To the Islands Read Online Free Page A

going queer from being too long in the tropics.—Do you remember, in the war, the cartoons about going troppo and drinking jungle juice?’
    At the end of the road, where the trees met, ‘There’s Djediben in her new dress,’ said Helen. ‘She looks ready for a garden party.’
    Gunn laughed. ‘Gosh, what a figure. She could be sixteen.’ They watched the slim, middle-aged woman advance down the road in her almost fashionable dress. Her body with its long lines had the grace of a girl’s, she walked delicately on her gross bare feet.
    ‘
Ali!
real pretty fellow now,’ Helen called to her.
    The small black face split open with a screech of laughter. ‘You pretty fella, sister, yeah, you.’
    ‘No, you, Djediben.’
    ‘
Ali
, sister!’ screeched Djediben, convulsed with laughter, and came and embraced her with thin black arms, touching gently with her palms Helen’s breasts and shoulders, circling her waist with a spider arm. ‘Sister,’ she sighed lovingly, hiding her face against Helen’s neck.
    ‘You old smoodger,’ Helen said.
    Gunn asked: ‘Where’s Dambena, Djediben? Still camping in the bush?’
    ‘Eh, Nambal—that way.’
    ‘He likes the bush, eh?’
    ‘
Jau
, ’im like ’im budj.’
    ‘You’d better go and see him. He’ll be getting off with another old woman pretty soon.’
    ‘
Jau
,’ screamed Djediben, ‘’nother old woman. Brother.’
    As she stifled her amusement against Helen’s neck a wad of chewed tobacco dropped from behind her ear and fell in the dust. With a wail she fell on her knees to search for it and having found it sat crouched in grief over her thin hand. ‘
Worai, worai
,’ she lamented, rocking slowly with desolation. ‘
Mundju
all binidj!’
    ‘It’s only dusty,’ Helen said consolingly over the keening, ‘and this is ration day, you’ll get more this afternoon.’
    ‘Aaaah,’ crooned Djediben.
    ‘
Mire badi
,’ Gunn said. ‘Never mind.’
    Suddenly, as if a tap had been turned off, all lamentation ceased. The woman got to her feet, put the tobacco in her mouth, and walked silently away.
    ‘Funny old thing,’ Helen said. ‘So many moods in one little woman. It’s a wonder she didn’t stay. She must have known if she kept wailing long enough I’d give her a cigarette to chew.’
    ‘Eldritch is the only word for Djediben.’
    ‘That sounds a bit sinister.’
    ‘She is, I think. Intelligent and inscrutable. Lots of dark depths under the smooth manner.’
    ‘She’s Rex’s mother. You know, the famous Rex.’
    ‘Rex’s mother?’ Gunn asked sharply. ‘I didn’t know that.’
    ‘I found it in an old file. It might explain some things about Rex.’
    Looking along the baobab avenue to where, in the shade-stippled dust, Djediben had sat herself down, Gunn said slowly: ‘I’m feeling a bit worried.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Rex.’
    ‘What has he done now?’
    ‘He’s come back.’
    Helen turned her head and stared, so that the light, falling through the leaves, filled her eyes and the clear, honey-coloured depths of them. ‘Here?’
    ‘Here.’
    ‘But how?’
    ‘Well, Stephen was coming back, that was all arranged, and somehow Rex got hold of him and persuaded him to introduce him to Terry. And of course Terry didn’t know anything about Rex, and finished up by bringing him back in the boat last night.’
    ‘Oh, Lord. What will Mr Heriot do?’
    ‘I can’t think. But he can’t blame Terry—I mean, it was his first trip, and he says no one told him about picking up stray passengers. It was just his lousy luck that it had to be Rex.’
    ‘But I can’t understand why Rex should want to come back, not after everything that happened before. He knows what Mr Heriot thinks of him.’
    ‘I think it’s just that he scores off the white man by being here at all. Especially off Terry.’
    ‘Poor Terry,’ Helen murmured.
    There was a kind of amusement in her voice, not for the first time when speaking to Gunn of Dixon. Oddly, Gunn