Coconut Wireless: A Novel of Love, Life and South Pacific Gossip

Coconut Wireless

What happens when a young Solomon Islands man and a cynical London girl step out of their comfort zones? Find out in this novel about love, life and gossip in the South Pacific.

by Nicola Baird

copyright 2010 Nicola Baird

ISBN: 978-1-4661-7296-8 Smashwords edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters are imaginary.

Events take place in the early 1990s, in and around Honiara.

Half of any money produced by sales of Coconut Wireless will be given to support projects working with Solomon Islands women and children.

Story summary

What happens when a young Solomon Islands man and a cynical London girl step out of their comfort zones? Find out in Coconut Wireless, a novel about love, life and gossip in the South Pacific.

When Suzy overhears her on-off boyfriend Dan flirting with another girl she decides to quit her London job and take up a maths teaching post as a VSO on an island in the South Pacific. Yet again she discovers that nothing is quite what it seems to be.

At first Suzy feels like a big fish in a small pond, whereas Henderson, a charming young islander, is uneasily finding his feet in the big city - but somehow both their lives are forever changed by one chance meeting.

It’s not just a love story that keeps you guessing until the end – there’s also the chance to learn about life in Honiara, the bustling capital of Solomon Islands as Suzy acclimatises to heat, mosquitoes and serious humidity. Enjoy meeting a cast of island characters including clever Stella who has to find a way to protect herself, and her children, and the old Malaitan woman Anna who grew up during world war two, and their nemesis: an MP with an eye on making enough cash to buy Ozzie beachfront real estate.

This cracking story by Nicola Baird of star-crossed destinies mixes magic and the everyday with a tropical South Seas backdrop. You don’t get that sort of weather in the Twilight series!

Coconut Wireless is the perfect next read if you loved novels such as One Day by David Nicholls, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith or anything by Marian Keyes, or non-fiction travel books such as Pies & Prejudice, Solomon Time by Will Randall or Castaway & Faraway by Lucy Irvine.

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Author Nicola Baird has written seven published books including the best selling Save Cash & Save the Planet (Collins, co-written, 2005) and Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children (Vermilion, 2010). Coconut Wireless is her first e-novel. Nicola lived in Solomon Islands from 1990-1992 working as a VSO journalist trainer for Solomon Islands Development Trust.

Coconut Wireless Contents

Story summary

Chapter 1 Wet wet wet

Chapter 2 Leaving home

Chapter 3 The bridge

Chapter 4 Anna’s story

Chapter 5 Not on holiday

Chapter 6 Mob dreams

Chapter 7 Water’s off

Chapter 8 Crazy nights

Chapter 9 Malaria madness

Chapter 10 Fresh start

Chapter 11 Rough justice

Chapter 12 Honorary Mrs

Chapter 13 Walkabout

Chapter 14 Secrets

Chapter 15 Wheel of Fortune

Chapter 16 Absolutely Normal

Chapter 17 In the dark

Chapter 18 Bad magic

Chapter 19 If only

Chapter 20 Soldiers’ Graveyard

Chapter 21 Sacked again

Chapter 22 Life ain’t easy anymore

Chapter 23 Heart-to-heart

Chapter 24 Pantomime

Chapter 25 The feast

Chapter 26 That’s my boy

Chapter 27 Solomon time

Info about Nicola Baird, author of Coconut Wireless

CHAPTER 1: WET, WET, WET

Suzy, legs-up-squashed into the bath, wonders how mad you have to be to give up baths, friends and going to the movies for two years? She’ll soon know because in a few hours she’ll be at Heathrow airport with her one-way ticket to Solomon Islands.

Things that are bad about this:

1 No one knows where this country is (actually nor did she – but thanks to a right-on Peter’s Projection map she now knows that the capital, Honiara, is on the biggest of a chain of islands just to the top right of Australia. Make that north east).

2 She may like baths but she’s not into water. In fact Suzy is a bit frightened of out-of-her-depth swimming and gets sea sick on boats. How will she cope on a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean?

3 Just a hunch but at 32C it’ll surely be too hot and humid to wear trainers or even glam up with a bit of lippy. Ever.

4 Developing such a fear about the chances of Honiara having a hairdresser that she made her stylist give her the first sensible (think short) haircut since her mum stopped having a go, around the time she was 10. The trick said her hair man is to avoid mirrors. At least that will be easy: Solomon Islands has no wine bars and no department stores. There’s probably no chance of dressing up again.

5 No one she knows lives there, has been there or wants to visit her there…

Despite these fears Suzy is also very over-excited. She’s found a great new job half way around the world teaching in a country where it is pretty much always sunny. She skilfully flicks soap bubbles from thigh to knee contentedly knowing that she won’t miss winter rain, thermostat battles with flatmates, the crush on the tube, Mrs Thatcher, or her old job in a classroom with no windows. Or the fact that everyone in London’s always busy according to their Fil-o-bloody-faxes. She especially won’t miss liar not-really-boyfriend, Dan, either."

In fact it’s all Dan’s fault she’s doing this. She was in this very bath when the missile moment happened.

Suzy remembers how the ceiling light was off, less for modesty than to remove the irritating noise of the rented flat’s extractor fan. She’d lit a scented candle and was smug in the bubbles assuming that as Dan had come round about six o’clock he’d be staying with her for the whole weekend. She now realises she was just a convenient early Saturday evening stop-off.

Suzy and Dan are an old university habit.

He’s brown-eyed, curly haired, has a gorgeous grin and plenty of wit. He wants to see the world on an expense account. He’s happy to be around children, but not planning to have any of his own ever as he says whenever he picks up a condom. He’s loving the get it spend it whirl of 80s business. Thinks he might even set himself up as a Greed Guru, or run a nightclub.

She’s slim, dark haired and forever fussing about morals and miners. Because she’s a feminist men find her an usually cheap date – she’ll even go halves on a kebab.

It’s obvious to Dan that they want very different things in life.

Even so he likes being with Suzy, and he likes the fact that her flat practically overlooks the Loftus Road ground. That grey Saturday he’d swung by in his lucky suit after the match for a little food and fun. But after the pitta stuffed with sweetcorn and mayonnaise, a bit of cuddling and a shower, there’s still time for a better date with Cassie, the good looking blonde in advertising who wrote her number on his shirt cuff at a mate’s party.

Suzy remembers, yet again, how she heard him picking up the phone and dialling.

You there darling?

Yes, says Suzy, surprised out of her after-sex, bath time reverie, because in all the years she’s known Dan, he’s never called anyone darling.

Do you mean me? asks Suzy too softly for Dan to hear.

Hey, didn’t think you’d be in. We met yesterday, remember? Do you want to meet at that new Russian place – vodka, champers and caviar – about 10pm and then go on to Limelight? Yeah? Good, see you later. He mumbles something she can’t hear, then laughs wickedly as he puts down the receiver.

Next moment the TV clicks on. It’s Disappearing World, his favourite - he loves to watch just how far the Coca Cola brand can get. Shocked by what she’s heard Suzy slips deeper into the water, an attempt to wash away what’s going on. A few moments later the two-timing rat is lying to her through the bathroom door.

Suze, I’ve got to go now. Need to read reports before work on Monday. I’ll give you a ring. He edges open the bathroom door, leans in to kiss her wet head and before she can splutter any kind of protest he’s let himself out of the flat into the city that never sleeps.

Instead of crying Suzy promises herself that things have got to change. She narrows it down to three options. She could spend three months moping. She could start looking for someone better than Dan to be a real boyfriend rather than carry on with this on-off pretence. Or she could disappear and take a long trip enjoying herself while Dan learns to miss her.

And even if he doesn’t miss her, she’ll find a way of being out of London for long enough to come back a new person. She sees herself with a tan, skinny enough to wear chic size 10 clothes, with long tresses and a bunch of stories to rival anything she’s done yet in her life. She will be the sort of person men like Dan will want to call darling (in an ironic sort of a way). Oh yes, and she’ll be bilingual, maybe even trilingual - a woman who can teach anytime, anyplace, anywhere…

On Sunday Suzy stops crying and thinks up more professional reasons to sign up as a maths teacher with Voluntary Service Overseas. The next two years of life look set to be:

Sunny. Tick.

Long way off. Tick.

Different. Double tick.

Well paid. Not at all. Anyway who but Dan cares about that?

The doorbell buzzes Suzy out of recall mode and swiftly into comfy travelling clothes. It’s Dan. He’s come round to wish her luck with the head hunters of the Solomon Islands.

Just typical he should be so politically incorrect.

It’s not too late to stop this you know, he says surveying her bed adrift with last minute packing that can’t be crammed into a backpack.

You could just not turn up at Heathrow. You don’t have to go and live in a country no one but an anthropologist or TV crew can locate. You don’t have to teach barefoot teenagers. You can stay here Suzy, near me. London’s brilliant. Ow. What on earth does a 23-year-old thoroughly modern Ms need this for? he laughs removing a plastic box from where he’s sitting. And why have you got so many?

It’s Tupperware. Someone’s mum said they are useful in the Tropics because they keep camera film, medicines, typewriter ribbons, that sort of stuff (she’s not going to mention diaphragms or spermicidal cream) a better chance of lasting in the humidity until their sell-by-date, replies Suzy feeling as crushed as the box Dan’s holding. He’s not made a declaration of love, so go she must.

You’ll write to me won’t you? she hears herself saying, uncooly.

Yes, says Dan taking off his Ray Bans to give a wink, but you know me, I’m better at reading…

CHAPTER 2: LEAVING HOME

ONLY A STRANGER would find it odd - everyone is in the church. The dark-skinned men up by the mahogany cross decorated with flowers. Their women, soothing babies by a curious pitch and roll of breast and belly, are spilling into the aisles and out of the rough carved door searching for a breeze. A few of the more daring women whisper to each other in a language of apostrophes and laughter, raising their eyes with silent humour as the old priest talks on and on, in the grand English of the church. Every now and then he breaks into an angry splutter of Pijin English accompanied by a menacing finger point. The village women don't feel comfortable when he does that: and, lowering offended eyes, switch babies from breast to hip. They are waiting for the singing.

Impatient, one old woman - 10 children and scores of grandchildren - shuffles barefoot along the aisle to the front, eyes cheekily down, knees and shoulders dipped, and drops two large kumara and a yam into the offerings sack. Curious, everyone abandons their struggle to follow the priest's Sunday words to stare at their bold relation hurrying the service to be over as she walks back down the aisle to the rickety bench outside the church. Her husband fidgets, the old woman is just as impetuous as when he first met her. Beside him their youngest, already 18 years, is purposefully staring at a hymn book. Accidentally he brushes the boy's arm making the green-backed book of modern hymns tumble on to the floor. His son's admirable Christian concentration is exposed ... a fat novel by Sidney Sheldon.

Henderson, what kind of person are you? Why are you reading a book on the Sabbath? In Church? demands the old man, embarrassed now by both wife and son during church.

Yeah, whispers a grey-haired uncle, sitting close by, and with added authority because he has been trained as a lay preacher to speak in capital letters, and What Ever Happens in a Book Anyway? THIS is Real, Henderson, Father's Words are the WORDS OF GOD - your Book is NOTHING.

Henderson ignores both his relations. He has just reached another interesting part – and already there have been three mysterious deaths and extraordinary sex. He is hungry to live the life of the book's heroes, discover what is really happening out there, guess the villain or villains. He also knows the only peace for reading he can steal is in church. Not many of the villagers read English that well, so Henderson can take whatever reading matter he likes into the church - and always does - even though his father rebukes him, and the priest has started calling him too proud and pointing his long finger more often in his direction.

Henderson just doesn't care. The only drawback to Church reading is that by mid-morning services become so hot, despite the cooling views, over half walls made from long leaves, out to the blue shaded Solomon Sea. Today it is scorching. Sweat trickles down Henderson's back, as if he was playing soccer, but when the women fan their hymn books ferociously over their babies' boiling bodies a soft breeze cools his neck.

If this church service ever finishes Henderson plans to lie still and sleep, dreaming of the exciting life that must be going on in the big city right-now-this-minute. He is sick of being bossed around by old men and women, the only people who seem to live in his village any more, in fact in any village any more judging by the quietness of nearby Heranisi and Panatu. All his school mates have long gone on walkabout in town and the students don't come back for Christmas holidays for another four months. There aren't even any girls to flirt with - the single ones are working as house girls (or that's what they say) with relations in Honiara and the married ones are busy with babies - and gardening, and cooking, and cleaning, and most of all gossiping about the wild goings on of relations on walkabout around town.

Henderson bends slowly to pick up his dropped novel and is surprised by a message: What are you doing here? The words are on page 158, curiously highlighted by a shaft of sunshine, but they might just as well be a gift from God.

Henderson's mind races to make sense of the question. What is he doing back home at the village when every other Solomon boy is having a real life? A modern life? The village is boring: it's an old-fashioned place, its daily rhythms of work punctuated only by church bells. It's lotu, lotu, lotu as the priest would say, for he always makes his points three times.

Since he failed his school certificate, about three years ago, Henderson has helped his family run their small village store, letting his father, an untrainable teacher, spend more time with the primary school kids. There are plenty of youngsters and classes spill out of the tatty leaf building which his father calls school. Henderson may not be a scholar (blame malaria for all that time off), but he is one of the rare ones who loves to read books. Diplomatically he stays silent about his father’s poor teaching, done in the Sunday School manner. Father tells the students to do this, or do that, and mixes English and Pijin in such a way that he's almost invented another language. The students, even the littlest ones, study torn primers of English grammar ineffectively. They learn everything in English, which most of them will later use to fail their secondary school entry exams.

In the village everyone talks their home language though no one finds this easy to read. About five years ago some overseas Christians came to stay in a nearby village to translate the Bible into their local language. Henderson remembers everyone being so surprised that they were bothering. After all most services by the old priest were in English. And then the day came when the newly translated Bible was ready and every family received a free copy. It was such a shock - inside were words everyone knew and understood when they heard them, but very few people could actually read them! And then there were the mistakes which caused so much amusement, and the fact that their own language was being used to send messages and praise God, the Big Man, (whom they thought only understood English salutations) that in the end the priest (who came from a bush village up the lagoon - and had a different home language anyway) abandoned the experiment just to keep order amongst his congregation. Some houses still have their gift copy perched in safe places away from the sticky hands of small children, but plenty too have been spoilt by cockroaches, or grown a mould which leaves an acrid dust on anyone who rashly touches the laminated cover.

The long-awaited singing begins and Henderson is side-tracked by the performance. The Sunday school kids, mostly students at his father's school, have formed a choir.

Today they are singing in a cappella style but there are plans at Christmas, when most of the villagers who don't live in the village return for a month’s holiday, to raise funds for a keyboard and guitars. His father is already rehearsing a play version of The Pilgrim's Progress. A wild looking 12-year-old will star as Christian - chosen because he owns a vital prop - a bulky backpack - and, more importantly, is a brother of the local MP.

The logic runs: make George Christian and the MP will then donate more money towards the music fund. The truth is: their MP is sure to stay in town during Christmas because he hates the constant demands of his relations and constituents for cash and IOUs. He also hates village life, thinks of it as boring; all time not spent wheeling and dealing (for himself) is wasted time. Many of the Honourable Members think the same.

Henderson helped his father create a simple storyline for the play. He envisages a troublesome journey for Christian, through gangs of town-based rascals (wild child types, often unmarried and unemployed) and exotic temptations of beer and loud music on the way to the Celestial City. In his own mind the Celestial City is also crowded by gangs of rascals and exotic delights of beer, loud music - and girls - but he knows better than to mention such thoughts to his father. The project has left him even more determined to try the bright lights.

The village students are excited too and have insisted a number of extra characters are introduced. There has to be a pantomime cow for instance - two of the older men, who tried to set up a cattle ranch back in 1976, rigged one up with copra sacks last Christmas and then lurched from leaf house to leaf house singing carols, shameless from potent home brew. They raised more than 50 Solomon dollars and their crazy Left foot, Right foot, Left foot, Hiccup progress is still imitated by the more playful, smaller kids.

Someone also has to be a devil, though no one is very keen to volunteer for this part - names (and reputations) after all stick for life in a village. Even primary school students are all too aware of that.

With the singing, the atmosphere of impatience dissolves. The women sway rhythmically - delighting sleepy babies - craning to see their older children perform. One little girl sings a verse on her own. It is lovely and Henderson finds his irritation at being discovered reading - yet again - ebb a little. There is a gecko busy in the leaf roof above his head. Over by the big mango tree, that marks the centre of the village, there are about 20 tiny colourful parrots feasting. A small boy is sent out to distract them - shoots a stone with his catapult into the top branches - and the marauders fly off in an angry swoop to a safer restaurant by the edge of the village. As Henderson watches the blonde haired boy come back to the church service, his eye is caught by a flash moving along the far side of the reef. He looks again - it's a motor canoe slowing up to come through the passage. The speck grows and as it judders through the reef, the sound of the surf pounding the reef is masked, a little, by the drone of the Yamaha engine. The village doesn't usually have visitors on a Sunday. Henderson makes to get up and meet the strangers, but his father stops him with a glance. In defiance Henderson turns back to his novel, this time without pretending it’s a prayer book.

At dusk, just as Henderson's mother passes out portions of rice, tinned fish and sweet potato on battered orange plastic bowls, the Capital Letter uncle comes by, very self-importantly, with the visitors. As ever his mother enables the food to stretch amply for another three mouths. No one speaks, but after wolfing down dinner, Henderson and the men move to the bamboo bench outside to story. The visitors are agricultural extension officers based at the government station about six hours canoe journey along the coast. They are due to visit spice growers in the southern part of the province, but were delayed by the taller man's daughter coping badly with malaria.

There's so much malaria at the moment, he complains. It used to be worse at Christmas and New Year when it gets wet, but at Auki everyone gets sick any time of the year. My wife is head of the Mother's Union and I tell her off for not making her members keep the place clean, but the truth is she does. I sometimes wonder if there is a special malaria devil going round at night planting tins of Taiyo brand tuna fish and coconut shells so the station's drainage ditches will have the perfect stagnant ponds for Mother Anopholese!

Yes, it's a problem here too, says Henderson's father slapping theatrically at mosquitoes busy eyeing-up his ankles. Our village is kept clean, but the government stopped the spraying programme back in l981. In fact that wasn't too bad because the spray seemed to make the pussycats die, so then we got an invasion of rats. He pauses to roll up a smoke.

Then we poisoned the rats but when they were dead the women used to complain there were more snakes around - no rats to eat them I guess - and even more mosquitoes! No, the worst thing here is that when people get sick it's a long way to the clinic. There's a bush road, which goes through the mangrove swamp, and takes a fit person two hours or so. Or there's Panatu's clinic, which we can reach by canoe - but sometimes there's no petrol or the engine's broken, or some small problem, he laughs resignedly, like no money to pay for canoe hire. We've given God two of our children early because of malaria.

The visitors nod their heads sympathetically and then switch their attention from sickness to the betel nut being offered round. Henderson goes to fetch his father's pot of lime powder and some fresh leaf for the men to take with it. He's been chewing betel nut since he was tiny and is always surprised to hear people say foreigners call it Solomon beer. Besides a chalky, numb-mouth feel he's never had the slightest hint of being drunk - but then maybe that's because he doesn't drink or for that matter use lime. He would, but he's always been a little vain and doesn't much like the idea of staining his mouth red, like a town girl with lipstick, or worse losing his teeth like most of the adults in the village.

What does lipstick taste like? He silently guesses while the other men chew and spit, companionably watching the stars, until the other visitor starts talking again: Have you heard that the Honourable Member for round here is negotiating with people up at 'Are'Are for bait fishing rights? I met a man who'd been at one of the meetings and the MP says if they give the go ahead he will make sure a really good clinic is built. The deal is good too, they just let the Japanese come in and pick up their fish and get paid - that's not bad development is it? I mean the work we do with the agricultural section involves hard work, nothing is as easy as bait fishing deals. Not a bad way to find money for an engine or pay the school fees is it?

Henderson's father isn't convinced. "We had bait fishing round here for