To the Islands Read Online Free PDF

moving, burned suddenly in a pool of sun.
    No, I won’t, she thought, won’t be his puppet, won’t let him force me into his service. ‘Bob Gunn doesn’t belong to the mission.’
    ‘He might be persuaded.’
    ‘No, I don’t think he would.’
    ‘He seems a good young man. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell.’
    ‘He wants to go home at the end of the year.’
    ‘Home? What is home?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, strangely tried. ‘I really don’t know.’
    The silence folded itself once more around her words.
    ‘Am I,’ he asked after a time, ‘keeping you from your breakfast?’
    ‘Perhaps I should be there. Yes.’ She turned to the door and stopped, looking down from the step. ‘Oh, here’s someone waiting. I think I’ve forgotten his name.’
    But though she smiled at him, the dark man outside said nothing. He waited until she had gone, through the patterned shade of poincianas and between the vincas, towards the kitchen. He thought she was pretty and strong and unhappy. Then softly he mounted to the doorway and stood there, with deference, in a patch of sunlight.
    The eyes of Heriot, fixed on the floor, took in vaguely the broad black dusty feet. Then mounted to the face.
    The eyes of the young man, fixed on Heriot’s hand, saw it suddenly tense.
    ‘Stephen,’ said Heriot.
    ‘Yes, brother. I come back to my country.’

2
    In the eyes of Heriot the young man melted and disappeared and formed again as a bare child, a child with almond eyes and a small hawk nose betraying the distant legacy of an Afghan trader in the blood. But the child was a girl child, so slight, so perfectly formed. There had been a beauty there which hit his heart, now, when it was gone, with a blow of reverberating grief, calling his memory back to that worst bereavement and most bitter defeat which all that morning had been feeding his despair. ‘Stephen,’ he said again. ‘Of course.’
    ‘You know I was coming, brother?’
    ‘Yes, yes, I knew. I’d forgotten. I’ve been sick, a little bit. You came last night.’
    ‘With Brother Terry, brother.’
    ‘Where are you living?’
    ‘With Ella. She my cousin, brother.’
    ‘Well, you’ll have to work and give Ella and Justin some money to feed you. And behave yourself this time,’ Heriot said wearily.
    ‘Yes, brother.’
    ‘It’s no use saying: “Yes, brother.” I’ve heard that before, too often. You were one I thought I could believe.’
    Stephen, in his pool of gold, shifted his feet and searched with his eyes for some place in the room not accusing, not discomfiting. ‘Yes, brother.’ His voice was low and very calm, beautiful in its accent.
    ‘Why did you do that, Stephen?’
    The young man shook his head.
    ‘Why steal when you had a job? You were making more money than your people here have ever seen. Who taught you to be so much of a fool?’
    ‘I don’t know, brother.’
    ‘Well, you’ve finished with gaol now, you won’t go back, if you’re wise.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I won’t say anything more. But it was a great—a great sorrow to me, to hear what you’d done. Your father was my good friend, my brother. He would have been very much ashamed.’
    At this reference to the dead, Stephen moved uneasily. ‘Yes, brother.’
    ‘And when he was dead I was your father, and that—that little girl’s. I was ashamed. I was ashamed,’ Heriot said loudly, staring with his veined eyes. ‘And for that little girl, Stephen. Have you forgotten her?’
    ‘No, brother,’ Stephen murmured, husky-voiced, tense, wishing to fly finally from this accusing and terrifying old man with his constant talk of the dead. ‘Brother, I go now?’
    ‘Yes, go. Have Ella and Justin given you breakfast?’
    ‘Yes, brother.’
    ‘You’ll be at the work parade, I’ll see you there. No, wait, walk with me to Father Way’s house; I haven’t eaten yet.’ Rising from his chair he appeared larger, broader, wilder-haired than before to Stephen, standing nervously in