Bloke, page 4
‘You’re no girl. You’re nearly my age.’
‘Which is?’
‘Ask in town.’
‘And in town they’d know the age of the international man of mystery.’
‘Giovanna, fellow sailor, I’m tired of the table tennis. I’m going for a swim.’
‘To earn my millions.’
I didn’t answer. I tumble-turned into the water and allowed myself to sink a few metres before rolling over to look back up at the boat. But of course there was only a wobble of uncertain, fractured shapes. The bulk of the boat warping and wavering, the figure in the stern separating into planes of silver and indigo. Or maybe I was looking at the capstan.
But I was clutching at the straws strewn all about for drowning men so I simply rolled over and began my descent, for the first time not casting nervous glances into the blue globe about me, waiting for the penetration of a shark. I began to work automatically, flicking urchins into the bag, swimming methodically in the murk of the deep, faint shafts of cloudy light descending from the surface like columns in a ruined castle.
Ruined castle my arse. I was the ruined castle, once again waist-deep in emotion. One more rule abandoned. A sucker for beauty will always find a way of making a fool of himself, choosing the most excruciating search, the most unattainable goal, no matter how carefully he plans after the latest disaster, no matter how exhaustive the list of pledges and stern admonitions.
Last bag. I hooked it onto the cable and saw it jig into motion. I climbed into the stern as she turned the winch handle.
The sun had come out while I was below. She had taken off the awful jumper and was wearing a loose T-shirt. Not loose enough for this drowned castle.
I slumped against the steering console and indulged the little luxury of watching her winding the bag aboard. Just as I expected: grace. Surrounded by slop and spines and snakes of weed, and all done as if to music. I tried to think of some music from ballet or opera, but even though I read every book that landed on my table, I knew about six bits you’d call classical and they were all from coffee or airline commercials. I gave up.
‘What are you looking at, Jacques?’
‘You, Giovanna. I’m the skipper, remember, they’re my urchins. I can look where I like. Anyway, where’s my cup of tea?’
‘I’m busy, or has that escaped all your looking?’
‘Well, I’ll get you one.’
‘No you won’t, Neptune – you’ll never stop reminding me.’
Halfway into the act of getting her a cup to embarrass her I regretted it and eased myself back onto my elbow. I was buggered.
She passed me a cup and I looked nakedly at her hand, fought down a gigantic urge to clasp it. Knew it would be a mistake. Frighten the fawn out of the dell for sure.
She kicked the bin of urchins into the stern and sat beside it, cradling her own cup of tea, looking at her feet, out to sea, at her fingernails, anywhere but at me.
‘Got a spine in ya hand?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know how you avoid it, no one else does.’
‘I worked for my father, remember. I’m a fishwife.’
I smiled, and she began to smile too. The transformation of her face in that instant of almost smiling clubbed my chest like a ten-pound rubber mallet. My jaw must have sagged.
‘You’re dribbling, Jacques. Shut your mouth. And you’ve got snot on your face. Again.’
I wiped my glove across my face and tried to hide the back of it from her.
‘Jacques, I can only work another couple of days. I’m going back on Friday.’
‘But the holidays aren’t over.’ There was an awful quavering in my voice. I hated it.
‘I’m a teacher, not a fisherperson, Jacques.’
‘What about the ticket to La Paz?’
‘I have to be back at work on Monday.’
‘I’ll drive you to the train then.’
‘I’ve got a car.’
Of course she had a car. I spent half my waking hours looking for it. ‘Well, I’ll shout you lunch.’
‘In Nullakarn?’
‘No, down the coast a bit – Lakes Entrance.’
I could see her planning a curt refusal so I smothered her sentence with my own. ‘Just two workmates having a yarn about La Paz and the fishing industry. Come on, who else can I have a yarn with? Bob Phillips? I’ll be barking at the moon soon.’
‘No you won’t, you never talk to anyone.’
‘I talk to you.’
‘That’s the problem.’
‘Where’s the problem? It’s just lunch, Giovanna, a lukewarm bloody focaccia at the Trocadero. You’re a dago, you’ll love it.’
She did smile then, properly. I made her smile. I reeled back from its beam as if someone had turned a blowtorch on my face. I know what you’re thinking. You’re going, ridiculous, how can a woman’s smile be compared to acetylene. Well, you’re not a poor hopeless bastard like I am if that’s what you think.
The spell weakened. She turned away, regretting that flash of friendship. I could see the cloud cross her face, her limbs tighten in preparation to stand and resume work.
I held out a hand. ‘Giovanna, please.’ There, I’d said it again. Weak as piss I am. ‘It’s just lunch. I promise not to fall in love. Promise.’
She glared at me. ‘Is that a fisherman’s promise or a real human’s?’
‘Which is best?’
‘Human.’
‘Then it’s a human promise.’
She turned her back and shrugged on her jumper. ‘All right, Jacques, lunch. Weather and fishing. Two old mates at the trough, that’s all.’
‘Sounds inviting.’
‘I’m breaking a rule, you know.’
‘I’m breaking six. I’ll give myself life for this.’
She grunted and walked along the gunwale, began hauling the anchor.
‘I can do that,’ I called.
‘Bullshit, you’re piss-weak, Jacques.’
four
The focaccia wasn’t too bad and I talked her into a glass of red. We sat at a table on the street. Lakes had just discovered bohemia, its milk bars had become delicatessens and patisseries. The town was the centre of the fishing industry on the coast and was still having difficulty convincing crayfishermen it wasn’t cool to lunch wearing white gumboots. The tourists liked their fishermen mucking around with nets at the wharf, not smelling like penguins right next to their apple Danish.
After we’d eaten I hung around while she waited in a queue at the ATM. Her attention was caught by the window of one of those hippy stores with incense and silk shawls and elephants with broken mirrors all over them.
I followed her gaze to the only decent thing in the shop. I slipped my hand around the wad of notes in my pocket.
The silly fat sheila at the machine was frigging around with her pin number and arguing with her ugly little son at the same time. She gave the machine a half-hearted punch – the one she’d like to aim at her son’s spiky head. The latest in macho hair for the eight-year-old. I took advantage of the diversion to step into the shop and slap six twenties on the counter.
‘Those earrings,’ I said, ‘the garnets in silver.’
‘Would you like that gift-wrapped, sir?’ inquired the sniffy sheila in Indian drag.
‘Yes, but quick, I’ve got two minutes.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ she said in the same voice, but I could see the flicker of interest in her eyes. Romance. Or death. One or the other. Well, that’s what they always said about me. Not a lot of talent but never afraid to run with the flight of the ball into the oncoming pack. Which is why my face looks like it does.
Giovanna had finished at the ATM and was casting a reluctant eye about. Being polite. The right thing to do was say goodbye to the skipper. She’d been brought up right, she couldn’t help herself.
‘Here,’ I said, thrusting the tiny parcel at her, ‘a bonus from the skipper.’
I could see her deciding to pocket it and return to her car, avoiding having to open it and say thanks, the very thing I was wanting.
‘Open it, it could be a piano.’
She pulled the ribbon away, slid her thumb behind the tape and flipped the lid of the box. She looked at it for a moment. I had her; she had to say thanks, she had to acknowledge my perception that these were what had caught her eye. It was cruel but I was a hunter.
‘What’s this for?’
‘You were looking at them. You like them, I could see. It’s a gift.’
She looked back at the box. ‘This was just going to be lunch, that’s what you said.’
‘It is lunch – and a gift.’
‘We’re not married, Jacques.’
‘Married people don’t give each other gifts, they just complain.’
‘So do unmarried people when they …’ She stopped and looked at me. ‘There’s nothing, James – nothing, right? Or I can’t come back and work for you. If you think I’m going to buy you anything, forget it. I’m saving for South America, I owe you nothing.’
‘Nothing, I swear. I saw you look at them and I’m rolling in dough, it’s just something to say thanks.’
‘What for?’
‘Lunch.’
‘You paid.’
‘But you were there.’
‘Look, I’m going. Jacques, I have the distinct impression that you’re a born liar.’
She turned and was in the car as quick as a fox turns off a forest path. I watched her drive away.
Born liar. I thrashed that over in my mind for weeks. The tone in which she said it. The quick glance of admonition. Did she mean it? A liar. Or just that I’d broken the rule about lunch? Broken the rule, I’d thrown the whole bloody book away.
No men, that’s what I’d promised myself. No bloody men. Knew he couldn’t just leave it at lunch.
I was arguing with myself, twisting the steering wheel, wrenching the gears. Of course I didn’t have to have the bloody lunch.
Except to be polite.
Polite. When was the last time … All right, I was curious, I suppose. And come to think of it, when was the last time someone invited me for lunch? And leery offers of nightcaps with married teachers with receding hairlines don’t count as an offer. Chalk dust still on their cardigan.
It’s because you like him.
So?
So that’s why you went, Germaine. Nothing to do with politeness.
Well, nothing’s going to stop me going to South America.
There are a lot of trees in East Gippsland and a lot of road for thought along the way. The Magna hummed along quietly enough but while I cross-examined myself I had to keep listening to the motor. The oil light didn’t work, so I had to rely on the note of the engine. And the smell. This should be the last long trip before La Paz, if everything panned out. Trying desperately to concentrate on the motor. And not the lunch. Or the earrings. Or the fact that talking to him was easy … if it wasn’t blindingly clear he was in love. Like a cow.
And there’s a past. Just rocks into town as if nothing’s happened. Cruisy as you like. Could be a woman set adrift in the background … or something else. He’s got the look of bushfire victim. Not burnt, not maimed, just badly scorched. Like a koala with his ears burnt off.
And that’s the other thing Jimmy Bloke doesn’t know much about. This industry. This town. Those plumbers and encyclopaedia salesmen suddenly becoming rich and ambitious, obsessed with cash. Couldn’t believe it when so much money fell in their lap simply because they could swim. Never got sick of it, the exhilaration of suddenly finding themselves top dog. Drinking champagne out of girls’ sandshoes. Madeleine Stevens took a men’s size 10 and a bottle of Great Western couldn’t quite fill it, but they passed it around like a premiership cup. Bit like Madeleine. Nasty. But true. She didn’t mind, it was generally her idea.
Madeleine hadn’t even married Stoker at that stage, Dad hadn’t gone to gaol. They were the innocent days, more to laugh about, less to regret, cowboys in wetsuits. Then the accountants started to call the tune and suggest extra revenue-raising activities: offshore pick-ups, exotic imports, boat explosions, dog electrocutions, most of the divers were into it. That’s when I noticed Baras. His manners, his aloof detachment from the fishermen’s carnival. He allowed others to do the dirty work, burn the boats of poachers, pick up drugs, while he just picked up cash.
He never drank out of Madeleine’s shoe, never wore thongs and T-shirts with stupid things written on them, he was different. Smoother. Bought his licence off a drunk, was the first to negotiate directly with the Japanese. And so Tokyo was the first foreign city for little Giovanna.
I was supposed to be his trade representative because he thought I would know some Italian. When was that going to be useful in Tokyo? But I swallowed the lure. The flash hotels and restaurants were irresistible to a nineteen-year-old. And he was attractive, no two ways about it. Regrets? Plenty. Gun-shy? Certainly. If Jim was the scorched koala, I was the roasted goanna.
The sea kept me sane. Any spare time was consumed by thoughts of whether to ring her, whether to winkle information about where she taught, whether to make a surprise visit, an invitation to dinner, a declaration of love. I couldn’t keep my mind still.
But the sea saved me. Once below, you were cut off from the other world, buoyed in a trance of blue, floating and sinking at the same time. Care and anxiety were expelled with each release of bubbles from the mask. It was a drug state without the tremor and confusion.
One day, two dusky morwong snooped up over a reef ledge to look at me. We stared at each other. A morwong’s eyes can swivel more than most fish, so they give the impression of quizzically searching your face. They looked to me like an elderly couple and probably were. Have a look at this young man, Mother, I wonder if he’d like a cup of tea. Of course he would, he looks tired, poor thing.
Inventing fish conversation – I knew the signs, I’d been down too long.
Every day I flogged myself with work and clubbed my mind to sleep. Whenever the sea was navigable I was out there flicking urchins, working myself to exhaustion so that even footy training was a relief. And the body’s effort in regulating itself to six hours at depth on hyper-gas meant my thought processes were scrambled for hours. Basically my mind stopped working. Bliss. Without the sea I’d be turning over every word and gesture like river-pebble runes and tea leaves, searching for an answer, rearranging them into a pattern that spelt love. The sea fixed that, reduced my mind to the complexity of a seal’s. It must be pleasant to be a seal, why they spend so much time in the sun combing their whiskers with indolent care.
Time dribbled away like sand in a runnel of water at low tide. Each day closer to when I’d see her again. I’d mooch about the town in the last of the dusk, inspecting beached and exhausted clinkers I knew I’d never buy. No one would – buggered. I glanced at Miraglia’s oyster shed and grimaced, relieved to be out of his company. Scrubber Higgins, the half-forward flanker, called a greeting as he locked up the fish shed next door, all surf-shagged hair and check shirt and desperate to make the takeaway before closing. Seagulls picked desultorily at the outfall from the shed before deciding it was time to head out to the islands. I sat on a concrete block supporting the pipe and inspected the slop of waste.
Abalone guts. I looked back at the shed. So this was the famed aquaculture operation. World’s best practice. Millionaires, unsatisfied by the natural harvest that had made them millionaires, pumped sea water directly into the abalone sprat tanks, and the waste straight back into the ocean. Genius.
It’s often seemed to me that humans could all get along if it weren’t for money and lust. Not much you can do about the latter, it’s in our chemistry, but take a good little town like this, surrounded by blue dreaming ranges and a lazy estuary where jade water whispers across sandbanks rippled like the roof of a baby’s mouth, where godwits stand shank-deep in the outgoing tide, waiting patiently, calmly for the revelation of the sandworms – perfect, but just add money and stand back.
There’re any number of ways to stuff paradise. Condominiums, minigolf, big-time golf, fish-factory effluent. And any number of ways money can turn people against each other, hold people apart who should be friends. I’d seen brothers do it over their dead mother’s Austin 1800, neighbours over the cost of a paling fence, lovers over who paid for the last movie tickets. Just add money.
Things were going along okay in fishing towns like Nullakarn, blokes were pulling their nets and making a living, then someone learnt that the Japanese would pay a fortune for abalone, the crustacean that Australians had derided as muttonfish for two hundred years.
Add the free market and suddenly a fish with as much charisma as a twisted sandshoe, and an alarming resemblance to things we never mention, has become the new gold standard. Men will dive eighty metres for it, allow their eardrums to explode, allow nitrogen bubbles to siphon inside their skeletons, burn the boat of any pinko who dares talk of increasing the number of licences, kill anyone who dives on their patch. And murder for the sake of fish had already happened three times in this town alone. This paradise. Just add money.
A few beers in the pub and it’d be a miracle if conversation didn’t turn to jealousy, greed, threats of violence. Well, not quite true. Three beers and all you’d get is a few veiled character assassinations, attempted murder would take about twenty-two beers. On average. Successful murders need a threshold of either thirty pots with tequila chasers and a few bongs or, more disturbingly, none of the above.
But it wasn’t all bad. Most times divers wanting to bring discipline to the industry would be satisfied to burn a boat or car, or kill a dog, normal stuff like that, business discussions.
I gazed out over a lagoon so beautiful it cried out for someone to turn it into a postcard, but already Mammon’s grubby thumbprints smeared that image. A boat drawn up onto a little shell-strewn beach was washed by the tender rose of the setting sun. Hard to tell from this distance and in this blessed light that it had been burnt to the plimsoll. The winch was collapsed into the stern. A business transaction.
