Bloke, page 2
two
I’m not a fighting man but I can. Done me time in the big gym. But I knew if I kept working for Miraglia the temptation to close his eyes would be irresistible.
Stoker Stevens played in the back pocket for the Nullakarn Sharks. He was hopeless, built like a brick shithouse but couldn’t pick up a clothes basket at the first try. Hurt a lot of people but rarely touched the ball. We allowed him safe passage into the pack and then stepped in behind to steal the ball from amongst the broken limbs. He earned his place. I saw some of his team mates wince when he trampled skinny teenage kids, but most of us were glad it was them and not us.
Stoker was always good for a slab and a bottle of Jim Beam after the game. He was rolling in it – abalone man. Seemed like a decent bloke, but then everyone’s decent who shouts a slab in Nullakarn. He was a good yarn spinner, but the look I’d seen when he was standing on an adolescent’s throat sometimes glinted unexpectedly out of his humour, like a shard of malignant brightness in a pitch-black tunnel, something shiny you feared instinctively.
His deckhand got crook one Sunday and I had no better offers so I went out to sea with him. Nothing much to it. Keep the boat in the right position, make sure the compressor delivers air to the diver, bring in the catch, clean it and stack it.
Anchored off the wild little bays of the remote south coast, I wondered how often these jobs came up. Compared to the veiled violence of Miraglia’s shed, this was like being sent to heaven. Even if Stoker came up grumpy and cursing about the air hose not being laid out to his satisfaction. I was used to bad-tempered blokes, but out here you just had to wait a few minutes and he was back to normal.
After docking the boat at the wharf and unloading the crates with the forklift, we went to the pub and had a few beers. As you do. Stevens pulled out a wad of cash and stripped off three hundreds and passed them to me.
‘That all right?’
‘Yeah, thanks. Better than I’m doing with the oysters.’
‘Miraglia’s a prick. Hang about, Jim, there’ll be plenty of work for a bloke like you.’ He gave me a look, waiting for me to appreciate the joke. He wanted me to pretend nobody had thought of it before. I didn’t. I was over pretending.
Not being acknowledged as a devastating wit didn’t seem to faze him, but I watched for that little spark of malice.
‘Can you dive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tanks?’
‘Yes.’
‘Think you could recognise a sea urchin if you saw one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Reckon you could pick it up and put it in a bag?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay, you’re employed. Me mate Bobby Phillips is using one of my boats to dive for abs and urchins. We need two divers to make it work. You’re number two. Meet us down the wharf tomorrow at first light. You’ll be on the Prickly Witch with Bob. Don’t expect much conversation. He’s not unfriendly, just got his mind on other things.’
He took a swig from his stubby. ‘Mind you, no one’s worked out what those things are. We’re not sure Bob knows. Played sixty games with Collingwood before he got bored and went crayfishing on the west coast. Funny bloke, done just about everything. Top seaman, though. You’ll learn a lot if you watch him. It’s good money, real good, but keep it quiet. Don’t want the whole town meeting underwater.’
He seemed to reflect on his offer for a moment. He looked about the bar. ‘Ever been in trouble with the cops? If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘Bit.’
‘All clear now?’
‘Yep.’
‘Good, because they do checks on licence holders, see, we don’t want trouble. Is Bloke your real name?’
‘Yep.’
‘Funny name.’
‘Can’t help that.’
‘We fly the urchins out to Asia, there might be passport checks and so forth. Can’t afford to hold up delivery. The fish have to be fresh. It’s not personal, Jim, business, see.’
‘No problem. Another beer?’
‘Yeah, thanks, mate, and a game of pool, eh?’
‘If you like.’
When I got home I could see by the glasses on the table that I had company. Dominic and a friend in the spare room. I grabbed a stubby from the fridge and spread my money out on the bench.
Even a few days a week like today and I’d be doing twice as well as I’d ever done before. I’d used diving tanks once, for about twenty minutes, but I felt sure I’d get used to them. You could get used to anything for this much money.
While I waited for Dominic to appear I began a meal of chops and vegies and caught myself wondering if I’d served it to them before. What was I doing? Catering? But you could do worse as far as house guests were concerned. You hardly had to talk to the Dominator, and his friends were always a bit preoccupied too. Guilt and sex have that effect. A very good quietener. But it doesn’t affect the appetite. For food either.
So we ate mostly in silence. I waited for my chance to make my only claim for services rendered. ‘Dom,’ I began, pouring more wine, ‘I’m not coming back to the oysters. I’m going to work for Stoker Stevens.’
‘Good for you. Diving?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you dive?’
‘Been down a few times,’ said the man who never lies.
‘Good money if you can stand being underwater for eight hours a day.’ He glanced at his girlfriend. A new one I hadn’t seen before. She was a stunner but said nothing. Planning how to keep the holiday romance from the city boyfriend, I supposed. ‘We’d better be goin,’ he said. ‘Thanks for tea, mate, bloody superb.’
So that was that. I was off Miraglia’s hook easy as pie. I wasn’t scared to front the big thug myself, just not sure I could keep my hands to myself if he started getting shirty.
Bobby Phillips wasn’t a bad bloke to work with, he just didn’t talk much. But then again neither did I. Everyone in the footy club wanted to know about the golden career of Flying Bobby Phillips, wanted him to sign copies of the poster of him marking on the back of the Carlton legend. Wanted to know why someone who won a Grand Final and a Rising Star award could walk away from the game two years later – for crayfish. Perhaps it was because crayfish don’t talk.
I didn’t ask him about football, I didn’t ask him about anything in fact, and I thought I saw his shoulders relax. There were rumours of drugs and funny business, but that was probably the way footy tragics handled their disbelief. There had to be a reason why someone would choose not to be famous.
Bobby had played a couple of seasons with Nullakarn too, but only to get people off his back. Now he was nursing a buggered knee. Or so he said. Didn’t seem to affect his diving.
Mostly we took it in turns to fish. That way we could stack the crates, rest, and keep an eye on the weather while the other was in the water. For two little gasbags like us it was the perfect arrangement. Sometimes we’d both be on deck together and we’d have a bit of lunch, even a bit of a yarn about what we’d seen below.
He liked the water, Bobby. You could get him talking about sea dragons and nudibranchs, but he struggled with conversation about things above the surface. Most people I knew were the other way around.
We did all right, too. Bob got his catch more quickly than me but seemed to ignore the fact that I’d exaggerated my experience, and he seemed even less concerned about my calculation of his share of the catch. Any other bloke would be trying to ensure a second-rate diver wasn’t cribbing an unfair slice.
But I kept the tallies scrupulously. Bob couldn’t care less but I liked him, I didn’t want him to think I was bludging. And anyway, my share of what we caught was very profitable. Never seen money like it. And without a word between us it seemed I’d become permanent.
I went around to his place once to help deliver the air tanks. The delivery bloke was doing laps of the town’s only roundabout. Think he was on his own special gas. Anyway I led him around to Bob’s. We used a particular air mix so we could stay down a bit longer. Not entirely legal but it maximised our diving time. While one of us dived the other could rest on deck which allowed us to get away without a deckhand. Less wages, less conversation. Bob had it twigged.
He answered the door wearing rubber gloves. I hauled the tanks inside while he signed for delivery. It was a government thing; they had restrictions on the use of material meant only for the defence forces or the exempt. And we weren’t.
While he grappled with the paperwork, a task that furrowed his brow in perplexity or annoyance, hard to tell which, I looked about the room and saw that every shelf was covered with books and artefacts about the sea, except for one frieze of photos. It was a series of portraits of the ancient mahogany gum in his backyard, and in the last photo Bob was standing in the deep shadow of its branches.
On one wall an aquarium burbled away, bubbles rising silver through water backlit by a blue fluorescent. He hardly spent an hour a day above the surface without being surrounded by the reassurance of the depths. Abalone crept, morwong ogled, seahorses motored in their strange erect posture, propelled by tiny ridiculous wings at their shoulders like a creation from an opera.
I turned from the tank to find Bob watching me, pen still in hand. ‘I collect things,’ he said. ‘Get the temperature and oxygen levels right and they’ll live for years.’
‘You’ve got a lot of books.’
‘On fish, the sea. There’s always something you don’t know.’
In the eerie, blue-tinged light it was hard to recognise Flying Bobby Phillips. The birdman seemed to be getting a bit gilly about the throat, becoming the fish he’d probably always preferred.
‘Well, see you at sea tomorrow, Bob.’
‘Yeah, mate.’
After all the mongrel jobs I’d had, all the boss brutes I’d endured, finally, it seemed, my number had come up. Good job, silent mate, fat wallet.
Next day we dived shallow for the urchins. Ten metres is shallow compared to some of the abalone boys, who were doing thirty metres, fishing greenfields where no one had dived before. Bob wasn’t into that so we stuck to the inshore reefs. I suspect he liked it there because we saw more creatures, more fish, nudibranchs, weedy sea dragons, the occasional turtle.
The East Gippsland coast is crenellated by little coves and beaches, estuaries and islands, and secret caves that only Bob seemed to know about. Resting after a dive, I’d doze as the boat rocked and slopped on a sea the colour of transparent jade. On calm days you could smell the bush aromas from shore, and albatross swept by so close you could hear their wings slice the wind.
I couldn’t think of anything more peaceful. The hills were rucked and fissured by streams and gullies. The sombre olive bush seemed to have been hooked with tufts of coarse wool. No house, no town, no road could be seen. Nullakarn was separated from the rest of the world by one of the world’s great forests. You could escape here. Hide. Naturally the town was full of fugitives and isolates.
Bob would accompany the urchins to Japan or Singapore from time to time and Stoker trusted him to get the right price for the shipment. I struggled to see Mr Bluegills Aquarium negotiating sales with hard-nosed Asian businessmen, but Stoker mumbled about his instant recognisability at Customs and freight terminals, without ever explaining what the Asians knew about the history of Australian Rules and men who leaped on other men’s backs.
Blokes in the footy club said Stoker had a boat in Darwin that was licensed to fish trochus shell within Australian waters. He had fingers in more pies than a Herbert Adams pastry cook. The upshot was that when Bob was busy I still had to go to sea to fulfil the quota. I needed a deckie. Sometimes I’d try and con Dominic into it, but he was difficult to lure – his social calendar was hard to juggle.
One night Dom and Megan came around. She drifted in trailing smoke and cordite, cast a wary glance about the pub yard and slid into her usual chair, masked by the verandah. She was like a cat, not a dozy fireside cat, but a twitchy minx about to swallow the mouse. Or tease it to death.
‘Good news, Jim,’ Dom began as he opened the traditional bottle of red, a label I’d convinced him to demand from the footy club as his due, a wine where grapes were involved at some stage of the production. ‘I’ve got someone to crew for ya. Good sort too. Handy at sea.’
I hoped it wasn’t Megan. My wetsuit wouldn’t cope. Anyway, if the girl he had in mind was such a good sort I wondered how she escaped the clutches of Dom’s silky hands – well, silky for an oyster shucker.
On Monday I waited nervously for my new deckie. No one liked going to sea with the wrong person. Some were hopeless sailors. Some got sick. Some smoked joints all day and forgot they were supposed to be keeping you alive. We didn’t use hoses and compressed air, but the gas we used stretched our bodies to the limit and we needed someone on the surface watching the safety line, ensuring the anchor didn’t drag, the urchins were kept damp.
It wasn’t a hard job but at sea everything was a potential problem. One tiny mistake could resonate like ripples on a pond. You trip over on land and you just get up again, you tripped up out there and you were in strife.
She wore a pair of men’s green work pants and a bulky jumper faded and stained by sea time. A cap was drawn low on her brow and we’d cast off from the wharf before I got a decent look at her face.
She stepped about the boat like an old salt and the ropes slid from her hands in graceful coils as she cleared the deck. She didn’t ask what to do, just walked around the gunwale as if it was a footpath, stowed the bow rope, fastened the hatches, prepared the fish bins and unpacked my wetsuit without question.
‘You’ve done this before,’ I commented.
‘Born here,’ was her reply.
‘I’m Jim.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, what about you?’
‘No, I’m not Jim.’
Women who took the mickey out of you, I’d had a few of them. They thought they were smart but they got on your nerves.
‘Don’t bite your lip in half, Jim. I’m a Romano, all us dagoes are related. Going out to sea isn’t what I’ve been breaking my neck to do – Dad cured me of that. I’m doing a favour for Dom, that’s all. His mum, actually. Her sister’s Miraglia’s wife.’
‘Well, there’s a woman needs a break.’
She looked at me for the first time and I saw her face properly. I hoped my intake of breath wasn’t audible. I was supposed to be the unflappable skipper.
I still wake at night with the vision of that face before me. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. A striking face, but you were never quite sure if it was beautiful or simply made classical by the eyes and jaw. The manner. The bottom jaw undershot the upper by a fraction, lending the mouth a transfixing sensuality. The lips were prominent, seeming to search the air.
That’s what I thought, anyway. I’d seen a few women like that before and had trouble taking my eyes off their lips. It’s hard to describe, but what catches the eye and trawls the heart is never easy to explain. In my opinion, Jim Bloke, psychologist.
At lunchtime I slumped against the transom, completely stuffed. I was a flat-water snorkeller, and the tank air and depth were knocking me about. All I knew about diving was that you could forget about the real world, so learning to breathe this hyped air was taking some getting used to.
She poured me a cup of tea, and perhaps I spent a beat too long looking at her hand. I had a thing about hands too. She snatched it away and began stacking urchins in bins.
‘No,’ I said, ‘knock off and have lunch, there’s plenty of time to finish them.’
‘Had it,’ she said. ‘Earlier. Crew and captain never lunch together.’
‘They do on this boat.’
‘Not today.’
‘Thought you knew enough about the sea to know the captain is boss.’
‘I’m sick of the sea. Eat your lunch and get back in the water, Jacques, my pay depends on the size of the catch – or didn’t the captain know that?’
‘Some captains don’t believe in that captain and crew stuff.’
She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘There are times when it’s important, and you should be especially careful considering your vast nautical experience.’
‘I thought I’d got away with that.’
‘Everyone in this town can count the days you’ve been at sea at first glance of you boarding a boat. They miss nothing.’
‘Well, no one said anything.’
‘No need, you’re a natural. They can see that, even if they guess your boating has been done on a river with nothing more dangerous than an angry swan. Besides, they need you. Abs and urchins and all that Asian money – they’re panicking that someone else will get a crew and licence and scoop the pool. Keep Stoker happy and you’ll make good money, Jacques.’
I ignored her wit. ‘What about you? Don’t you want to make money?’
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Teacher.’
‘Here?’
‘No, it’s holidays. Came down for my gran’s funeral and to see my aunts.’
‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘Yes you do, I told you. I’m a Romano. One of my aunts is Miraglia’s wife. So eat your lunch and get fishing. I want some money before I go back west.’
‘West?’
‘Yeah, Jacques, west. Get fishing.’
I swam between the reefs, flicking urchins from their crevices like a housewife stocking a supermarket trolley. I wasn’t annoyed, but abrupt conversations like that put me on edge. Especially when there was no need. Anyone could see I was harmless, decent. Well, I hoped they could.
There were schools of pearl perch and butterfish dawdling about the reefs. Usually I never tired of watching them but today I was conscious of trying to impress the crew with my dedication to ensuring a good pay packet. I’d never caught so many urchins. I would have given Bob a run for his money.
But if she was impressed she didn’t let on. All I got was a wave as she left the wharf.
