Thirteen Pearls Page 3

  ‘I’m not worried about Edie ’s capacity to take care of herself,’ Mum said in a defensive tone that betrayed her true feelings. ‘Red is a bully. Look at what happened when Dad died. Redmond practically forced Mum into that horrible nursing home.’

  I looked down at my cooling stir-fry and poked aside a stick of zucchini to reveal the glazed blue fishes beneath. This was an issue to stay out of. Personally, I thought that if Mum was really so upset, she could have had Nanna come and stay here. But there was her thesis and the dodgy front steps and the fact that Nanna twittered on from morning to night. It would have driven us all nuts. Besides, it wasn’t as if Mum owed Nanna dutiful daughterliness or anything. Nanna had scarpered when Mum was only nine, off to sit in an ashram at the feet of Swami Somethingorother.

  ‘And what about Dad’s legacy money that went missing?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Looks like Edie ’s going to recoup some of it for you.’

  Mum’s springy red curls glowed in the citronella candlelight as she tossed her head and let her fork fall to the plate with a clatter. ‘I don’t like that he went and got himself a—’

  ‘Mail-order bride?’ I finished for her.

  Her face twisted, wresting with the extreme political incorrectness of this term.

  ‘Who knows what he told Lowanna about himself when he met her,’ she muttered.

  (Subtext: Red is a self-aggrandising skunk.)

  ‘And he told Edie he forgot to tell us she already had a kid.’

  (Subtext: He probably proposed the day he met her because he was thinking with a certain part of his anatomy.)

  ‘I’m worried he ’ll exploit Edie,’ Mum continued. ‘Red’s mean. He’s always been one to extract a pound of flesh, one way or another.’

  Dad laughed. ‘Let’s hope he chooses to stop her smart mouth.’

  Ha ha.

  Mum’s delicate red eyebrows rose. ‘I don’t like his attitude towards women. Whenever he came off the rigs he was always banging on about how women should be submissive and wear make-up and be freshly scented.’

  ‘Well Edie can teach him different,’ Dad said.

  I kicked his shin under the table.

  He yelped, but his smile was fond. ‘That’s my girl.’

  ‘I, Edie Jocelyn Sparks, leave all my worldly goods, this being the half-finished Ulysses to my father, Gary Robin Wilkes, with which to escape my mother’s teeth-gnashing, hair-tearing stupendous grief.’

  Mum twisted in her seat and treated me to a pained expression, her eyes rolling to the dented car roof that was still covered in crayon drawings I had done when I was five. ‘Just try to survive okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Or I’ll have to take you up on that offer,’ Dad said.

  I sniggered. But as the old Corolla coughed and clanked its way up the Cook Highway, I felt a bit sooky about leaving the Ulysses. And, okay, the teensiest little bit about leaving Mum and Dad. Tash had been uninterested in my holiday plans until I’d mentioned the four grand. Then she ’d suggested she come with me so we could split shifts, plus the pay. No way José. Didn’t she have Jason to dazzle on Christmas day?

  ‘Practice,’ she ’d said, waving her hand airily. ‘Only practice.’

  As the car chugged into the airport car park, there was the thunder of a plane landing. A thrill ran through me. The moment Dad pulled up at the concourse, I burst out of the car.

  ‘Edie!’ Mum called.

  I swung round, my backpack flying so that its trajectory almost propelled me full circle. ‘Adventure!’

  Dad grinned. ‘Are we allowed to come in with you?’

  ‘Nope. Mum will try and run after the plane.’

  Mum unbuckled her belt and shoved open the car door. She sprang out, threw her arms around me and squeezed hard. ‘Don’t let my little brother give you any crap, okay?’

  Dad joined her and gave me one of those three-way cuddles that I used to adore when I was seven years old. But I wasn’t seven anymore, I was seventeen. And right now a seriously cute surfer with blonde dreadlocks and a Malibu snuggled into a chenille bedspread bag grinned at us.

  ‘Let me go,’ I said, elbowing my parents away. ‘You’ve got to stop clinging to me. One day I’ll be out on the ocean on my ownsome. You’re both way too umbilicular.’

  ‘Ring me,’ Mum said.

  ‘Yeah yeah. You’ll have your textile workers to console you.’

  ‘My baby . . . ’

  ‘Oh puhlease.’ I hefted up my backpack and marched into the terminus.

  I had never been further than Cape Tribulation, and then only by four-wheel drive with Tash’s oldest brother. No, he hadn’t been interested in the pristine rainforest; he wanted to thrash his jeep on the Daintree ’s rutted roads. I stared out at the glossy green mountain forests spilling into muddy turquoise sea and I wished I could be down there with the Ulysses. There had once been a hippie colony further north in Cedar Bay that Mum had visited for a few months as a kid with Nanna. People had lived in dome houses or beneath tarps and had eaten paw paws and coconuts and fish. Mum told me how she’d run wild with the other kids. There was no school and she ’d learned to swim by being chucked into one of the creeks that gushed out of the rainforest to the beach and where bright snakes wriggled beneath the crystal clear water. Mum and Nanna had helped plant fruit trees and used dragnets to catch fish for dinner.

  But when they’d gone back years later the colony was abandoned, water lines had been ripped up, and the orchards had grown wild and were overrun with feral pigs. The government had revoked the original miner’s licence, kicked out all the people and burned their houses. Mum and Nanna had both burst into tears when they saw the devastation.

  I imagined what it might have been like, sailing into Cedar Bay when Mum was there the first time. The calm sea swishing softly against the Ulysses’ sleek sides. Kerosene lamps and flickering candlelight winking welcome against the black velvet of the mountain encircling the bay. Swirls of phosphorescence in the water . . .

  The double propeller plane bumped in a pocket of turbulence. Below, lush forests gave way to an army of spear grass that marched over the flat red earth. Rivers twisted and spiralled in a complex system of tributaries like a tangle of silver snakes that blurred the land’s edge into a muddy red-blue swirl.

  Horn Island airport was tiny. I’d always bagged out Cairns as being the last outpost compared to say, Sydney or Melbourne. A fluttery rush of insecurity trammelled up from my gut. Where exactly was I going?

  I waited to get my bag, then caught the shuttle bus to the ferry that took me across a narrow stretch of water to Thursday Island. Wind scoured my flushed cheeks, a welcome relief from the stifling heat, as the ferry ploughed through the sea to the small island with a dense scattering of houses above the mangroves and a hill at its centre. From what I had read, Thursday Island lay smack in the middle of two seas. From it you could watch the sun rise over the Coral Sea and set over the Arafura Sea. I leaned against the bow railing, enjoying every salty gust, and tried to imagine my reunion with an uncle I hadn’t seen for years.

  The pick-up arrangements from T.I. had been vague. Uncle Red had been almost impossible to talk to. The phone had kept ringing out whenever I’d tried to call to find out what to pack, what sort of toys Aran liked, what they might need from Cairns. From what I’d gathered in our one brief conversation since he ’d told me my flight times was that I was to go to the bakery and wait to be picked up.

  Sleepy buildings lined the main street. A poster announcing a diabetes support group for islander women caught my eye. The shop fronts were sun-faded relics from the fifties, but the merchandise through the windows was modern enough. At the top of the street I turned, attracted by a glimpse of blue sea, and meandered back towards the coast, where huge mango trees dripped yellow-green mangoes. The road was spattered with a gluey mess of fruit pulp and bat guano.

  I took a deep appreciative breath. Ahhh . . . the sweet smell of the tropics.

  The bakery was opposite t
he sea. I wove my way between the tables and chairs and gazed through the display window into a carboholic’s worst nightmare.

  A man behind the counter asked, ‘What do you want? Haven’t got all day you know.’

  I snapped out of my daze. ‘Oh, sorry. I’m waiting for my uncle. I um . . . Could I have a chocolate milkshake please, with malt, and a lamington?’ Junk, junk, junk, but who knew what opportunities there ’d be for empty calories on a pearling island?

  I took my goodies to a picnic table by the water. Late afternoon sun shone on the tide-raked beach, exposing shards of broken bottles and chipped shells. Not exactly a postcard-perfect vision of an idyllic tropical island.

  Across the road, someone called out after me. It was the same guy who’d served me. ‘You don’t want to be sleeping down on that beach. If I was you I’d find a place to stay tonight, especially if your uncle ’s running on island time.’

  ‘But . . . wait!’

  He turned back, batting a cloud of flies with flour-dusted fingers. ‘Yeah what?’

  ‘Do you know him? Redmond Warren. He owns Thirteen Pearls. Did he tell you what time he ’d meet me here?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s all ailan time here.’ He vanished inside the bakery.

  The sun was sinking lower over an island across the channel and soon would be swallowed by the rising hill. What if Uncle Red had mucked it up? I only had fifty bucks until I got paid. Dad had slipped the fifty to me when Mum wasn’t looking, ‘for emergencies’.

  Don’t be such a wuss! At least everyone here spoke English. I’d walk around the island, get a better look, and see if I could find any backpacker accommodation, just in case.

  On the ferry there ’d been a framed map of T.I. showing a five kilometre road that circled the entire island. Trudging back to the wharf, I picked my way through the sticky, green-skinned mangoes and drained the dregs of my milkshake. A row of paint-faded fibro houses edged a road above the mangroves. Littered throughout the stubby mangrove roots were drifts of rubbish – plastic bottles, chip packets, soft drink cans and beer bottles. Disgusting. Dumping my pack on the embankment, I clambered down and started picking up some of the rubbish until bit by bit I accumulated a decent-sized mound.

  ‘Oi!’

  I spun around.

  A shrunken brown face with laughing, almond-shaped eyes and a halo of grizzled white hair peered down at me. ‘You better come up from there! There ’s crocs living down in them mangroves.’

  I scrambled up the bank at light speed, suddenly convinced I could smell the rotten breath of a croc snout centimetres from my backside.

  The old man pointed at me, doubling over with laughter. ‘Gotcha, didn’t I?’

  I kept my face blank. ‘You mean there aren’t any crocs?’

  ‘Nah. I’m not saying that. Some big salties like this spot. It was just funny seeing your hair flying like a wild thing and your face so white like you seen a ghost.’

  I caught my breath. ‘There ’s so much rubbish. Doesn’t anyone care?’

  The old man shook his head and tsked in agreement. ‘No respect. Specially some of the young ones. But you got to remember. For hundreds of years, we had something to throw away – it was fish bones or coconut husks.’

  Though he was missing a couple of teeth, the old man’s grin lit up his face. ‘I’m Uncle Bill. You’re new to T.I. then. You being looked after?’ he asked, as if I’d just arrived at a party and my host was still too busy showing others around.

  I shook my head.

  He hobbled closer and squinted up at me. ‘Who you looking for?’

  ‘My Uncle, Redmond Warren,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘He owns Thirteen Pearls and—’

  I was unprepared for his reaction – a great guffawing wheeze of delight as he slapped his skinny thigh.

  ‘I used to be a pearl diver,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ It was hard to keep the doubt from my voice – he was so shrunken and scrawny.

  ‘Yep. I had one of those big hard hats with the air tube to the top. Used to go down the deepest, they reckoned.’ He added, ‘Had to come back up real slow, or we ’d get the bends.’

  I nodded. Learning about how to avoid getting the bends had been part of my PADI dive certification. Only once had I come up too fast and that was after encountering a bull shark. I’d been so terrified that I’d forgotten to take it slow to the surface and was then stuck for hours in a decompression chamber.

  ‘I got a photo. You want to see it?’ Uncle Bill beckoned me after him.

  I hesitated. A couple of islander kids sat on the rotting steps of a house opposite, playing with matchbox cars. They stole shy glances in my direction. Really, how dangerous could this old guy be?

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  We walked up the street, past more rows of houses.

  I reached into my pack and broke off some of my lamington to share. Uncle Bill wolfed the piece down and grinned, his remaining teeth now flecked with chocolate. ‘My favourite,’ he said, smacking his lips. When we came to a building up on the crest of the jutting coast, I assumed it was the shell of an unfinished garage. But then I noticed that the raw concrete was greasy and stained with weather and time. We wandered into the garden and crunched across a snowy carpet of fish bones picked clean by birds.

  Uncle Bill saw my expression. ‘You like fishing?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well some time when you’re back here, I’ll take you out to a secret spot. Best place for catchin’ coral trout.’

  At the entrance to the house, I hesitated again. If this guy was actually a fiendish lamington-eating psychopath in disguise then I was about to do something really dumb. But then again, his knees practically knocked together and his hand trembled on the unlocked door handle, so I figured one of Dad’s self-defence moves would work a treat.

  The house consisted of three rooms: cavernous, unpainted, drab. Two big cement tubs served for kitchen sink and laundry. A faded brown sarong draped over a chair and a laminated table held a carved wooden bowl of mangoes on it.

  Uncle Bill shuffled up to a protruding strip of concrete that formed a mantelpiece and took down a photograph. It was a reprint of an old sepia photo. A guy with a straight nose, almond-shaped eyes and electric smile held a big old-fashioned brass dive bell in one hand. It was still attached to a tube that fed into his puffy white suit.

  ‘Me.’

  No way. I shook my head. He ’d been gorgeous.

  He twinkled. ‘Would have liked to have met you back then.’

  I laughed, but a part of me was close to tears. It was so sad – seeing this glorious young man shrunken to a toothless guy with gammy legs. It made me resolve to not waste my youth. To sail the Ulysses. To have adventures. To savour them.

  My attention was caught by another object on the mantle, sandwiched between a couple of tattered greeting cards – an open shell, all creams and silvers and whites with five huge teardrop pearls arcing across it like splayed fingers.

  ‘That’s what they gave me when I retired,’ he said. ‘Thirty years diving for the company, when I wasn’t cane-cutting.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Uncle Bill smiled. ‘Better than a watch,’ he agreed. ‘No good having watches up here, we ’re on ailan tim. And the springs rust up.’

  What time was it? It was already late afternoon and I had no idea where I’d be staying. ‘Do you know of a hotel on the island?’

  Uncle Bill nodded. ‘Yep. One just up from the bakery.’

  THE ABORIGINAL AND ISLANDER HOSTEL was ‘carbolic clean’ (as Mum would have said) and cheap, with meals included. Aunty Sally served up a stew that would have kept me stodged for three days if I hadn’t made a swift trip to the bathroom to instantly expel it after she ’d explained that the lumps of sweet meat were dugong.

  I wasn’t going to blow my fifty dollars straight up so I told her my uncle would pay tomorrow morning. Aunty Sally seemed unfazed by this, and after my reac
tion to the mention of dugong, she was anxious to make amends. When her nephew came in with a catch of crayfish, their legs still clacking, she laughed.

  ‘You come back here again and I’ll take you to my island and cook you up some cray. It’s the most beautiful island in all of the Torres Strait.’

  Sometimes, when Dad had finally triumphed over a client’s waste-of-space boyfriend, he ’d take us out to Charlie ’s Seafood all-you-can-eat buffet. There were crabs and prawns and oysters, but never lobster.

  Aunty Sally told me about the neighbouring islands, especially hers – Hammond Island – where the sand was white and the water was so blue it could fool fishermen. On her island, she ’d cook up the crayfish and ate them in the sea, letting the juices run straight into the water and tossing the cracked shells to flotillas of tiny fish.

  My stomach audibly rumbled.

  I nodded. ‘I’d love that.’

  The buzzer rang from out the front and Aunty Sally smoothed out her dress, a big blue muu-muu with pink frangipanis, and went to see who it was.

  ‘Grab your stuff. Got to get back before dark.’

  Startled, my head snapped up from my weak cup of tea.

  A big, freckled, sunburned man with a strawberry blond crew-cut blocked the doorway, jiggling his leg and rapping the wall with a set of keys.

  ‘Uncle Red!’

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘I didn’t know where to find you!’

  He frowned. ‘I told you to wait at the wharf.’

  ‘I don’t remember you saying that.’

  He loomed forward and glared into my face. ‘While you’re working for me you’ll listen to what I say. It’s life or death out here. Life on Thirteen Pearls is like being on a ship and I’m the captain. You do what I say.’

  Behind him, Aunty Sally rolled her eyes, exactly like Tash, as if to say, ‘Whatever.’

  I tried not to giggle as I scraped back my chair. Or what – you’ll make me walk the plank?