by Roxane Dhand
A loud snort derailed Coop’s train of thought. On the balcony next door, JB was puttering through his nose and lips. His friend was curled on his side, his head resting on his hands like a pet in its basket. Coop envied him – after years as a tender, he could sleep anywhere.
Even from his hotel, a mile from the beach, Coop could hear waves thrashing in the bay. Thunderclaps cracked like whips overhead, the sky an electrical show of flashing white lightning slashing through the stars, keeping sleep a dream. Inch by inch, he stretched out his limbs to the cool corners of his bed, relishing the relief until he was again stewing with heat.
At six the next morning, Coop pushed his half-eaten breakfast plate away. He had no appetite for the greasy chops, and was too nervous to work his jaws on the stringy meat. He heaped sugar into a mug of tea and replayed the meeting with Captain Sinclair in his head again, wondering if he’d missed something key. What had prompted the great change in the captain’s opinion of his ability to ‘see’ shell? A few weeks ago, the boss had been pretty scathing of his chances.
By six-thirty, dawn was breaking in the east. The Seafarer’s Rest Hotel was quiet as Coop and JB set off along the beach. The rain had eased but the wind was wildly insistent, whipping the waves white and sending them thundering against the rocks. The two men bent over, turned their shoulders into the force of the gale and forced their way towards the lay-up camp. The sand, no longer benign, blasted sharp-edged shrapnel against their skin.
JB used his sleeve to wipe the gritty residue from his face. ‘You all set, Coop? Nervous?’
Coop breathed in a lungful of salty air. ‘Always am before a dive. You know that. Not sure about this weather, though. It’s really blowing up. Visibility will be nil.’
‘You’ve dived in wild weather, Coop. Think about that job we did last year off the north coast of Scotland.’
‘That was different. It was freezing and the middle of winter but it wasn’t a storm-force blast. No-one with a grain of sense would go out to sea in weather like this.’
‘Then why are we?’ JB said.
Coop punched him lightly on the arm. ‘Good question, JB. I asked for this dry run, so we have to go. It’s the first decent thing Captain Sinclair’s done for us, so we’re not going to back out because the sea’s a bit rough. Anyway, he said the forecast was good.’
‘And that’s a load of bollocks,’ JB muttered.
They trudged on, battling through the loose sand, their canvas kit bags stuffed with diving gear. At the end of the beach, they turned inland. With the wind gusting relentlessly against their backs, they almost ran along a snaking path to the creek where Maitland had his boats laid up during the Wet. JB braced his shoulders and leaned backwards into the wind, trying to slow himself down.
‘Can you pick up the pace a bit, JB?’
‘I don’t have a good feeling about this, Coop.’
‘It’s what we came for.’
JB straightened up. ‘I know, but it feels – I dunno – like we’re being set up. Those are storm clouds on the horizon, and you know it as well as I do.’
A pale cream blob of light winked at him from the lighthouse and stretched out its arc across the bay. ‘It’ll be fine, JB. Sooner we get there, sooner we can show them what we Brits are made of, eh?’
At the lay-up camp, Coop exchanged his shoes for heavy caulked sea boots, tucked his dive helmet up under his arm and squelched across the mud to the small snub-nosed craft floating in the creek, its Christmas-green paint blistered and scratched like an old door. JB removed his shoes, hitched his duffle bag onto his shoulder and followed barefoot, furrowing lines of misgiving on his face.
They knew Captain Sinclair had a policy of mixing his crews. His multinational workforce barely tolerated each other, which some said suited him down to the ground. The Japanese considered themselves superior, and treated the Malays and Filipinos with contempt. The Keopangers were bottom of the pile.
Daike, the number-one diver, was already on board, sitting amid a clutter of ropes and supplies. He was watching the light change over the water, the clouds race overhead and the hawks chase down their prey, claws stretched out beneath them in the strange watery dawn. As Coop approached, the Japanese diver fingered the rice-paper charm he wore under his vest and took a spoonful of his breakfast rice. A flick of his wrist tossed it over the side.
‘Fish’s favourite food?’ Coop said.
‘You take from sea, white boy, you give back to sea.’
Coop’s mouth twisted. Tension tapped at his temples, his eyes gritty from lack of sleep. He was not in the mood for a duel.
‘Is that a Japanese custom?’
Daike didn’t reply.
‘Okay.’ He pointed at a mangrove branch attached to the mast. ‘And that?’
‘He for safe return.’ He pointed at Coop’s feet. ‘And you no wear boots on lugger.’
‘Why not?’ Coop said.
‘More better.’
‘Why?’
‘Feet better for …’ He searched for the English word. ‘Upright.’
Coop opened his mouth but Daike held up a hand and silenced him. ‘You talk too much, white boy. To see shell you need be quiet. We go now. Before rain come.’
Within half an hour they cast off. The crewman at the tiller steered the rolling lugger down the twisting creek and out into the bay. Wave after wave crashed against the hull, flushing the deck with foam, the sea boiling and angry. The wooden joints in the masts groaned loudly as they negotiated the reef-strewn channel. They finally dropped anchor before the treacherous Neptune’s Dairy, a narrow strip of water surrounded by rocky outcrops.
‘We stop here,’ Daike said. ‘Start work.’ He refused to go further until he’d seen Cooper in the water.
‘Where’s my compressor, Daike?’ Coop asked, not seeing it on deck.
‘No bring.’
‘No bring? Why not?’
‘No like. Better Malay boys turn handle.’
‘Have you ever used an engine air compressor?’
The Japanese diver said nothing.
‘Are you scared, Daike, that the engine will bring bad luck?’
‘I not scared.’
‘That’s good, because if we dive together again I’m bringing the engine-driven pump with me. You can dive much deeper, and it’s safer if you stick to the tables.’
‘We no dive together second time. One time only. Is big favour.’
JB stood on deck, waving the Admiralty tables in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. The waves rocking the lugger were making him work to keep his balance.
Daike announced that they would dive together to fifteen fathoms. ‘Is not normal. Normal is I go then you go. That way, we keep man on bottom all day. Today I show you shell.’
‘What about decompression times?’
Daike looked contemptuous. ‘You want rest like girl? Okay. I go down, I come up. Have cuppa tea and smoko then I go down some more.’
‘Are you not afraid of decompression sickness?’
Daike clomped off muttering, ‘I not afraid of anything.’
JB put down the Admiralty tables and stopwatch, and wedged himself against the edge of the boat. A major part of his job was to assist Coop dress in his diving outfit, and the pitching lugger was not helping. It was a task with a start and an end, and it could not be rushed. Coop hauled long scratchy woollen stockings over his feet and up his thighs. Then came two woollen vests, a pair of red tweed trousers and two heavy sweaters, crowned with a woolly cap to insulate his head.
On deck, despite the wind, Coop was beginning to sweat. He knew the initial dive water would be soothingly warm, but as he sank like a stone to the depths the chill would envelop him, and he would be glad to be wearing layers of wool.
The big, one-size-fits-all rubberised diving suit was before him. There was no way he could negotiate it by himself.
JB soaped Coop’s wrists and stretched the head opening wide, standing back as Coop squirmed himself inside
. He then sat on the one piece of furniture on board – the stool – for the heavy work to begin.
Daike was already hanging over the side on a rope ladder, his shell bag draped round his neck, brownish-black water foaming around his waist. The expression on his face through the glass plate was impossible to read.
Coop lunged his feet into his weighted boots – fourteen pounds of lead on the ends of his legs that helped keep him planted on the ocean floor. JB placed lead weighting plates on his chest and back, and a copper corselet over his shoulders.
He moved to the second of the coir-rope ladders for the final fitting of his diving helmet. Perching over the side of the lugger, hanging onto the edge of the boat, he waited while JB dropped the green-tinged copper helmet onto its fastenings around his neck. He dunked the faceplate in the seawater to prevent it fogging with condensation, and twisted a short stub of wood across the screws to tighten the seals. The rubber air hose was fitted into the helmet, the rope lifeline was secured around his chest, and finally Coop was set to go. A deckhand was already busy turning the wheel to keep the number-one diver supplied with oxygen. It was unusual to have two pumps on board – there was scarcely room for one.
A heaving wave hit the hull like a hammer and tipped the Sharky sideways. Coop clung to the ladder until the ancient lugger righted itself as it lurched and shuddered in the raging water, then lowered himself feet-first into the sea and sank from view into the murky gloom.
On board, JB waited with his back braced against the cabin and played out Coop’s lifeline. It was strange to watch the deckhand responsible for his diver’s air supply and he waited, anxious for the shake on the lifeline to signal that Coop was on the bottom. When it came, he started his stopwatch. He kept the divers at fifteen fathoms for sixty minutes, and then brought them to the surface when their time was up. It was a long, slow process.
The first drift over the seabed produced nothing. Back on deck, the two divers drank tea and lit cigarettes.
‘What’s wiped out all the shell, Daike?’ Coop said.
‘We spend too much time come up. Not enough time look on bottom. Shell is there. We go back and look some more. We no dangle on rope.’
JB glanced at the black clouds gathering on the horizon. He looked at Coop and shook his head.
‘You need rest time, Daike. Have another cup of tea and then we can go again in an hour or so,’ Coop tried.
‘I no wait. I have cuppa then I go down. I see shell here at start of Wet,’ Daike said. ‘I go down and pick up plenty. Today I show you how dive here. Tomorrow we sail little bit and you on own. Want help spot shell, you go now.’
Coop quizzed JB with a look.
JB hunched his shoulders. ‘Your funeral, Coop. You should be up for three hours. You’ve barely had twenty minutes. Can’t force you, though, if you want to play silly buggers.’
They went down again, over and over. As the day wore on, JB became more vocally concerned. Coop had told him about the poor visibility, and Daike was reporting alternate hot and cold currents, which bothered him. The huge black clouds, shot through with flickering lightning, seemed more menacing than any he had seen in his life. The wind had blown itself into a fury. They still hadn’t found any shell.
‘Coop,’ JB said quietly, ‘I think we should hoist sail and head back to the creek.’ It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sails hung limp like wet washing on the rigging.
Coop agreed, but Daike wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You want run for cover like sissy boy? Who frightened now?’
‘I’m not frightened. Just trying to be sensible.’
‘You frightened. I tell boss man you sissy boy.’
‘And you are a bloody madman. Do you want to get us all killed?’
JB had heard enough, and put his hand up like a referee at a football match. ‘The wind’s dropped. Just look at the sky.’
The entire sky had gone black, as if night had come early.
Jane Locke looked up from her paper and smiled. ‘You found it!’
Maisie dumped a brown paper package on the tabletop. Her face was burning and she felt rather damp. ‘Thank you so much for suggesting this, Miss Locke, and please accept my apologies for keeping you waiting. There were one or two things I needed to do in town and I momentarily lost my way.’
Jane nodded. ‘The backstreets can be tricky. I’ve had my fair share of encounters with dead ends and feral cats.’
Maisie peeled off her gloves and patted the palms of her hands against her cheeks; the heat seemed to be receding. ‘I didn’t even know this place existed. I haven’t really eaten anywhere other than in our bungalow or with our friends at their homes.’
‘Do please sit down and let me pour you a glass of water, Mrs Sinclair. The Long Soup and Satay Shop is one of my favourite places to come when I want to get away from the residency, but I appreciate it is quite a stretch of the legs from your bungalow. It’s much closer for me, so I try to come most weeks for Mr Truong’s long soup.’ She pointed to the kitchen at the end of the corrugated-iron shed, where an old, long-haired Chinese man was draping strands of limp noodle dough over a fat wooden pole.
Maisie picked up her glass and took a small sip. ‘I am embarrassed to confess I don’t know what long soup is, Miss Locke, let alone a satay. It’s shameful, really, how little effort I have made to integrate myself in the Bay. My friend Mrs Wallace is constantly chiding me for wallowing in bouts of homesickness.’
‘Well,’ Jane replied, ‘it’s early days, and a happy marriage will soon cure you of that.’
Maisie kept her eyes on the checked tablecloth. She was only just getting over her embarrassing conversation with Doctor Shin on the subject of her continuing virginity. ‘So, satay and long soup are what, exactly?’
‘A popular myth is that Mr Truong’s satay – chunks of meat, skewered on metal rods and cooked in a fire pit – is made from the flesh of stray cats. I denounce this myth on the basis that the feline population is far too thin.’
Maisie was not sure how to respond to this, so said nothing.
Mr Truong shuffled over and slapped two menus, spoons and napkins on the table. Maisie stared at hand-drawn pictures of the dishes he served. ‘Are there no written descriptions?’
Jane smiled. ‘This is easier when there is a large mixed-race community who speak different tongues. What language would you use? Mr Truong came over with the first great influx of Chinese immigrants in the mid-1800s during the gold rush over east. Many of the labourers who came at that time were employed as cooks, and Mr Truong gradually found his way here and quite literally set up shop.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘Yes, when I asked him. Who is Mrs Wallace?’
Maisie ran her hand over the menu. ‘I can see from the pictures that long soup is a liquid thick with smooth flat noodles, meat and vegetables.’
Jane nodded. ‘What you can’t tell, though, is that the liquid is fragrant and spicy, and the vegetables crunchy. I generally skip the meat and dive straight into the vegetables, which at the residence are invariably overcooked and in poor supply.’
Maisie twisted her napkin round her finger and mumbled something vague about vegetables being a universal problem in the Bay.
‘Who is Mrs Wallace?’ Jane asked again.
Maisie’s voice was gone, her whisper faint. ‘A very dear lady I travelled with to Australia. I miss her more than I ever thought possible.’
Jane clasped Maisie’s hand and pressed it in her own. ‘It’s very difficult at the beginning, leaving behind the familiar and finding one’s feet in a new environment,’ she said. ‘Friends are too few, and we must take care to nurture the ones we have. Do you think we might move on to using first names?’
Maisie stared at Jane’s hand, which still had a tight hold of her own. ‘I’d like that very much.’ She wondered how she could extricate her fingers without seeming rude. ‘First names would be lovely, so please call me Maisie.’
Jane withdrew her
hand and reached for the water jug. ‘And I am the plain Jane, who senses that you are struggling in your new home.’
Maisie looked properly at the woman seated opposite. A tall, statuesque woman with straight red hair slightly greying at the roots and cut short to her chin, a square face, and an impressive bosom dwarfing her slender hips. She looked cool, comfortable with herself in her drop-waist cotton day dress – the polar opposite of her employer. The bishop’s wife was brusque, fat and prone to excessive perspiration.
‘I think you do yourself an injustice, particularly on an intellectual level. I heard from Doctor Shin – and thank you for that recommendation – that you are conducting a study into the Aborigines and their culture.’
Jane looked pleased. Maisie imagined there were few people she had met in the Bay who were able to look beyond the lines on her face or the wisps of hair on her upper lip to see the nimble-minded person who lived inside.
‘I am, and I would very much enjoy talking to your maid Marjorie at some point as part of my research. But that is not why I have asked you here today.’ She looked around the restaurant. ‘Do you recognise anyone who might give us away?’
Maisie glanced around and shook her head. A young boy darted in from outside, his sodden shirt clinging to his ribcage, his hair blown wild by the wind. She hardly knew a soul in the Bay, and anyone who might consider themselves an acquaintance had probably thought better of the weather and remained indoors.
Jane lifted a menu off the table and flipped it on its back. ‘Please tell me if it is none of my business, but true friends and honesty are in short supply in the Bay. Let me be frank. Are you happy here? Because I worry very much that you are not.’
‘I’m not really sure what happiness is, but this,’ she waved her hand in circles beside her ear, ‘is what my life has become. I was sent here to marry a man I did not know. It wasn’t at all my choice.’
‘Were you not close to your parents?’
‘Why would you ask that?’
Jane gave her an appraising look. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You never speak of them, and they weren’t present at your marriage ceremony. Most fathers give their daughters away. Handing the care of his daughter to someone else is a big moment in a man’s life, and a mother would want to reassure herself that her child was cared for and happy. I am surprised neither one of them accompanied you out here.’