by Judy Nunn
Ian Tuckey’s tinny voice rang out from the back of the hall. ‘Oh give us a break, Kath.’ He was standing right behind her chair, and his remark was directly to her, but he made sure everyone else could hear, as Ian always did. ‘That argument went out with ark. Terrorists don’t travel in leaky boats, terrorists catch planes.’
Kath whirled about in her seat and glared at him. ‘Oh and you’d know, wouldn’t you, Ian!’
‘Yep, common-sense.’
Ian’s smug smile was infuriating and Kath was about to go him, but Alfred Tran interrupted; he was a quiet man as a rule, but an intelligent one, who assiduously followed world affairs and who had his views.
‘There are terrible things happening in the Middle East,’ he said, ‘and many are no longer able to escape through the normal routes available to them. For these people to have travelled this far and to have made the perilous journey by boat, must mean they have had to flee from great horror.’
There was a moment’s respectful silence. Everyone knew Alfred Tran’s background. He was a boat-person himself. He’d been a small boy when his parents had undertaken the sea journey from Vietnam in 1976, a journey that had resulted in the death of his mother.
Alfred’s input appeared to have calmed the bickering.
Until another voice spoke up. It was Nina Adrejic, seated in the very front row, and she stood, turning her back to the stage in order to address the entire gathering.
‘I don’ care if these people be Muslim or maybe-perhaps terrorist, or maybe-perhaps real-life refugee or whatever you want to call them,’ she said at the top of her voice and in her execrable accent, waving a hand about wildly to express her contempt. ‘These people come here illegal. They jump the queue. If they want to come to Australia, they apply! Like me!’ She stabbed a vehement forefinger into her chest. ‘I … wait … my … turn!’ she declared, each word accompanied by a vicious jab that looked as if it must have hurt. ‘I am proud Australian and I don’ like people who push in the queue. Is not fair. They wait their turn like me. And like Jalila’s family too,’ she said, pointing to where Jalila sat. ‘These people should do things proper, the way we did.’
Nina’s passionate outburst had taken them all by surprise and once again there was a moment’s lull.
Up on stage, observing the crowd, David Miller couldn’t help feeling a stab of anxiety upon the reference to Jalila, which had a lot of people automatically glancing in her direction.
Then old Geoff Marston rose from his chair in the centre of the hall where he and Freda were sitting together. He stood in order to draw attention to himself, for he knew his voice was not as strong as those who had been contributing to the proceedings.
‘Perhaps these people did not have the time you had at your disposal, Nina,’ he said mildly, and his voice, although weaker than the others, was heard by all. ‘Perhaps, as Alfred said, these people were forced to flee. Perhaps if they had “waited their turn”, as you say, it might have proved to their peril.’
Nina didn’t push her argument any further; she’d said her piece. Besides, the elderly Geoff Marston was such a thorough gentleman and such a figure of respectability that had she done so she might have appeared vulgar. So she gave a loud ‘harrumph’ of disapproval instead, which clearly announced her views had not changed, and plonked herself back in her chair.
Voices started up again as people became quarrelsome, exchanging differing views and generally bickering. Up on stage Gordon and David shared a look. The meeting was getting out of hand. Nothing was being served by everyone’s squabbling.
Gordon called the gathering to order. ‘I think we might leave things here,’ he said. ‘It’s rather late and I’m sure everyone’s keen to get home for dinner; what do you say, David?’ He didn’t refer to his wife, who was seated behind him at her desk. He could literally feel the daggers of her disapproval.
Sandy was most certainly scowling. She’d looked up from her laptop where her fingers had been frantically scrambling, trying to keep abreast of the proceedings, these would surely be the strangest minutes. And now they were going to close the meeting informally? Just like that?
‘Yes, good idea,’ David agreed, and he stepped forwards to address the crowd with a final word. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I’d like to offer a suggestion to everyone present, myself included. Let’s make no judgements on these people whom we don’t know. It seems to me a futile exercise.’ It seemed a futile suggestion on his part, too, he thought, people would always talk, but he felt compelled to say something in the defence of those on the island, who were bound to be maligned.
‘Hear, hear,’ Gordon chimed in heartily, ‘no point the whole town getting riled up.’ But like David he was thinking, Just try stopping them. ‘Well that’s about it, so let’s call it a day.’
Sandy Shadforth keyed in her husband’s final words of this ‘extraordinary’ Shoalhaven Residents’ Group meeting, pressed ‘save’ and closed the lid of her laptop. She was not happy.
People started filing out of the hall, talking nineteen to the dozen, but Paul remained where he was, watching as his father stepped from the stage. He was proud of David’s closing words. Brief though they’d been, he was well aware of their intended purpose. He watched as his father joined Maria and Jalila, and he noted with pleasure the fond exchange between the three as they started towards the rear doors of the hall. Jalila was now undoubtedly part of the family.
There had been a distinct shift in the father and son relationship of David and Paul Miller, and it had all been due to Jalila.
‘The bastard’s making a statement,’ Paul had said when his father had remained conspicuously silent throughout the family dinners. ‘He’s sulking because we’re talking about the others.’
‘No,’ Jalila had said, ‘this not true. He try not to hear is all. He think not right he take side.’
Her answer had astonished him. ‘How do you know that?’
‘He tell me. He say, “Jalila, is not that I no feel for your friends. But I must keep …”’ She fumbled for the word, pushing the air away with her hands.
‘Distance?’
‘Yes, distance. He wish no involve, he think is not right.’
‘He said all this to you?’
‘Yes. One night when family in kitchen. He tell me I am good wife to you. Loyal, he say. Your father he like me. I like him also. Your father is good man, Paul.’
The shift in the Miller father–son relationship had happened that simply. At least from Paul’s point of view. Jalila had altered his blinkered vision, opening his eyes to the man his father was. A conventional man, yes, a stitched-up man, yes, by most people’s standards, but a man who did not judge others, and a man who valued loyalty above all else.
Paul had loved his father for the brief closing words he’d made at the meeting.
‘We’ve decided we’re doing dinner at our place,’ David now said as he and Maria and Jalila joined Paul at the church doors. ‘Don’t know about you, but I could handle a beer myself.’
‘Sure, Dad, you go on ahead with the girls. I’ll give them a hand here clearing away the chairs.’ A number of the young regular churchgoers were already stacking the fold-up seats. ‘Liked what you said by the way.’
‘Good.’ David smiled. ‘That’s good.’ He didn’t know why or how, but lately the ice had somehow been broken.
As Inspector Terence Henley had warned, the following days saw a great deal of activity in the sleepy hollow of Shoalhaven.
Further vessels arrived in the marina. Equipment arrived by truck to be transported to the island in order that adequate accommodation could be set up there, together with an interview office and quarters for medical examinations. And of course officials arrived: medical officers, quarantine officers, police officers.
Among the equipment and supplies were military-style tents and furnishings, generators, huge boxes of general provisions to sustain the camp, a miscellany of quarantine and medical items and an endless array of other good
s. The streets and the marina of Shoalhaven had never been busier.
And the busier the town grew, the busier became the talk among its citizens. In the shops and businesses, the marina and the pub, wherever people gathered, the talk was about the refugees. And in private homes too, around dinner tables, the topic was always the same, although points of view varied.
‘I did find last week’s Residents’ Group meeting a little abrasive, I must say,’ Sandy remarked. ‘I tried to notate the proceedings to the best of my ability, and I’ve posted the minutes, if you can call them that, up on the noticeboard, but I did consider some of those present to be –’
‘Quite rude.’ Thelma’s words were right on key, she was in top form tonight, but then Sandy was sitting directly opposite her, which made things a great deal easier. ‘Yes, yes, quite rude, I agree,’ Thelma said, head nodding bird-like as always.
It was just before Christmas and Sandy Shadforth was having one of her dinner parties, just six to a table, she and Gordon, Samuel and Thelma Lyttleton and Geoff and Freda Marston. She’d intended a table of eight, but David and Maria Miller had been unable to attend. They’d said they were dining with Paul and Jalila that night. Sandy was rather thankful now; it gave her a little extra licence.
‘In printing out the minutes and reading through them,’ she went on, ‘I found David’s advice to us all just a little bit …’ She put down her knife and fork, leaving her chicken momentarily aside and paused as if searching for the word, but actually in order to defeat Thelma. Like everyone else in town she found the woman’s lip-reading compulsion intensely irritating. If Thelma hadn’t been married to the pastor, Sandy Shadforth wouldn’t have given her the time of day.
‘… patronising,’ she hastily concluded and with great success. Thelma had been left high and dry.
‘Oh is that so?’ Geoff Marston was surprised. ‘I thought it was rather sensible advice myself. I really –’
‘Really did, yes, yes,’ Thelma parroted, ‘so did I.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Samuel was in complete agreement. ‘Best not to make judgements on people we don’t know.’
For some strange reason, which no one had been able to ascertain, Thelma never parroted her husband, Samuel. Perhaps they had had words earlier in their marriage; perhaps beneath his benign exterior Samuel Lyttleton was a bully and she feared him. No one knew.
‘Most certainly best not to make judgements, of course,’ Sandy said, giving her mouth a delicate dab with her crisply starched linen napkin. ‘But I had the feeling he was advising people to stop talking about these illegal immigrants, and I’m afraid I beg to differ there. You’ll never stop people from voicing an –’
‘An opinion.’ Once again Thelma was right on the money. ‘No, no, of course you won’t.’
‘Thelma,’ Sandy said in her sharpest razor-blade voice, ‘you’ve hardly touched your meal. In fact you’ve barely even looked at it. Now will you please concentrate on your chicken breast?’
Thelma gazed instantly down at her plate. Sandy had spoken to her like this on many an occasion and she was frankly terrified of the woman. For the next ten minutes, much as she ached to join in the conversation, her focus remained steadily fixed upon her chicken breast, even though in her rattled state she was barely able to taste it.
Sandy picked up her knife and fork, once again the gracious hostess. ‘Of course I realised upon reflection just why David wouldn’t wish any derogatory discussion about these people from the Middle East.’ She popped a sliver of chicken into her mouth. ‘I mean, his daughter-in-law is from Iraq, isn’t she?’ Sandy was one of those who could chew and talk at the same time with the utmost delicacy; she considered it a sign of good breeding. ‘So of course he would wish to speak well of these supposed refugees, despite the fact they’re illegal immigrants.’
‘I don’t think he had any hidden agenda,’ Gordon said in mild disagreement. ‘I think he just wanted to stop people bickering.’
‘Perhaps he did, dear, yes, but as I said, you’ll never stop people talking. And for all her vulgarity, I must say I found a degree of common-sense in Nina’s views.’ She smiled graciously at Geoff Marston. ‘I know you tend to side with Alfred, Geoff, which is a credit to your humanitarianism and also to Alfred’s, but the fact is these people have jumped the queue, they have entered the country illegally.’ Another sliver of chicken, another dab of the linen napkin. ‘And then of course when it comes to Muslims there’s always the problem there may be a terrorist element. We must bear that in mind.’
Geoff Marston and his wife exchanged looks of concern. Shoalhaven was becoming a town divided.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Christmas came and went, unnoticed by many in the excitement that now engulfed Shoalhaven, and during the days leading up to New Year, nowhere was the town’s division more evidenced than at the pub. Perhaps it was the grog that fuelled the flames, perhaps it was the fact that many who gathered there had interests on the island, namely those fishers with huts, but opinions differed, argument was rife and tempers occasionally flared.
‘Christ knows what these shitkickers from the Middle East have done to our property,’ Kath snarled. ‘Jesus, that arsehole copper said the huts’d have to be fumigated! What the hell does that mean? They’ve spread some fucking disease all over the place? That’s what it sounded like to me and Buck. Eh, love?’ She dug a bony elbow into her husband’s side; he was a tall man in his late sixties, scrawny and tough like his wife and as fit as many a man half his age.
‘Yep, reckon you’d be right, Kath.’ Buck just sipped his beer, implacable as always. Buck left the thinking to his wife; life was easier that way.
Most of the island fishers were present, with the exception of the several working up north and also Paul, who didn’t go to the pub as regularly as he once had, preferring to stay at home with Jalila. The town’s old die-hards were there too of course. Archie, Mac and Ian Tuckey never missed a night at the pub. The whole lot of them were gathered around the tables they’d pulled together on the verandah.
‘The quarantine blokes might do a bloody sight more than fumigate the huts, Kath,’ Manny said ominously. Now in his late forties, Manny Papadakis had inherited his fisher’s business and hut from his father who had retired, but who still lived in Shoalhaven. Old Nic Papadakis ran the fishing co-op next to the marina.
‘Me and Dad was talking about all this just last night,’ Manny went on, ‘and Dad says the authorities might burn the huts down.’
‘Whaat!’ Young Pete, Boris Adrejic’s crew mate, voiced the horrified amazement of everyone present. Pete believed it only right he should represent Boris’s interests while his boss was up north, and he was quite prepared to give voice when necessary. ‘They can’t do that!’
‘Too right they can’t,’ Nat Franelli agreed, outraged. ‘They bloody well can’t and they bloody well won’t! I’d like to see them bloody well try!’ Young Nat could get quite fiery at times, particularly with a few beers under his belt. It was the second-generation Italian blood in him.
‘Dad reckons it’s happened before,’ Manny insisted. ‘About ten years back, on an island further north. A small fishers’ camp, only a few huts, off-season, empty at the time, a boatload of Indonesians come ashore and set themselves up there. Dad says that after the authorities found ’em and shipped ’em out they burnt the huts to the ground. It was all kept quiet of course, they didn’t let the news get around, but Dad says he heard it from a mate who was working up there.’
‘I don’t think they do that, not here,’ Aappo Laaksonen said gravely, shaking his massive, white-haired head at his sons, who were in instant agreement, as they always were with their father. ‘Not here I don’t think they do that. Too many of us here, eh?’ The snow-white eyebrows in the square-jawed face raised ever so slightly and the familiar, mischievous twinkle appeared in the ice-blue eyes. For a relatively old man by some people’s standards, Aappo was still attractive, and in an extremely masculine way. ‘I thin
k too many of us here not keep quiet, eh? Like to see them do this to the fishers of Gevaar Island.’ The mischievous twinkle broadened into a grin. ‘No, no, I don’t think so.’
The tension eased a little. Aappo could have that effect upon others, and most particularly upon men.
‘Yeah, well, I suppose we just wait and see what they say,’ Manny conceded. ‘I mean they’d have to tell us before they torched the camp, wouldn’t they?’
‘Too right they would,’ Nat said, ‘and Aappo’s spot on. If they want to keep this whole thing a secret, they better not try and burn our huts. If they do, we don’t keep bloody quiet like they want us to, we let the media in on everything. That’s a damn good idea.’
Aappo nodded. That hadn’t actually been his idea at all, he’d been thinking more along the lines of the whole lot of them taking on any who dared threaten their huts – as he and his sons most certainly would – but this new idea sounded like a good one so he was happy to take the credit.
‘Why do you reckon they’ve got this big thing about secrecy anyway?’ Manny asked. ‘Me and Dad was talking about that too, and we don’t get what all the fuss is about. I mean, eight illegals landing on our island? It’s not really that many is it, and boat-people aren’t anything new, are they?’
‘Don’t you and your dad know what’s going on in the bloody world?’ Kath demanded. Manny’s ignorance didn’t surprise her, she found him a bit on the dim side herself, but she would have expected more of Nic Papadakis, whom she knew well and who in his time had been the island’s longest term resident, a title that she and Buck now proudly shared. Old Nic was of Greek peasant stock, uneducated, certainly, but sharp as a tack. ‘Don’t you and your dad follow the bloody news, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Well, not much,’ Manny admitted self-consciously. ‘I mean, we don’t read newspapers all that much.’ His father couldn’t read at all, he thought, she knew that! And he’d left school himself at twelve, he’d been a fisher for over thirty years, why would he read newspapers?