| Thursday 24th April, 1936 Memo to myself – never, ever write again about tomorrow being sure to be a peaceful day. It is just tempting fate. Everything started well with a fair steady breeze as we woke up and made ready to sail on the evening tide. The boat went ashore to start ferrying the filming crew aboard, and we were getting set when someone started flashing us a message via heliograph from the shore. The equipment and films are packed and the camera crew are too – except the Sturdey Boys, who have been missing since last night. They have vanished with their knapsacks, coils of rope, lanterns, hammer, pick and chisel – three of us on the deck said “treasure hunting” in the same breath. By lunch time they had not turned up, and folk were getting worried – their Father is starting to make noises about his sons being kidnapped, and insisting we radio off for the police straight away. It is probably a good thing nobody is admitting to having a radio around here. Honestly – anyone who would kidnap that pair would probably be cured of criminal tendencies for life. It seems the locals have already searched and passed the word out to the other villages, but nobody has reported seeing them, and they have already been leaving tracks everywhere which makes things difficult to spot the most recent ones. Our Captain was very cool indeed by all accounts as Mr. Sturdey started flapping about contacting Interpol about kidnappers or the American Embassy to send some marines. Captain Gary has asked for volunteers to help in the search – of course I put my paw up immediately. I could see Molly wavering until one of the senior crew added that we would be going nowhere till the missing brats were found, at which she grudgingly gave in. Two trips in the whaler got the ten volunteers from my shift ashore, where we met our Captain and the headman, Mr. N’Kualita senior (very senior, he looked quite ancient but still as tough as an old tree-root.) It seemed they had been having quite some discussion, and indeed they might have known each other decades. As the Sturdey boys are not greatly into delicate archaeology, one can hear them pickaxeing a good distance away – and nobody in the villages or on the paths has done this morning. That led our Captain to think they can only be in one of the areas the locals refuse point-blank to set paw in, despite the huge reward Mr. Sturdey was waving for their safe recovery. The old chief was really quite upset at the idea of anyone going in there – he insisted all three areas were full of “bad juju” and absolutely too dangerous to even visit. Well, that was perfectly true of the Western Front but plenty of people went there. He agreed to allow his folk to act as trackers up to the boundaries, but insisted they go no further. His whiskers did not even twitch as Mr. Sturdey pulled out his cheque book and offered him any sum he cared to name. There seemed no point in delaying further, so Molly and I joined up with the bosun Mr. McReady and three of the Spontoonies, the water vole and two perky coyote girls from Main Island. We took much the same equipment as the Sturdey Boys had, leather knapsacks, water bottles, iron spikes, lanterns plus oil flasks and all the usual exploration gear; Mr. McReady even insisted on carrying a stout ten-foot bamboo pole, as he said it was the tradition. We also enlisted three local hunters, brothers from the Lalataba family, who joked that they could scent the Sturdeys half-way across the island by their fur-gel they comb into their head-fur. Unlike the Spontoonie oiled and cured fur, this attracts dirt and does not repel insects, in fact quite the reverse which gives the junior Sturdeys another thing to complain about (as if they needed it.). Our search area was the valley and swamp we had seen from the top of the central peak, the far side of the island from our East coast anchorage. Four hours of strenuous walking along jungle trails carrying packs followed, and then the Lalataba brothers pointed down to the trail with pride – two clear sets of prints from square-toed patent leather polo boots, leaving the trail and vanishing into a swathe of crushed and trampled vegetation that plunged down towards the valley where no paths lead. The ten-foot pole was rather a burden, but we took turns carrying it between pairs of us, and I could hardly argue with it being a traditional accessory. The three felines were tough-looking native hunters, and I would have them on my side in any sort of fight – but half way down the slope they stopped, and adamantly told us they were not breaking Taboo. Molly did point out we would never tell their Chief if they disobeyed his order – but no, they absolutely refused to go a step further into that valley, and told us they would wait uphill on the path two days for us. One hears of the total power of Taboo on the primitive mind, but generally in the sort of Hollywood films that Spontoonies only watch for laughs. The sun was getting alarmingly low as we went down the bank, following the vegetation trail. The plants were rather surprisingly crushed for only two people to have made the trail, and when I widened the trail I found they were oddly soft and pulpy for normal jungle growth. I took one last look up the hill, and saw the three brothers standing like guardian statues on the trail that led between settled villages and farmed lands, the red sun shining on their mottled fur. For a second I hesitated, fighting the urge to run back up to join them – but I have never quit on anything yet, and could hardly start when there was absolutely nothing visibly dangerous in our path. After a few minutes the slope levelled out, and the too-flimsy vegetation thinned out. There was what looked like an abandoned, cast-up beach – or more like the polluted waste land behind Barchester Gas Works, a cinder-strewn dead zone where only scrubby bushes cling on to life for a few painful years. I felt really very odd, considering there was nothing much to see, and I could tell the Spontoonies were getting very nervous. Molly and Mr. McReady strode on seemingly unworried, only commenting they were glad the tailroot-high bushes were no longer slowing us down. It was a very singular place. Looking along the valley side in the evening light, I could see the evenly sloping beach zone continuing until the bend of the hill hid it from view. Downhill, things were different again. We could smell the swamp, and it was rather awfully different from the brown, peaty aroma of Grimpound Mire back home – had even Beryl been here and told us there were unburied battlefields under the waters, I would have believed her in that place. From the top of the mountain we had seen the general features of the valley, a flat green swamp perhaps half a mile wide at the point we met it. There were five or six islands of solid-looking ground in the shivering moss, with piled stones that could have been just natural products of weathering or might have been something entirely different. The bog around it was a peculiar colour, and seemed somehow unconvincing, like a painter’s first attempt at colouring tropical growths. It did not seem to be growing as part of the land like the jungle, but to have crawled out and over the land, except where the rocky islands had worn through like fingertips sticking through an old glove or bones poking through the hide of a carcase. After ten minutes casting up and down the dead beach, Mr. McReady gave a call and we gathered round – sure enough, there was mud splashed where someone had recently started to wade into the swamp. Looking across, the nearest hillock was about two hundred yards away, but though we all shouted there was no reply except the hum and buzz of millions of biting insects. Despite everything, this was the sort of situation we had been trained for. We took a long drink from the water bottles and cached the packs high up on the shore, roped ourselves together and sent the lightest one ahead, Haroo the water-vole probing with the aid of the ten-foot pole. It was an awful crossing. What made it worse was that the pole often went down without resistance beyond a few feet as if we were walking on a floating raft of vegetation that might rip open like a rotten carpet under our weight. My heart was definitely pounding as we stepped onto the greasy but reassuringly solid stones of the hummock, and cast about for more clues. The whole thing was hardly twenty yards across at widest, and it was not hard to see where rocks had been prized up to look underneath and a few tentative trenches hacked in the slick and greasy earth. A chewing-gum wrapper caught in the dead twigs of a shrub at the swamp’s edge was our confirmation as if we needed any. From the middle of the valley we could get a clear view, though the sun was already on the horizon and we were all rather worried about running out of light. About four other hillocks broke the surface of the swamp as the valley neared the coastal lagoon from which an odd mist was rising. Three of them were no bigger than the one we were on, but the furthest seemed lower but four times as wide. It might have been a mile and a half away. We were hesitating, when I saw a sudden flash in the last rays of the sun, from the biggest and furthest island. It might have been a pickaxe raised to dig or a water bottle raised to drink – whichever, there was certainly someone on that islet. Mr. McReady saw it too – and he hardly needed to growl that we had to “jump to it” if we were to get there in time. I wished we could have jumped to it, but we were condemned instead to flounder across the swamp. Even on the drier land the insects were absolutely eating us, and against the sunset every one of our figures was clouded with a dark halo of flies. Anyway, we had no choice in the matter, and started picking our way forward through the green flabby moss with its inhabitants crawling into our ears and noses. On firm land we would have jogged it in ten minutes, but here it was a tortuous probing with many dead ends and sometimes we would recoil at the sudden shore of a jet-black lake where the pole found no bottom. All the time the sun was setting, and I thought of the cheerful sunsets in the stern cabins of the Liki-Tiki peacefully anchored on the far side of the island. Every now and then we would come across a muddy splash where the Sturdeys had preceded us, and wondered how they had managed it. Molly saw the answer first – she had been looking longingly at the nearest dry ground with a distinctive dead tree as we struggled past one of the small islets – and in ten minutes one of the branches had vanished. The floating swamp valley is tidal, and was rising up as the tide comes in! They must have come this way at low tide hours ago, when the ground was a lot more solid. By the time we had got to five hundred yards from the large islet we could see part of it was already under the rising swamp – and we could also see two figures silhouetted in the fading light on top. Mr. McReady had his bosun’s whistle and blew it hard – at which I could see the figures stop for a few seconds, wave and carry on digging. It was a jolly good thing we were roped together; about two hundred yards from the islet, I felt the moss ripping under me and I plunged into the oily waters up to my shoulders. Molly and the rest pulled me out – and we found out what else was down there. Leeches. A dozen or more ugly-looking red and black leeches had fastened onto me, and it took two precious minutes of daylight to remove them with tincture of iodine. I have never seen ones marked like that before, and I never hope to again.  We were definitely running out of daylight by the time we reached solid ground – and by then the islet was down to about half the size it had been. This is a week of Spring tides, almost the highest and lowest tides of the year. While we unroped and Molly helped me treat all my bites (plus the ones she had herself) our bosun went forward to have a word with the Sturdey boys. One might have thought they would have ran to see us delighted to be rescued, but it took another five minutes of furious debate before they all came back. It is a good thing we are all jolly fit, as getting this far had been a major strain on the system and getting back after sunset proved a lot harder. The insects definitely do not go to bed at dusk, and simply call up a new watch of them who all wake up hungry. I am only glad I made sure Molly kept up with her quinine tablets every day, and all our inoculations are up to date. We reached the solid shore about midnight, after all of us had taken several duckings. If not for the rope, I doubt any of us would have got out alive. It took another half hour in the dark to find the cache of knapsacks marking our trail and we drained our water bottles – trying without much success to wash out the taste of the swamp water we had all swallowed. Our rescuees halted on the shore and demanded we make camp for the night – right on the scrubby beach with no drinking water, tents or vegetation to make shelters from. A fine camp site, I don’t think! Mr. McReady was the soul of discretion, though I could hear him grinding his teeth as he persuaded them to at least get up the hill onto the trail where we might send word to their father, who (he diplomatically said) might be worried about them. True to their word, the Lalataba brothers were waiting where we left them, and one went off at a run to report our return safe and sound. They had picked a fair feast of wild fruits while they waited for us, and we all had a very welcome supper on the trail. After that – our bosun simply told the Sturdey boys we were going back to the ship, another ten miles, and invited them to follow. They were furious about not getting their way, but joined on the party as we took the next six stumbling hours to cross the island in the dark, arriving at the beach just as dawn was breaking. The jungle trails were definitely dark even for my night vision, and we all stumbled along in file like those pictures of the blinded after a gas attack. In the films, the captives are taken back to the cannibal’s village suspended from poles tied by their paws, and indeed we still were carrying a very suitable pole for the job – but although it was very tempting, we had to remember who our employer was. Otherwise I am sure the Lalatabas would have been very happy to re-enact for us an authentic piece of Island history. I only recall us all staggering onto the beach, throwing away our clothes (which were beyond salvage), lying out in the breaking surf to wash our fur as best we could and somehow getting onboard as the Liki-Tiki sailed on the morning tide. That was enough for me! Friday 25 th April, 1936 How I got into my hammock I have no idea, but I certainly woke up there in mid-afternoon – feeling rather unwell, with a sick pounding headache as if we had spent the night drinking that awful bootleg gin Prad Phao sold me on Pinafore Island. The rest of the search party were there, all of us in definite need of a proper wash and grooming – which was the first thing I attended to, even without fresh rinsing water. In a few hours we were all up and about, and caught up with washing and news. The good news was we were making excellent sailing, with every sail set and a strong South-easterly pushing us along at twelve knots to the delight of the senior crew. The bad news was the Sturdey boys got to tell their father their version of events first – they had been just about to get the treasure when we had stopped them, obviously part of a sinister Native plot to steal it for ourselves. As proof one of them showed some bones he had dug up on the main islet – where there are bones, there is treasure, obviously. Ah well, we hardly expected gratitude. The rest of the crew and the Captain have a different opinion, and we were all heartily thanked. It must have been even more discouraging for the two search parties who drew a blank; they had just as bad a time as us and all for nothing. There was one of the crew who seemed very pensive, one of the Albert Islanders. I saw him having a word with Captain Gary, then all my party were called to the Forecastle cabin where he wanted to speak with us. He started by revealing his Chief had authorised him to tell us the facts, but that the story is one that has not spread beyond Albert Island, and they would be happier if it stayed that way. Obviously I could not make notes at the time, but from memory he said something on the lines of: “Chief N’Kualita he say brave folk come back from Taboo valley, he fear for them. Hear story why Taboo, why Island fur no go. Long long time gone, Grandfather’s father then he young, tall ships come to Islands, Missionaries they come say all Island folk pray wrong. No pray Fire-gods they say, no pray Sea-gods, Earth-gods. Make mission down on beach one-two islanders they help, treat as guest. “Earth-god she angry! Island shake, island go down, Sea-god eat valley in night, all mission all village go to feed sea-god before sun-god come he back. Sunset-face valley bad place since, all Chief say no fur go there, mighty big taboo. Sea-god watch over, fur walk in valley they no see village more, some they cursed by Sea-god, they die soon after. All island fur pray you no taken by taboo!” Well, there is folklore and folklore. I can certainly believe some of the facts, these islands are earthquake-prone and it would not be impossible for one side to drop a few yards and be flooded. It would have shaken the Spontoon group pretty fiercely – but at that date there was nobody there to record it, which would explain why we have never heard about this. If the old main village had been on that side of the island, far from buried treasure the Sturdey boys were probably digging up the Mission graveyard! That would definitely bring anyone severe bad luck, and I only hope it is not contagious. Thinking of that, I hope I am not going down with anything. I have an awful headache aspirin is doing nothing with, and feel desperately thirsty. Molly says she is the same, and there is a regular queue outside the cabin acting as ship’s hospital. Still, we are making good speed back to Spontoon, and my shift is excused heavy duties today. We certainly had enough of those last night! Saturday 26th April, 1936 Spontoon ho! We sighted land on Ada’s watch after a fine run before the wind; all sails set for more than thirty hours brought us sweeping in past South Island before dark. Just as well – my watch was due on next, and I was feeling too sick and dizzy to go into the rigging, with my back and other muscles aching fiercely though we have done no heavy hauling recently. But we put a brave face on things and lined up on deck as the ship docked at the brand new jetty on the western end of Casino Island, this time sailing into port rather than having tugs haul us around. I think the square-rigged sails are a success, even though it needs a lot of us to work them. The party is tomorrow, we are told, and the film crew will not be invited. They hurried off the ship without as much as a thank-you, eager to get their films developed and themselves on the first seaplanes out towards California. Back to South Island! Beryl helped us get back to Haio Beach, which was nice of her as Molly and myself were getting worse by the hour with a burning fever. Mrs. H took one look at us and gently led us to the guest hut, which Helen and Marti rapidly cleared out of. She has prescribed complete rest – and is standing over us till I put the pen down. Dear Diary, good night. Monday May 4th, 1936 (Written much later.) Oh dear. We had read about Pacific Marsh Typhus in my advanced Field Medicine classes – it was just as well we were in peak fitness, as untreated barely one in four survive it – we came within an inch of our lives, though I am not sure quite how you measure that. I am writing this in the Casino Island main hospital. Mrs H nursed us herself and would let nobody near until the crisis was past and we could be moved without danger of contagion. Not that the hospital could have done any more for us, though Haroo and one of the Spontoonie coyote girls from our party are in the fever ward with Molly and myself. Although I have had some narrow shaves piloting Flying Fleas, this is definitely the closest I have come to finding out whether the Barsetshire or Spontoonie churches were right in the end – the local strain of Marsh Typhus is something that Ioseph Starling and Vostok would be falling over each other to grow in their test-tubes, if they found out about it. Quinine does nothing against it, and there are no vaccinations yet. One of those coyote girls who went with us – well, her village is mourning her. Molly was even worse hit than I was, and Mrs H says twice she really feared losing her as well. But we are on the mend now, though feeling as if we have been run through the mangle and hung up to dry. Definitely we can tell anyone who asks to avoid that valley, the locals are quite right about the place, and millions of insects are waiting for the next foolish explorer to come wading in there. Whether it is a Sea-God’s curse or not scarcely matters. I hear from the nurse that despite everything, a highly-priced Hollywood doctor has given the Sturdey boys a clean bill of health. It is good to hear, as after all that it would be too bad to save them from the swamp to have the “Taboo” catch up with them. Though everyone is recovering, I am still feeling rather down in the dumps. I always try to look on the bright side, but right now it hardly seems to help – although true enough it looks like I will not now be having any embarrassing interviews with our Tutors, or writing home with unwelcome news. I had just got used to the idea, too. Everyone says convalescing patients need to be encouraged and kept cheerful. It is a very hard thing to do right now. Mrs H is a tower of strength and visits every day. I am to hurry up and get better, she says, as there are quite a few folk waiting to celebrate us coming home as heroines. She is one herself, without a doubt: a shiver runs down by tail if I think of what might have happened had she caught it nursing us. The Hoele’toemi clan might have lost all of us. As it is, we are expected to be in here a few more days and then back to South Island to convalesce. Thursday 7 th May, 1936 South Island, sea, sand, sun and – Jirry, who is helping my convalescence by keeping my spirits up. The only good thing about that strain of Typhus is the survivors recover faster than the Euro version, or we would still be in the Doctor Munroabe Memorial Hospital. Fresh air and good plain food are doing their best, and Molly and I am making progress. I fear I have lost my taste for Poi, which is not too surprising – a pity, as on these islands Missy K has mentioned their having nineteen different taro breeds, each with its own distinct flavour. At least in future I will have that to look forward to. And in future when the locals say an area is even Taboo to their priests, I will stay well clear! Out Tutors have come to visit, and are very encouraging. In terms of our education the Liki-Tiki trip has counted very favourably, so we are well “in credit” and they tell us not to worry about hurrying back till we are fully fit. Helen has been back nearly two weeks, though of course she returns home for the weekends and gets the guest hut back. Convalescing has given me plenty of time to think. I remember very little of the worst part of our illness, but I remember Mrs H sponging us with cold water in the middle of the night in our fevers and seeing to – well, everything, when we were too weak to move. Last year when I was Tailfast to the family I thought through some of the future possibilities – one of them being me leaving here at the end of three years, waving goodbye to Spontoon and leaving Jirry to start from scratch looking for another. I have made my mind up now, and that is NOT going to happen. I would be every species of fool to say goodbye to the Hoele’toemi family, who have literally saved my life at least once – and possibly other times that I might not be told about. Considering they were willing to take me in and a half-Siamese kitten who in truth would have rather stood out in that family – well. Who could possibly do more, and ask for less? In the films it is the heiress who gets kidnapped and is always about to be forcibly married to the Native chief for her inheritance – but it is quite the other way round here, as they are the ones doing all the giving and I can promise them nothing but me. As Helen has pointed out more than once, I am not likely to find better than Jirry, and there is no reason why I should try. Molly is getting stronger by the day, and indeed it was awful to see her looking almost deflated, lying there like a deer rug. She is healthy enough to have a few things to say about the movie industry and the folk in it – even if she could afford it she says she will not be subscribing again to “Film Frolics”. (Later) Maria and Beryl dropped in to see us – our tutors are being generous with the passes on our behalf. Maria had a fine trip to Italy – or near enough. Her Uncle met her on a new airfield on their fortified Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, which he was officially opening. I suppose it is good security to meet on a wholly military island for discussing secrets, but it does seem rather odd that Maria never sets foot in Italy proper these days, always being whisked away to some remote spot before she has time to meet anyone she knows. She wistfully remembers her Neapolitan homeland she has not seen in two years – some guidebooks say “see Naples and die” but I am assured that only happens if you drink the unboiled tap water. Maria is most sympathetic – and indeed, tenfold more when I told her about having started my first kitten, and lost it before even thinking of a name. It is an awful loss, the more I think about it – my kitten might have cost me my Songmark career, but I had decided it was worth the price. I was definitely not going to follow Molly’s suggestion of dyeing my fur as Kim-Anh next January and trying to hide it with a false name; Kim-Anh is not a real person, but a kitten does need a real family. Maria has a hatred of swamps anyway, and it seems to run in the family; her Uncle has almost finished a big public works project to drain the malarial swamps near Rome. I remember Liberty Morgenstern arguing last term that any government might have done that, as it is only common-sense and saves so much in health costs. Maria very coolly agreed, then pointed out sweetly that anyone in the past century might have done it, but only her Uncle actually did. Beryl says we should hurry up convalescing and come back, as the first-years are acting up again. Of course, the only reason she would care is her dorm gets our second-year duties like first-year riot control. Wo Shin has for some reason been looking very smug these days by her account, and that dorm seems to have buried their differences without burying each other (amazingly enough), making them a formidable team. Being the leading lights in the Songmark Kilikiti team is getting them a good deal of prestige, and on the Casino Island pitch Brigit Mulvaney managed to put a ball through the British Embassy window at a hundred and twenty yards. It would be nice to think it was an accident, but at Songmark they do teach us to face unwelcome truths. And I must confess - if a certain junior tabby aide had been standing at the window at the time, I might have very quietly cheered. Saturday 9th May, 1936 Back to Songmark, hurrah! At least, we are to report to our Matron first thing on Monday, and today we all met up on Casino Island to watch the dance classes. Helen and Maria had teamed up with Jasbir’s dorm while we were recovering, but are very pleased to have us back. Though we have recovered well enough to stroll around Casino Island, getting through a full dance routine is quite another story – my tail drooped as I found out how much fitness we have lost. Still, we gained it by hard work before and we can do it again – considering we came through Swamp Typhus with our lives, we can hardly complain. Had we been on Beryl’s watch on the Liki-Tiki we would have been fast asleep when they called for rescue volunteers – just our bad luck, though someone had to go and get the Sturdey boys home. Molly thinks I made a very poor swap. Thinking of unlucky folk, I also bumped into Adele Beasley outside our tailors where she was picking up a complete new formal Songmark uniform with blazer– rather odd as we rarely wear the formal kit, but she has been known to spill paint, oil and all sorts of unfortunate things on her clothing. Everyone seems to have had an interesting Easter holiday, and she at least has stayed intact. I asked if she had managed to find a part-time job on Spontoon as she had planned – her ears blushed, she shook her head and said things turned out very differently to anything she expected. Poor Adele – I suppose she had to hang around Casino Island all holiday being bored. I noticed she had an expensive new head-fur style and her claws professionally lacquered, which takes absolutely hours to dry each coat – she must have had a lot of time to kill. At least when I enquired if she had met any interesting people, she agreed she certainly had – so it cannot have been a complete loss, even if she did not get to put her talents to work like the rest of us. Sunday 10th May, 1936 Today was a day I had looked forward to for some time, when Saimmi received permission to take us to Sacred Island. Helen and I woke before dawn as requested, kissed our respective sleeping Hoele’toemi brothers good morning and joined Saimmi on the beach where an outrigger canoe was crewed and ready. We took our place at the oars: really, there is no room for passengers on these canoes when getting through the surf, and rowing is jolly good exercise. South Island really looked very peaceful, although there has already been a big tour boat dropping off tourists at the Resort Bay hotels this week. The first of this season’s beach-side concession stalls is just being erected, and in a few weeks Haio Beach will be a very different place. It is half an hour’s hard row across to Sacred Island, especially given there is only one small gap in the reef which protects it from most directions. But we were ashore ten minutes before sunrise and hurried up the hill to the Tiki array on the summit. It is amazing how folk centuries ago managed to survey the hilltop so exactly – with what I now know, I can see having the structure 3 arc-seconds out of true alignment would stop it working. I just hope no earthquake ever tilts this place like Albert Island. As Susan de Ruiz says about her family’s homeland – “God preserve the Pyrenees mountains from an earthquake big enough to make the maps right.” The ceremony was very moving, and one that Anthropologists would die for (literally.) We were both allowed a small part in the choruses, but of course only Saimmi and the three senior priestesses could chant the final ritual. Helen is becoming quite devout in the local religion, as she says it is the only one where you can actually see results in front of your snout. On the way back we paused at the beach-side Tiki rows, where both Helen and I were made Tailfast, and will be again in another six weeks. Definitely we are looking forward to that, and perhaps we will meet Moeli’s other family when they swim ashore for the Solstice celebrations. My Accounting Island head-dress is carefully stored with the other family clothing in Mrs H’s hut – it is rather out of place in the cupboard at Songmark, and not exactly safe if Beryl discovered a well-heeled collector who recognises what it is worth. Whatever its value to a museum, I would not part with it for any money – someday I will need it. We were back at Haio Beach by lunchtime, and afterwards I helped Helen with the sad task of combing out her patterning; Molly has been in oiled fur since returning from the hospital, but thinks of it more as waterproofing than anything more significant. By half-past two we were back in our Songmark costumes, looking rather out of place amongst the palm-thatched huts and comfortably dressed Spontoonies in the warm sunshine. A farewell to the Hoele’toemis, and then we took a collective deep breath and headed up the trail to Resort Bay and the water-taxis back. At least there was plenty to keep us busy – our water-taxi barely dodged a big Sikorski flying-boat taxiing out of the Marine Air Terminal, and overhead there circled a new French-built Block seaplane carrying the familiar double-headed eagle markings, heading in to refuel before carrying onto the Albanian South Indies. Maria welcomed us back very energetically – she has been on her own in the dorm, with Helen down on South Island weekends and us away. Much to her disgust our tutors did the logical thing and attached her to Beryl’s dorm for duties, the first time they have had four on the team. She says she was definitely needed there – Beryl is not exactly dedicated to law and order, and recently Adele Beasley seems to have lost all ability to control Shin and that dorm. Given the fact that Missy K has never got on too well with anyone, that must make it a hard dorm to work with. We had a lot to catch up on, or we would have dined at the Hoele’toemis rather than the Sunday tea at Songmark. My ears drooped more than ever at the scent of Poi and the sight of Missy K shovelling it down – I remember how good it tasted, but now I can hardly touch the stuff again. At least I will know in future what to expect if it starts to be delicious again. (Later) Well, here we are again, with our freshly cleaned and pressed uniforms on and a pile of Helen’s notes for me to catch up on. It will be a shorter term than usual for me and Molly – but at least we are here to see it. The tour-boats are on their way to Spontoon, and we will see what sort of troubles, I mean Adventures, they will bring with them! (And she did. Amelia’s adventures continue in “Topical Heatwave.” ) next |