The Love Beach Read online

  The Love Beach

  SCANNED BY BILL

  Leslie Thomas was born in South Wales in 1931 and when his parents died, he and his younger brother were brought up in an orphanage. His first book, This Time Next Week, is the autobiography of a happy orphan. Aged sixteen, he became a reporter on a weekly newspaper in Essex and then did his National Service in Malaya during the Communist bandit war. T he Virgin Soldiers tells of these days; it was an immediate bestseller and has been made into a film with Lynn Redgrave and Hywel Bennett. Onward Virgin Soldiers, the follow‑up to this, is also published by Pan Books.

  Returning to civilian life, Leslie Thomas joined the staff of the Evening News becoming a top feature writer and travelling a great deal. His second novel, Orange Wednesday, was published in 1967. For nine months during 1967 he travelled around ten islands off the coast of Britain, the result of which was a lyrical travelogue, Some Lovely lslands. from which the BBC did a television series. He has continued to travel a great deal and has also written several television plays. He is a director of a London publishing house. His hobbies include golf. antiques and Queen's Park Rangers Football Club.

  His other books include Come to the War, His Lordship. Onward Virgin Soldiers, Arthur McCann and All His Women, The Man With the Power, Tropic of Ruislip, Stand Up Virgin Soldiers, Dangerous Davies, and Bare Nell.

  Also by Leslie Thomas in Pan Books His Lordship The Virgin Soldiers Orange Wednesday Come to the War This Time Next Week Onward Virgin Soldiers Stand Up Virgin Soldiers Tropic of Ruislip Arthur McCann and All His Women The Man With the Power Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective Bare Nell Ormerod's Landing That Old Gang of Mine Some Lovely Islands

  Lesile Thomas

  The Love Beach

  Pan Books London and Sydney

  To

  VINCENT MULCHRONE

  who first gave me the notion

  to go to the South Seas

  'Young girls in groups of eight or ten, dancing a very indecent dance ... singing the most indecent songs and using most indecent actions in the practice of which they are brought up from the earliest childhood. In doing this they keep time to a great nicety.'

  Captain Cook's Journals in the South Seas

  One

  There was a bulky bird of some sort, an albatross or an eagle or that variety of thing, Conway thought, trailing the mast. It followed the knob at the top of the mast everywhere, dipping with it, swaying with it as the ship swayed with the moving sea, trying to kiss it with its beak but ever that couple of inches short. He's really trying, Conway thought: trying, but not quite hard enough. Just holding something back in his wings as if he knew that the moment he got his beak to the mast all he would get would be a mouthful of splinters.

  Conway genuinely did not know whether it was an albatross or an eagle and he didn't care. He knew nothing about birds. It could have been a great swollen sparrow for all he worried. It had come to his attention only because he was on his back on the desk and his face was pointing in that direction.

  Apart from the bird, the mast, and the great liquid sun there was nothing in the sky. The Melanesian boys had washed the deck down only five minutes before, and he had been annoyed because he had to move then, but the boards were white and dry as stale bread now. Conway was wearing only a pair of stained and faded khaki shorts. He had a wide chest, and he could feel the skin under the hairs burning from the sun.

  Davies, dark and small enough not to have to stoop as he came up and out from under the hood of the companionway, almost furtively, and stepped on to the deck. He was wearing grey flannel trousers, white shirt, tennis shoes, and socks. He had been sizzled pink by the sun in half an hour the day before.

  Near Conway's head squatted a sagging lifeboat, welded with rust to her foundations, nesting in ropes and tackle,

  looking as permanent and fixed as anything on the ship. More fixed than the funnel.

  Davies had a Welsh voice. It was the low Welsh, not the high, piping note. But it still annoyed the Australian Conway. 'I heard them swilling the deck,' Davies said, conversationally. He carefully chose and sat in the blot of shade provided by the lifeboat. 'Did they make you move today?'

  'Aw, I moved anyway,' muttered Conway, still looking at the albatross or eagle. He wondered whether he wanted to know the identity of the bird sufficiently to bother to ask Davies. He thought he didn't. 'Yesterday I wouldn't move and the fuzzy wuzzies got shirty, then the old man got shirty, so today I saved myself trouble and I moved. I can't be bothered with bother.'

  Davies said: 'Years ago when I was on a troopship...'

  Conway said: 'What were you in?'

  'South Wales Borderers.'

  He saw Conway screw up his eyes.

  He said defensively: 'Eight VCs in one battle.'

  'Did you get one?' asked Conway casually.

  'It was in the Zulu War,' said Davies. 'That's when they got them.

  'He looked uncertainly at Conway, who was looking down at his own chest. Then he said:

  'On this troopship they asked for Welshmen to report to the entertainments officer. And we thought we had to sing. But they made us peel hundreds of stinking leeks.'

  Conway blew his nose with his finger and thumb which nevertheless remained dry. He regarded them with some surprise. Then he said: 'Well then?'

  'What?'

  'About this troopship. It wasn't about the leeks was it?'

  Davies stared. It was very hot. 'Oh no,' he remembered. 'No, it was about washing down the decks. At night, it was so hot that we used to sleep on deck...'

  'That's a new idea, 'muttered Conway.

  'Yes, and the first night I slept right next to the bell, the one they ring for six and eight bells and all that, and they banged it just when I had dropped off. By Christ, I jumped out of my skin! And this was the point about the washing down the decks, I'd just gone off again, just closed my eyes, and a bucket of water came whoosh across the deck. All over me. I said to myself "Issy", I said...'

  'Why are you called Issy?' asked Conway bluntly. 'That's a Yid name. You're not a Welsh Yid are you?'

  Davies said: 'Issy's a Welsh name. Short for Isslwyn.'

  'Easier,' commented Conway dryly. 'You have to sort of spit to say the other one don't you? What sort of bird do you think that is?'

  Davies had been watching it too. 'I'd say it was some kind of seagull,' he said. 'At a guess.'

  Conway said: 'That's what I thought.'

  They stopped talking and both looked earnestly at the fulmar petrel. There were some other birds wandering about the ocean, keeping their distance from the ship. A minor wind went musically through the ropes and stays, and there was the dull washtub sound as the old bow hit the Pacific every few feet.

  ‘We must be near land if there's birds,' said Davies. He had only been to sea once before and that was on the ten pound immigrant trip to Australia. The sun had shrunk the shadow in which he sat, so he shuffled his seat back. 'New Caledonia' said Conway informatively. 'Full of Frenchies. Colonials but still Frenchies. Fifty miles over there. Ah, there she is.'

  'Who is?'

  'The missus. The captain's. She just shifted up there and I saw the top bundle of her hair.'

  Conway nodded towards a canvas addition to the ship's bridge, slightly lower than the superstructure on the port side, and with an extra section of canvas sewn on to the walls to make it higher.

  'She gets in there, sunbathing,' said Conway like a garden gossip. 'Naked as a baby. Not a stitch. That's why the sides are built up, so nobody on the bridge can get an eyeful.'

  Davies said reasonably: 'How do you know she's nude then?'

  'The boys say. The crew. The bloke on the wheel reckons that if he gets a good hard to port ‑ that's funny. Hard to port, see?' />
  Davies nodded. Conway went on: 'If he gets a good hard to port and pushes the wheel right over, and leans right across with it, he gets a glimpse of her left‑hand tit.' He laughed roughly. 'He said he all but rammed a schooner once, doing that.'

  'I wondered why this thing was always tipping one way then the other,' said Davies. 'I couldn't make it out when the sea is flat. And it's just so some dirty bugger can see a nipple. He'll capsize it one day.'

  'What do you sell?' asked Conway. The bun of blonde hair had vanished now and he had gone back to looking at the cruising bird. 'What are you reckoning to get rid of in the islands. Outboards, guns? ...'

  'Butter and fats,' said Davies.

  Conway snorted. 'Hah! Funny! That's good. You know, I was saying to the mate, last night, that you are a humourless bastard, but that's all right. Butter and fats!'

  'It's true,' said Davies miserably. 'Butter and fats. And I'm not humourless, mate. It's just I've heard all your jokes before.'

  'You could have,' said Conway. He did not get annoyed. 'But butter and fats! All this way...'

  'There's a market,' said Davies stoutly. Then less surely: 'I hope. There had better be or Trellis and Jones, wholesale grocers, exporters, and importers, of Circular Quay, Sydney., will throw me out.' He found he was leaning forward into the sun again and it was burning his ear, just the rim, and his arm. He shuffled back. 'Up to now,' he continued, 'the people in the Apostles have got all their dairy stuff from New Caledonia. But it's irregular because of the boats. On the other hand this thing, this ship, turns up every two months without fail. You wait, I'll be selling frozen butter and lard by the ton.'

  'They've got cows of their own,' said Conway. He had looked away from the bird in the deep sky now and was regarding Davies with a little interest.

  'The grass is lousy, and they haven't got enough animals anyway. And they're too lazy, or it's too hot or something, to try and do anything about it.'

  Conway nodded: 'That sounds like them,' he admitted. 'I've heard they'd sooner sell their kids to slavery and their wives to whoredom than do a bit of extra graft.'

  'The natives are like that, I heard,' agreed Davies. 'Just idle. It must be because it's so hot.'

  'Natives?' grunted Conway. 'To hell with them. I'm talking about the British and the French.'

  The half‑dark of the Pacific night was leaning on the ocean. The sea swelled around the ship like bales of velvet on big rollers. Stout stars showed; the splendid Southern Cross, Lupus towing its planets like shining barges, and Centarus throwing its bright net. The small constellation, low on the horizon to port, were the lights of the highest brothel in the Central Pacific: on top of Mount George in the South Hibernian group.

  The Melanesian helmsman knew this, so did Mr Curry, the mate, who had been navigating by them, with occasional recourse to the heavens, since seven o'clock that evening. Tomorrow they would round the coral hem of these Apostle Islands, find the gate in the reef, and ride into the harbour at Sexagesima, the capital, about the same time as the British Legion club bar opened its doors to the warm air of the Equatorial morning.

  With her familiar ill‑temper the 3,000‑ton trading ship butted even the most innocent rollers. She was called The Baffin Bay.

  Only an Australian could call a South Seas tramp steamer after a place in the Arctic, Davies thought, but he did not bring it up because it was too much trouble in the heat and MacAndrews, the captain, was the type to be touchy. It certainly had a cool sound in a hot ocean.

  Davies thought he saw Greta MacAndrews giving Conway a funny bitter look at dinner that night. She was a redfaced blonde, going to fat. MacAndrews hardly said anything at meals, simply ploughing through whatever the Polynesian cook had put before them, pushing his spoon or fork under the lower edge of the Sydney Daily Mirror. It was always the same copy and MacAndrews read it from the beginning of the voyage until they reached the Apostles. Curry said that on the way home he did the crossword.

  There was a joke on board, which had been running for eight years, about Curry, the mate, and Rice, the chief officer. MacAndrews always made the joke to new passengers, the first night out, and spoke hardly another word for the remaining two weeks of the voyage.

  Davies was thirty, uncertain of himself mostly, but sometimes violent in a Welsh way when someone upset him. He had a thoughtful Celtic face, with deep dark eyes and thick hair. Sitting next to Conway he contrasted with the Australian's great shoulders, his thick neck, and big muscular face. Conway was affable, very certain of himself, uncaring about much judging from his nonchalance in any table argument. He had a scar running the length of his left arm, stitched like a railway line.

  With them was a Belgian, Pollet, square, getting plump, with cultured grey hair, thick glasses, and a peaceful face. He had been in the Pacific Islands all his life, and he knew them, the beaded strings of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, as well as any man. He sold patent medicines to the natives and bought village carvings and other ornaments which he sold to collectors on the West Coast of the United States.

  'Sexagesima,' said Pollet separating and spitting out two individual lentil seeds from the soup that night. 'Is the wettest place in the world when it's wet, and the hottest when it's hot. It is the capital of the Apostle Islands and has a thousand white people, British and French, who would mostly like to get out, but cannot. Even when they do they go back. Like me.'

  'A hellhole,' attested Greta MacMdrews. 'A shoddy, muddy, dirty little dump.'

  'A considerable description,' nodded Pollet. 'You don't like it?'

  'At this time of the year the people crawl about in mud and pouring rain, and when the season changes they crawl about flattened by the heat. Give me Sydney any day.'

  'I'll buy it for you,' mentioned Conway.

  'Thanks,' she said, looking at his scarred arm. 'How did you do that?'

  'Crocodile bit me,' he lied.

  'As long as it wasn't a woman,' she said easily.

  'The Portuguese discovered the Apostles,' said Pollet. 'The British and the French colonized them and fought over them. And they still fight over them ‑ each one trying to get rid of them on the other. They produce nothing of worth, they are not strategically placed, they are not the sort of location to drop a test H‑bomb, even. In a word, they are worthless.'

  'There's St Peter's and that's the main one, right?' asked Davies. 'What are the others like?'

  'St Mark's is the home of a peaceful pagan tribe,' said Pollet, ticking it off on finger. 'St Paul's is inhabited by mad Christian natives, completely barbarous. Then there is St Luke's, a sweet island I think; St Barnabas, where there is an active volcano; St Matthew's and St John's, which have primitive tribes, and some smaller isles, just rocks really, in between.'

  Rice, the engineer, said across the table, 'Those pistons will need doing this time.'

  'Time enough,' said MacAndrews not looking over the paper.

  'You said that last trip. We'll be under sail before we're finished.'

  Davies, thinking of his butter and 'fats, said: 'There's no chance of you not continuing to sail to the Apostles regularly is there?'

  'Till we sink,' sniffed MacAndrews glancing away from the page. 'It's the only sea route known to our navigating officer, Mr Curry. The day we go anywhere else, Mr Davies, we're in trouble.'

  Greta turned and looked directly at Conway who was separated from her by Rice. Rice, an obliging man, leaned forward out of her view. The mess steward was bringing around beef stroganoff. There was a lot too much pale sauce for a meal on a pitching ship. 'Mr Conway,' said Greta, 'why are you going to the Apostles?'

  Rice was stabbing his stroganoff with a leathery piece of bread. 'He's on government work,' he said, as though protecting Conway from further questions,

  'What work is that?' she pressed. She started to eat and made a face at the food or at her reading husband, the sour expression starting with one and finishing with the other. 'It's time we got a cook aboard who can cook,' she said.<
br />
  'Dull government business,' Conway grunted answering her first remark. Davies thought that was a lie for a start. If something was dull, Conway was the type to shine it up when it came to talking about it.

  Rice said: 'Which dull government is that for?' He was the oppressed little man who thinks of a pun once a month and hopes that everyone will laugh, is never surprised when they don't, and they don't.

  'The dull Australian one,' said Conway. 'Nothing to get excited over. The Apostles, anyway the British half, not the French, gets orders from London, but just to keep us colonists happy. the natives in one of the outer islands, St Paul's, come under Australian trusteeship. We look after the blacks there.'

  'You've never shipped with us before,' said Greta. She was now making a continuously unpleasant face at her food.

  'My first trip. I don't always wet‑nurse them. It's somebody else's job.'

  Davies said: 'You've been in Vietnam, haven't you?'

  Conway had his fork halfway to his mouth. He let it drop back. 'Where did you get that?' he asked. He stopped reacting immediately, as if he became aware of it, and pushed the ashen meat into his mouth.

  'You went on about it the other day. On deck. The first day, out of Sydney.'

  'The day we split the rum,' said Conway remembering. ,Just romancing. I was there with the Aussie army but I got invalided home. Rheumatic fever.'

  'Great place for rheumatic fever, the Apostles,' said Pollet. 'Especially now, in the wet.'

  'I won't be there too long,' said Conway. 'Not long enough to catch anything ‑ except what I want to catch.'

  Davies was lying on his bunk in the way a dead man is fixed in his coffin, arms across the chest, feet touching. It was a narrow bunk. Conway was moving about in the next cabin. It was three o'clock in the morning and the ship was rolling heavily in a near‑placid sea. Directly above Davies was the wheelhouse and he could hear MacAndrews banging about on his big feet. You could never hear the Melanesians because they had no shoes, and Curry, the mate, who was the only other person ever to be on the bridge, always wore basketball boots, so he was no trouble. But tonight the skipper trod heavily. They were waiting to go through the reef and into the lagoon of St Peter's Island.