by John Harris
He climbed across the deck back to the wharfside and sat down on a bollard. The knife-backed cat which was still there waiting for sparrows, eyed him hostilely, the last inch of its ginger string-thin tail twitching angrily.
“Thank the Lord Jesus for that,” Joe said fervently as he settled his broad bottom. “My feet is pumping up and down like the pistons on a Manly ferry at rush hour.”
Chivvying Frankie before her, Rosa collected the charts and instruments and disappeared below. A moment later, they returned to the deck and, climbing to the wharfside, began to unload the cart. Rosa had unfastened the neck of her dress and rolled her sleeves higher. She turned to Joe, a box of corned beef in her arms.
“Well,” she said, “you tired or something?”
Joe looked up at her, startled. “Mama, I only just sit down.” He pointed fiercely to the bollard.
“Ain’t no time to sit down.”
Without bothering to wait for his reply, Rosa swung the box of corned beef into his arms and, picking up a carton of tinned milk, lifted it to the deck of the Tina. Joe sat nursing the corned beef, watching her as she reached for another carton, then he sighed, swore softly to himself and followed her, the box on one hip.
“You want-a to sell me,” he said loudly, waving a handful of waggling fingers at her. “And buy-a the donkey!”
It was as Rosa turned to reply to him that she noticed the young man sitting on a crate a few yards away, feverishly smoking a fag-end and watching them intently.
As she stared, he caught her looking at him and returned her stare with a calculated defiance. He was only a young man – indeed he was hardly more than a boy – and he was clearly uneasy and on the look-out for something, his eyes constantly covering the wharfside in nervous sweeps.
Rosa paused in unloading the first of the potatoes, studying him, suspicious of strangers and instinctively protective towards Frankie.
“You seen everything?” she asked.
The boy started, glanced about him and strolled towards them as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Halting in front of them, he watched them with a studied carelessness that was obviously not genuine, his eyes travelling from Rosa, to Joe, and finally to Frankie, who had also slowed to a stop now, conscious of an audience for the first time.
“You can keep your eyes off her,” Rosa said quickly, watching his face. “She’s not your type.”
The boy sneered at Frankie’s bony figure in faded jeans and T-shirt. “Gawd,” he said, “I got something better to do. She’s as skinny as a wishbone.”
“Well, Cripes!” Frankie shoved her hands firmly on her narrow young hips. “Don’t fret yourself about me, Mama. I’m not worried by that gadget. If he only knew it, he’s tampering with death.”
The boy stared coldly back at her. “OK, kid, keep your hair on. I’m no cradle-snatcher. I was watching your Ma.”
Rosa’s natural aggressiveness promptly reasserted itself. “Shall I stand still?” she asked. “Or can you manage if I go on working?”
The boy scowled. He was not used to being addressed like that by women – especially old women. In the areas where he and his gang had held sway, women of Rosa’s age and standing had been in the habit of crossing the street to avoid him. He threw away his cigarette and moved closer.
“Wops, aren’t you?” he said. “I don’t take that kind of talk from Wops. You know what we did to the Wops in North Africa?”
Joe waited apprehensively. This sort of approach was all too familiar whenever he moved out of the area occupied by the Italian colony. “They still speak English your way?” he was always being asked.
Frankie edged behind him, nervous in spite of her ebullience, but Rosa was staring back at the boy, studying him, her face unchanged.
“You’re not old enough to do anything to anybody in North Africa,” she said at last. “My son was killed fighting the Wops and their mates. We’re Australians.”
The boy’s hard young face fell. “Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Rosa’s unchanging expression was disconcerting and the young man scowled again. “Ah, go bag your head,” he said, at a loss for anything better.
“You’ve obviously not been very well brought up,” Rosa commented. “Seems your Ma shoulda larruped you more.”
The boy thrust his hands into his pockets and tried hard to stare her out, but, without his friends to add their noisy support, he was stuck for a reply.
“You going some place?” he asked at last.
“Why?”
“Just wanted to know. That’s all.”
“You the police?” Rosa asked.
“What’s it to you if I am?”
“No, you’re not the police,” Rosa decided, unperturbed by the implied threat in his voice. “They got better manners. Besides, you’re not dressed like the police.”
The young man scowled again and fingered the lapel of his jacket, a cheap jacket flashily cut to hide its shoddiness.
“You’re big like a policeman,” Rosa continued searchingly. “But you’re not a policeman. You come from Robert Rossi?”
“Who’s Robert Rossi?”
“He’s the bloke we – Oh, he’s just a bloke.”
“No, I’m not from Robert Rossi.”
“Well, what the hell are you sniffing round here for then?” The boy was clearly put out by Rosa’s direct approach and Frankie giggled, regaining her self-assurance. The lively mechanism of her mind, alert as a dockside sparrow’s, brought out a favourite gibe, bubbling it cheerfully to her tongue as she saw him hesitate. “Don’t be too rough with him, Mama,” she said. “You’re embarrassing the tripe outa him. He ain’t tough. He only smells strong.”
“A guy can look, can’t he?” the boy said defensively, addressing Rosa. “You goin’ on a trip? You’re shoving stores aboard.”
“What if we are?”
“A long trip?”
“What if it is?”
“Thought you might be glad of a passenger.”
The reply was unexpected and Rosa’s eyes met Joe’s. Then she turned to the boy again, sitting down very deliberately and wiping her hands on her frock, so that the ginger cat crept nearer, half-expecting food. The tension was immediately relaxed. Joe sat down and Frankie cocked a thin leg over the winch and settled herself on the anchor cable.
Rosa was staring more amicably at the boy now. “Depends where you want to go,” she said.
“Anywhere,” he offered. “I’m easy. Just feel like a holiday. That’s all.”
“We’re going a long way,” Frankie put in and Rosa gestured at her sharply.
The boy eyed Frankie disinterestedly, a long leggy girl, then he ignored her completely and directed his answer to Rosa. “That’s all right,” he said. “Suits me OK.”
“It’s going to cost you something,” Rosa pointed out.
“I got the dough.”
Rosa hesitated. “You on the level?” she asked.
Joe, who had been watching them all this time, entranced, his black liquid eyes expressionless, started suddenly to life. He had been dreaming of someone to pay his fare – of good Australian pounds to buy drink. If they had to go to the islands on this mad adventure of Rosa’s, OK, let them for the love of God take a passenger and earn money.
“Mama,” he pleaded as he saw Rosa hesitate. “Take him along.”
Rosa signed him to silence and addressed the boy again.
“We want cash,” she pointed out. “On the nail.”
“Mama–” Joe began to see his dreams of help and wealth and bottles of beer being thrust aside by his wife in the niceties of financial cut and thrust. The boy, however, was unperturbed.
“Don’t trust me, eh?” He fished in a money belt round his waist and hooked out a wad of money. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Looks all right to me,” Frankie commented. “’Less you made it yourself.”
“It’s good dough,” the boy said, staring at Rosa with anno
yance. She was clearly the force to be reckoned with and he continued to ignore the other two. “Silly old cow,” he was thinking, frustrated by her lack of awe. “Stupid old biddy!”
Joe could see the anger on his face and he began to gesture.
“Mama–” he said plaintively.
“Well?” the boy interrupted. “Is it on?”
“Tell you what,” Rosa said, and Joe turned away and tried to stop his ears to the haggling by clapping his hands over them with a ringing slap. “We’ll take you cheap–”
“What?” Joe whirled.
“Cheap?” The boy was eyeing Rosa shrewdly, suspicious of kindness. “What’s the catch?”
“Suppose you help work the ship?”
Joe looked up more cheerfully at the thought of someone younger and more energetic than he was to do all the pulling and pushing, to sit in the wind, to give him time for dozing. And at the same time to pay money. Not so much – but money, nevertheless. Ah, clever Mama! Clever Rosa!
The boy was considering the suggestion. “I’m no sailor,” he said after a while. “I hadn’t thought of working.”
“Don’t look like you ever did,” Frankie said and he glared at her, annoyed to find himself on the defensive against them, despite himself.
Rosa was studying him out of the corners of her eyes, pretending to be occupied with a carton of tinned food while she tried to read the thoughts running through his mind. “We can tell you what to do,” she said. “And you can go farther by working your passage. Farther from Sydney. Your money’ll last longer. You pay passage money all the way, you won’t get very far.”
He thought it over for a moment. “OK,” he said. “I keep most of my dough in my pocket and help with the ship? That it?”
Joe sat down abruptly. Between them, he thought angrily, they would soon arrange it that no money would be paid over at all. Mama, he muttered fiercely to himself, do not let him get away with a single halfpenny.
But Rosa was holding out her hand to shake the young man’s. “That’s a deal then,” she said, and Joe groaned.
“You can wash the dishes,” Frankie announced cheerfully. “They’ll want me on deck.”
“You’ll take your share like the rest of us,” Rosa said calmly. “You’ll work your passage and do what we ask you.”
“OK. How much you want?”
Joe looked up, cheerful again. “You pay us now? A pound? Two pound? To help out?” He held out a fat hand and grinned.
As the boy fished for his money again, glad to show it off, Joe’s face lit up, but Rosa took the notes that were held out and shoved them into the pocket of her dress.
“I handle the money,” she said firmly.
The young man watched as the silent rebellion smouldering in Joe’s eyes clashed with the defiance in Rosa’s and was quelled to uneasy fits and starts.
“Just one thing, though,” he said. “When do you start?”
“Any time. Soon as you like.” Rosa turned, speaking more to Joe than anyone else. “Soon as I ring up Lucia and tell her we won’t be round for supper like we said.”
“Now, Mama?” Frankie leapt up from the winch, prepared to work the Tina out on her own to get them moving.
Joe protested bitterly. With a passenger who was paying out good money, he had hoped to spend a few days longer in Sydney, postponing the evil hour when they must sail and using the money to its best advantage. “Mama,” he said. “What-a the hurry? You can’t go just like that.”
“No such word as ‘can’t’.”
“Mama, we got to get the things together.”
“Nothing to get,” Frankie chirruped. “Everything’s aboard: pots, pans, clothes, bed. Only a few things Lucia’s looking after and we won’t need them.”
“The sooner the better,” Rosa turned again to the young man. “You better go and get your things.”
“I got ’em.”
“Your luggage, I mean.”
“Ain’t got any.”
“Nothing?” Joe lifted his hands and let them drop to his sides with a slap. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Funny holiday,” Frankie commented, and the boy was immediately on the defensive again.
“Listen, you, you mind your own business and I’ll mind mine. OK?”
Rosa watched him silently for a moment, then she gave her husband and daughter a push. “Get aboard,” she said. “Don’t argue.”
The boy glanced quickly over his shoulder. “Might as well come aboard, too,” he said. “I’ll get below.”
“OK,” Rosa agreed. “We’ll get the rest of the stores aboard. You going to give us a hand?”
“Now?” The reply was unwilling and grudging.
“We sign you on, don’ we?” Joe turned and flourished an imaginary pen over an imaginary log book. “You think we let you off payin’ and I do all-a work?”
Rosa took no notice, her ambition driving through the others’ protests. “We can find somewhere for you to sleep later,” she said. She was beginning to see the fulfilment of her idea in the young man’s arrival and was anxious to be away. “You’d better make up a bed in the engine room. What’s your name?”
His hesitation was noticed only by Rosa. “Smith,” he announced. “That’s it: Smith.”
Rosa looked at him shrewdly. “Can’t call you Smith all the time. What’s your first name?”
“William. William Smith. They call me Willie.”
Rosa looked at him a little longer, then she shrugged, an Italian shrug, philosophical and indifferent, accepting what he said for the truth, when she knew it was anything but. “Nice name,” she said. “Nice simple name. Lots of Willie Smiths about. Easy to get lost in Willie Smiths. Better take off your coat and we’ll get finished.”
There were long banks of lavender clouds close to the horizon, dark against the afterglow, as the Tina S headed for the mouth of the harbour. Birds, shining glitteringly white an hour or two before, were now ghostly shapes that uttered lost lonely cries in the smoky monotone of evening.
The Tina S, like a matronly old hen, headed south for the open sea at the end of a long tow from Angelo Carpaccio’s sturdy fishing boat. In the silence, they could hear the thump of the other vessel’s engine and the slap and smack of water under the broad bow of the Tina as the wind tossed the waves into her bosom. In the air about them was the damp taste of the open sea and the salty smell of the waves. Behind them were the lights of Sydney with the sparkling span of the bridge with its winking aviation warning and the red diamond that marked its centre for shipping coming in from the Pacific. About it and below they could see the strings of lights that marked big ships and the moving clusters of the ferries trudging like bright beetles across to Cremorne and Manly. Alongside them a buoy rolled and gurgled to the swing of the tide.
“OK,” Rosa said, sniffing at the wind that was punching at the southern shores, shifting sand and drifting spray. “Here’s where we let go. You got Tommy’s atlas handy, Joe? When we turn north, she’s going to run some if it really starts to blow.”
Joe looked at her with black eyes big as ink pools. “Yes, Mama, I got the atlas. On the cabin table. Already Frankie has spilled tea over it.” He indicated the cabin hatch from which wafted the odours of the bacon and beans Frankie was cooking for supper, whistling shrilly as she worked. “I ruled off the course. A straight line. It go over rocks and reefs, I bet. I don’ know.”
“Right. Tell ’em to let go.”
Joe moved towards the bows and hailed the boat ahead. At once the thump of the engine fell to a mutter and, as the tow rope slackened and the wind whipped away the spray its bight slapped off the waves, Joe lifted the bowline he had tied in the end of it from the winch and dropped it with a smack on the water ahead of them. Immediately, Frankie’s dark head appeared through the hatchway and she rested her elbows on the deck to watch.
“Here we go,” she said, grinning up at Willie Smith. “Seasick yet, chum?”
The Tina S had alre
ady slowed to a wallowing roll in the long white-tipped swells when the other vessel came round alongside and a few boat-lengths away, still hauling in the tow rope.
“You go fishin’, Joe?” came a voice, clear and crisp across the water.
Joe nodded. “We fish,” he said shortly, his face expressionless.
“Hope you catch a lot. You goin’ to haul ’em in by hand?”
Joe nodded again. “We goin’ to haul ’em in by hand.”
“Brother, you got a job there. Get a lot. Robert Rossi’s wanting his money by the weekend. Arrivederci, have a good time.”
“You go jump in the harbour, Angelo Carpaccio,” Frankie shrieked.
The man on the other vessel grinned and waved to Rosa. “OK, Captain Mama. Keep that crew of yours away from the booze.”
“Thank you for the tow and give my love to your Mama,” Rosa called. “Now go and get on with your fishing.”
Carpaccio waved and the other vessel’s engine began to thump again, and she gradually drew ahead of the Tina S after the other trawlers as they steered for the fishing grounds.
“OK,” Rosa said. “Off we go!”
“Right!” Willie Smith rubbed his hands and Rosa was pleased to see they were strong hands and that there was plenty of muscle under the striped city shirt. “Let’s get.” Now that he was committed to going, he was as anxious to be off as Rosa. “Let’s start the engine.”
“Engine?” Frankie guffawed. “We haven’t got an engine. At least, not one that goes.”
Joe indicated the sun-bleached canvas they had checked during the afternoon. “Sails,” he said cheerfully. “You don’ hear of sails?” He puffed his fat cheeks out and blew.
Willie stared at them, puzzled, only half-believing them, then as he realized they were serious, he nodded – satisfied, but still a little uneasy, still awkward and unfamiliar aboard the boat. He was spellbound by the ease with which the others used the ropes, and envious of the sure way they moved about while he was constantly thrown off-balance by the lurching deck.
“Suits me,” he said. “You know best. Where do we head for first?”
“Brisbane,” Joe shrugged. “Port Macquarie. Then we head out east.”
“Where to?”