Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
6 February, 1937 to 7 February, 1937

"Dire Decisions"

Being the twenty-first episode of the diaries of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, at the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding School for Young Ladies, on Spontoon’s Eastern Island.
Right now she’s off on a mission of National Importance …


Saturday February 6th, 1937

Dear Diary: it has been a very long time since I saw Tillamook! Last time was from the liner bringing me to Spontoon in September 1934, where we anchored for six hours to refuel. The cloud level was about a hundred feet then, and all I remember was seeing glimpses of dripping pine trees sweeping down through the fog to the water’s edge.

    The commercial Pan-Nimitz flight out from Spontoon was uneventful, although Molly and Helen did keep trying to second-guess the pilot. As we hear a lot in Mahanish’s bar, pilots make very poor passengers just as sick doctors are very troublesome patients to their colleagues. After our weeks of intensive preparation I took the chance to relax for the hours of flight, and read through various guides to the area. Not that we will be here very long, just enough time to pick up the “cover” of being Lady Allworthy and party, ready for our next section of the trip to Macao. Tillamook is quite the wrong direction to go from Spontoon, but it has a friendly government and Mr. Sapohatan has presumably set things up so anyone checking our stop before Macao will hear the right story. Apart from Vostok, all the small independent nations of the Pacific have tolerably good relations with each other.

    It made a change to have Adele with us; she can relax while in the air as nowhere else. Of course, all being well this will be the last trip she has to worry about such things. She found a lost ten-shell note wedged down the back of her seat, amazingly enough! That is the way of some specific types of curse, as Clear-Skies Yakan has told us - the most powerful ones act not by creating misfortune but by moving it into one’s usual path. So a curse active on water would be devastating to a fisher-fur, even though they could have all the good fortune they can get, on the ice, in the desert or other places they are not likely to go and find it. It is very hard to actually create or destroy such things - but one can certainly move them elsewhere.

    On the way over Adele was telling us something of her adventures on Krupmark last holiday - she admitted she is wearing the same sort of gold ring around her tail-root that I am. In her case it is not to be confused with a wedding band - she has mentioned a Miss Chartwell on Krupmark who she works for in the holidays. Not an entirely safe or pleasant employer, but Adele hints there are compensations. As I suspected, her particular misfortune there was learning that she liked some things that it is a generally bad idea to get involved with. Like me, Miss Devinski has told her very plainly that she stands in clear danger of being thrown out. At least I have an almost embarrassing range of options in that case - neither Mrs. Amelia Hoele’toemi nor Lady Amelia Allworthy absolutely needs a Songmark certificate.

    The float equipped DC-2 made excellent time, and we touched down in Narrawangan Bay about half an hour before sunset. The hills further inland were certainly swathed in fog but as they say, the coast was clear for us. Narrawangan Bay certainly looks a distinctive place with all red cedar and pine buildings, even the one church we saw. The hotel we were all booked in at was a low, sprawling complex two storeys high, with a fine view out over the bay if the clouds managed to clear. What a sweat-lodge looks like I do not exactly know, but they seem to be inconspicuous and the centre of towns might not be the place to find them.
 
Our hotel was a few hundred yards up from the seaplane slip; we all checked in for one night as Songmark students and were intrigued to see that Lady Allworthy and party had arrived already according to the register. That is the plan; supposedly Adele and party arrive from Spontoon and vanish out of sight into the interior, reappearing when they are finished talking with the traditional Shamans deep in the backwoods. But only Adele will actually do that; the rest of us pick up the Lady Allworthy party identity and head out to Macao leaving our Songmark papers and outfit behind.

    By the time we had got to the hotel it was fully dark. We were still in Songmark dress uniforms but the hotel management were apparently fully informed of our arrangements - they provided trunks for those clothes to stay in storage till we returned. Mr. Sapohatan has a long arm indeed! It was a relief to get into the rooms and relax; all the bedrooms are up on the first floor and are done very plainly but neatly in polished red cedar with locally woven rugs on the floor. We are not due out till the next Imperial Airways clipper touches down at midday tomorrow - by unanimous vote we decided to have one enjoyable evening first. Certainly a party of Songmark third-year girls away from class should know how to make the most of their chances.

    The first priority was a leisurely soak and fur-grooming after the long flight. There was a huge wooden tub filled with steaming water but no tap or plugs, which puzzled me until I spotted a notice on the wall explaining there were natural hot springs piped into town from the hills just above. With a nicer climate, this would make quite a fine tourist resort. Tillamook is well off for interesting Anthropomorphology, good sports fishing and wide open spaces - but so is the whole coast through to Alaska and Rain Island, and it needs something special to make it stand out.

    Molly seems determined to take her cover role as my maid seriously; at least, she announced that a Lady Allworthy does not wash her own back and tail-fur. Certainly, it would look suspicious if anyone in Macao noticed that was happening. I agreed, on condition I returned the favour. Of all Songmark only myself, Helen and Maria are the only ones Molly feels comfortable letting wash and groom her. This is triply so since she last encountered Captain Granite at New Year; apparently before she died Captain Granite told Molly various things to her severe disadvantage, complete with evidence Molly cannot ignore. Molly does say that it was some compensation bringing the rest of the crew to justice, and that style of justice ends not with judges and prisons but well-fed sharks.

    We all wished Adele good fortune for tomorrow, or at least ordinary fortune, which would be a big improvement for her. Adele is quite a pretty lop-eared rabbit, and though she always shown an interest in handsome males she has never risked taking it any further on Spontoon - with her usual curse that might be just as well. For them to turn out to be slavers or extreme carnivores would be entirely par for the course. Oddly enough, she seems to have gained quite a lot of practical experience here and there, despite never having had a sweetheart. We all hope she can get her curse fixed - though Helen did caution her not to expect everything to suddenly reverse thrust and become automatic good luck! We have had our fair share of knocks and tumbles, which we managed without suffering any curses.

    After drying and grooming, it was down in our best Songmark outfits to dine in the hotel restaurant. An unusual situation; Songmark is world famous in certain circles but most of the guests had no idea who we are, and asked us what company we were flying with. Of course there are many small airlines, most of whom have their own uniforms, and ours is certainly practical enough to resemble an airline outfit. There was no need to conceal anything tonight; we told the story of our coming here to study some of the more ancient tribes in the interior, and any star-nosed moles hidden in the audience will be reporting it as truth should they be asked.
 
    Something they do not sell in Tillamook is Nootnops Blue, in fact there are very few places in the world it is legally on sale. Places such as Krupmark hardly count, not having any real laws in the first place. Molly has mentioned that technically it would have been legal in her home town when Prohibition was on - and she often bemoans the fact that nobody thought to get into that import trade before the Volstead act was repealed. They do not even do Nootnops Red, though that might be because of its reputation of staining everything it touches a deep red; I believe a main ingredient is red mulberry juice, which makes a very decent ink or cloth dye. So we sampled the local brew, a pumpkin-based ale that is certainly … distinctive.

    Although it was pitch dark outside, under the hotel lights we could see garden plots behind the hotel stretching up in terraces all ready dug over for the new season’s sowing. Adele has actually been here before twice with her parents, hunting ancient burial mounds. She says the locals use the Red Indian tradition of growing three crops intertwined in the same patch; maize grows up first, beans grow up the corn for support and pumpkins and marrows rampage around below, covering up the ground and keeping the weeds down. They call this the “three sisters”, the plants living together very happily. (N.b.- Adele does persist in calling a marrow a “squash”, which is properly what happens when one steps on a ripe one. Despite being a vegetarian type, she had hardly heard of that staple of the Euro vegetable diet, the mangel-wurzel either.)

    The hotel was quite empty this time of year and we were soon talking with the waitress, a rodent girl named Kalakapa, of some sleek-furred local breed. Perhaps she is a marmot, though I did not recognise her type exactly and did not ask. While the cooks got busy with our order she showed us the back rooms where they have various local foodstuffs in preparation, the sort of thing our Tutors always ask us about. I suppose it is a case of “you are what you eat” and they like to know just what we are becoming. Mind you, back on Albert Island in their cannibal days they might have thought it a good thing to have eaten strong warriors and visiting Euro professors, but nobody seems to promote that idea much in the schools these days. Nor do they warn herbivores off harming their intelligence by eating cabbages.

    Molly was intrigued by the way they make the local drink. The backroom was very warm, courtesy of the hot springs, and scented strongly of yeast. Hanging up were various bloated shapes in sacks and nets - it looked alarmingly Cranium Island-like, and I was wondering what might be about to hatch out of them. Maria’s eyes crossed and her tail twitched at that suggestion; she has been telling us stray details of her experiences there and having thought it through, she seems to be alarmingly unworried by the idea.

    Actually, there was nothing alarming about to burst out of the swollen shapes. The locals have a variant on the classic farmhouse “Marrow Rum” * recipe using one of the local “three sisters” they grow. Kalakapa tapped one of the hanging marrows and announced it was almost ready to drain; good news she said for next week’s customers.

    An excellent meal followed; they have a relative of the Alaskan King Crab living in the waters off these islands, which has legs as thick as my tail. It is not a matter of using a nut-cracker on the legs and claws, but a one-pound geologist’s hammer to break into them. Whoever wrestled these ashore alive and fighting certainly earned their wages; Molly was speculating that sometimes the crabs win. Adele declined and went for the traditional Winter vegetable stew. Not surprisingly, here it involved maize, beans and pumpkin.

    It is interesting, that Adele is one of our most herbivorous herbivores. Molly and Maria eat anything, and though Adele does eat fish at times she far prefers vegetables.  Except Poi. Being brought up to eat very small amounts of meat and fish, she can at least digest it. Then, her parents were hardly poor, what with all that raiding of tombs. Last week our Anarchist first-year Rosa was telling us just why Spain is in such a mess; the peasants of all species there in some areas never get to eat meat, live in unheated windowless adobe huts and get about three week’s actual paid work a year which they share out between them so few folk actually starve to death. It is no huge surprise that some even see Anarchy as offering an improvement, seeing how little they get out of life under every variation of regular government. Spain has had quite a few different governments this century but the actual life of a peasant has changed little whoever is in power, we hear.

    The weather outside turned to thick fog as we ate, which rather spoiled our idea of heading out to see the Narrawangan Bay nightlife (which Kalakapa assured us is minimal in Winter anyway.) So, another sample of the pumpkin brew and we retired to our rooms. Molly as befits my maid is in the adjoining room, with communicating door left open in case I call - it is something we will need to practice.

*Editor’s note: this recipe appears in many of the older wine-making books usually described as “a classic” which means it’s not guaranteed to actually work. Take a huge vegetable marrow, the sort you missed harvesting as a tender courgette before going on holiday and returned to find grown to the size of a battleship shell and about as edible. Cut off the very top and scoop out the seeds and stringy innards, leaving a cavity. Pour in a mix of warm water, brown sugar and orange juice, add yeast then re-seal the top of the marrow. Hang up in a warm room with a big bucket underneath. In theory the yeast ferments, digests its sway through the marrow tissue till it eats through the skin, then trickles out into the bucket ready to bottle as a rich, fruity wine.
    In practice - in the only documented case the Editor knows, the marrow was reassembled firmly duct-taped together and left to ferment above the bathtub while the intrepid scientist went on his summer holiday. In the meantime the fermentation pressure grew and grew - and one day blew. Think home-made explosive biological warfare device, by the time folk returned from holiday…


Sunday February 7th, 1937

An unfamiliarly soft bed and last night’s two helpings of pumpkin brew had me sleeping through till past eight o’clock, something quite unheard-of at Songmark, even on Sundays. I was quite embarrassed on waking to see a stranger standing silently by the bedside - even more so when she turned out to be Molly, dressed in her black and white starched and spotless lady’s maid outfit. Even the lace ruffles at her wrists were starched.

    Molly seems to be getting into the role alarmingly well - that is, it is a frightening sight to see her looking respectful and demure, quite blending into the furniture. Molly in that outfit is about as incongruous as seeing a cheerful woolly tea-cosy on a land mine; a decorous outside hardly alters what is underneath. She had my clothes brushed and neatly laid out; evidently Madame Maxine has been educating her very thoroughly in her official duties. One hears such things about Madame Maxine and her establishment; they can do just about anything for a customer it is possible to do, and their secrets are absolute.

    Dressing for the first time as Lady Allworthy was an experience. Whoever put the outfit together had impeccable taste and my exact recent measurements ready to paw. There was a very modish light cotton trouser-suit with belt in the latest style ideal for travel, with a belted overcoat ready to don against the fogs and rain of Tillamook. There was no sign of our Songmark uniforms from last night; Molly had evidently been up early at her duties packing them away for our return. Whether she was just hard at work practicing or feared someone might be observing us already, my “maid” was as silent and dutiful as any of the socially invisible servants of a stately hall. (Butlers may be acceptable as the guilty party in weekend murders, maids and gardeners, never. Simply not done.) In all the novels set in stately homes the servants are rarely mentioned unless it forms part of the plot, but having half a dozen attending in a room would be nothing special at parties and such.

    Well! I little thought in my first week at Songmark when I was elected head of my dorm that I would be in charge of them to quite this extent or even want to. Not that I want to as it is, but as the German chancellor keeps saying, Providence will not be denied. He generally says so whenever he wants to justify something and claims the Universe is on his side. It was with some trepidation that I knocked at the room next door to see just what I had in the way of a Guide and a secretary. Neither Maria nor Helen have been to Madame Maxine’s for training, but neither are taking on a role so far outside their usual style.

    I need not have worried; though Maria was all business in a plain, simple brown tropical tweed outfit, Helen looked suitably rugged in a bush jacket with the pockets obviously bulging with useful objects. In our self-defence classes we have been shown that a pocketful of spanners in a leather tool-roll make a most useful weapon and one that police and Customs furs are liable to let through unchallenged. Neither did they make any comments about Molly’s new outfit; in fact Maria had her notebook out and asked if I had any letters to dictate. It makes a change; normally I am the one scribbling in the notebooks and diaries.

    As Lady Allworthy, my first instructions to my staff were for us all to head downstairs and get some breakfast. The idea of being able to order breakfast in our rooms was a great treat and rather tempting, but I needed to practice our teamwork in public somewhere a slip-up would not be too disastrous. Maria had our travel schedule ready in paw; she commented that although Sunday lunchtime on Tillamook seemed an unlikely time for international departures, it made perfect sense for a route starting Saturday midnight from Sealth with a Monday lunchtime arrival in Macao. Strictly speaking we are flying to Hong Kong, but Macao being just across the bay the ticket covers both cities.

    We saw Adele at breakfast; she almost jumped out of her fur when she recognised us - although she knew we were changing outfits, evidently we were being more convincing than just playing dress-up. I hardly recognised myself in the mirror, for that matter. Although the outfit looks perfect to appear on the front page of The Tatler or Harper’s Bizarre it is rather less practical than I am used to, rather lacking in pockets (ladies have other people to carry their things) and too restrictive for an Adventuress. And the shoes are loud; they are hard tipped at the heels and click echoingly on every pavement. I had forgotten just what such things are like; last year’s transforming into a Spontoonie maid or Kim-Anh Soosay put me into less formal outfits than Songmark, not more.

     It was something of a strain not being able to give Adele any parting advice or encouragement. We do not officially know her now, and had to leave her to her own devices to contact the shamans far in the backwoods. I would quite like to see how that goes, but we have our own mission to perform. A farewell nod had to suffice, then we had to go and make ready.

    Any observers outside the hotel at eleven o’clock that morning would have seen only a perfectly normal party departing, I hope. The porters had already taken our valises to the dock (though we could have carried them easily ourselves, it would have been out of character), and Molly went first holding a silk umbrella over my ears against the light rain. Maria followed then Helen brought up the rear dressed practically in a long Melton overcoat that actually did conceal some useful equipment. A scene totally familiar on Spontoon outside Shepherd’s Hotel or The Grand in tourist season, but not involving Songmark girls.

    Again, we all had to restrain ourselves from yelling with enthusiasm as the Imperial Airways clipper appeared from the clouds, dropping to get “on the step” exactly on time and pulling into the harbour with a precision that might have had even Miss Devinski smile briefly. Again, Maria took charge of the passports and efficiently chivvied the porters to get our baggage up to the mooring dock - one can quite understand how her Uncle makes the trains run on time, though right now she is keeping quiet about that connection.

    Our first-class cabin on an Imperial Airways flight must certainly have cost Mr. Sapohatan and Spontoon the profits on a lake of Nootnops Blue and a shop full of postcards - so we resolved to make the most of our good fortune, and enjoy our trip. The chairs were comfy and lightweight wickerwork with watered silk cushions, the cabin walls finely inlaid veneer, and the cabin service excellent. Not quite as hinted at on the front page of that Casino Island Pulp comic “Spicy bell-hop Confessions”, though indeed the impeccably uniformed young Malay steward was rather handsome and extremely charming. Kim-Anh Soosay might have been more suited to admiringly watch a well brushed civet-cat’s tail sway down the aisle than Lady Allworthy. Neither of those two are Tailfast and my ears drooped as I reminded myself that the only rings any of us have right now are the ones hidden in my tail-fur and Adele’s.

    There were no fellow travellers in the seats behind us, so I could bring Maria and Molly up to talk with me while Helen watched over us. Helen is rather distrustful of this whole trip; we are a long way from any help and heading into an area famous for its instability. However, we are well equipped for the job - Helen is carrying most of our money. As we learn at Songmark, money might not be the answer to everything but it can buy you useful options. Oddly enough, Miss Devinski and Beryl were quite in accord on that.

    The first four hours flight appeared to be rather a waste looking on the map, as only then did we cross Spontoon’s longitude again on our way West. Our first stop was at Marcus Island, a little coaling and fuelling station where there was half an hour to stretch our legs and do some in-character sightseeing. Then back into the air; a silver service supper from the very civil civet and we retired to the sleeping compartments. I would have dearly loved to feed my flight logbook with a turn at the controls, but not on this trip!


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