L'amour Finds A Way

Down in the Churchyard With the Bush Beer Boys

A Short Story By W. H. PERCIVAL

OF course, it was obvious that Tiny wouldn’t last long on this island. Altogether too robust a character to please the mission aries and our milk-and-water Admin types.

When he came ashore at the wharf and spotted me, he roared like a playful bull. The old ladies in the hotel, two hundred yards away, nearly dropped their tea cups.

“Hello, you old bludger! Still sitting on your bottom robbing the taxpayers?”

He’d put on a bit of weight since Coll, days. Must have been thirteen stone, and his face seemed redder and his smile seemed wider. We exchanged preliminaries and I drove him out to my place.

“Where are the pubs?”

“There aren’t any.”

“The cafes then. The dance halls?”

“No cafes, no dance halls,” I said.

“The hotel is unlicenced. We have a hop every Saturday night at the cinema.”

“Good grief! What a dump!

What do you jokers do for grog?”

I told him about the Bond system.

Two bottles of spirits per man per month. He didn’t believe me at first, but when he saw that I was serious he looked a bit faint.

He had quite a way with the jirls. Always larking about and smacking their backsides, and jetting away with jokes I couldn’t make in a Club. He made a big lit with them all . . . except Rima.

Rima was my house girl, the only jirl I’d seen who cpuld keep Tiny it a distance. And of course the fig mug had to fall flat on his face or her.

Tiny worried me a bit. At that ime I was expecting a high official ippointment; and any breath of icandal would havfe spoiled my ;hances. Tiny saw the point and ried to quieten down. It was a loble effort that lasted almost a vhole week.

Then ne met the Bush Beer Boys.

FT was a clear night with L thousands of stars and a great big moon and a gentle breeze aaking the palm trees sway.

It was late that night when I leard that Tiny was having a party fith the Boys in the churchyard. got down there fast to grab him •efore he put both of us up the reek.

He was there all right, drinking ip the beauty of the tropic night,

and vast quantities of orange beer The Boys had a four-gallon can of the stuff on a flat-topped grave and several spare bottles besides.

Rima lived with her fat sister in a native house just down the road from the church. When I reached the churchyard, a little after midnight, Tiny got an irrepressible urge to go and whisper sweet nothings in Rima’s ear.

Maybe it was love that blinded him, or the moon got in his eyes.

It might be possible that the beer had something to do with it.

Whatever it was, when Tiny tried to tip-toe through the shack’s open doorway, he failed to see the sheet of roofing-iron they had placed across it.

There was a clatter enough to make the dead in the churchyard turn over. Then he was in the blackness of the room, trying to find a way out.

Someone crashed into him, he said, and he grabbed the figure long enough to know that it was a man and that his body felt hard and lumpy.

There was another fearful racket as the unexpected man found the other door and brought down another sheet of iron. By this time the girls were awake and theii screams added to the din.

Tiny took off at full throttle after what he called the intruder Neither of them saw the clothes line stretched before them. The man hit the line and fell. Tiny’s weight crashed down on top of him and a mass of bed linen buried them both.

This is the end, I thought. We will both be deported by the next boat. But Tiny seemed to be quite sobered up. He started talking.

He just happened to be passing, he said, and he saw the thief enter the hut. He rushed bravely in and tackled the fellow. Now there would be no more pilfering in the neighbourhood.

He had, in actual fact, surprised a thief, and been quick-witted enough to realise it.

Did Rima change her mind about Tiny after that? Not on your life!

But that didn’t worry him, because that night he met her fat sister, and a week later they were married.

No, he’s not here now. Tiny’s manager decided that he could be taken only in small doses, and shipped him and his new wife off to one of the outer islands. He is still managing the Branch store there and, I understand, drinks nothing stronger than coconut milk.