by Roxane Dhand
All the same, it took her a long time to find it. It was not in the white ledger where details of divers’ employment were recorded, but in the daily journal for another of Maitland’s luggers, the Clancy, a ship that had been wrecked in the cyclone. She was sure that Maitland didn’t want it found.
She put her head in her hands and a swamping tide of fury and desolation left her shaking from its force. Her husband’s treachery hadn’t stopped with her mail. From the window, she watched a sea eagle hover above the hot-red rock face standing guard over the beach. Its prey flailed only briefly, clamped between its claws, as if it knew there was no hope. She felt the blood draining from her cheeks, leaving her skin cold.
Coop had reason to be worried. He had effectively signed his own death warrant.
Back at the house, Maisie took her empty breakfast tray to the kitchen. Duc still did not encourage her passage across the threshold and stood guard in the doorway, blocking her path.
‘What are you planning for supper tonight, Duc?’ she said.
He outlined what he proposed to cook for dinner, but his windmilling arms semaphored his unhappiness. The shellfish had been caught the previous evening from traps across Mangrove Creek and had arrived in a squirming sack. They rarely went shopping. The mobile market came to the house, along with the twice-daily delivery of ice for the ice chest. That morning, the delivery was late.
‘How many’s we, Mem?’
‘I don’t know. Captain Sinclair hopes to invite the new French pearl doctor and his wife to supper, with the bishop and his wife and Miss Locke. The mayor and Miss Montague will probably join us too, and I expect Captain Mason will be here as usual. Why not cook for twelve and then there will be extra food for you and Marjorie if we are fewer.’
‘Hope ice boy come soon. Or shellfish get stinky.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘I put ’im in wash house after I boil them fellas.’
‘All right. I’ll go and get it, and you can clear a space in the ice chest.’
The ice chest, which lived on the back verandah, was the only means of keeping food cool and reasonably fresh. Twice a day, the ice was raced into the bungalow from the road. It was a backbreaking but vital job in their climate. A panting employee carried the melting block with huge iron tongs and deposited it in the chest. The contents were first taken out and then put back when the new, fresh block was in place.
From the back of the house Duc was shouting, ‘I cook boy in house here! I tell you ice no good!’
‘I don’t deal with coloureds. Where’s your Missus?’
‘Mem don’t want talk to white-trash ice boy.’
‘And I don’t take orders from little brown faggots.’
Duc in his spotless singlet, a crisp white sail on a light teak deck, cupped a hand behind his ear. ‘What you say?’
Maisie stepped into the fray, her voice sharp. ‘Joe, isn’t it? Are you a little behind schedule this morning?’
‘Problem at the ice factory, Mrs Sinclair.’
‘Is your problem an excuse for your tardy arrival, when we all depend on your promptness to keep our food fresh and us in good health? Did you oversleep?’
Joe took a step backwards, his hands shielding his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. What more can I say? My father died yesterday. An ice block at the factory crushed his chest. I didn’t want to come to work today but Mum insisted we try to be normal until we work out what to do.’
Maisie felt wretched. ‘Oh, Joe. I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do to help?’
Joe shook his sunburned face, arms straining under the weight of the ice. ‘We’ll be right, Mrs Sinclair. Better get this in the chest and I’ll be off.’
A trail of water sparkled on the wooden floor: guilt, shame and shifting priorities shimmering in fat, accusing droplets.
Words do not evaporate like water, Maisie. If you cannot be gracious, keep your mouth shut.
She bowed her head, and prayed he could not see her face.
With the ice situation resolved, Maisie left the verandah and went down into the garden to inspect her fledgling allotment.
She was peering at a sickly fruit when Marjorie returned from chiffa business in town. Something was attacking the plants she had grown from the seed that Mrs Wallace had sent her from Gantry Creek. It was supposed to flourish in the fiery red soil, but the leaves were ragged, the fruit meagre. She suspected the goat.
Marjorie traipsed up the path. ‘Word is, Missus …’
‘What is it, Marjorie?’
‘Another one of them whitey divers beeum dead.’
Maisie could hear galahs shrieking in the trees in the distance, the birds acting as if nothing had changed. But the world was spinning. The icy knife of dread shot through her chest as her eyes swerved towards the jetty. It couldn’t be him. William Cooper couldn’t be dead. She struggled to force air into her lungs and wrapped her arms round her body, to blanket the sound of her pounding heart. She prayed Marjorie would think the tears in her eyes were the doing of the cruel sun.
‘Who told you?’
‘Chinky oar fella wot brings us da fish was on da jetty pickin’ up stories. He saw da lugger boat sail in with da flag thing halfway down da pole. All happened before I got allonga dere.’
‘Did he see which lugger?’
‘I told you before dat dem Chinky blokes like Duc can’t see so good. And before you gets to asking, he can’t read no boat names neither. So, don’t know whether it was dat diver fella you like or not what got deaded down below.’
‘I beg your pardon, Marjorie?’
‘Missus.’ Marjorie folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m black girl, like you know, but I got white girl’s brain like you, and I ain’t stupid. I got eyes. Biggum good ones now with da peepies an’ all, but even before dat I could still see things. Don’t need fancy spectacles for dat stuff.’
‘Marjorie. If you are in any way suggesting that I have feelings for this man beyond what is right and proper, you are grossly mistaken. I am a married woman!’
I might be a married woman, Maisie thought, but William Cooper is the man who sets my heart racing, not my husband.
‘’Scuse me, Missus, I know dat. But I ain’t no sneak. We’s on da same side! An’ I got ears too. Go where dey no shoulda go. ’Member that randy goat captain fella day after the big blow? He think that black girls can’t hear no good.’
‘Colour has nothing to do with it, Marjorie.’
‘No, I knows you think dat but you’s strange. Others think we’s invisible. And deaf. So, we hear wot we not supposed to hear. Yes?’
Maisie nodded.
‘Wot’s it you white folks say? Walls gottum ears? Well, I is a wall dat hear the captain and those gamblin’ fellas when you wants me to listen. You very happy to hear wot I had to say dat time den. Now I’m not sposed to use em.’
‘Just tell me what you know.’
‘Doctor Shin was on da jetty, Missus. He did da looking.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Fish man said when da diver bloke was brung ashore he was covered with a blanket, his head and all, so da doctor had to look. To see wot was underneath.’
‘And it was a white man.’
‘Yes, Missus. Chinky fella said white face.’
‘And he was dead?’
‘Don’t know ’bout dat. Told you, word is he beeum dead.’
Maisie tore down the verandah to the back door, flying down the steps to the garden as if pursued, and jumped on the heavy iron-framed bicycle that saw scant service. The front tyre was half-flat, and the chain was dangling off its hub. She wound the pedals backwards until the chain snaked onto the spiky teeth. She’d forgotten she knew how to do that. She’d also forgotten her hat, her gloves and her reason.
William Cooper might be dead.
She paused for a second at the junction of Vulgar Villas, her secret name for the ostentatious eyesores the Bay’s new wealth called home, then pushed off for the turn to Capta
in Espinell’s shore-side camp. She wheezed over the handlebars, wobbly legs straddling the iron frame, sweat guttering down between her shoulder blades. She had gripped the rubber-clad handlebars so tightly that her palms were tacky with gluey latex, her heat-swollen fingers bent over like claws. A vulture flapped overhead; she narrowed her eyes and followed its path, the first two fingers of her left hand welded together in a tight cross.
Please, God. Don’t let him die.
Bearing down on the pedals, breath thinly restored by the short rest, she pumped over flecks of storm-exfoliated paint that littered the road, the same shade as the walls of the government hospital. Scalloped pink flakes scattered on a bright white surface. Like confetti, she thought. Was there confetti at my wedding?
She shook her head; it might have been important once.
William Cooper might be dead.
She braked with a squeal and threw her bicycle in a patch of scrubby grass. A wheel was still spinning. Round and round on a loop in her head.
William Cooper might be dead. William Cooper might be dead.
William Cooper might be dead.
She knew she was a mess; she didn’t care. She dashed up the steps of the Japanese hospital and smacked through the front door with a fearful heart.
It was too quiet. She wanted bright lights and clanging bustle, brisk nurses and swinging doors. Evidence that a life was being fought for. She banged on the counter with her fist.
She thumped again, her voice booming loudly like a foghorn. ‘Hello! Is anybody there?’
A nun gliding past came to a stop beside her. ‘Mrs Sinclair, there is no need to shriek.’ The disapproval was tight in her voice.
Maisie flushed and lowered her voice. ‘Might I have a word with Doctor Shin?’
‘This is really not a good time, unless you are in extremis,’ the nun said. ‘The doctor does not generally consult at this hour. Midday on the third Wednesday in the month is his slot for white ladies. But you know this.’
‘I do know, and am quite well, thank you, but most concerned for an employee of my husband. We have heard a man has been brought in for treatment. We feel responsible for our divers’ welfare. So, I am here to find out what we might do.’
‘I see,’ the nun said. Her head turned slightly towards a door, as if she was expecting company. ‘Doctor Shin is attending to a white diving casualty at the moment, but I wouldn’t know to whom the man is indentured. I shall let the doctor know you are here. You may have a long wait.’
The last time she had sat in the hospital waiting room, the agenda had been hers; today, the room was the same, the walls were the same, tall and square and pink, but now the vigil was not the same. She sat alone, despair tearing at her heart. It was too early in the day for accidents; they mostly occurred after working hours when the heat and drink inflamed tempers, when shucking knives slipped on hard carapace in overheated packing sheds. Midday was not the hour for a diver to die. Was there ever a good moment? She sat in the silent, stifling box, clutching and twisting her handkerchief, and tuned in to the silence. The day stretched out, hour after hour, a time-distorted limbo.
The smell of antiseptic in the waiting room was like poison. Maisie held onto the memory of Coop’s voice, cradling it inside, wrapping the sound of him around her like an antidote. She clacked her fingernails on the chair arm, in time with the clock on the wall. It was too fast, too fast, too fast.
The Buccaneer Star had reported an English casualty, but she couldn’t remember when. Was it this week? Or last? She breathed deeply and tried to regulate her pulse.
Albert Banks had only been at sea a few days. According to the Malay shell-opener, a sudden gust of wind had caused the boom to jibe and caught him unawares. It pitched him off the deck stool and dumped him overboard still clutching his coffee mug in his hand. Weighed down by his fourteen-pound lead boots and the plates on his chest and back, he’d dropped to his death like a stone. It was a tragic accident, the reporter had written, and could have happened to anyone. Like Coop, Maisie thought.
‘Mrs Sinclair?’ Doctor Shin appeared at the door. A muscle twitched under his left eye, fatigue kneading his face. Outside, the light had started to fade and his shadow was long in the room. He rubbed his eyes, his mouth grim.
Maisie stood up, giddy with nerves, hardly able to support herself. She saw that dry skin was flaking through the dense dark stubble on his chin. He drew back, shaking his head.
She was aware she was chewing her lip, as Coop often did, and willed herself not to shout. Is it him?
‘I’m here representing the Bay’s English community. We have lost one of our own, I believe. Might you tell me who has perished at sea so that I might pass on the news to his employer and family?’ She sounded like a pompous third-rate hack, and hated herself.
Doctor Shin consulted his clipboard as if the answers to her questions were chiselled there.
‘An Englishman has passed away, Mrs Sinclair, you are quite correct. He was dead before he was brought ashore and I have been conducting his autopsy, to ascertain how he died. On one of your previous visits, I believe I mentioned I was making a study of diver’s paralysis – caisson disease, or “the bends” as it is referred to on the pearling boats.’
‘Was he our diver, Doctor Shin? Is it William Cooper who is dead?’ The questions burst out of her like a ruptured dam.
The Japanese doctor took her elbow and guided her towards the door.
‘No, Mrs Sinclair. This was not your husband’s diver. The crew said that the deceased was John Geoffrey Jones. I believe he was one of Captain Hanson’s men, the second of his to be brought in this week. They are diving in very deep waters, beyond Neptune’s Dairy, with no regard for their own safety. All these white men think about is matching the indentured divers in shell collection and they are paying for it with their lives. I said to you before that I feel the white-diver experiment will not end well.’
Maisie looked at her shoes, and pawed at the floor with a cramped, sweaty foot. She could hear the doctor’s voice echoing round the tall square room with its pink walls, like the whoosh whoosh sound of the sea trapped in a shell.
William Cooper is alive. William Cooper is alive. William Cooper is alive.
She stumbled and fell sideways, faint with reprieve.
CHAPTER 16
MAISIE PROPPED HERSELF UP on the sofa as soon as she arrived home and began to leaf through an old copy of Every Lady’s Journal. Doctor Shin had sent her home in his sulky and told her to stay inside and rest. Fainting in the heat was not uncommon, he said, but needed to be taken seriously. She wasn’t certain that fainting with relief was an illness, but hadn’t set him straight.
Duc was singing in the kitchen. It sounded like he was practising his scales; up and down, a tone at a time, again and again.
‘What about Miz Locke?’
Maisie looked up at the sound of Marjorie’s voice.
Marjorie, in her brown frock, was busy with her broom, sweeping up another sack-load of horticultural debris from the floor, corks wedged in her ears. Even though the Wet was said to be over, insects still penetrated the fine gauze lining the mosquito room and were impervious to any deterrent except the constant burning of joss sticks, which Duc brought back in handfuls from the emporium in Asia Place. She planted them in holders with a little tray underneath to catch the ashes. The trays were useless; pale grey ash, the colour of fish scales, blew everywhere.
Marjorie swerved her eyes towards the garden lavatory. ‘She been waitin’ here hours, and just gone to relieve herself in da dunny.’
‘Miss Locke’s our guest, Marjorie. If she’s come to see me and waited here all afternoon, then she must have a very good reason to drop in unannounced. I’m sorry if it has put you out in any way. What time did she get here?’
‘’Bout siesta time and I’m allonga babysittering her since then while you was out.’
‘It was an emergency.’
Marjorie spread her feet apart and tented her
hands on the broom handle. ‘Yes’um. Big ’mergency with that white man wot makes you go all moonie-eyed.’
‘He’s alive, Marjorie. That’s what’s important.’
‘See dat, Missus. But she stayin’ for dinner or wot?’
‘Yes, Miss Locke’s staying. Duc said this morning he would cook seafood with his special rice, our garden tomatoes if the goat hasn’t eaten them all, and snake beans from the Japanese market. There’s a lot of fish, so that should embrace the captain’s extras as usual. Could you trot by the bishop and Mrs McMahon and remind them they are joining us?’
The question seemed to consume her for a second. ‘Thought you don’t like fish.’
‘I don’t particularly, but I am making an effort to get over my dislike – as I am asking you to do – by reminding the bishop and his wife about tonight. I know you would prefer not to go, but sometimes you have to swallow down things you find unpalatable.’
Marjorie rubbed her index fingers along the sides of her nose. Maisie knew the gesture; there was more to come.
‘Okay, Missus. I go to the holy churches and before dat I’ll remind Duc ’bout food. He’ll be one mad fella, though. He’ll be spectin’ some other sea-boss fellas, as boss fella said they do gamblin’ later and he like them fellas more better. You and me, though, we need words ’bout chiffa money.’
‘Why?’
‘We’s now got lotta quids in that skimpies jar. Duc an’ me been wonderin’ ’bout doin’ dat investin’ he told you ’bout.’
Jane Locke returned from the squalor at the far end of the garden, sniffing anything fragrant she came across en route.
Maisie patted the chair next to her and Jane sat down. ‘I am glad you came, and apologise once again for my pitiful state. When we met that time in Asia Place I was all of a lather, and today I had a fainting spell in town, so Doctor Shin has confined me to the house for a few days.’
Jane shifted forward in her seat. ‘Are you anticipating a happy event?’
Maisie felt the blush creep up her neck. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing so exciting. Doctor Shin is convinced I am on the brink of collapse, although I’m sure I did nothing to make him think that. To him, I am a great white puzzle that he is struggling to fathom.’