The Pearler's Wife

by Roxane Dhand

  ‘For six days a week, dawn to dusk through nine months of the year.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I have ears, Maitland. What do I have to do on the supply ship?’

  ‘First thing to understand is we run the schooner to make a profit. You count the shell, double-check it against the diver’s tally book and record it in the shell ledger. Shell is sold by the ton, and fifteen hundred pairs of shell equal a ton, give or take. You need to keep your wits about you because some of these Jap bastards will try to get you to falsify their shell weights in the shell books.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘To make them seem better than they are. If they get a reputation as a crack diver they can negotiate better advances on their pay for the following year. They’re all thieving bastards.’

  ‘I am sure there is the odd honest diver about, Maitland. What else would I have to do?’

  ‘The lugger crew’s mail comes to the packing office and you take it out to them. It’s tied up in red tape and they have to sign for it. They row over to you, first with the shell – which comes on board in baskets. They take the mail and then they row back again when the slop chest opens.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Our floating emporium. We carry anything that a bloke might be missing after a few weeks at sea. Tea, coffee, tobacco, fruitcake, tins of fruit and veg, tons of other man stuff, and gallons of grog. We record it as a cash advance against their wages in one ledger and the actual items we’ve sold in another.’

  ‘Why the double entry?’

  Maitland didn’t reply. He picked up the letter knife and began to ply it back and forth between his knuckles.

  ‘I’m not doing the paperwork if you don’t explain why, Maitland.’

  ‘We get fleeced enough for export duty on the shell we sell at four pounds per ton. This is a way of ensuring that we avoid customs duty levied on the goods we sell the men.’

  ‘So, the customs duty officer sees nothing amiss in the accounts books and you keep track on the stock to replace in another. Do you give it a hefty mark-up as well?’

  Maitland ignored the question. ‘Think you’ll manage the job?’

  ‘I’ll muddle along,’ she said.

  He pulled back towards the door and smacked his leg hard against the corner of her desk. ‘And move this bloody furniture back to where it was.’ He snatched up a stockwhip from one of the cane chairs. ‘I didn’t say you could rearrange the whole sodding house.’

  It was on her lips to say that it was Duc who had moved it out of position, but the words died, unformed. ‘What’s that for?’ She glanced at the whip.

  ‘I use it to school the horses.’ He gave her a hard look, as if daring her to argue.

  It was late afternoon, the red pindan stained gold by the sinking sun, when Maitland caught up with his gardener. In his right hand, the stockwhip handle felt smooth and familiar – an old friend returned home after a long absence. The whip had cost him a small fortune. Made of tanned kangaroo hide and crafted for him in Queensland, it was loaded and balanced to suit the particular usage he’d specified.

  This wasn’t the first time he would belt the guts out of a black.

  Action. Reaction. There was no guilt involved. Maitland had no fear that retribution might be wrong. Driven hard into his belief, like crucifixion nails into human flesh, pain was linked to sin. The bastard black had burned his lawn and he was going to pay.

  The Abo hadn’t been hard to follow. He’d almost invited it. The stupid bastard had shuffled through the bush, kicking up a dust plume as high as a fucking flare. He’d heard the police force were thinking of using the Abos as trackers. That had to be a bloody joke. The sodding bastard was on his back in the scrub, slumped on the ground like a drunk. Head in the shade, jammed hard against a gum tree, his legs were splayed wide, at ease in the sunshine. He was fast asleep, the corners of his mouth slack.

  Maitland took off his jacket, folded it carefully lining side out and hung it on the tree.

  He woke the Abo with a boot to his crotch.

  ‘Wake up, you fucking bastard. You burn my fucking lawn because you’re too idle to get off your skinny arse and think I won’t care?’

  Charlie rolled over, shielding his genitalia with his arms.

  Maitland squeezed the handle of his whip and, nodding to himself, laid a stripe across the young man’s cheek. He watched the blood bead up from the broken flesh. He thought first of pearls – dozens of tiny pearls lined up in a neat row – but he changed his mind. The beads were dark red. More like garnets, he decided.

  Charlie pulled his face down towards his shoulder.

  Maitland’s boot to his bum flipped him on his face. He swung the whip again and again, the plaited thong landing anywhere it could find. He enjoyed the sound, the snap and crack of leather against skin.

  ‘Learned your lesson yet, you black fucker?’

  Charlie tried to make himself smaller.

  Maitland was affronted by his silence, the silent acceptance of his lot. There should have been something. A scream. An apology. A pitiful begging for him to stop. A sob at the very least.

  Maitland pulled his legs straight and yanked down his trousers. He unbuttoned his own fly and doled out something extra, just to be sure he’d really got the message.

  Funny how you notice things. The Abo had ruined boots. The leather scraped clean off the toes, no laces. Not even metal eyelets where the laces should have been. Who the fuck wears boots with no laces?

  Maitland took his jacket off the tree and flung it over his shoulder. He felt a little too warm to put it on straightaway.

  On the way back to his bungalow, Maitland took a final glimpse over his shoulder and began to whistle. He’d always had a good ear for a tune and he liked the hymn. ‘Comfort, comfort ye my people’.

  It seemed fitting somehow.

  When Maisie woke the next morning, the sun was already well up. Maitland had made it clear from day one that he didn’t want to see her at breakfast, so a tray was brought to her room. She found his temperament difficult to fathom and even harder to manage, but she was learning to recognise the signs. It hadn’t taken her long to work out how the land lay. She kept out of his way before he left for the packing shed. He was never in the best of moods first thing in the morning, and she couldn’t fake much sympathy for his self-inflicted hangovers. She listened for sounds of him, then relaxed against her pillows.

  There was a persistent tapping at the back of the house, a scramble of sound she couldn’t unravel. Maisie kicked the bedclothes off her feet, reaching for her floral cotton wrapper. It was too hot to wear it, but Mrs Wallace had been insistent. Propriety must be observed if she was not alone and the house unlocked.

  ‘Marjorie,’ she called. ‘There’s someone at the back.’

  Tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Marjorie!’

  Tightening the belt around her waist and holding the wrapper closed across her chest, Maisie pushed her feet into slippers and followed the noise along the verandah, patting her overnight hair into place with her free hand. She could see Marjorie in the garden, hanging out bedsheets on two long wire lines. She was wearing a white cap and apron over a brown frock and had bunged her ears with wine-bottle corks. Duc was singing in the kitchen and his voice was a shocker. No wonder she’d not heard the tapping.

  ‘Hello?’

  A tea-coloured face peered in through the netted lattice.

  ‘Mem. Doctor Shin says can you come?’

  ‘Who is Doctor Shin?’

  ‘Japanese doctor at hospital.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Very urgent. I have letter.’ The young Malay held up an envelope so she could see it through the flyscreen. She read her name, written in loopy black ink.

  She opened the door and stretched out her hand. The edges of the envelope had been stuck down tight against prying eyes. She went to fetch her letter-opener, instructing the boy to stay where he was. She worked the ti
p under an edge and slit through the paper casing with the sharp blade. It contained a single sheet of flimsy paper. The message made her stomach churn. She folded it, stowed it in her pocket then went back to the boy.

  ‘Tell Doctor Shin that I am coming straightaway. I will get dressed and then I will come. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mem. I tell Doctor Shin you come soon.’

  Maisie took the bicycle from the side of the house and decided to pedal along Royal Avenue to the Japanese hospital – it would be quicker than asking for the sulky. She tucked her skirt up to clear the chain. In London, she had bicycled a lot and had a skirt with full flat pleats that gave her plenty of room to pedal. She’d left it in England, though, not thinking for a moment she would need it here.

  It was hot enough to fry an egg on the handlebars, and for once she was glad to wear gloves and insulate her hands from the sticky rubber grips. Thick coastal bush grew either side of the road but there was no shade to speak of. She squinted as the glare from the white shell road knifed at her eyes.

  Buccaneer Bay was set out on a grid system, the township stretching two miles from the lighthouse to the Japanese hospital. At the fourth block, she passed the government hospital, which was little more than a large house under attack from white ants. The peeling paintwork testified to its neglect.

  As Maisie pedalled past the blistered front entrance, she went over Miss Locke’s whispered words at the knitting circle the previous week. She had wanted to know if there was a good doctor in the town, one who might help her find a way to conquer The Visitor without knocking herself out every month.

  ‘The British doctor is not in good health. He’s ex-Indian Army. You may have seen him at parties. He reeks of stale brandy and cheap tobacco. I probably shouldn’t say this but his patients look healthier than he does. He is pale and mottled and his hands tremble. I have heard, too, that he is not well qualified, but that might be nasty gossip. What I can tell you, though, is that at the hospital there is no provision for ladies. With those things we must endure. I am sure when the time comes, you will want to go home to have your babies. Or travel to Perth.’

  Maisie flushed and fanned her face with a knitting pattern. She scrabbled around for a change of subject.

  ‘What happens to people who are really poorly?’

  ‘Any infectious disease is dealt with by putting the sufferer in a bungalow in the grounds. There was a Japanese sailor who came here a couple of years ago who had the small pox. The doctor installed him in a tent on the beach. The Jap died, but the disease didn’t spread. So, that was a good thing. They never put him in the hospital.’

  ‘Is there no alternative? Another physician?’ Maisie had asked. ‘Or must we sail back to Port Fremantle?’

  Miss Locke swept the room with her eyes. ‘Can I trust you, Mrs Sinclair?’

  Maisie nodded.

  ‘A few of us – what you might call the more broad-minded among the Britishers – consult the doctor at the Japanese hospital. He speaks excellent English and treats the usual range of medical problems you might expect out here. Broken bones, runny noses and prickly heat. He’s very discreet.’

  ‘I’m surprised that a Japanese hospital has been allowed to exist. It seems improbable that the town would permit it to happen.’

  Miss Locke coughed and lowered her voice. ‘You are quite right, Mrs Sinclair. At the start, when it was first discussed, the existence of the Japanese hospital and a Japanese doctor in Buccaneer Bay was not at all popular. The mayor told everyone the very idea was an example of non-white races challenging the authority of the white man. He had the support of his business colleagues here, but there was an entire workforce of Japanese in town holding down myriad types of job, from gardener to deep-sea diver – and they wanted their own Japanese-speaking doctor. During the lay-up, there are about two thousand Japanese men in Buccaneer Bay.’

  Miss Locke glanced round the room, inched forward in her seat and clicked her needles loudly.

  ‘I think the problem was that all the plans regarding the building of the hospital and appointing a doctor were made in secret. By the time the mayor realised what was afoot, the Japanese had sought the assistance of the consul general in Sydney and he had expedited the whole process. The new doctor and his wife arrived soon after and the hospital was built almost overnight, funded by donations from the Asian community.’

  Maisie tried to concentrate on what she was being told. ‘But, Miss Locke, you said the government hospital offered very little in terms of medical care, so surely this was a good thing?’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s a good thing to finally have a medical facility that could actually care for the sick, but everyone here was scared that the Asians might think themselves equal to the European. That is what everyone fears. Every day the government preaches its White Australia policy and wants the coloured workforce banished from its shores, but …’ Miss Locke cast another anxious eye at the fellow knitters. ‘The Japanese venture is a success. No-one can deny that. The doctor now has more patients than he could possibly have imagined, and a lot of them are white. We just try not to talk about it too much.’

  At the Japanese hospital, Maisie leaned her bicycle against a broad-leafed mulga tree. The humidity was drenching. She peeled off her gloves and fished in her skirt pocket for a handkerchief, mopped her throat and forehead, and pushed open the front door.

  Doctor Shin sat on a stool in his office, a cigarette hanging from his lips. Wearing a white doctor’s coat to protect his clothes, he was small and neat, his fingers stained yellow, his mouth full of gold teeth. He stubbed his cigarette, stood, bowed and seemed relieved. ‘Mrs Sinclair. I am most indebted to you. Thank you for coming.’

  Maisie put her hands together and bowed back. It seemed natural.

  ‘Please come with me, dear madam. I am at a loss with the magnitude of what has occurred.’

  The doctor led her down a long stretch of corridor. She saw that many of the side wards were occupied.

  ‘Is there much sickness in Buccaneer Bay at the moment, Doctor Shin? I haven’t heard that we have an epidemic.’ She pressed the edges of her blouse round her throat.

  ‘No, dear lady. These patients have the divers’ paralysis.’

  ‘These are all divers who can’t move?’

  ‘Some can, a little. Some are more affected.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I am attempting to make a study. These men are hard-hat divers who spend their days on the seabed – most often at great depths – collecting shell. I have read many reports from the British Medical Journal and I believe that, under pressure, the human body becomes saturated with nitrogen. While the diver remains at the same depth the pressure is constant and he is in no discomfort. Think of the diver as a bottle of champagne. When he comes up gently from the seabed, the nitrogen releases into his bloodstream with a little fizz. But if he comes up too quickly it is like shaking up the bottle. At the surface, the bubbles explode into his body exactly like the moment when the champagne cork pops out. It affects their joints the most, and is painful almost beyond bearing.’

  ‘Surely it would make sense to come up slowly and avoid the pain.’

  ‘Some divers do come up in stages and still suffer the paralysis. Other divers sink to the depths day after day and are not affected. This is why I am trying to make a study to try to find out why this happens, scientifically. Everyone has his theory. Some think that thin men with long necks do not suffer, while barrel-chested men with short necks will be dead after a few weeks. White men, the crews say, are particularly at risk.’

  ‘But that’s incredibly worrying. All the new divers are white, Doctor Shin. Are they not committing suicide by diving for shell?’

  ‘Time will tell. They have come from England boasting the latest equipment and diving charts to regulate their ascent from the bottom of the ocean. Let us hope it will be enough to keep them safe. But let me show you why I asked you to come to the hospital toda
y.’ He pushed open a door at the end of the corridor and stood back to let her through.

  It occurred to Maisie that this was the first time a man had shared his thoughts with her without patronising simplification – as if she were an equal, capable of understanding.

  The treatment room was stuffy and it seemed to her that evil had been trapped in the airless room. Charlie lay on his front, arms by his sides, fingers splayed. Blood-soaked sheets were pulled down off his body in a twist of hospital cotton, and the acrid odour of the young man’s sweat nearly overwhelmed her. She took a step back, thinking she might faint, and clasped her hands tight.

  ‘I found him on the steps this morning,’ Doctor Shin said.

  ‘How did he get there?’

  ‘The night-pan collector brought him on his cart.’

  She stared at the young man on the trolley, her face white with shock. ‘Why didn’t you treat his injuries straightaway?’

  ‘I need an assistant. You will understand, Mrs Sinclair, in a moment.’

  Charlie had told Doctor Shin – in rambling fragments – that he’d waited a long time in the garden for Captain Sinclair so he could explain that the woman in the house had told him to water the grass with the artesian water. When it was knocking-off time, he’d set off into the bush. He didn’t think the boss would track him down and whip him.

  ‘But why have you asked for my help, Doctor Shin? You must have qualified staff to assist you?’

  He waggled his fingers towards the patient. ‘Would you not prefer it this way? Would you like it to be public knowledge that your husband was capable of this?’

  Maisie stood up straight but couldn’t look him in the eye. She understood the value of what she had been offered, and knew she was now bound in some inexplicable way to the Japanese doctor.