Free Inheritance by Jenny Pattrick Page A

and customs, in the politics of Samoa’s new independence. My ridiculous brother forgot all his resentment and put on a great show of charm, boasting about his political science degree, offering to take her on a tour of the island in his new car, laughing in his high, silly way and slapping his thigh. Unfortunately, he was very attractive to women. Tiresa was about to lead him away when Jeanie’s wretched husband did the same to her.
    ‘You are being discourteous to Gertrude,’ he said, in a loud hectoring voice. ‘Come and take your proper place.’ No word of greeting to us. Jeanie smiled her apology and went with him – a relief to Tiresa, who had Teo earmarked for an important marriage and wanted no hint of flirtatious behaviour to be witnessed by the patele.
    Proper place, he said! Jeanie had been sitting among high-born Samoans. Stuart Roper would have to learn a few manners if he was to settle in the islands. We were an independent country now and fa‘asamoa was the proper way of life.

    Our patele, of course, made great play of the hurricane being God’s punishment on all sinners, as witnessed by the fact that the LMS pastor’s house collapsed and his survived. A triumph for the Catholics. My mother, Tiresa, joined in the orgy of incriminatory pronouncements, solemnly claiming that Gertrude’s death was a punishment from on high for her shameful treatment of her own ‘aiga at the feast.
    ‘She ignored our pule, seated us in a position not befitting. So!’ Tiresa truly believed this. She loved to make spooky proclamations about the wrath of God. Naturally, as a devout churchgoer and generous contributor to the patele’s lavish way of life, she expected the Lord’s wrath to mirror her own.
    ‘It was no accident the banana palm fell just then,’ she said. ‘The finger of God struck it down in punishment!’ Tiresa wagged her own finger at me, to make sure I took note (and renounced my sinful ways).
    It had taken two days for news of the accident to reach us. Our own village was badly hit – seven fale had lost their roofs, all the falela‘iti‘iti‘i collapsed into the lagoon, their fragile rickety walkways now an undignified heap of broken poles rising from the shallow water like the bones of a beached whale. We would have to go back to relieving ourselves in the bush and that could create its own problems. Already I was designing an education programme. But in those first days no one had time to worry about problems in other areas. We were cut off anyway – no radio, roads blocked. Nearly the entire banana crop for our village was gone. We were busy picking what we could, storing the green bunches in pits. An old matai said they used to make masi – a sort of fermented, rotted banana mush, which would last months in the ground, but none of us fancied the sound of it. How were we going to feed all the families? Most of the breadfruit trees were gone too. The taro survived, but banana and breadfruit were the staple.
    On the third day my cousin Samasoni battled his way down through our devastated banana plantation in search of me. He arrived, sweating and scratched, with the news that Gertrude was desperately ill and needed a doctor. Would I come?
    ‘Things are bad up there,’ he whispered. ‘A person like you should be there.’ This whetted my curiosity, as he knew it would.
    What a nightmare trip back inland! The track had virtually disappeared under a tangle of vines and fallen debris. Suffocating damp rose from the ground clogging our lungs. I had to stop often to lean against a tree and cough. We could have been breathing pure water.Samasoni went ahead, hacking with his bush knife, but, even so, it took three aching hours to cover what should have taken a quarter of that.

    Gertrude lay still on her bed, hardly raising a hump under a snowy sheet. The housegirl waved a fan back and forth over her body. Perhaps stirring the heavy air brought some relief, but I doubted it. The old lady looked