The Dutch Wife by Eric P. McCormack Page A

missionary and his wife from Saskatchewan and they sat on deck much of the day. They were returning to the Motamuas after a sick leave. Mr. Berkley was a tall thin man with protruding cheekbones and big ears. He was in his forties, though at times he looked twenty years older.
    His wife was small and plump with short brown hair, a sweaty face and narrow eyes. She wore a waistless blue dress—her “frock,” as she called it. She explained to Thomas that “the Reverend” (as she referred to her husband, even in his presence) had just spent a month in hospital being treated for a tropical disorder she kept calling, over and over again, “dengue.” She said the climate of the Motamuas was responsible. “It’s killing both of us,” she said.
    “What exactly is dengue?” Thomas said.
    “Oh, you haven’t heard of it? A disease from mosquitoes,” she said. “They’ve never seen as bad a case as the Reverend’s.” She looked at her husband with pride.
    Mr. Berkley, who’d been quietly eating, glared at her as though he hated her or was in pain, or both. It would have been hard to tell the difference on that thin face.
    “We didn’t catch your name,” Mrs. Berkley said to Thomas.
    “Vanderlinden,” he said. “Thomas Vanderlinden.”
    Both looked at him with sudden interest.
    “Vanderlinden?” said Mr. Berkley. The distaste in the way he said the word was heightened by the severity of his face. “We know a Vanderlinden. He lives in the Highlands of Manu. Are you a relative of his?”
    “In a way,” said Thomas.
    “Is that why you’re going there? To visit him?” said his wife.
    “Yes,” said Thomas. “It’s a family matter.” He didn’t like this inquisition.
    Mr. Berkley’s face was stern and evangelical. “I regret to say your relative’s the type who makes our work harder,” he said. “He makes no effort to disabuse the islanders of their superstitions. Indeed, he encourages them.”
    Thomas made no comment. Rowland apparently hadn’t changed much from the way his mother described him.
    “You mentioned a family matter,” said Mrs. Berkley. “What’s that about?” She asked this bluntly, as though she were entitled to know.
    “It’s private business,” Thomas said, just as bluntly. They were offended. He hoped they would leave him alone.
    IN FACT, HE WOULD HAVE PREFERRED to have been alone for the entire voyage. But that was all but impossible on such a small boat as the Innisfree . In due course, the other two passengers, Schneider and Cameron, tried to make friends with him too. They were short-haired young men, clean-shaven, and they wore brand-new tropical shirts and pants. They were Foreign Service operatives on their way to their first offshore postings.
    But they were disappointed about that. Cameron said his colleagues in the Home Office called the Motamuas “the smelly underarm of the planet.” In fact, they were disappointed in everything, from the size of the schooner (“a toy boat,” said Schneider, the dark-haired one) to the fact that the only woman aboard was a plump, middle-aged missionary (“Lord, save us from temptation,” said Cameron of the ginger hair, looking up to the skies).
    They were soon disappointed, too, by Thomas’s obvious reluctance to socialize with them. Eventually they allied themselves with the Berkleys. One very calm day, as Thomas was about to enter the dining salon, he couldn’t help hearing his fellow passengers’ voices above the usual creaking of the timbers.
    “He’s a relative of the most degenerate man on the islands,” Mr. Berkley was saying. “He’s going there to visit him.”
    “Really!” said Cameron.
    “He didn’t tell us anything,” said Schneider. “We could barely get a word out of him.”
    Mrs. Berkley summed it all up. “That’s the type he is,” she said. “He won’t tell anyone his business.”
    Thomas came into the salon and they changed the subject. But he guessed, from the smirk on Schneider’s