Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

came on my plane,’ Stella said softly, ‘and I don’t remember him. I was with him for twelve hours. I don’t remember a single face on that plane.’ She turned to him. ‘What does he look like? Describe him.’
    â€˜I don’t remember him either,’ said Nyall. He was staring down the street at a naked child squatting in the gutter and playing with a paper cap. ‘Well, we must find him, I suppose.’
    He fixed her with his most penetrating regard. ‘Do you understand?’ he said. ‘If this gets out, it will reflect on me and my department. I could be thrown out.’ He threw a wild glance to the skies as if imploring heavenly aid. ‘You don’t know what the word “gold” means in this country. You must be discreet.’
    â€˜I understand,’ said Stella, cowering before his vehemence.
    â€˜You’d better leave it all to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll find your Mr Jobe for you. You sit tight.’
    She wanted to look for Jobe by herself, but she would not have dreamed of disobeying him. He was the inevitable extension of her father and husband.
    â€˜You’d better go back to the mess for lunch now,’ he said. ‘Come and have dinner and meet Janet tonight. No, not tonight, I’m going out. Tomorrow.’
    She thanked him. ‘Who went to Eola with David?’ she said. ‘Someone went with him.’
    Nyall turned and looked at the child in the gutter, distracted. After a while he said, ‘He went alone.’
    â€˜But he said he would take somebody with him – someone who knew a lot about the Papuans.’
    â€˜Only Sereva, who went everywhere with him. Good boy,’ he mused. ‘Oh, I believe he did intend taking someone, but he decided not to – the less people who knew about it, the better …’

CHAPTER 7
    Work in Marapai stopped at 3.30. The sun was still strong, but past its fiercest hours, and the white administration employees scattered to the beaches, to the golf course, to the tennis courts, or to lie disconsolately in their stuffy ten by ten rooms and wonder why they had ever left Australia.
    It was at 3.30 that Stella, leaving the Department of Survey, made her way along the path that crossed the parade ground. She passed a group of policemen who were saluting the Australian flag, and approached a low, stone wall and a row of ragged trees, behind which, she had been told, was the Department of Cultural Development.
    Over to her right by the police barracks – a low green building with a thatched roof – half a dozen Papuans were kicking a ball around, yelling and shouting with laughter. They had tucked their ramis up between their legs like loin cloths and were kicking the ball with bare feet.
    The surrounding offices, after a day in the hot sun with their louvres raised to suck up any passing winds, were closing for the night. Some offices were less punctual than others. Typewriters could still be heard and Papuans were sweeping the floors, standing in doorways urging little clouds of dust on to the ground outside.
    The Department of Cultural Development was still open, its louvres raised, breathing in the afternoon winds, which blew dust and the scent of frangipani flowers from across the square. Casuarinas leaned over it, the shaggy fringes of their foliage hissing on the iron roof.
    Stella stood in the doorway and looked around at the office where her husband had worked. It was little different from the Department of Survey. Seven foot walls partitioned it off like a milking shed. There was office paraphernalia – tables, desks, typewriters and filing cabinets. The strange, long, animal body of Papua and New Guinea and a map of the world with the British Empire marked in red were pinned on the wall. An oil painting of a native in a feather head-dress was propped up on top of the bookcase, and there was another drawing, which might have been