The Gulliver Fortune

by Peter Corris

  They were nearing the Straits of Gibraltar. The weather was still cold but the rough seas had abated, and when the sky was blue there was a depth and strength to the colour that was new to him. He lit his pipe and puffed carefully; like money, tobacco was in short supply and had to be carefully rationed. Edward was sitting between his legs playing with a set of farm animals John had carved for him back in England. Gulliver directed his puffs away from the boy.

  "I don't think the streets will be paved with gold the way it says in the song, d'you, Pa?"

  Gulliver rubbed Carl's fair head. "No, son. I expect there'll be a lot of hard work and a good deal of luck needed, like anywhere else."

  "Jack's lucky," Edward said. "He's got a pocket knife with a long blade, and it's so sharp."

  "Jack's strong," Carl said. "I've seen the muscles in his arms—they're like rocks."

  Gulliver grunted and stared at the boiling wake. He remembered the boats he'd stolen. The first when he was just a lad. Where had he meant to sail her to? Ireland, was it? He couldn't remember. And later the one he'd taken to use in smuggling. And the barge he'd worked on for a pittance after he'd got out of gaol. Hard work, but it had led him to Catherine and that was his life's lucky stroke. Thinking of her made him want to see her.

  "C'mon, boys. Let's find your mother and Susy."

  "Look, there's Jack!" Carl pointed below to the aft deck when Jack walked with Trudie. They were deep in conversation, the dark and red heads close together.

  "She's a pretty girl," Carl said.

  Edward waved and called out. Jack looked up and scowled but he lifted his hand in a quick gesture of recognition. Trudie waved. "I want to be like Jack," Edward said.

  John Gulliver pulled him to his feet, lifted him off the ground a few inches and set him down. "What about me? Don't you want to be like your Pa?"

  Edward looked at the giant doubtfully. That big, that much hair? he thought. It didn't seem possible. John Gulliver saw the doubt and felt his confidence drop. He was going to need all the confidence he could muster for this new place, and all his seemed to be draining away in the direction of his eldest son. "Let's find the women," he said gruffly.

  Catherine and Susannah worked at the laundry trough deep inside the ship. The passengers' use of the troughs and the coal-heated coppers was strictly rostered, and space at the washing lines that crisscrossed a section of lower deck was keenly contested. Susannah rubbed at a shirt collar that hadn't come clean in the wash. Jack's shirt. She glanced at her mother, who struggled to lift a sodden mass of clothes up from the water for rinsing. Susannah leaned across to help.

  "What's the matter, Ma? What's wrong?"

  "Wrong? What should be wrong, girl?"

  "You look so pale and you get tired easily. Pa said something about it the other day."

  Catherine wrung a shirt vigorously; her sleeves were rolled up and her forearms were muscular from years of work. She was alarmed. "What did he say?"

  "I didn't cotton to it. It was in German, I think."

  Catherine smiled. She had taught her husband pet words and phrases in German in the early days of their lovemaking and John would bring them out from time to time. This was probably something about a little flower, meine kleine Blume. "I'm all right," she said. "This soap is rubbish!" She scratched at the bar of coarse yellow soap, trying to roughen its surface and raise a lather with it.

  "I had a dream that I was in Australia. I met a black-fellow. I was frightened."

  "There's blackfellows everywhere," Catherine said. "They do no harm. Remember Willy." Willy was a tall gentle African who had delivered coal to the Gulliver house in Golders Green. The family were good customers, taking many sacks, and Willy welcomed the cup of tea that was always waiting for him when he emerged from the coal cellar for the last time. Susannah remembered that the coal dust had been blacker than Willy's face, but not by much.

  "Will we have money again in Australia, Ma?"

  "I don't know. I hope so. Your father always finds a way to make money."

  "Like Jack."

  Catherine Gulliver wrung out a heavy long underwear suit. "No, not like Jack. Your father is a worker, Jack is not. Well, there may be a place for both kinds in this country Australia." She felt weak suddenly and could not get much moisture out of the heavy fabric.

  "That won't dry, Ma. Not like that."

  Catherine gritted her teeth and wrung it again. "It will be warmer soon. Things will dry more quickly." And the sun will shine and we will get colour in our faces, she thought. So I will not look pale. She did not like her husband to be worried. He had teased her the other night about getting fat. "Must be the wonderful grub," he said.Her gorge rose at the thought of food. She was tired of eating and living with so many people—tired of the noisy children and the surly men and the women who talked incessantly, sometimes so fast that her brain seemed to seize up and she could remember only German words. She was tired. She'd have to tell him soon.

  The Southern Maid passed peacefully through the Mediterranean; the sea was calm and the air grew milder. The passengers spent more and more time above decks, competing for the space, especially for seats in the form of upturned buckets and barrels, and the six precious folding canvas chairs that Jack had stolen from second class and rented for a few pence per day. Where he stowed them at night no one knew, but his manner and the sight of the heavy pocket knife swinging from his belt was enough to deter most from attempting to cheat him. And Jack had let it be known whose son he was—the name of Gulliver still meant something to those who followed boxing and even in his late fifties John had the stamp of a fighting man.

  In the Sicilian channel Carl tried to interest his older brother, whose attention he had caught for a few fleeting minutes. He stared at a misty shape visible miles away to starboard. "It's Italy to one side and Africa to t'other, Jack."

  "Which be which?" Jack said.

  Carl pointed in turn. "Africa. Italy. That's Sicily. It's as big as Ireland, almost."

  Jack's interest in both places was nil. "Which way to Australia then, Carl? D'you know that?"

  Carl considered the question carefully, as he considered all questions. He scanned the horizon. He knew something of latitude and longitude but not enough. He was an honest boy. "No," he said. "But I can find out."

  "That's what matters to me."

  "I know the first port of call."

  Jack had had his sea legs within minutes of being aboard and he despised the poor sailors, but the thought of land interested him. There was a possibility of trade, or perhaps a present for Trudie. Not that she'd ever asked for one. It was something he wanted to do and he was surprised at himself for having such a feeling. But then, all his feelings for Trudie surprised him. "Where's that?" he grunted.

  "Port Said, Egypt."

  Jack's policy was never to thank anyone for anything lest it cost the initiative. Even asking questions was dangerous. "And after that?"

  "Colombo," Carl said proudly. "That's in Ceylon. Where the tea comes from."

  Jack turned away. He had things to do but he couldn't resist. "What's next, Carl, after Columbus?"

  "Colombo. Then Australia, I think."

  "Good," Jack said.

  3

  London, July 1986

  Ben and Jerry lunched at Garfunkels in Piccadilly because it was close to the bookshop where Jerry worked and because she liked the salads. Jerry was figure-conscious, aware that her present agreeable shape left little margin for error. Ben would eat anywhere he could get wine, as well as salads suited to his diabetic diet. It was also a good place to meet Jamie Martin, something Jerry had been pressing for since she'd heard the news of his successful tracking of the Gullivers. They sat near the window and looked over at the Americans and Australians pouring in and out of the Regent Palace Hotel. The newsstand was doing brisk business with papers carrying the headline: BECKER BLITZ!

  "I've tried to read up on it a bit," Jerry said.

  Ben sipped his wine. "One what?
"

  "Emigration to Australia before World War I."

  "I thought it was called immigration."

  "It's immigration to Australia but emigration to us."

  "What about the West Indians and Pakistanis?"

  "That's the reverse."

  "I see. And what did you find out?"

  "Almost nothing. Hang on." Jerry took her plate across to the buffet and heaped it, avoiding the potato salad and starchy beans. When she returned she said, "There's almost nothing written about it from the personal angle. No diaries or letters. Just general works, really. A lot of facts and figures. What're you going to eat? You have to have something to soak up the wine, Ben."

  "Mmm. Omelette, I suppose."

  "You had eggs for breakfast."

  "I don't care. I didn't have wine for breakfast."

  "Almost, I bet."

  Ben grinned. "Where's Jamie? He's late. You were saying?"

  Jerry swallowed tomato and lettuce. She added a few drops of wine to her glass of mineral water. "There doesn't seem to be anything much written on people going to the colonies at that time. And there were thousands of them! It sounds like a possible thesis topic." A secret wish of Jerry's had been that Ben would go back to historical research and become an academic. She had almost abandoned the idea in recent weeks, along with the wish that they would get married. Her public ambition, still firmly held, was to get a short story in the New Yorker.

  Ben's omelette arrived and he poked at it without interest. "With any luck the Gullivers' ship will have sunk and only one of the family will have survived." Ben was three glasses into the bottle. He waved his fork. "The survivor will have returned to Britain, been married and widowed, and his one son is a bachelor living quietly in West Ham."

  "Eat something, Ben," Jerry said. "You're getting pissed. Oh, look, this must be him."

  Jamie Martin entered the restaurant and peered around. The day was bright outside and his eyes were slow to adapt to the fashionable gloom. When he spotted Ben and Jerry he waved a manila folder in the air and approached quickly. Ben made the introductions and Jerry poured Jamie a full glass of wine to cut down on Ben's reserves.

  "Jerry's bookish," Ben said. "She says there's nothing much written on departing Britons pre-World War I."

  Jerry looked anything but bookish to Jamie Martin. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress; her dark red hair fell to her shoulders which were, like her arms, lightly tanned. The combination of hair and skin colour was unusual. Jamie gulped some wine, said he would have a rare steak and was suddenly acutely conscious of a wish to impress Jerry. "If you mean personal, primary material, you're right," he said. "There's a hell of a lot of statistical stuff, though. Britain lost more people to overseas countries around the time the Gullivers went than to any other except during the Irish potato famine."

  Jerry cherished her remote Irish ancestry. "Is that right? That's interesting, Jamie. How many?"

  "It hit a quarter of a million, that is, emigrants, around 1909, 1910."

  Jerry leaned forward. "And how many during the famine?"

  "Could we skip the history lesson?" Ben said. "What've you turned up that's useful?"

  Jerry frowned and worked at her salad. Jamie was saved from having to make a quick answer by the arrival of the steak he had ordered. He cut through the pink meat, forked a piece into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "Great," he said, "just the way I like it. I got the passenger list for the ship they went on. Oh, and I found out a bit more about John Gulliver's wife, by the way."

  Ben waved his glass, indicating a half-hearted willingness to listen.

  "Don't be such a shit, Ben," Jerry said. "This is terrific. Go ahead, Jamie. It's so long ago, how did you find out about her?"

  "She's listed as an alien on the passenger roll. The Home Office kept tabs on aliens and the files're open."

  "If you know where to look," Jerry said. "Come on, then. What about her?"

  "Jewish," Jamie said. "Or her mother was, which amounts to the same thing. Seems there was some sort of pogrom in their part of Germany in the 1860s and her father and mother got out."

  "That's fascinating," said Jerry, who had once calculated that more than half the people she admired in history were Jews. "So they all fetched up in Australia, did they? I hope you can track them from there."

  Jamie concentrated on his steak for a few minutes while Jerry picked at her salad and Ben considered the pros and cons of another bottle of wine. He decided against. The funds his father was providing were adequate but not princely and he'd have to fork out again to Jamie after lunch, which he'd have to pay for. Save now, spend later, Ben decided. He'd get a bottle of Scotch to take home. Jerry poured the last of the wine into Jamie's glass.

  "Thanks," Jamie said. "It could be a bit tricky. I've confirmed that the ship didn't sink." He grinned at Jerry, showing the newly cleaned teeth. "I know a bloke who tried to do research on a ship that traded around China. Went nuts trying to track this particular voyage, only to find that she sank off Lands End."

  Ben was swaying in his seat. Jerry smiled. "Let's get some coffee," she said. "Tell us more, Jamie."

  Jamie finished his food quickly, leaving only a few scraps of fat and a few bloody streaks on the plate. He hoped Jerry would be able to steady Ben's hand enough for him to write a cheque, or perhaps she controlled the cash . . . He consulted notes in his folder. "Port Said, Colombo, Fremantle was the route. I've sent some telexes off to Canberra and Sydney. Expensive, I'm afraid."

  "No object," Ben said. "Nothing spared."

  Jamie cleared his throat. "Good. I should have something back pretty quickly."

  "What's tricky, then?" Jerry said. "You said it could be tricky."

  "Yes. There's a newspaper report. Pretty vague. It seems to come from a Morse code message picked up at sea so there is room for error."

  The coffee arrived in a pot. Jerry poured a cup for Ben and virtually forced him to drink it. Jamie took his with milk and sugar. "The Southern Maid," he said. "She's described in this newspaper as a fever ship."

  4

  'Southern Maid', February 1910

  Clive Rooney was an Australian who had taken a trip to Britain as a single man and was returning with a 'wife and daughter', to wit, Hester Peel and Trudie. Not that Clive and Hester saw much of Trudie, who spent all her time with Jack Gulliver. Neither minded this much; they were full of plans for their future in Western Australia. Those plans included marriage. According to Hester, a distance of 12,000 miles between her and her husband, whom she had not seen for ten years, constituted a divorce.

  "We could have a double wedding from the look of those two," Hester said as she and Clive joined the crowd at the rail straining for a sight of Port Said.

  "Steady on, Hes, the lass's only sixteen."

  "That's what I was when I got hitched."

  "The boy's not even that."

  "He looks older."

  "Be useful in the pub," Clive mused. "Think his people'd let him get off with us? I wouldn't want to argufy with that John Gulliver." Clive Rooney was a smallish man, stockily built and redheaded but without the temper and cockiness that often go with that build and colouring. He liked to get along easily with people.

  "We'll see." Hester Peel was used to her gentlemen paying attention to her daughter. Clive Rooney had never done so and it added inches to his stature and expanded his character in her eyes. The idea of taking Jack Gulliver in charge was another example of his loyalty and seriousness. She squeezed his arm and pointed across the flat, grey sea. "Look, Clive. I can see the land."

  Rooney nodded. "Port Said. Saw it on the way over. It's a hellhole and a half. Don't let young Trudie go ashore."

  "As if I could stop her," Hester said. "I want to go m'self. You can show me the spicy bits. Do they really sell postcards with . . . you know?"

  "To knock your eyes out," Rooney said.

  The passengers were told that the ship would be in port for only one hour, to take on more tra
vellers, coal, food and water. This was a lie; the stopover would be for four hours, possibly longer, but bitter experience had taught the Pacific Steamship Company to keep its passengers on a short leash in Port Said.

  Catherine Gulliver refused to go ashore. "A rest on the ship when it's quiet would be a tonic to me, John," she said. "The noise seems to go right through me. Listen now, that awful clanking has stopped. What a relief!"

  John Gulliver looked at his wife doubtfully. She was puffy and pale, her eyes watered and her hair was lifeless. He'd suggested that she should wear some lighter clothes in the heat but Catherine had persisted with her heavy skirts and shawls. He also thought fresh air would do her good, but from the quick sniff he'd had of it the air of Port Said was none too fresh.

  "Well, the children are keen, Kitty, but . . ."

  "Go on with you. Children, just mind to stay close to your father. Carl and Susy, you watch Edward now."

  "Yes, Ma," chorused the children, including Edward himself.

  Husband and wife exchanged smiles. Jack Gulliver appeared in the cabin doorway as his mother was arranging herself, luxuriously alone, on the bunk. "Are you poorly, Ma?"

  "No, Jack. Just tired. You can help your father keep an eye on the little ones."

  "No," Jack said. "I'm going with Trudie." He put his hand into his pocket and took out three half crowns. "I'll buy you something nice, Ma, and here's a little for the kids."

  Carl nodded gravely and took the coins. "Thank you, Jack."

  John Gulliver had noted that his eldest son apparently considered himself no longer a kid. He'd seen enough of Jack and Trudie together to tell that Jack was a man, in the physical sense at least. His pride revolted at the thought of his son providing pocket money where he could not, but he fought the feeling down. "That's handsome of you, Jack. Perhaps we'll see you and Trudie in the bazaar."

  "Perhaps, Pa," Jack said gruffly. After a look at his mother, who lay with her eyes closed, he turned and strode away towards the stairs.

  Market stalls, crammed with jewellery, leather goods and ornaments, and carpets spread on the ground and covered with trinkets, seemed to flow right down to the dockside. The artificial harbour at Port Said sheltered behind a huge breakwater, built of stone transported across the desert. This 'gateway to the Suez Canal' was connected to Egypt only by a causeway and a spit of sand, but for most sea travellers it was all of Egypt they ever saw. Jack and Trudie walked along the narrow aisles between the stalls and dodged the beggars and hucksters who leapt out at them, pawing and gibbering.