Bloke, page 6
He left, and I turned to the instrument panel, getting myself ready to sail when I realised I had no crew. Surely they weren’t expecting me to sail across the strait on my own. Half a million of vessel, if I wasn’t mistaken, and only one person on board. Bit risky.
But I was keen to make way, so I climbed onto the wharf, released the bow rope and walked to the stern before I noticed a boy at the rear bollard.
‘Mr Bloke,’ he said in a strange chopped twang, ‘I your mate, eh.’
I looked at him. His five foot five had deceived me. But he could be anyone looking for a quay job and a tip.
‘Mr Stevens send me to meet you here. You give me air ticket from Daywin.’
Daywin, eh. Well, he had all the details, so I shook his hand and climbed back onto the boat and let him handle the stern rope. I went about my preparations but made sure I watched his feet as he worked his way around the boat. At least he was a sailor, I noticed with relief. Deft handling of ropes, soft feet on the deck. He wouldn’t kill us with incompetence.
I turned my attention to the unfamiliar motor and controls to find out how she responded to the wheel. Well, there was no wheel. Just little buttons and lights like the eyes of a dragonfly. The big diesel was pulsing below deck, settling into a rhythm you hardly noticed. Like the pulse in your own neck. Almost inaudible at the idle but still a presence, a subliminal growl.
I mucked about, manoeuvring her slowly so as to be ready to correct if she did anything surprising. And soon we were in open water, away from the buoys and channel markers and heading for Darwin. Daywin. Ten hours at the controls without a break, unless Daywin could relieve me for an hour.
When he brought me a cup of coffee and a sandwich I asked, ‘Can you sail this thing?’ But no, Daywin could not take the helm. He stepped back in alarm at the suggestion, a tad theatrically for me.
So I was stuck at the wheel. The Arafura Star had autopilot, so I could duck off for a quick slash, but I was too nervous to leave the controls for longer than that, no chance to look about the boat at all.
Noticed anything unusual about the business? Giovanna had asked. Well, I was starting to, don’t worry about that. The dusk was beautiful, the island wind perfumed now that we had left the port. Plenty of time to wonder about what I had got myself into. To wonder at the casual manner of the urchin transactions, almost as if they were an incidental nuisance.
Ten miles out of Darwin, a launch approached from the east and drew aport. A light flicked on and scanned the bow of their vessel showing the word Polisi.
Oh, this was good, police on the open sea.
They came aboard. Asked for my paperwork, looked at my skipper’s ticket, examined all the air tickets and documents, and finally spoke to Daywin in Indonesian.
Good old Daywin took it in his stride, as if his uncles had turned up. They asked to be shown about the ship and Daywin took them below. I could hear them opening and shutting lockers and cupboards.
The ship was so plush every step was carpeted, every door rubber-sealed. Even if I’d known the layout below I wouldn’t have had a clue where they were or what they were doing. It occurred to me to investigate, but one of the officers nudged me into the helmsman’s chair and offered me a cigarette. I didn’t smoke but the message was plain. Cool your heels for five.
Eventually the other cops came back. All calm, all smiles. Daywin was still relaxed and we all nodded to each other as if we were judges at a flower show. They returned to their launch, saluted me, threw the painter back on board and motored off into the night. Their light snapped off and that was it, I never saw their boat again.
Daywin was as cool as a cuke and went about his business as if nothing had happened, or as if everything had happened as planned.
I watched him carefully. One of the policemen had left the Arafura Star with the package the spook had told me was insurance and maintenance stuff. Strange interest in another boat’s service requirements. Large and heavy package for a service book and spare key.
And they’d shown not the slightest concern that my skipper’s ticket was five years out of date and barely qualified me to sail a kayak on Lake Burley Griffin. I picked it up after a quick course in the big gym. It filled in time, I’d never had any intention of kayaking in Canberra.
Notice anything strange about the business? My oath I did.
We motored into Darwin within the appointed time and were met by a service crew who came aboard and began to work swiftly and methodically with not much more than a g’day, how’s ya aunty’s sore leg.
I watched them closely but they were doing nothing other than preparing the Star for tourist service. Lifejackets, pamphlets, bottles of water, sunscreen. I turned away from the routine and noticed that Daywin was gone.
There was no sign of Stevens, and the service blokes ignored me. I didn’t mention the police. It was like it hadn’t happened.
I stepped ashore and looked down at the deck, but still no one showed the slightest interest. I opened the plane ticket. Just as I expected. Ninety minutes to get to the airport. They hadn’t intended for me to do one of those half-day tours of the city sights where the driver tells bad jokes to Japanese and geriatrics. Still, it was a relief to be free of the helm, a relief to be free of the whole bloody vessel, to have a leak without listening to every beat of the Star’s pistons.
Further along the promenade, I looked back at the wharf and saw that a truck had pulled up alongside the Star and was unloading cling-wrapped pallets from the hold.
I had a beer, a beef roll, opened up my good old Geographics, but couldn’t read a thing. No lost tribe could engage me, no goggle-eyed fish fascinate, no trench was deep enough to distract. I stared at the imprint page, where it said the mag was printed on Burlington Satin Sheen and wasn’t aware I was reading it.
Noticed anything strange about the industry?
six
I arrived back home just before dawn and stumbled into the house.
‘Jacques.’
Her. I’d parked next to her car, so dog tired I hadn’t even noticed.
‘I’ve made you coffee, skipper.’
‘What are you doing here? It’s not holidays.’
‘I’ve come to make you coffee.’
‘No you haven’t. What’s going on?’
‘Oh, so you’re asking that question. Good.’
‘Giovanna, give the irony routine a miss, will you. In the last thirty-six hours I’ve driven to Sydney, flown to bloody Singapore, sailed to Darwin, and back bloody home and I’m in no mood for games.’
I gave her a steely, manly look, a no-nonsense man losing his patience look, not the flabby puppy-love look I’d had before. That’s when I noticed the earrings.
My eyes glistened. I nearly ruptured myself trying to contain tears of exhaustion and relief. I was angry, confused, tired beyond reason, and when I saw the earrings the floodgates of weariness and irritation nearly burst their banks.
I just stared at her and she just passed me a cup of coffee. ‘I was worried about you, Jacques.’
‘Not Jacques, please, I’m not up to it. Not James, Atlas, Neptune or any bloody thing. I’m too tired.’
‘Jim, then, all right. I’m going to get a few things and then we’re going to sea.’
‘Oh no, please, I’m exhausted, Giovanna.’ It was almost a wail. What had happened to the steely, manly look? Out the bloody window.
She pushed me into a chair and I grabbed her hand and pressed my face onto her knuckles. She didn’t take her hand away.
‘Jacques – sorry, Jim – you go and have a sleep. I’m going to buy some tucker and get the boat ready, and when you’ve rested we can go to sea.’
‘Jesus, Giovanna, can’t you see I’m buggered? I don’t want to dive, I just —’
‘You don’t have to dive. Much. Christ, you’re an irritable little bugger when you’re overtired. I think you can go straight to your room.’ She took her hand from mine. ‘Jim, when you’ve had a sleep we’re going out on the boat to have a yarn. That’s all. To act as if nothing’s happened, as if we’re just happy fisherfolk going back to work, as if we’ve noticed nothing at all. But we can’t talk here.’
She dragged me to my feet. I tried to turn inside the curve of her arm but she rotated me away, pushed me toward the bedroom, allowed me to topple onto the bed. I went out like a light. The girl of my dreams at the foot of the bed and I go to sleep. The indomitable power of passion, I suppose, the gigantic forces of Eros.
When I woke the clock said seven o’clock but it was daylight. Tomorrow. I’d slept for nine hours.
A slow, sly smile crept onto my face, as if a puppeteer drew the strings attached to my lips. She was wearing my earrings. She was here. Somewhere.
I staggered into the kitchen in my jocks.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘just in time for coffee.’
I grabbed for a pair of trousers on the back of the chair, the bachelor’s wardrobe technician.
‘You’ve been asleep for hours. I thought you might like coffee before we go.’
‘You’re wearing the earrings.’
‘And you’re wearing yesterday’s jocks.’
We drove down to the wharf and I sat dumbly beside her, confused by sleep and her sudden proximity. Bob had already gone to sea, and Giovanna had launched her father’s old boat, the Petrel Head. The hoist and winch were barely adequate but the boat itself was still seaworthy. Since it was her father’s boat she was skipper.
Going south we went between a rocky outcrop and the shore, a passage I’d never dared. I could tell she was pleased I’d noticed her daring. She was enjoying herself. The weather was gorgeous, there was a little swell but nothing too far from perfection.
‘Jim,’ she said, motoring into a small, enclosed bay, ‘we’ll anchor here, get two bags of urchins and then have smoko. No one dives here, you’ll get the urchins in thirty minutes. Just enough to prove we’ve been to work.’
‘You didn’t call me Jacques. I hope you’re not getting familiar.’
‘In the water, Jacques, two bags and make it snappy.’
She was right. No one ever dived here. In any kind of rising sea it’d be impossible, and even today it looked turbulent from the ocean side. But once inside the arms of the tiny bay it was quite safe and sheltered.
There were urchins everywhere. And crayfish and abalone. In the last bag of urchins I placed two crays and half a dozen abs on the top, where they wouldn’t get crushed.
The dive only took forty minutes, so I wasn’t nearly as tired as usual. As soon as I was back on board she upped anchor and prepared the boat for departure.
‘Where’s my cup of tea? Crew always make the diver tea.’
‘Hang on to your hat, James, there’ll be time for tea. We’re going ashore.’
She spun the boat about and headed straight for the rocks, threading us between two reefs so close together that I snatched my fingers from the gunwale. Inside the reefs there was an even smaller bay, and driven into the reef was a massive iron ring which she tied us to in a blur of rope and fingers.
Yep, this was her coast.
‘This was my father’s bay. We worked here a lot. Hasn’t been fished for ten years or more. Eleven, to be exact.’
‘Is your dad still alive?’
‘No, mate, that’s when he died. Eleven years ago. He was a cray-fisherman. He called this bay Housekeeping. Always reckoned it earned us the essentials. When you could reach it. He died watching the Tigers get whipped by Sydney. Heart attack. They’d do it to anyone.’
‘I thought you resented him a bit.’
‘Not him, the life.’
‘Doesn’t seem too bad to me,’ I said indicating the bay.
‘Dad drank too much. Never had any money, did stupid things on the punt – just turned me off having anything to do with it. I loved the old critter. We were mates. I was literally his mate. Old Tiger taught me to fish, sail boats, shoot ducks. I miss him. Anyway, help me get lunch ashore and we’ll get a fire going.’
I collected old driftwood wracked at the back of the beach and built a fire in some stones where the sand met a grassy verge beneath giant banksias. Driftwood has a wonderful perfume when it burns. Perhaps it’s the salt, who knows. But as I got a whiff of it
I was suddenly tired again. I put two crays upside down on coals I dragged from the fire and she brought me a cup of tea. I eased myself back against the corky knobs of the banksia trunk.
She sat facing me. ‘Jim, you’re in bother, mate. I couldn’t talk to you in the house. I didn’t know if Dom would turn up. Or Miraglia.’
‘Miraglia’s never been there. I’ve never even paid him any rent.’
‘There’s a reason for that too. That last boat you brought over had a very valuable cargo.’
‘I never got a chance to go below – but they were unloading some pallets out of the hold when I left.’
‘The cargo I’m talking about would have been fairly small.’
‘Like so big?’ I shaped the size of the parcel Daywin had given the police.
‘Could be.’
‘What was in it?’
‘Don’t know that either, for sure, but some people will be rich because of it and someone might get the blame, and you’re the only person known to have been on the boat.’
‘But there was this other bloke —’
‘Bet you don’t know his name.’
I was going to tell her it was Daywin but stopped myself in time. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ I mumbled defensively.
‘That’s why they were so keen for you to go.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Well, I don’t know much, and I’m guessing the rest. But they’ve got a bit of form, some irregular business activities in the past – got my stupid old man mixed up in it, and when things got hot they left him holding the baby. Poor idiot knew no one’s name, no one’s phone number, just did the pick-up like they said, and when the police knocked on the door all his mates left him with it. Cost Mum everything to keep him out of gaol. House, car, the lot. Broke him too. He was such a larrikin before that. Afterwards he trusted no one. Broke and bitter. He opened his arm to the heart attack.’
‘So who’s involved?’
‘Stoker probably. Baras certainly. Maybe a few cowboys. Some of the crazy boys used to import their own treats and pick them up off tankers or trawlers. Bit of a game, bit of excitement. Then the serious boys got involved. Saw past the excitement to a million-dollar trade. Had to keep it a closed shop. Keep the lackeys ignorant.’
‘Like me.’
‘Yep. Silence anyone who got out of line.’
‘Like your father.’
‘He never realised how big the scheme was. He thought it was a bit of fun like the old days.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘No.’
I heaped more coals around the crayfish and the smell of them cooking spiced the sea-fragrant air of the cove. Salt, banksia smoke and cooking fish.
‘Those pallets in the hold of the Star, what do you reckon they were?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Fishmeal? That’s another of their little schemes. They’ve set you up properly.’
‘What’s wrong with feeding fish?’
‘It’s introduced a disease into the wild stock.’
‘That’s the whisper I’ve heard too, but how do you know?’
‘Well, I don’t, for sure, I’m just in possession of some information people aren’t supposed to get. You have to promise not to tell anyone. People I love could get hurt.’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘You’re very old-fashioned, Jim.’
‘Thanks.’
‘My aunt —’
‘Mrs Miraglia?’
‘No, another one. I’m Italian, remember, we’ve got hundreds of aunts. Well, this one works on the telephone exchange. It’s a radio transmitter really, but they call it the exchange. Someone has to keep an eye on the satellite reception. It doubles as a weather station. But it passes the time to scan the calls. She hears a few things. That’s why you have to promise not to say how you know, even if it’s a policeman asking.’
‘Why don’t they just use mobiles?’
‘They do most of the time, but a lot of them live outside mobile reception. People in Nullakarn, for instance. So calls go through the exchange.’
‘So?’
‘So my aunt noticed the same numbers being rung, the same pattern as last time.’
‘Pattern?’
‘There was a young fisherman a few years back. Did all right for himself but then there was a bit of a hitch. They had to back out. Customs and coppers had only one name. This young bloke’s. He didn’t take it too well, threatened to name names, but then he had an accident. Had a stroke underwater. Unusual for such a fit man. Everyone but the coroner thought so.’
‘Someone fixed him up?’
‘That’s what I think, but I don’t know. They always get someone involved who needs the money, and when it goes wrong he doesn’t know anyone’s name. He knows Stoker’s, of course, but Stoker can’t remember their names anyway. Just blokes he’d met when he played footy for Carlton. Dad said he believed that bit. Couldn’t spit into the wind at Carlton without giving some criminal tuberculosis. But he hated Carlton, said they deserved Stoker. Anyway, my aunt didn’t like the pattern. She told me to warn you. Which I’ve done.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Not at all.’
‘No, I mean thanks a lot. After you rang to say about the peculiarities in the business I had my eyes open for a change. I should never have got on the Arafura Star, but I thought I could suss out the business. Everything was wrong. A single crew member with no name, and I was virtually a prisoner at the helm. Then the cops stopped us just off Melville Island, checked my skipper’s ticket, said nothing about it being expired, took a parcel from Daywin, my little mate, and that was it. My coxswain’s ticket expired five years ago. They looked at it and said nothing. I was shitting myself after that.’
