service can you do for your children than select them the right kind of father?

Which isn’t to say that motherhood was on my mind when I married Alexander Louis Mason. My reasons—which I now find hard to reassemble—were entirely centred around myself. So it gives me comfort to know that, in a larger sense, I did the right thing.

‘Which one, Daddy?’ shrills Amy, and her father jackknifes his big frame until his head is almost level with hers, and points.

‘The one at the end.’

‘That end?’

‘No.’ He swings her pointing arm. ‘That end. The land end, not the water end.’

So now I am craning and squinting at the jigsaw fragments of boards and glass that are visible through the trees. Although mostly hidden, it seems very close to the beach. Excitement floods into me, pushing aside all the niggling doubts and apprehensions. Our tropical island home.

Already I’m lining my family up on the beach with our house in the background. Photos to send to my father. I want to be in those pictures so in my mind I ask Alex to take over the camera and I fluff up my hair. I pose with an arm around each of my children, my best smile. Hannah and children in paradise. Lucky, lucky me.

A letter arrived from my father two days before we left Christchurch. That is, three days ago, though this seems hard to believe; we have entered another universe, a different time zone. He was appalled—my father—at what we were doing. Had we not thought of the risks? The whole world knew that Fiji was just a hair-trigger away from civil war. If Rabuka pulled out of the Commonwealth as he was threatening a family like ours would have no protection. Was Alex a fool or just an irresponsible ratbag?

Alex read the letter of course. Since he’d sold the niteclub he’d been at home most of the time. He’d watch from upstairs for the mailwoman and hot-foot it out as soon as he glimpsed her so I had no chance of spiriting my letters away.

Not that many. I’d lost touch with old friends, there was only my dad and the dismaying photocopied Dear fill-in-the-blank recital of bible-club outings and offspring achievements and growth charts that arrived each Christmas from sister-in-law Alice.

So Alex read the letter with raised eyebrows then asked God to save him from armchair experts. Why would an old fool (my father is four years older than Alex) in Portland, USA, feel he knew more about the Fijian situation than someone who had recently been there. And not as some protected tourist but as a businessman and potential resident? Who had spent two days in Suva at the time that the reconstituted government was being negotiated. Who’d had discussions with Ministers close to the infamous Brigadier Rabuka, and who hadn’t for a moment felt endangered. But then, a ratbag would surely feel safe among other ratbags—wasn’t that so? Well, WASN’T IT?

Cowed, as I always am when my husband shouts, I said that my father was, indeed, a foolish man, and not for a moment did I believe Alex would put us in danger. Laying it on, as I’ve learnt to. But in fact it did seem that Alex was right—the people of Fiji must sort out their political crap as best they can, it wasn’t our concern, nor will it be. The island on which we will live and set up business is remote from Suva, and indeed from civilisation. Dictatorship, or democracy—what does it matter to us? Whoever ends up in power will certainly see that Alex’s plans have potential for the whole of the Fijian islands. Have they not readily granted us seven year residency permits? Besides, we are New Zealand citizens and the military coup has already strained diplomatic relationships with that country. The Fijians won’t want to further risk such a useful source of aid.

My taking up New Zealand citizenship had also distressed my father, even though I was was also, still, a citizen of the U.S.A. His dislike of Alex—considering that only once have they met—has always had an irrational tinge. Unhealthy, my husband says. Is that true? Or is there something about Alex that inherently arouses distrust? I’m thinking about the marriage contract. I don’t wish to think about it, I’ve promised myself not to. Neither of us have mentioned it since that awful day. We’ve put it behind us. Alex was right—distrust is no basis on which to begin a brand new life.

Yesterday evening when we arrived at Nadi airport it was, I admit, a shock. I’m familiar with the place, we’ve holidayed on these islands—and on others—Samoa, Rarotonga, Tahiti… Alex loves South Sea islands and each year we’ve escaped the bitter Christchurch winter to lie on the sand in luxury resorts. When Liam started school those holidays became shorter, dictated by school breaks. At the ages of seven and five our children are already seasoned travellers.

But Nadi airport, this time, was not as I had known it. Armed Fijian soldiers stood, cold-eyed, in groups of two or three watching us as we disembarked and as we passed though customs. Where were the smiling, hospitable, extroverted Fijians we had learned to expect? Instinctively I clutched the childen.

In the airport lounge Indian familes stood with their luggage and silent and anxious faces. Were these the fortunate ones with another country to go to? Were they emigrating, or just hoping to stay with relatives until it felt safe to return? Nowhere among them a smile or a hug, just a sense of weariness and wariness that made my heart race as if their nervousness was contagious.

We were rescued by the arrival of an overweight Fijian male of evident importance. He hove, beaming, towards us with two big henchmen in his wake. He shook Alex’s hand. They had met when Alex came over to look at the property. ‘Ni sa bula’ he said to us all.’ Welcome. Welcome to Fiji.’

Amy tugged at my trousers, look. I did, and it seemed that all eyes were now on us. Yet the armed soldiers seemed a little more relaxed, the nearest one flashed me a smile.

Alex introduced me; Ratu Naqasima, the Minister of Trade and Industry.

‘Acting Minister,’ the Ratu amended, smiling at me ‘You will be aware of our situation.’

He was delighted, it seemed to me, to be a recipient, however minor, of international attention.

They moved off then—Alex, the Ratu and his companions—to talk men’s talk, leaving me with the children and the luggage. Four standard-sized suitcases, with two trunks to follow as freight. Much more than we’ll need, according to Alex, but I’m proud of having reduced it to so little.

‘No overcoats,’ he’d ordered,’ no socks, no jerseys. Throw them away.’

I’d looked out the window at the naked elm tree trembling in the bitter Christchurch easterly and tried to imagine being forever warm.

One of the trunks contains the childrens’ games and books and toys. They won’t need those, either, Alex had said. But he isn’t the one who has to keep our kids entertained. In the other trunk I packed just a few warm clothes for me and the children. They’re our going-to-Portland clothes. Someday, when our tropical island has insinuated itself into our bloodstream, making me more convincing and Alex kinder and less possessive, I’ll get to take Liam and Amy to meet their grandparents—their only grandparents, for Alex’s parents are dead. When they meet my children, my parents will have to admit that, despite their anger and dire predictions, something entirely good has resulted from me and Alex.

We waited ages outside the terminal for Alex to rejoin us. It was cooler there but still we had to peel off clothes. Thank heavens we hadn’t arrived in the heat of day—and this was winter! I have no experience of a tropical summer—how much heat can we stand, and how long does it take to acclimatise?

Alex found us, he was very pleased with himself.

‘Far as they’re concerned we’re Very Important People.’

‘Of course we are,’ I said, smiling at my kids—and the plight of the Indian families inside was wiped out of my head. Alex had assured me this was how it would be. Never had the Fiji islands been more in need of investment. In the five months since Colonel Rabuka’s Fijian soldiers forcibly ousted a newly elected government the economy had collapsed. Tourists had fled or changed their plans; armed soldiers and racial violence were not part of their prescription for paradise. And the Indian workers had refused to harvest the sugarcane. Without sugar, without tourism, Fiji has virtually nothing to trade.

Desperately, they are trying to lure the tourists back with cut price fares although it is still winter and what should be the height of the tourist season. We flew here for next-to-nothing. Alex was delighted—nothing gives a rich man more pleasure than saving money at someone else’s expense.

In truth, the events which had those anxious Indian families queuing at the airport counter were for us a window of opportunity. The idea of living on a tropical island had been in Alex’s head for some time, but he couldn’t decide which country he preferred or what kind of business we should invest in. At the news of Rabuka’s coup Alex poured champagne. In an effort to cushion the economic disaster that followed Fiji devalued its currency. Alex leapt on a plane. I think he had visions of snapping up a whole island, the best for us and the rest to be sold at great profit when all the political nonsense had settled down.

Problem was,almost all of the land in these scattered islands is under tribal Fijian ownership and constitutionally bound to stay that way. Faced, like other islands in the Pacific, with colonisation, the Fijians had played their hand more skillfully than most other indigenous races. So, despite the fact that people were queuing to leave the country, real estate options were limited. We didn’t want city and we certainly didn’t intend to live in some Indian enclave in a country outpost. So this place was a find.

Kaikoso Island has been under European ownership since whaling days and is largely undeveloped. Shown a house on four hectares of beach front land, Alex looked no further. The home was in a state of disrepair, but that could be easily remedied. And as for the business… .

As my husband tells it he stood on that beach—the one that we are this moment approaching—and had a vision. In his mind’s eye a vast underwater aquarium stretched into the sea. Here tourists who couldn’t swim, or didn’t wish to deck themselves out in goggles and flippers, or were afraid of sharks, or just ashamed of their own bodies… Here they would come and marvel at the beauty of coral and the rainbow splendour of tropical fish. And we will take their money.

There was the matter of a permit. Regulations covering the island were geared to keeping it ‘unspoilt’—that greenie euphemism for undeveloped and uneconomic. But already, at the other end of the island, a backpacker business is in operation. Exemptions, therefore, could be obtained, and surely would be given the need for local jobs and tourist dollars.

Alex extended his stay, enlisted the support of the man who ran the backpacker huts, sorted himself out a highly recommended lawyer and arrived home to tell us we would be leaving.

The boatboy—he is not a boy but a swarthy young man with magnificent thighs and has (I asked him)a wife and two children. I did not question him further because Alex threw me a look that said I was behaving like an American. In the States, I have to assume, he didn’t notice my American-ness because he was surrounded by people behaving like Americans. But as soon as he brought me to New Zealand my American behaviour became upsetting to my husband. I talk too much and too readily to strangers, my voice is loud and my accent irritating. In New Zealand, especially Christchurch, they value a thing called reticence. Broadly speaking it means not saying what you think, and doing this only occassionally, and in a soft voice. For eight years, in the interest of international and domestic relations, I’ve been doing my best to be reticent.

Alex may come to regret his choice of country, for Fijians are nosier and more outgoing than any American I’ve ever met. Having established who we were the boatboy knew already about the aquarium and how much we’d paid for the house and land. He was eager for more information. What ages your children? How long been married? Where in New Zealand you live? What you think about Brigadier Rabuka?

We think nothing. We have no thoughts.

The coup was necessary if Fijian culture was to survive. That’s what’s they said. Fijian culture and democracy are incompatible, since the first is based on hierarchy; inherited privilege for some and serfdom for the rest.

If you’re not high born, on the these island, it pays to be white since white skin is a guarantee of privilege. That’s my understanding; the situation as explained by Alex. Our important status is guaranteed so why should we give a damn about democracy?

‘It is not all Fijians who support Rabuka,’ said the intense little Indian taxi driver who ferried us up the coast from Nadi. ‘It is not Indians against Fijians, it is those who were doing very well the way things were against those who were not doing well at all.’

‘We don’t want to know,’ said Alex. That shut him up.

It was a long ride, almost two hours, but taxis here are cheap. We passed through a couple of towns and one or two sparcely-lit villages, but for the most part it was black countryside. The children soon fell asleep, one head on my lap, another wedged against my shoulder. Despite logic and Alex’s assurances I felt an increasing anxiety. It was difficult not to. For a start, there were the military trucks full of uniformed soldiers that loomed, sinister, in our headlights before trundling past us. Each time the little driver would square his shoulders and hold his head motionless and erect.

As we drove futher into the country we were almost the only vehicle on the road. From time to time the taxi’s lights would pick out a rough, isolated shack set just back from the road and decorated with old-fashioned hoardings. Each one was covered by a grid of iron.

I had to ask.

It was Alex who answered. ‘Shops, yes. The local store.’

‘And the iron bars?’

Alex glanced at the driver—in case he felt inclined to reply? He apparently did not.

‘The shopkeepers are Indian.’

The driver must have thought, as I did, that this was scarcely an explanation. ‘At night,’ he clarified, ‘the Fijians get on the grog—the kava, you know? And beer. It makes them crazy. The more they drink, the more they want. Those shops sell beer.’ He paused. ‘And we are Indian.’

‘You said,’ I worried to Alex, ‘that there’s no shop on this island.’

‘What island is that?’ the driver wanted to know.

‘Kaikoso,’ said Alex. ‘And no shops.’

‘No Indians either,’ said the driver.

The hotel we slept at last night—we had not booked, no need to, the rooms were empty—was called Pacific Lodge. It is owned by an Indian man. The windows to our rooms had steel bars.

The boatboy—his name is Rupene—is steering us to the beach beneath our house. And people are gathering.

‘To welcome,’ Rupene grins at us and slaps a thigh as solid and dark as polished walnut.

So I reach for my bag and take out my lipstick and a small mirror. It is not easy to apply lipstick in a moving dinghy. I’m aware of Alex rolling his eyes, but when I’ve finished the boatboy nods in definite approval.

I am anxious about this house. Men do not understand about houses, that there is rather more to them than piling and roof and walls. I did not expect a say in the purchase, but I would like to have been able to compile a mental picture and Alex’s descriptions have been hopelessly vague.

I must not expect the kind of home we have left behind—that much he’s made clear. No second storey (a hurricane risk), no swimming pool (only the sea), no three car garage (no roads either), no spare bedroom, no rumpus room for the children. Here we will live a simple, healthy life.

There is, of course, the maid’s quarters. Alex has hired our maid already, sight unseen. Despite the luxury of our Christchurch home we had no household help. What else would I do with myself all day but clean and cook and garden and care for my children? Alex is an old-fashioned husband, he wants his wife at home raising his children. He says he made this clear from the start of our whirlwind courtship and I suspect he did. I was an airheaded waitress with good legs and aching feet.

‘No wife of mine will have to work,’ he may have said. My foolish blood would have raced with joy.

Single women work in order to afford a social life; married women work in order to have a social life. This was something I didn’t understand.

A very private Las Vegas wedding, then a flight half way across the globe and I was installed in a mansion on a broken pie-crust of hills overlooking the city of Christchurch. I was immensely pleased with myself and not a little relieved. Half way across the Pacific Ocean it had occurred to me that the man at my side may be nothing more than a charming con man—I was possibly about to arrive in a foreign land as the wife of a pauper with a devilish smile and liver spots on his hands.

Within two days of our arrival Alex was happily back at work, buying and selling office blocks, developing shopping malls. He hadn’t yet bought the niteclub so I still saw him most evenings. I was grateful for the luxury in which I lived and eager to prove myself a better wife than the two who had gone before me.

I was also bored and lonely. Our hillside neighbours were less than friendly so I went into the city and got myself a job as receptionist in a newly built hotel. Alex was not pleased, he said the job was demeaning to both of us, he promised to pay me more attention. So I quit the job and was rewarded by a long weekend with my husband in Queenstown among the Japanese and American tourists. Alex enjoys the company of tourists, the cut and thrust of credit cards, the sense of these relationships being both international and transitory.

I’m not complaining; I like a man who knows what he wants and gets it.

I am worried about this maid, or—in tropical parlance which no doubt I will soon get used to—housegirl. Not about the prospect of having one, that I embrace with shameless enthusiasm. (It astonished me to find that even wealthy New Zealanders tend to believe in doing everything themselves; a kind of puritanism—exhaustion equals virtue.)

It’s the lack of consultation that upsets me. Alex can’t see why. She was recommended as efficient and energetic, at least by Fijian standards. It’s as if he’s purchased some kind of appliance. But she will be living in our house, so surely I’ll need to like her. As will Liam and Amy. And she will have to like them.

But, if she doesn’t work out, we can easily replace her. That’s what he told me. People here are desperate for work.

Is our housegirl among this group on the sand, who now stand, crouch, sit as if they have been there in those same positions all day? They are smiling. Their voices reach out to us. ‘Ni sa yandra. Ni sa bula’.

‘Bula’ Amy and I call back and Rupene beams approval; we have read the guide books, we’re doing our bit. I unbuckle Amy’s sandals, and my own. A man in a flowered skirt enters the sea and wades towards us. Alex leans towards me. For Godsake . . . your skirt! And I see that the hem of my carefully selected Methodist dress has ridden up around my thighs. Obediently, I yank it down.

The man’s skirt flaps in the water as he and Rupeni steady the boat. We climb out into clear, lukewarm sea that laps at our knees. We walk up onto the sand while Rupene and his helper drag the big aluminium dinghy ashore.

Rupeni makes introductions. The hefty woman is our housegirl. She’s middle aged, fifty at least, but that doesn’t grant her maturity in European eyes. Her name is Rusila. She beams at each of us, a little desperately I feel. She is pleased to have a job. She will make me feel rotten if I have have to exchange her.

‘Everything ready,’ she says. ‘Waiting for you. All clean.’

Rusila’s daughter is part of our welcoming committee. Her name is Della and she has a child slung on her hip. I don’t catch the child’s name, or the name of Della’s husband who helped us off the boat. There’s an elderly man with a leathered European face and a silly little moustache. And there are two other women, Fijian, plus a clutch of dark-eyed children who, one minute, watch us from further along the beach. When I look again they have disappeared.

All the women wear cotton dresses with little sleeves and prim necklines. On instruction from Alex I bought myself three such dresses, plus safari shorts and respectable cotton shirts. For the aquarium venture to succeed we will need the support of our island neighbours. I must conform and avoid causing offence.

They help to carry our bags across the beach and up the few steps to our house. We walk in single file through a gate in an unkempt hedge. I stare up at our new home and it looks just fine. But what has caught my eye and taken away my breath is the garden. Tucked behind the hedge and beneath the towering palms are masses of flowering, heavily scented plants. Grass sprouts among them, the place has been neglected. And also, it would seem, under attack—for here and there plants and trees have been uprooted or severed and left to lie. I wonder at this. No one who had built a garden like this would allow such a thing.

We troop into the house, which is indeed ‘all clean’. The son-in-law is showing Alex the repairs he has done, and I can tell that my husband is less than impressed but can’t afford to risk goodwill by saying so. Is this how it’s going to be? For how long? And does that not mean that I am stuck with this housegirl, like it or lump it?

Now I am wondering about protocol. Should I offer them tea and biscuits from our box of provisions? But there are so many of them, and to replenish our supplies means a twenty minute boat ride each way, plus a return taxi from the wharf into town. How do people survive here? In our eagerness we have thought nothing through. Besides, we’ve not brought cups since Alex thought there was some crockery here that we could use in the meantime.

I begin to open cupboards. Rusila has begun to unpack our groceries and put them away; I’m startled until I remember that this is our housegirl and that is presumably what housegirls do.

But Alex, unusually generous, has opened a carton of beer, which he now distributes. In one blow the cups and protocol problems are solved. Liam and Amy run off to re-explore the house, Lucila’s grand-daughter in tow. The child’s name is Leone, her father’s name is Filipe. Names are important, I must try to remember. Old leather-face with the military moustache is ‘Mister Peter’. Alex hands me a beer which I take to the window. A flat ocean horizon like a silver ribbon stretched above our garden trees.

‘Who lived here?’ I ask Della, who is closest. ‘Did they make the garden?’

There’s an odd little hush—a dip—in the conversations going on around me. Della stares down at her bare feet. I look to Alex.

‘You said an American?’

‘That is right,’ says Rusila. She closes a cupboard door.

‘So was he young? Old? Married?’

Filipe coughs into his cupped hands, a mouthful of beer gone down the wrong way. Alex gives me a look that says let-it-alone. Finally Rusila, again replies.

‘Not young, not old. The friend—he do garden.’

‘Ah,’ I say, feeling somehow foolish. And after a moment the talk and laughter revives.

TWO

Some days I hear drums, or imagine I hear them. Not a solid bass drum beat but a soft jumpy rhythm of fingers moving on hollow skin. An insidious sound that makes me think of rats dancing.

‘There,’ I say to Rusila. ‘Now! Can’t you hear it?’

She shakes her head with a big smile and I find that the sound has stopped. Is it in my brain? Should I ask Alex to buy me some drums, the cigar shaped kind, so I can teach myself to play them?

Already I have run out of things to do. I have run out of things to read. Doing nothing is only a pleasure if you have someone to do it with.

Oh, the first few days were exciting. Neighbours called in, at least the men did. Mister Peter, who I now know to be Peter Greer, came a number of times, full of advise on how to ‘handle’ Fijians (do not get off-side with them but never trust them) and tales about their cannibal past. These he relates with a kind of vicarious glee—like a schoolboy describing the contents of a porn magazine. Just across the water, on this side of the mainland (Viti Levu) is the tomb of Fiji’s last big-league cannibal. Peter Greer says we must go and see it; a stone has been laid at the tomb for every person this man consumed. Nine hundred and ninety nine stones in all. The number rolls off Mister Peter’s tongue, full of significance.

Who was counting, that’s what I want to know. Was it this glutinous warrior’s own estimation—or had he saved the skulls like so many abacus beads? And did anyone double-check the tally? Does nine nine nine not seem just a little too convenient to the missionary purpose?

I didn’t say this, just took my snigger off to another room. Peter Greer is our closest European neighbour and we’ll need his support. He and his wife are the only other occupants of the six houses dotted along our stretch of beach. The couple moved here seven years ago from Suva. He’s a retired civil servant, a career expatriate who’s worked in India, Burma, Algeria.

Another retired British couple own the property next to the Greers and also lived here permanently until the coup frightened them into an extended holiday with their family in Europe. The other three houses, standing empty, are holiday homes and in safer times would be occupied at this time of year. Peter Greer congratulates us on buying when we did. ‘Very smart move.’

Bryce McRae, who runs Kaikoso Backpackers, has also come to see us—or at least to see Alex. I am of no consequence in the social fabric of this place. Nor did I expect to be on any island where Alex would choose to live.

Besides my husband and Peter Greer, Bryce McRae and his batchelor brother-in-law, Mickey Redfern, are the only other European males on this island. But Bryce and Mickey are not expats, they belong here. Bryce’s manner, even his strutting walk, proclaims ownership. He’s a short stocky man, freckled, with eyes as impatient as summer flies at a window. He doesn’t like me, I sense this, though he and I have barely exchanged two sentences. I don’t need him to like me but it would be good to know if that dislike is of me or just women in general. I’ve not yet met Hazel.

Less than a hundred years ago this island belonged to Rusila’s family. Her forebears sold it to a British missionary called Charles Redfern for one musket (‘No bullet’, she chuckles. ‘Just gun, no bullet. Dumb yeah?’) and the right to continue to live on the island in perpetuity. Which some still do, in a cluster of patched-together homes. Rusila grew up there but lives elsewhere whenever she can. ‘They noisy,’ she says. ‘Too many. I like the private.’

Yet, until Alex put a stop to it, she encouraged her family to visit her at our home whenever they liked. Della would bring her young daughter and sometimes a friend or two and they would sit around chatting in Fijian while Rusila went about her chores. Other times it would be the son-in-law Filipe, largely silent but always smiling.

Presumptuous of them, of course, but when they stopped coming I missed the sense of life they had brought to our house.

The first day or two here we did little but sleep. Even the children. The sudden heat, the sea air, our accumulated exhaustion—or the combination of all three—had us stupified. I would lie in bed, half awake, hearing unfamiliar voices and laughter drifting from the kitchen and feel bewildered and displaced, as if I had woken up in someone else’s house, someone else’s life.

On the third day, restored and full of excitement, the children and I explored the island while Alex went to the mainland in Rupene’s boat to stock up on food, beer, gin and other essentials. Kaikoso—the word for salt-water mussels, which indeed, around the rocks, are abundant—is shaped a bit like a lightbulb with the half dozen expat properties reaching along the eastern side from swelling to socket. The last of these houses overlooks rocks and reef. All these homes were built within the last fifteen years. This stretch of land, like the rest of the island, belonged to the Redfern family, but Mickey’s late father had expensive habits, so a strip was subdivided and sold off.

Those Redferns who remain live on the western, ocean-facing, side of the island in a cluster of houses perched just below the horizon. You don’t build houses, here, on the tops of anything regardless of premium views. Not unless you want to see them scooped off by a hurricane.

By similar logic—though mostly, I guess, necessity—the Fijian houses are little more than rough shelters that can be replaced at low cost. They too are clustered together. So on this one small island there are three distinct enclaves. The Fijian may have been here first and the expats may have bigger and better houses but the Redferns are, without question, the aristocracy of Kaikoso.

Yet, apart from Bryce and Kathy of the backpackers’ hostel, the Redferns are an almost invisible presence. A high hedge surrounds the grouped houses, and the wrought iron gates look less than inviting. Not that the children and I ever intended an introductory visit.

Thumbnail sketches of the Redfern family from Rusila. ‘Old lady Mrs Lettie Bossy, want to boss whole of Kaikoso… . Mickey. Nice man. Posh only too much the grog. Too much be alone… . Ailsa. Poor girl see nothing much. Since small girl, can’t see. Then he have baby. He at school and baby out here. Then gone. Not Ailsa, baby gone. Ailsa look after old Mrs Lettie.’

The backpacker hostel—an office plus several huts fetchingly thatched in the way of native bures—is about a mile from the Redfern homes. And between those houses and ours, but much closer to ours, is the Fijian village. On first encounter this was a shock, like stepping into a documentary. The children and I had walked by then for a couple of hours—along the beach, around rocks and then following a track that led from bush onto open grassland then back into bush. There is no road on Kaikoso and the tracks are many and bewildering, criss-crossing and weaving in all directions. I was no longer sure of where we were but we could hardly get lost on an island of less than twenty square miles. Amy had begun to complain so I’d lifted her onto my shoulders, Liam was a few steps ahead and he suddenly stopped.

‘Oh my God!’ I heard him say in a phoney voice he’d picked up in his Christchurch school playground,

There, in front of us, was Rusila’s village. Rough little houses—shacks really—with roofing iron extending out in front like the peak of a cap. Skinny dogs lurking, roosters and hens scratching at the bare soil between, a couple of tethered goats, a cow, a pony with too many ribs, a smell of woodsmoke, animals, damp earth. Discarded cans, rags, bottles lying beneath a bush; I imagined rats. Clothes—startling in their whiteness and the brilliance of their colours—flapped gently on a line stretched between a branch and the furthest house. Two women crouched at the fire, a child—smaller than Rusila’s grandchild—tottered after a dog. A man in a white and green sulu skirt came through the trees with a fish still hanging on his line.

About it all was a feeling of make-believe, of children playing a summer game.

The nearest dog looked at us with a tentative wag of the tail but did not bark, did not approach. I was inclined to retreat, find another route, but one of the women turned and saw us. A vast smile, her hands outspread.

‘Bula,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Ni sa bula. You are Mrs Mason, yes. This Leem? And Amee?’

Other women came out of their houses, we were introduced but their names fell straight from my head. They offered us food, drink, I said thank you, vinaka, but no, we must be going. Liam was disappointed, he wanted to hang around, to eat, to make friends with the dogs; but how could we take from these people when they all to obviously had so little?

They set us on the path to our home. Just a few minutes walk down a palm shaded track and we had reached the edge of our overgrown garden. I was glad that our house had not been built on this side of the property, but further along, glad that the previous owner had filled the space between us and the Fijian houses with this lush greenery—a bulwark against the flies, the rusting cans and sad-eyed dogs.

We should have accepted the offer of food and drink. This was explained to me that night by Rusila. To refuse was to insult.

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. Can you tell them I’m sorry, I just didn’t know.’

‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘Explain to your family that Hannah is congenitally stupid; that might save us much embarrassment in the future.’

Liam smirked. I tried not to