Ah shit. Somewhere deep in my mind, I registered that this was not a good way to start a new day. Semi-paralysis, pounding head, mouth like a wallaby’s bum. My stomach reacted uneasily to the slight sway of The Scoop, snug in her berth.
I kicked Miss Wagga Wagga out of bed. She was a tall, rangy twenty-something wharf rat with badly-dyed neon red hair and a smattering of amateurish tattoos. Several painful-looking piercings on her face and body completed the low-rent look.
‘Jonno, I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘Like, what if I stayed here with you?’ She had a sweaty sheen to her skin as she put on her skimpy clothes – dirty Daisy Dukes and a sleeveless T showing a hint of scrawny side-boob.
I thought for a moment. The girl had shoved a fair amount of my precious coke up her studded nose the previous night. Having her on board was a luxury I couldn’t afford. ‘Sorry, not going to happen,’ I told her. She glared at me, hoisted her cheap bag over one shoulder and left without another word. Turns out she also left without her cat. I had a vague memory of her arriving with a stray kitten tucked under one arm. That was confirmed when I stepped barefoot into a puddle of cat piss in the saloon.
My own bladder suddenly sent an urgent mayday message to my brain. I lurched to the toilet. Sometimes taking a much-needed piss can be as pleasurable as an orgasm. I looked in the dirty mirror, tried to focus. The image that gazed back was blurry, blotchy and bloated. The blue eyes were ringed in red and the rough, unshaven face had a weary look of disdain. The thought came from nowhere: what would old Percy think of you right now?
I knew exactly what he’d think. ‘Jonno, what the fuck are you doing, you big selfish bastard? You need to fucking sort yourself out.’ And he’d be right.
I was making myself some breakfast when the cops arrived. I got the fright of my life when they indicated they wanted to search the boat. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
‘What for?’ But I knew.
‘For drugs,’ they replied, watching me closely.
How did they know, I thought, my chest tightening. The backpacker bitch must have dobbed me in. Fuck! There were four cops, with two sniffer dogs. They spent an hour on board looking in every nook and cranny as I stood on the pier in a cold, dread sweat. Images of trials and firing squads scurried around in my brain as the dogs got busy in the bowels of The Scoop. The kitten must be shitting himself, I thought randomly. From the yelps and high-pitched whines it was clear the two big German shepherds were getting increasingly excited. They must have found the last of my stash. I found myself praying for the first time in twenty-five years: Please, God, don’t let them find anything. I’ll do anything, I’ll give up the drugs, get clean. I’ll donate the proceeds of my next book to charity. Please, please don’t let them arrest me.
Later, when the cops had gone – empty-handed, their dogs with tails between their legs – I sat alone in the cockpit with a bottle of Tiger beer, pondering my situation. I’d checked my hiding spot and the meagre remnants of my stash had gone. Miss Wagga Wagga must have stolen it. The cops had wagged their fingers at me and made it clear I was lucky – the dogs had detected drug traces but not enough to arrest me. But I knew they’d be back – maybe they’d even plant some stuff next time, I thought feverishly. Ironically, the backpacker had done me a favour by nicking the last of the coke.
The steaming humidity was softened only by a slight breeze. There was a perpetual background ting-ting-ting of steel halyards knocking against masts. The Blue Nile’s ‘The Days of our Lives’ played mournfully in the background as the kitten emerged from its hiding place and started pawing a bit of loose rope on the decking.
The breeze brought with it wafts of brine and diesel and the ever-present, unidentifiable pungent odour of Asia. Scores of people were visible, some lounging in their boats, some working on repairs or simply chatting on the many long piers that punctuated the glittering green water. Wrapped up in my own misery, I had no desire to talk to any of them.
Opening the bottle with shaky hands, the beer foamed out, spraying my cargo shorts and Billabong T-shirt. I hardly noticed as I took stock of my situation: here you are on the downslope to forty, never been married, have never even come close to meeting a woman you could love. You have few real friends and are largely estranged from your family. What a pathetic loser, I thought.
I had two other pressing problems: first, the money was fast running out and second, I had to produce a new book within a few months or I would have to pay back the advance. There were heaps of messages on my phone from Drusilla, my agent. Initially cajoling, the messages had grown progressively shriller until they became out and out abusive: ‘Jonno, get fucking back to me, pronto. Immediately, now, this minute. The publishers are screaming blue murder. Unless they see some physical evidence of a new book, they want their money back. I don’t know what the fuck you’re up to but you need to call me ASAP. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Worse, I’ll cut your useless balls off.’
All this was depressing. But what really shattered me, what really cut me to my very soul, was Cody’s contemptuous ‘junkie’ comment. It kept replaying in my head. The worst thing was he was right . . . I had been selfish and put us both at risk.
I’d always reassured myself that I could give up cocaine anytime I chose. But now, deep down, I knew the truth: the dope had got its hooks into me big time. I had to do something about it. I picked up the kitten and looked into its bright eyes: ‘Mate, I’ve got to change my life around. Tell me, how the bloody hell do I do that?’ I smiled wryly; I was talking to a bloody cat. Then once again, I thought about Percy and his fighting spirit. I had once asked him where the scars on his knuckles came from. ‘How easy do you think it was going to school in the Gorbals with a name like Percy?’ he replied.
That image of him tipped me over the edge. He had such high hopes for me. He would have been appalled at how far I had fallen. I wrapped my arms around myself and cried. I cried more than I’d ever cried in my life. Waves of self-pity and self-loathing swamped my brain. Finally, eyes red, nose running, I managed to get my shit together. My heart gradually stopped racing. My body ceased heaving. But then my reptile brain said slyly, ‘you need a hit’. But there was no gear left. I would either have to go into Jakarta and score some more stuff or . . . what?
‘What the bloody hell am I going to do?’ I asked the kitten again.
10
AS SHE showered and got ready to go out to sample the delights of Singapore city, Annie examined her feelings of unease. The conversation with Gary and Dani that afternoon had been pleasant enough but there had been some odd undertones. It was clear that there was some tension between the younger couple. It was equally clear that Martin was flirting with his pixie-haired colleague. Annie noticed the looks they gave each other and the way their hands lingered on each other’s shoulders or arms as they sat around the table.
She had smiled, however, when Martin, who was paying the lion’s share of the charter costs, had put on an ostentatious captain’s hat complete with gold braid on the peak. Less amusing was the fact that he had then got rather pissed; after several glasses of fizz, he had progressed to some New Zealand sauvignon blanc and then a big Aussie red. Gary had been more circumspect, thankfully. Someone needed to take responsibility for the boat. To her relief, Gary had declared himself the trip’s ‘designated driver’. He explained that he had had a lot of sailing experience, much more than Martin. He came from Portland, a US seaport in Maine, where his father ran a charter boat business; Gary used to crew for him on runs up to Halifax in Nova Scotia.
Dani was harder to read, Annie thought as she towelled herself. It seemed that the younger woman was trying a little too hard to please. But it could be that she’s just tired after the flight from Sydney, she decided, giving her the benefit of the doubt.
The two couples had decided to spend a few days moored in Singapore to give the girls a chance to check out the great shopping in the city while the guys familiarised themselves with the big boat.
Annie found herself warming slightly to Dani when they went shopping at the famous Bugis Street Markets. Her excitement about the amazing array of clothes and accessories on offer was infectious. ‘The only problem,’ she warned Annie, ‘is that all these great bargains could be Chinese knock-offs and we’d never know.’ Who cares, Annie thought.
Nevertheless, she caught the shopping bug and, by lunchtime, was weighed down by a battery of brightly coloured bags bearing many of the top fashion brand names. As they stopped briefly at a street café for mouth-watering oyster mee sua (vermicelli) and pisang goreng (banana fritters), Annie told Dani she may have to buy another suitcase to take all her new clothes home with her.
‘I know what you mean. I only brought one small carry-on case with a few clothes with me, ’cos I thought I’d be spending the whole time in a bikini. Gary thought I was mad,’ Dani said.
‘How long have you guys been together?’
‘Oh, dunno, must be, what – nine months now? To be honest, like, it’s been a bit hot and cold. Gary’s all right but sometimes he can be a bit . . .’ She paused.
‘A bit what?’
‘Well he’s, like, up himself a little? Maybe ’cos he’s American. He can just be a pain in the arse. Not like Marty, he’s a cutie.’
Annie thought this was an odd thing to say about someone else’s husband. Besides, no one called him Marty! She sipped her light beer. ‘How did you meet?’
Dani took a gulp of her Mai Tai. ‘Um, I was in the pub with Marty and a few other bank colleagues when he introduced me to Gary. Seems a long time ago now. They were talking, like, about doing this trip. It sounded really exciting.
‘It’s the main reason I’ve stuck it out with Gary all this time, to be honest. I didn’t want to miss out.’
‘Too much information!’ Annie laughed.
‘What about you and Marty, how long have you been married?’
Annie closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Nearly eight years. Seems a lot, lot longer somehow.’
‘Why? Aren’t you happy? Only, I know he spends a lot of time away from home. And of course he doesn’t really want kids, does he?’
‘He told you that?’ Annie was shocked but didn’t want to make a big deal of it to Dani. I’ll bloody kill him, she thought. How dare he say that to a virtual stranger. ‘Well, you know, marriages have their ups and downs. We rub along okay, I suppose.’
‘Have you ever, like, cheated on him?’ Dani said with a mischievous smile.
Annie was more than a little irritated by the way the conversation was going. She looked sharply at the other woman. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she snapped. ‘It’s time we went back to the boat.’
Dani rolled her eyes. ‘Okay. Whatever.’
That evening, all four of them went back to Bugis Street, where they found the cobblestoned shopping area had transformed into a colourful scene of bustling crowds, loud street food vendors and nightspots. Over dinner, Annie watched Martin and Dani closely. But they did nothing, said nothing to arouse any further suspicion.
Over the following two days they went sailing to Jurong Island and some of the other smaller islands in the Singapore Strait. Annie was relieved to find that Gary skippered the boat with easy confidence. She was also relieved that she hadn’t felt seasick.
Finally they were ready to set off for Langkawi in Malaysia. Gary had plotted a course through the Strait of Malacca and they should arrive there in time for Christmas. The Malaysian island had been the destination for their honeymoon almost eight years before, although Annie sometimes felt it was a lifetime ago.
‘A toast,’ Martin said, standing up with glass aloft the night before their departure: ‘To calm seas, warm winds and wild times!’
The four of them happily clinked glasses, completely oblivious to just how wild it was to become.
11
‘HI, I’M Jonno and I’m an addict.’
The kitten sat up and looked at me in alarm. I had said it aloud, in a wry, mock American accent, although I now knew it in my heart to be true. Cody had been on the money. Charlie had entered my system like a Trojan horse and it was now attacking my body and my brain from within.
So far I had only snorted it. The problem is you develop a tolerance for coke fairly quickly. You need more and more to experience the same rush, the sublime high that beats all else – including sex and booze. In my heart I knew it was just a matter of time before I started smoking or injecting it and perhaps other, even more heinous substances. I knew that if I started injecting that shit, I’d be lost forever.
On the earlier legs of the voyage, I’d eased back. But since Cody’s abrupt departure, the terrible craving had returned. If I stayed here, it was odds-on that I would descend even deeper into the drug abyss.
What to do? I was sitting quietly in the cockpit with the kitten snoozing in my lap. I had decided to call him Wagga. ‘Mate,’ I told him, ‘as I see it, we’ve got three options: one, we can try to sell The Scoop here and head back to Sydney; two, we could stay here, live on the boat and try to make ends meet; or three, we sail off somewhere – anywhere – and try to kick the coke. What do you think?’
Wagga just yawned. He had a grey–black stripy coat, a cute face and whiskers as long as his thin tail. ‘Much bloody good you are,’ I said, tipping him onto the deck. In the end, two things affected my final decision. I was becoming increasingly paranoid that the Jakarta drugs squad would come back and plant some evidence. The thought of being executed or, worse, locked up for twenty years in some nightmarish Indonesian prison was too much to bear. But it was Percy’s letter that really clinched it. For the millionth time, I unfolded it, taking care not to add to the creases and wrinkles that cut lines through the blotchy ink on the paper. With the fingers of my other hand, I rubbed the AA bronze token that had meant so much to him.
Maybe I had just hit rock bottom because I suddenly realised what a whiny, selfish, self-pitying shitbag I had become. It wasn’t who I was, or at least who I’d been. I figured I had been a decent bloke once, a man Percy had admired and even loved, as his letter proved. ‘You were a light in my life.’
I owed it to his memory to sort myself out. I screwed up my eyes. ‘I. Am. Going. To. Beat. This. Bastard. Thing,’ I said through gritted teeth.
And that was how the decision was made.
The next morning The Scoop, freed from its mooring ropes, seemed to spring forward with a new eagerness. Perhaps it was just my imagination, or the result of my heavy-handed grip on the throttle. I had never single-handedly sailed a boat the size of The Scoop before and, as we left the throbbing Pantai Mutiara marina, I was excited but apprehensive about the challenging sea voyage ahead. The fact that I also faced a rather choppy voyage of self-discovery did not escape me.
I gingerly picked my way through the teeming traffic as we slipped out into Jakarta Bay, narrowly missing a commercial catamaran with a bevy of backpackers on board. I wasn’t confident enough yet to use the sails so we motored along the north-east Java coast, inshore of the islands of Kapal and Rambut. My immediate intention was to reach the Sunda Strait, a narrow strip of water that divides Java and Sumatra, then head west into the vastness of the Indian Ocean. After that, who bloody knew?
Sailing north to Singapore had been an option but I felt that navigating through the Malaccan Strait would be challenging for a nervous solo sailor at the best of times but bloody dangerous when he was going cold turkey. I had used the dregs of my credit card to refuel and provision The Scoop, even remembering to buy some cat food for little Wagga, who seemed perfectly happy to scamper around the boat. To my surprise, I enjoyed having him around. I had also cleaned up the cockpit and saloon and stowed away the bits and pieces that had accumulated on the foredeck since Cody’s exit about a week before. I put all of this activity down to the optimistic mood I was in, literally and metaphorically clearing the decks for the next chapter in my life.
A day into my new voyage I felt like shit. I had been well
aware that cold turkey would be no picnic. While I had no nasty rash or scabs, I was throwing up a lot and my body felt like it had been hit by a flying refrigerator.
The main problem was mental; the most crippling effect was my feelings of paranoia. On the water, sitting rigid in my lonely cockpit, splattered by the wind-driven spray, my mind raced with thoughts of how various people were out to destroy me. They were all at it: the nuns and priests from St Jude’s, the book critics, my agent Drusilla, German Shepherd dogs and, of course, that turncoat Cody. Any moment, I expected an Indonesian patrol boat would scream up alongside The Scoop and arrest me for drug smuggling.
I was shaking, my hands struggling to hold on to the helm. My energy levels were in the toilet and I just wanted to crawl into a bed and sleep for a week. Obviously, the demands of skippering a boat made that impossible. So, kneading my red-rimmed eyes with aching knuckles, I pumped up the sound system to give me the illusion of company. Nothing like a bit of AC/DC to give my body something to shake about.
After a couple of days, I would have given my Oscar for a baggy of coke. The craving was debilitating. My nostrils flared at the thought of it. I could actually feel the stinging sensation on my gums where I used to rub in the last smear of coke. I’d even frantically searched the places I had stashed it while Cody was around in case there were any little specks of white powder still remaining. Maybe, I thought, those police pooches missed something.
At some point, I realised that I had managed to guide the boat round into the Sunda Strait. You know when you are driving a car and suddenly you arrive safely at your destination and you can’t remember how the hell you got there? Well, that’s how it felt. Both the boat and my brain were on autopilot.
The Scoop Page 4