33. Suspect

As we walked over a lawn to the next courthouse building, I told Manesh about the conversation that I had overheard on the coach, in which I had understood Captain Hasiki to be concerned not to raise sympathy for the attackers. What I had seen of the treatment given to the prisoners made me worry that the investigation might do just that.

“We need to show these people we won’t take any nonsense.” He responded. “Perhaps the Captain is so far from the real world that he doesn’t know what works and what doesn’t. But there are other people who know how to react. Don’t say anything to anyone yet, but trust me, our boys will be authorised to get to the bottom of this and winkle out every last one of these savages.”

I was about to reply when we arrived at the next holding room where a very similar scene greeted us, with many of those who had already been questioned looking, if anything, even more the worse for wear than in the room we had just left. We waited to see the return of those who were out being interrogated and, to substantiate my cover story, Manesh asked the Guardians in charge if they knew where my father was.

As we passed from room to room, the situation was much the same. Sometimes the suspects had been treated worse, sometimes better (but never very much better) and it was clear that a worrying pattern had developed. I began to hope that I would locate the burglar, on the basis that this might at least focus attention away from the rest of the men caught up in the net of arrests.

I looked at the prisoners in each room as we passed but did not recognise anyone.
Several times, I saw a face that I thought might be his but on closer inspection found that it was not. Or, at least, I thought not at that moment. As we continued our search, however, I began to wonder whether, perhaps, I had actually made a mistake and he was in one of the rooms we had already passed. Once I even went back to confirm my judgement.

After a while, I began to wonder whether I would even recognise my intruder if I did see him. The more I tried to picture what he looked like, the less certain I was and the faces that I saw seemed to blur into one another, giving me a sense of uncertainty about the whole task. To me, the routine of entering a room, asking if anyone knew where my father was working, examining the faces and moving on became unreal, as if I was watching someone else doing it.

I can’t even tell how long this took although I registered that it had started to rain and then that it was growing dark. Then suddenly, I saw him. I might not even have recognised him if he had not seen me first as he had already been questioned and his face was badly swollen. There was, however, no mistaking the look of recognition in his eyes and the fact that he flinched away from me.

I tried to give no sign that I had noticed anything and moved out of the room in the normal way. For a moment, I wondered whether I should even tell Manesh about him. He had already been beaten quite badly, and I would be condemning him to much worse, but in the end, I had no choice.

“Sergeant,” I said, “if I did identify the burglar, is there any way that we could get him down to Captain Hasiki for questioning without letting anyone else know?”
“The whole force is hoping that they will get to take a pop at him.” He answered. “Just tell me if you see him and we’ll do the rest.”
I hesitated.

“I think,” I said, “I think that he may have been in the last room that we visited.”
“Describe him. Where was he sitting?”
“I’m not absolutely sure it was him.” I replied weakly, as if my uncertainty might soften the consequences, “but I think he was at the end of the second row from the corner. Wearing a torn shirt with blood from his nose down the front.”
Manesh looked through the door.
“I see him.” He said. “Very good. You can leave things to us now. I’ll get one of the men to walk home with you.”

“What will happen to him?” I asked. “He’s only a kid.”
“Yes. He may think that he’s a grown up, but he’s about to discover what playing with the big boys means.”
“Would it be better for me just to talk to him? He’s already been questioned and he can’t have given anything away.”

“He doesn’t know what really being questioned is like at all.” Manesh grinned. “That boy is just at the start and by tomorrow morning he’ll be telling us every thought in his head and some he doesn’t even know about yet. You’d better get off now. This is going to be a long night.”
He called one of the young Guardians and, ignoring my protests, sent us off into the evening.

I found Bahla waiting for me when I arrived back at my father’s house.
“I’d heard you were here.” He greeted me. “How are you bearing up?”
“Just numb.” I replied. “I found these drawings of Rega’s in the ashes, and the photo she was working from. I keep thinking that I’ll look up and see her.”

“Yes. Everyone is still in shock, I think. The whole island is. It feels as if things will never be the same again.”
“I think you’re right.” I agreed, “The end of an era.”

“The Guardians are just waiting for the order. They want to get out there and show who’s boss.”
“Hasiki will keep them in check, I hope.” I felt that I was grasping at straws. “In the coach coming down, he was very clear that he wanted to keep things calm.”

“The problem isn’t Hasiki. It’s whether he can keep control. The Gardeners are the ones we have to worry about. They want to declare a holy war. They may live in luxury but, in their way, they are exactly like Hama Batu and his men. They think that as long as they are defending Our Granny, they can justify anything.”
“But Hama Batu’s men are savages. The Gardeners have access to the knowledge from the books and they can see how the Tractor provides order and civilisation for the island.”

“I’m not so sure.” Bahla looked down at his feet. “The Tractor supplies them with their food, but they have no idea of how it works or what it takes to keep it going. And they think of the books as being just an offshoot of Our Granny’s wisdom. If they thought there was something in the books that contradicted Our Granny – or, more precisely, their interpretation of Our Granny – they would have them on a bonfire before you could blink.”
“And how would they propose to keep the Tractor going and the rest of the things that depend on the books?”
“Our Granny would provide.”

“And you think that the Shadows are any better?”
“Not at all. The Shadows are even worse, if anything. The Gardeners see the books and the Tractor as being a part of Our Granny’s will. They would destroy them if that were not the case but, as things stand, they don’t. Hama Batu and the Shadows would destroy them anyway because they are against Our Granny’s will.”

“So we’re on the side of the Gardeners? I’ve just turned in one of Hama Batu’s men to the Guardians and it was a very uncomfortable feeling.” I looked questioningly at Bahla.
“We’re caught in the middle. It’s an uncomfortable place. But we have to believe that the Gardeners are the lesser of the two evils. At least they’re not trying to take us back to the jungle.”

My father entered the room in time to hear the last interchange.
“You don’t want to go back to the jungle. I can promise you that.” He said. I can remember when I was a child, before the Americans came here. You never knew where your next meal was coming from, and if you lived to be thirty you were an old man. Look at me. I’m over sixty and I still have my teeth.
Hama Batu can talk about the jungle but the only reason he can live there is because his people can trade with the Village. He pretends not to be a part of it but he gets food that has been produced here and metal tools and weapons.” He turned to me.

“I gather that you found your burglar.” He said.
“That was supposed to be confidential. How did you know?”
“All the Guardians are talking about it. They say that he had already been questioned and he would have been released if you hadn’t spotted him.”
“Oh.” I was quite taken aback. “So Hama Batu’s men are likely to find out that I was the one who identified him?”
“Oh yes. They almost certainly know already.”

“Do you think they’ll come after me?” what I had done was beginning to sink in. “They won’t want people to think that they can betray the Shadows and get away with it.”
“You can’t say for certain.” My father thought for a while. “The Shadows will have a lot else on their plate at the moment. At the same time, it would probably be no bad thing if you were to drop out of sight for a bit.”
“Easier said than done, I would have thought.”

“I don’t know.” My father smiled. “With all the panic going on, there will be a lot of Guardians moving around. Perhaps we can ask Hasiki to find a place where they don’t know you.”
“Well it can’t be up in the plantations. Everyone up there knows who I am. And the same goes for the Hangar. And the reading room. I never thought about it but I’m just a bit too recognisable for comfort.”

“How many times have you been up to Our Granny’s house?” My father asked.
“Just once. And I’ve been to the Court Houses up there three times. Counting today.”
“Well that may well be the safest for you. By and large, the Gardeners don’t know you and you’ve been out of circulation for a while, so a lot of the newer Guardians won’t recognise you either.”

“What about books?” I asked. “Will I be able to get books up there?”
“Listen to that, Bahla,” my father laughed, “I find a way to save his skin and all he’s worried about is what he’ll be able to read.”
“Don’t worry, Tommu,” Bahla winked at my father, “I’ll find a way to get some reading material up to you for as long as you’re there.”

32. Investigation

By the time we reached my father’s house, I was tired out but that did not make sleep any easier. No position I could find was comfortable and dawn was breaking before I finally fell into a deep slumber but even then my dreams continued where waking thought had left off.

I was still fast asleep when I was awakened, about mid-day, by banging at the front door. I opened it to a Sergeant Guardian that I vaguely recognised.
“Hi Tommu.” He greeted me. “They told me you were here.”
“Yes. I arrived last night. I’ll call my dad.”
“No,” he said, “it’s you I’m after. Can I come inside, please?”
“By all means. How are things this morning?”

“Pretty bad. I think they’ve recovered all the dead but it’s still very gruesome down there. The smell is what gets you. And the soot.
I was lucky and I got a couple of hours sleep but some of the boys have been working for twenty four hours, solid. They’re just about done in.”

“Is there anything one can do to help?” I wondered why he had come to see me.
“Actually, yes. Captain Hasiki sent me to ask if you’d be able to take a look at the perpetrators before they are buried. I believe that you caught a burglar last year and we’d like to know whether he’s one of them. The grave has been dug and they need to close up as soon as possible for health reasons, so it would be convenient if you could go down this afternoon.”
“I can come down with you now, if you like.” I told him. “I just need to get washed and dressed.”

Just as I was getting ready to leave, my father came in.
“Ah! You’re up. I decided not to wake you.” He said. “I’ve just been down to the market but I couldn’t find any eggs. The whole place is just about deserted.”
“I’m going down to the hangar to see if I can identify the burglar. Would you like to come along?”
“Not really, thanks. It’s all a bit depressing. Unless you need me, Manesh can take care of you.”
“I don’t need taking care of.” I protested, grateful for the name, “Let’s go then.”

The Sergeant and I walked down to the hangar. As my father had said, the Village was almost deserted. The few people out on the streets seemed to be in a hurry to escape, keeping close to the walls of the buildings and disappearing suddenly into doorways.

The sky was lightly overcast so that the sunlight did not cast distinct shadows and the hot, humid wind blew dust and leaves and specks of soot across the bare road. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead and beginning to run down my back under my shirt. Small groups of Guardians stood on the street corners, rifles at the ready.

The wind brought the reek of smoke and wet ashes and, every now and then, the horrible smell of burnt meat. As we went further down the hill, we could see traces of soot on the road where they had been carried by the feet of people moving about the fire and the quantity of ash in the air began to increase.

At the bottom of the hill, we were stopped by a sentry. Sergeant Manesh explained our mission and we were allowed to go ahead, only to be stopped again a hundred yards further on. At last we were accompanied by one of the Guardians down to the field where the bodies of the three fire-bombers were laid out, together with their victims.

I walked carefully over to them. Fortunately, all the corpses were covered with cloth blankets. I would not have been able to look at the Village dead. I tried not to think about what I might have seen if I had.

Our escort pulled back the blankets, one at a time and I looked into the three faces. One of them had been quite badly burned and all had bullet wounds but they were easily recognisable and, with a peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment, I realised that none of them was the burglar I had apprehended.

“Sorry, Manesh,” I said, “no-one that I recognise.”
“Good. That means that we know what at least one of those on the run looks like,” He answered. “Captain Hasiki asked if you could spare him a moment.”
“The Captain is inside, checking that the structure has been secured.” Our escort added. “Come this way and I will take you back to wait for him.”

We followed him to the entrance of the hangar. I could see the remains of the Guardians’ reception office just inside the door. It was cluttered with ashes and the remains of furniture. At the end of the room, the wooden partition that had separated Rega’s space from the reception area had burned down and I could see the ashes of her desk and chair. The board on which she had pinned her finished work was completely incinerated and so was most of the desk. The remains of its surface sloped down to the ground where the legs had been destroyed, held up at the other end by the last piece of the drawer unit.

The top drawer had slipped open and I could see the black mass of charred papers that were all that remained of the pictures that Rega had drawn. As I watched, fascinated, the wind rocked the the desk backwards and forward, balancing on the last remains of a leg that had been turned to charcoal but somehow continued to provide support at the back.

All at once, it gave way and the desk collapsed, splitting the drawer and spilling the charred papers out onto the floor.
“Our Granny’s portraits!” I cried in surprise as the stack slid forward, revealing that lack of air had protected the centre of the pile from the fire. “Do you think I could see if any of them can be saved?”
“You shouldn’t really go in there,” Manesh answered, looking at me strangely “but why the hell not.”

I stepped through what had been the wall and gingerly lifted the charred pictures off the top of the pile. Most of them had been completely destroyed by the fire and were now reduced to streaks of ash, washed down by the overnight rain. Near the middle of the pile, however, were a few pictures with just the outer edges burned.

I recovered two of the sketches of Our Granny and then, below them, the photograph that Rega had showed me the day we first met. The remainder of the pile consisted of a few other sketches of anonymous faces that I did not recognise, too badly damaged to be worth saving, so I picked up my trophies and returned to wait for Hasiki.

After a few minutes, he came around the end of the hangar, where some yards of wall still stood intact, and greeted me.
“Ah, Tommu,” he said, “I gather that your man was not there.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s what I was hoping you would say.” He smiled grimly. “Although it means that I have to ask a further favour of you.”
“I’ll assist in any way that I can.”

“We need you to help us to find your burglar.” He hesitated, “If you would, of course. We have arrested more people than we can deal with. More than we should have, I think, and I would like you to go up and see whether you can find him there before we let them all go. We have no other obvious leads in this investigation, so you would be doing something really important.”

He looked at me carefully before continuing. “You need to understand, though, that there is some danger to you in this. If you are seen to be turning in one of Hama Batu’s Shadows then they could decide to take revenge on you. We will try not to let anyone know what you are looking for, but we can never be sure that they won’t guess. Will you do it for us?”
“Anything.” I said. “I want to do whatever I can. It’s important to me too.”
“Thank you, Tommu. I wouldn’t have asked you if it wasn’t necessary. If you need anything, then let me know.”

“Actually, Captain,” I said, “there is something. I wondered if I might keep these three pictures?”
He looked carefully at the charred drawings and the photograph. “What are they?”
“They were done by a friend of mine.” I answered.
“In that case, I don’t see a problem. Keep them. But if we need them at some point, you’ll have to return them.
Now go with Manesh. He’ll take you up to the old courthouse where we have the prisoners.”

Hasiki turned back to his men. The Sergeant and I set off up the hill, leaving the scene of devastation behind us. In the eerie stillness of the empty street, the sound of our sandaled footsteps seemed strangely loud.

“May I ask you a question?” Manesh broke the silence. “Why did you want the pictures that you asked the Captain for?”
“I’m not really sure.” I thought for a moment. “Somehow they are unfinished business. I told Hasiki that they were drawn by my friend, but that isn’t the whole of it. I know that she wanted to know whether they were correct or not. Perhaps she would have wanted me to find out.”
“I’m really sorry.” He said.
“What can one say?”

My question closed the conversation and we walked on without speaking further until we arrived at the Gardener’s courts. My mind flashed briefly back to my last visit here for Iliva’s trial but I was soon brought back to the present by the noise of shouting from inside, and what sounded like heavy blows.
“We had better pretend that you’re here to see your father.” Manesh suggested. “If you see the burglar, then don’t say anything until we have moved on. Afterwards you can tell me.”

The first room we entered contained a group of men under guard, sitting on the floor with their hands tied. As we entered, a door at the back opened and two Guardians came in, half dragging, half carrying a man between them. His face was bruised and his eyes were swollen and blackened. I saw that one of his arms was twisted at an odd angle as they pushed him down to sit with the others. They seized another suspect and dragged him from the room and I noticed that several more of the suspects also suffered from bruising.

A quick check showed that my intruder was not in the room and, as we moved on, I whispered to Manesh “Are those members of the Shadows that they have identified?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” he replied, “just routine questioning.”
“In that case, what would they do if they did find one of Hama Batu’s men?”
“You don’t want to know.” He answered. “You don’t want to know.”

31. Coach Trip

“Where is your travel bag?” my father said. “You’re coming home for a while.”
“But I have work to do.” I protested weakly.

“All arranged. There’ll be no planting for a while anyway. The island has to remain locked down while this is sorted out. We must go tonight or you will be stuck here indefinitely. The Captain will be going down to the Village with the tractor and I’ve made sure they’ll save a seat for you.”

He emptied my cupboards into the duffel bag and picked up the model from the desk.
“We know now that this is a link to The Shadows and Hama Batu. The investigators will want to talk to you about your burglar when you are feeling up to it.”

We walked out together to the gatehouse, where I waited in an empty office until the Tractor was ready to leave. I sat at the back of the trailer on the way back to the Village, squeezed onto a sofa made for two beside three burly Guardians. The vehicle was filled to capacity, with Captain Hasiki, a Guardian Lieutenant and half a dozen men, as well as my father and the Sergeant who had come up with him to the plantations.

I am afraid that the conversation in the coach passed in something of a blur for me but I think that subsequent events showed that it was important, so I will do my best to reconstruct it.

Some of the talk was about the details of the fire. One of the problems had been that there was the water supply from the Village was not designed for emergency use so that it had been very hard to fight it. In addition, there had still been some drums of oil stored in the back of the hangar and they had contributed a dark, rank smoke to the blaze. The sergeant thought that even the attackers had not understood how the fire would spread and what damage it would cause.

“They didn’t act alone.” He said. “They would have had to get hold of our uniforms and the drum of gasoline. There’s no way that three fuzzies from the jungle could have pulled that one off without help. But we’ll get them. If we have to chop down all the trees on this island, we’ll find every last one of them and make them wish they’d never been born.”

“Careful there.” Hasiki said gently. “We need to be very cautious as we follow this one through that we don’t make things worse. We have to make very sure that we focus very narrowly on the culprits.”

“With respect, sir.” The Sergeant interjected. “You didn’t see the hangar and smell the fire. We need to show these people that we’re not going to be pushed around. We have to hunt them down like the monkeys they are. Catch them and pull their toenails out one by one, then make them eat their own excrement. Then chop their heads off. That will teach them some respect.”

“Is that what people are saying in the Village?” the Captain asked.
“They had better not go anywhere near the Village, Sir. They will end up roasted on a slow fire themselves. Everyone would be ready to join in the hunt. They are just waiting for you to get there so that they can set it all up.”

“As you say.” Hasiki hesitated, “But we want to react carefully. After today, the whole island will be outraged by this. We need to build on that to starve the perpetrators of sympathy. The one thing that we don’t want is for people to feel sorry for them.

The best defence against this sort of atrocity isn’t to emphasise its importance. Over the last few years, we have been gradually undermining Hama Batu’s power base. He used to have dozens – perhaps hundreds – of followers. As we’ve given people work in the plantations and gradually expanded the area we control, that number has reduced and reduced.

Today’s attack is a desperate measure. This is the work of a group that fears that it’s being marginalised and squeezed out of existence. Yes, they’ve inflicted a serious wound on the Village but I think it was as much by accident as because they attack from a position of power. Three people rolled a drum of gas down a hill and set fire to it. That is the only strength they have shown and it might be almost the total strength of their position. Three men and a match.

No doubt they planned it carefully; they seem to have been well organised. But I suspect that they would have been almost as surprised by the scale of their success as we are. What we have to avoid is turning a defeat into a disaster. They want to provoke us; to get us to turn them into heroes and to inspire their supporters.

The best way to deal with them isn’t to attack everything is sight. The best thing is to carry on eating their lunch. Take away their supporters. Give them jobs. Take away their territory, leave them exposed. I’ll tell you who the most valuable fighter is in the battle against Hama Batu and the Shadows. It’s Tommu. Every time he plants a palm tree, he strengthens the Village and he weakens them.”

“But Sir, if we let them get away with it they’ll think we are weak. They’ll take it as a licence to attack us again.”

“No Sergeant. If we over-react, they will know that we are weak. Have you ever watched a monkey that’s got fleas?”
“Fleas, Sir?” The Sergeant looked puzzled.
“Yes. The monkey sits in the sun. It runs its fingers through its fur and it finds a flea. It catches the flea and it squashes it with its finger nails. The fleas are a small problem for that monkey.”
“What do you mean, Sir?”

“Now imagine the same monkey. It sits there scratching itself all over. It snatches at where the flea is biting it on its leg then it scratches its stomach, then its back. Perhaps it is just one flea but pretty soon the fur is coming out in tufts and you see its bare skin, red and swollen. That monkey has problems.

It still has the problem of the flea, but now it has the problem of the damage it has done to itself as well. You watch that monkey and you know it is in trouble.
I know which monkey I would rather be.”

The conversation drifted on to other things and I was left in the back with my own thoughts, something I could well have done without. As we drew nearer to the Village, there was smoke on the wind and an aroma of roasted flesh that would prevent all of us who smelled it from ever again enjoying a barbecue.

The hangar – or the shell of it – was illuminated by arc lights. The roof had collapsed and the afternoon rain had damped the last of the fire but it was clear that blaze had stopped because the interior had been completely burned out. A Lieutenant Guardian ran up to the Tractor and took Captain Hasiki and the Sergeant to a meeting at the old court houses. The Gardener’s coach was swiftly unhitched and a water tanker hooked on instead. Fighting the fire had used more water than the pumps could deliver to the tanks at the top of the hill and it appeared that more was needed to help replenish them before the supplies to Our Granny’s house and her gardens were impacted.

The charred remains of the dead, had been placed in neat lines in the field nearby. The men at the site were smoke blackened and exhausted. They were still working on securing the ruin, propping up collapsing walls and beams so that they could get in and out safely. As I looked at them, I recognised in their tired eyes my own sense of disbelief. I could see that their movements were dazed; mechanical.

They too felt that this was an enormous mistake; that if, perhaps, they worked hard enough, tidied up enough, they could somehow put things in order. They were trying to find an obscure error and correct it so that everything would be back to what it always had been.
“We should help them to clear up.” I said to my father. “They look done in.”
“No.” He replied. “There is nothing that we can do tonight that can’t be done as well tomorrow morning. We need to get some sleep now, to prepare for that.”

We set out to walk up the hill to his house. Although it must have been close to midnight, the Village was still wide awake. There were lamps lit in every house with people out in their gardens and on the street corners. Everywhere was the smell of the fire and ash.

As we walked, we passed groups of Guardians escorting prisoners. My father stopped one and asked who they were.
“Suspects.” Came the reply. “We’ve been through the shanties and picked up everyone we found in the wrong place. And you know what sort of job that was. Two of my men have knife wounds.
Every damned family has some relative from the jungle with no papers staying with them. And as soon as they realised what was happening, of course they hid or ran away to the hills. I shouldn’t think we’ve got half of them.”

“Were they involved with starting the fire?” my father asked.
“They say they weren’t, but of course you’d expect that. But there’s time enough to find out tomorrow which of them are telling the truth. A little persuasion and they’ll be singing in no time. We’re having to hold them in the old court houses up near Our Granny’s garden.” He broke off to encourage one of the prisoners who was lagging behind.
“Move along there!” He shouted. “You lazy piece of beetle dung! Or you’ll feel the weight of my boot!”
Our paths diverged and we walked on up the hill in silence. My father was thoughtful.

“Hasiki is right, you know.” He growled. “I’d like to catch the people who did this as much as anyone, and gut them like fish, but this is stupid. They’ve brought in dozens of low life illegals and if there’s even one or two of them that had anything to do with the fire we’ll be lucky.

They should have secured the perimeter and gone to bed. As it is, the culprits will have been warned and they’ll be the last to be caught. If we’d waited until tomorrow we could have done some proper investigation and perhaps found the real villains instead of going out recruiting for Hama Batu.”

30. Fire

Two days later, I said my goodbyes and set off for the plantations where we were ready to plant out a new section of young trees. Up in the hills, the atmosphere was relaxed. There had been no security incidents for some time and, in some ways, I thought that it would be good to get back to the day to day routine of the work there.

Usually I could lose myself completely in the exacting task of pegging out the planting pattern, selecting the best seedlings from the nursery beds and ensuring that they were given a good start in their permanent homes. It takes four years for a palm tree even to begin to produce and it will continue to fruit for anything up to twenty years. Setting out the young palms to make the best use of the slopes and ensuring that the ground is properly dug over and prepared is quite critical. That is something that the Guardians and the labourers don’t always understand and tend to try and shortcut.

There is also something very satisfying in watching the plantation develop, the neatly symmetrical rows with each young tree at last in its permanent place, and knowing that this design will endure and grow over the years ahead. With so many things in our lives open to doubt and disruption, the sight of the perfect pattern in the plantations is somehow reassuring.

This time, however, I found it difficult to settle to the familiar routine of the planting process. Somehow my mind seemed to be elsewhere. I won’t say that I was continually thinking of Rega but she was often on my mind. I accepted my father’s view that our relationship required clarification but I had no clear idea in what direction.

On the one hand, there was no doubt that we were comfortable together and, as he had pointed out, she was an attractive woman with a wicked sense of humour. On the other, she was thirty two years old and I had just turned forty four. Twelve years is a big difference at any age but while we were both young and active, it was not a problem. Twelve years between fifty eight and seventy on the other hand...
Even when I wasn’t directly thinking about Rega, however, I found myself preoccupied, questioning the value of what I was doing. Even the familiar dawn trip to the plantation site somehow failed to distract me and the workers and the Guardians teased me about my ‘girl at the hangar’.

One evening I went out to inspect a set of holes newly dug to prepare for planting. As I looked down the line of pits, it was instantly clear that the young Guardian who had pegged them out had made an error. Half way down the slope, the line kinked and swung away to the right so that, at the far end, the holes were more than a yard too far apart.

I began to give my standard speech for occasions of this type. “These trees will still be here when you are a grandfather. It may be a lot of work to fill the holes in and dig new ones but better a week’s extra work now than palms not producing the right amount of oil for the next twenty five years etc.”
“We hoped that you would not have noticed.” The lad replied. “The difference is only three trees at the edge of the plantation.”
“Oh, forget about it,” I shocked myself by saying. “Leave the damn things where they are.”

I was really in a bad way, I concluded.

The first week I decided that, at the weekend, I would go down to the Village, but of course when Friday evening came, there was too much to do so I decided to wait and go down ten days later when I had to for my meeting.

The next week, returning home on Wednesday evening to my room at the fort, I found a crowd milling about the gate. I knew most of them and walked over to one of the carpenters who made our wooden plant setters.

“What’s going on here?” I asked him.
“Nobody seems to know.” He replied. “The Tractor is here with the Gardener’s passenger carriage. It wasn’t scheduled here until the ploughing next month. A couple of Guardians came with it and one of them is with Captain Hasiki. Someone told me that there was an incident down at the Village but that’s as far as it goes.”

The Tractor was parked on the parade ground and, as I had been told, it was hitched to the Gardener’s luxurious coach. The coach was something of a bone of contention between Gardeners and Guardians. It was fitted with glass windows and completely weatherproof, with upholstered sofas for the occupants and even a cupboard for drinks.

Normally only Gardeners were allowed to travel in it. Paitor was the only other person who ever used it and the idea that it might have been made available to anyone else was quite strange. The crowd were pressing and jostling around it and attempting to engage the driver in conversation but he was resolutely silent. As I walked past, however, he came over to me.

“Tommu,” he called. “Where are you going to?”
“I was just on my way to the canteen. I feel thirsty after a day out in the sun.”
“Your father is here.” He said. “He’s waiting for you in your room and he needs to speak to you urgently.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “You mean that my father came up in the coach?”
“Yes. But don’t stand here talking to me. You don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense. Who else have you got with you?”
“Your dad will tell you as soon as he sees you. Hurry along. I’m not supposed to say anything to anyone. I just didn’t want you going out without seeing him.”
“Just a hint? You have to give me some clue.”
“I’ve already said too much. Now you go along and see your father.”

I turned and walked as quickly as I could to my room, my head whirling. Nothing in my experience could explain what was happening. How could my father have driven up to the plantations in Tahmo Lukuni’s private coach? Something he needed to see me about? My work certainly did not justify this sort of urgency and if my father was here, then he was OK. Surely?

As I passed down the corridor, one of the Sergeant Guardians came up to me.
“You know that your father is waiting in your room?”
I nodded.
“Have you spoken to him?” he asked, “Do you have any idea what’s happening?”
“Not the faintest. Have you heard anything?”
“Nothing definite. They say there’s been a fire in the Village.” He shook his head. “You’d better get along there.”

I entered the room to find my father sitting on the bed, looking out of the window. He stood as I entered.
“Hi Tommu.” He looked down at the floor. “Are you well?”
“Yes Dad. I’m fine. Now tell me what on earth is going on.”
“Calm down.” He was still not looking at me. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
He gestured towards the arm chair. “I’ve had some tea sent over. Take a bowl.”

He began to pour the tea.
“I’m not thirsty! Now will you please tell me what is happening?”
“Just sit in the chair. You’ll know soon enough. Sit down.”
Reluctantly I sat down and accepted a bowl of tea. “OK. I’m sitting.”
“That little model of the Tractor,” he began, “do you still have it?”
“Yes, it’s right there.” I said. “Bottom drawer of my desk.”
He opened the drawer and looked inside. “The same.” He grunted. “I thought so. Well we’ve found a few more of them.”

“Dad!” I protested. Will you please tell me what, exactly, is going on.”
“Bad news. Very bad news.” He looked at me directly for the first time. “The hangar has been burnt down.”
“The hangar? Are you all right?”
“Me? Oh yes. I’m quite fine.” He was looking down at his feet again. “They killed the ones who did it. Three of them. And round their necks they were wearing things like that.”
“Models of the Tractor?”
“Yes. With the knife through it. Exactly like the one you took off your burglar.”

“When did this happen?”
“Lunch time today. Three men – at least three men – dressed as Guardians rolled a drum of gasoline down the hill and opened the bung. There was fuel everywhere, all across the entrance. One of our men came out to see what was happening and they stabbed him dead on the spot.

By the time that the rest of the men got out, they had set a light to it and the whole area was an inferno. The three of them tried to attack the Guardians and they were only armed with knives and axes so they really had no chance of survival. But the damage was done. The building was full of people attending the new court house so casualties were heavy.”

“Where were you while all this was happening?” My mind was reeling as I tried to grasp the impact.
“Off duty, fortunately. But you need to know the worst...” his voice trailed off.
“Rega!” I cried. “Rega was out at lunch. Tell me that she’s OK. She’s OK? Isn’t she?”
“I’m afraid not. Rega was in her office. She couldn’t escape. You need to know.” His voice shook. “That’s why I came. Someone had to tell you about Rega.”
“Burned. That is the most awful thing. The most painful thing.” I covered my eyes and sank back into the chair. “If... if I had been there. If I had been there she would have been at lunch.”

“You can’t think like that, Tommu. Pull yourself together, boy. There’s nothing you could have done. And they say that in a fire like that people aren’t killed by the flames. They always lose consciousness before the flames reach them. The fire uses all the oxygen, so they actually die of asphyxiation before they get burned.”

“Rega! I wanted to talk to her. I was going to go down at the weekend but I was too busy.” My mind skipped from one thought to another. “There must be some mistake. Perhaps she wasn’t at work today. Perhaps she was out interviewing a witness. There’s probably a simple explanation.”

“Try and stay calm, Tommu.” My father said gently. “I’m afraid there’s no mistake.”
He placed his arm on my shoulders. “There’s nothing you could have done. Have a sip of tea. It will help you to calm down.”
I picked up the bowl and looked blankly at the tea. “No!” I shouted. “No! I will not have tea!” I flung the bowl across the room so that it shattered on the opposite wall.
“No! No! No! Tea is the last thing I want!”

29. The Question

We finished our meal and sat for a moment without speaking. At last Rega broke the silence.
“If you’d like to see the photograph, I have it down in my desk.”

“That would be intriguing.” We walked slowly back down to the hangar, pausing as we passed through the market to look at some of the stalls. When we reached her office, she opened a drawer and brought out pile of drawings from which she extracted the photograph.
“Do we know anything about the American?” I asked.
“Nothing. I suppose that he was someone from the airbase.”
“I could find out a bit more about him from his uniform.” I looked at the picture closely. “You can tell, from that, whether he was a solder or an airman and even how important he was. We have several books about the organisation of the American military.”
“Would you do that? I don’t suppose it will help very much in working out what Our Granny looked like, but it would be interesting.”

“Sure. I’ll bring a couple of books over and we can look him up together.” I paused. “So do you have any progress on your own picture of Our Granny?”
“Half a dozen sketches,” she spread some drawings over the surface of the desk, “but I think you can see the problem.”
“Yes. I can. No two are of the same person.”
“Exactly. There is even less agreement about Our Granny than there was about my master of disguise. This is a youngish woman with a long straight nose and a pronounced chin. Very severe looking.”
“And this,” I said “Is a woman of the same age, more or less, with a round face and laughing eyes.”

“She's older in this one – it’s from Tahmo Lukuni’s description. It was incredibly difficult to draw because every time I chalked in a feature he wouldn’t say ‘The nose is too long.’ Or ‘Face too round.’ He would say ‘She needs more respect.’ Or ‘Not kind enough’. And as you can see, what she actually looks like is pretty random. But Lukuni thought she had the right personality.”
“They all seem to be completely different.” I commented, scanning across them for a common theme. “You’d think that at least they would agree on whether she had dark or light skin.”

“Every shade from pale as coconut meat to black as ebony, according to my witnesses. And they all claim to have worked closely for her for many years. I showed the pictures to Paitor and asked him whether any of them looked like Her but he just laughed and said that it was a long time since he had seen Her. ‘I told you that it wouldn’t be easy.’ That’s what he said.”

“How are you going to draw a composite image from that lot?”
“That’s my problem. No matter which of Her Gardeners you ask about Our Granny, and no matter what description they give you, there are five others saying they are wrong. There is no consensus to work from. I’m surprised there isn’t one of them who thinks She is a man.”
“Perhaps you just asked the wrong people.” I laughed. “I’m sure that if you’d asked a few more you would have found someone who thought that she was a man.”
“Don’t joke!” she looked at me severely. “If I don’t come up with something then my job is probably on the line.”

“I shouldn’t think so. Paitor understands the problem. I think that what you should do is go back to Tahmo and show him the sketches you have. He’ll pick one and then you just burn the rest.”
“But would that one look like Our Granny?” she cried in distress.
“What does that matter? You’ve done the job you were asked for. They don’t want a picture of Our Granny. They want a picture of their idea of Our Granny and you’ll have given them that.”

She thought for a moment. “Perhaps you’re right. But I would still like to try and finish what I’ve started. Not least because I’m beginning to wonder what Our Granny actually does look like.”
“Well perhaps you should go and see Manaku Jim. He would know what she looked like.”
“Manaku Jim? I wouldn’t go up there. If he liked me then I’d end up having to sleep with him. Urgh.”
“I thought that all the women wanted to sleep with Manaku Jim.” I looked at her.
“Perhaps once, years ago. He gives me the creeps.”

I left her with the problem, but the next day I was back with the books on the American military and we found that the American was an officer in the navy. The following day found me there again, to see what progress she had made with the picture of Our Granny. Somehow, without precisely intending to, I found myself at the hangar most days.

We got into the habit of lunching together, walking up through the market, or sometimes down to the shore. I discovered that her family had moved to the village when she was about ten years old and that she had lived for some time in the shanty towns. She had always been able to draw and this was the key to an independent life for her. She now had a comfortable room in a house in the village, living with a friend of hers who was married.

I began teaching her to read and showed her some of the books from the Reading Room that dealt with art and the techniques of drawing. One book, in particular, described a painter from a place called Florence and showed coloured pictures of his work that she felt were outstandingly well executed. This led us into research on how to produce different colours and we spent time out in the fields searching for coloured rocks that we could grind up to make paints by mixing them with egg whites and other binders.

We also spoke to the tattoo artists from the market and the women who made batik, learning from them how they produced their colours and tints and Rega began to experiment with coloured paintings. She produced pictures of flowers and some of the local children and a coloured version of one of the sketches of Our Granny. It was in the style of Michelangelo with the face illuminated by light shining from above.

It wasn’t the version from Lukuni’s description and she said that she knew it was not one of which he would approve. It made Our Granny look rather light hearted so she gave it to me that year on my birthday to hang in my house.

One evening I went to visit my father. I made it a habit of going to cook dinner for him at least once a week when I was in the village. He had bought a piece of pork and some bindi, which we cooked with mushrooms and corn. After dinner as we sat looking out over the village he broached the subject of Rega.

“Are you getting serious with that woman, then?” he asked brusquely.
“Hold on, hold on.” I was caught off guard. “Rega and I are good friends. There’s no need to read more into it than that.”
“You’re down at the hangar every day.” He took a sip of his beer. “Don’t tell me that you come down there to see me.”
“No, I’m helping her to make paints.”
“And having lunch together, and spending the evenings with her.”

“Spending time together doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We have interests in common.”
“Are you saying that you don’t find her attractive?” he looked at me slyly.
“She’s attractive. Very attractive, I think. But we’re comfortable together. I wouldn’t want to upset that.”
“You mean that you’ve never thought, for example, of kissing her?”
“Dad!” I protested. “She’d probably be shocked. It would upset her. I enjoy seeing her and I wouldn’t want to put that at risk.”

“Sometimes you have to take a risk. There’s only the two of us, now that your mum is gone, and I sometimes think that it might be nice to have grandchildren.”
“Stop! Stop! You’re taking an innocent friendship and turning it all of a sudden into grandchildren. Where does this all come from? I am just helping the woman to improve her art and now you want me to marry her?”
“Well have you talked to her seriously about your relationship?”
“No. we’ve never discussed it.” It occurred to me that perhaps Rega had, once or twice, obliquely started to turn the conversation in the direction of what, exactly, our relationship was but I had felt a bit uncomfortable and we certainly had never gone into the matter. So strictly speaking, what I said was true.

“You have to think about it from her point of view as well, you know.” My father said. “ You monopolise her and, even if you don’t think of it as a relationship, other people do. She is wasting a lot of time with you if you aren’t actually interested. If you don’t think that it will come to anything, you owe it to her to be clear about it. She won’t find anyone else as long as you are hanging about.”

“I don’t see how I could make any sort of commitment to a relationship. You know that I spend most of the year up in the plantations. I’m due to leave again soon.”
“Even more important, then, that you sort yourself out. You can’t just walk off and leave her hanging in the air while you’re incommunicado up in the jungle.”
“It’s not the jungle, Dad. You know that.” I objected. “The plantations are cleared and under the control of the Village. And it isn’t as if I am so very far away. It is only a couple of hours walk. I can always come down and see her at the weekends.”
“Don’t try and change the subject and split hairs and nit-pick me!” My father looked at me sternly. “I don’t care if you are in the jungle or on the farm or here in the Village. The important question is what do you feel about Rega. That is something that she has a right to know, so that she can make her own mind up about you. You say that you don’t have a relationship, but I suspect that she might not agree with you. That is something you need to sort out for yourself and clarify with her.”

“All right. All right.” I conceded. “Stop all the pressure. I admit that I need to clear this up. But it’s something I don’t really know myself. I need to think about it. I’ll tell you what. I’m up in the plantations now for two weeks. Then I have to come back for some meetings. I’ll speak to her then.”

28. Background Colour

I looked up from the drawing in my hand. “Why do they want a picture of Our Granny?” I asked.
“To do Her honour and show Her their love. That’s official. The portrait will hang in the football stadium where everyone can see it and remember how Our Granny cares for the island. Paitor told me when he gave me the commission. ‘It’s so long since She lived among the people that they don’t remember what she looks like.’”

“How far along are you with it?”
“I’ve done a lot of work” she answered, “but I haven’t made a great deal of progress. But that’s a long story and would probably bore you.”
“Not at all. I’m fascinated by the idea of trying to depict something that you have never seen. I was just about to get something to eat. Why don’t you join me and tell me about it over lunch?”
“I don’t usually eat lunch.” She hesitated “But why not?”

She picked her wallet up from the desk and added it to a basket already bulging with painting paraphernalia and scraps of paper and we set out for the market. Leaving the hangar, we passed the new tractor shed, specially built to house maintenance operations and the development project for the oil powered tractor.

“What is in the hangar now that they’ve moved the Tractor out?” The times when I had been in the Village I had been mostly at the reading room and I was interested to see that the main shed area in the hangar had now been partitioned off.
“Mostly offices.” Rega gestured towards the windows that now faced out of the tall doorway. “They control the issuing of money from there and the identity cards for people allowed into the upper Village. There are some new law courts and the offices of some of the football teams. Everyone that matters wants to have a place in there. It’s all who you know, you know.”
“I can imagine that. All those powerful people in one place.”
“Yes,” she smiled mischievously, “I have to remind myself every morning on my way to work that I may work in the building but I’m not one of them. At least I hope I’m not.”

We walked up the hill into the market area. The place was bustling with vendors noisily selling fruit and vegetables, heaps of spices, jewellery, trinkets, carved furniture and anything else one could imagine. Various tradesmen were at work on the side of the road; a barber was cutting hair and next to him a tattooist was completing an intricate design on a man’s shoulder.

We passed a butcher’s stall with pieces of chicken and pig being sold for the evening meal while fresh stock, in the shape of the live originals waited more or less patiently in cages for their turn on the table. Next was a dentist where the crunching sounds of a tooth extraction made us hurry onwards.

Our destination was a food stall where we selected fillings of roast pork, tomatoes and carrots which the owner, a jolly woman wrapped in a colourfully dyed dress, placed on pak choi leaves that she folded quickly into a triangle and dropped into the pot of oil bubbling on her charcoal brazier.

“What oil do you use for the frying?” I asked her.
“Palm oil, from the plantations. It’s the best. And you can buy it here in the market.”
“That’s good to know.” I told Rega, “My last ten years have been spent planting palm trees and at least it seems to be doing some good. When we started, we knew that it would take a long time until we produced any quantity of oil but even knowing not to expect early results there were moments when we felt we were wasting our time.”

The stall keeper scooped our samosas from the hot oil and handed them to us, wrapped in banana leaves. We bought some fruit juice from the next stall and went to eat our meal in the shade of the enormous wild fig tree that grows at the top of the market.

Sitting there on the grass, our world seemed perfect. As we looked out over the crowded stalls of the busy market and over the hangar buildings, standing high above the plain, we could see the farmland stretching down to the river. The Tractor was working methodically up and down with labourers like ants spread across the fields, each engrossed in their task of hoeing or weeding. In the distance was the football stadium and, beyond it, the black dots of the fishermen in their canoes out on the lagoon. Even the squalor of the shanty towns was not visible, hidden behind the corners of the hill.

The great tree spread overhead, cast a cool shadow to protect us from the sun, as if it had always been there to shelter us and always would be. The breeze blowing in from the sea was a welcome relief from the heat of the day as it brought the industrious smell of spices and cooking from the market. As we sat there, eating our food and drinking the sweet fruit juice, I think that neither of us could have imagined that the moment would not last forever.

“You were going to tell me about how far you’d got with your picture of Our Granny.” I said.
“Yes. And it’s been trouble from the start.”
“Hard to find people who can describe her?”
“Not at all. People will describe her all day. But when the Captain-Major called me into his office he warned me that that drawing Our Granny was lilely to be controversial. He would have preferred not to expose me to it but he said that he didn’t have any option. The request had come from the Head Gardener himself.

It’s strange that you should have mentioned Iliva. I think the whole thing really started from there. Even before I drew the picture of her, I had occasionally made sketches for the Guardians but it was and off-and-on sort of thing; nothing regular. After the picture of Iliva I started to get more work at the hangar and it became a real job. And of course, the people really looking for Iliva were Gardeners so they got to hear about my work. Most of them knew Iliva, so they could see that what I had done was a good likeness.

In any case, at some point the idea surfaced that it would be a good idea to have a picture – a sort of official portrait – of Our Granny. When I had my interview with Tahmo Lukuni, the Head Gardener, he told me that he thought of it himself, although that isn’t what Paitor said.

Tahmo Lukuni told me that the Village has grown so much in the last thirty years that most of the people who are here now don’t remember when Our Granny lived among us. They come to the Gardeners’ Courts and they don’t understand the traditions of the Village or Our Granny and they have no idea of everything they owe Her and how the Gardeners are her representatives.

What we needed, he said, was a portrait that would bring people closer to Our Granny so that they would understand how She cared for the Village, how wise She was and loving and how severe where people did not show the correct attitude and respect.”

“That sounds a tall order to me,” I said, “especially if you weren’t going to meet her. What are they going to do with this portrait when you have painted it?”
“I think the idea is to make copies of it. As I told you in my office, one is to be hung in the football stadium where everyone can see it. Our Granny gave the stadium to the Village and they want a large painting of her there to show that the Village is grateful. Then they also want copies they can hang in the various public offices – in the hangar, in the reading room, in the courts and so on.”

“But you’ll be kept busy for the rest of your life if you have to draw so many copies.”
“The idea isn’t for me to draw them all, necessarily. Once there is one, approved version, there are other people who can make copies. Their problem was to find someone who could work from descriptions, without seeing her. That was why they insisted that Paitor should assign me to the task.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to take someone up there to meet her?”
“Precisely what I asked.” Rega smiled, “But it emerged that the ‘official true portrait’ needed to be , shall we say, ‘younger’ than Our Granny is today. As Tahmo Lukuni put it ‘We are not interested in being critical; in encouraging people to see her frailties. We want a symbol that people can respect.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After the first meeting with Paitor, I had to go up to Our Granny’s house where I was interviewed by one of the Head Gardener’s staff. He was interested in my feelings about Our Granny, whether I had any doubts about Her and so on. I had taken some drawings to show him but he never asked to see them. I gathered that he had seen my picture of Iliva and he was amused by the idea that I had never met her. After about an hour he sent me home, saying that they might contact me again.

The next time I was called in, it was to meet Tahmo Lukuni himself. He explained that there was a danger that the villagers were forgetting Our Granny. They needed to understand that football and money were not an end in themselves, that they were only a way of encountering Our Granny and being a part of the Village. That was why they wanted the reminder, a picture that could be reproduced so that people could remember Our Granny and stop losing respect for her.

I asked who would describe her to me and he said that he would provide a description himself. When I explained that the portrait would be improved if I could speak to several people who knew her, it was clear that he had not realised that I would want to speak to anyone else. I told him that if he wanted a realistic portrait then I’d need to speak to at least three, preferably five people. It wasn’t that I doubted his memory but sometimes quite crucial details don’t come out in the first few sketches. Things that make the difference between a recognisable picture and one that has all the features right but doesn’t look like the subject.

In the end, he agreed to let me speak to some of the other Gardeners and he also gave me a photograph.”
“A photograph?” I looked at Rega in surprise. “I didn’t know there was a photograph of Our Granny. That must have made things easier for you.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She frowned. “The photograph is small. About the size of the palm of my hand and there are several women in it, and an American soldier. Of course I asked him which of the women was Our Granny and he instantly pointed to a young girl – a child really – and said that she was Our Granny.

I pointed out that when the Americans were here Manaku Apu, her son, would have been as old as the girl in the picture and asked if Our Granny wasn’t perhaps one of the older women. At that, unfortunately, Tahmo Lukuni became really angry. He asked me if I was aware of the penalties for Disrespect. So of course I apologised and that was that. We made an appointment for our first drawing session and my audience was at an end.”

27. Fellow artists

For the next few weeks while I was up in the plantations I puzzled over the model tractor we had found. I showed it to a few of my friends but no-one was able to think of any plausible explanation of what it was. It is a pity that I didn’t think to show it to Bahla. He was the one person who might, perhaps, have been able to shed some light on it at that time. Instead, I decided to take it down to the hangar when I returned home to the Village to ask the Guardians there if they could offer an explanation. The Sergeant on duty was an old friend of my father’s. He greeted me warmly and offered me a drink of fruit juice.

“Have you been to see your dad?” He asked. “He misses you now that he is on his own. Spends far too much time down here when you are up in the hills.”
“I’m going up to see him this afternoon.” I answered quickly. “I only arrived back last night and I had to get some food in. It’s six weeks since I slept in my own bed and the whole place needs cleaning.”
“So what brings you in here instead of doing all that important stuff?”
I took out the pouch and showed him the little model.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.

When I had told him the story he shook his head. “Beats me. But the carving is beautifully executed. Look how he finely he has done the exhaust and the air intake. You wouldn’t think you could carve such thin rods out of that brittle wood. It really is a work of art. I think that Rega would find that fascinating.”

“Who is Rega?” I asked. “I don’t know him.”
“Not him; her. She is the artist who works with us in the hangar.”
“I didn’t know that the Guardians included an artist.”
“She has only started working here lately.” He replied. “Before that she used to help out from time to time. Let me call her over.”
He went into the next room and returned with a youngish woman, shorter than the average and light skinned with a round face, she looked at me carefully.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Rega. I believe that you have a mysterious artefact.”
I handed the model to her and she took it over to the window and examined it carefully.
“Yes, very well done.” She commented. “I wish I could get as good a likeness in my own pictures. Then we’d have no difficulty finding them.”
“What pictures do you do?” I asked.
“Missing persons, wanted criminals.” She answered. “Drawings that the Guardians can show to witnesses, that sort of thing.”

“Was it you that drew the pictures of Iliva? That was a pretty good likeness. How did you know her?”
“That was one of the drawings I did before I came to work here full time. But no, I had never met her. I worked with her husband and some of his friends who knew her well.”
“In that case, it was nearly a miracle. But I’m surprised you would work with a man like Manla Kulu and help him try to recapture a person who did not want to be with him.”

“That particular picture was relatively easy. The way I work, I sit with a number of people and I use chalk to draw a separate portrait based on what each of them tells me. I draw each feature and then the witness tells me what is wrong and I correct it.
I’ll draw the nose, for example, and they might say ‘It’s too long’ or ‘It has a kink’ or whatever, so I change it until they say I have that right and I go on, one feature at time, until I have a complete portrait from each witness.
Then I look at all the portraits and I combine them into one that is the best fit I can make from the different people’s perceptions. Iliva’s picture was easy because she had a strong face and the witnesses all agreed on what she looked like. Bringing all the different portraits to a single image was really easy.

As far as whether I should have helped her husband, I wouldn’t know. Drawing good pictures is hard enough without questioning every job that I am asked to do. I couldn’t take each commission and say to the Guardians ‘You shouldn’t be looking for this person!’ That would be silly. My job is to draw the pictures. The Guardians find the people. The Gardeners’ Courts decide whether they are guilty or not.
I can’t know on the basis of what people look like whether they have committed a crime. All I can do is just to draw as best I can.”

“And if the witnesses disagree about what someone looks like?” I looked at her. “What happens then?”
“That depends on the circumstances.” She replied “Sometimes there is a general agreement but with one that is so different that you just discard that input. Other times you find that one witness has noticed something – a scar perhaps, or a particular feature that the others have missed and it is enough just to add that feature in to the general portrait. Most of the time there is enough agreement to create a composite that people can recognise and it’s good enough for the purpose.

It gets more difficult when the subject is consciously trying to confuse you, of course. I had one case last year like that where there was a series of robberies that was obviously committed by the same person and I couldn’t get a good picture. The robber would wait until people had been paid, follow them home and, as they were about to go into the house, threaten them with a knife and take their wages.
The pattern was the same, week after week, but the description was different each time. Sometimes the criminal had long hair. Sometimes he had a beard. Sometimes his jaw was square and his face appeared round. Sometimes he seemed to have a long face.

By altering his hair style or holding objects in his cheeks, wearing tall shoes, changing the tint of his skin, he was varying his appearance so that he looked different each time. By making changes to half a dozen aspects of his appearance he could turn into someone you would not recognise. Some of the people he robbed were even convinced that he was a woman.
I kept drawing pictures of him. Each of the victims swore they were accurate, exactly what they had seen, and yet each picture that I drew added to the confusion as to what he really looked like.”
“Was he ever caught?”

“Yes, he was.” She smiled. “But not through the pictures. In the end, it was just luck. A couple of Guardians were coming off duty and walking home when they heard someone call out. They went to see what was happening and found the robbery in progress. The robber tried to run away but he tripped and twisted his ankle so that they were able to catch him without too much trouble and bring him down to the hangar.

The soles of his sandals were thickened to make him look taller so, in the end, actually, it was his disguise that brought him down. I spoke to him and showed him the pictures and he was quite proud of being able to change the way he looked. But that was exceptional. A lot of criminals would like to trick us but not many actually try and even the ones that do try are usually not very good at it.”

“That is an amazing story. Do you still have the pictures now? I’d be fascinated to see them.”
“Oh yes. I have a box full on my desk. It’s just down the corridor.”
I replaced the model in its pouch and followed her into her room. A blackboard was fixed to one wall, showing a series of sketches. Mostly faces, viewed from different angles, some obviously different attempts at the same person, some partly completed work in progress.
“Sit down please.” She sounded amused. “Normally this chair is for the witnesses.”
She selected a set of drawings and handed them to me.

“So you’re Tommu.” She looked at me directly. “I think I've heard people mention your name but aside from that and the fact that you have a very well carved model tractor, I know nothing about you. Tell me more.”
“The model tractor is a puzzle. It came from someone who tried to break into my room in the plantations. I've spent most of the last few years up there. As for myself, I'm a reader. I try to understand the world by interpreting what people have written about it.”
“That isn’t so very different from what I do. I try to draw a true picture by interpreting what people say.”
“You’re right, I suppose. In a way we both work second hand. Although I don’t think that my authors are consciously on the run and trying to escape from me.”
“Perhaps not.” She laughed again. “But it would surprise me if at least some of them weren’t pretending to be a bit more than they are. Either consciously or because they don’t really see themselves.”

“Yes. I have often thought that the books we have show as much about the person who wrote them as they show about the subject they try to deal with. While I was up in the plantations recently I read a book called ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’. The story is about a man who is always being tempted to do the wrong thing. But the author never has any doubts. The characters have names that tell you immediately whether they are good or bad. You can imagine that author would be happy to die for what he believes in. You have to envy that sort of certainty.
He writes about a place called Vanity Fair and his characters are tempted to stay there but the author always knows better. He knows that you shouldn’t waste your time on money and clothes and socialising. He knows that there is something beyond that. You can imagine him looking at us here, going to the football matches, people drinking and eating. You know that he wouldn’t like it.”
“Like Hama Batu?”
“Just like Hama Batu. I know that we have the Gardeners to tell us what Our Granny is thinking but you look at what they say and most of the time it’s something that makes the Gardeners better off. What I’d like to know is what Our Granny actually says. Not what the Gardeners say that she does.”
“I can sympathise with that, anyway.” Rega replied. “That is my main problem at the moment.”
“How so?”

“My current assignment is exactly in that area. I have to paint a portrait for the Head Gardener. Of Our Granny.”
“Well he could take you directly to see Her.”
“Not allowed. The portrait is to be a surprise. In any case, Our Granny has taken a decision, it would seem, that the only people she permits to see her are the Gardeners. I am to prepare a composite portrait of her based on interviews with people who have met her but I am not to see her myself.”

26. Fortification

Langanipa’s promotion was just one part of a broader reorganisation of the Corps of Guardians. From the start, they had the dual responsibilities of maintaining the Tractor and defending its security and this separation was becoming more and more pronounced. The Technical Guardians had been recognised as a separate division, under the leadership of Lieutenant Bambafama who had been promoted to Captain in recognition of the extraordinary achievements of his team.

These included the introduction of two new energy sources – the water wheel and the use of palm oil as fuel as well. Iron smelting had been established and work on the second, oil powered Tractor was well under way.

Lieutenant Hasiki, who had led the Guardians in the Trading Expedition, was promoted to Captain in charge of the Guardian Defenders and a special rank of Captain-Major had been created for Paitor, in overall command of both branches.

Initially, having suffered a high rate of casualties in the Trading Expedition, Hasiki had been passed over for the plum Guardian jobs in the Hangar so that he had ended up in charge of constructing the first of the border forts – a job that no one else wanted. In the long run, however, this had proved an advantage because, having accomplished this successfully, he had continued in charge of the defence of the frontier.

As overall commander of the forces in the plantations and, therefore, of the vast majority of Guardian Defenders, he was the visible face of resistance to the occasional incursions of Hama Batu and his Shadows. Hasiki had learned the lessons of the Trading Expedition well, ensuring that his men always travelled in strength, well armed and ready to overwhelm anyone who attacked them with superior fire-power and discipline.

Remaining within the cleared area of the forts and plantations, he focussed on protecting the work of jungle clearance, so that the workers were well guarded. Every attack by the Shadows was beaten back – usually with heavy losses – and, as the forest was cleared and the planted area increased, the attacks became more sporadic so that it appeared that the Shadows were gradually losing heart and reducing in numbers – perhaps to just a fanatical hard core.

It must have been a difficult time for Hama Batu and his men. The forts were well protected, their territory was being eroded, their supporters deserting, so that even their occasional success – an attack on a careless group of workers or the destruction of some palm trees, perhaps – went unnoticed and unreported.
More and more , the forest dwellers were migrating into the plantations. When Hama Batu’s men arrived to obtain food, they had to take more from the groups that remained in the jungle, making themselves less and less popular. Even his promises of the return of the Americans and a time of plenty for everyone did not seem quite so convincing now that people could see an easier life in the plantations next door.

Hasiki, himself, led his men by example. He spent most of his time touring the forts, supervising the training of the men and talking to the Guardians and workers. He was a familiar, diminutive figure in the plantations, joining the working parties and taking a personal interest in the direction of the work.

The order in which the different areas were cleared was important to him. He always attended planning meetings to ensure that each new extension to the cultivated land could be defended easily and he would often walk up to us as we worked to enquire how things were going and whether we had any problems.

His right hand man was Sergeant Starling, another veteran of the Trade Expedition with a formidable reputation as a fighting man. When he was not on duty he could be found in the shebeens and bars of the shanties, an innocent smile on his face, a girl on each arm and a mug of corn liquor in his hand. He was very proud of an American saying that he had picked up somewhere: “I have no problem with drink.” He would say.
“I drink. I fall over. No problem.”

I only once saw him in action against the enemy when our working party was attacked as we were pegging out the plantation pattern. The Guardians were sitting talking nearby when one of our workers was struck by an arrow and a group of men, armed with axes and clubs ran towards us.

Instantly, Starling, appeared transformed , from an affable giant into a destructive whirlwind. Directing his men to right and left, he seized a rifle and brought down three of the attackers, then, with a machete he expertly felled two more. The remainder were already in flight, pursued by the rest of the platoon and the raid was beaten off leaving two of their number dead and five prisoners, four of whom were injured, with our only casualty the man who had been wounded by the arrow at the start of the attack.

The wounds of the prisoners were treated but two of them died later. The remaining three were sentenced to work in the plantations under guard and two of them ultimately remained as plantation workers after their sentence was over. The third was shot trying to escape.

That incident was quite unusual, at that time – the only attack on the plantations that I ever saw in the years before the war started officially. We took it for granted, in those days, that things would continue improve as we exploited our environment better. Looking back now, it seems difficult to believe that we never saw the warning signs but the explanation is simple: we were not looking for them.

I remember once when I was staying for a few weeks in the Guardian billets inside one of the stockades. I was woken just before dawn by a noise at the window. The window was open – if you can believer that – and without bars and as I looked from my bed I saw that there was someone trying to climb in.

I decided to wait until he was halfway in and then to leap up and grab him. The plan seemed like a good one but, as I leapt out of bed and across the room, he sprang back out the way he had come. I followed him and, as I emerged from the window, he was climbing over the gate and running away.

Without thinking, I ran after him, flung open the gate and followed him across the parade ground and out into the street. I was faster than the intruder and he jinked and zigzagged as he tried to get away. I could feel the stoney ground cutting into the soles of my feet, used as they were always to wear sandals, but I didn’t let up.

He threw down a piece of dirty cloth, perhaps thinking that it would trip me up but it was easy to avoid it and, as we came to a place where the road began to rise sharply he suddenly seemed to give up and slowed down so that I half dived, half ran into his back and brought him to the ground. It was only at this point that I suddenly saw my vulnerability.

We were alone a quarter of a mile from my room. I was wearing only a rather revealing pair of boxer shorts and the skin of the soles of my feet was torn so that I could hardly walk. Even now, years later, I don’t fully understand the incident. Somehow the fight seemed to have gone out of him and he walked meekly, with my arm heavy on his shoulder, as he half carried me back into the barracks.
When we arrived we were met by the guard who had been awakened by the commotion and they took the man in charge. He was very young – perhaps fifteen or sixteen – and the Sergeant grabbed him by the arm.

“What were you doing, trying to get into the room?” he asked.
“I thought it was my friend’s room.”
“What friend?” The Sergeant asked. “You were going to steal something, weren’t you?” He pushed the boy roughly so that he fell over. “What were you trying to steal?”
“I thought it was my friend’s room.” The boy repeated, getting to his feet. “I wanted to visit him.”
“You wanted to visit your friend at five o’clock in the morning?” The Sergeant cuffed him about the head so that he put his hands up to fend off the blows and sat down again. “You’ll have to come up with a better story than that. I’m taking you down to the cells so that you can think about what you really want to tell me.”

I believe that was the last time that I saw my intruder but a couple of hours later the Sergeant came to see me.
“Tell me, Tommu,” he said, puzzled, “do you have any idea why he might have wanted to break into your bedroom? Did you have anything there of value, that he might have wanted to steal?”
“Nothing at all.” I replied. “My things are all down in my house in the village. All he would have been able to take were a couple of shirts or shorts. The clothes I wear every day and some papers from my work.”

“Would any of those have any value, do you think?”
“Not that I can see.” I thought carefully. “All that I have is the planting plans for the next week or two – where we will be working, which fields we will be ploughing, where we will be doing weeding, where we will be transplanting the palms. None of that is particularly important or secret. We tell the teams about that every evening so that they can report for work the next day.”
“Well it’s quite strange.” The Sergeant was thoughtful. “We kicked seven kinds of sense into him without squeezing even one drop of sense out of him. He rambles on about his friend and then he admits he wanted to steal something. Then he denies it. It just doesn’t add up.”

“What will you do with him?” I asked.
“There’s nothing much we can do with him. I’ll hang onto him for a while and make him join the work parties but that won’t really achieve anything. If nothing more comes up in the next couple of weeks, we’ll just let him go.” He looked thoughtful. “Oh. I almost forgot. What do you make of this?”

He held out a grubby leather thong with a small pouch attached. I opened it and looked at the contents.
“A tiny wooden Tractor?”
“Yes,” the Sergeant said, “and very carefully carved. With a knife that goes right through its engine. As if someone has stabbed it; cut it right through. He had it round his neck. I can’t imagine what it means.”
“Neither can I. Do you mind if I keep it for a while to examine it?”
“Not at all.” He said. “I was going to throw it away.”