Davey Jones's Locker

by Christopher Cummings

  The anxiety was even more pronounced when he and Carmen set sail from the Yacht Club on Sunday morning. The closer they got to Bosuns Bay the more Andrew wished he hadn’t suggested the meeting, or at least not at her grandparent’s house. What made it worse was that it was a beautiful day, the sort the tourists flocked to North Queensland to enjoy: clear blue skies, sunny but not too hot; a gentle, cool breeze.

  It took them over an hour to sail the six kilometres. That made it worse as Andrew’s emotions were heightened by the tension. By the time the catamaran slipped around the rocky headland into the small bay he was deeply regretting the decision to visit but still clinging to faint hope that somehow Muriel and he might repair their friendship.

  Carmen steered the catamaran through the outlying rocks and then tacked her up the length of the short bay to the beach. While they did this Andrew scanned the house but saw no sign of anyone. He had half expected to find them on the back patio, or in the garden. ‘I hope they are home and we haven’t come all this way for nothing,’ he thought. A check of his watch told him it was just after 2pm. He was also worried about Carmen. She seemed to be in a funny mood and he did not want her asking questions and upsetting Muriel or her family. However he knew she would resent any reminder. To her a promise, once given, stood for ever.

  The catamaran was beached and the sails lowered and roughly furled. Andrew placed the anchor among the exposed roots of one of the big trees. Then he turned and looked up the driveway, his heart beating with what he recognized as fear. But there was no backing out so he set off up the driveway, Carmen following along behind.

  As he passed the closed side door to the boathouse Andrew wondered if the old lifebuoy was still there. So strong was his curiosity that he stopped, tempted to risk a peek. However all of his upbringing had made him shy of making free with other people’s possessions or homes. With an effort of willpower he resisted the temptation. Shaking his head he started walking again, Carmen now beside him.

  When he reached the steps leading up to the back terraced garden he turned to go up them, then stopped, his left foot on the bottom step. Carmen pointed up the driveway. “Better go to the front of the house. Visitors don’t usually come in the back way,” she said.

  The thought of having almost committed such a beach of manners caused Andrew to blush. He even felt guilty walking up the driveway beside the house. They passed the open doors to the garage and looking inside cheered him up. There were no people visible but there were two cars parked there: His and Hers; and Muriel’s family car was parked off the side of the driveway under a tree up near the front of the house. ‘There must be people home,’ he thought.

  There were. In the front garden were four people: Muriel, Old Mr Murchison, Grandma Murchison and Muriel’s mother. They were busy pruning rose bushes. Old Mr Murchison was peering among the foliage of a rosebush, a spray in his hand. There was a side gate and Andrew stopped outside it and waited till Muriel’s mother saw them.

  “Oh hello. What do you want?” she asked, her voice far from friendly.

  To Andrew’s relief Muriel looked around and then said, “It’s alright Mum. I invited them.” She gave a smile and said, “Come in. How was the trip over?”

  “Good,” Andrew answered, opening the gate and going in to the front garden. “Bit slow. There wasn’t much wind. Hello. Hello.” These last to Old Mr Murchison, who had straightened up and was peering at them through his glasses and to Grandma Murchison. So emotionally sensitive was Andrew that he fancied the old man was glaring at him. Certainly Grandma Murchison was only being polite, not warmly welcoming.

  There were a few moments of embarrassed silence, then Muriel said, “Would you like a drink?”

  They never got a chance to answer. Through the front door of the house came Muriel’s father. He stopped and looked at them in surprise. “What are you two doing here?” he demanded.

  Andrew went hot with embarrassment. Carmen gestured to Muriel, who said, “I invited them Daddy. They are my friends.”

  “Funny sort of friends,” Muriel’s father replied, compressing his lips into a thin line. “You should have had more sense than to invite them here.”

  At that Carmen bristled. “Excuse me! What have we done wrong?” she demanded to know.

  “What!” exploded Muriel’s father, his face mottling red. “What? You stir up all these lies and accusations and go around making up wild tales that hurt my father and you have the hide to ask what you have done!” he shouted.

  “We haven’t made up any wild tales,” Carmen cried angrily. “All we have said is what we have seen.”

  “What about those insinuations in that newspaper article?” Muriel’s father snapped.

  “We didn’t write them!” Carmen cried. She looked to Muriel who nodded but also looked upset and angry.

  “So who did then?”

  “Sub Lt Sheldon said it was one of the English tourists on the diveboat,” Carmen answered.

  “So you say! I don’t think I believe you!” Muriel’s father cried.

  “Are you calling me a liar?” cried a very angry Carmen.

  “Yes I am,” Muriel’s father snapped back.

  Carmen gasped and sucked in her breath. “Well! I know one thing for sure, that someone has been telling lies.” At that she looked directly at Old Mr Murchison. Andrew saw the old man blanch and then his face mottle with emotion. He shook his head and muttered, “Go away please.”

  To Andrew’s growing dismay Carmen stood her ground. She faced the old man squarely and said, “I would like to know what happened to my grandfather.”

  Old Mr Murchison seemed to shrivel and wilt. Again he shook his head. Andrew saw his hands shaking. Old Mr Murchison trembled and said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t help you. Go away.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?” Carmen snapped

  Muriel’s father took a step forward. “How dare you make accusations like that! Get out!”

  “Accusations!” Carmen shouted. “Facts I would call them.” She turned back to face Old Mr Murchison and went on, “According to you the Deeral encountered bad weather on the twelfth of February, Nineteen fifty eight, at which time she was approximately a hundred nautical miles east of Bowen. And you said she sank in a storm during the night of February the fourteenth, two days later. And you claim that after she sank you drifted in the sea in a lifebuoy for the next three or four days. So how come the wreck of the Deeral is at Cape Upstart?”

  “That is not certain,” Muriel’s father yelled, “Now get out of here!”

  By now Andrew was both distressed at the turn of events, and afraid. He backed through the gate. Carmen however stood her ground, glaring at Old Mr Murchison. “Well Mr Murchison, how do you explain that?”

  Old Mr Murchison shook his head and appeared to Andrew to shake with emotion. “I can’t,” he croaked.

  Carmen then pointed at the old man and said coldly, “I think you are liar Mr Murchison. You said there were storms for four or five days, but I have checked the weather reports for Bowen and the Whitsundays during the period from February the tenth to February twentieth that year and there wasn’t a single day when the wind got above fifteen knots, and no storms at all, just a bit of rain.”

  At that Old Mr Murchison seemed to choke up. He gobbled and then clutched at his chest. Andrew feared that he was going to have a heart attack. So, obviously, did others as Grandma Murchison and Muriel’s mother both hurried to him. “Inside!” Muriel’s mother said. The two women helped the trembling old man through the door.

  By then Muriel’s father was almost beside himself with rage. “Get out of here!” he shouted, stepping forward.

  CHAPTER 23

  PLANS

  This time Carmen did retreat. She stepped back through the gate and swung it shut but remained defiantly angry. To Andrew’s added distress Muriel now waded into the argument. “You horrible person!” she screamed at Carmen. “How could you hurt my grandfather like that!”

>   “Because I don’t have a grandfather,” Carmen retorted, “Something happened to him and I’d like to know what. And your grandfather knows the truth and won’t tell.” Then she turned on her heel and said, “Come on Andrew.”

  Andrew met Muriel’s eyes, his emotions all in a jumble. Muriel glared at him. “You promised Andrew!” she shouted. “Now get! I hate you! And I never want to see you again!”

  Muriel’s father advanced to the gate and shouted at them, “Get out of here, and don’t ever come back! And stop spreading malicious lies or I will get my lawyers to sue you for slander.”

  At that moment Muriel’s mother came to the front door and called to Muriel’s father. “Basil, you had better come quickly. Your mother has fainted.”

  Hearing that made Andrew swallow with anxiety. His stomach had already turned over from fear caused by the mention of legal things. Now his stomach heaved again. The thought that the argument might have harmed the two old people made him feel sick. On top of that he was feeling stunned and hurt by Muriel’s rejection. He saw both Muriel and her father hurry to the front door and inside as he hurried down the driveway behind Carmen. But he was also feeling angry as well. What Carmen had said about the weather had shocked him but had caused his suspicions to gel.

  Being abused and called a liar also stung. Andrew felt broken hearted over the loss of his love but he was also upset at her being unfair to him. ‘I didn’t raise the subject, and nor did Carmen,’ he thought, the injustice burning.

  Brother and sister hurried down past the garage and terrace to the beach. As they did Andrew kept glancing back, half hopefully, half fearfully. However they reached the beach without seeing anyone back at the house. In silence they unhooked the catamaran and slid it down into the water. Within a minute they were afloat and busy raising and trimming sails.

  Only when they were under way did Carmen speak. “Well, that put the cat among the pigeons! Sorry Andrew, but I wasn’t going to take that sort of abuse and false accusations lying down.”

  Andrew shrugged and looked back at the house. As he did his mind seemed to clear. “You were in the right,” he said. “I agree with you. They had no reason to be nasty like that.”

  “Some guilty consciences back there I reckon,” Carmen observed. “Old man Murchison knows what happened to Grandad alright. Did you see the way he went pale and started to shake? That is a guilty conscience if ever I saw one.”

  “I was worried he might be going to have a heart attack,” Andrew replied.

  “Good!” Carmen snapped. “Be only justice. I think your theory about the gold is the right one; and I suspect that Old Mr Murchison murdered Grandad and the others.”

  Despite his distress over Muriel Andrew thought so to. He said, “We would have a hard time proving it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We are doing a pretty good job so far,” Carmen replied.

  At that moment Andrew knew that he just had to find out. ‘If I don’t it will eat at me from inside for the rest of my life,’ he thought. “I am going to try to find out,” he said.

  “Good! We both will,” Carmen answered. “And I know Dad really wants to know too.”

  But how? Discussing that kept them going all the way back to Cairns. They reached the Yacht Club without any clear plan at all. To Andrew it was intensely frustrating. They had a certain amount of proof, but none of it was conclusive. When they discussed this with their parents and he suggested asking the police to investigate, his father again shook his head and said no. Nor did his father think that the civil maritime authorities would be interested in opening an enquiry into what happened. All the family could agree on was to go quietly and secretly, to pretend that they had lost interest.

  That night in his bed Andrew cried himself to sleep. He mourned his broken friendship with Muriel, but he was also hurt by the injustice of her accusations and wondered if he had known her well enough. ‘I think I was blinded by her good looks,’ he decided. But that didn’t help much. He still felt hurt and rejected.

  Next morning as he sat down breakfast his dismal thoughts were interrupted by his father holding up the newspaper for him to look at. “Isn’t this one of your friends from school?” he asked.

  Andrew’s eyes noted the coloured pictures of a large, burnt-out vehicle and of people in army uniforms sitting beside a road being tended by ambulance personnel.

  HEROIC RESCUES read the bold headline. Underneath it said, ‘Army Cadets rescue people from blazing fuel tanker on Kuranda Range.’

  On reading that Andrew leant closer and read the caption to the second photo. ‘Paramedics provide treatment for minor burns to cadet heroes Graham Kirk and Stephen Bell’. “That’s Graham alright,” he commented. His own unhappiness forgotten he sat and read the article. As he did Carmen joined them and he showed it to her. He then read with interest how the previous afternoon a van with five people in it had tried to overtake a fuel tanker coming down the range road. The van had collided with a sports car coming up the mountain. The driver of the sports car had been killed in the crash and his car had erupted in flames. This had set fire to the petrol tanker. Warrant Officer Howley, who was the driver of an army Land Rover which had been following the van down the mountain, had dragged four people from the van, which had crashed on its side amid streams of burning fuel. Warrant Officer Howley had become trapped but Graham, who had been helping the people to safety, broke the windscreen and dragged both the driver of the van and Warrant Officer Howley to safety. They had managed to get clear just before the petrol tanker exploded.

  “Graham really was a hero,” Carmen commented.

  “Yes,” Andrew agreed. ‘But it won’t make him any friends. People will be jealous,’ he thought. Curious to know more he hurried to school, almost forgetting his own troubles.

  The first person he met there was Peter. Peter was not able to tell him any more than he had read in the paper. “I didn’t see any of it,” he explained. “I was in a coach with the main body of cadets and we were stuck in traffic way back up the road. We had to come home via Mareeba and the Rex Highway, then along the coast.”

  “It said Graham and Stephen both helped that army warrant officer,” Andrew said.

  Peter frowned. “Yeah, I read that, but I don’t understand it. Neither Graham nor Stephen was at the bivouac and I didn’t see them in the Land Rover before we left.”

  “Maybe they were picked up later,” Andrew suggested.

  “Hmm,” said Peter. “Maybe, but it sounds funny to me.”

  That got Andrew worried. “Are they in trouble for something?”

  “Don’t know, but here comes Graham now. Let’s ask him,” Peter replied.

  As Graham arrived Peter stood up and shook his hand. “Bloody well done mate! You and Stephen both. Really well done,” he said.

  Graham blushed and said ‘Thanks,’ then managed a weak grin as Roger stood up and congratulated him. Andrew joined in, being careful not to touch the bandaged forearm. Peter then asked, “Where were you blokes on the weekend? I didn’t see you at the bivouac, yet you were with Warrant Officer Howley at the crash?”

  For a few moments Graham looked quite sick. Then he shook his head and replied, “Sorry. We’ve been ordered not to say.”

  To Andrew’s mystification Peter nodded and said, “Like that other weekend when you went off with the officers eh? They must be planning another one of those really good week long exercises. I hope so.”

  Graham nodded but did not answer. Andrew felt a genuine surge of jealousy. “I wish we could come on them. I’ve heard they are great,” he commented.

  That got them talking cadet exercises and army versus navy rivalry became a major part of the conversation. Andrew didn’t resent it from people like Peter but he was still envious. There was no more discussion of the weekend accident when Graham indicated he didn’t want to talk about it. “I saw that guy in the sports car get killed and then incinerated. It was horrible,” he explained.

  The thought of bein
g burned to death made Andrew squirm with revulsion and he was happy to drop the topic. Blake and Simmo next appeared and he went off with them. For the next ten minutes, until the bell went, they discussed the tanker crash and also the upcoming camp.

  During Geography in Period 1 Andrew noted that Graham was again sitting next to Angus, and that there was no sign of Amanda. Out of curiosity he asked Louise, who was sitting across the aisle at the next desk, “Where is Amanda?”

  Louise shrugged and said, “Don’t know. I heard she has been sent to another school.”

  “She is the daughter of that army warrant officer who is in the paper this morning isn’t she?” he asked.

  “Yes she is,” Louise agreed.

  “Weren’t she and Graham going together?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” Louise replied, sounding very off-hand.

  Her apparent indifference piqued Andrew’s curiosity. “Did something happen?” he probed.

  Again Louise shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said. She turned back to her work, indicating that the conversation was over.

  ‘Hmm!’ Andrew thought. ‘She knows something but isn’t going to say. There is a story here!’ (And there is but you will have to read ‘Fourteen’ by C. R. Cummings to find out what it is!)

  At the conclusion of the lesson Capt Conkey reminded them all that exams were coming up the following week, and that their assignment was due the next Monday. That was mildly worrying to Andrew as he had not really started the Geography assignment. There was another reminder during History and that did get Andrew thinking. What was worrying him about that assignment was how much to include about the Deeral and how much about the Merinda.

  ‘I don’t have very much on the Merinda,’ he mused. He knew he could not include any of his suspicions about what became of the Deeral, other than to hint that where she was found was unexplained and peculiar. That got him mulling over his suspicious theories again and from that he fell to lamenting his broken relationship with Muriel. Again he wondered if there was any hope of repairing it.