and a bottle of Coca-Cola, decanted into a plastic bag, for Minehanga. She would wake on our return and drink it on the spot through a straw she kept for the purpose.
Mabul is not a large island; it can be circumambulated at a stroll in half an hour. On occasion our path would take us through the Sipadan-Mabul Resort’s compound, though it made me nervous. It felt like stumbling across Las Vegas after years in the desert, the lights, the music, white people sitting at tables in the open-sided dining room eating meat and salad, drinking beer and Australian wine and Scotch. I have been a holiday-maker in such places often enough, but in Sarani’s company I felt alienated from my own people. I would keep to the shadows as we passed, until the night Robert Lo spotted me.
‘So you made it.’ The dislocation from the place and circum stance of our first meeting made this reunion surreal: from the noise-filled hall of Earls Court, to a balmy tropical night on an island with a fraction of the floor-space; from suit and tie to shorts and a T-shirt. He had looked more at home in a suit. Sarani put on his confused old man act in Robert’s presence and excused himself to keep an appointment he had made to massage a shopkeeper’s wife. Robert was busy with some Taiwanese guests and took me over to the table where two of his diving instructors sat.
Sam and Tim were both English. Both had long sun-bleached hair and the sort of incidental tan that comes from working outdoors in the tropics. Robert introduced Sam as Samantha and she chided him – ‘only my Gran calls me Samantha’ – in an unmistakably Yorkshire accent. Tim was as Cockney as Bow Bells. If anything I found them more amazing than they found me when I told them what I was doing on their doorstep. ‘You mean those dirty old boats out from the village? They use fish-bombs, don’t they?’ They were relieved to hear that my hosts only used nets and spears. They saw the damage that was being done to Kapalai close-up and on a daily basis. That morning Tim had taken a group to a spot known for its beautiful coral and bizarre fish life, and he had found a pile of rubble.
Sarani returned and was sitting with some of the resort’s boatmen on a bench under the palms in front of the restaurant. Sam was keen to meet him and meeting her put a twinkle in his eye. I acted as translator. He was very surprised to hear that she was unmarried and was working here as a diver. ‘Does she go diving at Sipadan? Are there many fish?’ Sam went to get a fish-identification book from the resort library. It was a treasury, every species illustrated with a photograph of a specimen in its habitat. Sarani’s eyes lit up at the pictures of sharks and I told him Sam had seen four different species on one dive alone, including oceanic hammerheads. ‘He says if they catch one of those they are rich for two months. If they catch two, a son can get married.’ Sam’s expression dropped a little when she realised Sarani had at one time or another dispatched examples of most of the species in the book. ‘We saw dolphins today at Sipadan as well. Tell me they don’t catch dolphins.’ I could not, and I could not lie; Sarani accompanied his explanation of how to harpoon a dolphin with hand gestures. She took it well. She saw the difference between traditional hunting and commercial exploitation, but when Sarani turned the page to the rays I though better of telling her how much he could make from a manta. Tim stopped by on his way to bed. ‘What’s he doing, reading the menu?’
I was not keen to foster relations with the resort while we were at Mabul – I felt closer contact might taint Sarani and would certainly tempt me – but he was very taken with Sam. Of more immediate concern was our continuing run of poor catches from the deep-water nets. And then the engine failed. Pilar diagnosed a worn-out valve. Going to Semporna would have meant a trip in Pilar’s boat without enough sea produce to cover the cost. Sam suggested we go on the resort’s speedboat which was making a run in the morning. Tim had a day off and decided to come with us.
Sarani was fascinated by the boat. The twin 200 horsepower outboards lowered into the water at the push of a button, the hydraulics whining. They started at the push of another. He held on as we skimmed over the light chop at what was light-speed in comparison to his boat. It was thrilling to be travelling at thirty-five knots through the bright morning air, the controlled forte of the engines behind us, the sea a precious blue, and on the flood tide we streaked across the Creach Reef. In the Semporna Channel, the water was dead calm and we seemed to be floating above it. The landmarks whizzed past, the mangroved inlet, the detached stilt village, the turn at the south point of Bum Bum into the home strait. The outskirts of Semporna were upon us, the fish farms, and then we were pulling up to the jetty next to the ice house. Sarani was unfazed and started unloading his various empty jerrycans before the boat had been tied up. He set off to find a man who owed him money. Tim ushered the departing guests to the minibus waiting to take them to Tawau airport. I was making plans for a breakfast of fried rice.
The bald lieutenant was in the café with two other men, one in a policeman’s uniform. They both had the sleek air of authority about them and the man out of uniform, the elder of the two, wore rich clothes, a gold watch and a gold ring. The lieutenant called Tim and me over.
‘This is our ex-Deputy Chief, and this is Inspector Amnach of CID.’ The Deputy Chief had been posted to the Peninsula, a post with more responsibility, and he was saying goodbye in his civvies before he left. He had picked a good time to leave, when the whole Semporna establishment was under scrutiny, and he projected self-assurance, knowing his career would always run so. He spoke courteous English and asked Tim about the diving and Tim in his usual manner, at once blunt and long-winded, replied, ‘Sipadan’s great. Mabul is so so. And Kapalai, well, you can forget about Kapalai in a couple of years. Why? Fish-bombing. You ought to come out and see sometime.’ He started a long and repetitive lecture on the stupidity of playing bombs. Every time he seemed to be finishing, he would come up with a different way of saying what he had just said and add, ‘You know what I mean?’ in such a way, raising his eyebrows and wrinkling his freckled forehead, blue eyes wide, lips pursed, as to force one to treat it as a real question and say ‘yes’. Diplomacy was not one of his talents, but his manner was so good-humoured and earnest that it was hard to take offence.
The implied charge of incompetence did not offend the ex-Deputy Chief. He was patient in his rehearsal of the difficulties facing the coastguard in its operations against the fish-bombers. Tim had a solution for every one: the reef is too shallow? use inflatables; they throw the evidence overboard? have divers on hand to recover the bombs. He offered his own services. The ex-Deputy Chief spelt it out.
‘It is not our job to protect the reef. Our job is to catch criminals. Of course the people who are playing bombs are breaking the law, but as I have said we cannot catch them there. Do you know how many reefs, how many islands there are on this coast? We only have posts at Tawau, Semporna and Lahad Datu. If we go to one reef, the bombers go to another. Our operations are concentrated on the detonators. We cannot arrest someone for having an empty bottle or fertiliser or petrol. These are innocent things.’
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