The Pearler's Wife

by Roxane Dhand

  He pressed his face into his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut. JB was already asleep, his breathing regular and untroubled. Coop rolled onto his side, then onto his back, and stared at the ceiling for a bit. After tossing and turning for half the night he got down from his berth and raked his fingers through his matted hair – there was no way he was going to sleep. He slipped out on deck in the early hours and lay down on a tarpaulin. He closed his eyes and tried to untangle the events that had led to their present predicament.

  Captain Sinclair had abruptly changed tack to flatter him out to sea on a clapped-out lugger. He spent a long time wondering about that. Like an excited child, he’d signed a document in Captain Sinclair’s office that he’d pretended he could read. Whatever Captain Sinclair was up to, he was as smart as the devil, and Coop needed to wise up.

  He slapped at a mosquito and shifted his position. It was impossible to get comfortable on deck. The water smacked at the planking, unbalancing the order of his thoughts. He found himself thinking about Mrs Sinclair. He barely knew her, but her elegance and beauty did nothing to diminish her resourcefulness or strength of will, and despite her poise she truly seemed to judge others by who they were rather than how they had been born. She was different from anyone he had ever met – a finer breed of woman, and utterly out of his reach. He pressed his palms together, imagining them cupping her face and travelling south over her lithe, soft body. The blood pounded in his head, while his thoughts made him sweat.

  JB emerged from the cabin, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and pulled a tin of tobacco from a sodden pocket. He rolled two cigarettes and handed one to Coop.

  ‘We need to be careful when we get back to shore,’ he said. ‘I think we’re being played. But I don’t know yet what the game is.’

  Coop lit up and nodded. ‘Got to agree with you there, JB. I’m getting the feeling we weren’t meant to come back from this little jaunt.’

  CHAPTER 13

  THE STORM ON SHORE blew itself out in the early hours. By daylight, the residents were emerging from their shelters. In the hotel bars and along the waterfront, the verandah talk was of the weather. Everyone agreed it felt a lot cooler. Storms sometimes did that.

  On another verandah, the temperature was still too hot.

  When they had called it a night some hours before, Shorty had borrowed a pair of Maitland’s pyjamas and bunked down in the guestroom. He had now come to rout out his host. The storm shutters were still down in the mosquito room and the stifling space was dark. He undid the buttons of the pyjama jacket and peeled it off his sweaty flesh.

  ‘I think your gamble will have paid off, Mait. A quid to a shilling that boat will have broken up at sea.’

  ‘Here’s hoping.’ Maitland kicked the tangle of damp sheets to the bottom of the bed and turned his pillow over to the cool side. The relief was fleeting. His head throbbed and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. With Shorty in the house, there was no possibility of dozing off again. He reached over to the nightstand for his glass and gulped the water down. ‘What time did we turn in last night?’

  ‘Damned if I know. Late, early hours … depends on your point of view.’

  Duc’s discreet cough and knock at the mosquito-room door ruptured their talk. ‘You want cuppa tea or breakfast today, Boss? It being all windy-windy. I got him saucepan fella fulla porridge.’

  ‘Is my wife up?’

  ‘Oh yes, she talkin’ Marjorie.’

  ‘Then no. I’ll go out. You coming, Shorty?’

  ‘Think I might breakfast with your wife, Mait. See what she has to say about life.’

  Duc had cranked open a couple of storm shutters but the reek of brandy and cigar smoke was still heavy on the air. Maisie hadn’t slept a wink. Shivery with worry, her stomach wild with anxiety, she could not stop thinking of William Cooper. The cyclone had blown through, but the sea was still thrashing up the dunes, swamping the sand, swollen and angry. She wanted to cry out that Maitland had deliberately put the diver’s life at risk and those of his crew. But who would have listened? For a moment the question overwhelmed her. She felt a terrible panic that those black eyes of his would not come back to the Bay and that somehow it was her fault. She peered down the shadowed verandah to the guestroom, where Captain Mason was sleeping off his drink. In many ways, I’m no safer than the divers, she thought. Maitland doesn’t care enough to protect me from his friend. She turned and stared beyond the lattice to the lighthouse. Did you do your job last night and keep a little boat safe? She shook her head. I can’t think about him now or I’ll drive myself mad.

  ‘Morning, Maisie!’

  She turned, startled at the sound of her Christian name, and stared at the bare-chested Shorty. ‘Where’s Maitland?’

  ‘The packing shed, town, communing with the gin bottle. Who knows?’

  ‘Where are your clothes, Captain Mason?’

  ‘I wasn’t planning on needing them just yet,’ he said, and in one smooth movement he grabbed her hand. His head swooped down and he kissed her palm, lapping the tip of his tongue backwards and forwards across her flesh like a slobbering dog. It was about as pleasurable as a hospital-bed bath. She wiped her hand on the chair arm and didn’t give two hoots if he’d seen her do it.

  He straightened and gripped her shoulder with his massive paw. She felt her bones crunch.

  ‘Maitland is a lucky bloke, Maisie, but you deserve better; a proper man with lead in his pencil.’ He bent down a second time and stamped a rash of slimy kisses on her lips and neck.

  She peeled his hand from her arm and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What do you think, child bride?’ The sweat was thick on his forehead, his voice breathless. ‘I want you.’

  ‘I’m married,’ she said, stiffly.

  He lunged at her again and ran his hand down her leg. ‘Are you sure that’s a valid excuse, Maisie? I can’t see the certificate hanging in pride of place on your wall.’ He shook his head, mocking. ‘You’ll change your mind eventually, and I’ll be waiting when you’ve had enough of Maitland. I never give up and you will give in, I guarantee it. You won’t get a better offer. It’s time for you to get down off that high horse of yours and face up to what life’s all about here.’

  Maisie stepped back towards the door. ‘I think you should go home, Captain Mason. I don’t feel comfortable with you in my house. Maitland’s not here and I thought we were all dedicated to perpetuating the myth that we know how to behave like gentlemen in this parody of little England.’

  ‘Cut me some slack, Maisie. I’m only human.’

  ‘And I am too,’ she said.

  ‘Are you, though? You’re too bloody perfect, so high-principled that no-one can keep up. That’s probably why Maitland blasts himself with the gin bottle every night – he can’t cope with living with Saint Maisie.’ He sat down at the table and thrust his spoon in his bowl. ‘Have some porridge. It’s not half bad.’

  Maisie struggled to keep her voice level. ‘Do you think I have an appetite? You’ve just told me that I have a totally unrealistic view of what life is like here, that no-one can live up to my expectations of them or tolerate being preached at by a newcomer. But while you chomp your way through my food, let me tell you what it’s been like for me. Everyone with a white face who I’ve met in Buccaneer Bay believes themselves to be well bred, a slave to a British code of conduct of which they have no firsthand experience and which has been dreamed up by a generation of impostors. There is discrimination here on a scale that horrifies me, and the violence towards the native inhabitants – which is ignored and unpunished – is, to my mind, nothing short of criminal.’

  His face stiffened. ‘What’s the matter with you, Maisie? Where’s all this come from?’

  She stared at him tight-lipped and thought hard about his accusatory summation of her character, and the marriage that was a sham.

  ‘Tell you what, Maisie.’ Shorty Mason got up from the table and pick
ed up a box of Maitland’s cigarettes. He flipped up the lid and took one out. He tapped the end on the back of the box then put the cigarette between his lips. ‘I’ll get dressed and get out of your hair. I’ll come back later when you’ve calmed down.’

  Maisie wanted to slam her fist in his patronising face. ‘That’s too good of you, Captain Mason. By the time you return, I’m sure Maitland will be home from wherever he’s gone and be delighted to pickle you with drink.’

  Shorty Mason paused at the door and said, almost gently, ‘I’m sorry if I offended you, Maisie, but I think you have a very great deal to learn about the ways things are in the Bay.’

  CHAPTER 14

  IT WAS THE LATEST start to the pearling season that anyone could remember. Slowly, the weather was changing. Delicate blooms began to lift frail heads from buffeted stems, and butterflies rose from the earth in puffs of yellow. Weeds flourished in the garden and threatened to strangle the tender shoots. It should have felt like spring but, to Maisie, heaviness like a wet autumn in England clung oppressively round her shoulders.

  In the days after the cyclone, she had tried to put William Cooper out of her mind and concentrate on the business of living with her husband. Shorty Mason’s words had stung; perhaps she wasn’t trying hard enough, or was being naïve about marriage. Doctor Shin thought that the difficulties more likely lay with Maitland; that he had followed a bachelor existence for so long that he was finding it hard to adjust to married life. Give him time, the doctor had said; nature not medicine has its own way of sorting things out. Despite her efforts, she thought constantly of the tall English diver – one moment daring to hope he had survived the storm, the next convinced he had not. He had become her romantic fantasy, resonating in her head every time she looked out to sea.

  Two days after the blow, as the afternoon sun was sinking, the Sharky limped into the Bay.

  Maitland’s slack-jowled face was red with fury. ‘What the bloody dickens!’

  ‘Looks like that old tug of yours survived the willy-willy,’ Blair said, draining his whisky. His voice was ugly. ‘Impressive, mate.’

  Maitland shook his head. ‘Incredible.’

  Maisie exhaled, hugging both arms around her body, cradling her relief.

  He didn’t miss the sigh. ‘And what are you looking so bloody smug about?’

  She hoped he wouldn’t hear the joy in her voice. ‘Your boat’s safely home, along with your crew. That’s something to be pleased about, surely?’ She felt ridiculously happy.

  He gave her a long, hard look. His grey eyes were cold with scorn. ‘They aren’t returning from a bloody cruise, Maisie. They went out to work the pearl beds and have obviously failed. I’ll have to patch up the lugger and send them off again next week with the rest of the fleet. That costs money – which doesn’t grow on trees by the way, despite what you’ve been brought up to think. And you can get to work as well. You’ve loafed around here long enough, enjoying my bloody hospitality.’

  Maisie inhaled, struck by the damning finality of his words.

  Early the following Monday morning, Maisie joined Maitland’s workforce. She sat in a swivelling, sweat-stained chair in the fire that was her husband’s office and ran her finger down the schooner’s supply list. She pivoted around, using her foot as a rudder, and stared at the back of Maitland’s bulldog neck. It was pitted with black pores, which seemed as if they could do with a good scrub.

  ‘There’s a great deal of food here, Maitland. How long do the men spend at sea?’

  He remained perched on the edge of the desk and didn’t turn round, which gave her an interesting look at his ears. ‘A month to start with. They’ll store the tinned goods in the boat’s dinghy.’

  Mrs Wallace had told her that men with small ears, in her modest experience, invariably possessed a venal temperament. Mrs Wallace. Maisie mouthed her name and almost cried out with longing. She had come to treasure her as the mother she’d never really had and the pain of her absence was still raw, like a wound that refused to heal. What advice would she hand out if she were here right now? Had she already guessed at the size of Maitland’s tiny ears and been trying to warn her?

  She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. ‘It’s all tinned goods. Is there no fresh food? Whole armadas died of scurvy in the past. And beri-beri,’ she added for emphasis.

  ‘Jesus, Maisie,’ Maitland said, easing his paunch from the desk, ‘I’m not running a bloody restaurant. They’ll supplement what I give them with fish. And when you go out on the schooner you’ll make sure they haven’t hidden any of my pearls. I know I’m being done right and left, and you’re going to ensure that it bloody well stops.’

  ‘How am I expected to do that? Captain Hanson does his own shell policing. You’ve heard him say over and over that it’s the only way he can vaguely control the onboard thefts.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘His boats all fish the same patch and he rotates between them. I’m not supervising the opening of shell, Maitland, and will I be taken seriously as a woman doing a man’s job?’

  He gnawed at the tip of his pipe, his small, effeminate mouth working the smooth surface between his lips while he eyed a sarong-wearing Malay stacking shell into bins.

  ‘I’m not suggesting you personally open the shell, Maisie,’ he snapped. ‘You collect what they’ve opened up when they row it over to the schooner. There’s a wooden box that some bloke in town’s just invented – the shell-opener drops the pearls in and there’s a valve that makes it bloody impossible to shake them out. I have the only keys here in my office. I don’t have the time to ponce about at sea, although you have nothing but time on your hands. So, you pick up and record the shell and run the slop chest. Even a female should be capable of that.’

  Maisie thought it would be simpler just to steal the box, new invention or not, and pretend it had fallen overboard.

  ‘What will you be doing while I am at sea?’

  He flipped the lid off a tin of tobacco and began stuffing his pipe. ‘Pencil and paper tallying.’

  ‘Isn’t that what I’m doing?’ She thought of the number of ledgers he expected her to fill in.

  ‘No.’ The light-grey eyes screwed up with annoyance. ‘Everything that came off the luggers during the lay-up was labelled with the licence number of the boat it came off. It’s been stored up at the camps. Now we’re off to work again, I have to reissue the gear to the lugger it came from, item by item.’

  Maisie studied her husband. He was flushed as red as Mars, and drops of perspiration stood proud on his brow like blisters.

  ‘I thought all the luggers were out to sea.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, why are you doing this if the boats aren’t here anymore?’

  ‘Residual stock. We’ll keep it here or on the schooner, for repairs.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘How many luggers am I supplying with residual stock?’

  ‘Mine, two of Hanson’s, Espinell’s and a couple of Blair’s.’

  ‘Not Captain Mason’s?’ She had all her fingers crossed he was at sea with his luggers.

  Maitland shook his head, unleashing an arc of sweat.

  ‘And the slop chest?’

  ‘Is the shop we run off the schooner. I told you. I’m not sure how I can explain this to you any plainer. The schooner is a floating shell repository-cum-office-cum-shop. It serves three purposes, all mutually dependent. We try to keep the luggers generally in the same area, within a few miles or so, to cut down on costs because it’s expensive to transport supplies and equipment back and forth. At the moment, though, we’re not all fishing the same beds. Mason’s gone north of Neptune’s Dairy because he says he doesn’t know where the most plentiful beds are just yet.’

  ‘But you’re putting all your eggs in the same basket.’

  She sensed he wanted to stamp his foot. Or better still, to slap her.

  ‘For the moment I am. While we’re at the tail end o
f the Wet. My crews think Cooper is the messiah, after that stunt with the Sharky. Give it a week or two and they’ll move off to different patches. The Jap divers know where to go for the richest pickings.’

  Over the past week, Maisie had heard whispers that the business with the Sharky had saved Maitland’s fleshy hide. She was not clear quite why. ‘And then what?’

  ‘You’ll sail about on the Hornet till you find them, Maisie.’

  ‘Where is the schooner? I’ve never even set eyes on it.’

  ‘Mangrove Point Jetty in Japtown, close to the wholesalers who supply the stock. You should take a trip there and get your face known. Running the slop chest is your job now, so don’t stuff it up.’

  She looked at the large balding head with its straggly, thinning moustache and button-sized ears. ‘Is it really, Maitland? I thought my job was to provide you with some social respectability. How do you expect me to do that if I’m never at home?’ She stood up and scooped the ledgers under her arm. ‘I think I’ll take this paperwork to the office at the house. The sound of your pencil cooking the books is giving me a migraine.’

  For the crews at sea, six days of the week were a miserable, exhausting slog. Saturday was different in only one sense: they dropped anchor at the end of the day and didn’t work again until Monday.

  The fleet’s rendezvous point was Shell Bay. All the designated luggers in the pearling cluster began to arrive on Saturday afternoon and, as they dropped anchor, the crews pushed out in dinghies to stretch their cramped limbs and greet friends from the other boats. The only English crew was on board the hastily patched-up Sharky. Coop wondered if the other white divers were raising more excitement than he was. He’d been at sea a couple of weeks and already he was struggling to remember if there was life beyond spending days on end in primitive conditions, searching for an ugly mollusc that didn’t want to be found.