Free Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay Page A

boys?’ he asked more gently.
    â€˜No, taubada.’ There was no way on earth of telling what might be going on behind those lustrous eyes, staring now so steadily into his own.
    â€˜All right. Get in and let’s go home.’ They had probably just been gambling. They would naturally not like being questioned. When Rei started up the engine and the jeep moved down the hill, Washington said, hoping to soothe the boy’s ruffled nerves, ‘Sing to me Rei. What was that song you were playing up there?’
    â€˜I no sing, taubada.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Sore head,’ said Rei, chewing again.
    Washington looked away. They were passing along the dock side. A cargo ship was tied up against the jetty. It was still lit up and the lights from its ports tossed and broke as the water lifted and fell. There was no unloading that night and the jetty was deserted. Only one solitary native squatted on the edge of the wharf, his black, fuzzy head silhouetted like a flower against the sky.
    Even Rei had changed, thought Washington. He had always been a fool, but a gay one. He was always happy. He would bring his friends up to the boyhouse and play his guitar and sing for hours on end – local songs, hillbilly songs, Samoan dances learned from the early Polynesian missionaries.
    But now he only sang with his own people, making Washington feel a stranger. He went about solemnly, and quietly, in a manner altogether foreign to his nature. He had ceased to be childlike and had become enigmatic. Sometimes Washington felt he was hiding secrets.
    All of them, thought Washington – retreating further from the comfort of Sylvia’s caresses – including Rei, had turned against him. And he had been their friend. They had come to him with their troubles – a piece of old sheet for a sail, iron to patch a roof, a rusty knife, a letter to be written to a friend. He had made speeches at their weddings. But now they no longer came and there was nobody to sing to him. Rei, who wandered around looking enigmatic and doing things more efficiently than usual, was the only one left. He felt the whole brown race had smelt him out and no longer trusted him – conspired to shun him, perhaps, God knows, even more than this. He suppressed a shudder.
    The road wound round the edge of the water. The tide was out, leaving a few yards of pebbly beach, and half a dozen native men with flashlights were fishing in the shallows. He could see the vague, shadowy outlines of their bodies. The road turned and led back past a long row of buildings towards the hills. A wild hillside with only one path threading over its crest loomed ahead. The road turned again and finished in a group of tumbledown iron sheds that had once been army stores.
    â€˜There’s no light,’ said Washington, standing up and peering through the trunks of half a dozen coconut palms. ‘I told you to leave a light.’
    â€˜No light,’ reiterated Rei, and they both stared at the black smudge on the hill ahead that was Washington’s house.
    â€˜Well, you bloody well go up and light it and come back with my torch.’
    Rei, who did not like the dark any more than Washington, rolled his eyes.
    â€˜ Go on! Hurry up ! I don’t want to wait here all night!’
    Rei clambered out of the jeep and started slowly up the path. The darkness swallowed his head, shoulders, arms and legs, and left only his white rami floating away like a moth into the gloom. He started to sing.
    Why does he sing now? thought Philip. To keep spirits away? What spirit is he afraid of here? Or did he, without knowing why, sense that there was no peace in that decrepit little hut?
    The white moth of Rei’s rami had disappeared but his voice could still be heard, chanting away up the hill. Washington lit a cigarette. In the tangled rubble of the sheds something moved. A door scraped and a piece of tin fell with a clatter to the