Bloke, page 5
And this pipe spewing out from the concrete block was an improbable symbol of money’s hypnotic allure. Anyone with an abalone licence could swim along the bottom and pick up twenty-dollar notes. All day. Not urchins, they were the catch of Johnny-come-lately wannabes, but abs, that was serious. You could fill a bag with abs, watch as they were winched into the boat, and there was your deposit on a house. One day’s work. A year of that and it was Paris for lunch. Fair dinkum. One bloke did it in his own jet. No wonder they wanted to protect the enterprise.
Those who had sold their licences for a slab of beer when abalone were still called muttonfish could cry into their third beer without prompting. Some of them couldn’t look at a diver who’d kept his licence without splintering enamel off their grinding teeth. Money.
But some men couldn’t tolerate just being rich, they had to be richer than their mates. They wanted to drop names like Monaco and Copacabana into the conversation. Any conversation. They were a bit amazed to find they’d paid a couple of million for a house with no plumbing, but that could happen to anyone purchasing real estate over the phone. Never thought to ask if it had taps, but no one else needed to know that. Just flash a picture of the new wife squeezing her tits at a Mediterranean sunset and anyone would be impressed.
So what if it cost another two hundred thousand to get the taps and dunny installed, hell, it was only a few days’ swimming, no need to get wet at all if you could grow your own.
So a couple of blokes did, Stoker Stevens being one of them.
They cultured abalone in tanks. No sweat, no wetsuit, no problem. Growing money. But even that wasn’t enough for them. They had to employ someone to harvest seaweed and kelp, mince it and feed it to the sprats – goodness, it was costing them $615.75 a week. Some bludger was getting fat on the back of their enterprise and stunning grasp of economics.
Then they worked out that if they imported Taiwanese fishmeal they could feed the little critters for a third of the price. It was illegal, but there was always one Customs officer with a gambling problem, or a politician who needed money for an election campaign. And who cared if it introduced a disease worse than syphilis?
That was the rumour in the footy club, anyway. Mind you, some of the rumour-mongers had swapped their licences for a night in the cot with another bloke’s sheila. Not even separate nights. And she was off her face. Like fucking a dead stingray.
Steady on, Jimmy boy, you’re going a bit strong there, but sadly I have to say that one night after training when stubbies and joints were doing the rounds one seasoned old salt explained in precise anatomical detail what could be done with a dead stingray. Well, they’d been stuck behind the Three Hummock Islands for three days sheltering from a gale. Got bored. Only natural.
The aquaculture said it all about the momentum of greed. The fish shed needed drones to do the feeding, kids like Scrubber Higgins – mollydook surfer, fair to average half-forward flanker, Xbox champion, unemployed before becoming an instant aquaculture expert.
Scrubber didn’t need to know that the fishmeal allowed abalone sprat to gain weight 350% faster than those fed on minced kelp. In fact Scrubber didn’t like knowledge at all, he actively resisted it because he viewed his brain as a 1950s computer – you had to be careful not to overload the memory. All he needed to know was that he got paid for feeding abalone and turning a few taps on and off: the green one when the gauge read 248 or above, and the red one when the meter beside it was in sector two. These instructions had been printed on the wall above in large black letters because Stoker Stevens played footy with Scrubber and knew his limitations.
And there were plenty. One year a coach got all technical and drew charts and arrows on the match board. Scrubber’s eyes began to bulge, his palms went clammy. ‘If we win the hitout what happens next?’ he asked Scrubber. He should have known better. One look at Scrubber’s head should have warned him, but new coaches sometimes try to impose themselves on the wrong talent. ‘Well, where do you go?’ he persisted. Scrubber’s eyes distended some more. ‘Where’s the arrow pointing?’ the coach yelled. Scrubber, sometime boat deckie, felt he was on safer ground. ‘South,’ he responded with relief.
The coach didn’t exactly put his head in his hands and cry, but he knew it was going to be a long year and determined then and there never to have Scrubber in the same team as himself, and, if injuries and defections made that impossible, to at least make sure there was never a probability of their meeting near the same football.
Scrubber was an idiot. Perfect for the game Stoker was playing. The whole operation was one of those pieces of genius Australia is famous for. Think rabbits, blackberries, prickly pear, foxes. You pump sea water into a tank, watch the fish get fat, convert them to squillions, fly to Broome to buy pearls, Spain to watch bulls and stare at men in tights, then pump the effluent straight into Bass Strait. Simple. Stroke of genius. Think corrugated-iron shed by the lagoon at Nullakarn. Think Scrubber Higgins in charge of the taps.
To get abalone you have to dive deep, into a sea inhabited by some very big fish. Combine danger with money and you attract eccentrics: mad poets, Maori musicians, alternative-medicine freaks, cricketers wondering what to do after their bats broke, water-colourists – they were all in Nullakarn and they had the best parties. The Maoris and Islanders could sing and play guitar and all of them were rolling in cash. Most had a mad sense of reckless competition: who could dive deepest, get the biggest catch, go out in the worst conditions, be first back to the pub.
But there were others for whom counting money only made them want more. While their fellow depth freaks were carousing in the footy sheds and throwing banknotes at hippy artist girls to dance naked on the table, the ambitious were staining their fingers with bullion. A cacophonous rendition of ‘Pearly Shells’ and a wild root in the surf offended their sense of enterprise.
Maybe you think I’m exaggerating; can’t imagine that an evening sitting by a lagoon suffused by sunset could be tainted by an iron shed and a beached boat, but that’s what happened to the first paradise – there’s no reason why this one should be any different. There are still people in it.
Or maybe you’re going, aw, Jimmy Bloke, what a whinger, what a dog in the manger, what a jealous little Bolshevik. Forget it – what this bloke wants can’t be bought, probably can’t even be found. And the man who looks for something whose existence he doubts is in real bloody strife.
five
Dominic and his girls still came and went. I encouraged them toward better wine, colder beer, more adventurous meals. They were an entertainment for me, company. I missed them if more than three or four days went by without their clandestine arrivals.
Megan’s smoky sensuality was always a distraction. The air vibrated with her lust and anxiety, the two competing for control. Her husband was an abalone diver. Built like a grey box, temper like a moray; if he found out about his wife’s infidelities, someone would pay.
One day I met the gas man wandering about town in his ute again. Didn’t know where to go. He was definitely sampling the gas, couldn’t risk lighting a cigarette, explode like an enemy of America.
Off we went to Bob’s. If Bob wasn’t diving he’d almost certainly be at his salt-grey house crouched under a grove of banksias and the giant mahogany gum. Brush wattlebirds were creating a riot in the banksia flowers. A bloke as vague as Bob would never hear a knock on the door short of blows with a spalling hammer. After I’d done a fair impression of the hammer without response, I walked around the back.
Bob was sitting in a deckchair beneath the trees and didn’t hear me approach. He was reading, bent over the book in deep concentration. Deep in something, anyway.
‘Bob,’ I said, but he stirred only slightly. ‘Bob,’ I repeated and he turned to me with eyes as bland and unfocused as the sky.
We negotiated the gas delivery and I left a bit unnerved by his eyes, like those of a fish that lives in a deep trench of the ocean and gazes from orbs like soup plates. Empty soup plates. It troubled me, and I couldn’t help watching him more closely. Stoker had been in and out of town driving about in the black ute with tinted windows. He liked the mafia look. I’d seen him in earnest discussion with Bob, down at the wharf and huddled at a table in the pub. I assumed it was more Asian business but I didn’t like the furtive, anxious glances he was giving me.
One day we went out when the sea was cruel. The tide was running against the grain of the swell and we bucketed about like a paper cup in a drain. Being on deck was misery so we changed shifts as quickly as we could. I blubbered into the stern as Bob dived in. We were intent on getting the catch and scrambling back to port.
Recovering from a dive, I shifted Bob’s clothes into the shelter of the cabin so the slop of the sea couldn’t reach them. His wallet fell out, and as I replaced it a docket fluttered from it and I recognised the typography of Foong Li, the brand of our major buyer. I glanced at the receipt and noticed it had an invoice clipped to it – for dried fishmeal. So we were involved in aquaculture too.
I refolded the docket and tucked it back in the wallet, then sat on the transom to eat my lunch and do some rudimentary maths. The urchins were nowhere near as profitable as Stoker claimed, and there were boats, divers, air freight, gas, fuel, all to be paid out of the proceeds.
I noodled it about for a while then shrugged it off. It was their business. Besides, the abalone were paying ridiculous money, and then there was the trochus shell and the tours. Perhaps the operation made more economic sense as a whole. As far as I could see, the urchins were a lineball enterprise.
Then Bob came back onboard and I went over. Later, heading back to port, the depth had turned my brain to porridge and all I could think about was drinking a stubby or two, sprawling on my bed and hoping Dominic didn’t turn up too early.
One night, after pressing my brain back into shape, like the way you pour portwine jelly into a mould with embossed starfish and seahorses, the phone rang. It took a while for the sound to penetrate the jelly mould, but eventually I scrambled over to the receiver.
‘Jacques?’
Her.
‘Giovanna.’ The word came like a sigh. I couldn’t have suppressed my relief if I’d tried. In all my scenarios it was never her ringing me, it was always me pleading and bleating. She was so distant and aloof it never occurred to me that one day I’d answer the phone and hear her voice. It had probably rung six times in all the months I’d been there.
‘Giovanna,’ I repeated, trying to trawl up something sensible to say. ‘How are you? I’ve been thinking —’
‘Good, Jacques, it’s good that you’re thinking. Have you noticed anything about your profession recently?’
I struggled with the question. Was she joking with me, pulling my leg? Half of my confusion was due to the fact that she’d rung me. I was waiting for a declaration of undying love or something – idiocy of that degree is often caused by depth exposure.
‘Jacques, are you still there? There’s something going on down there. I’ve heard a few whispers that worry me. Have you heard anything?’
‘What about?’
‘Think, James, think. I’m talking about the fishing, the abs, the urchins, new boats, all that.’
‘It’s been good. The catches are good, the weather’s —’
‘Not that, Einstein. The business, the industry.’
I couldn’t think what she was getting at. I had my own suspicions but they revolved around the viability of the industry. The problem was I’d divided my brain in half. One half was trying to digest what she was really saying while the other half was trying to fashion it into things I hoped she’d say. And both halves were annoyed by her inability to speak to me without sending me up. Jacques, James, Einstein. My brain was flab and my nose was out of joint.
‘The business, James. Your trip to Singapore. Bringing the boat back. Didn’t that seem a bit strange?’
‘Of course, the whole thing’s weird. I can’t see why they need me at all.’
‘That’s good,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘It’s good that you’re noticing.’
‘And the price they get for the urchins doesn’t seem to justify all the trouble that —’
‘Exactly, Jacques, exactly. Keep your wits about you. Be careful. And thanks for the earrings. Good night.’ She hung up.
I sat staring at the phone. Is that it? Is that the best you can do? Thanks for the earrings?
I grabbed a stubby and went out on the verandah, nursing bruised pride and deflated hopes, until suddenly a pelican drifting on the estuary lit up like a neon sign. She rang you, the neon sign read. She told you to be careful. Blink, blink, blink; pennies dropped, pelicans glowed, the jelly set nice and jiggly.
She was worried about me! Sadly, it never occurred to me to worry about myself.
Footsteps on the verandah, but I never turned from the stove, presuming it to be Dominic and his latest love interest coming in for their tea.
‘G’day.’ It was Bob standing in the doorway.
‘Yeah, mate, g’day.’
‘Stoker wants you to pick up another boat from Singapore.’
‘Another one?’
‘The tours are going good. They sold that other one. Too small.’
‘Are you coming?’
‘No, mate, you’re on your own.’
‘What, sail it back alone?’
‘They’ll supply a crew. He’ll fly back from Darwin. Here’s the air tickets and the boatyard stuff. Stoker’s tour skipper will meet you at the dock.’
He knocked back the offer of a beer. Wasn’t interested in the bolognaise. Walked past Dominic and – whoever she was – without seeming to see them, and they walked past without seeming to see me. The invisible international man of mystery.
I shuffled through the paperwork. Tickets. Per diems. Last week’s pay. List of addresses and phone numbers. Same routine as last time, except I was doing it on my own. If it hadn’t been for Giovanna’s warning, nothing would have looked out of place. I flipped through the papers again and still nothing seemed untoward. But I was edgy. I rechecked the list of suppliers. One had a Taiwanese address, BokChoy International. What dickhead thought that up? Someone’s little joke.
Stoker Stevens was just a rich fat bastard who had fingers in pies all over the joint, and I’d done all right as the baker’s doughboy, so why should I worry? Maybe I could sniff something out, surprise Giovanna with an amazing revelation. Go all forensic super-sleuth. Expose corruption. Save the free world.
I could even make it an excuse to ring her. Two problems there: I didn’t have her phone number, and the flight out of Sydney was in eight hours. I barely had time to thrash the Commodore up the coast.
Better have a shower, pack some clothes and go. Just like that. Out of the catapult.
On the plane I opened my bag and dragged out a book on the fish of New Britain Bob had lent me, and five old National Geographics I’d found on a shelf in the broom cupboard. Told you I’d read anything. A lot happens in a quarter of a century, but not much of it happens to mountains, suboceanic trenches or tribes in the Amazon. Well, that’s what I thought. I’d never had a chance to ask the tribes of the Amazon.
I survived my time in the big gym by cultivating the habit of reading. Reading with the aim of obliterating time. It was a habit that became a luxury. I could start turning the leaves of an intoxicating book and look up from the last page and realise I’d missed two meals.
Not so easy on an international flight, where you’re constantly jogged back to reality by the rumble of food trolleys and questions from stewards. Anyway, the time passed. Oh, I thought of Giovanna, all right: her hair, her mouth, the lovely lithe shape, the ankles … well, that’s when I had to steer my way back to reality, remembering that I’d probably never seen her ankles.
Time passed in wonder at the taro gardens of the Lani people of Western Papua, the St Helen’s volcano, Giovanna’s hair, the spook fish of the Kermadec Trench, Giovanna’s mouth, the habit of dung beetles to create dung balls too heavy for one beetle to push, Giovanna’s phone call …
And then we were snatching our jackets, looking to our couture, trying to find pockets for the biscuits and juice boxes we’d saved from the meal trays. International man of mystery, my arse. Just an old Broady boy who never got used to having more food than he could eat. A Broady boy who’d struck it lucky. Struck something, anyway.
But no time to think of that now. Off the plane and into a cab. Meet the nobs from Foong Li food processors and then down to the boatyard to pick up the Arafura Star. They cut it fine, this mob. I was in Singapore a full six hours. I showered at the airport, lunched with the Chinese agents, and here I was stepping aboard the Star.
The bloke showing me over the controls was just a diesel monkey. An Asian diesel monkey who knew everything about motors but not much about the English language. Decent sort of bloke, but we were shadowed by a spook who made my skin crawl.
In James Bond movies they had knives a foot long concealed in their sock. How they walked with such sinister grace and threat with all that sharp steel in their sock was beyond me, but they did and so did this guy. He had that sinister grace and an unnerving facility with the English language. Of course, I didn’t know about the sock and knife business but he sure gave me the creeps.
‘Mr Bloke,’ he said when the engineer had gone, almost choking with vexation over the pronunciation of my stupid Western name, ‘here are your instructions for delivery and a package for Mr Stevens. Service and insurance documents, maintenance manual, spare anodes – nothing you need to bother about, you understand.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, perhaps a bit too bluntly, but I was keen to have him and his socks off my boat.
‘Very good, Mr … Bloke,’ he almost gagged again. ‘I’m sure you’re aware of the schedule? The boat must be in Darwin by fourteen hundred hours tomorrow. Mr Stevens needs the boat by two so she can tour next day. I’m sure you will keep to the schedule.’
