by Morris West
Chapter 6
I CRAWLED painfully out of bed and made my way down to the bathroom to wash the sleep out of my eyes, and the stink of liquor off my skin. I dressed slowly, resigned to the thought that it was now too late for breakfast. I packed my bag and paid my score, declining the offer of a drink on the house in favour of a cup of tea in the kitchen. Then, leaving my bag behind the bar to be collected later, I walked down to the low timber building that was the town’s only bank.
The manager was a tall, ruddy man in a fresh linen shirt and starched shorts. When I presented my letter of credit he greeted me as if I were a millionaire and invited me into his office for yet another cup of tea. His manner cooled considerably and he gave me a sidelong look when I told him I wanted to lodge my letter of credit for safe-keeping, and that if I did not return within three months the whole amount of the credit was to be paid to the personal account of Johnny Akimoto. He drew some papers from the drawer of his desk and laid them on the blotter in front of him.
Then he began to quiz me.
“Is there any reason why you should not return in three months, Mr Lundigan?”
“None that I can think of at this moment, but it’s as well to be prepared, don’t you think?”
“Of course, but what for, Mr Lundigan?”
“Accidents do happen, don’t they?”
“True enough, but. . . .” He realized that he was on the verge of an indiscretion. He stopped short and gave me his practised, professional smile. ‘“Of course the bank will make any dispositions you wish. You have only to sign the papers and. . . . Well, that’s all there is to it. I was just curious.”
This sort of question and answer could go on indefinitely. I decided there was no harm in telling him at least half of the story. I told him.
“I’ve leased an island off the coast. I’m a naturalist. I’m making a study of marine life at depths of fifteen and twenty fathoms. I’m an aqualung diver. That entails certain risks. I’ve rented Johnny Akimoto’s boat and I’m paying him a weekly wage in addition. If anything happens to me I want him to be able to claim payment and to have whatever is left over by way of a bonus.”
The bank, manager relaxed again. He might be dealing with an oddity but at least I was not the lunatic he at first thought.
The tea came at that moment, and he began to make small talk again. I endured it for a while with reasonable courtesy, because I had a question to put to him.
“Tell me . . . do you know anything about water rights?”
“Water rights?”
His eyebrows went up again.
“Yes, water rights. What rights, if any, has the free-holder or leaseholder of an island over the surrounding waters?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “It is not a question that normally rises. In law as I know it, the holder’s land-rights extend to the low-water mark, in practice they are presumed to extend to the inner fringes of the reef surrounding the island. You might possibly have an action for trespass, but I think it would be a long and costly business to sustain. In any event the question is hardly likely to arise, is it?”
“No, I suppose it isn’t, but one likes to be sure of these matters.”
“Impossible to be sure in this case, I’m afraid, Mr Lundigan. But”—he spread his hands, in a gesture of smiling disparagement—“there is a lot of water and a lot of islands on the reef. Your island is off the tourist tracks anyway. If you make it clear that you want to be private, I don’t think you’ll be bothered very much.”
I couldn’t tell him about Manny Mannix, so there wasn’t any point in pressing the question. I nodded and smiled and made some fatuous remark about students being odd cattle anyway; then he handed me the papers to sign.
We finished our tea, we shook hands and I walked out again across the street. Half-way down on the other side was a small single-fronted shop with gold lettering on the window and an old-fashioned glass jar full of coloured water behind the dusty pane.
I walked across and introduced myself to the proprietor. He was young, which was fortunate for me. He was talkative, which was an annoyance, but he accepted my story with more readiness than the bank manager had done, and was quite ready to waive the formalities of prescriptions and doctors’ signatures when I asked him for atebrin tablets and penicillin and sulphanilamide. I bought iodine and bandages and asprin and a small scalpel, and had them packed in a small wooden box provided by the garrulous young druggist.
But I was not to escape so easily. Time is at discount in the north, and the most casual customer is expected to make his own contribution to the conversational gambits of the community.
I listened with mild interest to a curtain lecture on the stings of bluebottles and sea-urchins and the danger of the dreaded stone-fish. I heard, without too much concern, that another naturalist had passed through the town only a fortnight before—a girl this time, quite young, very attractive according to the young chemist, who, fresh from the university, was no doubt finding the local fillies something less than interesting.
I escaped at last, clutching my little wooden box under my arm only to find that I had hours yet to kill before I made rendezvous with Johnny Akimoto at his hut behind the sand-dunes.
Sudden panic overtook me as I stood on the cracked pavement bubbling with hot tar and saw the rickety town peter out at either end of the single main street. The riot of green, the raw colours of bougainvillea and poinsettia seemed to close in on me, weigh me down, with their rioting strength. Johnny Akimoto’s warning came back to me and this, added to Nino Ferrari’s caution about the dangers of an inexperienced diver, made me afraid and set me cursing my own foolhardiness for embarking, with so little preparation, on a project that scared even the professionals.
The thought of Manny Mannix nagged at me, too. I wondered what he would do next, where I should meet him, what would happen when we came face to face. Then I saw that I was standing opposite the post-office.
On an impulse I crossed the street, presented myself at the counter and booked a trunk-call to Nino Ferrari. The wilting clerk looked at me as if I had ordered the Eiffel Tower, then he scribbled the number on a slip of paper and told me to wait by the call-box outside.
I waited, I waited a full hour, and when Nino finally came on the line his voice sounded faint and far away, as if it had been filtered through wet linen. He said, “This is Ferrari. Who is calling?”
“This is Lundigan, Nino—Renn Lundigan.”
“So soon? Didn’t your stuff arrive?”
“The stuff’s all right, Nino. It’s being shipped from Brisbane today.”
“Then why do you call me?”
“Because I’m scared, Nino.”
I thought I heard him chuckle, but I couldn’t be sure. “What are you scared of, my friend?” “I think I’m crazy, Nino.”
He really laughed this time: a full-bellied laugh that came crackling in fantastic distortions over the thousand miles of cable.
“I know you’re crazy. There was no need to spend good money to tell me that. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, Nino, there is. I’m expecting trouble.”
“Trouble? What sort of trouble?”
I had to be cautious now. There is no privacy in a public-telephone booth in a Queensland country town.
“I told you, Nino, there is someone who doesn’t like me.”
“You told me, yes. Has anything happened?”
“Not yet, but I want to ask you if there is trouble, would you come up and help me out?”
There was a long pause. I thought for a moment we had been cut off. Then, Nino’s voice crackled again over the wire.
“What sort of help do you want? Diving?”
“And other things, too, perhaps. I don’t know yet. I can’t predict what may happen. I’m just taking out insurance, that’s all.”
There was another pause. I knew what Nino was thinking. He was a newcomer to this country. He had once been an enemy. If he got in
to any trouble it could prejudice his chances of naturalization. I was asking more than I had a right to ask. I knew it, too, but I was too scared to care. Then, Nino spoke.
“All right, my friend, if you want me, you send for me. I will come on the first plane. You pay the bills?”
“I’ll pay the bills, Nino . . . and thanks.”
Nino chuckled. “I’ll thank you better if you stay out of trouble and let me run my business.”
“I’ll try, Nino, but I can’t promise it. I’ll send you the rest of the story in today’s mail. Good-bye for the present and thanks again.”
“Good-bye, my friend,” said Nino, “and stay out of trouble as long as you can.”
The line went dead. I hung up the receiver. I walked back into the post-office, bought myself an air-letter and scribbled a note to Nino Ferrari.
When I dropped it in the mail-box I felt less lonely and less afraid. There were three of us now. Three men and a good boat and a friendly island. Manny Mannix could do his damnedest. I picked up my little box of medicines and walked down the track to the sandhills to meet Johnny Akimoto.
Johnny’s boat was lying a hundred yards offshore, rolling a little in the oily swell. She was ketch-rigged, fresh painted, and her brasswork shone under the loving care of Johnny’s hands. Her sails were old but carefully patched. A workmanlike boat run by a good workman. She had a hold amidships and cabin-space aft. Her decks were swabbed clean and her movables were stowed with a sailor’s careful precision.
It took us three trips in the dinghy to get the stores aboard, and when we had stowed them and closed the hatch down Johnny busied himself with the small fuelstove in the galley.
I sat on the bunk and talked to him while he worked. “She’s a good boat, Johnny. I like her.”
He grinned at me over his shoulder.
“A good boat is like a good woman. Look after her, she looks after you. You saw her name, Wahine. In island language that means ‘woman’. This is all the woman I have.”
I grinned back at him.
“That makes two of us, Johnny.”
He nodded and turned back to his stove, talking as he worked.
“Sometimes it is like that—there is one woman who is an women and when she is gone it is as if there were no women at all.”
“You’re a very wise man, Johnny,” I said quietly.
I saw his dark shoulders lift in a shrug.
“We are the lost people, Renboss. But we are not all children or fools.”
“Have you ever had a woman of your own, Johnny?”
He shook his head. “Where in this country would I find a woman of my own kind? Where, if I left this country, could I find the life which I have here? It is better this way, I think.”
There was a small silence after that, while I smoked my cigarette and Johnny heated a can of stew and cut thick slices of bread which he buttered and laid on a tin plate.
When the meal was ready he laid it on the cabin table and we sat down together. I felt again the curious sensation of separation and release which had come to me on the flight north. This man was my friend, my brother in adventure. The small, confined world between decks was the only real world, the rest was all illusion and fantasquerie.
When we had finished eating we washed the plates and went up on deck. Sitting on the hatch-cover we saw the sun go down in a crimson glory and then it seemed, at one leap, the stars were out, low hung, in a purple sky. The wind was blowing inshore and we heard the slap of the water as the Wahine rose and fell to the rhythm of the small waves.
Johnny Akimoto turned to me.
“Something you should understand, Renboss.”
“What’s that, Johnny?”
“This boat. She is mine, as if she were my woman. I understand her, she understands me. So long as we are on board, I must be the master. On the island it is the other way. It is your island—you say what is to be done, I will do it. We understand that, both of us.”
“I understand it, Johnny.”
“Then there is nothing more to be said between us.”
“There is one thing, Johnny.”
“What is that?”
“Before I came on board today, I telephoned a friend of mine in Sydney. If there’s trouble he’ll come up and join us.”
“This friend of yours—what sort of man is he?”
“He is an Italian, Johnny—a skin-diver. He was a frogman with the Italian navy during the war.”
“Sounds like a good one. He has promised to come?”
“Yes”
“It is always good to have friends at a time like this. Come below. I want to show you something.”
We tossed our cigarettes into the water and went back to the cabin. Johnny Akimoto opened a cupboard under the bunk and took out two rifles. They were .303s, army pattern, but they were freshly oiled and the bolts slid home smoothly and true.
Johnny looked at me and grinned.
“I have had these a long time. I have never used them, except for rabbits and wallabies. If there is trouble we shall not meet it unarmed.”
“What about ammunition?”
He grinned again.
“Two hundred rounds. It goes on your bill.”
He put the rifles back in the cupboard and closed the door.
“Now I think we should sleep. We start at first light.”
I peeled off my clothes and threw myself on the bunk, drawing a single sheet over me for covering. I heard Johnny go on deck to set the riding lights. I saw him come down and turn out the hanging lamp in the cabin. Then I slept and I did not dream at all.
We woke to fresh sunlight and a flat calm. I dived overside for a freshener, while Johnny stood on the deck with the rifle in case of sharks. When I hauled myself aboard on the anchor-cable Johnny went over in his turn.
Then we started the diesel, hauled in the anchor and nosed the Wahine out, eastering first, then turning south-ward to the Whitsunday channel and the bright islands where the tourists come.
Johnny was at the wheel, standing straight and proud—proud of the boat which was his woman, proud of himself and his mastery of her. We ate in the sun, watching the coast slide green and gold past our starboard quarter and the small smudges ahead grow to green islands with the lace-work of white water round them.
It was a three-hour run at cruising speed. Allowing another hour for loading, Johnny proposed that we should lunch before we left for our own Island of the Twin Horns. There was a matter of courtesy, he explained. The tourists were one thing. They came and paid their money and had their fun and went away, leaving little but a memory of laughter by day and whispers under the palms by night. But with the island people themselves it was a different thing. There was the drink to be taken together, the news to be exchanged, the small local news which they made themselves and in which the transient tourists had neither interest nor part. There were favours to be done: the repair of a generator, a fault in the refrigeration system, a note to be taken to a guest-house on a neighbouring island. We must attend to our own business, to be sure, but we would not cut ourselves off from the concerns of the small family of which we were now a part.
I pleaded caution, remembering that one day, sooner or later, Manny Mannix would come flairing like a hunter for the traces of Renn Lundigan. To Johnny Akimoto my reason was unreason.
“These are good people,” he said. “Make yourself one of them, they will be one with you when trouble comes. You never know how or when you may need them.”
I had no choice but to agree with him. I asked myself what I should have done without this grave, strong islander, alien in blood but still no stranger, who stood at the wheel like some ancient god, his muscles rippling to the play of the wheel, his skin shining like silk in the sun.
We were half-way there when Johnny gave me the wheel while he went up to the forepeak and stood whistling like the old lugger captains for a wind.
We didn’t need a wind. The diesel was throbbing smoothly and pushing us throug
h the flat water at a steady eight knots. But Johnny wanted a wind. Johnny wanted to hoist sail and show me how his woman performed, when the sweet wind filled the canvas and laid her over on her side. But the calm persisted and I was glad of it. There was no work at the wheel and I could surrender myself to the soft magic of sun and water and the silence of men who understand each other and have no need for words.
It was eleven in the morning when we made our landfall —a small island of coral with a long, low building in the centre and small white huts dotted among the palms. The coral beach dropped sharply into six fathoms of water and we cut the motors and let the Wahine drift in to close anchorage.
The tourists came down in a body to meet us—brown girls in bright bathing-suits, brown boys with their arms round the shoulders of the girls, the island staff in print frocks or khaki shorts, following behind like shepherds of the holiday flock.
Some of the bathers swam out to us and tried to clamber up the anchor-cable, but Johnny Akimoto refused to allow them on deck. His ship was his own and none might come aboard except as his guest. We dropped into the dinghy and rode the few yards to the beach where Johnny returned the familiar greetings with grave courtesy and introduced me as his friend, Mr Lundigan, who had bought a place near by and had come to pick up his stores. The island folk gave me a warm greeting but asked few questions, content to accept me at the value Johnny had given me.
They told me that my crates had arrived safely. I was able to relax again and enjoy the cold beer and the tropical salad and the easy hospitality of these dwellers on the inner reef.
When I told them the name of my island they laughed. When I confounded them with news of a channel and a water-supply, they nodded sagely and pointed the moral that the Government didn’t know everything. Even though it might pretend to. When I talked in cagey generalities about underwater exploration they were frankly and embarrassingly interested. The island dwellers have a naive and touching pride in the wonderland that surrounds them. Each has his tally of small discoveries, or his small hoard of collector’s pieces—cowries, quaint corals, bailer-shells, flotsam and jetsam from forgotten wrecks.