CHAPTER 21
SHOCKS AND RECRIMINATIONS
Nor could Andrew protect Old Mr Murchison. At breakfast the next morning Andrew’s father held up the morning newspaper.
“Well, the secret is out now,” he said.
Andrew stared at the headline appalled.
LOCAL MARITIME MYSTERY SOLVED? it read.
‘Oh no! Muriel is going to be very upset. I hope she doesn’t blame me,’ he thought.
The newspaper article was all about the wreck of the Deeral. It went over the story of the sinking of the Merinda and of how the Deeral had set out with four men on board to search for it. Andrew noted that his grandfather’s name was there, along with Murchison’s and the names of the two crewmen. There followed a word for word copy of the 1958 article that he had read. Then there was a detailed description of how the wreck was found and of what it looked like. The concluding sentence set Andrew’s heart in his mouth with interest and anxiety. It read: ‘Now at last, after all these years, it seems that the sea might be going to give up the secret of what really happened on that fateful voyage.’
As he looked up from reading Andrew’s mind raced. Who had written the article and put it in the paper? His first thought was that it must have been Carmen. Then he considered his father. He looked at him and asked, “Did you write this Dad?”
His father looked surprised. “Not me. I’m interested, but not that much.”
“Car?”
Carmen shook her head. “I wish I had but it never crossed my mind. I wanted to do some quiet detective work first but now it looks like it will all be out in the open.”
Remembering Carmen’s comment about evidence being hidden or destroyed Andrew could only nod. “I wonder who wrote the article then?” he said, ticking off in his mind possible candidates. The article had a name under it he did not recognize and which was no help. They discussed who it might have been, then once again speculated on what might have happened on the Deeral on her fateful last voyage. All they could do was go over the same theories as before and nothing was resolved, except the obvious determination to find out the truth.
This time when he got to school Andrew told his friends about the discovery of the wreck but was careful not to put forward any of his ideas or suspicions about what might have happened.
Peter nodded and said, “I saw the name Herbert Collins and wondered if he was a relative. Your Grandad eh? Sorry about that.”
The person Andrew thought would be most interested was Graham but he seemed preoccupied and soon left, to go and talk to Amanda. This occasioned some cruel jibes from some of the others about ‘dogs’ and ‘going for the ugly ones because they are grateful’. Andrew thought they were being quite unkind. Amanda was plain but she appeared to him to have a very full bosom and a shapely figure. ‘She is probably very nice person,’ he thought. Later, in Geography, he cast a few glances back at where Graham and Amanda sat side by side. They were obviously so close together that their bodies must be touching. Seeing them putting their heads together and the way they were whispering and looking at each other made him quite envious. With memories of doing just that with Muriel he wistfully wondered if he had any chance of recovering her affection.
That hope seemed to vanish to almost nil that evening. The phone rang and when his mother answered it and said, “Yes, Andrew is here,” his hopes shot up.
It was Muriel, but her first words were biting. “Oh Andrew, how could you! I asked you not to. I thought you loved me.”
“How could I what?” Andrew asked, mystified.
“Write that newspaper article,” Muriel answered.
“But I didn’t,” Andrew replied, hurt that she thought so.
“Then it was that sister of yours,” Muriel snapped. “It is so cruel! There have been media people over at Grandad’s badgering him and Grandma all day. They are very upset and hurt.”
“It wasn’t Carmen,” Andrew answered, angry that Muriel was making the accusations without any proof.
“Then who was it?” Muriel asked angrily.
“I don’t know. Look Muriel, I am sorry about all this but we didn’t tell anyone, except our parents,” Andrew explained, trying not to let his emotions obvious.
“Then it was them!” she snapped.
“It wasn’t! Dad was quite surprised to read it in the paper. Anyway, he wouldn’t have had time. He only learned about the wreck a few hours earlier.”
“He could have,” Muriel said.
“He didn’t! He told me,” Andrew replied. He was getting annoyed now and it hurt to hear her speak that way.
There was a silence and Andrew distinctly heard muffled sobs. It made him realize that Muriel was crying. While he was groping for the right words to say she said, “Please let it drop. Please don’t talk to people about it, and don’t hurt my Grandad.”
That was food for thought and all Andrew could say was that he would not raise the issue with anyone. “But if people ask me I will have to tell them,” he added.
“Then you are no friend of mine!” Muriel cried, slamming down the phone.
Feeling hurt and puzzled Andrew made his way back to his room but was quite unable to settle to his homework. What he did instead was take out his chart of the Barrier Reef and pencil on the actual location of the wreck of the A V 1313 and then circle an approximate area for where Old Mr Murchison said the Deeral had gone down. He carefully measured the distances and found it still matched what they had previously calculated. He also thought hard about the pencil lines he had seen on the chart at Bosuns Bay and did some more speculating.
That night he had another horrible nightmare- diving again and swimming around a huge wreck full of moray eels and skeletons- and his air suddenly running out and no-one there to share with! Muriel should have been close but she was nowhere to be seen.
He woke up gasping for breath and sweating, then had trouble going back to sleep again.
The next morning it was their turn to be badgered by a newspaper man. Andrew and Carmen were only allowed to answer questions with their parents there and both, by silent agreement, kept their suspicious theories to themselves. Their father did most of the talking and merely said that it had always been a family mystery what had really happened to Herbert Collins.
The paper that morning had another article. This was obviously the result of the interviews with Old Mr Murchison. “I can’t explain how the ship ended up where you say it is,” he was quoted as saying. “I didn’t actually see her sink. The waves were huge and it was dark and I was washed overboard and was lucky to grab a lifebuoy.”
Carmen read this aloud to Andrew at the breakfast table. Her whole voice was doubting in tone. She read on: “Old Mr Murchison could offer no explanation to reports of the ship possibly being sunk by explosives. ‘We had no explosives on board. I know nothing about that,’ Mr Murchison said. Oh I don’t believe that!” she snorted.
“How could we prove that?” Andrew asked.
“We could ask old Mr McGackey. He was a crewman on her,” Carmen answered.
Andrew had forgotten about the arrangement to go and speak to him that afternoon and was pleased to learn that his father was going to join them. He was obviously intent on discovering the truth about his father’s death.
School that day was ordinary. Andrew later only remembered two incidents. One was seeing Graham and Amanda being all lovey-dovey in class. The second was finding Willy Williams and his mate ‘Stick’ Morton sitting outside the Deputy Principal’s office.
“What are you here for Willy? Are you in trouble?” he queried.
Willy nodded. “Yes, over a paper plane,” he replied.
Stick chuckled. “It hit Miss Hackenmeyer,” he interjected.
“Oh silly boy!” Andrew commented, shaking his head but grinning.
Willy couldn’t help it. He grinned back. “Stick hit her with it in class,” he replied.
Andrew looked at Stick and then back to Willy. “So if Stick threw it why are you here?” he asked
.
“Because I made it,” Willy answered. Then the memory of Stick’s face as he saw the plane hit Miss Hackenmeyer came to him and he chortled. For the next few minutes he related the incident in the class room. The story cheered Andrew a bit and he went on with the errand he had been sent on.
After school Andrew made his way home with Carmen. Their father was waiting for them. “No afternoon tea,” he commanded. “Get in the car. We will have afternoon tea when we get there.”
They were driven over to Gran’s. She joined them in the car and they continued on to the Retirement Home. Mr McGackey offered them tea and biscuits and then sat and listened to their story. As they spoke he kept nodding and his lips were pursed. At the end he said, “So that is a real mystery. Old Joshua comes back from the sea and tells everyone the ship sank in a storm way out on the Barrier Reef, and here she is scuttled in shallow water close inshore. Very fishy! Very fishy indeed!”
Andrew now asked, “Mr McGackey, are you positive that the Deeral’s number as an army workboat was A. V. one three one three?”
Mr McGackey nodded vigorously. “Absolutely certain. As I said, us old sailors were real superstitious. To be on a ship with one thirteen was bad enough, but two!”
Carmen then asked, “Mr McGackey, would the Deeral have been carrying explosives?”
Mr McGackey nodded. “Of course she were. We were a salvage outfit. We always had some gelignite and detonators with us. Not a lot, but always some. You never know when you have to blast a bit of reef or rock like when you are trying to refloat a vessel what’s aground. We even blew a bent rudder off a ship once.”
“So you don’t believe what Mr Murchison said to the newspaper today?” Carmen asked.
Mr McGackey gave a snort of disbelief and shook the newspaper which lay on the table beside him. “Joshua Murchison is a bloody liar! I always thought his story sounded a bit fishy. Never did like the man, nor trusted him either. There were a few times I thought he was pullin’ the wool over Bert’s eyes about a couple of business deals. But Bert were a good, trusting man, honest as the day is long, and he could see only good in other people.”
Hearing that praise made Andrew glow deep inside and he could tell that it pleased his father and Carmen as well. He asked, “How could we check whether the wreck we found is actually the Deeral, to match up the maker’s number and so on?”
Mr McGackey looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, “Well, she were registered here in Cairns. You could ask at the Harbour Board offices. Or you could try to contact the builders in Scotland- if they are still in business that is.”
Both of those ideas were accepted as a plan. They agreed that the first step must be to prove that the AV1313 actually was the Deeral. “Otherwise we could be doing Old Mr Murchison a great injustice,” he said.
Andrew’s father said that he would get on to that the next day. They then thanked Mr McGackey, who said, “Anytime. Always nice to have a chat about the old days.”
That made Andrew realize just how bored and lonely the old sailor probably was and it saddened him. It made him even more aware of the other old people in the home and he tried not to look at them, feeling both self-conscious and very aware of his youth and good health.
The family made their way home and Andrew settled to his homework. In particular he began a rewrite of his History assignment, to include a paragraph on the mystery of the Deeral. That evening he sat watching TV, all the while hoping Muriel would ring, but dreading what she might say if she did. She didn’t, so he went to bed feeling depressed and irritated. The next chance of speaking to her would be at Navy Cadets on Friday night and he began to half-dread that.
‘Oh, I hope I can make it up with her!’ he thought unhappily, still trying to come up with a strategy to win back her affection.
There was no mention of the wreck or the mystery in the newspaper the next morning. That concerned Andrew but did not really surprise him. ‘It is not important to other people,’ he thought. But it was a sad comment. Carmen was both angry and vocal about it. “They should open an enquiry into it,” she said at breakfast.
“An enquiry? What sort of enquiry?” her mother asked.
“A police investigation,” Carmen answered.
“Oh fair go!” her father said. “There is no proof that would justify that.”
“But Dad there is!” Carmen insisted.
“Maybe, but I can’t see the authorities wasting time and money looking into something that might have happened half a century ago when there isn’t any real evidence of wrong doing,” her father replied.
Carmen almost scowled. “I call the wreck of a ship in the wrong place pretty firm evidence,” she cried.
Her father shook his head. “Not till the wreck is definitely identified. Then we will need even more evidence.”
Carmen pressed her lips firmly together, “Then we will just have to find some evidence,” she said.
Her father nodded and wiped his lips with a serviette. “We will. Now eat your breakfast.”
“Don’t forget to go to the harbour people or whatever,” Carmen added.
“Cairns Port Authority is the name now. No, don’t worry. I won’t,” her father replied.
Andrew, who had been listening but not really wanting to get involved, lest he turn Muriel against him permanently, sadly took himself to his room to get ready for school. Thursday was a nothing much day. Other than noting Graham and Amanda arriving late at History it was a dull day. Nor did his father have any new information.
“I have applied for information,” he explained. “If they can find it they will send it to us.”
“What about the builders?” Carmen asked.
Their father shook his head. “According to my internet inquiries they went out of business years ago. I don’t think we will get much that way.”
So there was nothing to do but wait. In his room Andrew worked on his assignment and brooded. To his great relief he slept well that night without any nightmares. Friday dawned dry and clear and with Andrew suffering butterflies in the stomach from anxiety. Would Muriel be at Navy Cadets that evening? Would she speak to him? It was all very upsetting. On top of that it was the annual school Sports Day and Andrew was nominated for half a dozen events and wasn’t really looking forward to them.
Despite that he tried his best, coming second in the 400 metres race, 5th in the 800 metres, and gaining points for his house in the discus, javelin and shot put. He did enjoy seeing all the girls in their short sports dresses. He also noted Graham, Amanda, Stephen and Rosemary wandering around as a group, obviously not participating. ‘Graham must be winning with Amanda,’ he decided, feeling a spurt of envy and then brooding over whether he ever had any chance of winning with Muriel.
Then it was Friday evening and time for cadets. By tea time Andrew was almost nauseous from anxiety. It took an effort to eat and he dressed with particular care, making sure his teeth were cleaned, washing his mouth with a gargle to remove any possible bad breath, and using deodorant.
All the way to Navy Cadets in his mother’s car Andrew was tense. On arrival he anxiously scanned the yard and then inside. But there was no sign of Muriel. All the worry had been for nothing, to be replaced by another concern. ‘I hope she isn’t going to drop out of cadets just because of me,’ he thought.
Sub Lt Sheldon was there. After the first parade Andrew took the opportunity to speak to him. “Sir, did you see the newspaper articles about the wreck?” he asked.
“Yes I did. I wish they hadn’t been written. Do you know who the author was?” Sub Lt Sheldon asked.
“No sir. It wasn’t anyone in my family. We were quite surprised and shocked,” Andrew replied, nettled by the implication that he might have been responsible.
Sub Lt Sheldon nodded and looked thoughtful. “I think it was one of those English tourists. One of them was a journalist, but I haven’t been able to check yet. But I wish he had waited to check a few facts before stirring things up like that.
”
“Yes sir. It has really upset Muriel and her family,” Andrew agreed.
“Seaman Murchison? Yes, I noted she wasn’t on parade. Do you know where she is?”
“No sir.”
“I will phone her home to check,” Sub Lt Sheldon said. “Now you had better get along to your lesson.”
“Aye aye sir,’ Andrew replied, saluting. He really wanted to stay and find out where Muriel was, but had no excuse to remain. So he about turned and marched away. Splicing was the lesson, something Andrew already knew how to do but was still required to demonstrate his skill at. After that there was a lesson on First Aid- serious bleeding, and then drill. Andrew settled back into the routine of the training and was able to relax somewhat. However worry about Muriel remained to niggle at him.
Jennifer was there but she did not know where Muriel was. “She has been away from school most of the week,” she said.
Nor did Shona know. Andrew even asked Tina, noting a hurt look on her face as he did. That made him feel uncomfortable as he was dimly aware that Tina liked him. Carmen had no news either. “Pity,” she said. “There are a few questions I would like to ask her, and I would like to talk to her grandad again.”
“Not much chance of us being invited over there at the moment,” Andrew replied bitterly. He also wanted to visit the house at Bosuns Bay. In particular he wanted to have another look at that chart. He did not trust his memory and had not been focused on the thing at the time, but now it was starting to loom larger in his thoughts all the time. ‘It had a pencil line from out on the Great Barrier Reef in to Cape Upstart,’ he remembered, ‘and with some numbers written beside it. Were they the magnetic bearings to steer?’ he wondered.
Carmen made a face and said, “Then we might just go uninvited.”
“Muriel wouldn’t like that,” Andrew replied, aghast at the thought of offending her even more by such obvious prying.
“I think you’ve cashed your chips anyway,” Carmen replied.
Andrew gave her a bleak look and nodded. His intellect told him that, but his heart still hoped. Carmen obviously saw how down he was because she patted his shoulder. “Never mind Little Brother, plenty more fish in the sea. Now, are you game to come with me?”
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