At midday, when the sea was warm enough for Barker to bathe in, Mautu helped him to his feet and, propping him up, steered him down the paepae, through the breadfruit trees and bananas to the beach and into the water.

  When the salt water stung Barker’s healing sores and scabs he yelped with pain, bobbed up and down and wheeled round and round, slapping at the water, while Mautu sat on a boulder laughing and telling him that was not the way of the courageous warrior.

  ‘It feels like a million knives!’ Barker cried.

  ‘Salt heals your wounds!’ Mautu called.

  Afterwards, Barker emerged unsteadily out of the water, and Mautu and Poto helped him across the soft sand. Barker would stand in the shade of the breadfruit trees, with the water weaving like brilliant worms down his wrinkled body, while Poto dried him carefully so as not to hurt the sores. Every time Barker winced, Poto said, ‘E, you’re a coward!’

  When they reached the paepae Peleiupu handed Barker a dry ie lavalava and returned to the back of the fale while he stripped off and put it on. Poto then drew the curtain across the fale. Behind it, Barker lay down and his wife dabbed coconut oil into his healing tatau, soothing the stinging pain.

  ‘You need haircut and shave,’ Mautu suggested at the end of the second week.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling him,’ Poto said.’ He’s looking like a real savage.’

  Barker pulled the two long plaits that were his beard, then the thick ponytail that was his hair, grinning. ‘You cut it then,’ he said to Mautu.

  ‘I don’t know how to,’ said Mautu. Peleiupu wondered why her father had lied, then remembered Barker was a papalagi and a person’s head was sacred.

  ‘Then I won’t have it cut!’

  ‘Poto can do it.’

  ‘I’ll go and get the scissors and comb,’ Poto said, and hurried off.

  The scissors gleamed in Barker’s right hand as he reached back with his left hand, gripped his ponytail and pulled it around his neck. Quickly, heavily, he cut through it. ‘Don’t! Your hair’s going to look terrible!’ Poto cried.

  Dangling it like a dead sea eel in front of Mautu’s face, Barker said, ‘See, it is very easy.’ He twirled the ponytail around once and then spun it out of the fale. It floated slowly and lay on the paepae. Handle first, he extended the scissors to Mautu, who edged away. Barker gripped the bottom ends of his beard, opened the scissors and pushed the V-shaped mouth across the plaits just under his chin.

  Before he could cut it, Mautu said, ‘Don’t!’ Barker smiled as he handed Mautu the scissors. Poto gave him the large yellow comb. They all went to the back of the fale and Barker sat down on a chair. ‘Short — I want it short,’ he told Mautu.

  Peleiupu noticed that Mautu was sweating as he unplaited Barker’s hair and combed it with long careful strokes. The first snips of the scissors were hesitant, afraid. ‘Not enough — be braver!’ Barker egged him on. The scissors snipped and snapped and made long cuts that sounded like paper being ripped. Soon Mautu was humming to the scissors’ rhythm, and the hair tumbled.

  ‘Getting old,’ Barker said, picking up a handful of hair and rubbing it between his fingers. ‘Nearly all grey.’ He flung the hair at Poto and Peleiupu, who laughed. ‘Shorter!’ he said to Mautu.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I want to look younger, a new man.’

  The mat under them was growing thick, furry hair as Mautu snipped away. Soon it was a blanket of gold flecked with sparkling grey: a throne appropriate for the young prince Barker was being transformed into as his enormous camouflage of hair shrank.

  ‘How do I look?’ Barker asked Peleiupu and Poto.

  ‘Beautiful!’ Peleiupu replied in Samoan.

  ‘Hear that, Mautu? Your princess thinks I’m beautiful!’

  ‘She does not know ugliness when she sees it!’ Poto joked.

  ‘You’re envious, that’s all!’ Barker countered. They all laughed.

  As Mautu set to work on Barker’s beard Peleiupu watched more intensely, eager to see what Barker looked like without it.

  ‘Don’t come any closer!’ Barker said. Peleiupu looked around. The whole blond, cats’-eyed tribe of Barker’s children was gazing at their father. ‘If you’re going to watch, then remain silent,’ he instructed them.

  ‘Yes, don’t make a sound,’ Poto cautioned.

  The children sat down at the back posts. Barker shut his eyes and withdrew into his thoughts. The scissors continued to free his face.

  ‘Beautiful!’ Peleiupu murmured a while later as Mautu dropped his arms to his sides and stepped back to admire his work.

  ‘Yes, he looks less savage and pagan now,’ Poto said, holding her husband’s shoulders. Barker’s eyes blinked open; their piercing greenness was no longer lost in his now youthful face.

  ‘Yes, you’re handsome!’ Mautu chuckled. ‘I cut twenty years off your age!’

  ‘I feel naked,’ said Barker, running his fingers over his face and through his hair. ‘Naked! The air feels cold on my scalp.’

  ‘My pagan friend, you are young again!’ laughed Mautu, sitting down. ‘Isn’t he, Poto?’

  Poto slapped Barker’s shoulders playfully. ‘Yes, you look good again.’

  Picking up handfuls of hair from the mat, Barker laughed and said, ‘Gold. Gold. Gold!’ The hair scattered round the fale as he tossed it up into the air. Then he asked, ‘Do I look bald? Do I?’ Mautu shook his head. ‘You’re lying!’ he shouted.

  ‘Ask your children,’ Mautu suggested.

  Barker cupped his hands to his head and called, ‘Children, come closer!’ They did. ‘Do I look bald — and ugly?’ he asked. Mautu, Poto and Peleiupu looked at the children. ‘Do I?’ Barker repeated.

  Tavita, the eldest son, shook his head. The others copied him. The younger ones giggled. ‘Come!’ Barker called, stretching his arms out to them. ‘Come to your handsome father!’ Except for Tavita, the others scuttled across the fale into his arms. In a moment he was scooping up handfuls of cut hair and sprinkling it over them as though he was baptising them. They laughed and hugged him. Peleiupu looked up at Poto. She was trembling, almost crying.

  Peleiupu glanced at her father. His eyes were brimming with tears. This was the first time they had seen Barker showing any real affection, in public, for his children. She walked out of the fale.

  ‘See that? You like it?’ she heard Barker saying to his children. She saw him lifting up the side of his ie lavalava and displaying his tatau. ‘Your father is brave, eh?’ They ohhhed and nodded.

  Barker quickly gained weight and grew stronger. His tatau healed, and every time it was oiled it shone brightly against his pale skin and was envied by the young men of Satoa. He didn’t wear papalagi clothes any more, he lived in the fale instead of the store, he went everywhere barefoot and spoke Samoan most of the time. Because they were with him almost every day, Mautu and Peleiupu did not consider this transformation unusual, but it provided the basis for hilarious, often cruel commentary among other Satoans.

  For instance among the matai: ‘Barker, our papalagi, doesn’t want to be a papalagi any more!’ one said.

  ‘No, his lordship is now a tattooed savage who isn’t a palagi or Samoan or aristocrat!’ another wit remarked.

  ‘… But his tatau is exceptional!’ a just matai objected.

  ‘It is the beautiful work of Satan, you mean!’ A deacon cut the just matai’s justice from under his bare feet. The just matai, who always paid his debts at Barker’s store promptly, did not want to commit heresy so he remained silent and promised himself the pleasure of telling Barker what the deacon, who had a large debt with Barker, had said.

  ‘Pity our palagi no longer wears trousers!’

  ‘And boots …’

  ‘And his lovely blond beard …’

  ‘And his strong gun!’ The married women, who were inclined towards bawdiness, improvised during one of their group mat-weaving sessions, without Poto.

  ‘Pity he’s now so thin …’

  ‘And small …’

  ‘And without his large pink tongue …’

  ‘Which he was so expert at using …’

  ‘For what?’ an innocent interjected.

  ‘Why, for speaking English!’ an experienced matron replied. The fale shook with an earthquake of laughter.

  Among the taulele’a, who admired Barker’s tatau but refused to admit it to one another, the gossip was more serious and therefore nasty: ‘The illegitimate lord thinks he’s brave!’ the puny son of one matai said.

  ‘Yes, he thinks he’s got liver like us Samoans!’

  ‘No liver, that is!’

  ‘Bet you he used some magic palagi potion to kill the pain!’

  ‘Yes, bet you that weak palagi did that!’

  ‘Let’s go and pull off his ie lavalava and see his ugly tatau!’ the puny son of a matai suggested. Silence.

  ‘Yes, let’s!’ a few others replied.

  ‘Yes, let’s go tonight, whip off his ie lavalava and see his ugly tatau!’ the puny one encouraged them.

  But, alas, no one wanted to be encouraged any further: they knew how expert Barker was with his guns and fists.

  Among the unmarried women and girls there was agreement (not voiced for their male folk to hear) that Barker, once a weak papalagi, wasn’t weak any more: he was carrying a tatau, uniform of courage; he was now also quite handsome without his beard and ugly hairiness.

  Nearly all the children of Satoa were afraid of Barker: he was a papalagi, part aitu and part devil; that’s why he was so pale and hairy and spoke devil-like Samoan.

  Parents and elders used him to frighten their children into obedience. ‘You want the palagi to come and eat you?’ they frightened disobedient children to sleep.

  ‘You want the palagi to come and steal you?’ The terrified child either screamed louder, frail heart threatening to burst with hysteria, or swallowed his tears and nearly drowned in his own fright.

  Or in some particularly imaginative aiga, when a child was imaginative enough to ask his parents where he had come from, they told him, ‘We bought you at Barker’s store.’ If the child started whimpering, the parent consoled him, ‘Don’t worry, we had to pay a lot of money for you — that shows we love you very much!’

  In those homes ruled by extraordinarily imaginative sadists, after whipping an errant child into uncontrollable screaming and then whipping him some more to try to stop his screaming, the sadist pulled the hysterical child towards Barker’s store, all the while threatening, ‘If you don’t stop crying I’ll sell you to the palagi!’ If the child didn’t stop — and it didn’t matter if he was no longer able to — the sadist shouted, ‘I’m going to ask the palagi to eat you if you don’t stop now!’ If the child didn’t stop, the sadist dragged him nearer to Barker’s store, and only desisted when the child sobbed for mercy.

  Now that he was slimmer, without his shock of hair and with a brave tatau, and he spoke better, less angry Samoan, Barker wasn’t so scary a devil — but he was still a devil to watch out for. No matter how fiercely, adamantly, persuasively, and sometimes angrily Peleiupu and Arona defended Barker to other people, they were nearly always left with the infuriating feeling that their listeners had not believed anything they had explained. Not a word of it.

  ‘How do I make our people believe that Barker is not a foreigner and a papalagi to be frightened of?’ Peleiupu asked Mautu not long after Barker got his tatau.

  ‘Do they treat him like that?’ Mautu asked, surprised.

  ‘They don’t accept him — they see him only as a papalagi.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ sighed Mautu. ‘He’s my friend. I don’t see him as a papalagi.’

  ‘What about when you first met him?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I did see his colour then.’

  ‘Our people have never gone beyond that. Not even now that he has a tatau.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why he got it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she retreated.

  The next morning she noticed that Mautu was specially caring for Barker.

  ‘We have a request to make,’ Barker said in Samoan. Mautu nodded. ‘We want … we want our children to attend your school.’

  ‘Haven’t you been teaching them yourself?’ Mautu asked.

  ‘No, he’s taught them little. They’re little savages. They can’t read or write,’ Poto said.

  ‘Not even Tavita?’ Mautu asked Barker.

  Barker shook his head. ‘I wanted my children to be free of European “civilisation” …’

  ‘Even its learning?’

  ‘Especially that. But I now know that savages, in particular “noble savages”, are becoming obsolete. It would be criminal for me to make savages of my children in a world that is Christian and quickly converting to papalagi ways and diseases.’ He paused. ‘Yes, it would be criminal to leave them to the mercy of the literate, civilised savages from Europe.’ He patted Poto’s shoulder. She pressed against him.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Mautu replied.

  ‘Mautu, even in our remote village we are not safe any more from so-called civilisation. I want my children to be armed with the weapons of reading, writing, arithmetic, science, arrogance, money and guns.’

  ‘I want my children to be educated,’ Poto insisted.

  ‘Don’t worry, Poto, I’m sure Mautu and Pele and Lalaga will turn them into well-groomed, highly literate savages!’ Barker laughed.

  On Monday afternoon, just before classes began, eight of Barker’s children arrived at Mautu’s school. The group reminded Peleiupu of a scared brood of piglets. Lalaga got Peleiupu to record their names and ages in the thick exercise book that was the school roll. By the time she had extracted the names and recorded them, the other students had arrived and were gathered around the Barker children, trying not to be too obvious in their surprised scrutiny of them. The Barker children were unique with their tattered ie lavalava and clothes, their uncut blond tresses that flowed down their backs, and their golden tans and cats’ eyes. As odd as their father, they thought.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ Lalaga asked the Barker children who looked at Tavita, the eldest. Tavita shook his head. The others followed suit. ‘It doesn’t matter; we use Samoan in our classes.’

  No one present that day would forget the unusual names of the Barker children. For weeks they would mimic Peleiupu’s pronunciation of the names, stringing them out as if they were reciting a nursery rhyme: ‘David Dennis, Anna Arabel, Elizabeth Elinor, James Jason, Frances Florence, Michael Mason, Ronald Reginald, and Genevieve Gwen.’ Some would sing the names and laugh.

  ‘For our school your names will be: Tavita, Ana, Elisapeta, Semisi, Faranisisi, Mikaele, Roni and Siniva,’ Lalaga told the Barker children. ‘You will all be in my class. Don’t worry — I didn’t start my learning until I was fifteen. Mautu started even later. Work hard and you’ll catch up to the others.’ As she looked at them she remembered Barker’s story about the Inca king who was covered with gold. She was surprised they were so shy and quiet: she had heard they were rude, disrespectful and without shame — replicas of their father.

  ‘They’re not afraid of the other children; they always fight together and they don’t give in!’ Peleiupu told Lalaga that evening.

  Most Satoans would refer to that surprising day as ‘The Morning the Tattooed British Lord’s Heirs Started to Learn the Alphabet’.

  The Alia

  ‘He’s — he’s caught our Disease,’ Arona said. They were alone in the school fale; their students were cleaning the grounds.

  ‘Who?’ asked Peleiupu, continuing to write on the blackboard. For almost a year Arona had been teaching a junior class. He was about fifteen.

  ‘Barker.’ The name slipped like a startled fish into Peleiupu’s hearing and, for a moment, she didn’t want to know it was there. She glanced at him; he was refusing to look at her. ‘He’s got the Disease of Satoa!’ he whispered.

  ‘How do you know?’ She was breathing in the sweet scent of frangipani. She noticed the sun was caught in the embrace of luminous clouds.

  ‘Tavita and I have been with him most afternoons. He’s been teaching us about ships.’ He waited for her.

  ‘Does Mautu know?’ she asked. The smell was insinuating itself, like the roots of weeds, down her throat.

  ‘No, Barker has told no one else.’

  ‘What about Tavita, does he know?’

  ‘No. I’ve told no one but you.’

  ‘Mautu will know what to do,’ she offered.

  ‘I promised Barker I would not tell anyone. He’s taught me many wonderful things,’ he said. She didn’t want to hear him. ‘Many things about the sea and the stars and ships.’

  ‘They’re returning to class,’ she said. He got up. ‘He’s been very good to us, Pele.’ He walked off.

  The students were entering the fale. ‘Be quiet!’ she ordered.

  They stopped talking at once.

  That evening after lotu, while they were having their meal, Lalaga asked Mautu why he hadn’t been seeing Barker lately. Mautu told everyone that Barker was too busy designing a large alia he was going to build.

  ‘Arona’s been helping him,’ Lalaga said.

  ‘Is he teaching you how to design ships?’ Mautu asked Arona, who was sitting with the other young people at the back posts. Arona nodded.

  ‘Tell us what Barker has been teaching you,’ Mautu asked Arona.

  So while the elders ate, Arona detailed, in his ponderous, thorough manner, how he and Tavita were learning how to use a compass, a sextant and the stars to steer by. He gave the English and Samoan names of the stars. His eyes glowed as he described Barker’s alia, giving the exact measurements, the revolutionary changes Barker was introducing to the traditional design, the timber to be used, and the other qualities needed for the alia to come alive. Not once did he lose his way, or the attention of his audience. Peleiupu found herself flowing with his tale, and forgetting that Barker was dying.

  ‘And when the alia is built has Barker asked you to sail with him?’ Lalaga asked. Peleiupu felt Arona looking at her. She daren’t look at him.