To the Islands Read Online Free

Kimberleys.’
    Gunn said, looking across at the cliff: ‘By the time this country’s ready for agriculture the rest of the world will have blown away in fine dust.’
    ‘Things are working out,’ Way said, ‘I think. There are plans for opening up more country, running some more cattle. Not,’ he admitted, ‘that I’m any less concerned, but I’m more optimistic. Once Heriot’s affairs are fixed up and the new man comes we won’t feel so uncertain about everything.’
    ‘Did the council find a new man?’
    ‘They said in their last letter they had two candidates.’
    ‘The mail came last night. Mr Heriot probably knows by now.’
    ‘It’ll be a relief,’ Way said. ‘To him as much as to anyone. He’s too old.’
    ‘Harry’s older.’
    ‘But more stable. Less to worry about.’
    Picking at the grass, Gunn said slowly: ‘I wonder whether, when he’s dead, people won’t think again about Mr Heriot.’
    ‘I’m a charitable sort of bloke,’ Way said with a faint smile, ‘as a clergyman. I’ll just say I prefer people who have a certain warmth about them. Especially on missions.’
    ‘He’s one of the old school, though. It was tough for them, they didn’t have time for warmth. And he has achieved something, you can’t take that from him. I don’t see how we can sit in judgement on him, now, when it’s so much easier.’
    Way said dryly: ‘You’re young, Bob, you make me ashamed of being so old and inflexible. But I stick to this: a man who goes round spreading civilization with a stock-whip gets no admiration from me.’
    Gunn, staring at the ground, pulled out his tin to roll another cigarette.
    ‘No time for that,’ Way said. ‘I’m two minutes late already. My wife has a trying time waiting at the organ with the girls whispering, “
Ali
, Mana wipe her nose, Mana scratch her neck,” all round the church.’
    ‘I’d better take off,’ Gunn said. He got up and walked round by the grass half-walls to the open front of the iron church where the men stood waiting under a baobab.
    Murmuring: ‘Good day, brother.’
    ‘
Nandaba grambun, abula?
’
    ‘You talk language, brother?’
    ‘
Jau
,’ Gunn said. ‘Little bit.’
    ‘Good day,
abula
.’
    Good day, Michael; good day, Justin; good day, Edgar; good day, Richard; good day to all my brethren.
    Kneeling on the ant-bed floor, rock-hard under her knees even through the thin hassock, Helen Bond watched Heriot at his rigid prayers near the front of the church.
    Thinking: What does he say, morning after morning, kneeling up so straightly? How does he go on, with always the same day ahead? Is it the prayer itself that gives him strength?
    He had raised his head now, his neck was darkly burned below the white hair. His mind is somewhere else, Helen thought. What does he think about, what has he been thinking to himself for all these years and years?
    From a rafter above his head a lizard dropped to the floor, stood in the aisle waving one forepaw. She, watching it, became aware of a sort of rustle of attention among the people, and found that they too were watching, with the amusement and the tenderness they kept for the eccentricities of wild life. But Heriot had not noticed, his eyes were fixed on a distant tree showing over the half-wall of the church, and his body still had that tensity of concentration that belonged to his prayers, so that she felt suddenly ashamed that she could be so easily distracted, and covered her eyes with her hands. But could think of no prayer, having already said everything that seemed necessary.
    Afterwards, standing outside with Gunn, she watched Heriot walk stiffly back to his office, and said: ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He let me examine him, and he seemed to be in wonderful condition for a man of his age. Yet sometimes he seems too tired even to say “Good morning”.’
    ‘Terry thinks he’s going troppo.’
    ‘Troppo?’
    ‘It’s not in the
Nurse’s Encyclopedia.
Means