Judge Jack

About the Author

Kathryn Fleming writes about Fiji. It is a country she knows well. After a decade of teaching English in Auckland, New Zealand, and a successful career in real estate, she retired to Denarau Island, Fiji.

Now a Fiji citizen, she spends her time writing about her new home, its people, and, most of all, its visitors.

Dedication

For Frank Hitchcock

K. F. FLEMING

JUDGE JACK

Copyright © K F Fleming (2017)

The right of K F Fleming to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78693-232-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78693-233-4 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-78693-234-1 (eBook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2017)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Diana Rabone, Warren Fleming, Madeleine Hopkins and Rose Carlyle.

CHAPTER ONE

‘Wait here,’ said Anthony Peregrine to his wife.

Exhausted from a long-delayed flight from Auckland to Nadi (followed by an indifferent taxi, a postponed ferry and a dusty ride), he stepped out of the punishing sunlight, through the great double doors of his father’s house into a vast gloom. He stood uncertainly, trying to get his bearings, but was aware only of an oily damp smell: a mildewy must, moist and warm.

Thin, shellac light filtered through shutters to his left. He took a step forward and was brought up hard against something cold and solid. He stood for a moment, startled by the pain.

Where the hell was his father? He’d been knocking at the door for God knows how long. He’d got here as soon as he could. The summons had been maddeningly brief.

Dear Anthony

I am dying. Please come, dear boy.

Jackson

Peregrine House

South Beach

Vonu Island

Fiji

Why couldn’t he own a laptop, like the rest of the bloody world? Or a phone? Was that too much to ask? The letter from Nadi had been postmarked April 1st, a week from today. Was it all an obscene hoax? Christ, was he too late?

Music from above drifted through the humid air. Someone was playing the piano. The sweet notes calmed him and focussed his vision. He was standing in what seemed to be an open-plan kitchen that stretched to the eastern end of the room. He stepped around the dark wooden counter-top and edged towards the amber light. Floor-to-ceiling hinged shutters, fastened by brass hooks and eyes, dominated the cluttered wall. On either side, vast shelving was crammed with books, framed photographs and ornaments. Anthony unlatched the shutters and folded them back against the shelves.

A meagre, dappled light filtered into the unyielding interior, revealing a sordid voluptuousness of dusty clutter and disorder. Threadbare oriental carpets were scattered about the room. He was standing on the largest of them: crimson roses, purple grapes, and orange butterflies woven into an olive green background. Four rolled-arm bouffant settees formed a golden buttress to the great weave. Winged cherubs and doves decorated the tapestry cushions, too many to count.

Anthony ran his eye along the north wall, and time and distance fell away. He was a small boy in a large room, his only company the medieval painting that had presided over every loathsome meal. He was back in the draughty dining room of his youth, with a plate of uneaten vegetables, and the terrifying images. It was The Flaying of Marsyas.

Anthony had hoped never to set eyes on the odious oil again. He closed his eyes. His memory of the painting was even more vivid than the reality before him.

At first, it had seemed friendly enough. A bucolic scene: a leafy tree, a violin player, a puppy and a child. But Anthony had had plenty of time to inspect the horrors of the painting: a man hanging upside down, fastened by his monstrous bestial legs to the tree, two men cutting away his living flesh with tiny scalpels, a ghoulish figure, half-man, half-goat, holding a bucket and looking on, a puppy feeding on the discarded flesh of the man. And the most sickening aspect of it all: the skin strippers seemed in no hurry at all.

Anthony felt a sense of vertigo as bile rose in his throat. What had possessed his father to bring the vile picture to Fiji and hang it in his living room?

‘Hello, there, you must be Anthony.’

The light, trilling voice filled the air. It seemed to be coming from the painting. He searched for the sound across the spread of the room. Taking up the whole of the opposite wall was a heavily timbered curving staircase, extravagantly fanned at the base. The thick newel post supported a figurine of some sort. Anthony couldn’t see it clearly, but discerned something pious in its demeanour.

He looked up to see a long white dress, quite still. Was he looking at a ghost?

‘I am so sorry. We were expecting you earlier, and now Mr Jack is taking his bath. Mama is helping him.’

The long white dress skipped down the stairs and took his hand.

‘Come, I’ll take you to him. I’m Amy, by the way.’

Anthony found himself being led by warm, moist fingers. Up close, he could make out a tall, slender form, dark with dark hair. And then an open door, a paved terrace, and lawns fringed with limes and white frangipanis.

‘Mama, Anthony is here. What on earth are you doing?’

‘There, see what you make of that now, you greedy gorgons.’

Anthony looked up to see a large Fijian woman on the top rung of a ladder patting the line of timber beneath an eave, infested with teeming ants.

‘I’ve caught them. They’re trapped. Look, they’re all bunched with nowhere to go, and running around in circles. I’ve outfoxed them. I’ve built ramparts.’

She held up a roll of double-sided tape.

‘See, they can’t crawl over it. It’s all sticky. They have no choice but to get on back home to where they belong.’

The woman let out a great peal of laughter. As her mirth took hold the ladder began to shake and clatter against the pavers.

‘Mama, Anthony is here. Please come down!’

‘Oh, dear! Do forgive me.’

With startling agility, still giggling, the woman climbed down the ladder.

‘How do you do, sir? I am Amber. We have been expecting you. We thought you would be here much earlier. We have been waiting, and then we couldn’t wait any longer, I am afraid. Mr Jack is taking his bath now. He is in the garden. He likes to bathe near the sea. I’ll tell him you’re here. Amy, please make Mr Anthony some tea.

‘The ants go marching seven by seven, hurrah, hurrah. The ants go marching seven by seven, hurrah, hurrah. The little one stops to go to heaven.’

The soft lyrics were lost in the trees as Amber’s ample skirts disappeared into the vast orchard.

‘Mama likes to sing, especially when she’s bathing Mr Jack. It helps to pass the time. For both of them. It’s such a long process. Doctor’s orders. It soothes his skin, you see, eases the pain. Mama will have to get him out of the bath and dress him. I’m sorry about the ants, but Mama feels besieged by them. They’re everywhere, inside and out. They nest in the gardens, of course, but their columns are always on the march. Mama is about to make marmalade, and they love her marmalade. They love anything, really: geckos, birds, moths. They’ll suck the inside out of a cane toad leaving only the leathery exterior.’

Amy unlatched the French doors and threw them open to the garden.

Anthony was struck by the self-possession of the girl. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. A Fijian girl with the confidence and grace of an accomplished woman of the world. And well-educated too, by the sound of her voice.

‘We have lemon tea or English Breakfast. You must be exhausted. Such a long journey, and all by yourself.’

Christ, he had forgotten his wife. How long had she been standing outside? He had lost track of time.

‘Tiffany, Tiffany,’ he called out, heading for the front door at a run.

‘Here, let me take those.’ Anthony grabbed the suitcases and strode back into the room. Appalled at his obvious neglect of his wife, he was babbling. ‘Darling, here, sit down.’ He pulled out a bar stool from under the kitchen counter-top and guided her to it.

‘You must be so hot. This is Amy. She will make us some tea. Amy, this is Tiffany, my wife. Jackson is in the garden taking a bath. Amy’s mother, Amber, is with him. Poor Tiff, it’s so hot. But at least it’s cool in here. And maybe, later, we’ll go down to the beach and have a swim, my darling.’

‘Don’t fuss, Ant. How lovely to meet you, Amy. You are such a pretty girl, and I do so love your dress.’ Tiffany, tall and reedy, arranged her mini-skirted legs to maximum effect, one foot anchored on the slat of the stool and the other angled with stilettoed foot pointed. ‘Such a gorgeous home and so lovely to be near the sea,’ she said, tossing her mane of jet black hair.

‘I’m making tea,’ said Amy. ‘Mama and Mr Jack will be a while, I’m afraid. Figaro! Figaro!’ Amy cupped her hands around her mouth and called out in the direction of the beach.

‘Oh, there you are.’

From amongst the shadows of the limes a dark figure took shape. He dipped his towering frame as he stepped into the kitchen.

‘Figaro, Mr Anthony is here and Miss Tiffany. Please take their bags upstairs.’

‘Bula, Mr Anthony, Miss Tiffany, and welcome to Peregrine House.’

‘Thank you, but let me,’ countered Anthony, straightening up off his stool.

‘It’s quite all right. Figaro likes to work in the house sometimes. He’s mostly outside tending the orchard and gardens. Please let him.’

‘Must be wonderful to have everything taken care of, wonderful for Jack, I mean. Back home we can’t afford gardeners and full-time maids. I can’t tell you how tiresome cooking and cleaning and gardening can be. You really have no idea,’ said Tiffany. ‘And when you do hire cleaners, and they come, that is if they can be bothered to turn up, even though they charge a king’s ransom…’ Tiffany broke off. She had lost her train of thought and found herself gaping at Figaro.

He had hoisted the larger of the two suitcases on to his left shoulder and, scooping up the other, was limbering up the stairs. Oblivious to the audit of her gaze, he broke into a soft song as he went. Hesitating on the landing, he looked back at Tiffany, lost in an inventory of his velvet musculature. She had never seen such beauty in a man: all the strength of a body builder and the grace of a dancer. He seemed to bounce as he walked.

‘So, you got our message then, Amy?’ asked Anthony. ‘We didn’t know how to make contact. It was a friend who suggested we send an email to the Vonu Resort. We didn’t even know it existed. The family is not much good at communication, I’m afraid. It’s been twenty years since Dad walked out on us. We didn’t even know where he was. Not exactly. Somewhere in Fiji. We knew that much through Dad’s trustee. But he wouldn’t tell us anything more. I don’t think he knew, himself. And there are so many places in Fiji, so many islands. We didn’t know if it was Viti Levu, Vanua Levu or some godforsaken outcrop.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Amy. She stood quite still, an exotic bronze figurine bent over the steaming water. Moisture had settled on her hair and curled it into a coronet of tendrils at her forehead. She had her face turned away from him. Anthony took in the curve and blush of her cheek. Her skin was smooth and lustrous like the bisque of a doll.

All at once, he felt as though he was someone else. And that he was somewhere else. The chair was too high and it was too low at the same time, so that he didn’t have room for his legs or the assault of his weight. His lower body seemed to be suddenly in the way of everything. Vast thudding hammered at him, only to be drowned out by a piercing screeching. Christ, was he having a heart attack? He leaned back and gripped the sides of the stool.

‘It’s only a little thunder,’ said Amy, softly. ‘Nothing to be afraid of, but it sets off the geckos, and the mynah birds. It’s still the rainy season. You can set your watch by it. Four o’clock in the afternoon, the thunder really rolls in, and then the rains come, only for a little while: often only ten minutes. Mama and Mr Jack will be coming soon. Mr Jack likes to bathe in the rain but, even though they’re in the shelter of the big bure, Mama doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like the rain all around her, and tries to hurry him along.’ Amy looked up from the boiling water and indicated the tea canisters.

‘Oh, yes, we’ll both have English Breakfast, thanks, Amy. Lovely, no sugar, just a little milk. Watching the figure,’ said Tiffany, patting her stomach.

This was monstrous. To be kept waiting like this. On and on. Surely his father must know they had arrived. What was taking him so long? How long did it take to dry off and put some clothes on? Anthony was enraged by the insult of his father’s absence.

His whole existence had been a waiting room, a pinched ante-chamber for what was to come, a prolonged intermission before the final act, in which his father played the starring role: his father who had iron-fistedly insisted on absolute punctuality in all his children. The smallest degree of tardiness earned brutal retribution: pre-dawn work-outs, weekends of chores, and confiscation of hard-won possessions. And their mother was not spared this tyranny. Anthony would hear her weeping in her bedroom if dinner was served late.

But to keep others waiting was his father’s punishment of choice. His family would assemble in the reception room of their home at the appointed hour and their father would be taking a phone call or watering his roses or dictating a memo. The family would be required to stay in position, quiet and orderly like an army awaiting their general’s command. It was not uncommon for an hour to pass in this tedious game of subjugation.

His father was an important person. The demands on his time, energy and presence were relentless. Appointed QC at an astonishingly early age, he went on to become a High Court Judge in Auckland. At forty-five he was the youngest barrister to win such an appointment.

And it was in the High Court of Auckland that his obsession with time took root. Jackson explored its coinage: its power and its sway. He became especially interested in the psychology of delay.

Spectators would be settled, juries sworn in, counsel would take their positions, the defendant would be led into the dock, and then the wait would begin. In this delay was the might of Rome, the power of kings, the whim of emperors. Those minutes thieved from others were a golden gift to him, a shining elongation of his own life, an adjustment to the finite register of all life in his favour.

And the passing of sentence was an opportunity to dilate on his petty philosophies. He would quote the great writers before passing sentence: Time discovers truth, and Time is the justice that examines all offenders, as if he was helping the hapless criminal to see the error of his ways, when, in actual fact, his words would be scarcely heard, let alone understood.

And then all of a sudden and too soon, the judge was standing on the terrace.

As a surgeon, Anthony well knew the slow progress of bone shrinkage and its attendant indignities. He spent his days examining arthritic joints, torn ligaments, crumbling cartilage and compressed spines. Accidents, extreme sports, and poor diet were often largely to blame. But the chief culprit was the natural ageing process. Many of his cases involved patients deformed by scoliosis or osteoarthritis. It was all too common and Anthony was able to offer little hope to his patients except a regimen of diet and exercise.

But his father was as tall and erect as ever. Unlike himself, for whom the gruelling hair ritual was more challenging by the day, his father had a full head of hair, completely grey, but thicker, if anything, than he had remembered. A calf-length white fabric encircled his lower body, and a loose long-sleeved shirt, fastened at the neck, enveloped his spare frame. His feet were bare and pink and perfect like those of a child. Amber stood next to him, one hand in his, the other balancing a wicker basket laden with flannels, oils and poultices.

‘Forgive me, son. I find myself old and in possession of so many afflictions. You have grown into a fine young man, Anthony, a surgeon now. And married too: a beautiful wife.’

Anthony was unable to respond. This was not what