Getaway

by John Harris

  Frankie clutched his hand excitedly. “Pop, break down and give yourself a treat! Let’s have a bang at it. It’s a beaut’ idea.”

  “No.” Joe flourished his fingers again, then, as his hand dropped, he eyed his wife, seeing himself caught between the known thunder of her temper and the unknown thunder of the Pacific. “Mama,” he begged. “We sell her and pay off the debt, eh?” He smiled nervously. “That’s what we do. And I’ll go outback on a sheep-a-farm. Away from the booze, Mama. I send you money regular.”

  Before he finished speaking, the temper he had feared burst out of Rosa as she saw his pleas as an attempt to deprive her of the idea that was the first warm thing in her life for weeks.

  “Let’s sell her,” she snorted. “Who’d buy her? Let’s lie down and die! That’s all you ever think of. Giving up. You’ve got no backbone. You couldn’t keep a job a week. You know you couldn’t.”

  “Go it, Mama,” Frankie was yelling excitedly. “Give him what-for! You know the islands, Pop. You worked ’em for years when the slump was on. You told me often.”

  “You worked the ships out there in the winter,” Rosa broke in, “when the fishin’ was bad and the boats laid up. You know ’em like the back of your hand.”

  “Mama, that was years ago. I forget.”

  “’Course you don’t. It’s like swimmin’. You never forget.”

  Joe’s voice cracked with the earnestness of his plea. “Mama, OK. So I don’t forget. But what we live on? We got-a no money. What we going to buy fuel with?”

  Rosa was standing by the table still, majestic in her subdued excitement, one hand on the coffee pot, her feet splayed comfortably for the ease of her bunions, her eyes staring at the greasy boards of the bulkhead unseeingly. Frankie stood watching her, her eyes glowing with fascination.

  “Fuel?” Rosa spoke over her shoulder without turning her head. “That bag of old iron in the engine room hasn’t gone for months. We’ll use sails.”

  “Now, Mama–” Joe waved his arms in entreaty, his voice rising, his hair standing on end with his anxiety “–the sails get old. They all-a right round here. But, Mama, I don’t trust ’em a long way from home.”

  “We’ll make ’em do.”

  “Sure we will,” Frankie chimed in. “I’ll help fix ’em.”

  Joe glared at the two of them, the everlasting man baffled by the unreasonableness of woman. “OK. You are so clever, the two of you.” His voice rose rapidly as he waved his arms again, despairing and using his despair as an argument. “So we got sails. But what we eat?” He made a gesture of scratching round on an empty plate with a knife and fork and looked up at his wife with goggling brown eyes. “You don’t tell me that yet, Mama.”

  “There’s plenty to eat out there,” Rosa snorted. “You’ve said so yourself. We can eat coconuts.”

  “I don’ like coconuts,” Joe said plaintively. “They give me indigestion.”

  “We can eat fish. You know how to fish, don’t you?”

  “There’s pigs and wild goats and birds,” Frankie yelled. “I’ve read about ’em. Things grow. They grow like mad.”

  “Now, Mama–” Joe backed away and put out his hands as though he were warding off a physical attack “–I think you sick. I talk but it is like water off-a the duck’s back. You’re crook. You don’ feel well.”

  “I’ve never felt better in my life!”

  Joe sighed noisily and tried a new angle. “Mama, we’re too old to work this boat. That’s why we have to borrow money from Robert Rossi. This boat need three strong men. That’s why we stay here all-a time. We don’t afford to pay a coupla hands.”

  “I can help.”

  “So can I, Pop.”

  Joe was almost in tears now. “That’s three of us, OK,” he said bitterly. “One ol’ man, one ol’ woman, and one little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl,” Frankie exploded. “I’m sixteen. Practically seventeen,” she added. “Cripes, Pop–” she ducked as Rosa’s hand swung instinctively at the expletive “–I’m nearly a woman.”

  “Excuses – that’s all it is.” Rosa’s temper flared up again at Joe. “We can find someone willing to work their way from one place to the next.”

  “And if we don’t, we kill ourselves.”

  “I’m willing to kill myself so long as I take long enough over it for young Tommy to grow up into a man.”

  “So’m I, Mama.”

  Joe stared at his daughter, jigging from one foot to the other in her excitement, then he turned again to Rosa. “What about Frankie’s job at the factory?” he asked.

  “That dump,” Frankie said indignantly. “I been waiting to get out of it some time. It’s enough to stiffen the crows.”

  “You earn good money.”

  “Good money!” Frankie snorted her contempt.

  Rosa silenced her protests with a gesture. “You want to go, Frankie?” she asked.

  “Aw, Mama, what a question!”

  Rosa smiled at Joe. “She can pull on a rope as well as you and me. She’ll be useful.”

  “I can cook, Pop,” Frankie pointed out. “I can handle the boat. I’ll wash dishes,” she ended in a burst of self-sacrifice.

  Joe’s voice was low again now and he mouthed his words deliberately, his eyes rolling, the sweat standing out on his dark skin. “You ever been in a storm, Mama?” he asked fiercely. “A bad one – out there, I mean.”

  “You give me a pain in the neck,” Rosa snorted furiously. “You’re only thinking of excuses. There’s islands, aren’t there? Millions of ’em.”

  “The map looks like it is fly-blown.”

  “Well, we can shelter when a storm comes up.”

  Joe’s voice was a wail as he answered. “Mama, some of them islands don’ got the shelter for a rowing-a-boat. You don’ ever hear of reefs?” In his ears was already the roar of the surf on the coral and in his eyes the glittering spindrift that the combers flung high into the air. He had seen fine ships – far finer ships than the Tina S – smashed to matchwood on the fangs of rock and flung in splintered planks across the sun-bright sand. He licked his dry lips nervously. “We ain’t-a got no charts, Mama. We got nothing to tell us where to go.”

  “We don’t need no charts,” Frankie said. “I’ll go to Lucia’s and borrow Tommy’s atlas. It’s a good one. A big one. Lotsa maps in it. I’ll go now. She’ll be in.”

  She ducked under the rusting hurricane lamp that had smudged a smoky circle on the boards of the deckhead in the period since their lighting had failed, and almost fell up the ladder in her haste. They heard her feet clatter on the deck, then a distant “Hi, Charlie” as she sped past the watchman’s hut.

  Joe stared at the sky through the cabin hatch where she had disappeared, then he turned again to Rosa.

  “Rosie–” he interlaced his fingers and spoke in an attitude of entreaty “–maps ain’t charts. They don’ make-a no reefs in maps.”

  “We got a lead line.”

  “Lead line!” Joe beat furiously at his forehead with the flat of his hand. “Mother of God, all she say is ‘lead line’. Like that. Lead line. Like it navigate-a the boat.” His voice rose to a shout. “Mama, you don’t got the time to use a lead line in the dark when you’re running before the wind. Bic boc! The boat is high and dry and we are all swimming. Like fishes,” he added, trying a few feeble strokes with his arms.

  “Listen,” Rosa said patiently. “We’ve got to find two hundred and fifty pounds by the weekend or we’re living in some rotten little shack ashore with no future–”

  Joe shrugged. “I’m too old to have a future.”

  “–And no future for Frankie. And no future for Tommy. He’s got to grow up, hasn’t he? He’s got to earn his living and it won’t be long now. He needs this boat. We can take on a few stores here–”

  “What we use for money? Old-a rope?”

  “Joe–” Rosa beamed at her husband and immediately Joe backed away, suspicious “–you can’t tell me you couldn
’t scrounge a few potatoes and tins of meat and things.”

  “They don’t let me have any no more,” Joe said sulkily. “They all-a know me.”

  Rosa’s smile faded at once. “Then try somebody who don’t. Go to Mrs Potniak’s. She’s too old and stupid to notice who you are. Go to Mama Gisorsky. Go to O‘Hara’s up in King’s Cross. Anywhere.”

  “Mama–” Joe shook his head wearily “–they all-a know me.”

  “Then borrow a handcart and go to the other side of the city where they don’t.” Rosa stared unseeingly in front of her. “How far is it to Brisbane, Joe?”

  “Brisbane?” Joe’s eyes opened until they looked ready to drop out at his feet. “Mama, I can’t walk to Brisbane.”

  “No, you old fool.” Rosa snapped back to the present. “How far is it to sail to Brisbane?”

  Joe shrugged. “Four hundred mile. Five hundred mile. I don’ know.”

  “We could sail that with our eyes shut. How far outwards to the first of the islands?”

  “Three hundred. Four hundred. Mama, I don’ like-a this.”

  “We’ll take on more stores at Brisbane and head east.”

  “And how we pay for ’em at Brisbane?”

  “Same way. Never – never.”

  “Mama, that ain’t honest.”

  Rosa laughed contemptuously. “How much do you owe round the city for booze? How many times you scrounged tobacco? How much money you lost on the horses and never paid back? How much you swiped from me when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Now, Mama–” Joe was beginning to look uncomfortable again.

  Tomorrow, you borrow a handcart. Put your best suit on and a collar and tie.”

  “Collar and tie! I don’ wear a collar and tie for years.”

  “Well, you’ll wear one tomorrow. It looks more respectable and people’ll trust you more. You still got that old celluloid one. We’ll leave on the afternoon tide. We’ll get Angelo Carpaccio to tow us out to the Heads. We can cast off there and put up the sail. It’s a beautiful sail,” she exulted as the soaring Italian enthusiasm in her triumphed over the Australian phlegm. “I helped to make it myself.”

  “Mama!” Joe was shouting again now and waving his arms. “This is not a deep-a-sea boat. She is not even good for fishing. She is a crayfish boat. She is built in Cape-a-Town many years ago.”

  “She sailed here from Java in the war when the Nips came,” Rosa pointed out. “She got from Cape Town to there some-damn’-how. She didn’t sink.”

  “All-a-same, she didn’t float so good. Mama–” Joe made a last desperate effort “–you don’t-a just sail away like that. Not into the Pacific. We need books. Pacific Islands Pilots. We want instruments. Parallel rules. Dividers.”

  Rosa looked at him. “Ah, you old fathead. When something’s wanted you use it as an excuse. I’ll borrow the instruments. I’ll get Tommy’s geometry set. That’s got dividers in it. What else do you want?”

  Joe gave up the unequal struggle. His knowledge was no match for Rosa’s enthusiasm. Where he could see danger, her excitement overrode it. “Mama,” he said sadly. “You’d need a compass – not this old bit of magnet we got. It don’t been swung for years. You need a chronometer – a sextant–”

  Rosa swept his objections aside. “I’ll get everything we want. We’ll make a list. I’ll borrow ’em from Mr MacGillicuddy. He was mate of a ship till he started drinking too much. He’s got ’em all. He’ll lend ’em to me. I’ve done his washing many a time. I’ll tell him I want ’em for Tommy.” She paused, struggling with her conscience over the lie, for she was a religious woman to whom lies did not come easily. “I do really,” she said. “You’d better go this afternoon for the stores. I’ll have everything ready by the time you come back. There’s a southerly buster coming and we won’t get out while that’s blowing.”

  Two

  The sun was slipping down towards the uneven skyline of roofs when Joe returned but, though his brown face was drawn with exhaustion, his heart lifted as he saw the water broaden out before him from the wharfside to where the great steel bridge stretched like a shining spider web that glowed bright gold in the sunshine. Out on the sparkling waters were the hurrying ferries from the quay to Kirribilli and Cremorne.

  Slogging back to the Tina with his cartload of stores, Joe’s grizzled hair had become slicked with sweat and his shirt stuck to his back like a cold poultice. Prayers and imprecations stood together on his lips, each the background music for the other, for Joe was often tempted to short-circuit the priests who ministered the Gospel, and take on the Lord on his own.

  He felt as though he had tramped every one of the straight streets that stretched away from the waterside in rectangular blocks to King’s Cross and Surry Hills, funnelling chasms either for the wind or for people as they streamed from work, a mass of turn-of-the-century tenements with cast-iron balconies and shabby frontages.

  Mrs Potniak had not been too old and stupid to recognize him, and Mama Gisorsky and O‘Hara’s in King’s Cross had been too smart, and he had had to retire beaten to the other end of Bourke Street. His only satisfaction had been that the shopkeeper who had finally succumbed to his velvet words and pleading eyes had been big and noisy and threatening, and Joe always got pleasure from besting men like that. It soothed some of the resentment he bore in his breast that there were wealthier men than he, cleverer men, even men who had the energy to work harder. Joe was always downcast when he thought of his poverty and his complete inability to do anything about it. But warm sun was made for sitting in, he always believed, not working in, sweating in, pushing handcarts in – the length of Bourke Street, he thought savagely, down the length of the airless gutter while the kids cat-called him and the lorry drivers told him to get the hell out of it.

  As he trundled to the wharfside, he noticed with alarm that Rosa was on deck studying a school atlas that Frankie held for her, crouching on her knees before her on the cabin top. He realized she had obviously not changed her mind and that filled him with even greater alarm. Pushing a handcart was bad enough, but sailing into the wide Pacific – the biggest and fiercest ocean in the world – in the Tina S was worse. Joe approached his wife with trepidation.

  Frankie’s smile cheered him for a moment, then his shoulders drooped again as Rosa looked up, her expression still full of enthusiasm. Her idea was burning its mark on her brain, for in it she saw the means of defeating all the forces that were ranged against them in their trouble, the harshness of the wealthy, the grasping greed of Robert Rossi, the intractability of the police, and the craftiness of the lawyers who baffled them with long phrases. Always she had fought against such people – from the days when she had romped in the crowded alleys of King’s Cross; in her adolescence against people who had called her a Wop as she went to work in a sweet factory underneath the great spans of Sydney Bridge, fighting with a vocabulary she had culled from three generations of docksiders. She had married Joe thirty-five years before when he had been square and straight and strong as an ox, expecting to find things easier, but she had found he was lazy and irresponsible and over-generous to the wrong people and she had had to go on fighting, and now that he was old and lazier than ever she was still fighting – harder now than at any time before.

  But in this idea of hers she saw the opportunity to square things up a little. The niceties of detail didn’t enter her head. To people like Rosa, fishing people to whom the sea was a living, the only important thing was to keep their boat – above all, above storm and tragedy and wreck, above meanness and stupidness and debt.

  The warmth of her idea made her smile as she looked at Joe. “Look what we got,” she said.

  She indicated an ancient sextant and a hand-bearing compass both in mouldering cases green with mildew.

  “Mr MacGillicuddy didn’t offer any objection,” she said. “He was drunk. We got this too: Lucia’s alarm clock. That’s as good as any chronometer. Never loses a minute.”

  Frankie’s grin was encourag
ing and Joe picked up the books. “Pacific Islands Pilot, Volume 1,” he read. “Admiralty Sailing Directions, 1916.” He pawed among the yellowing charts, dog-eared with age. “Mama,” he said sadly, by this time resigned to the adventure, “you see-a the date on these? 1907. And this one is only half a chart. He use the other half some time to light his pipe, I suppose.”

  Rosa’s smile died, then it sprang to her face again as Frankie jumped up and dug under the debris. “Look, Pop,” she said. “I got these too.”

  She handed Joe a bundle of brightly coloured folders containing glowing descriptions of the Great Barrier Reef holiday islands, Tahiti, and the various other places that attracted tourists.

  “I went round all the steamship companies,” she boasted. “They’ve all got maps in ’em. They wanted to know why I wanted so many. I said I was thinking of taking a cruise. Y’oughta seen the look on their faces.”

  Joe raised his eyes to the sky. “Mother of Mercy, holiday guides!”

  Rosa suddenly looked at the alarm clock she had brought and the pleasure in her face died.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  Joe jumped as she turned on him. “Mama,” he excused himself indicating the cart, “I grow too old to push-a that lot about. All-a way down Bourke Street. You know how long is Bourke Street.”

  Rosa’s heart was touched with compassion as she noticed his drawn face, and she took pity on him at once.

  “Was it hard work, Joe?” she asked gently.

  “I feel I am like Samson,” Joe said heavily. “Only I ain’t so strong.”

  Rosa moved to let him sit down, then she smelt his breath and her pity disappeared at once. “You’ve been drinking.” She made it a statement rather than a question, and Frankie looked up from the charts with interest.

  “Beer, Mama,” Joe pointed out with a shrug. “Thin beer.”

  “Pity you didn’t save your breath to get more stores.”

  “I can carry beer,” Joe said sulkily. “I gotta to shove stores.”