What lurks beneath

Throughout An Island Calling we meet members of Suva’s small but openly, often persecuted, gay community who point to the layered hypocrisies which burden their, and Fijian, society. They have very clear ideas why John Scott and his partner were murdered, the murky dynamics which coalesced that terrible Sunday early morning, and then polluted official investigations and public reactions.

Maybe, as Owen Scott suggests, his brother and partner, Greg Scrivener, made an ultimately fatal decision to return to Fiji, live their double lives as an openly gay couple with an open relationship while John led the Red Cross, assuming Fiji had not significantly changed since he grew up there. Perhaps the influence of Pentecostal preaching is over emphasised and John Scott and his partner would have been murdered anyway, such was the state of their killer’s delusions. Kaisau was apparently part of John Scott and Greg Scrivener’s gay circle until spurned by Scrivener, a casting out which preyed on his mind while in New Zealand until a few weeks prior to the murders.

Once you’ve deeply experienced Fiji it gets into you, under your skin, and you’re never the same. Even knowing the murkier nastiness which lurks just beneath the surface.

An Island Calling is an excellent contribution to deepening our understanding of what’s really going on in that fraught and still traumatised society.