Free The Love Beach by Leslie Thomas Page A

a mock shout: 'Anyone want fresh butter and fats.'
    'The woman with the rusted hair, next to your friend Bird, is called Mrs Flagg,' informed Pollet. 'Her husband is next to her ‑ the other side. A very unorthodox type of English they are. They have much interest in the natives of St Mark's, the tribesmen who wrap the penis in banana leaves.'
    'Jesus, said Davies. 'Is that what they do? Banana leaves, eh?' Conway said: 'And Mrs Flagg is interested in this er ... habit?'
    Pollet said: 'Fascinated by it.'
    'And Mr Flagg?'asked Conway.
    'He likes it too.'
    Davies leaned back and said to Pollet: 'Who else do you know?'
    'Most people,' answered the Belgian. 'I have been skitting around here many years. There is Mr Turtle. He is the man who runs the radio station. He goes for only an hour a day so he is not very busy. He is a Vigilante ‑ how do you put it ‑ he is the leader of the ratepayers. He wants to put parking meters in the middle of Sexagesima. His wife cries a lot. She is next to him. See how red‑eyed. She has been crying quite recently.'
    Pollet frowned at the tops of the people's heads just below them. 'The man perspiring in the hairy sports coat is called Mr Hassey. Thirty years ago or more he came here for two weeks to ascertain the natives, which is his expression.
    'Next to him is Mr Livesley who is so proud because he has that neon sign above his baker's shop. It is the only sign for hundreds of miles, and I think perhaps the only one in the world that says "Bread" in three lovely colours, always changing. He sent a photograph of it to the Pacific Islands Monthly.'
    The Belgian looked along the rows below him. The build‑
    ingwas noisy with conversation and the shuffling of chairs. The seats were all filled by now andthe late‑comers were standing around the walls completely blocking the scenes of everyday life in Chungking.
    'Ascertain some more natives for us, will you?' requested Conway.
    Pollet smiled: 'Ah yes,' he agreed. 'This is probably the meaning of Mr Hassey. Well, Mr Kendrick is there, by Mr Hassey and Mr Livesley, his friends. He has the bicycle shop. People do not know it here in the islands, but a few years ago, about five, in Sydney, he was convicted by magistrates of squeezing a lemon in a prostitute's eye at King's Cross. I was in the city myself at the time and I read it in the newspaper. A most strange man.
    'Colin Collins, the Reverend Colin Collins, an American missionary. He is down there. From a very minor religious group. He is their only missionary and they sent him here. He is a very good man as far as his church operations are concerned. Excellent. He has a Polynesian wife ‑ from Tahiti, I think, and she allows him to sleep with her and her five sisters all together in the same night. I understand that they have lashed two beds together for this purpose. But he told me one day that he prefers Japanese women.'
    The building was now uncomfortably full. There was something different about the people, Davies thought. He searched for the reason, looking about him, watching faces and eyes, listening to sentences or half sentences, hearing people laugh or cough mildly, looking at their clothes. Then he realized that they were two generations short, that something of the movement of life had not yet reached this place. They reminded him of the grown‑ups he had known. in South Wales when he was a child before the war. He wondered if living in this corner had done this to them or whether they had come to the islands because they were this sort of people anyway. Had they come here to hide away?
    One of the ornamental Chinese doors, to the right of the hall, opened with a creak like a falling tree, and a small, bald‑headed man in a voluminous kilt, strode in, followed by a line of ten other men and four women.
    'Mr Rob Roy English,' whispered Pollet. 'Chairman of the town council. And the others ‑ they are the council.'
    Davies said: 'Why the kilt?'
    Pollet shrugged: 'He is proud.