by John Harris
“I want to go home,” he said. “I got fed up.”
Rosa looked at him, her face hardening. “Home?” she said, a warning immediately in her tones.
“Don’t we all have enough?” Joe demanded bitterly. “What am I? Christopher Columbus? Captain Cook? I belong in Sydney. I don’ like being here.”
“Just because you’re wet. Just because we’ve had a bit of trouble.” Rosa’s voice was getting thinner and lower.
“A bit of trouble!” Joe’s hands started to flap. “A bit of trouble, she say. We lose the mainsail–” He described a parabola with his arm to indicate the wave and made the sound of tearing with his tongue.
“We can mend it,” Rosa snapped.
“–we lose all our clothes.” Joe threw imaginary coats and skirts into the sea as his excitement grew. “We lose our blankets. We don’t got no water–” he stopped dead as water made him think of drink and he realized on the instant just how much he had missed his daily ration of beer, the sneaked schooners and demis he scraped together that Rosa never knew about, the Saturday sousing he liked to indulge in and the Sunday lie-ins when he slept it off.
“We ain’t got nothing left,” he wailed. “We ain’t got nothing!”
“Shut your mouth, you old fool,” Rosa stormed, her eyes flashing. “We can mend the sail. We can manage without clothes. We can manage without blankets. We can collect water in something else. We can ration it.”
She turned to Willie. “What do you say?” she asked fiercely. “We can manage, can’t we?”
Willie looked up from the floor where he was collecting broken crockery with Frankie. “Sure, we can,” he said calmly, sitting back on his heels. “So long as we go careful.”
“Ha!” Joe seized on the point. “Now we start getting to go careful. And already I ain’t-a touched a drop of booze since we left Sydney.”
“Booze,” Rosa snapped. “That’s all you ever think about – getting drunk on other people’s charity! You’ve got no backbone.”
Joe shrugged. “I don’ need no backbone,” he said. “Just a strong stomach.”
Rosa glared at him, tears coming to her eyes, and Willie got to his feet quickly and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Cheer up, Mama,” he said. “We’ll manage. We got to manage.”
“I’m thinking of the stores,” Rosa said. “We can’t afford to hang about.”
Willie shrugged. “We still got some money,” he said. “Even if we hadn’t we shouldn’t starve. There’s food everywhere on the islands.”
Rosa’s face went red. “There’s one thing that’s for sure,” she said. “We’re not going back.” She looked at Willie. “If we go back, the cops’ll get you, won’t they?”
“Yep,” Willie said very quietly, and Frankie’s eyes became bright and scared-looking. “I reckon they will.”
“Was it bad what you did?”
Willie’s eyes were on the deck. “Yes. It was a bit,” he said.
“You pinch something, Willie?” Frankie asked timidly.
“No. Not exactly.”
“You hurt somebody?”
“That’s it, kid.”
“Bad, Willie? Real bad?”
Willie nodded. “Sort of.”
Frankie didn’t pursue the subject any further. She had experienced enough of life in the dock areas to know when not to enquire too deeply.
Rosa also had her suspicions but she thrust them hurriedly out of her mind.
“Don’t worry,” she urged him, colouring a little. “They won’t get you.”
“Thanks, Mama,” Willie said.
Joe stood up again, red-faced with jealousy. “So that’s the reason.” He thrust out a fat dramatic hand. “He got-a more importance than me, eh?”
“Yes,” Rosa snapped. “Him and the boat and Frankie. All I’ve done all my life with you is pull you out of bars and borrow money to take the place of what you’ve spent. You ain’t the reason. Make no mistake.”
She was suddenly hard and unforgiving, as they had not seen her before – without the spark of pity for her husband that always redeemed her quick temper.
“Take it easy, Mama,” Frankie said uneasily, and Joe put out a hand in a calming gesture.
“Now, Rosie,” he began hesitantly.
“You can shut up,” Rosa continued. “And you needn’t paw me. If you aren’t man enough to stick it, we’ll leave you behind and I’ll be glad to see you go.”
Joe sat down abruptly.
“Right!” Rosa got control of herself again. She stood up and looked around her, shuffling her feet in her old slippers. “We better get on with sorting things out a bit.”
While they lay in the deserted lagoon, Rosa sat down to repair the worn and fraying sail, patching the huge rent with scraps of canvas she unearthed from the boat’s lockers, a wearying job that required all her courage to persist with it, for she knew well that it would inevitably split again because the canvas was old and rotten. Eventually, it would have to be replaced and they had no means of replacing it, but she preferred not to think of that as she laboured with palm and sail needle and twine and resin. They could face that problem when they came to it.
The sodden blankets and clothing were strung about the shrouds to dry while Joe, grumbling and making awesome prophecies of disaster, went out with the dinghy fishing and Willie and Frankie went ashore with the bow and arrows he had fashioned at Aranga-vaa, one of them carrying a sack, the other the razor-sharp knife. Always they returned with food of some sort and as she found they were not drawing on their meagre stores, Rosa’s spirits rose a little. Coconuts and bananas and fish, with the occasional eggs Frankie found or the birds Willie caught, kept their diet reasonably varied; and their water supply improved so much with the containers Joe made out of coconuts that hung like a bunch of grapes from the mast that Rosa felt a flooding of affection for them all.
“Christmas, day after tomorrow,” she announced. “I reckon we ought to celebrate.”
The next morning, while Frankie emptied the ship of every scrap of paper they possessed and cut it into paper chains stuck together with a paste of flour and water, Joe secretly went ashore and found a little pine tree, which he raised in the end of the cabin.
“Ain’t-a nothing to hang on it,” he apologized to Rosa, his dark eyes large and humble. “But I reckon it help to make it seem more like Christmas.”
“Joe,” Rosa said, overcome by love and the desire to mother him. “Joe, it’s beautiful!” She paused and went on quietly. “Joe, old dear. Don’t let’s fight. It’s my fault, I know, always goin’ on. Only it’s tough and if I give up we all give up. That’s why I keep picking on you!”
“That’s all right, Rosie.” Joe gave her a peck on the cheek. “I know what it’s all about. If I didn’t get so tired, mebbe I’d never open-a the trap, anyway.”
While they were talking, they heard Willie’s shout from the beach, and when Frankie went to fetch him with the dinghy they found he had killed a wild chicken, probably the last remnant of a vanished habitation.
“It’s a bit skinny, Mama,” he said with a grin as he held it up for her in the cabin. “But if we spit out the bones and the gristle, she’ll do for dinner.”
Rosa stared from one to the other of them, then her gaze wandered over Frankie’s paper trimmings and Willie’s chicken and finally rested on Joe’s tree. There were tears in her eyes as she turned to face them again.
“You are all so good,” she mumbled. “Something from each of you. Now, it begins to feel like Christmas.”
That night, caught by a mood of nostalgia, they sang carols on the foredeck and tried not to think of busy streets and brightly lit shops when all they could see was the empty lagoon and the silent ridge of palm-tufted land.
The following day, to go with the trimmings and the chicken and the tree, Rosa fished in the bilges where they kept their spare canned food and found a tin of peaches. Frankie was frantically trying to make something of her hair, strugglin
g with comb and scissors and water in front of the spotted mirror.
“Mama–” she turned frantically to where Rosa crouched, scarlet-faced and sweating, over the oven in the galley “–where’s me frock?”
“Search me,” Rosa said.
“Whyn’t I ever wear a frock?” Frankie demanded angrily. “I never wear a frock.”
“Far as I know, you’ve not got one,” Rosa said, straightening up and grinning at her. “Last time I tried to make you wear one, you bit me. I’ve never tried since.”
Christmas dinner was a riotous affair, for Rosa produced a bottle of home-made wine she had been storing under the bed for months, and they all tried to pretend they were tipsy on it.
“One more bottle like that, Mama,” Joe said gaily, “and I ain’t-a responsible for me actions.”
He leaned over and kissed her heartily full on the mouth and Frankie, scrubbed to the point of shining, stared hopefully at Willie. But he was laughing at Rosa’s blushes and didn’t appear to notice.
During the afternoon, Rosa and Joe fell asleep and Willie and Frankie swam over the side, one of them always on deck watching for sharks. In the evening, after a meal at which Rosa allowed extra sugar and produced a cake she had made, a very plain cake devoid of icing but a cake nevertheless, Willie followed Frankie on deck and sat beside her on the stern.
“I’ve been saving my bit of Christmas till now, Frankie,” he said quietly.
Frankie turned to him, puzzled, and he fished in his pocket.
“It’s your birthday soon,” he went on. “Mama told me. In January.”
“That’s right. I’ll be seventeen.”
“Well, I’ve made you a Christmas present and a birthday present all in one.”
Frankie was trembling as he held out his hand, and with fingers that suddenly seemed clumsy she took from him a tiny wooden cross he had carved.
“It’s only got sail twine to put it round your neck,” Willie apologized. “But I plaited it nicely so it’ll look better. It ain’t worth much but I spent a long time on it.”
Frankie found it difficult to speak at first. “Oh, Willie, it’s beautiful. I’ll treasure it always.” Her eyes were bright with moisture as she looked at him.
“I’ve been saving my Christmas kiss till now, too,” he said. “Pity we’ve got no party decorations to make it nicer.
He spoke casually but his voice was a little unsteady.
“Put it on, Willie.” Frankie held out the cross and bent her head. As she straightened up again, Willie kissed her on the lips.
There was no passion in the gesture, just gentleness and affection, but Frankie sat back, satisfied, her heart full.
“I reckon this is the nicest Christmas I’ve ever spent,” she said.
They lay in Tyburn several more days, unable to venture out because of a wind that raised the combers on the reef to huge proportions and made the opening into the lagoon impassable, and every evening after dark, after pumping the bilges, Willie took one of the lamps into the engine room and continued to tinker with the engine.
“Haven’t we nearly finished fiddling with this old thing?” Frankie asked.
“Nearly,” Willie told her. “One day, kid, I’m going to get a job fixing engines. I got a way with ’em, I reckon, and I could make money and perhaps open a garage – or a boatyard.”
Frankie’s eyes searched his face, taking in every contour, proud of his skill yet vaguely jealous of an old inanimate engine that could so hold his interest, while she was granted only spasmodic attention.
“You’d like a steady job, Willie?” she asked.
“Sure I would,” Willie said fervently, then he put down his spanner and stared at his hands, startled at the enthusiasm in his tones. “Yeh, sure I would,” he said again, more firmly, as he picked up the spanner once more and went on working.
“Settle down and all that?”
“I guess so.”
“Maybe get married–” Willie looked up as she tried to edge him back to that exquisite moment on Christmas night “–in time, I mean,” she added hastily.
“Maybe,” Willie said. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing!” Frankie pushed her hurrying thoughts to the back of her mind and concentrated on looking absorbed. “I just wondered.”
“But that’ll be a long time yet,” Willie said. “If I got a garage or a boatyard I’d have to work hard to make it go, wouldn’t I? A man’s got to work to make his mark in the world.”
“Yes, sure he has, Willie,” she agreed earnestly. “If I was you, I’d get down to it and never let up till I’d fixed myself a place. Then I’d maybe look round for a girl.”
Willie stared at her, a half-smile on his lips, and she gazed back at him, her black eyes wide and innocent. “Yes,” he said. “I reckon that’s what I’ll do. That’s a good idea, kid. But first of all I got to fix this engine. I want to surprise your Ma.”
They had already decided to leave Tyburn the following morning and Joe was lying on his back in the cabin, thinking of all the bars in Bourke Street and trying to imagine them one after the other all the way from the waterfront and all the cronies he was likely to meet in them. He liked people and crowds and happiness, and the loneliness of his present existence, with no one about them but the few island fishermen who came into the lagoon to watch their nets or make fish traps, only served to make him feel more solitary.
Rosa was sewing her old coat with sail twine, for she had long since run out of cotton. It made a poor job and she realized just how shabby the garment was becoming. Her mind began to dwell on clothes and the shops in Sydney, and her thoughts travelled across the years to when she was taking Georgie for his first grown-up suit – in the days before Joe grew too fat and lazy and they still had money to enjoy.
Then she began to think of the lonely Christmas they had just spent and began to compare it with the boisterous parties they had once had, surrounded by dozens of dark-eyed noisy relatives. Then she smelt the incense at the church and heard Father Gilhooley’s grating voice again and saw the brass candlesticks and the candle flames glittering like stars. And the Young Men’s Association and the Children of Mary fighting with each other at the Corpus Christi festival, bass against falsetto, for possession of the hymns, and Georgie in starched white and lace winking at her from his place as an altar boy, unimpressed by the solemnity of the occasion so that she was at first shocked and then warmed by his gaiety. Then she saw him as a young man making eyes at Lucia across the church when he should have been paying attention to the responses, and finally in the dark blue of his naval uniform, grave and gay together, as he told her he was leaving. And all the time, as she thought of him, his face kept fading and she kept seeing Willie’s instead, just as irrepressible, just as grave, just as angry and sulking when he couldn’t have his own way.
She was still struggling in her mind to separate the two, to push away the image of Willie, blond and big and handsome, that she kept seeing in place of the slight dark Italian boy who was her son, when the Boy George seemed to jerk once, twice, and again, and she relaxed that the deep-throated coughing noise she could hear came from the engine.
Joe was sitting up on the bed now, staring at her, his eyes big and round, the flat grey hair that had once been black and kinky standing up straight round his bald patch like a halo.
“Mama,” he said. “The engine. It goes.”
With his finger he executed the wavering circle of a turning wheel, then they both dashed for the ladder and heaved themselves up on deck to see the little round puffs of exhaust smoke exploding through the stern, where Willie had led the pipe when he had removed the smoke stack from the deck.
They found him in the engine room, a grin on his face, his arms black with grease to the elbows. Frankie, half-obscured at the other side of the engine, grinned over the top at them, a smear of oil across her face.
“Mama!” she shrieked as she saw Rosa appear. “We got it going. Willie fixed it after all.”
; Rosa stood with her hands on her hips, smiling, while Joe skipped up and down, staring at the engine, his mercurial temperament lifted by this new success.
“You cure-a the leak?” he asked gaily and Willie nodded.
“And the water pump? You make her work too?”
“Sure. Ten years’ growth in it for one thing and the valve washer all worn out. I made a new one.”
“What with?”
“An old shoe sole, Pop,” Frankie said. “I found it for Willie in my locker.”
“Is that all that was wrong with it?” Rosa was staring angrily at her husband, suspecting him immediately of laziness.
“Hell, no, Mama! Lots more than that. The whole thing’s had it really, but I made it cough a bit. Won’t last for ever but she goes.”
Rosa looked at him for a moment, then her face fell and she switched off the engine. The sound died with a few despairing coughs and they were in silence again.
“It’s gone!” Joe’s head appeared from under the engine, “It’s no good again.”
“I switched it off,” Rosa said flatly.
“Aw, Mama, why?” Frankie demanded. “It’ll probably take us hours to start it again.”
Willie said nothing, but on his face was a look of frustration and hurt.
“It uses fuel,” Rosa explained, her face blank and determined as she faced the disappointment. “We haven’t got any money to buy any more. Save it till we need it.”
Willie shrugged and Joe watched them, still on his knees, as they argued. “OK, Mama,” Willie said. “But let me get it going properly first.”
“It’ll help when there’s no wind,” Frankie pointed out. “I got sick of hauling her round in the dinghy to find a breeze last time.”
“Makes it safer going through the reefs,” Willie went on.
“It uses fuel.” Rosa’s gentle face was hard as it always was when she argued with Willie – as though she had to keep a tight hold on her emotions in case they ran away with her and made her give ground. “It uses plenty.”
“I brought a drum aboard. I told you I did.”
“If you use it all up, it won’t be there if we ever want it urgently.”