We talked for a bit about the terrible time I had, then I said curiously: “You’ve had to go a fair way to recruit labour for this job?”
“Had to, my boy, had to.” It was Witherspoon who answered. “Indians no damn good-sullen, uncooperative, suspicious, haven’t the physique. Fijians have, but they’d have a heart attack if you suggested they do any work. Same with any white man you could pick up-loafers and wasters to a man. But the Chinese are different.”
“Best workers I’ve ever had,” Hewell confirmed. He had a curious trick of speaking without appearing to move his mouth. “When it comes to building railroads and driving tunnels you can’t beat ’em. Never have built the western railroads of America without them.”
I made some suitable remark and peered around me. Witherspoon said sharply: “What are you looking for, Bentall?”
“Relics, of course.” The right note of surprise. “Be interesting to see one being excavated from the rock.”
“Won’t see none today, I’m afraid,” Hewell boomed. “Lucky to find anything once a week. Ain’t that so, professor?”
“If we’re very lucky,” Witherspoon agreed. “Well, well, mustn’t hold you back, Hewell, mustn’t hold you back. Just brought Bentall along to show him what all the bangs were about. We’ll see you at suppertime.”
Witherspoon led the way back through the mine, out into the brilliant sunshine and down to his house, chattering away all the time, but I wasn’t listening any more, I’d heard and seen all I wanted to hear and see. When we got back he excused himself on the ground that he had some work to catch up on and I went to see Marie. She was sitting up in bed with a book in her hands and there wasn’t anything much the matter with her that I could see. I said: “I thought you said you were going to sleep?”
“I said I wasn’t going to move. Different thing altogether.” She lay back luxuriously on her pillow. “Warm day, cool breeze, sound of the wind in the palms, the sea on the surf and all the blue waters of the lagoon and white sand out there. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Sure. What’s that you’re reading there?”
“Book on Fiji. Very interesting.” She gestured at the books piled on the table beside her. “Some more on Fiji, some on archaeology. Tommy-the Chinese boy-brought them to me. You should read them.”
“Later. How are you feeling?”
“Took your time in getting round to ask me, didn’t you?”
I frowned at her, at the same time jerking my head backwards. She caught on fast.
“I’m sorry, dear.” The impulsive cry, very well done. “Shouldn’t have said that. Much better, I’m feeling much better. Right as rain tomorrow. Had a nice walk round?” The banal touch, like the cry, perfectly done.
I was in the middle of telling her about the nice walk I’d had when there came a diffident tap on the door, a clearing of the throat, and Witherspoon came in. By my reckoning he’d been outside that door for about three minutes. Behind him I could see the brown-skinned forms of John and James, the two Fijian boys.
“Good evening, Mrs. Bentall, good evening. How are you? Better, yes, better? You certainly look better.” His eyes fell on the books by the bedside and he checked and frowned. “Where did these come from, Mrs. Bentall?”
“I do hope that I haven’t done anything wrong, Professor Witherspoon,” she said anxiously. “I asked Tommy for something to read and he brought me these. I’d just started the first one and-”
“Those are rare and valuable editions,” he said testily. “Very rare, very rare. Personal library and all that, we archaeologists never lead them out. Tommy had no right- well, never mind. I have an excellent selection of novels, detective fiction, you can have what you like.” He smiled, the incident magnanimously forgotten. “I’ve come to bring you some good news. You and your husband are to have the guest house for yourselves during the remainder of your stay here. I’ve had John and James here at work most of the day clearing it up.”
“Why, Professor!” Marie stretched out her hand and took his. “How very, very nice. It’s so kind of you-it’s really far too kind of you.”
“Nothing at all, my dear, nothing at all!” He patted her hand and held on to it longer than was necessary, about ten times longer than was necessary. “I just thought you might appreciate the privacy. I dare say”-this with a crinkling of half-closed eyes which I took to be a dyspeptic twinge, but it wasn’t dyspepsia, it was meant as a roguish twinkle-“that you haven’t been married very long. Now, tell me, Mrs. Bentall, will you be fit enough to join us for supper tonight?”
She could be as quick as a cat. She caught the all but imperceptible shake of my head and she wasn’t even looking in my direction.
“I’m so sorry, Professor Witherspoon.” It takes some doing to combine a dazzling smile with a tone of deep regret but she managed it. “There’s nothing I’d like better, but I really do feel so weak yet. If I could be excused until the morning I-”
“Of course. But of course. Mustn’t overdo the convalescence, must we?” He seemed to be on the point of grabbing her hand again, but thought better of it. “We’ll send a tray along. And we’ll also send you along. No need to stir.”
At a signal from him the two Fijians caught an end of the bed apiece and lifted, not such a feat, as the bed itself probably didn’t weigh even thirty pounds. The Chinese boy came in to carry all the clothes we had, the professor led the way and there was nothing for me to do but to take her hand as we walked between the two houses, bend over her solicitously and murmur: “Ask him for a torch.”
I didn’t suggest a reason why she should ask for one, for the excellent reason that none occurred to me, but she handled it beautifully. When the professor had dismissed the bearers and was expatiating at length on how the guest house was built entirely from the products of two trees, the pan-danus and coconut palm, she interrupted diffidently to ask: “Is there-is there a bathroom here, Professor Witherspoon?”
“But of course, my dear. How remiss of me. Down the steps, to the left and it’s the first small hut you come to. The next is the kitchen. For obvious reasons you can’t have fire and water in houses like these.”
“Of course not. But-but doesn’t it get rather dark at night here? I mean-”
“God bless my soul! What must you think of me? A torch-of course you shall have a torch. You shall have it after our evening meal.” He glanced at his watch. “Expect you in about half an hour, Bentall?” A few more platitudes, a smirk at Marie and he bustled briskly away.
The westering sun had already dipped behind the shoulder of the mountain but the heat of the day still lingered in the air. For all that Marie shivered and pulled the coverlet high about her shoulders. She said: “Would you care to let the side-screens down? Those trade winds aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Not when the darkness comes.”
“Let the screen down? And have a dozen listening ears pressed against them in a couple of minutes?”
“You-you think so?” she said slowly. “You feel there’s something wrong here? With Professor Witherspoon?”
“I’ve long passed the feeling stage. I know damn well there’s something wrong. I’ve known it ever since we arrived here.” I pulled a chair up to her bed and took her hand: a hundred to one that we had a keen and interested audience and I didn’t want to disappoint them. “What are you going on? Feeling fey again or womanly intuition or hard facts?”
“Don’t be unpleasant,” she said quietly. “I’ve already apologised for my foolish behaviour-just the fever, as you said. This is intuition, or a hunch-quite different. This ideal spot, those smiling Fijian boys, the marvellous Chinese servant, that Hollywood dream of what an English archaeologist should look like and behave-it’s all too idyllic, too perfect. You get the impression of-of a carefully maintained facade. It’s too dreamlike, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean you’d feel better if you saw the professor roaring and cursing round the place or saw someone lying under a stoop and drinking from the neck of a whisky bottle?”
“Well, something like that.”
“I’ve heard the South Pacific often affects people like that at first. The sense of unreality, I mean. Don’t forget I’ve seen the professor several times on the screen. He’s just as large as life. And if you want perfection marred, just wait until the boyfriend, Hewell, happens by.”
“Why, what’s he like?”
“Couldn’t describe him. You’re too young to have seen the King Kong films. You won’t mistake him though. And while you’re watching out for him I want you to check the number of people who come and go into the workers’ hut. That’s why I didn’t want you to come across for supper.”