Something Fishy

by Derek Hansen

  ‘You got him!’ said Marvin. His friend, Cord, and the two Barbies had joined him at the jetty. I still held the boy, reluctant to hand him over.

  ‘Hey, buddy, you had us worried,’ said Cord.

  Not half as worried as they should have been.

  ‘What happened?’ said Marvin.

  ‘Maurice left me there!’ said the Professor. Even now, after all he’d been through, there was still disbelief in his voice.‘He just drove off and left me there!’The disbelief was now tinged with accusation.

  ‘Now don’t go saying things like that, Anthony,’ said Marvin. ‘That’s not nice. Maurice told me what happened. You swam away from the boat.’

  ‘No! That’s not what happened. He left me there — he left me!’

  ‘I think we should talk about this later,’ said Cord.

  ‘And I think you should listen to him,’ I said.‘I’ve been out there. Nobody swims away from a boat in those conditions.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have gone out there in the first place,’ said one of the Barbies, who I assumed was Fat Boy’s mother. Maybe that was Fat Boy’s problem. As a baby he’d been breastfed silicone. ‘You shouldn’t have talked Maurice into taking you.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ protested the Professor. ‘He was the one who wanted to go. I didn’t. He made me go with him. He made me.’

  ‘That’s not what Maurice says,’ said Marvin. He wagged his finger playfully in the Professor’s face, suggesting the boy’s lie was transparent.

  ‘He did!’

  Marvin tried to take the Professor out of my arms but the boy refused to let go of me. But he had to let go some time. He had no choice.

  ‘I have to put you down,’ I said.

  The Professor looked at me despondently and I could see that he had already accepted the inevitable. He was the whipping boy and it was time to be whipped. He was the repository of all blame. I smiled encouragingly as I set him down on the jetty, frail, shivering and still wrapped in my towel. I wondered how short-sighted he was without his glasses. I hoped he was very short-sighted. My emotions were swinging between pity and cold anger. I didn’t want him to see either.

  ‘It’s pretty obvious what really happened,’ said Damian.

  We were having lunch on the terrace of Damian and Jenny’s idyllic holiday home, on the high part of the island above Homestead Point. The house was protected from the wind and a trap for the sun, which lent a sense of unreality to the drama that had just played out on the reef below.

  ‘Fat Boy probably didn’t let out enough rope on the reef anchor. My guess is that he was first back into the dinghy when the wind picked up. He probably took a couple of waves over the bow and panicked.’

  ‘So he just drove off and left the Professor in the water?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Damian.

  I loved the way my names for the boys had caught on.

  ‘Can you imagine how that poor boy must have felt when he saw the dinghy leave?’ said Pru.

  ‘It must have been horrible,’ said Damian.

  ‘The worst part is that lying tub of lard is going to get away with it,’ I said. ‘Fat Boy can do no wrong. I can’t imagine how he and the Professor ever became friends.’

  ‘They only met once before coming here,’ said Jenny. ‘Apparently Fat Boy’s mother and the Professor’s mother go to the same gym in Santa Barbara. The Professor’s mother and father are going through a messy divorce and they thought it would be good for him to get away. Coming on holiday as Fat Boy’s playmate probably seemed like a good idea.’

  ‘Great idea,’ I said. ‘First he gets stranded out on the reef. Then he gets hung for Fat Boy’s crimes.’

  ‘Badi,’ said Damian.

  We all looked at him.

  ‘Up until the mid-nineteenth century in India, a poor man could secure the future of his family by accepting payment to be hanged in place of a convicted rich man. The Hindi word for the practice is badi.’

  Damian never ceased to amaze me. He was always coming up with stuff like that.

  It was midafternoon, that magical time when the type on the pages of the book you’re reading begins to swim and your eyes give up the burdensome task of remaining open. All four of us were asleep or on the brink when the phone rang. I wondered who would weaken first and answer it. Jenny groaned as she rose. She wasn’t gone long.

  ‘Good news and bad news,’ she said. ‘That was Marvin. We’ve been invited over for drinks before dinner. A thankyou for rescuing the Professor.’

  ‘Dear God,’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything worse, though in truth I wasn’t trying really hard.

  ‘The good news is that you’ll get to see their house. We had dinner there with the last owner. He’s a major Hollywood producer and he used to lend his house to his friends. He had interesting friends — Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Tom and Nicole before they split. God knows who else. The house is utterly amazing, just the sort of place you’d expect movie stars to hang out in.’

  ‘Great,’ said Pru.‘I’d love to see it.’

  ‘I think it’s a ploy to pressure me into taking them fishing,’ said Damian.‘They don’t give a toss about the kid.’

  Damian was right, as usual.

  ‘So how about it?’ said Marvin.‘How about we go fishing in your boat tomorrow morning? Weather forecast is good.’

  ‘Great idea,’ said Damian, managing to sound faultlessly sincere.

  I tuned out while they discussed the detail. Jenny had said the house was fantastic and it was. It sat on the ridge of a headland, surrounded on three sides by the sea thirty metres below. The architect had obviously been to Bali and been influenced by the homes he’d seen there. The floors were multi-level and built with dark timber while magnificent heavy wooden beams supported the cathedral ceilings. The deck area, which was cantilevered out over the edge of the cliff, was the length and half the width of a basketball court. Greenery and the lack of permanent walls made it hard to know where the outside began and the inside ended. Changes in floor level and imaginatively shaped tanks of tropical fish were used to divide areas off, to separate the dining area from the living room, for instance, and the area where the kids could watch their videos and play with the iMac. It was beautifully done.

  The bedrooms were in separate buildings connected to the living area by long wooden walkways which were roofed over but otherwise open to the lush surrounding gardens. During the tour I’d slipped back to lie momentarily on the bed in the main bedroom. Uma Thurman had slept there some months earlier and, well, I’d always had a thing for her.

  The bathrooms were interesting in that they had both an inside and an outside shower. The outside showers were partly walled in and strategically placed hibiscus provided at least an illusion of privacy. Why surround a shower with walls when there’s no one to peep? I had to hand it to the architects. Their touches were thoughtful and they’d used a magnificent site splendidly.

  Jenny and Pru were in deep conversation with the Barbies. It turned out I’d done the silicone twins an injustice. Both had graduated from good colleges, one with a serious law degree and the other with an MBA. Both had brains and a solid knowledge and appreciation of the arts. It was only in the more mundane areas like parenting that they were found wanting. I guess it just wasn’t a subject they were interested in.

  The Professor seemed to have recovered from his scare and was transferring video footage onto the iMac. I looked around for Fat Boy but couldn’t see him anywhere. He was out of sight and soon to be out of mind, and that was just fine by me.

  ‘So, six o’clock then,’ I heard Damian say.‘At the jetty.’

  I could tell by his tone of voice that he was anxious to get away. Here’s a contradiction for you. We were guests of people who had an indecent amount of money, in a home once frequented by the famous, and what were we drinking? They called it champagne but it was Mitchell Lane sparkling white, the cheapest and, some might say, the least appealing w
ine of its kind produced in Australia. They’d probably been sent the same list of wines the store in Suva had sent us and, not recognising any names, bought on the basis of price alone. The upsetting thing was that the fizzy plonk was all they offered us to drink. No beer, no spirits, no cheap but endearing red. Even worse, they raved about the Mitchell Lane, constantly congratulating themselves on the bargain they’d got.

  ‘I’ve pissed better wine than that,’ said Damian on the way home.

  His observations weren’t always erudite.

  Marvin didn’t have a game boat but any time he wanted to go fishing he could hire the resort game boat, which he did most of the time. But along the way he’d heard stories of fish Damian had caught and become envious. The fact is, Damian fished longer, harder and more skilfully than anyone else and reaped the appropriate rewards. Basically Marvin wanted to cash in on all of Damian’s knowledge and experience. We were ready for him and ‘Call me Cord’ when they showed up at the jetty. We weren’t ready for Fat Boy and the Professor as well.

  ‘You don’t mind if I bring the boys?’ said Marvin.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Damian.‘The more the merrier.’

  I don’t know how Damian kept a straight face.

  ‘I told the boys how good you are,’ said Marvin.‘Promised them both a big fish.’

  Damian didn’t respond, a clear indication to anyone with a modicum of sensitivity that he was not amused. I helped load their bags aboard which seemed to contain mostly Pringles, chocolate bars and soft drinks. There wasn’t a hint of a lure or any other fishing equipment. Clearly we were meant to provide it.

  We set off up Lighthouse Reef, trolling the right lures on the right weight lines at the right speed. Marvin and Cord settled down alongside Damian and began discussing the Dow Jones and the Nasdac and which stocks had done what overnight. Both Damian and I have investments but the last thing we want to do on a fishy sea on a bright Fijian morning is talk about them or even think about them. I stayed aft, watching the rods and keeping an eye on the boys.

  The Professor was playing with his video camera. When we motored past Marvin’s house, which looked just as amazing from out at sea, he pointed the camera at it and filmed it. I wished I’d brought my camera because the sun had only just lit upon the house, gilding the roof and windows and turning the surrounding greenery bright emerald. I looked to see if Fat Boy had noticed. He was slumped back on a cabin seat stuffing his face full of crisps.

  Game fishing can get pretty boring while you’re waiting for a strike. For Damian and me it’s normally a period of companionable silence as we scan the ocean for birds or interesting splashes. It’s time out to appreciate the good fortune that allows us to be there. For Marvin and Cord it was an opportunity to talk tech stocks and boast of killings. For Fat Boy it was one long opportunity to whine.

  ‘When are we going to catch a fish?

  ‘Fishing sucks.

  ‘When are we going home?’

  The Professor just played with his video camera.

  We got our first strike an hour and a half out. It coincided with one of the few times Fat Boy got up off his fat arse and he just happened to be passing the rod when the fish hit. Despite being told not to touch the rods, he pulled it out of the rod holder. I hadn’t even had time to get to my feet. Just what Fat Boy intended to do with the rod from that point on was as much a mystery to him as it was to the rest of us. He wasn’t wearing a belt and it was immediately clear that in any tug-of-war the fish would win hands down. There was a mighty splash out behind the boat as the fish realised it was in trouble.

  ‘Marlin!’ screamed Damian. Like a good skipper he was watching the fish, not what was happening below.

  A marlin, for God’s sake! Here we were, hooked up on a marlin, a rare occurrence around Naviti Lau, and Fat Boy had hold of the rod. It was hard to think of a worse scenario. I raced across the deck to grab the rod from him. My intentions were those of any fisherman: secure the rod, keep the tip up and the line taut until somebody managed to put a belt on. I don’t know what sort of fish Fat Boy had caught before but he hadn’t a clue. The fish pulled the rod tip down so that the rod was parallel to the sea and Fat Boy dragged hard up against the transom. He screamed as both his feet lifted off the deck. The next logical step was that the fish would pull him overboard. Dear God, could we be so lucky? That thought must have occurred to Fat Boy about the same time it occurred to me. He let go of the rod and its thousand-dollar reel.

  This sequence of events takes longer to describe than it did to happen. Probably only three or four seconds had passed from the moment the fish struck. Even so, I was only centimetres away from Fat Boy when he let go. Less than a tenth of a second away. Fat Boy was as aware as I was that help was at hand. But would he hang on? No. He saw me coming and still he let the rod go, almost threw it away, just as I reached him. That was the last thing I’d expected. We had a marlin on, for God’s sake. I made a desperate lunge for the rod but didn’t get close.

  I pushed Fat Boy away, more vigorously than was probably necessary, and he obliged by taking a tumble which would have cracked any deck less sturdy. I used the security line clipped onto the reel to haul in the rod, hoping against hope that the marlin was still hooked. Some hope. It was long gone and probably still laughing. At least we’d got the rod back which was something, although the reel would have to be stripped right down to its smallest parts and soaked in oil.

  ‘What happened?’ said Damian.

  I told him.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Marvin.‘You mean Maurice could have been pulled overboard?’

  ‘With any luck,’ I said softly.

  ‘What?’ said Cord.

  ‘I said it was lucky he fell backwards.’

  I couldn’t believe Marvin. There was no ‘sorry about the rod’, no ‘sorry about the reel’, no ‘sorry my ignorant, selfish slob of a son caused you to lose your fish’. None of that was a consideration. Fat Boy was still lying bum down on the deck looking at me in wary disbelief. I think I’d given him more of a shock than the marlin had. I noticed the Professor was still videoing. It suddenly occurred to me that he might have videoed the whole thing, including my vindictive treatment of Fat Boy. If he had, it didn’t matter. The Professor was smiling and that was something I hadn’t seen before.

  After that morning’s fishing trip we managed to avoid Marvin, the boys and the Barbies for another two days. Then we had the misfortune to have them turn up on Homestead Beach the same morning we were there. If it hadn’t been such a glorious day and if the water hadn’t been so clear, we would probably have found an excuse to leave them to it. But we stayed and, while Homestead Beach is a good three hundred metres long and only ten metres of it were occupied, they decided to set up right alongside us.

  The smiles froze on Pru’s and Jenny’s faces. Damian decided that the article he was reading on servicing expensive game reels was the most compelling story he’d ever encountered. I took on the responsibility of engaging with our uninvited guests. I passed some time in polite conversation with Marvin and Cord before wandering over to the Professor and asking him to come snorkelling with me. I’d noticed that he seemed more isolated and withdrawn than usual. He nodded and bent to pick up his face mask and flippers, but not before I’d had a chance to look into his magnified eyes. He no longer made any effort to hide his feelings. What I saw there shook me to the core. There was a sense of defeat, bewilderment and hurt that had him on the knife-edge of tears. I wanted to throw my arms around him but we walked down the beach and into the water instead.

  If his video camera had worked underwater I think the Professor would have been as happy as it was possible to be. We spent an hour and a half together, duck-diving, peering under coral heads and swimming from reef to reef. I could hear him exclaiming through his snorkel as we got buzzed by reef sharks up to a metre long, encountered a manta ray about one and half metres across, and made the acquaintance of giant parrotfish, briefly a grand trevally and as
many different kinds of tropical fish as there were grains of sand on the beach. As it happened, it turned out that tropical fish were the problem.

  I’d just towelled down and settled back with a deserved gin and tonic when Marvin dropped his bombshell. The Professor had wandered off up the beach by himself to video shells.

  ‘We’re sending Anthony home tomorrow,’ said Marvin.

  ‘What?’ I said. I was peripherally aware of Damian lowering his magazine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marvin.‘We try and do our best by him but we just can’t deal with him any more.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ asked Damian.

  ‘Oh, lots of things. You know, swimming away from the dinghy that time they went out snorkelling. Kid could have got himself killed and, my God, what would we have told his parents?’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I guess Damian, Jenny and Pru couldn’t either because a deathly silence had descended.

  ‘The tropical fish were the last straw.’ ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘We couldn’t figure out why they started dying on us. It turned out Anthony had been urinating into the tanks.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ I said, probably more forcefully than was polite.

  ‘Oh, he did it all right,’ cut in Cord.

  ‘How did you find out?’ I asked. ‘I mean, did you see him do it?’

  ‘No,’ said Marvin.‘But Maurice did.’

  I felt so bad about what had happened to the Professor that I offered to drive him out to the airstrip in Damian’s Suzuki. I lied and told Marvin that I had to meet the plane anyway, that it was bringing us more supplies. Even so, I didn’t expect Marvin to agree; after all, they had a duty of care to see the Professor safely aboard.

  ‘Hey, that’s downright neighbourly of you,’ said Marvin. ‘You hear that?’ he said to his silicone soul mate. She was downright appreciative too.

  That night I put pen to paper and wrote a letter to the Professor’s mother outlining what I believed had really transpired and the injustice of the way her son had been treated. I told the others what I’d done and they each added a footnote and their signature. None of us could bear the thought of the Professor arriving home in disgrace.