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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
3 May, 1937 to 7 May, 1937



Monday May 3rd, 1937

A damp day and one where it felt as if we got most of the rain on our fur. The whole morning was spent at the airfield, helping the mechanics there work on servicing various commercial aircraft. Airlines generally have their own maintenance staff for regular routes, but nobody is going to have a dedicated team waiting around here for one flight per day, which is what some routes fly this time of year.  Working out on the open tarmac was hardly fun – it became a sort of mantra with us “at least it isn’t January.” And at least it is Spontoon rather than (say) Northern Vostok or worse still the Aleutians. But a Songmark girl needs to be able to work in whatever situation she finds herself!

    At lunch we caught up with the newspapers, and the attack on Judge Poynter is all over the front page of the Elele (Native edition – not the one the tourists see.)  The Police are “making enquiries” and the trial is set for Friday. Exactly how one tries dead assailants is probably something a lawyer could explain (I could ask Beryl who would probably know but I would probably regret it) although the other fur on trial is of course – me.  Molly says I would be stupid to give myself up, at least before the trial finishes.  Actually I was hardly contemplating it.

    I just hope furs like Crusader Dorm do not get a scent of all this! They are fanatics about Justice rather than Law – and are fresh from a trip to Vostok where by repute they were feted as heroic furs having solved various crimes and exposed several plots making good use of their skills and outsiders’ perspectives. Folk from outside a culture can sometimes spot things locals overlook as self-explanatory. Their local guide Svetlana has a formidable reputation, in that she got her Songmark bills paid by saving the Grand Duchess from an assassination attempt by two Reds. One she threw off a rooftop from four storeys up, and as for the other – she is a wolverine and they have one of the most formidable bites of any fur. One generally thinks of non-sentient animals biting throats out, let alone anyone who qualifies for education at an Aeronautical Boarding School for Young Ladies. At least I did not have to do that against the Judge’s would-be assassins.

    Back to Songmark to our workshop practicals. Certainly the islands get their money’s worth out of us; we have a wide array of broken devices to have a look at, ranging from vacuum cleaners to radios. It might be a long way from aircraft in some ways (as Missy K grumbled), but switches are switches, likewise motors, bearings and the like. The fact they happen to be meant to sit in a kitchen rather than a fuselage is hardly important as long as we can fix them. A fur can be an awfully long way from an authorised repair shop here in the Pacific!

    We even got to deliver our fixed items back to their various owners, which was a treat to get out in the fresh air again after spending the afternoon with the stink of burned insulation and machine oil in our snouts. Like most people I headed out to Casino Island carrying the repaired radio (a blown valve replaced) as it probably has most of the Euro machinery in the Spontoon group except for Moon Island where the military maintain their own equipment. Happily the rain held off long enough for me to get to the address near the High School as water and electrics hardly mix.  Any fur on Main Island outside the larger villages would need a very long extension lead to connect to the nearest power socket!

    Another treat I witnessed was the sight of a Native wedding party, heading cheerfully down from Luakinakina Park where various open-air ceremonies take place. Not everything happens on Sacred Island, after all. It was a fine sight – even more so when I recognised the happy couple. The groom is a field-mouse I have seen in the village by the delta where the Sacred Lake River comes out, and indeed I have seen the bride before as well. Last time she was on the beach being admired by several locals who appreciated her fine figure – and indeed it looks as if there will be both a marriage and a birth celebrated in that Spontoonie household hardly a month apart. One hopes the child matches the happy couples’ species, though around here furs care less about that than “euros” do – even those who could have a pedigree rarely have the paperwork to prove it. Instead of a white dress the blushing bride wore a flower lei and fully oiled fur now with various markings combed in that I found myself looking at rather wistfully. Helen at least will be looking similar as a bride in July, though only as to the markings – presumably her shape will match by Winter Solstice.

    It was certainly with a lot to think about, that I returned to Songmark! No police waiting outside the gatehouse for me either – so far so good.  We discovered at teatime that no good deed ever goes unpunished, when our hopes were briefly raised at the sight of more of those Rain Coast experimental rations. They had taken our advice and dropped the rather nauseating cheese and potato “sea pie” from their can-a-day project but in “reward” for our reviewing Songmark was given the remaining case of unwanted Sea Pie sample tins! With that sort of reward one hardly needs punishment.  Presumably they had heard we are almost out of 1918 vintage Maconochie and wanted to give us a “like for like” replacement emergency ration that nobody is likely to tuck into except in direst emergency. At least we could hand the cans over to the junior years and remind them they wanted to sample the rations last time – though they really wanted the salmon and the chilli.

    A quiet evening with our books “cramming” hard. At least we could take a long break for a shower; one learns to make the most of the smallest luxuries here, like finding claw-holds on a rock face. It all gets us further forward, however small the distance. I described the Native wedding – at least, the mouse girl is now a native and her offspring will be legally born one. Molly says she met her last week on the beach while I was training with Malou, along with a lepine girl who seemed to be in much the same case.

    It was rather strange, thinking about that. Molly pointed out that whatever happens I am stuck as Lady Allworthy no matter who I marry. Jirry can never be Lord Allworthy, neither will any other male as the title descends entirely through me (just as Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, but had he survived her he would never have been King Albert). She joked that I would be a very popular girl as my kittens will be heirs and heiresses no matter whose else they are, and whether I ever get married or not! Molly has the oddest ideas at times. Most times, to be honest.

     
Wednesday May 5th, 1937

What a day. Two days of it exactly – we have been out in the Kanim Islands helping the Spontoon Ministry of Works install telephones. The Kanims are generally listed as part of the Spontoon Independencies, and local furs travel between them without passports or papers – but they are not really a tourist area, in terms of hotels and entertainments. Which made it surprising that just as on Spontoon’s South and Main Islands the telephone cables are carefully buried a yard deep in the coral rock, avoiding lines of 20th century telephone poles spoiling the view. Actually, we discovered that was not the reason, as one of the workers from the Ministry recounted tales of a major storm 8 years ago that blew half the lines down (the Kanims are generally flattish with little shelter from the elements. Except germanium and hafnium, as Molly says. Molly is getting very odd.)  Although it costs more in terms of labour to put the lines underground, they are not as vulnerable there. Besides, on Spontoon every piece of structural timber comes from places like Vostok or Tillamook, and foreign exchange can be better spent elsewhere.

    Anyway, it was a lot of hard work – although we were not digging the ditches, which had already been done as an “off-season” Public Works job by locals who are now heading out to shake grass skirts on Casino Island for the summer. We had to handle the electrics, hunting down “shorts” in the cable and generally work out how to get the signals flowing. Two days of serious work, and a few of us were very grateful the lines only use fifty volts as we found out where some of the electrical “shorts” were the hard way.

    There were compensations though; two days of excellent weather and our Tutors decidedly in the background. In fact only Miss Blande was there to loosely keep an eye on us, having told us the Clerk of Works would test the system afterwards and our marks would be based on his report. I doubt she was at a loose end though, as she vanished off with a gentleman friend we have met before, a canine gentleman of Great Dane type.
 
    I must say, the islanders made us very welcome. There was plenty of room in the village longhouses as some of them had already vanished off to Spontoon for the tourist season, and the ones remaining were happy to see a fresh snout who was not a camera-snapping tourist obsessed with how quaint everything was. Quite an excellent luau, with the traditional fire-pit cooking baked fish (not pastefish either!)  Most of us joined the dancing, and quite a lot of palm wine went down much appreciated. Unlike most week-days at Songmark we could sample it as we felt reasonably safe from being roused at two in the morning for an emergency fire drill or being told we were heading out on Dawn Patrol in our Tiger Moths.

    So, two fine days working in the sunshine and getting three villages wired for telephones. The central exchange was jolly interesting, being a very solid concrete structure sunk deep into the ground on the highest point of the island. One could walk ten paces away from it and not know it was there, when the trenches carrying the cables were filled in and grassed over. It is rather like the one we have seen on South Island. “Typhoon proofing” is one thing, but any typhoon that needs three feet of heavily reinforced concrete to resist against it will leave nobody around to need a telephone.

    Of course, any similarity between that and the hardened telephone exchanges furs are installing around the Maginot Line and other such places is entirely coincidental.  Spontoon is a luscious peach of an island, as all the tourist brochures promise. And anyone biting hard into a peach without knowing about the stone inside is likely to break their teeth on it.


Thursday May 6th, 1937

We are certainly getting around the islands this week! Before the tourists arrive en masse, the film studios are getting busy with making the most of the good weather. There were two studios asking for help, one shooting a standard Jungle Adventure on South Island, a director I have never heard of, and one that most of us volunteered to work with. The other filming on Main Island is Miss Margot Melson, a lepine lady whom I have met before and is what they call well-known for being famous.
 
    Naturally Prudence’s dorm jumped at the chance, having appeared as extras in two of her films already and wishing she could have arrived at Easter when they would have volunteered for this one. I tagged along myself, as did Helen and Maria who are always puzzled at such things. Naturally Molly would run a mile to avoid it.

    The Spontoon Islands have been the backdrop for a few other films than the obvious South Seas adventures, over the years. They have been the Pirates’ Caribbean, the Mayan jungles and various science-fiction backdrops as required. I think the sight of half a dozen Roman Legionaries might actually be new, though. Miss Melson explained the plot has an Amazon heroine who is captured from her remote island past the fringe of their Empire and becomes a lady Gladiator (would that be “Gladiatrix”?) before escaping.
 
    The star is Miss Hermanita, a suitably exotic panther girl of about our age who was throwing herself into her role with skill and energy. It is fortunate that the armour the Roman soldiers are wearing is mild steel and industrial padding rather than standard “properties department” painted celluloid, as she was laying into them full force with a war-club!  If the Directors’ films were not all automatically blacklisted by the Hays Office they should certainly win awards for acting, as anyone could see Miss Hermanita was giving her all to avoid capture (and the extras had a bonus scheme generously awarding the one who subdued her, which should help pay for the genuine bruises they took in the process despite the armour. Melson Productions stress realistic reactions and improvisation rather than slavishly sticking to a script.) Miss Hermanita’s Amazon costume is quite cool for the climate, and unlike what one hears of the historical Amazons she is still … fully equipped. Very much so, in fact.

    Definitely, the Spontoon filming industry does things differently. No wonder Miss Melson keeps coming back here, apart from the warm reception she gets. As Ada says, it would not go down well in Peoria, but she has no intention of going there. We were helping shift the equipment from the beach-side camp to the tourist “temple” near the volcano that has played quite a few film roles over the years. Naturally, it is completely fraudulent and about as genuine as the sheet-metal spacecraft from last year’s film “Hula Warriors of Venus” we saw being cut up for scrap at Superior Engineering last month. Although the structure looks nothing like a classical Roman temple, it is explained as being that of one of the exotic cults they adopted, as some furs still worship the Magna Mater in the remoter woods of Barsetshire.

    Actually one can learn quite a bit about filming from watching how a true professional goes about it. Or at least we think so, but this being Songmark we are likely to find out just how wrong we are, if our Tutors hand us a camera tomorrow! Watching an expert at work always makes things look easy.

    Much to Prudence’s disappointment, we could not stay for the after-filming socialising. Miss Melson’s parties are famous, as she certainly believes in “work hard play hard” – we were all invited but our Tutors declined on our behalf. Back to the grindstone, working on our navigation exercises. Carmen and Belle had their ears and tails really drooping, thinking of what they might be doing instead. Still, they have the weekend to look forward to for that; at least in our final term our Tutors spare us gratuitous weekend work.
 
    Maria has been looking in the Songmark library at the public journals former third-years left behind them. Miss Devinski tries hard to be unpredictable in terms of the challenges she throws at us, so studying what our predecessors did in their final terms will not be a certain guide to what is still ahead of us. But no year yet has been thrown anything as physical as our Aleutians trip, or the endurance test of our helping the Spontoon Militia for four days solid last Spring with about six hours sleep. Possibly such things take too much time to recover from, and time is precious. Besides, we have already done that and been marked on it, for good or ill.

    It is getting decidedly warm now, and every Songmark dorm building has all its windows wide open to catch the evening breeze. Molly claims she can smell the chilli cooking at Mahanish’s, which is probably wishful thinking as it is half a mile and more away – though the wind is in the right direction and she certainly has the best scenting ability of any of us. Pointing out that she can dine there for luncheon and teatime Saturday and Sunday did not cheer her up – she has a large and indigestible textbook to cope with right now.


Friday May 7th, 1937

Another scorching day, the hottest yet! But it was on with the full Songmark formal outfit including the blazer as Miss Devinski sends me off to Meeting Island to attend the court hearing. Other folk were allowed to go if they wanted, but in the end only Beryl and Irma joined me. Beryl looks as sweet and demure a Young Lady as anyone might want on the cover of the Songmark Prospectus, which just shows that appearances are deceptive. Mind you, I suppose I can hardly complain as I am still hoping my disguise as Kim-Anh was wholly deceptive.

    We had to wait awhile for the court to open the public gallery, as presumably they had things inside to argue over. Beryl spent the time chuckling over “Fifty great Untrue tales of the air”, a paperback she picked up at the kiosk on Eastern Island. The kiosk is stocked for the season with various Pacific Island tales for the tourists, some of which are equally bogus and less honest about telling you so.

    Not surprisingly the court was packed out with quite an angry crowd. Judge Poynter is something of a national fixture here, and even though he has almost wholly retired everyone knows him as a fair and honest fur, and their grandparents did as well. Burning down the Casino would hardly enrage the locals more than having him assassinated especially by three furs he never met before, let alone prosecuted. It was rather a surprise to see him in the witness stand rather than behind the bench, but of course he can hardly try his own case and one of his colleagues, an avian gentleman was presiding in the court. Harold was very neatly dressed in a tropical weave tweed suit, and was the very image of a fine old country gentleman.
 
    The proceedings started off with Harold’s testimony; simple enough as basically he was at home when the door was kicked in. The next “witness” was the Dictaphone, the recording of which was amplified and played on the speakers in the court. Beryl whispered that it is a common fault of criminals to gloat and explain their foolproof plans to show their cleverness, even though it is nothing of the kind. In the circumstances I could only be grateful – otherwise I would have been just too late.
 
    The prosecution had managed to trace the three intruders’ movements since arriving on Spontoon and going on shore leave; they had bought the machetes in Eriksson’s Outdoors on Casino Island, along with climbing rope and assorted small clothing including gloves plus a waterproof tarpaulin presumably for afterwards. Carrying blood-dripping machetes around the streets is likely to cause comment, this not being Krupmark. Where the leader’s revolver came from was unknown, and probably he had it with him on the ship.
 
    Nobody had any clear idea of how they identified and tracked down Judge Harold Poynter. True, there was that article awhile ago in the newspaper about him, but that did not list his address or even which island of the group he lived on. Neither had anyone made enquiries at the Casino Island Post Office or other places a stranger might have found it out from. Unless it was sheer chance, it would have needed a local contact to know that Harold spends Saturday afternoons at home and that his housekeeper takes the weekend off. I thought about that big grey wolfhound I had seen watching the house, and indeed I had never seen him as a local before. Wolfhounds are large and distinctive, and there are not many who are Native Spontoonies.

    I would not liked to have had the job of defence counsel when the court judged the Dictaphone recording as “admissible evidence” and the prosecution produced signed testimony from the tour ship’s Captain and Bosun that they had heard it played and the voices on it really were the deckhands Malone, O’Malley and Flaherty they had identified later in the morgue.  Fortunately for the court they had wanted Harold to know exactly why he was going to die, and boasted about having done the same to a District Commissioner in Rangoon and a mission doctor in Trincomalee, Ceylon. Those cases are naturally outside Spontoon’s jurisdiction, but the court will be sending the confessions to the relevant authorities to see if they can clear the cases up. As the prosecution pointed out, as long as they did not get greedy and only attacked at a small fraction of their landfalls, they were well-placed for a “getaway” every time. If I had not been there, the next person in that house might well have been Harold’s housekeeper first thing Monday morning, by which time the tour ship would have been half-way to Tillamook and nobody even counting who had been ashore. Ships’ crews typically do not have passports and do not go through Customs or Immigration like the regular tourists and travellers.

    Once the recording had played out and the Defence council retreated with “no further questions” it was my turn – at least, Harold’s description of Kim-Anh’s arrival and the rather hectic forty seconds afterwards. Actually what Harold described was a “slightly built but agile feline girl, unknown to me” and indeed he did spot Kim-Anh’s Siamese fur markings as I left the dim curtained room and went out into the better lit corridor. It was a good thing I had said nothing, as Harold has a reputation for hating anything in the way of a cover-up and would be sure to have identified my voice and tell the court whose it was.

    The rest of the evidence was medical; a distinguished Skunk gentleman we have seen at the hospital, describing just what I had done to three furs with a broom handle and a gasogene. One broken neck (the bull), one simply fractured skull (that was the stoat) and one canine whose skull was broken in such a way that when he saw the X-ray the doctor just stopped counting at two dozen fragments. That gasogene was heavy, built like a two gallon champagne bottle and I put everything I had into the swing.
 
    If anything I only felt embarrassed – as the prosecution and defence quibbled over whether it was physically possible for one slight feline as described to have done all that against three armed furs without even taking a scratch or shedding fur as evidence. It seems it is not unprecedented by all accounts – but most of the cases on record have involved specially trained Burmese Dacoits, Peshwari Thuggee or other furs brought up from birth in “fiendish Oriental fighting arts” and trained in drug-boosted or religious frenzy as the prosecutor put it. The fact that Harold thought he saw a Siamese girl, and that the trio’s previous target had been in Rangoon, was made much of. Besides, folk who checked the Dictaphone recording carefully spotted there were only two people in the room breathing at the end, Harold and just one other.

    The Jury was out for hardly ten minutes before coming in with a unanimous verdict – “justified furricide by fursons unknown”. The court found this a very popular verdict, and I cheered along with the rest. That lets me off the hook, at least with the police. What our Tutors will think about it I hardly know, but I doubt it will really reflect badly on Songmark with the few folk who know the facts.

    As we left I could hear various reporters canvassing the public for their opinions. The best idea I heard was that some loyal Burmese friend of the murdered Rangoon Commissioner, possibly a reformed dacoit, had tracked his killers down and by coincidence found them just in time to inflict “fiendish Oriental vengeance”.  That puts the ball a long way down the court from Miss Bourne-Phipps of Barsetshire! We have not enlisted any Burmese Dacoits in class as far as I know, but I doubt our Tutors would reject them for that reason. Songmark accepted Beryl from Saint T’s and Svetlana from Vostok, after all.

    Harold was pretty much mobbed by well-wishers outside the court afterwards but I managed to confirm meeting him tomorrow, to carry on where we were discussing my Allworthy problem. In fact, I might do rather more than that.

    Although our Passes could have kept us out all day had the trial lasted that long,  not even Beryl suggested doing anything but heading straight back although we did stop at the Sunset Grill by the water-taxi slips on the way to Songmark for a rather superior lunch. Chicken omelette with local herbs was a wonderful treat, and not something the Songmark cooks do. We would have lunched on Meeting Island had the timing been otherwise, and our Tutors would have been happy enough with that.

    Beryl was musing about there being a reward out for any evidence leading to further convictions in the Poynter case. I was decidedly glad to have been found innocent (in absence) of any crime. That wolfhound is the one obvious loose end to be tidied, and indeed I mentioned him to Mr. Sapohatan who may be passing it to the Police. Still, there was something familiar about him. I am sure I have seen a picture of him or someone very like him recently, but we read a lot of newspapers in a month and it could have been anywhere. One thing I do not have time to do is sit down for a day or two in what Maria calls the newspaper “morgue” of back issues at the Spontoon Mirror and the Daily Elele scanning for what might or might not be there.

    Just in case our Tutors thought we had had a too-relaxing morning in the peanut gallery of the court, they thoughtfully laid on an afternoon’s hard exercise swimming for the whole year. Certainly it was the right day for a swim and not one for running round the sand dunes with packs on – in fact it was very welcome to get out of the full dress outfit with blazer and into our bathing suits. It is a rare occasion that we actually do something tourists would do, in the conditions they would like to do it. Three hours in the water was hard work as ever but nobody was passing out with heat exhaustion. We have read that some of the Ave Argentum have been literally run till they drop, then thrown out for “failure of resolve.”

    Back to Songmark to wash the salt out of our fur and a very welcome meal. It seems the first potatoes of the year are in season on Main Island (grown on the flanks of Mount Kiribatori) and although they generally all go to the hotel and tourist trade that has not quite taken off yet. So we get an exotic luxury meal – mashed potatoes! At least it is a luxury compared to poi, and as for exotic – it is the first time the cooks have served it here this year. Which just goes to show how one fur’s exotic is another’s boringly mundane product. Molly was speculating whether if Euros have drinks like Malibu and Copa Cabanas, Spontoonies will someday drink Pittsburghs or Toledos.
 
    Back to our dorms, where I took the chance to explain how the day in court went. It will be in tomorrow’s editions of the Daily Elele, but probably only in the Spontoonie language edition. I am not sure what the Tourist Board would like the least, publicising that the islands have international assassins visiting their shores or that there is a local sufficiency of vengeful Burmese Dacoits to deal with them!


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