Derek was furious. He had just lost an argument with his
wife over the design of the island's new Christmas postage stamp. The stamp showed a woman, Mary the woman of Christmas, naturally enough, for wasn't that what it was all about, the birth of Christ and without a woman that wasn't possible. Forget about the man, he was hardly required, especially these days with artificial this, and artificial that. However it was the choice of painting. He'd wanted something traditional, by Rembrandt, but the chosen image was to be a reproduction of a local's crude painting, with Mary as a brown Polynesian. He couldn't argue with that, but it wasn't - traditional. Women!
- A man just didn't have any decision-making powers after he married. Women took over a man's life, changed him, moulded him, chose his ties and his socks.
- Derek was the High Commissioner and he put forward the views of his government to the island government, headed of course by a female prime minister who listened because most of their income came through his government, but the prime minister listened more intently to the High Commissioner's wife than to him.
- Derek had showered and changed into slacks and a coloured shirt, plastic thongs. He'd go for a wander around the grounds before dinner.
- Almost sunset but it was still very warm. The lawns had been mowed earlier today by the Public Works mower boy. He liked the smell of new cut grass, and he enjoyed the fact that he hadn't had to mow. The grounds were neat and clean for the parliamentary garden party tomorrow.
- He passed the housegirl's quarters on the back terrace. The girls lived in a large room with two single beds, a chest of drawers. Next door was their shower and toilet, then the wash-house and a room where potatoes and onions and some bulk cased groceries were stored. The louver blades on the girl's shower had been broken and removed, he noticed idly - boys trying to look in? A line of bloomers - was that what they were called? Or were they scanties, or pants, hanging on a line with bright plastic pegs - what had happened to the old wooden pegs that had once been common - gone, like so many other objects.
- Derek stopped beside the big hibiscus busb in the corner beside the lounge, an enormous sprawling bush 4 metres high, its red blooms closed for the night, its branches intertwined, a tangle, perhaps like a human's life, some branches upright, some horizontal, some twisted and bent, but all seeking the light of the north and the sun.
- The two housegirls were cross-legged on the lawn, threading frangipani blossoms on to cotton for leis, a heady exciting aprhrodisiacal scent.
- "Dance tonight?" he said.
- Sala the young new girl lowered her head shyly.
- "Yes, Mister," Mele said almost lewdly. All her remarks were almost lewd, or was it only his imagination?
- Sala was a slim young hula girl, dressed in an old cut down dress which might have been his wife's at one time, faded pink, shapeless, too long, too wide. She was about 16, never looked either the wife or him in the eyes, different to Mele who was bold, stared insolently.
- Sala only whispered in reply when spoken to, but she walked twitching her hips, wriggling her stomach muscles provocatively.
- Mele dominated Sala, ordered her around the kitchen in a loud voice while she sat at the scrubbed table smoking cigarettes, feet up on a chair.
- Mele, big and brassy, Gauguin-like, wearing a pareu, one pull of the shoulder knot and it would fall. She slapped the food on the table with a flick of her massive hips, she stirred the dust in the dining room with her coconut-spine broom, always laughing, though he had heard her cursing the wood-fueled stove.
- The kitchen was always hot. The kettle boiling, pots bubbling, the smell of roasting mutton, no doubt a leg of old ewe, rams didn't survive, it was certainly a female world. The mint sauce bottle was on the dining room table. A man missed fresh mint sauce when he lived in the tropics; manufactured bottled sauce was a poor substitute.
- Mele had been married three times. "But not churched," she giggled. Sometimes the current husband would appear on her pay day, presumably to cadge cash. She had a new baby only a few weeks old. It was asleep in an old pram. Two of her children sometimes appeared for a day or so to spend time with their mother.
- Mele's hair had been combed out and fell to her waist. She was fat but she was not ugly. It had been said of Mele that if she threw one of her legs over you in bed she'd crush a man to death. It might not be an unpleasant death? He dismissed the thought.
- Derek had always been very correct towards the house staff, never allowing himself to be familiar, to give rise to the slightest suggestion of impropriety. And with these girls easy attitude towards love, it was so - easy.
- Mele had been with them for a long time but he'd never really noticed the succession of housegirls. They came and went regularly, pregnant or immigrating. He murmured soothing words when his wife railed against their excesses, their clumsiness, their extravagances, their stupidity, their forgetfulness, their Polynesian ways, there were always island girls willing to work for the expatriate.
- How many housegirls had they employed in all their years living on various islands? Scores, literally, they had washed his clothes, cooked his meals, made his tea, but he could hardly recall any of them. They had no pension plans, in many cases they got no holiday money, they worked seven days a week, all for the privilege of associating with an expatriate's family.
- He knew that in some expatriate households the housegirls were a cause of suspicion on the part of wives, but not in this one, he'd never looked at them. Strange, that. He stroked his chin. He needed a shave.
- The stringing of frangipani flowers was complete and there was a burst of high pitched laughter from Mele. Then the sound of the shower starting its thrumming and immediately the water pump started its thump thump to fill the header tank on its rock cement stand from the underground 20,000 gallon tank fed from the corrugated iron roof.
- He looked into the pump house, at the black electric motor and the green pump with its brass rod going in and out as the black driving belt rotated.
- Around the flat top of the underground concrete tank globular yellow and orange pawpaws hung from the many trees, some were rotting on the ground in the mile-a-minute weeds. He enjoyed pawpaw for breakfast, with a slice of lemon. There was one lone male pawpaw tree. He'd tried driving a nail into the trunk to change its sex. He had chopped the top off the trunk, said to be another way of making a pawpaw tree change to female and thus produce fruit, but without success.
- Nothing male in this compound, except the pawpaw and him. Maybe if somebody drove a nail into his trunk he'd change sex? Of course not, ridiculous thought.
- Why had he been trying to change the sex of the male pawpaw? He searched for the nail in the trunk, couldn't find it and it was still sprouting sterile flowers.
- The dinner table was set for the two of them. It was a lonely life. They'd sit in silence over the soup, the main course and the sweet.
- Sala served the meal for a change.
- "Mele gone out?" Derek asked.
- "Sala needs the practice."
- Sala was shy, slopped the soup, almost dropped the mutton, spilt the gravy.
- "It doesn't matter," his wife said quickly. The poor girl was obviously embarrassed, afraid of them.
- He always said that housegirls were generally a waste of money, they did little work, but their wages helped the island's economy. In years past every household had house girls, but the new houses had no quarters built for them, it was a changing age.
- The girls rose at dawn and lit the fire in the stove so there'd be heat for his bacon and eggs, but there was no longer any requirement for them to light the boiling copper daily to wash the white clothes which used to be common, there was an automatic washing machine now. And a dish washing machine and an electric water heater for hot water over the sink. And no children that required a baby sitter. And his wife did the cooking, mostly.
- His wife rang the small brass bell to signal they had
finished.
- "Coffee?" Derek asked.
- "We haven't any real coffee beans, the ship hasn't come."
- "Instant." He sighed. He had no newspapers from the last mail day to enjoy a read after the meal while he drank his coffee - even though he had rationed himself to one newspaper an evening.
- "You never make those refrigerator biscuits anymore."
- "You don't eat biscuits anymore, you say they make you fat."
- He went outside again.
- The cat stared at him from the loofah plant leaves, a female cat of course, and the dog eyed him, there were hens in the hen house, and no rooster. One of their old house girls had said there would never be any eggs without a rooster, but even she must have known that wasn't true, maybe she felt sorry for the hens - or sorry for roosters? Maybe they should get houseboys - but his wife would never entertain that idea.
- His wife certainly ruled the roost here, as did Polynesian women in most other homes. She might have been a hula girl years ago, thought only of dancing and playing the ukulele, and he had thought her meek, but she had straightened him out.
- She chaired the meetings of the Womens Action Group. What did women need an action group for, they already governed the island. Oh the men might be in the majority in the parliament, but their wives told them what to do. When asked for decisions, the parliament mumbled and he knew they had to consult their wives before any answer was forthcoming.
- He was just a figurehead. Useless! As useless as a male pawpaw tree.
- Why didn't they make his wife the High Commissioner and be done with it. He blanked the thought. That was almost a possibility, except that she wasn't slotted into the career structure, but even that could be arranged.
- Mele was sitting on the terrace in the gloom strumming her cheap Chinese-made green plastic ukulele.
- And look at that stray hen, strutting proudly. Damned cheek.
- The lights were on in most of the rooms in the house, curtains drawn, except for the housegirl's quarters which were a blaze of light through the open glass louvres. Sala was sitting on her bed, holding Mele's baby. The baby was naked. Sala was stark naked.
- He couldn't help it. He didn't really mean to stare, but the sight was so arresting, that he stopped, unconsciously, brought up short. And he didn't move on.
- They were a reminder of the Christmas stamp. And beautiful, the sound of the ukulele an appropriate accompaniment. Sala appeared to be singing. They both looked very beautiful. The scene almost brought tears to his eyes. He smiled, fondly. Sala reminded him of his wife at her age. He was wrong about the Christmas stamp. It would be today, not some centuries-old reproduction. The stamp would be popular with collectors.
- He hadn't realised the ukulele music had stopped.
- "You dirty old man," Mele said softly behind him.
- "What!" he yelped.
- He just looked at her in the gloom. He wanted to say something, he needed to say something. She was wrong. But he just looked at her, sadly, and shook his head. He walked away, down towards the water tank and the pawpaw trees. He'd sit there awhile under the male tree, just him and the tree with the nail in its trunk.
