Thirteen Pearls Page 10

  Kaito played the shakuhachi and Leon looked far from chilled out. Instead, he rapped the side of his deckchair, as if bored, or cross. I tried to engage him in a conversation about the dumbest things we ’d ever done. It flopped. And when Kaito slipped his foot from a thong and starting playing with my foot, Leon glared at us both.

  ‘I’m knackered. Think I’ll call it a night.’ He turned to Kaito. ‘Red made me do twice as much work when you didn’t come back.’

  We remained silent, listening to Leon rustling around in his tent until his lamp went out and it was only the two of us and the sea swishing through the mangrove roots.

  I’d been anticipating this precious time alone together, casting careful glances at Kaito over dinner, running my tongue over my pleasantly bruised lips, sneaking off to brush my teeth at every possible opportunity, just in case . . . But now, the night felt hollow and strange, as if something were missing. With Leon gone, the spark had departed too. Leon was such a big, flaring presence. The two of them complemented each other – Leon, golden and larger than life, and Kaito, dark and mysterious.

  Kaito reached for my hand and lightly squeezed my fingertips, working his way up to massage my palm. He shifted his chair closer to mine. His other hand closed around the back of my neck with a sharp squeeze that sent a rush of chills through my body. He lifted the tangle of hair from my neck and his lips were feather soft against my nape. I forgot about Leon.

  We kissed until Orion’s belt had sailed overhead to the horizon. I didn’t want to fall asleep out here and have Aran wake up unable to find me. Or worse, have Uncle Red discover me out here in the morning. ‘Have . . . to . . . go . . . to . . . bed,’ I murmured sleepily, stumbling to my feet with an inelegant yawn.

  As I crept back into the home–shed and banged into the glass door, clumsy with exhaustion, I thought how satisfying tiredness was up here. It was true tiredness – virtuous tiredness. Not because I’d stayed up too late surfing YouTube clips or because I was madly cramming for an exam. I was tired because I’d worked hard. I’d washed and scrubbed and cooked and cleaned and dragged Aran around. I was covered in bruises and covered in kisses, and right now, in the ghostly glow of my LED torch, my narrow bed, with its wee-scented sheets and thin mattress that let the springs dig through, seemed heavenly.

  FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS my days and nights were divided. Days belonged to coping with Aran and being a domestic servant. Nights belonged to Kaito. Kaito treated me neutrally during the day, especially around Uncle Red (wouldn’t do to be seen getting off with the boss’s niece!). But at night we kissed for hours. Kaito was definitely on ailan tim. I was used to boys racing to get to the main goal. I wondered whether Kaito was employing some sort of ancient Oriental secret seduction method. The more relaxed and unhurried he was when we were together, the more wound up I became, until it got to the point where he could walk into the kitchen where I was cleaning and gutting fish to poach with slices of lemon in coconut milk (thanks cuisine. com.au!) and I could feel him from across the room, as if he was physically touching me.

  By contrast, Leon hardly spoke to me and didn’t seem to find nearly as many excuses to come back to the home–shed during the day. Which left me spending most of my waking hours with a delinquent four-year-old.

  Here’s the list of Supernanny techniques I tried on Aran. (They all got five star-ratings on the website.)

  The Snack Box Technique: Aran and I sat down with the gold sheet of cardboard and pack of textas I’d bought at the newsagency with Dad’s precious get-out-of-gaol-free fifty dollar note. We scrounged a small box from outside the oyster shed and tipped its contents (a motley assortment of baton screws and coach bolts) into a coffee mug. Then we decorated the box and I wrote ‘Aran’s Snack Box’ on it. At the start of the morning, I put an apple and a box of sultanas and six buttered wholegrain Cruskits inside.

  Effectiveness Rating: Box destroyed in first hour when Aran stood on it for extra reach to hunt in high cupboard for Tiny Teddys, thereby crushing Cruskits to golden dust.

  The Sweet Hearts Technique: I cut out big love hearts from a sheet of red cardboard and wrote a message to Aran on the second evening after we returned from T.I. to tell him what I appreciated about his behaviour. I racked my brains and decided he was helpful with stripping sheets from the bed to wash. That night Aran looked at the heart quizzically. I explained what it said. He beamed with pleasure and insisted on putting it beneath his pillow.

  Effectiveness Rating: Next morning – cardboard heart soaked with urine, pillowcase and sheets stained with clouds of pink ink.

  The Patience Technique: According to the Supernanny website, good behaviour involved effective listening and for me to demonstrate to Aran that I was willing to listen to him too. I got a bucket and stuck a random collection of stuff into it – a rolled sock, a beer bottle, a cast-iron grill pan, a packet of fettuccine, a broken computer game case, a bar of Sunlight soap and two Buddha statuettes. Then I arranged them in an obstacle course. Aran point blank refused to let me blindfold him with a tea towel. So I showed him what he had to do – guide me around the obstacles while I wore the tea towel blindfold. I was half-cheating because I could see a slit of ground through the gap between my nose and cheekbones; however, I couldn’t actually see enough to avoid being led straight onto the (heavy) grill pan. I tripped over it and landed palms first, decapitating a Buddha.

  Effectiveness rating: ten bandaids on my palm required before the blood finally stopped seeping through.

  The Naughty Mat Technique: When Aran was being a pain in the bum, I was meant to tell him that he was being naughty and it was unacceptable and that if he continued I’d put him on the naughty mat (an old towel – there were no mats here). Then, when he continued (and that was a given) I was to put him on the mat for four minutes (one minute for each year of his age). If he tried to get off I had to firmly and gently put him back on again. At the end I was to crouch to his eye level and ask if he understood why he ’d been put on the naughty mat/towel. Then after he ’d apologised, give him a kiss and thank him (even though he had dumped the satellite phone receiver into the washing-up tub).

  Effectiveness rating: Let’s put it this way – we never made it past the bit where I had to keep him on the mat.

  The Paci-Fairy Technique: A fun and creative way to rid a child of their pathological attachment to a pacifier (or in Aran’s case, the lucky sticking-up-trunk elephant).

  Effectiveness Rating: You have to be kidding. You could offer me full corporate sponsorship and the latest satellite navigation system to go there and I wouldn’t even be tempted.

  Here’s what I tried that did work: I’d bought ten packs of seeds from the hardware store and decided to make a garden. I’d be back in Cairns when it was time to harvest, but Kaito and Leon would still be here and it would be fantastic to get some fresh food into Aran.

  Aran and I chose a spot for our garden. It was tough work digging into poor soil that was essentially red grit riddled with stones. Dad was a great gardener and he was into Esther Dean’s no-dig method, so back in Cairns we’d lined the backyard with discarded fridge boxes and then mixed shredded confidential DoCS documents and bales of sugar-cane mulch to layer over the top.

  Aran liked digging with the little spade I’d found in the tool shed and he enjoyed getting his hands in the dirt. Given the way he carefully formed neat little mounds for us to plant our bok choy seeds, I figured that he’d gardened before. Maybe with Lowanna back in Thailand. I poured a scattering of minuscule, fly-away seeds into the little nest of his palm and he pressed the seeds into the mounds with painstaking exactness.

  I had no choice but to mulch with dead leaves. When a chook tried to back-scratch the leaves, Aran went nuts, chasing the chicken until it took flight and hid out in the lowest branches of a scraggly gum tree.

  Later that night I braved speaking to Uncle Red and he said I could use some scraps of old roofing iron to make a fence.

  Aran helped me make the fence
too. I kept worrying he ’d cut his hands on the sharp edges of the tin off-cuts, but again it seemed like the minute I gave him real grown-up work, he was happy to help, and surprisingly capable. We made a dodgy little enclosure with two wooden stakes to hold the entrance together. Although it looked shonky, the chooks, crossed fingers, seemed to take it seriously, and Aran and I took great pleasure in going out early each morning and late every afternoon to water the garden beds.

  Handling the sheets of tin and straightening the edges with tin snips woke the hunger in me to build. It’s a creative need that’s hard to explain to people who don’t understand. People like Tash who can’t believe I could get passionate about the differences between brands of polyurethane varnishes. But building is like grand-scale sculpture. Only instead of being static decorations in parks, or sitting pork-chop-like on plinths in galleries, people got to live inside the creation (or sail it) and have it shape their lives.

  Dad reckoned that I should become an architect once I returned from sailing around the world, but it wasn’t designing that excited me so much as actually building. I like using power tools and couldn’t understand why most girls were uninterested in learning how to use a drill or welding iron or nail gun. I suspected it was mainly because it isn’t expected of girls; it’s a blue job.

  Thinking about demarcation between female and male labour (see, Mum, I did pay attention when you were raving about female textile workers) got me marching down to the operations shed when Red and the boys were out on the boat. I was sick of being banished from the male realm, especially when they came in regularly to trample and crap up my domain.

  Outside the entrance, I grabbed Aran’s hand and held it tight (didn’t want him losing another thousand dollar pearl). But what caught my eye was a stack of barnacled framing timber leaning up against the outer wall. Another person might have seen a pile of rubbish ready for the scrap heap, but I saw a project.

  Christmas was getting closer and I knew what I wanted to give Aran. I squinted appraisingly at the stack of old timber. Yep. Should be enough.

  ‘Hey Aran, can you help me find the best tree on Thirteen Pearls?’ Aran skipped in front of me and came to rest at the base of the mango tree. It was only a short distance from the back of the shed and partly screened by a ragged hedge of acacias. I stood beneath it, gazing into the canopy and making mental calculations, while Aran gleefully stomped on a trail of ants.

  When the boat returned, Aran and I were already waiting at the jetty. Kaito’s hair was slicked black and droplets of seawater still glistened on Leon’s golden arms.

  As they unloaded, I got straight to the point. ‘Uncle Red, I’ve got a favour to ask.’

  He glowered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘What were you going to do with the old oyster racks that are stacked against the processing shed?’

  He shrugged and ran a reptilian tongue over his pale dry lips. ‘Junk. Best to burn them.’

  ‘Well I’d like to use them, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Do what you want with them, just make sure they’re not in my way.’

  (Kind of like his whole approach to Aran . . . )

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in a happy dream making a Thai green curry. Every now and then, I’d grab a pen and make a few sketches or scribble in alterations.

  That night, I told Kaito and Leon about my grand plan while the boys shared a beer and I drank a cold cup of tea.

  ‘Better make it cyclone proof,’ Leon said.

  Kaito nodded. ‘There was a big cyclone a hundred years back. Killed three hundred men. They found dolphins fifteen metres up in the cliffs above Bathurst Bay.’

  ‘Bathurst Bay’s a fair a distance from here.’

  ‘Yeah, but the Torres Strait can still cop it in cyclone season. Red’ll be on cyclone watch for the next few months.’ Leon stretched back in his camp chair and pointed at the sky. ‘Tell us a bit about those stars Edie. That ring of stars up there.’

  I followed the direction of his finger. ‘They’d be part of Taigai’s crew – the Pleiades. But I know them as the Seven Sisters. Dad told me there’s a Greek legend about seven sisters who were the goddess Artemis’s attendants and they were being chased by the hunter Orion, so Zeus turned them into stars and Orion has been chasing them across the sky ever since.’

  ‘In Japan, we call them Subaru,’ Kaito said.

  ‘No way, like the cars?’

  ‘Yeah, but the stars came first.’

  Leon caught my eye across the flickering candlelight. ‘It’s great what you’re doing for Aran, Edie. I’ll help you with it if you like.’ He added in a mutter, ‘If that tight uncle of yours ever gives me any spare time.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d love a hand.’

  So I wasn’t surprised to see Leon carting the frames from the shed first thing the next morning.

  ‘Where do you want them?’

  ‘Over there.’ I indicated a patch of browned grass beneath the mango tree.

  ‘Want me to break them up for you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be great.’

  Aran ran circles around the tree in a state of high excitement. I helped him use the saw and then wonkily hammer in two nails I’d scabbed from Red’s tool shed. I’d use the last of the fifty dollars to replace them next time we took a trip to Thursday Island.

  I had to hack a wedge into the base of a branch with an axe to make a flat surface. Mentally, I apologised to the tree before sawing off the first bearer and nailing it onto the sappy, raw scar. The next bearer was trickier to thread between the branches. Leon planted himself on the other side and balanced the beam on his shoulder until I could secure one side to the tree.

  When it was done, I stood back to survey my handiwork with a sense of exhilaration, and laughed out loud.

  ‘What is it?’ Leon asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Go on, tell me.’

  I took a deep breath and attempted to explain. ‘Since I arrived it’s been like a nightmare . . . Aran and Red – it’s like I’m on another planet, living with aliens.’

  ‘You saying I got a green head?’

  I smiled. ‘No. You and Kaito . . . ’ Did I imagine it, or did his expression change slightly at my mention of Kaito? ‘You’re the ones who’ve kept me here.’

  ‘Is that a good thing or bad thing?’

  The past weeks had brought new and unfamiliar experiences that had rocketed me out of my comfort zone. Looking after Aran, avoiding my uncle, hooking-up with Kaito, had all made me feel unlike myself at times – completely out of my depth . . . but there were good things about it as well.

  ‘Both,’ I said.

  He grinned and nodded, as if he understood exactly what I meant.

  ‘And right now, it’s the best. This,’ I said, pointing to our building project. ‘This is what I’m good at.’

  Now I was doing the thing I knew and loved; it made me feel capable again. Over the past three years, since first starting the Ulysses, I’d become addicted to building. I’d get home from school, chuck my bag in my room, grab a carrot out of the fridge and race downstairs to throw back the tarp and set to work on my boat.

  For the first time, I felt truly happy about being on Thirteen Pearls, because at last I was doing something I was good at.

  I HAD BEEN ON THE island exactly three weeks and five days before it was finally Leon’s turn to chauffeur me over to the big smoke. Leon reckoned Red was trying to keep Kaito sweet so that he ’d come back and help with the seeding. I suspected he was right.

  The boys had taken turns doing the shopping before my arrival, but shopping had become a pink job once again. Not that I minded. I liked being able to choose what we ate, and thanks to some halfway decent ingredients and a thirty-page print-out of recipes, my cooking was slowly improving.

  The best part of this trip, however, was that we ’d be dropping Uncle Red off at Horn Island. He was flying out to Darwin on business and would be gone eight whole days! Because the fares were hike
d up around Christmas, Uncle Red wouldn’t be returning until 28 December, which meant that Aran would have neither of his parents (however much you could call Red a parent) with him on Christmas day.

  Red had dropped it on us the night before. One half of me was doing inner cartwheels, the other (less selfish) half noted Aran’s crestfallen expression and felt a surge of anger.

  After putting Aran to bed and waiting for the first faint, snuffling little kid snores, I tried to tackle the issue.

  ‘Uncle Red?’

  ‘What?’ he grunted, not looking up from the TV’s flickering lure.

  ‘Don’t you reckon it’s a bit harsh leaving Aran at Christmas?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He’s already lost his mother—’

  ‘What do you mean lost his mother? Lowanna’s not dead, she ’s looking after her own mother.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t she take him with her? He misses her. I bet he wouldn’t be so hard to handle if he was with her.’

  I should have noted the warning signs – Red’s fingers closing tight around his beer, his face growing shinier.

  ‘It’s weird that she doesn’t write or phone or anything. No wonder the poor kid’s such a mess—’

  There was an almighty smash as the beer bottle shattered on the concrete a metre from where I stood.

  ‘Bloody woman!’ he shouted. I couldn’t tell if he was referring to Lowanna or me. He leaped from the couch and raged in my face so that I almost choked on his beery breath. ‘What the hell would you know? Little Miss Know It All.’