Inheritance. Part 9

Jeanie pulled at my hand. 'Come on. It's so beautiful. You should, Elena!' She was the beautiful one. I promised to walk over when I had closed the clinic. To tell the truth, I would rather watch her than the clouds of little reef fish. But she loved it. What didn't she love about Samoa?

I was just locking up when Giles Metford from the High Commission came waddling and calling across the road.

'Elena, Elena! Is Jeanie with you?'

Comical as ever from a distance sweating inside his crumpled, grubby white suit, wild, faded hair in need of a cut, his red cheeks inexpertly shaved but today so anxious and distracted I couldn't make fun of the old gossip.

'John O'Dowd's had an accident,' he puffed. 'It looks bad. The police are up at the house now. Do come, Elena.'

'The police?' I asked 'What about a doctor?'

'That too, but it's old CJ who has arrived.'

Oh dear. Old CJ was a complete imbecile of a palagi so-called doctor who had been given the job because his Samoan wife was valuable to the administration and also high born. Everyone tried to avoid being seen by CJ. He would be worse than useless.

I hurried to Palolo Deep while Giles brought a car. There she was, my Jeanie, floating face down out in the middle of the coral bowl, oblivious in her tropical paradise. When I called she came up dripping and waved. Oh it was a hard thing to shatter that sunlit joy. But she caught the mood quickly enough, swam to sh.o.r.e and came running over the path through the coral.

'It's your father,' I said, and she moaned as if she knew already.

She wouldn't stop to make herself decent; tied a lavalava over her dripping bikini while running to the car. I couldn't keep up with her and thought for a moment they would leave me behind, but Giles wanted a decent doctor on the scene and waited.

I dried her hair and fixed it back as we drove up the hill.

That man, her husband, was on the steps watching the drive. There was blood on his s.h.i.+rt. Jeanie ran past him and into the house without a word. I came up more slowly.

As I climbed up the steps her husband shouted at me. 'What? What are you looking at? It was nothing to do with me!'

Can you believe it! His wife's father grievously hurt, his wife distraught, and all he can find to do is proclaim his innocence to the whole neighbourhood. I was about to give him a piece of my mind, but Giles pushed me inside, muttering some placatory rubbish in my ear. He was right of course. I was needed inside.

Quite a group there. The Landers, two police and CJ who wore a grave face but served no other earthly purpose. The sergeant, Salesi, was the one who had rung the hospital for an ambulance. John O'Dowd lay on a divan, flushed, semi-conscious, his breath snoring in and out heavily. He looked terrible, dried vomit on his s.h.i.+rt. I did the usual checks, and was immediately worried. His heart raced and his pupils reacted sluggishly. He felt insanely feverish. Mad old Simone handed me a bowl of iced water. She had obviously been trying to cool him down. She could be quite practical when it suited her. I rang the right people to alert them and made sure CJ would be sidelined when the ambulance arrived. Jeanie knelt beside her father, holding his hand, talking to him. Tears ran down her face, but she stayed calm, concentrating, willing her father, it seemed, to hold on to life.

Stuart came into the room then. He laid his hand on Jeanie's shoulder, quite gently, I thought.

'He went walkabout, poor old man. Out in the sun all day, evidently. I had no idea; couldn't find him. I've told the police.' His voice, low and urgent, hammered away at her, giving the details, the times. He was as white as a sheet and trembling.

Simone's strident voice cut into the monologue. 'I heard an argument. They were arguing!'

Hamish raised a warning finger but she turned to him angrily. 'An argument! Hamish you heard it too. Tell them!'

He shrugged in a way that showed he agreed. Simone turned to us all, her pile of white hair flying this way and that. What a fiery woman she was! At times like this her French accent, which I suspect she cultivated, rolled and crashed around the English words.

'Yes a so big argument! All that old gossip about John's birth which we all have forgotten. On, on, on he hammered the words. We could hear so clearly every word in our garden. What kind of inheritance of the blood, he asked, had been pa.s.sed on to Jeanie? He poured shame on that poor man accused our John that he was knowing all along his bad blood and had hidden the facts. Then we saw John run out of the house as if stung by a bee. Hamish, Hamish we should have followed to calm the poor man! Shame on us!'

Jeanie looked up for a moment, straight into the eyes of her husband, then back to her father without a word. Stuart gave a sort of sob.

'We were talking, that is all. Not an argument.' And then in a wild outburst, 'Oh where's the b.l.o.o.d.y ambulance?'

It arrived, finally, just then. I don't think John had any idea what was going on. He allowed himself to be stretchered out of the house, as inert and limp as a sack of flour. I rode with Jeanie and her father in the back, while CJ sat up front.

He lay flushed and tossing for two days. Very irregular heartbeat. Slowly he regained full consciousness, but wouldn't eat. He let Jeanie hold his hand but seemed not to hear her when she spoke.

Tim Stokes, the surgeon, said they couldn't get the heart to steady. 'It should be a simple case of heatstroke,' he said, wiping his big gingery hands on a towel, 'but there doesn't seem to be a will to improve. Even his daughter can't buck him up.'

Tim told me that the silly man had gone walking up the cross-island road, must have wandered for several hours, up and down. Eventually, a couple of the girls from Papauta School saw him. They'd been sent further up the road to look for loa. The girls use the seeds as a dye and also export them to New Zealand, I understand. Very enterprising. Anyway, they found John O'Dowd sitting on a rock in the full blaze of midday, his head hanging, blood dripping from his nose. Those strapping Papauta girls, high-born every one, and trained to be sensible, manhandled him down to the school. Sala herself rang the Landers who fetched him down in their car. Goodness knows where Stuart had been. I never heard.

Jeanie lived at the hospital for two days. Sat on a little wooden chair beside him. I brought her food which she ate mechanically. He would never touch it. Clenched his teeth against any attempt to feed him. He was not rational. We had to put him on a drip. I stood behind her, one time, watching. She leaned her tired head back against my thigh, tears running down her cheeks.

'I can feel him slipping away,' she cried. 'I can't bring him back!'

John opened his bloodshot eyes, smiled at her, smiled up at me, and closed them again. That was all. I wanted to shake him; to drag his spirit into the world again. It was as if he had been cursed. Like a potent voodoo curse, that he had no power or will to fight.

'He should pull through,' I told her, but without much hope. 'Surely the drip will give him some energy to fight this.'

But that night his heart stopped beating. Jeanie, whose finger was there, on the pulse in his wrist, felt it stop, heard the last sighing breath, and screamed for the doctor. But he was gone.

John was buried in the little graveyard at the plantation, next to Gertrude, which was ironic. Teo and I stood there at the back of the little crowd of plantation workers. Our mother came too. Now that she had won (in her eyes) the case over the land, she could afford to observe the niceties. It was she who had a white concrete cross placed on the tomb and ensured that it was heaped with wreaths and garlands. Jeanie's face remained impa.s.sive as the priest read out the rites of interment. Not many of the palagi community were there. A dozen at most. My heart ached for Jeanie, standing there with Stuart at her side, but alone I could tell she felt alone.

Teo felt it too. And showed it in his own careless way. In front of the husband, Teo put an arm around her, kissed her on both cheeks, then turned away without a glance at Stuart. To many there it seemed like a challenge. But Stuart was in a strangely subdued mood that day, his famous anger dormant. Tiresa, who saw the kiss too, was the one to erupt. Her face darkened. 'Tama!' she called, an insult to call her own son as if he were some underling. 'Sau!' And forcibly marched him off to help unload the umu.

There was a roast pig and taro and breadfruit, but it was a sad little feast, and no one stayed very long. Jeanie would eat nothing. She sat on the edge of her father's grave perfectly proper to show such grief, but a worry or irritation to her husband. Stuart could not leave her alone, though she clearly wished it. He kept going over to her, touching her arm. Arguing, I think, that she should join the guests. He wasn't bullying her. He felt isolated without her, I suspect; no one else was talking to him. A strange man. Weak, as many bullies are when their props are removed. Jeanie was both his prop and the target of his bullying. That day she simply didn't notice him. Their relations.h.i.+p had broken in some way with the death of the father. That estrangement was, I believe, a torment to Stuart. I only saw him twice after that and both times he was a mess.

We took Jeanie to Piula 'to cheer her up' Teo said, but he had a different reason. He knew it would be the last time he was able to behave in this free manner. Piula pool is famous for its clarity and beauty. Being brought up Catholics, of course we averted our eyes as we walked past the Methodist seminary rising above the sea on the promontory, an impressive concrete building, you have to admit, compet.i.tively large as are all buildings to do with religion in Samoa, but not as large and beautiful as our old Catholic seminary. We led Jeanie down the steep and winding path to the sea. A warm afternoon, it was, with a light breeze coming off the sea. Teo was excited, chatting wildly of this and that. I think he was apprehensive about the wedding. It would be a big event, as Ma'atoe was high-born and the taupou of her village.

We hadn't told Jeanie about Piula. It's such a lovely surprise. She thought we were just going for a swim. The lagoon here is clean. No falela'iti'iti'i to deposit their faeces at low tide.

'Look!' cried Teo, gesturing with pride as if he himself had made the pool.

Jeanie grinned at his excitement and was suitably impressed. It is beautiful. A perfectly formed little cave in the cliff disgorges a clear icy stream into the sea. Perhaps the young would-be pastors, or perhaps our ancestors long ago, have built a semicircular wall of black volcanic rocks to enclose the stream so that it becomes a cold pool deep enough to swim in. Even I enjoy this pool. It was a good thought of Teo's. Jeanie always loved the water. She swam with him up into the cave, disappearing into the darkness and then floating down with the current, shouting with the chill. Over the rocks they climbed to wallow in the warm water of the lagoon. Then back into Piula's cold freshness. I like to think of it as Samoa's version of the Scandinavian sauna and snow routine. Much gentler of course. Our way of life is much gentler. They swam for a while, disappearing up into the darkness, their laughter echoing off the stone and pouring out to me in triplicate. It made me happy to hear them, that day. Sometimes Teo's antics his flirting and his sudden anti-palagi bursts of anger irritated me, but Piula is too peaceful for anxiety. I dipped myself then lay under a tree and watched them. Finally they came over and we ate our picnic. Teo told her then that he was to be married in a few weeks' time and that he would have to behave himself after that. He said it lightly, making a joke, but I heard pain, too, behind his words. He stroked her wet arm lightly as he spoke, then rolled over on his stomach to look at her. She held his gaze; let his hand lie on her arm, near to her breast. I believe if I had not been there they may have made love. Perhaps that was why I was there to make sure it didn't happen.

'Yes,' she said, quite calmly. In those weeks after her father's death Jeanie often seemed removed, as if mourning in some internal, hidden way, his loss. We had known him only briefly: he was there, then gone. His loss caused hardly a ripple in our lives. But Jeanie had been brought up by him. And now she was an orphan in a strange land. I think that awful husband could not begin to fill the void.

She picked up Teo's hand where it lay on her, kissed the fingers and laid them back on his own thigh. It was a gesture of great gentleness, I thought, familiar, as if it had been performed often. I don't imagine it had where was the opportunity? but a feeling of natural intimacy existed between them. They could have been lovers in another country. But neither was free.

'They say the palolo will rise one week, maybe two before the wedding,' said Teo. 'Will you come? You must see it.'

This was more problematic. Everyone would be at the lagoon to watch the rise. Teo would have to watch his step.

I suggested reluctantly I admit, but the older sister must sometimes keep the peace that Stuart should come to see the rise too. The others shrugged and nodded. There was something dreamy about the two of them that day. It worried me rather. Perhaps it was simply Piula. There is something magic about the place. Surely it is older than the Methodists!

It occurs to me now that Francesca may have been conceived there at Piula. Did they swim up into the cave to lie together on the little sandy beach there, while I dozed in the shade outside? To have sprung into life at Piula how perfect!

The palolo did indeed rise a week before Teo was married. A night as tumultuous (and eventually shocking) as the day at Piula was peaceful. My mother wanted the excitement of the rise well over before the wedding. There was no way she wanted her big day (she saw it as hers) upstaged by the s.e.xual antics of those reef worms! Tiresa always predicted the day by the flowering of the moso'oi tree and the smell of the reef. I simply watched the moon and the weather. Our patele prayed to G.o.d, so he said, and G.o.d told him, but I heard that his prediction was actually based on the excitement of the coconut crabs: if they clattered around more than usual in the night, and fought among themselves with extra vigour, the palolo were about to rise. We all had our theories, but amazingly, we all predicted the same day! How was that?

There is a beach between our village and the next, where it is easiest to wade, and the palolo rise in great quant.i.ties. The two villages usually join forces there for the tapalolo, though the spoils are not shared every man woman and child for himself! An hour or two before dawn that year it was late in October, the moon in its first quarter we gathered at the beach in front of our village. Jeanie and Stuart arrived in their little car with their torches and reef shoes. I met them and handed them a net each and a bucket. Jeanie was full of it all, asking questions as fast as I could answer them.

Stuart drifted away for a while. In the dark I could just see him talking in a rather familiar fas.h.i.+on to Soloia, a young cousin who worked on the plantation. I resolved to keep an eye on him. By the smell of his breath he'd been drinking. But he came back to hook an arm rather possessively through Jeanie's. Or was he intimidated by the press of people and the excitement? Since John's death he seemed to hang around her in a rather pathetic way. He relied on Jeanie. Something unhealthy about his neediness.

Teo's fiancee, Ma'atoe, was there too with her entourage she was village taupou, and insisted on having an attendant group of unmarried girls a custom not always followed by those times, but Ma'atoe and her family were old fas.h.i.+oned. Still are.

I love the sight on the beach and lagoon at tapalolo. It's as if a small lighted city has suddenly sprung up, reflected in the water. Some carry electric torches, others kerosene lamps. Back then, several still favoured live flames made with rags, dipped in kerosene or pitch and tied to the end of sticks.

The air is always still. People are quiet at first, wading and peering, then netting the palolo in great sweeping scoops. The delicacy is actually the s.e.xual organ of male and female reef worms. On this particular night, in a synchronised action, they release this part of their anatomy into the lagoon. The little gelatinous wriggling part, headed by one light-sensitive eye, makes for the surface I suppose they think our torches are the dawn (if they have thoughts) and we scoop them up. It has to be at this particular pre-dawn time. With daylight, the hundreds of thousands of palolo release the eggs or sperm to get on with it, and then dissolve. But we get to them before that happens. To be honest I scoop them straight into my mouth. They are best totally fresh, eaten in the dark, though some prefer them fried with onion on toast, a barbaric practice in my opinion.

Jeanie was interested in the flavour or was she pretending delight when I slipped a handful into her mouth? Stuart spat his back into the sea. They worked beside me for a while then we drifted in our own directions. The hunt becomes compet.i.tive, of course, and I am not immune when it comes to palolo!

It was a good harvest as I remember. When dawn came the sand was lined with buckets and bowls br.i.m.m.i.n.g with palolo. Some would go to the markets; most would be gorged on that day. No doubt Tiresa was intent on keeping some fresh enough to serve at the wedding feast. Did she freeze some? I'm trying to remember whether her fridge-freezer from New Zealand had arrived by then.

I watched the sun rise out of the sea, a beautiful fresh morning. What a pleasure it is that moment, after tapalolo, when the new sun warms a belly full of seafood! I hoped Jeanie was feeling the same. There she was, sitting on a fallen coconut tree, lost in thought. My dreamy Jeanie! I shouted to her, still full of pleasure, not guessing what was to come. She looked up briefly and raised a limp hand. I began to feel uneasy. Something was not right in the way she sat so still on such a morning. My mother was calling me to help carry the buckets back to our fale, but from further down the beach there were other shouts. Jeanie jumped up as if shot and stared towards the shouts, but they were calling for me. A doctor.

At that part of the beach, the coconut palms lean down right over the water, and low scrub is left to grow underneath them so that canoes may be tied there in rough weather. Two young men emerged from these bushes, half carrying, half dragging Stuart. Teo walked behind. 'Elena!' he shouted, 'Elena!'

Stuart was bleeding badly. One hand flapped frightfully from the wrist as the men ran. It was attached by skin and flesh only, the joint severed. His face was a sheet of blood, the features drowned. I couldn't tell at first if he was conscious or not. The men shouted that Stuart had stumbled into some traps, set to catch coconut crabs. Then, as he thrashed, had set off another which caught his ear. One of the fellows held up the severed ear with a sheepish grin. Good Lord, those traps should be banned. I would see to it that they were.

I did what I could to stop the bleed. Jeanie did not rush over immediately, which I thought was strange. She had sat again on the log as if in some dream. Or nightmare. It was only later, as I was attempting to move him, that she came to help. The ear wound was superficial; already the blood was clotting, but the hand was another matter. Stuart moaned and writhed as I tore strips of lavalava, applied a tourniquet, and tied the hand back in place as best I could. I couldn't tell how much blood he had lost. I asked how long ago the accident had happened. The men shrugged and pointed over to Teo. Teo had found him they said.

My brother was sitting on the log beside Jeanie, his head hanging. The shock had got to him, I think. He was shaking violently, bright-eyed as if with a fever. Teo was never one to handle blood well, for all his bravura. I had known him faint at the sight of a bad slash from a bush knife.

Well, there was no time to see to Teo. We bundled Stuart into the back of his own car. Jeanie drove while I sat with him on my lap, hoping that we would meet the ambulance soon. Stuart was by now white as a ghost and shaking. He was incapable of answering any questions. Fortunately Jeanie knew his blood group a common one as I remember. We didn't carry large stocks in Apia in those days. (And I doubt anything is different today another reason for me to take up that job.) Blood seeped through the cloth of the bandages. I tightened the tourniquet and prayed for the ambulance.

We met it as we drove into the hospital grounds. Palolo night was a busy one, evidently, for the hospital, cuts from the coral being the most common, severe indigestion from over-indulgence the second.

We saved Stuart. He lay for days like one dead, but he lived. Tim Stokes sewed ear and hand back on but neither took. Both wounds became infected and, in the end, even the hand had to be removed. Stuart took it all rather stoically, I thought. Given his argumentative manner and fierce temper, I expected a torrent of accusations, but he was too sick, perhaps, to press charges. When the police came questioning, he simply muttered that it was an accident and he didn't remember which canoe or which trap.

I wonder? He was drunk, which would affect his memory, certainly. The man often carried a flask, so they said. But I suspect something happened between Stuart and Jeanie that night. Did they fight? Did she push him into the traps? Perhaps Teo was involved? From then on she was open in her dislike of her husband. She called infrequently at the hospital, and showed little interest in his progress or lack of it. When Tim said Stuart must go back to New Zealand for treatment, Jeanie stayed in Samoa. The plantation was her excuse, but Jeanie had showed little interest in the business up to that time.

Tongues wagged of course. But, by that time, Teo was married.

Should I take the position? The question keeps battering at me. Teo can't understand why I hesitate. (I should call him by his t.i.tle, but keep forgetting, which just shows how much a palagi I have become.) He says I have no ties to New Zealand, and that senior registrar at the hospital would only lead to better things in the future. I think he means that it would add to our family's pule (or his own!) if I had a senior position in the administration.

I'm tempted; of course I am. But it's not true to say that I have no ties here. Teo means I'm not married with children. I have good friends. And there is Francesca, who needs me I feel. And Jeanie. Ann.

Last week, back in Samoa for a week of meetings, I visited Teo and Ma'atoe in their smart new home, built beside Tiresa's fale which became the guest house, following her death. I prefer the airy fale and always sleep there when I visit, which annoys Ma'atoe, who thinks it disrespectful to her sparkling spare room with three mattresses on the bed and mosquito screen on the windows. It's a shame, I suppose, that Ma'atoe and I don't get on. She's a good, if conservative mother to their five children, who are all bright enough. The eldest boy is training to be a priest, and one of the girls has a position in the administration. But I would like to see them spread their wings take their education further. Ma'atoe says too many bright ones leave and never come back (looking at me severely); she feels a responsibility to keep them in the islands. I'll bet young Simi breaks away though.

That evening, returning from matai choir practice, Teo stopped at the fale and sat down on the matting for a chat. He is a big man now not as large as me but of a fitting size for his position. He seemed easy and relaxed always less pompous away from Ma'atoe or his fellow matai. He propped his back against the Pou o le Tala the same pole that our father had leaned against when he told us stories while I lay out, head on some cus.h.i.+ons, a lavalava covering my feet. The seaward breeze had died; most of the fale were dark; even the pigs were sleeping somewhere under the trees. It would be sixteen years since I had lived in Samoa for any length of time. Nothing much has changed. This is in some ways comfortable and in others a challenge. That night the familiarity seemed more important.

'The t.i.tle is a good one,' said Teo, scratching his back against the pole, 'Not split, and quite senior.' The light of my little hurricane lamp lit his smile. He told me I would be only one step down from his own t.i.tle. He knew my view of splitting t.i.tles and offering them to off-sh.o.r.e Samoans, simply in my view to attract foreign dollars in family or church donations. 'Your village duties would allow you to make a real difference,' he said, 'and you could have a major say in the plantation if that interests you.'

Teo has an entrepreneurial streak. He'd like to get the plantation back into serious production, but his government and family duties keep him occupied. And, of course, he loves all that arguing, wheeling and dealing, making speeches. Teo has become quite a noted faipule.

'It's tempting,' I said, and meant it. That old dragon Gertrude would smile in her grave to know I was genuinely interested in cacao. But this was too good an opportunity to explore another matter. I had been waiting for the chance. Plantation policy could wait.

'Do you remember Jeanie Roper?' I asked The mats rustled as Teo s.h.i.+fted his weight. I watched his face. For a while he said nothing, but looked back at me steadily, trying to read me, I suppose.

'That's a long time ago,' he said at last. 'Yes, I remember her. Of course.' He showed no particular emotion. His lack of emotion was of interest to me though. My brother still enjoys gossip.

I told him that I'd come across her recently; that she'd changed her name. That she'd dumped Stuart years ago and had a grown-up daughter.

Teo grunted and made to get up. 'All in the past,' he said, 'I can't say I'm interested. Think about the job though. You would certainly get it. t.i.tle and job, I can guarantee.'

Off he strode, across to the house. I thought it strange. He had seemed settled in for a good talk.

My meeting with health officials in Apia was brief. There was an expectancy, I could feel, that I might soon be senior to them, and they were eager to display efficiency. I left the building and wandered along Beach Road, looking for changes in the two years since my last visit. A new hotel, a face-lift for the library. A building flying a foreign flag I didn't recognise.

The clouds that had been ma.s.sing most of the morning over the peaks were rolling down towards the sea, threatening rain. I had forgotten how regular the midday rain was and had no umbrella with me. As the first fat drops landed, I reached the verandah of a fancy new nightclub. There was a bench there and I sat, watching the road become a lake, water sheet off roofs, gutters overflow. Shoppers and street vendors, cars too, paused and waited for the blinding downpour to ease. It is such a pleasure to feel the humidity sucked out of the air each day; the brief freshness after rain is so sweet!

As I turned from the roaring rain to examine the group of nightclubs, I realised I was sitting exactly where the door to the old Tivoli Theatre had been. That seedy old building that had seen so many film evenings, dances and shows. The Women's Committee play! I heard again the wild applause, the stamping and the shouts of laughter that night we put on the concert to raise funds for Maota o le Alofa: the 'House of Love' the National Council of Women's Centre. I have never seen Jeanie happier than at that time.

My mother, naturally, had a hand in the planning. She was head of the Women's Committee in our nu'u and our district. But the Masiofo herself headed the enterprise. As head of state's wife she was determined to leave a monument to women in the new independent Samoa a place where women from all over the islands could meet, stay, attend sessions on hygiene and baby care, hold performances. Plans were underway at the time to build a new Fale Fono down at Mulinu'u, so it was only natural that our powerful Women's Committees should want a prestigious building of their own.

Donations were called for throughout the islands, but the Masiofo wanted a focal event. So the concert was planned. This was to have not only the usual programme of singing and dancing items from various villages, but an ambitious performance of the famous legend of Sina and the King of Fiji. The Masiofo thought I might have some fancy palagi knowledge of theatrical staging. We were together at university in Wellington for a year and she knew that I had briefly joined the drama club there. But Jeanie had a much broader knowledge. She loved the theatre and had been active in her local drama group back in New Zealand. I roped Jeanie in, and together we helped turn the usual simple performance of an old story into a full-scale event with stage lights, scenery, an interval, and a cast of thousands!

Jeanie had such energy at that time! Stuart was back in hospital in New Zealand. Or maybe out of hospital. Jeanie told me she had broken with him; had told him not to come back. She didn't want him. She spoke so fiercely! The plantation was hers, she said, not his. He had only made matters worse in every way; had hounded her father to his death and beaten her and she never wanted to set eyes on him again. Such a change from before, when she seemed to accept him in a pa.s.sive sort of way. Perhaps his absence had brought her to the realisation that they were bad for each other. I asked her if Stuart accepted all this. Would he stay in New Zealand?

'He'd better,' was her reply.

A fierce little tiger she was!

But she threw herself into the concert. She suggested we borrow lights from the local palagi drama group and string them up in the old, rat-ridden rafters of the Tivoli; we could beg old banana crates from the wharf and build scenery. We could build a long low flat and paint it to look like a canoe, for the scene where the King of Fiji and all his attendants cross the sea. Tiresa and the Masiofo were impressed with all this knowledge and planning and added the full force of their influence to the production.

Any scepticism Jeanie might have had about the dramatic quality of the piece was shattered at the first rehearsal. We were both electrified. Laughing one minute; moved the next. And this was only a rehearsal!

Jeanie grinned over to me in the darkened old theatre. 'You didn't say your mother was a star.'

Tiresa had the part of the giant lizard and performed it with relish, wagging her great sacking tail back and forth, snorting and gnas.h.i.+ng; the fiercest lizard on earth was my mother, her swollen limb down to half its size by now and giving her so much more movement. She was proud of me over that at least and proud of her Women's Committees which had carried out the campaign so fiercely.

Jeanie had worked out an ingenious way, using undulating blue ribbons of 'sea', to make the lizard appear to be lifted magically out of the water. Tiresa thought it was marvellous, all the theatricals, and was delighted to be the centre of one of the most dramatic moments. All the animosity had gone by now, with the plantation divided and Teo safely married. She was as pleased with Jeanie's ingenuity as everyone else.

All the other main parts Sina, her mother, the king and so on, were of course taken by the highest-ranking women. The two highest masiofo equal in rank split the role of Sina, each playing half the show. Most of the cast were over fifty and few under fourteen stone. Jeanie, with her new-found theatrical zeal, looked doubtful when she was introduced to the cast, but she quickly changed her opinion when she saw them perform.

'They must choose their highest ranking women by the way they sing and dance,' she muttered to me at one time after a particularly beautiful song.

'Why not?' I whispered back. 'Of course that comes into it.'

Disaster nearly struck when our beautiful cut-out canoe, which stretched almost the full width of the stage, could not fit all the ample behinds of the King of Fiji's retinue. No matter how much shuffling went on, a paddler stuck out into the sea at each end. Our Masiofo decreed that the two largest behinds would have to go for this scene. Roars of laughter and measuring followed. Jeanie was in st.i.tches. The two women who retired did so with pride it was certainly no shame to be large.

Jeanie was down at the theatre soon after dawn on the day of the performance. I was there early too. I heard her behind the curtain so happy, so quick to pick up friends.h.i.+ps. Two of the cast were with her the two who had been ousted from the canoe. All three were laughing and singing together. The women from Savai'i I didn't know them had sat on a piece of scenery while they waited to come back on stage and had smashed it to matchsticks! Together with Jeanie they were improvising a replacement with woven palm leaves and flowers. Much nicer than the painted original!

In came the truckloads of leaves and flowers to transform the aging Tivoli into a garden paradise. Women's Committees from all over Samoa were there, all in their separate village uniforms a flowery decoration in itself everyone singing and laughing as they wove garlands and plaited palm leaves. Salamasina brought the girls from Papauta School down to lend a hand. We all shouted with appreciation as the Masiofo arrived with a huge piece of tapa cloth big enough to hang as a backdrop for the whole stage. A wonderful Tongan tapa. It was the Masiofo's share of a giant half mile by fifteen foot piece, given by Tonga to celebrate Samoan independence. She was so generous and energetic that day didn't turn a hair, later that night, when some performers poked a hole in the priceless piece so they could get a glimpse of the audience.

Tiresa had roped Teo into helping cut and transport the palm leaves. He came with a bad grace, I thought, not contributing at all to the general festive occasion. When he asked for Jeanie, I sent him and his towering pile of fronds in the wrong direction. I didn't want his frowns spoiling such a glorious day.

Everyone came to the show. The whole palagi population and all the Samoan hierarchy. The Tivoli was packed. Crowds stood at the back and lined the side walls. Frangipani scented the air and our beautiful stage lights turned the garlands and the scenery into a magic grotto. Oh it was all glorious! Jeanie and I hugged each other as the curtain went up and the first beautiful chorus began. The woman who played Sina's mother took five minutes to die convulsively, a wedge of breadfruit stuck in her throat. It brought the house down. Howls of laughter. Next moment all were in tears Jeanie and me included at the sad lament that followed.

The lizard's rise from the sea a technical triumph earned a special round of applause.

Teo was there of course, without Ma'atoe. He didn't look any happier. When he approached us at the end of the show, pus.h.i.+ng his way through the boil of excited women, I made sure to stick with Jeanie.

'What's eating you, brother? Does marriage not suit?' Then I whispered in his ear. 'Take your long face away. This is a happy day for Jeanie, she needs this.'