(Being the Ninth instalment of the diary of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, in her second year at the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding School for Young Ladies, on Spontoon’s Eastern Island. Amelia has returned after a not particularly relaxing "Holiday" on the Vostok Islands, the Russian Tsarist equivalent to present-day Taiwan…)

Wednesday 10 th January, 1936

Here we are again! The old song of that name carries on with "Happy as can be/ All good friends, and Jolly good company." That describes things quite well, we are very glad to be back with Helen and our pals after our experiences over on Vostok. Being almost blown up with an exploding salad, captured by deviant Reds and staring down the many barrels of a front-line Soviet squadron’s guns, is not my idea of Christmas.

Everything was a mad rush yesterday, our tutors gave us the half-day off but we hardly had time to relax for a minute with getting everything ready for the term. Our timetables, official diaries and everything had to be ready for inspection, and it was barely half an hour before "Lights-out" that we could throw ourselves flat on the beds and catch up on things. The beds will never seem hard again, after waking up on Christmas Day under a mound of branches and pine needles in a Romanov Island forest.

Helen had a wonderful time, by all accounts. Though Vostok was certainly an Education, I could wish I had stayed here with her – or more accurately, on South Island. She is proudly wearing a Tailfast necklace, a different shell type to the one I lost at Lars’ party but a similar braid of her and Marti Hoele’toemi’s fur.

Everything went very well, and she spent the rest of the holiday with him in the family guest hut. Certainly, it is her turn to have some fun and stability in life. But had I not gone to Vostok, it would have been just Molly and Maria out there – I dread to think what Molly would have made of our being captured by the Reds, she would probably have tried to "out-draw" the whole platoon of them.

Her only complaint is that Prudence Akroyd is wearing an almost identical Tailfast ring, and was witnessed ahead of Helen at the Solstice ceremony. I will congratulate Prudence when I see her – I know Helen really dislikes the idea, but Prudence and Tahni are a devoted couple and it would have been unfair not to allow them the same. As I pointed out, just because we really dislike Poi we should hardly want to stop Missy K enjoying it all she likes. Anyway, Tahni is a Hyena and they are Different; I sometimes wonder just what a Hyena mother does tell her cubs about the facts of life.
We had noticed Beryl is going around with her ears flat as a spaniel’s, and an expression as if she had been put on an all-Poi diet by her doctor. Thinking of doctors, Helen says the ones on Spontoon are feeling much better, if equally annoyed – and one of Beryl’s Business Associates has had to flee the island with the Police in hot pursuit. I recall them being highly puzzled about that outbreak of tapeworms at the end of last term, especially since they could find nothing in common with what the patients ate.
 
I also remember those "Natura" slimming pills that Maria never got the chance to try, which were advertised as being non-addictive and made from wholly natural ingredients. Just as well she never tried any – although the advertising was perfectly correct as far as it went! They were what the showgirls and dancers were using, and recommending them to their friends when they found they really did start losing weight. The trouble was – although most of the pills in the packs were a perfectly harmless (if probably useless for slimming) herbal mix, the last pill in every pack contained one live tapeworm egg. If you analysed the pill in the traditional way of first grinding it to powder in a pestle, of course it would not show up.

Exactly who exposed the "scam" is rather a mystery, in that it was not the Doctors or even the Police. Beryl is fuming that it was an inside job, and someone is betraying their own comrades in business. Of course she would say that – but it is odd that nobody has taken the credit for putting such an unpleasant (though doubtless profitable) racket out of business. *

* Editor’s note – "Those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it." Someone pulled this exact same scam in West Germany in the 1960’s!

Friday 12 th January, 1936

An exhausting week, and in Songmark we generally begin as we mean to go on. Fortunately first weeks of term are always planned by our Tutors assuming we spent the holiday lazing on the beach (or in front of the fire) without a thought in our heads. Wishful thinking! Our Vostok adventures have been written up in part and should count for something; at least we kept jolly fit and could show we had used our training in practical ways. Miss Devinski was quite pleased with our account of how Maria and I crossed Romanov Island, but less so that we had run into an ambush in the first place.
Actually, I am getting quite worried about Molly. She was recounting quite gleefully to Beryl (a sympathetic and large ear) her adventures with the Pelmeni, when they raided the Red camp and were disinclined to take any prisoners. I am glad I was not there myself – I can accept taking any measures in self-defence if really given no choice, but Molly seems to have enjoyed it rather too much. Father has mentioned some folk who went through the Great War and found it to their liking.

I have hardly seen Tatiana since we returned, though from her looks I fear the trip has rather knocked the stuffing out of her. I expect she will have a rather tough report to write for her Embassy, and is worrying about just how much of the truth to include in it. She would not have got back alive without being rescued by that dashing "Akula" – but if she is bright enough she might be able to slant it as being rescued by an Anti-Bolshevik crusader gives wonderful credence to her cover story. She needs adulation from Vostok like she needs a hole in the head (though Maria says in her part of the world they have stopped using that particular phrase as a joke. If Tatiana revealed she let a Menshevik officer de-brief her, she might get one.)

I must say, some of our holiday makes rather grim reading! We have the weekend to look forward to – no dances arranged yet, but we will certainly get back into practice. Molly is so much more social with a hula rather than a hand grenade.

One unfortunate after effect of our Vostok trip is we appear to have "jumped quarantine", as there is now a raging paratyphoid epidemic in Tsarogorod, where we ate the food and drank the water. All the surface ships were stopped the day we left, but nobody seems to have considered airships. We have not been put into Isolation or anything but must present ourselves to the Hospital on Monday for tests, and hopefully cleared. Actually we all feel fine, the more so with the weekend coming up.

Saturday 13 th January, 1936

It does seem more than a month since we were last on Casino Island. But today we had all day to enjoy without having any First-years to escort, so we made the most of it. It was a rather choppy crossing; being Tailfast has done nothing to help Helen’s seasickness problem.

We were so keen to get over that we arrived before the shops were open. Maria suggested we use the time and head over to the North side of the island and see how our poi peelings and fish bones are being treated these days. Helen says she has not heard any loud bangs recently, but she has been on South Island most of the time.

Both "Bio-reactors" are there still, though we were expecting at least one to be a hole in the ground by now. Indeed, they have expanded. Doctor Maranowski’s methane plant has grown an extra metal tank big enough to drown a bus in, and Professor Kurt’s structure looks rather bulkier with a fat tube the size of a railway carriage built next to it.

Professor Kurt greeted us warmly, being always keen to show off his pet project. He has insulated the whole structure against the winter rains, and added a secondary chamber to scavenge what heat he can from the almost finished compost. He tells us he has been around the islands preaching the merits of his designs, which he envisages powering the lights in every village and large plantation. True enough, oil has to be bought and imported, while crop residues and seaweed are something the Spontoon group are not liable to run short of. Some of the sugar cane plantations on Main Island actually set light to the dried-up fields after harvest, creating a spectacular blaze that looks good on the films but is awfully wasteful of "Bio-material" as Professor Kurt obliquely calls it. He is a very fine speaker, though tends to polish things too much for my tastes – nobody else would talk about what gets washed up on Pebble Beach as "untreated bio-humic wastes, rich in nitrogenous and phosphoric nutrients." But if his business is transforming liabilities into assets, I suppose he needs to keep up his enthusiasm for the raw materials.

Maria even requested a copy of his pamphlet – I got one myself, and indeed it is a most poetic work. Some of it hardly seems to be about gardening, being a philosophy of the Soil, Labour and Natural Sciences for a new age. We were asked to keep an eye on him, though surely there is nothing wrong with a philosophy of conserving and developing the National Spirit on the National Soil. He had a few very scathing things to say about Helen’s part of the world, where the "Dust Bowl" is still spreading. From his lecture tours of Spontoon, he is (he tells us) helping to build a Land Consciousness. It is amazing what one can grow with compost.

Leaving him to his steaming empire, we passed his rival on the way to the Dance School. Judging by the delivery lorry, Doctor Maranowski has a contract with the Eastern Island sawmill to use their bark and leaf trimmings. I’m not sure the Althing really expected folk to be importing more wastes into Casino Island; the idea was to reverse the flow! Still, he is doing a fair job of supplying the power station with fairly clean gas, if rather too smelly for domestic use – although there is the consolation that gas leaks are easy to trace with his product.

We washed our paws of the whole business for the day, and had a very fine practice at the dance school followed by lunch at "The Missing Coconut". It is good to be back! Our friendly rivals of the S.I.T.H.S. are all there, and seemed to be pleased to see us back. At the least, we provide a rival they can aim to devastatingly beat without the risk of offending their relatives and neighbours who are on the other teams.

It felt rather good to be back in Native dress, although the weather is rather chilly for it still. The forecasts are for snow on Vostok this week – thank Heaven that Spontoon is in a warm current and not the Arctic one that chills Vostok! It also felt rather odd putting our "Euro" clothes back on afterwards, especially for Helen, who wore the full Native kit (if "full" describes something so scanty) every single day of the holiday, including a few trips to Casino Island.

Certainly, Casino Island is a wonderful asset to have – I hate to think where the nearest international bank would be without it; possibly back on Vostok, rather a long way to go to check one’s account. I checked mine, half dreading that Father had both heard of and believed the stories Soppy Forsythe is spreading about me back home, and might have cut me off without a penny. It was a great relief to find my Allowance waiting for me in my account as ever.

Actually, there is something rather puzzling in my account. Even if nothing had been wired over from Home, I would not have been literally without two pennies to rub together. I was anonymously credited with two cowries the day I left for Vostok, which I am quite at a loss to explain (my daily account does not pay interest, not even pennies’ worth.) Molly claims that money is money, how you got it makes no difference as long as you can spend it, but I disagree.

Molly is looking rather dismally at her own depleted account – after settling this term’s fees and the excitement of Vostok, she is faced with another uphill struggle or back she goes at Easter to the awaiting G-men. Not a cheerful thought for the first week of a brand new term! I think she was hoping to find an abandoned Red "war chest" in the ashes of their camp, full of unmarked gold bullion intended for bribery and subversion.

Still – pledging Molly half my allowance, I still had enough to treat us to a slap-up meal at Bow Thai, that rather nice Oriental restaurant that does such major things with tiny chillies. It may cheer us up – and even if not, a mouthful of Thai bonnet peppers makes a distraction impossible to ignore!
(Later) Back at Songmark I bumped into Adele Beasley – literally, she was on the far side of the door when I opened it rather energetically. Applying a bandage to her bruised snout, I sympathised that it must be difficult to live in Missy K’s dorm, with Beryl a rather uncomfortable comrade. Poor Adele – we retired to a vacant classroom and I learned things are not too well with her. As a lepine, any jokes about having "Lucky rabbit’s feet" rather fall flat (as she often does tripping over them.) She has enough trouble with her accident-prone nature without Beryl’s practical jokes, and Missy K cares nothing for most Euros. Adele says she wishes she had joined my dorm – which would be very good for her no doubt, but I could not help shuddering at how some of our adventures might have ended. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her safety techniques, one could never point out anything she does wrong – but neither could one hand her a corned-beef tin to open without having the first aid kit open first.

Adele also commented wistfully that we seem to be getting all the boys. True, she is the odd one out of her dorm as well, Missy K being conspicuously engaged and Beryl having what sounds like a full-time partner-in- crime in Mr. Van Hoogstraaten Junior. She was the odd one out even in her first dorm, having started out in Prudence’s group before being transferred to swap for Ada (proving that even our Tutors are sometimes mistaken.) Being in a happily working dorm is a wonderful boost; the Spontoonies have a saying something like "It takes more than one stick to make a fire" and indeed Molly, Maria, Helen and myself certainly strike sparks from each other.
Actually, though I sympathised as I finished bandaging her muzzle, my ears went right down at the thought of her search for a gentleman friend finishing with her usual bad luck. Being merely kidnapped and sold to the "Euro slave trade" as Molly nearly was last year, might be far from the worst that could happen to her; it was a good thing Adele could not read my mind, as the word "hasenpfeffer" featured largely in it.

Sunday 14 th January, 1936

Our first Sunday back, and both Helen and myself spent a long while with the brushes getting ourselves ready for our trip to South Island. I had time on Vostok to do some hard thinking about our Sundays, and have decided that the Reverend Bingham’s church will have to do without me from now on. Madelene X was scandalised (her usual state around us) when she heard me discussing it last night with Helen, but I am going to a religious meeting anyway, unlike Molly and Beryl.

Helen has quite a lot to teach me these days, as she has been taking very regular instruction from Saimmi. In Helen’s case, she has very little family to argue about her future, and last night after lights-out she told us she is planning on staying here if she can. It is very hard to become a permanent Citizen of these islands (waving large sheaves of currency at the right officials will not do it, a concept that had Molly speechless with shock) but becoming Helen Hoele’toemi would qualify her. In which case, I can see why she is keen to learn all she can from her potential sister-in-law about fitting in.

Still, that might be quite a long way off still – although looking at this year’s official diary, it came as an awful shock to discover that after Easter we will be more than half-way through our days at Songmark! We only have one Winter and one clear Summer solstice ceremony we can attend here – our final Summer will be hectic and a lot of it probably spent away from Spontoon. It makes you think.

We met Saimmi on the beach of Hotel Bay; all three of us dressed in decorous "Ulàul cloth" sarongs and picked fresh flowers for our head-fur as we entered the jungle. Although we looked around hopefully, this time none of the Wild Shamans made themselves visible to us. Saimmi has mentioned that they turn up only when needed, and we might not meet another one this year. Our destination was a small shrine hidden at the very end of the narrowest trail I have ever walked – certainly Missy K could not have managed to fit along it, even if she is a native Spontoonie. We re-dedicated the shrine with the seasonal version of the standard ritual, and as we rested Saimmi described what I had missed at the Winter celebrations on the peak of Mount Tomboabo above us and on Sacred Island. Some of it sounded a little disturbing, but I wished I had seen it.

A good thing about South Island is that nowhere is more than three hours walking away unless one decides to hack through the "three-yard jungle". So it was just lunchtime when we stepped out of the forest at the Hoele’toemi household, where we had a very enthusiastic reception. It looked as if half the cousins had come over to meet us, including Namoeta who lives these days on Orpington Island, and has such bizarre control over chickens. Certainly, the local religion has some interesting sides to it.

It was wonderful to sit down in a longhouse with the cubs and kittens crawling playfully over us (Helen seems to be accustomed to the idea by now) and just relax with the household. Mrs. Hoele’toemi formally welcomed me back – and Jirry was extremely pleased to see me, to my great relief. Simply not being Tailfast right now is not the same as breaking an engagement – besides, having to go to Vostok I had no choice in the matter. From the Native’s usual point of view I suppose I was Tailfast too soon – and if I do wear Jirry’s braided fur again, it will be with a real hope of settling here.

For the time being, it was a very fine afternoon as we headed out to the waterfall pool for a swim and to catch up on everything in the style approved of by the Tiki gods. A marvellous Sunday and one I hope we can repeat often. Although my neck-fur did get rather bitten, it was very much worthwhile.

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