The Gold Ring
This story, like its companion piece "Beginnings" is based on the story and characters in the film 'In a Savage Land'.
Mick, Evelyn, Philip and the other minor characters were created by Bill and Jennifer Bennett and belong to them. I have only borrowed them and I have borrowed some of their words too, because they were the best.
I hope they will not object too much.
In the film, Mick is played by Rufus Sewell, Evelyn by Maya Stange, and Philip by Martin Donovan.
Theirs are the faces I saw and voices I heard when I was writing this story.
The song "Begin the Beguine" that drummed through my head as well as Evelyn's, is the recording used in the film, that is the 1939 recording by Joe Loss and his orchestra.
I have rated this M a little steaminess and some swearing
.
Begin The Beguine
.
When they begin the Beguine
It brings back a sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendour,
It brings back a memory ever green.
I'm with you once more
Under the stars
And down by the shore
An orchestra's playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the Beguine.
To live it again is past all endeavour
Except when that tune touches my heart
And there we are swearing to love for ever
And promising never
Never to part.
What moments divine
What rapture serene
Till clouds came along to disperse
The joys we had tasted
And now when I hear people curse
The chance they have wasted
I know but too well what they mean.
Oh! Don't let them begin the Beguine
Let the love that was once a fire
Remain an ember
Let it sleep like the dead desire
I only remember
When they begin the Beguine.
Oh! Yes! Let them begin the Beguine
Make them play!
Till the stars that were there before
Return above you
Till you whisper to me once more
Darling I love you.
Then we'll suddenly know
What heaven we're in
When they begin the Beguine.
The Gold Ring
.
I sat in that dusty old assembly room, like so many I have sat in over the past years. Faded paint, bare boards, a battered old table piled with stacks of books, a projector, slides. a blackboard behind me, rows of chairs in front of me.
Like so many of the classrooms I have sat in, first in school, then University, first learning, then teaching. The same dust, chalk, the smell of books, of people in their damp clothes, the humidity. Outside, the tropical rain slashed down without cooling the air.
There had been a good crowd in this little town on the tip of Cape York Peninsula, the last stop on my lecture tour before home.
Home! Home!
I had taken this lecture tour because home meant nothing to me. A place to sleep, a place to eat. Nothing else.
There was still a small crowd waiting to speak to me, wanting me to sign the books they had bought.
I had seen the local bookshop window filled with my books, a banner diagonally across them.
'White woman lives in jungle with sex –crazed natives'. A long haired blonde spectacularly endowed being chased by black silhouetted natives
I wondered what they expected.
It had started life as a paper, a study of women's lives in the islands of Papua New Guinea before Western 'civilization' took over. With my Professorship gained, my publishers suggested that I should write a fuller, more personal account of my time in the islands in those last months before the war found them.
It proved to be a best seller. I was surprised too, that people wanted to hear me lecture about it.
And it killed my time.
I wondered what they thought of me, these people who bought my book; what they thought when they saw me.
Evelyn Elizabeth Spence. Average height, five feet five, slight build I suppose, blue-grey eyes, reddish gold curly hair, pinned back now.
I glanced out of the window as I waited for the next person.
The rain was still sheeting down.
I could hear a jukebox playing faintly from the bar down the road.
Bert, my tour manager said, "Only a few more."
I smiled briefly at him.
"They came to the lecture, they bought the book, they have the right to expect a few minutes of my time."
"Back to the hotel for tea then? Only one more lecture. The last. Home next."
I smiled briefly again.
I took the next book to sign and the words of the song on the jukebox slid intomy mind.
"And down by the shore an orchestra's playing…."
I finished the signing, gathered my things together and Bert and I went to our hotel along the covered boardwalk.
'Down by the shore…'
It was in my head and I wanted to shove it away, away from me.
I was shaking.
"Will you have your tea in the lounge, Evelyn?"
He hadn't noticed anything.
"No, no. If you don't mind Bert, I will have it in my room."
"Sure. I'll get them to send it up. See you in an hour and a half."
Somehow I got in the old fashioned wire lift and held tight to the rail as it ascended to my floor. I looked down at my hand; at my knuckles, white through to the bone.
The words were banging in my mind.
.
'And even the palms seem to be swaying.'
.
As if I was drunk, I felt my way along the wall to my room and as I got in, it hit me with the force of a blow.
'Oh Yes! Let them begin the Beguine
Make them play!'
I staggered to the bed and sat, then lay down on it.
I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the tears from running down my face but, of course there were no tears left. I had shed them all.
I could hear the jukebox.
No! I couldn't. How could I? It was in my head.
Oh God! God, in whom I do not believe, make it go away!
.
I once knew a man, not my husband; another man.
I was on the beach on an island in Papua New Guinea, talking to the women, making notes, idly watching a schooner in the bay.
A longboat was coming ashore and suddenly all the people of the village were running down to the water's edge to help drag it ashore. They said "Him Mister Mick, trader man" which left me just as mystified, as the longboat's master, a white man, jumped ashore and came up the beach smiling and laughing with the islanders.
Watching idly, I saw a tall man, as tall as Philip my husband but stronger built, younger than Philip, about twenty nine I suppose. Under the hat he was wearing, his hair was dark, and as he passed, our eyes met and I saw his were large and green, a vivid green. I looked down at my notebook disinterestedly, but that was a pretence. I was interested, suddenly, surprisingly curious about him, this stunningly beautiful man.
.
That was the first time I saw him, walking up the beach towards me.
'it brings back a memory evergreen'
Mick.
The throb in my head slipped into the beat of the song.
The words again.
"When they begin the Beguine"
.
I had met my husband when I was at UCSD. My parents were forward thinking and encouraged me to higher education, something not often found in Australian parents at that time and I studied first at ANU, then in California. My M.A was in Anthropology and I had a flair for languages. Philip was my professor at SD and I fell in love with this good looking "All American Boy".
Tall, fair, thirty four years old, he seemed to think I was pretty good too. When I got my MA, he was very excited and told me of an opportunity he had to go to the South Pacific islands for an extended period to study and publish a paper on the lives and sexuality of the natives and would I go with him.
What exactly was he asking?
Nicely brought up girls of my background did not sleep with their boyfriends. Besides, I wanted to marry him. He saw my face and said "Of course Evelyn, we could get married."
That is how we arrived in Papua New Guinea; newlyweds.
In my excitement and enthusiasm, things seemed so good. I thought of us as equal partners working for the same end, though my chief interest was working with the women of the islands. I began to realise that for Philip, my work was of no importance. He had little interest in the rites of the native women and thought they had little or no bearing on anything, whereas I thought there was a strong matriarchy underpinning life in the islands: but to Philip, I was a glorified secretary at worst and at best his interpreter: cook, cleaner and bedmate.
Sex too seemed fine but at twenty five I had been a virgin with little knowledge of what to expect and accepted our love for what it was; warm and nice although often perfunctory, ending with Philip turning away with a loving pat on my bum.
It was when I was making my notes, listening to the village women discussing their sex lives that I found how different mine was to theirs. I put it down to 'civilisation'.
In my ignorance too, I made mistakes, some very bad, in handling some of their customs, in being fiercely angry about the treatment of the women. Philip was unforgiving about these and told me what he thought. He was right, I was wrong. Telling too what my place was. Typing his notes, a bit of interpreting, washing his shirts …one step behind him. Although he never actually said so.
.
Drumming through my head, wanting it to go away, the pain,
"It brings back a night of tropical splendour"
Not the memory: only the pain.
.
The Commissioner for the islands introduced us, He was Mick Carpenter; the "Honest Courtesan" the schooner in the bay, was his. He was an American trader, trading for pearls with the people of the islands; he was smilingly sceptical about us and our work.
"A few months, that's all you'll last, I'll give you six weeks."
Stung, I rose to his unspoken challenge.
"Do you want to bet, Mr. Carpenter? What? How long? Twelve months? If you win, you can have my husband's watch..."
This had been my wedding present to Philip.
" If I win … Your finest pearl!"
He obviously thought he was on to a winner.
He walked part of his way home with me and I offered him a drink. He and Philip did not like each other. Philip patronised him for his lesser education and accused him of ripping off the people in his trading. Mick's suggestion, that Philip was doing the same and on a grander scale, managed both to enrage and put Philip down. Philip stalked off in a huff but Mick had made his point and to be honest, I found I agreed with him. It was obvious too, that Mick despised Philip.
The next morning, none of the villagers were about. I went down to the beach to find them and found everyone was there, crowding around Mick, the men pushing their canoes out to the water.
I asked him where they were going: out to the reef diving for pearls.
"Can I come?"
"No! No room." he said turning away. When he turned back, I had installed myself in his canoe.
"You see, Mr. Carpenter! Plenty of room. "
It was an exhilarating ride out to the reef and fascinating to watch the men dive for the oysters. Mick stood and pulled off his hat and shirt. He was tanned, lean, muscular and very fit, with his head a mass of black curls. The way he stood, the way he tilted his head, reminded me of what? Yes, that was it! David! Michelangelo's epitome of confident arrogant male beauty. He dived and I watched him swimming, twisting and turning in the depths of the clear green water. He was as lithe and as strong as the native lads.
I enjoyed it all, the excitement, the laughter, the company.
.
It was there all the time in my head
'I'm with you once more
Down by the shore'
Down by the shore.
.
We sat on the beach later that day and I watched him sort the shells, saving some, discarding others. He opened one.
"Smell" he said and I did.
I shall never forget that smell of a newly opened pearl shell. I looked up and he was smiling at me. He took another.
"When you open a pearl shell, for a brief moment the oyster has a ring of colour. Legend says if it is gold, your love will last forever."
He pushed his knife in, twisted it to crack the shell and gave it to me. Holding my breath with enchantment, I opened it. There it was, a ring of gold, fading fast, but gold.
"What was it?" he was still smiling.
"Gold, of course. What about you?" I was excited, like a child.
"I've done it many times."
"Do it now!" I demanded.
He did.
"What was it?"
"Gold, what else" he said. He looked at me for a moment and there was something in his eyes. Something shielded, something I didn't understand and he looked away again.
We went up to his house to sort and put away the pearls.
It was small, built on the hillside. Entered from the village side, it had one room that was office/ living/ bedroom; a banquette on two sides around a table and a bed against the other wall; narrow shoulder-high shelving, filled with small labeled boxes. There was another door in the fourth wall which led to an L shaped covered veranda. The short leg of this was his kitchen and shower room, and the long leg, with a rattan table and chairs, looked down the hill to the bay.
I watched him sort that day's haul, telling me about each one.
Then I said "Show me my winnings."
He reached down a box and took out a little tissue wrapped parcel. The softest gold flecked tissue paper held a pearl, about three quarters of an inch across, it gleamed, it glowed, it was exquisite.
My lips parted, I held my breath, then I said, "I shall enjoy wearing that, Mr. Carpenter"
"You think?" he smiled and took it back.
Philip was angry when I got home. Where had I been, his work was more important: he wanted typing done: he hadn't had anything to eat.
Things were worse after this, little petty things that both tore into and hardened my heart. I was ambitious, yes! But I knew I was as clever as he; I knew too, my view of our work was as important as his but he thought differently. He thought I would ruin his work and reputation and said so. His arrogance and near contempt shook and hurt me
I made mistakes; there were things I didn't understand, but it was Mick, in the background who advised and explained; who, in some way, comforted and reassured me. Sometimes without saying anything.
He went off on one of his trips and was away for several weeks. While he was away, I made a disastrous error of judgment in taking some photos. I was so absorbed in how they would fit into my work, I never thought. Private things that I should never have watched, should never have filmed, which caused major problems between the natives and us; and between Philip and me.
When he came back, his sole comment about this to me was "They are people, Mrs. Spence, not specimens."
I was offended then slowly realized what he said was true. For all my thoughts that I was close to the women, I had been thinking of them as subjects to be studied.
The situation between Philip and me was deteriorating. My ambition was still as fierce as ever and my conviction that I was right, so I made up my mind. I would work alone for a while.
I went to him.
"Mr. Carpenter, I want to hire your boat. I want to go to another island to work, to live with the people for a while. Will you take me?" He regarded me steadily.
"What about your husband?"
"He will continue to work here."
"Does he know?"
"Of course. The thing is I don't have any money. So will you accept these?" And I put my wedding and engagement rings on his table. He looked at them and again at me.
"Mr. Carpenter! Will you take me?"
He tilted his head, his hands open in a gesture of agreement, then slowly picked up my rings.
"Sure"
The island I had chosen was about eight hours sail away. I was sitting alone on the foredeck when I heard him say behind me.
"Mrs. Spence, it's none of my business, but…"
"No, it isn't, Mr. Carpenter."
And we continued in silence until we anchored off the island and went ashore.
Mick spoke first to the people near the shore, then took me up into the jungle and then further uphill. The rains started and when we eventually came to the village where I was to stay, we were soaked and heavy with mud.
He spoke to the chief, asking for a hut for me and explaining what I wanted to do. We were shown a hut. I looked around. It was primitive.
Well! I wanted to live like them.
"Mrs. Spence, these people are not like the people of our island. They are afraid of me and they owe me. But they are not afraid of you; I have spoken to them but..."
I interrupted, "I am not afraid of them, Mr. Carpenter. I can take care of myself."
I unpacked my things, it would soon be dark.
Looking out at the teeming rain, I saw Mick sitting under a shrub. Half an hour later in the deepening gloom, he was still there.
"Mr. Carpenter, there really is no need for chivalry. Come in "
We sat, and then lay down to sleep in silence but I felt reassured just knowing he was there.
In the morning, he said, "I'm going now."
He put my rings on my papers and he was gone.
From first, I felt menaced by the men of this village and they knew it. Then, they began to steal from me, my typewriter, my papers, things which were of no use to them, and they were not afraid to use superior strength to wrest them from me. I struggled on with the rain, the mud, the little trickles of fear.
Then he was there again.
"Mrs. Spence, I've come to take you back. Your husband is dying."
I was not in time.
Then it set in; the grief, for my husband, for our hopes, for our love that had been dying before I had left: the remorse, the guilt, even the fear I had felt on the other island. And it came to me. There was only one way to deal with it: how the women of these islands mourned. They shaved their heads, wore only their grass skirts and thick mud. And not eating or drinking, they sat in a cage and waited.
If they lived, they lived.
"Mrs. Spence, Evelyn, is there anything I can do to help?" Mick began.
"Yes Mr. Carpenter. Build me a cage."
"No!"
He left but within a few days, he was back; I found later he had gone to get my things from the men who had stolen them from me. He came to me every day, forcing me to eat the smallest bits, and drink mouthfuls of water, cleaning my cage, making me walk a few yards every day, talking to me all the time, anything, as long as he was talking to me.
I don't know how long. Weeks? Months?
I don't know where I was in those long weeks, retreated inside myself. I sat through the rains till one morning, I looked up and the sky was blue above me.
And I left my cage and went to him.
He was cooking his breakfast,
"Have you got a couple of eggs for me?" He swung around, his face surprised but his eyes were warm with delight.
"Sure, sure." He came to me and draped a towel over my naked breasts. After we had eaten, he went to my house to get me my clothes while I showered. How wonderful that first shower was.
Words were slow coming back to me that day.
Later, in my house, as I sorted my notes and papers and Philip's, a roar filled the air, a Japanese plane, papers floating down. Propaganda.
I ignored it; it was nothing to do with me. I was here to work. The Commissioner arrived. The Japs were invading the South Pacific islands. Australia was at war with Japan.
Help was needed, he said, to observe the waters. He asked Mick.
"Not my war!"
Then the Japs bombed a place called Pearl Harbor. The Americans were now in the war and the Australian Government was repatriating all Australians and Americans from the islands.
I was gathering my notes, packing everything in a tin chest.
"You got your things together?" Mick had come for me. "Time to go. What the hell are you doing? Leave them!"
"No! I'm not going anywhere without them. It's all my work."
"Jesus! What are you thinking of, woman ? The Japs are invading us and you are saving paper!"
"It's my work, I am not losing it."
"You fucking can't take that on board. They won't let you."
"I am not losing my work!"
I fled to the centre of the island with a few of the islanders and buried my chest.
The Commissioner was waiting. We started down the path to the bay but Mick was not with us.
"Mr. Carpenter is staying on as an observer."
I looked back and he was standing on his veranda watching us, I lost sight of him in the trees. As the Commissioner packed us into the launch that would take us out to the RAN ship, I made up my mind.
He was still standing on his veranda, so alone.
He swung around in surprise and I went to him.
We watched them leave; the big destroyer moving out of the bay, down the straits.
We said little then. We sat at the table and had our meal. Words were slow. Slow, almost unnecessary. Perhaps it was apprehension of what may be ahead. Days of war. Perhaps. Perhaps it was something else.
There was a wind up gramophone in the corner with a few records, and he put one on and then another.
"Come on, let's dance." he pulled me up.
"I can't, I don't know how."
"I'll teach you"
He stood next to me and showed me how to move my feet, then took my hand and placed his other around my waist and the music was there with its insidious beat.
.
"When they begin the Beguine "
.
We moved together.
Right, together, right foot back, together, left, together, left foot forward, together.
Tentatively, he tucked our hands close to his chest, then let go of mine to put both arms around me, rested his head against mine. My legs shook and I leaned into him, lifted my face to find his mouth.
Oh Mick! Mick!
He fumbled with my shirt buttons; impatiently I did it for him, impatient to have his hands on me, having his mouth, soft gentle kisses, somehow more erotic than hard and wild ones. He was kneeling to kiss my breasts… down to my navel, my belly. Moving me to lie with him on the bed in his little house and then his hands were on me and mine on him, on his chest, around to his back up to his shoulders, into his hair, over our bodies, down over our hips to caress each other where we needed it until we were both lost in what we were doing, needing more. Saying nothing all the while, nothing needing to be said.
He was kissing my neck, letting his lips drift down the curve of my shoulder, across the swell of my breast, circling the nipples, down the gentle slope of my belly, to kiss the soft inner side of my thigh. First the tender inside, then inched his way up against the inner parts of me.
He was hard and ready for me. But he took me slowly. And I knew, knew at last how it should be.
When he finally came into me, I cried out and wrapped my legs and arms around him moving with him, feeling the fire in him and the power and pleasure as we reached the peak of ecstasy.
His mouth was against my throat, and I felt rather than heard him say
"Evelyn, I love you Evelyn."
My hand drifted across his shoulder.
"Yes"
"Always."
My hand in his hair now.
"Yes,"
.
"What moments divine!
What rapture serene"
.
The night passed: we made love throughout it. Soft words of love, gentle touches, little gasps, wild fierce demanding joy, till we slept.
.
"Till clouds came along
To disperse the joy we had tasted."
.
In the morning Mick showered, wrapped a towel around himself, and then went outside while I showered. I heard his muffled shout.
"Christ! Evelyn."
I joined him. The straits before us were full of Japanese warships. We grabbed what was necessary: Mick's radio equipment and binoculars, maps and charts and fled to the cave under the overhang in the cliffs that Mick had chosen should this need arise.
While Mick radioed the RAN fleet with the information, I scrambled back and fore with essentials, hiding all traces of us with help from some of our village women until finished at last, we stood breathless smiling at each other.
One of the older women said
"You and Mister Mick do mighty fine copulation las' night."
A little giggle went around the group.
I didn't know how they knew but I flushed and was angry until I realised they were not being salacious.
I was no longer an outsider.
I was being admitted to the sisterhood, the islands' sisterhood of women who knew the joys of love. I was being invited to share their secrets and I smiled back.
"Yes, thank you; mighty fine"
"Mister Mick, he mighty pretty man. He have a mighty nice dong?" she asked delicately.
My lips quivered as I realised what she was asking.
"Er, um, yes, mighty nice!"
Then as Mick came up the path, we all looked at him and giggled. Women's age old secret laughter about their men.
.
That must have been almost the last of the laughter.
The villagers disappeared inland as the Japs landed.
John MacGregor, the missionary from the other side of the island had elected to stay too. He and I had never seen eye to eye but now he joined us. In the taut days that followed, hidden in our cave, we began to listen to each other's point of view, see it a bit clearer. Not agreeing but maybe understanding a little.
There was an arrangement between Mick and his Radio Control that he would signal to be picked up should his position become untenable.
As they became aware that information was being radioed from the island, the Japs began shelling it. Mick radioed to RAN Control and one moonless night we waited for the flashes that would tell us when to row out beyond the headland to the waiting boat.
Australian sailors helped me onto the launch first, then John, and then I saw Mick pushing the canoe away from the launch and moving back to the shore.
"Mick! Mick!" I was half over the side and John and a naval officer were hanging on to me.
"I have to stay" he said.
"God bless you Michael." John called to him and held me close.
The powerful engines of the launch took us away. Out to sea to the waiting destroyer.
.
"And there we are swearing to love for ever
And promising never never to,,,,,,"
.
There was a knock at the door.
"Evelyn, you ready? Time!"
"O.K Bert, I'll be down now."
I splashed my face and took down, brushed and re-pinned up my hair. A dab of powder, a smudge of lipstick and I was ready. As ready as I would ever be.
.
When I got to the mainland, I kept searching for news; the lists, Australian, American, of the wounded first, then, with no news, the death lists.
John McGregor with his church contacts did his best too.
The tide turned for us: then the war was over and I kept looking.
When the seaways cleared, I went out to the islands.
I found my notes where I had buried them on our island.
I asked about Mick. …no-one had seen Mister Mick since the war.
I found the 'Honest Courtesan' still hidden in the creek where he had laid her up, her bright work dulled, her varnish and paint blistered and peeling, her canvas cover faded and fraying. In another bay further along the coast, her longboat lay, beached but holed by a Japanese shell.
I went further out among the islands asking, asking
Hope hanging on grimly, painfully, till it died on that day when someone said "Yes, Yes," and took me to a grave marked only with a little stone cross.
"Him Trader Man"
.
I went back to Canberra, to my university and lectured; and to kill time every night, I organized my notes and photographs and published them in the university press. It was well received.
I achieved my Professorship but the ambition that had driven me before was dead.
Then, someone suggested publishing it on the open market, not a textbook, but as a personal account of a white woman living as a native in the islands.
I wrote about Philip, John, the Commissioner, my island friends; and I wrote about Mick, American ex-pat adventurer. Tough, gentle, kind, honest. A man of integrity.
I wrote too, about Mick, Trader man, schooner owner, pearl diver, my lover. His face, his eyes, his mouth, his hair, his body, his smile, his laughter. I wrote and wrote through my tears till there were no more to shed but this was not for my book. This was for me, my catharsis; and although the tears stopped, there was still the small cold stone in me which didn't go away.
My book proved to be a best seller, people were interested and lecture tours were arranged.
First the West Coast of the States and then my homeland.
I did them.
Why not?
I had nothing else to occupy my vacation time from the University, my mind, my life.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Last lecture over! There were a few people hanging about waiting for book signings, I smiled tiredly at the last person and sat back brushing the hair off my face. Then it was only Bert and me. He had started packing things while I finished signing.
"Good session, not many left." Bert said, picking up the last few books. "Hello! This yours?"
He handed me a small package.
"No. Someone must have left it behind."
I unwrapped it and flipped open the first fold of a soft gold flecked tissue paper
.
Your Winnings
.
I knew what it was before I opened it further.
A pearl. A perfect pearl. Three quarter inch across, gleaming, glowing.
"Did you see who left this?" I said.
"No" Bert said but I was up and running out of that dusty assembly room in that little town that was the last stop on the line.
Out into the teeming rain, across to the bus station; down the road looking in each bar, each shop. Returning slowly till I remembered the train station; Running there, running through the ticket office, onto the platform.
No-one.
I stood, the rain soaking me, the hope draining out of me.
I was turning away, when someone came out of the waiting room; he stopped when he saw me.
His hair was longer, the curls around his face were beginning to grey. His beautiful face was worn and lined. He looked smaller, somehow, in his old naval overcoat, and bent till I saw the crutches that he leant into… then I saw the empty trouser leg that was pinned up.
Mick!
I began to walk to him, then I saw the uncertainty and fear of rejection, shame even, the longing, in his eyes and I ran, ran to hold him. In my arms.
'Till the stars that were there before
Return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more
Darling I love you.'
.
He told me later that when, a few weeks after us, he left the island, he had enlisted in the US Navy. He had seen action safely over the South Pacific until in almost the last days of the war, he had been wounded. So badly, that he had almost died. There were times, he said, when he wished he had. He had not known where to find me, he would not have looked.
"Not like this! " he said. Until he saw reviews of my book and news of my lecture tour. He could not stay away. He could not bear not to see me: just once, just one more time. No! He would not have spoken to me but he had to give me my pearl.
"I carried it all through the fucking war, how could I have not given it to you, when I did see you ?"
It took time to persuade him that to me, life was unbearable without him. Mick was proud, afraid of what he might see in my eyes, disgust, revulsion, worst of all, pity. It took time for him to realize I saw only him: that I needed his love for me, the contentment of being in his arms, the sweetness of touching his beloved face. It was longer till we shared our bodies again, till we gave each other the joy and ecstasy we had known; the touch of his hand, his mouth on mine, holding each other in the night.
We never married. We had no need of government officials in their dusty offices.
No need of churches, of a God that I did not believe in and Whose Presence he sometimes doubted.
Our vows had been made years before, on an island in the South Pacific.
'I love you Evelyn.'
'Yes'
'Always'
'Yes.'
We made our home there on the peninsula, close to the reef, where he could see the sea that he still loved so much.
.
'And we'll suddenly know
What heaven we're in'
. . . . . . . . . . .
We did not have much time left together, Mick and I.
A few years.
The war, his wounds and the pain, all took their toll on him.
And he was gone.
I did not shave my head, or shut myself away. He had already fought that battle for me, and he had given me a reason for me not to do it again. So I ate, drank and went on living my life as he would have wanted.
But I built myself a cage for Mick.
It was…is an intangible one; of light and laughter, of little memories, a man jumping ashore, a brown hand holding a shell out to me, sand drifting through my fingers, a canoe going out to a reef, a beautiful brown body lithely turning in the green waters, a wind up gramophone, a song.
A pearl in a gold cage that I wear on a chain around my neck.
In the years after the war, I had heard only infrequently from John MacGregor. Then I had a letter. He had heard about Mick. He was back in the islands. Would I go out there? He knew how I felt about the mission and religion but still he asked.
"I am asking you to come to teach. We need teachers. Not Anthropology, of course. Basics, reading, writing, maths. They are desperate for knowledge, Evelyn."
So I am going, back to the islands, to the islands he loved.
I am going back with our child. The child he knew for such a short time, the child with his face, his eyes, his hair and I will tell her about the islands, her father and me.
.
And when it is my time to go into that dark, the thing I will remember on the day I die, the thing that I will take with me is the smell of a pearl shell, freshly opened, on a beach, and the sight of its fading gold ring.