The thought of the long slog west became a nightmare to her. Mitch talked of the Cooks, and Tongas, and Fiji, then New Caledonia, where his father had run a field hospital. She dragged her feet, projecting less and less interest each time he mentioned it.

She was never bored with Papeete, though her routine never varied. She awakened each morning to the sound of the first motorscooters blasting past Parc Bougainville, rattling the open hatch above her berth. Showering with the hose on the quay, writhing under its cool touch and spraying it discreetly around inside her Bikini when she thought none of the passing traffic was looking, she would hardly have traded the hose for the languid warm showers of home.

None of the white-collar automotive traffic that would later jam the quay was abroad; this was early-morning, go-to-market time for laborers and villagers: an hour of Lambrettas and Vespas and rocketing Hondas. Scooters flew everywhere, carrying white-frocked nuns and beer-bellied fishermen and bronze, miniskirted prostitutes heading for the early-morning tourist trade.

The bonnitiers would be casting off from their beery section of the quay. The fish smell was carefully hosed away each evening, but the scent of Hinano beer seemed to become part of whatever it spilled on. The fishing boats churned out full-bore, bamboo poles slung on cabin tops, glittering in the morning sunlight. They left in a roar, gleefully rocking the yachts and trying to awaken anyone still asleep below. And they always came back full of fish, though the charter boats which followed them usually returned full of disgruntled tourists, empty.

One morning she finished her garden-hose shower and dressed below in a flowered print skirt. She strolled down the Bir Hakeim. She carried a palm-frond basket Louie’s mother had woven and presented, along with Louie, as they pulled out from the Takarava wharf.

Early risers from the Star of Peace were up. The battered schooner was here on French sufferance after being slammed, ostensibly by accident, by a French destroyer off the Mururoa test grounds. Having no operating head-facilities, the protesters were crossing to the ancient Hotel Scott and brushing their teeth at the quay-side faucets. A gendarme was posted to watch them night and day.

There were other commune-boats. Skinny, bearded kids and long-haired girls from an ancient American yawl, with no visible finances, were cheerfully cooking native food topside, their galleys too full of unwashed dishes to use. On a French “’ippie boat,” the crew braved poisonous bottom-paint, harbor pollution, and unknown ingredients to scrape the growth off its hull to eat it boiled. She had seen them last night checking yacht garbage along the seawall.