‘She’s treating us like animals!’ Arona said.

  ‘Perhaps we can do something about her,’ she suggested.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He stopped. The track meandered ahead through the long grass and tree stumps and a thick stand of mango trees into the thick tangle of rainforest and the sound of rushing water. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. His shadow, because the sun was now dropping behind Mt Vaea, was a swelling tide of blackness that flowed from his feet backwards over the track and clearing, and Peleiupu imagined it enveloping Mrs Pivot’s house and the east, where the sun rose in the mornings.

  As they entered the damp coolness of the rainforest she shivered, anticipating the cold of the mountain water in which she would soon be bathing. For an instant she was afraid for Mrs Pivot.

  Evening was falling quickly; Mt Vaea’s shadow covered the clearing and houses. Their presence, as they hurried back to the house through the grass, stirred the cicadas to life, and their shrill crying was soon a quivering chorus that shook the earth.

  Mrs Pivot wasn’t in the room. They put on their dry clothes, and Peleiupu hung their wet clothes on the outside line. Arona sat on the back steps and combed his hair. She came and sat on the veranda and, while they gazed up at the darkening mountain, listened to the cicadas and thought of Satoa and their parents at Salua.

  They became aware of Barker’s and Stenson’s laughter and conversation coming from the main house.

  ‘Let’s go and help her,’ she suggested.

  No one was in the kitchen. No sign of a meal being prepared. They could hear Mrs Pivot in the sitting room with the two men. Her laughter was high-pitched. Quietly, Peleiupu and Arona went around the house and, sitting in the shadows on the veranda, watched what was going on in the sitting room, oblivious to the mosquitoes stinging their flesh.

  Stenson and Barker sat at a small table in the middle of the room. On the table were two decanters of dark brown liquid. Both men, as they talked, drank from crystal glasses; their faces flushed red as though sunburnt. Behind Stenson, perched in a cane chair near the door into the passageway, was Mrs Pivot. She refilled the men’s glasses every time they were empty, and joined in their conversation occasionally.

  Peleiupu soon noted that as Stenson drank the whisky, his jade-white complexion became suffused with a healthy pink glow, his manner became more sure and definite, his voice assumed a freer, more melodious tone, and he laughed easily. The whisky wasn’t awakening violent demons in Stenson as Mautu had predicted, Peleiupu observed. It wasn’t transforming Barker into a violent beast either: he was sinking into a mellow sadness.

  She concentrated on what they were saying. ‘… At times they’re like precocious children — wilful, capricious, cruel, quick to violent anger. Like children they can also be forgiving, generous, totally without fear or reason. In fact, they live more through intuition and their senses than through reason,’ Barker said.

  ‘But isn’t it true they have a highly complex social system?’

  ‘Of course, but it evolved over centuries through trial and error — not primarily through thought. There is little innovation; they fear any innovation and change. There is too much respect for customs and traditions …’

  Arona stirred beside her. ‘It’s getting cold,’ he whispered.

  ‘Get your shirt,’ she told him. He disappeared into the darkness.

  A few minutes later, he handed her her sleeping sheet and she wrapped it around herself.

  ‘They’re terribly arrogant,’ Barker was saying. ‘They consider themselves more civilised than any other race …’

  ‘Including the enlightened, civilised English?’ laughed Stenson.

  ‘Yes, even us devils! Cheers!’ They drained their glasses. Mrs Pivot refilled them.

  ‘And like human beings everywhere else, they are extremely racist …’

  ‘But racism is based on colour.’

  ‘So it is, my friend. Their name for Negro is Meauli, Black-thing, an object — not human. They even make fun of their kin who are darker-skinned…’

  ‘So it is based on colour!’

  Nodding slowly, Barker raised his glass and said, ‘But who doesn’t treat others as their inferiors? Here’s to my natives and their tolerance and hospitality — and they are kind to me!’ They clinked glasses and drank.

  ‘Is that why you’ve chosen to live among them?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ sighed Barker. ‘At first, I had to — I was shipwrecked there physically and spiritually. I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere. And I’ve lost the courage to begin the circle, the search, all over again.’ He stopped and, for a few heavy minutes, Stenson waited for him to continue. After drinking another glass, Barker said, ‘I was definitely not returning to England and Europe, to the spiritual poverty, the meanness, the sick anxiety of an industrialised society drowning in its own self-love and poisonous vapour, in its ideal of Progress … But don’t misunderstand me: I didn’t choose to stay here because I’d discovered the South Seas paradise, the El Dorado, the Noble Savage that Europe has been searching for since the Fall. No. I came to trade, to try and make a killing — and the “noble savages” will cheat you like anyone else. I was shipwrecked and, for a hellish while, thought I was going mad in all that lushness and kindness. I lived with a chief’s daughter for protection and so I could continue trading, and, to my surprise, found I couldn’t leave. Today I often think of escaping. But to what? To where?’ He emptied his glass and thumped it on the table. ‘I think I have become an integral part of Satoa, our village: I am their European trader, a useful pet, and, being a pagan, I’m their living proof of the Europeans’ sinfulness and inferiority!’ He motioned to Mrs Pivot and she refilled his glass. ‘I did find a friend, though — a remarkable man who accepts me for who I am, who sees past my being Satoa’s pet European. He is the father of the two exceptional children I brought today.’ Remembering the children, he asked Mrs Pivot where they were.

  ‘They’ve been fed and are now asleep. No need to worry about them,’ she said.

  Barker described to Stenson how he had taught Mautu English and how he, in turn, had taught his wife and children and a few others in Satoa. ‘Now I have people in Satoa I can talk to, especially Mautu and his children, who have an insatiable hunger to learn about the world. He is already far ahead of me in his knowledge of theology and the sciences.’ He shut his eyes as if he were in pain, lay back in his chair and said, ‘Why do we always end up discussing why we are here in this godforsaken group of islands? Why?’

  ‘Because it is where we are. And you do belong here now!’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Barker, wiping his forehead with his shirt sleeve. ‘But what is the meaning of it all? To be stranded on these islands on this exiled planet suspended in the ocean of God’s loneliness?’ Peleiupu saw the glitter of tears in his eyes. He sat up. ‘And why should I worry about it always? Why?’ He jumped to his feet. ‘You are the author, the thinker — you should know why we’re here. After all, you have told me countless times that you sailed here to die.’

  ‘I propose a toast to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria!’ Stenson said, rising to his unsteady feet. ‘May she continue to produce more expensive heirs!’

  ‘And to the Royal Stud, Prince Albert. May he continue to find the energy!’

  The whisky sloshed in their glasses when they clinked them together, hard. They gulped down their drinks and slumped back into their chairs. Mrs Pivot replenished their glasses and took the decanter back to her seat. Peleiupu and Arona watched her pour herself a drink and then, unnoticed by the men, drink it quickly.

  From then on, Mrs Pivot drank with the men without their knowledge. She drank one to their every three, then one to their two. Her movements became more restricted; every drink made her sit more still like stone. What was she afraid of? Peleiupu wondered.

  ‘Every time we talk, my friend, we end up wallowing in our maudlin self-pity,’ Stenson was saying. His speech was slow now, and Peleiupu had to concentrate to understand him. ‘We were reared on God, Queen, country, empire, and our divine right as Englishmen to rule the world. But look where you and I are.’ His delicate hands swept the room. ‘Cut off from God, Queen and country, in exile in the freedom we searched for, but we feel so alone, derelicts abandoned — yes, abandoned — in what you so poetically identified as “God’s ocean of loneliness”.’ He sank deeper into his chair. ‘But it is spiritually good,’ he said. ‘Sir, it is where I want to be.’

  ‘Enough of this picking at our own boils!’ exclaimed Barker. He jumped to his feet, straightened the sleeves and lapels of his imaginary dinner jacket, extended his arms as if he were holding a dancing partner, then, humming a Viennese waltz, started waltzing around the room in time to the music. ‘Madam, may I have the pleasure of this dance?’ He bowed to Mrs Pivot, who raised her head, stood up, back ramrod straight, and moved into his arms, her face fixed in a radiant smile. To the tune of Barker’s humming and Stenson’s clapping, they danced round and round the room. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ called Stenson.

  To Peleiupu, Mrs Pivot appeared as light as a dry leaf caught in the strong arms of the breeze. Soon she was Mrs Pivot on tiptoes whirling and whirling, her senses dizzy with the delight of the waltz.

  ‘They dance funny, don’t they?’ Arona remarked. Peleiupu tried to ignore him, though she was irritated by his reaction.

  Holding an imaginary partner, Stenson stepped onto the floor and danced after his friends. In the white lamplight his sweating eggshell whiteness looked ominously breakable. ‘Beautiful, beautiful!’ he kept saying. And Peleiupu danced with him. Round and round …

  Then unexpectedly Stenson seemed to ram into an invisible wall. For a moment he maintained his dance posture, as though he was hooked up by the light, then his knees buckled and he was clutching at his chest as he collapsed to the floor, where he squirmed and coughed, head flung back, face rippling with pain. Mrs Pivot rushed over and, kneeling beside him, pushed back his shoulders, held up his head and said, ‘Breathe, breathe, more deeply!’ He sucked in air through his mouth in one long gulp and out again. ‘Again!’ she instructed him. His coughing eased as he sucked in air and exhaled it. Sucked. Exhaled.

  Peleiupu, who’d rushed to the window when Stenson had fallen, clutched her sheet around her body. ‘I’ve told him to stop drinking!’ Mrs Pivot said to Barker, who was kneeling beside her, wiping Stenson’s forehead. ‘But he won’t listen!’

  ‘Does it happen often?’ Barker asked.

  ‘Yes, and getting worse. And you can’t do much about it.’ She loosened his cravat and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘He’s very ill but he acts as if he’s well.’ Stenson was breathing normally again, Peleiupu observed. ‘He has little time left.’

  ‘Perhaps that is the way he wants it to be,’ Barker said.

  ‘But why? He has so much to live for. He must return to England: this country is bad for him!’

  ‘He doesn’t like England; he wants it to end here. Samoa is a beautiful place for that purpose, he keeps telling me …’

  ‘He must live!’ she insisted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For his family …’

  ‘He has no family, you know that!’ When she didn’t reply, he said, ‘Get his bed ready and I’ll bring him.’ She refused to rise. ‘You get his bed ready, now! He won’t be going to England — and neither will you.’

  Peleiupu saw tears on Mrs Pivot’s face as she sprang up and hurried out of the room.

  ‘Is this really what you want to be?’ Barker said to the sleeping Stenson, thrusting one arm under his shoulders and the other under his knees. ‘It’s so far away from home, isn’t it?’ He lifted him up.

  Peleiupu and Arona crept across the veranda to the windows of the front bedroom. Mrs Pivot was straightening the pillows and sheets and mosquito net.

  Barker came in and placed Stenson on the bed. Mrs Pivoy started taking off his shirt, remembered Barker was present and looked at him. Barker backed out of the bedroom.

  As she watched Mrs Pivot stripping off Stenson’s clothes, Peleiupu concluded that Mrs Pivot was obviously used to doing it. Her hands lingered as she massaged blood back into Stenson’s arms, then his chest and belly.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Arona asked.

  ‘Healing him,’ Peleiupu replied. She gasped audibly when Mrs Pivot bent down and kissed Stenson’s sleeping mouth. Peleiupu glanced at Arona, whose eyes were wide with fascination.

  Mrs Pivot pulled away from Stenson, drew the sheet up to his neck, tucked in the mosquito net, dimmed the lamp, then, before leaving, whispered, ‘Don’t leave me, please!’

  In the soft glow of the bedside lamp, Stenson, in the white net, looked as if he were incubating in a luminous cocoon: Sleeping Beauty, shrouded in silk, caught in her enchanted sleep; the Magician of Words would wake only to the kiss of a true princess who wasn’t Mrs Pivot, thought Peleiupu.

  ‘I’m going to sleep,’ whispered Arona.

  They hurried to Mrs Pivot’s quarters.

  ‘A lot of mosquitoes,’ Peleiupu complained.

  ‘You use the net she gave us.’

  She spread his mat by the door, then returned to her net at the other side of the room. He turned down the lamp.

  ‘She’ll be angry!’ she cautioned as he untied Mrs Pivot’s net. He ignored her. He even got Mrs Pivot’s pillows. She watched as he tied the net above his own mat and got into it.

  Aloud she said a short prayer and lay back.

  ‘You are not to go there again tonight!’

  ‘To where?’ she pretended not to understand.

  ‘It is not for your eyes!’ It was final. She was gripped by a sudden shame, remembering her curiosity as she had watched the two men and Mrs Pivot, and, most shameful of all, her own brother had witnessed her enjoyment of it.

  A while later, as the dull roar of the river was brought to her by the breeze, she heard Arona slip out of the room. In her mind, she watched his feet leaving wet footprints in the grass and on the boards of the veranda.

  For a long time she couldn’t sleep as she tried exorcising from her thoughts what she imagined Arona was watching.

  The sharp thudding cut into her dreams. She woke. Bright morning. Arona had put away his net and mat; Mrs Pivot’s bed hadn’t been slept in. Peleiupu crawled quickly to the open door.

  Arona was chopping firewood behind the stables. She sprang up to go and ask him; knelt down again when she remembered that the discussion of such matters between brother and sister was forbidden.

  When she saw Arona going up into the kitchen with an armful of firewood she dressed and hurried to the kitchen. There was a large black kettle on the woodstove that Arona was stoking with firewood. He just glanced at her, then back at the fire. She got cups and saucers and a teapot, the tablecloth and started setting the table. ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked.

  ‘Still asleep.’

  ‘They drank too much.’ No reply. She got a loaf out of the bread bin and started slicing it.

  ‘The kettle is boiling now,’ he said. She put some tea leaves into the teapot and he poured the boiling water over them. The steam stung her cheeks momentarily.

  ‘Shall we wait for them?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, sitting down at the table. She tossed him a rag and told him to wipe off his sweat.

  ‘She mightn’t like us eating first,’ she insisted. He glanced at her. She sat down, sugared the whole teapot, and filled their cups. She said grace.

  She sensed a new confidence in him. She buttered a pile of bread that he ate ravenously, with four cups of tea. She refused to watch him, but when she remembered Mrs Pivot, she didn’t resent him his new-found independence.

  While she washed the dishes, Arona sat at the table, picking at his teeth with his fingers.

  Barker’s bedroom door opened and, before it closed again, they heard his sharp snoring. Footsteps approached the kitchen. Peleiupu glanced at Arona.

  The doorknob turned. The door was pulled back. Mrs Pivot’s sweaty musky odour wafted in. The night had transformed the neat, flawlessly dressed Mrs Pivot into a dishevelled stranger. When she yawned, her mouth seemed to fill the doorway. She hadn’t seen them. She stood in the doorway, picking the sleep out of her eyes, then, noticing the fire, she saw them.

  ‘We have eaten,’ Arona said.

  Yawning again, she slumped into a chair at the table, rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes. ‘Get me some water,’ she said. Peleiupu brought her a glass. Eyes still closed, Mrs Pivot emptied the glass in one long motion. ‘Have you made any tea?’

  ‘It’s in front of you,’ Arona replied.

  ‘Pour me a cup,’ she instructed. He just sat there. ‘A cup of tea!’ she repeated. Peleiupu moved towards the table but, when Arona looked at her, she stopped. Mrs Pivot opened her eyes. ‘Pour me a cup of tea!’

  ‘The pot is in front of you!’ Arona challenged.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Pour your own tea!’ Arona emphasised each word.

  For an instant Peleiupu thought Mrs Pivot was going to slap him. ‘You’re very cheeky,’ she chastised him. She fumbled with the teapot handle. ‘Very cheeky!’ She looked away from him. He continued staring at her. Her hands trembled as she poured and some tea splashed onto the tablecloth. Grasping her cup with both hands, she drank. ‘It’s too sweet! You shouldn’t sugar it in the teapot!’ She looked at Peleiupu. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Me,’ Peleiupu replied.

  ‘Very stupid!’ she said in English. ‘But what do you expect from Samoans from the back?!’ Peleiupu knew that Mrs Pivot believed they couldn’t speak English.

  ‘I saw you last night,’ Arona said in English. The air seemed to solidify around Mrs Pivot. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. ‘I saw you and Mr Barker.’