Rushing to Paradise Read online

  ‘But who is he?’ Jaw set, Dr Barbara advanced across the sand, followed by the Saitos. ‘Foreign Service? The Colonial Office?’

  ‘No, Barbara - Club M diterran

  �

  e.’ Monique spoke straight faced. ‘Monsieur

  �

  Kouchner is a field scout. Club Med may open a beach resort on Saint-Esprit..

  They stood still, staring lightheadedly at each other. Dr Barbara sank to her knees and clasped a handful of black sand, which she threw playfully at Monique.

  The two women embraced, laughing with relief. The first yacht-crews were coming ashore in their dinghies, waiting for the tender to clear the reef.

  ‘You’re safe here, believe me,’ Kouchner happily assured Carline and the Saitos as they questioned him. ‘Saint-Esprit belongs to the world. The publicity and demonstrations, they’re all too much. The President decided on a magnanimous gesture, especially as Peugeot and Renault are boycotted in the United States.

  Green issues are a big factor in the parliamentary elec tions..

  ‘They’ve just pulled out?’ Still sceptical, Carline pointed to the landing craft. ‘Then what about the LCT? What’s hiding behind that ramp - a brigade of marines?’

  ‘Far more dangerous - TV crews, journalists, publishers’ agents. Unlimited destructive power at every finger-tip.’ The cheerful travel agent raised his short arms to embrace the island.

  Everyone is coming to Saint-Esprit.’

  ‘And the LCT?’ hartered in Papeete.’ [he Frenchman cast a hopeful eye at

  the)d-stained beaches with their dead birds and fish, already: isualizing the native huts clustered around the bar-restaurant, icrobics gym and holistic massage room. ‘The navy may be nack, just for inspection, but not for some time - the death of the American was a big turning point.

  Saint.-Esprit is yours for many 11i(!1t1i. Rni. ni L11 Ii n [‘he tender carrying visitors from the Palangrin had entered the lagoon and docked alongside the pier. The journalists and news photographers stepped ashore, followed by the TV

  crews, already staking out the most promising panoramas of the modest land. An assertive woman interviewer from a French fashion magazine soon spotted Monique and Dr Barbara and began to c! uestion them, thrusting her tape-recorder into their faces. The! irst camera strobes flared against Dr Barbara’s high forehead, iluminating the exposure sores on her scalp, which a thoughtful make-up girl concealed with her powder puff.

  For the rest of the day Saint-Esprit became a series of movable press conferences, which sprang spontaneously from the air around the expedition members like dust-devils.

  Bouquet and the crew of the Croix du Sud set up a bar on the airstrip beside the bulldozer, and this served as the combined nerve-centre and casualty station of the island. Dr Barbara and Monique led the ournalists on a tour of the albatross nesting among the dunes, provoking only two of the pairs to abandon their eggs.

  Professor Saito and his wife were interviewed by a team from Japanese TV

  channel, who set up a small studio against the anquil backdrop of the camera-towers and the nuclear lagoon.

  Vaiting his turn, Neil wondered whether to startle the ltroshima and Nagasaki viewers by extolling the merits of omic weapons, but felt Carline’s cautionary hand on his a oulder.

  ‘Leave out the nuclear weapons, Neil. Just congratulate the rcnch President on his good sense.’ He was amiably tipsy on the lie broupht ashore from the Croix du Sud. ‘Remember, you’re the only one they managed to shoot. Don’t let the Saitos take the credit.’

  ‘David, it might all be a trick… How far can you trust the French?’

  ‘About as far as I trust the British. Maybe a little further.

  They’ll stay away for a while, long enough for us to save a few more of the birds. Tell me - what do you see from these camera towers?’

  ‘Nothing, David.’

  ‘Really? That’s a pity - an interesting experiment is about to start soon, and not the kind you record with a geiger counter.’

  Barefoot, at the Japanese director’s request, Neil submitted to his interview, sending greetings to his mother and Colonel Stam ford, to the nursing staff at the Honolulu hospital and, lastly and most awkwardly, to Louise, who already seemed a memory of his early adolescence. Blushing with embarrassment, he raised his right foot to show the bullet scar, standing one-legged while the camera lingered obsessively over the wound.

  He left the interview to find Dr Barbara beaming at him with all the pride of a stage mother. Neil was glad to see her so buoyed by the French government’s decision, the chatelaine of Saint Esprit assured of her tenancy. She had borrowed Monique’s lipstick and rouge, and her face was more animated than Neil ever remembered. She was flattered by the attentive cameras that followed her up and down the runway, and touched by the congratulations of the yacht-crews who cheered her on as she swept about her island on a wave of adrenaline.

  At last, speaking to the assembled cameras beside Bracewell’s grave, she made a passionate plea to the world’s television audiences.

  ‘First, I want to thank the French President and the French people. They’ve saved a great deal more than the albatross.

  They’ve saved Saint-Esprit and its wild-life, and above all they’ve saved hope - hope throughout the planet for a better world, where all species can live together without fear. The twentieth century is nearly over, but it still carries with it the Lsprit to be a beach-head, the doorway through which we step into the next century. Save the albatross, save Saint-Esprit, and save the twenty-first

  century.

  ‘Dr Rafferty, you’ll continue your work when you leave?’ Asked a Swedish woman journalist wearing a collection of pro-. h rtion badges. ‘You’ll take your message to the whole world?’ Leave…?’ Dr Barbara seemed puzzled by the notion.

  She trovned at the camera lenses and clutched the safety pin that secured her ragged shirt. ‘I’m never going to leave Saint-Esprit.

  My work and life are here, on this island. Saint-Esprit is a refuge for all living creatures, not just for the albatross. I want every threatened plant and animal to know that it can find asylum here.

  Go back to your countries and tell them - Saint-Esprit is a sanctuary for the entire planet and everything that lives on it. My d1I1 IrC idC Cfl()Uh t

  VCTCO1I1C the )r!J Y More than fifty people had gathered around the cameras as Dr Uarbara extemporized her new credo. The yacht-crews switched Off their portable radios and listened intently. After a moment’s respectful silence a loud cheer drummed against the roof of the prayer-shack. Carline took off his camouflage forage cap and saluted Dr Barbara as she smiled and blushed, accepting the CH!

  braces of Monique and Mrs Saito.

  1)id you see that, Neil?’ he asked almost dreamily, glad to be c-iced by Dr Barbara’s words. ‘The purest draught of evangel sin - complete sincerity hand-in-hand with the widest eye to the iiiain chance.’

  ‘Is this how new religions begin? David, it could be hmpening. ‘ Neil, Neil… there’s nothing new here. It’s the oldest rcilgion there ever was - sheer magnetic egoism. But she’s ibsolutely right, it’s just what I expected from her.

  Still, back to york - every fly with a sore foot and every trampled blade of I -ASS

  is already on its vav to Saint-Esprit.’

  Events moved faster than Neil imagined possible. A rush of dreams, plans and hopes swept aside the barrier which the French military threat had built across their minds. Though thrilled at first by her own daring, Dr Barbara soon calmed herself. The decision to remain indefinitely on the island, in this shabby realm of rotting fish and oil-stained beaches, had provided a new image of herself to live up to, as if she had set out to test the further possibilities of her own fame.

  Accompanied by Professor Saito, she strode around the island, inspecting the fern-covered hillsides and drawing up her plans for the sanctuary. While the journalists and camera-crews stum bled behind her, Kimo brought up the rear with
machete and marker pen, and soon lines of stakes set out the animal enclosures and plant terraces of her new Eden. There would be shaded enclaves for rare species of fungi, and irrigated beds for obscure water-plants whose habitats were threatened with extinction by pollution and deforestation. Large mammals, reluctantly, would be excluded, but the smaller natives of woodland and desert would be bred and nurtured in their caged environments, and eventually turned free to roam the island. No creature, however violent or self-destructive, would be rejected, since a true asylum welcomed the vicious and deranged. One day, even the most virulent bacteria might be succoured.

  Throughout all this Professor Saito was in a taxonomist’s heaven, keeping track of Dr Barbara’s ambitions and adding an eager commentary of his own, which he dictated into the tape recorders that Mrs Saito borrowed from the journalists and pressed into his hands. Diagrammatic forests of genera and species reared through his mind, branching into the remotest limbs of the biological kingdom, along which he mentally scrambled to rescue a rare parasite or endangered predator.

  ‘And how long will this take, Professor Saito?’ asked a sceptical British tabloid reporter. ‘Three months? A year?’

  ‘Many years, possibly decades.’ Professor Saito modestly raised his small hands to the dense foliage, smiling as his wife stared stonily at the moss-covered trees and the tangle of vines and ferns. ‘But in nature everything fits together, nothing can escape. A blueprint within us is already mapping out the at the sweating journalists, tormented by the flies and mosquitoes. ‘You’ve left one endangered species out of your inctuary. Is he banned, and how long for?’

  We’ll find room for Homo-sapiens. At first he’ll be on the taff side, and work his way back into the good favours of mother nature. But we’ll happily protect

  you, if only from ourseif Mrs Saito chuckled over the sally all the way down to the irstrip. ii fttiUC l)O1iiiCC11IC11tS, and the complete lack t progress on any practical level, the establishment of the:inctuary prompted considerable interest well beyond the shores uf Saint-Esprit, as Neil noticed when he and Kimo took the:nder to the Palangrin and watched the satellite TV transmis ons in the communications room. Eating breakfast cooked by ic admiring chefs in the galley, he watched himself stuttering hyly through his interviews. But at least Louise, his mother and cp-father would see that he was well. Neil’s familiar image road shoulders, determined chin and, most affectingly of all, his mall but pronounced limp - again bounced between the satellite ishes of the world, an electronic ambassador for Saint-Esprit. reen and animal rights groups in Europe, America and Japan id already responded to Dr Barbara’s open-armed invitation, d the first threatened plants and birds were being prepared for long journey across the Pacific. i yielded to the inevitable, accepting that the islanders would have no time for either leisure or pleasure.

  hausted by all this environmentalist zeal, M. Kouchner re eated to the landing platform behind the funnel of the car ferry. rting under the drooping blades of the company helicopter, lie zed wistfully at his maps of the Marquesas and the Friendly aware that a romantic vision of the Pacific first dreamed ( by GaugUiIl and Robert Louis Stevenson was giving way to a far more puritanical one.

  Joining Kimo on the bridge of the Palangrin, Neil found him scanning the skies to the north-west, as if expecting an early asylum-seeker, some endangered cockatiel or condor released from its cargo crate at Papeete airport.

  ‘It’s a bit soon, Kimo. Are you waiting for one of the rare birds?’

  ‘You bet - Irving’s supply Dakota. Let’s hope he remembers us.’

  ‘Dr Barbara talked to him on the radio - he said they were loading the plane.’

  ‘Sure. He’s so busy with his TV station he forgets this isn’t a game show.’

  ‘We could row around the yachts - people give us anything we ask for.’

  ‘I know…‘Kimo turned away from Neil, as if his frankness unsettled him.

  ‘But I don’t like doing it. Anyway, they’re running short. In a few days you’re going to wake up and find everybody’s gone. You’ll be sitting alone on that beach again.’

  ‘Won’t that be good, Kimo? It’s what you always wanted.’

  ‘Right on - I can’t wait. Too many people coming to Saint Esprit. Nobody’s thinking about the albatross any more. Let’s get that Dakota down and then we can go from there.’

  After returning to the island, Neil paced along the waiting runway, now cleared of all obstacles. The reserves of food, fuel and medicines which they had salvaged from the Dugong had been exhausted, and their modest meals of rice, fruit and canned fish depended entirely on donations from the depleted larders of the visiting yacht-crews. Monique and Mrs Saito were strict in their rationing, but Dr Barbara made sure that Neil received extra portions of protein. If only for the cameras, it was essential that he remain lean but not haggard, or his parents and a dozen Yet he tried to share his rations with Dr Barbara, leaving his infinished plate in her tent. For all her elation and the endless nterviews, she had begun to neglect herself. The exposure sores and the ugly rash on the backs of her hands were spreading.

  Not enough vitamins, Neil. Let’s hope the Dakota comes ‘I’ll go fishing, Dr Barbara - the lagoon’s full of perch and No, Neil…’ Dr Barbara calmed him with a distracted onile. ‘Saint-Esprit offers asylum to every living thing. The lagoon is their sanctuary.’

  ‘But they’re not threatened. The French have stopped harpooning them.

  Professor Saito says they’re fit to eat.’ You’re threatening them, Neil.’ Dr Barbara lifted the flap of hc tent and pointed to the runway, where Kimo and Carline, 4onique and the Saitos sat under the palms beside the bulldozer, vatching the clouds. The surface of ground coral had been swept; Kimo to befit the arrival of a queen. ‘Waiting for the sky ve’rc turning into a cargo cult.’

  I ortniiaciy for the fish, the relief plane ruin Honolulu arrived Hfore Neil

  could win his wrestling match with Dr Barbara’s onscience. Two days after the Palangrin’s departure, in a tumult of cheerful sirens and discarded video-tape, the elderly Dakota Ircled Saint-Esprit, flew in over the broken-backed shrimp-rrawler and touched down on the runway.

  Irving Boyd had done everything he promised. As the itchway opened, Neil recognized the bald-headed driver with the manatee transfers pasted to his neck, whom he had last seen the quayside at Honolulu. Scratching his tattooed scalp, he ized in awe at the coral-dusted figures approaching him along the runway, like an over-worked UN aid official greeting a party spectres.

  The stores soon revived them. Donated by support groups IHlroughout the Hawaiian Islands, there were crates of canned meat and fish, cartons filled with oranges, pomelo and pineapples, supplies of organically reared eggs, flour and pasta.There were enough waterproof tents to house fifty volunteers, camp beds and sections of duckboarding, paraffin stoves and water-purifiers, mosquito netting and portable latrines. A thousand tomato seedlings in plastic trays were soon wilting in the sun, nibbled by two suspicious goats that Kimo lifted from the Dakota in his arms. A dozen hens, Rhode Island Reds, blinked at the light from their bamboo cages, where they had spent the flight from Papeete pecking at the sacks of plant fertilizer stowed behind them. Sighing and whistling through her teeth, Mrs Saito climbed into the Dakota and carefully decanted the scattered phosphate into a bucket.

  Neil searched through the bales of donated clothing, choosing a shirt in a vivid nightclub blue and a baseball cap with an eco-theme badge lovingly stitched into its peak by a member of a women’s group in Sydney. There were oilskin jackets and scuba gear, and a friendly banner painted by child ren at a Honolulu infant school depicting an idealized Saint Esprit like an island in a fairy tale, occupied by amiable tigers and dignified crocodiles.

  As he dragged away the sack of letters sent by well-wishers all over the world, Neil estimated that the monthly relief flights would supply their needs for the indefinite future. He helped Carline and Kimo to erect the largest of the tents, which would serve as thei
r storage depot, surprised to see that a set of heavy padlocks formed part of the assembly pack.

  Only five yachts in the original fleet that defended Saint-Esprit now remained in the lagoon, and their crews, as Kimo warned him, had almost exhausted their supplies. Bouquet and his ship mates on the Croix du Sud sailed reluctantly back to theirjobs in Papeete, after a night of dancing around a beach fire and a last walk with Dr Barbara among the moonlit waves. Major Anderson and his wife were now ex officio members of the sanctuary, thanks to their work on the aqueduct. They were provided with a tent, mattresses and camp beds, and shared the meals prepared by Monique and Mrs Saito.

  But when Neil suggested that the remaining yacht-crews liould be given enough supplies to return them safely to Tahiti, c found himself contradicted by Canine.

  ‘I think not, Neil. We need everything for the sanctuary.’ arline fondled the padlock of the storage tent. ‘Who knows vlien the next plane will arrive?’

  ‘They’ve helped us so much - they gave us everything we had.

  1)avid, it’s a long way back to Tahiti.’

  ‘They’ll make it, if they leave now. We mustn’t encourage ‘diem to hang around.’ Smiling sympathetically over their plight,: irline took the cans of beef from Neil and returned them to the over-crowded shelves. ‘Don’t you agree, Barbara?’ Still wearing her faded shirt, Dr Barbara stared at the bales of ciudy clothing and the cartons of canned food. She took Neil by the arm and steered him into the sun.

  ‘David has a point, Neil. The sanctuary isn’t a chandlery for passing yacht.

  We must think of ourselves and all the work e: e have to do.’ Neil freed his arm and turned to face her, as Kimo and Carline itched them from the shadows inside the tent. ‘So we give nothing to any crew that calls here? Dr Barbara -even if they’re U csperate?’

  ‘Of course not. Obviously we help anyone in real need. Look r me, Neil, I’ve

  taken nothing.’ Dr Barbara clasped the rusty ‘ihty pin between her breasts, a talismanic brooch. ‘But we do iive to draw the line. In fact, a lot of lines are going to be drawn 11 the next fw weeks. And von 1] help drav tIiCnI Neil it-to prove her point, three days ater the last of the yachts had ct sail for Tahiti an unexpected arrival lowered anchor within the reef. This storm-battered sloop was the Parsfal, and its hull and patched sails were painted with psychedelic colours, slashes of mauve and acid green that flared from the waves like the fins of a deranged kraken. The craft had sailed straight out of the nineteen-sixties, manned by a crew of nautical hippies, long hair in pony-tails, studded leather bands on their wrists, rainbow pirates drawn to Saint-Esprit by some pot-induced vision of their The two young men were drop-outs from a Stuttgart archi tect’s office, and their passengers were a pair of German women and a small child whom they had picked up in Vancouver. Neil was surprised that they made no attempt to approach the camp and greet the expedition members. They kept to themselves, lighting driftwood fires on the beach, playing with the child and swimming naked around the reef as they hunted for coral, which they later cut into necklaces.