Sole Survivor

by Derek Hansen

  ‘You gunna let your mate in?’

  ‘Okay. Archie . . .’

  The dog needed no second invitation and galloped into the bedroom. By the time Red had poured the tea and stirred in Bernie’s two spoonfuls of sugar, the fish was heated through. He flipped it onto a plate and took it in to Bernie.

  ‘Don’t give any to Archie.’ Red went back out to the kitchen for the two cups of tea. Archie was licking his lips when he returned.

  Bernie ate without speaking but certainly not in silence. He’d lived alone so long virtually all of the social graces had slipped away. He chewed with his mouth open, smacked his lips and frequently stuck a finger in his maw to guide his food towards the few remaining teeth that were still operational. He also had the habit of scratching himself whenever parts needed scratching, in company or otherwise. Not surprisingly, he never thought Red’s nakedness worthy of mention. Bernie wasn’t too fussed about clothes himself. He’d eaten half of the fish before his cough started up again. Red took his plate.

  ‘Drink some tea.’

  The old man grabbed the cup and gulped a couple of mouthfuls. He handed it back to Red and sank down onto his pillows. He’d begun to sweat again.

  ‘Mate, I’m knackered.’

  ‘You’ll be right.’

  ‘Nuh . . . not this time. Had enough anyway.’

  ‘You’ve been saying that for years.’

  ‘Mean it, but.’

  For once Red was inclined to believe him. Bernie did look knackered. ‘You’ll feel better after a wash.’

  ‘You can give me a wash but I won’t feel no better.’

  ‘We’ll see. Give you a shave, too.’

  ‘No! Sit, mate. Got something I want to tell you.’

  Red sat back down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Wrote a letter last night. Yeah, knew that would surprise you. You still going round to Fitzroy?’

  Red nodded.

  ‘Yeah, well, I want you to witness the letter and take it with you. It’s there on the tallboy.’

  Red reached over, picked it up and read it. It was Bernie’s will. The writing was hesitant and spidery and the lines curved away to the right. For all that it was clearly legible and its message unmistakable.

  ‘Dear Rosie, I’m dying,’ said the accompanying letter, ‘and I thought I’d leave my bach and things to you. They’re yours if you want them. Forget about them if you don’t cause they aren’t worth much. Garden’s got some nice roses, but. Thanks for being my friend. Hope you grew up good-looking. Yours sincerely, Bernard Arbuthnot.’ Rosie’s name and Green Lane Hospital were written on the top of the letter. Red stared at it unable to come to terms with the contents.

  ‘Met her when I had TB and a bit of an alcohol problem. Her dad treated me for the booze. What a bugger he was, but she was nice. He wouldn’t know a cop was up him till he blew his whistle. She came with him sometimes, a bit of a tomboy. She used to sneak me in a bottle of beer. They never could work out where I got it from. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘You’re leaving your place to a woman?’

  ‘Yeah. She was a good girl, that one. Real cheeky.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Bernie cackled. ‘Thought that would get ya! Oh, she was a beauty, hair as black as a Maori’s, and wicked black eyes. Always up to mischief. Stole fags for me, too. One day I suggested to her that an occasional nip of Scotch wouldn’t go astray, so she started filling up an old cordial bottle for me. Trouble was, she knew that if she filled the whole bottle with Scotch her father would realise someone was nicking it, so she had this idea. She filled it with a drop from every bottle they had. Mate, I’d never had a cocktail like it. Had everything in it! Bloody Pimms and chartreuse, bloody crème de menthe, and that bloody egg nog stuff. Had whisky, rum, gin, vodka and I don’t know what. The only way I could drink it was in my coffee. They took it off me before I was halfway through. My singing gave me away.’ He burst out laughing, stopped when he started to choke.

  ‘You reckon this will find her?’

  ‘Who knows? If it does, it does. Long time. I told her though, told her every time she visited me, that I’d remember her in my will.’

  ‘Reckon she’ll come?’

  ‘If she does, she does.’

  ‘Wish you hadn’t done that, Bernie.’

  ‘Aw, ya never know. Ya might thank me one day, a pretty woman and a good-looking bloke like you.’ He started laughing again. ‘Never know, do ya?’

  ‘I’ll get your things from the bathroom.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Bernie coughed and gestured to Red to sit down again. ‘Something else. I want to be cremated.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want you to toss my ashes into the ocean out past Aiguilles Island where I used to fish. Used to dive there a bit, too. My secret possie. On the rise where the shells are.’

  ‘What shells? Paper nautilus?’

  ‘Nuh. Army shells.’ The old man was cut off by another bout of coughing. Red handed him the toilet paper just in time. ‘Where they dumped the old munitions after the war.’ Bernie’s face had gone from wax to scarlet beneath a sickly sheen of sweat. All the talking was taking its toll. ‘Christ! I just might decide to kick the bucket today. Nobody’s supposed to know about dumping the shells, but they used to take me out with them when they wanted to do a spot of fishing on the sly.’ He began to laugh but his laughter quickly turned to a rattling cough that snapped his breath. Red rolled him over and stuffed some more toilet paper in his hand. Bernie coughed and hawked and sank back, exhausted, on his bed. The smell of his sweat rose bitter and pungent. That was what had stunk the room out. Still, Red had smelled worse, a lot worse.

  ‘Tell me later.’

  ‘Might not be a later.’ Bernie slowly drew in deep breaths until his breathing was back to normal. Red noticed tears in Bernie’s eyes but that could just have been from the effort of talking. ‘I’ll give you the markers. Line ’em up and you’re right over the rise.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a rise.’

  ‘Neither did the Army. I got them to drop the shells there because I thought I might go back later and salvage some for scrap. Now listen carefully.’

  Red listened until Bernie had finished.

  ‘Now you can give me a wash, if it makes you happy. And Red, when you go to Fitzroy, do you think you could leave Archie here?’

  A normal man might have welcomed the prospect of an attractive young woman coming to share his lonely neck of the woods, but all Red could see was disruption to his daily life. Women didn’t belong. They didn’t belong in the camps and they didn’t belong at Wreck Bay. His day had begun like any other yet suddenly Bernie had pulled the rug from under him. His whole world hung in the balance. Bernie’s letter threatened change, the thing Red feared most. Change brought risk, the risk that he’d no longer be able to cope. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing at all. He was powerless and bound by duty. He could not deny a dying man the right to leave his few possessions to whomever he chose. The wishes of a dying man were also sacrosanct.

  Red couldn’t get Bernie’s letter out of his mind. He thought about it constantly as he stopped off at his shack to grab a pair of shorts and a sweater, and made his way down to the beach. He thought about it as he fitted his forty-four gallon drum onto the jib arm at the end of the jetty and loaded it onto his boat. He worked hard to stop himself thinking but still the thoughts persisted. What would a woman do at Wreck Bay?

  The double-prowed lifeboat was immaculate, its clinker hull kept brilliantly white. According to hearsay, it had once swung from davits on the ocean liner Oronsay, though some claim it was the Orsova. Somehow it had ended up in the hands of the whaling company and Red had taken it over when the station closed down. It had been fitted out with a Cummins diesel which was more powerful than need be and something of a glutton for fuel. But Red could squeeze economy out of it, never feeding it more revs than the hull or conditions could use. Diesel was expensi
ve.

  Each resident of Wreck Bay kept a drum at the jetty and another at their house. They drew diesel off into four gallon tins for the long haul up the hill to fuel their generators, and used hoses and gravity to refuel their boats. Red filled a four gallon can from the Scotsman’s drum and funnelled the contents into his fuel tank. He repeated the process twice to be on the safe side, then filled his emergency can. That was sixteen gallons he owed, and a debt he’d pay in full. He checked to see that his fresh water tank was full and his lifejacket where it should be, and cast off. It was strange motoring out of the bay without Archie standing up on the bow telling the gulls where they were headed. It didn’t feel right. It was not how things were done.

  Red was always cautious before putting to sea because there was little chance of hailing another vessel if he got into difficulties. Although Great Barrier Island was only fifty-five miles by sea from Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city and main port, it might just as well have been five hundred and fifty. Only twenty-five miles long north to south and ten miles at its widest, there was little reason for anyone to visit or live there once the logging had finished, the mines had petered out and the whaling station had closed. There were few roads and few guest houses to encourage visitors. The locals either worked farms or caught fish and crayfish for a living. Nobody got rich.

  Red was fortunate that the land around Wreck Bay on the north-east coast was too rugged and poor for commercial cultivation and had proved too inaccessible for the loggers. The forbidding cliffs that lined the coast did not encourage visitors, either. As a result, the entire northern end was left to the seagulls, terns and gannets. Only Wreck Bay provided shelter and the three bachs were well sited to avoid the worst of the storms. It was possible to live there if you were sufficiently bloody-minded.

  Red motored due north towards Aiguilles Island off the northern tip. With the tide almost full and the seas slight, he decided to take the narrow channel south of the island. Normally, even on a moderate swell, the surf pounded in on Aiguilles Island and Needles Point like heavy artillery, which was fair warning for all to give it a wide berth. He slipped through the channel and increased speed, swept around past Miners Head and across the mouth of Katherine Bay. Seagulls and gannets began diving on a school of kahawai. Even though a hook-up was guaranteed Red was far too preoccupied to throw out a lure. Leaving Archie behind had unsettled him, but even worse was the prospect of a woman coming to live at Wreck Bay. It had taken him long enough to adjust to the Scotsman’s arrival.

  His keen eyes picked out the dorsals of two mako sharks circling around the periphery of the feeding school. He knew what the predators were waiting for and it wasn’t for kahawai. They were just a side show. The sharks were patrolling, waiting for the massive schools of migrating snapper, part of a never-changing cycle. Red had the utmost respect for never-changing cycles. He glanced up to the bow compartment where he’d stored Bernie’s letter, carefully protected inside his oilskins. Red also had the utmost respect for letters. He’d seen dying men survive because of them. He found it hard to reconcile the fact that letters which could do so much good could also do so much harm. He tried to imagine what would happen if the woman came. But why would any woman, perhaps even a beautiful one, want to come to Wreck Bay? Red didn’t know much about women but he knew enough about Wreck Bay to know that it held nothing for them. Even the hardy Barrier women couldn’t imagine why anybody – male or female – would want to live there. If they couldn’t handle it, how could a city woman? The letter worried Red all the way from Wreck Bay to the Port Fitzroy wharf.

  The store at Port Fitzroy was aptly named the Last Gasp. It was opened originally as a holiday canteen to service the summer yachties. The owner, Col Chadwick, maintained he called it the Last Gasp, not just because of its remoteness, but because of the objections and obstructions of the other residents who were opposed to change of any kind as a matter of principle, particularly since they hadn’t thought of opening a store themselves. Once opened, the store instantly became indispensable to the point that the locals would have fought to prevent it closing. Col gave up his crayfishing to become full-time shopkeeper. The Last Gasp sold everything Red needed except alcohol, because it wasn’t licensed. Col ordered in Bernie’s sweet sherry anyway, on a nod and a wink basis.

  Red waited outside the store until Col had time to attend to him. The locals just thought this was another of Red’s eccentricities. They still recalled the time he’d come ashore without remembering to put his pants on. But the fact was, Red got claustrophobic in the little store with its crowded shelves. If anyone else came in while he was there he found it unbearable. The locals also still talked about the time he’d had one of his turns in the store. He waited outside until two visitors, guests of Fitzroy House, had left.

  ‘G’day, Red.’

  Red shook hands with Col Chadwick and handed over his two shopping lists. ‘And two flagons.’

  ‘How is the old bloke?’

  ‘Not good. He wants this letter to go off to Auckland.’

  Col raised an eyebrow. Bernie had written a letter?

  ‘Okay. Anything else?’

  ‘Need a hand with the diesel.’

  ‘No problems. I’ll just fill your orders and walk down with you.’ As Col trotted off with the orders, he glanced down at the envelope. Rosie Trethewey, Daughter of the Professor, Green Lane Hospital, Auckland. The handwriting was Red’s. ‘Jeez,’ said Col to himself. ‘Helluva address.’

  Red fretted for Archie. It was hard to stand around without a dog. It wasn’t right. They were a team and splitting up only weakened them both. But the sick man needed company and that was all there was to it. Archie would have stayed, he was certain of that. Archie had never let anyone down, never refused anyone. Red decided to walk on ahead to his boat and unload the empty drum. The simple mechanics of the job brought the woman back into his mind. How would she get by handling drums of fuel? How would she handle a boat and Aiguilles in a blow? Old Bernie had done the wrong thing by them, no doubt about that. He hoped fervently he’d also done the wrong thing by the woman and she’d be smart enough to realise.

  Red’s boat was an oddity on the Barrier where all boats, with the exception of the visiting yachts, were working boats of one kind or another, and bore the scars of their trade. A wise man never had a picnic down wind from a beached fishing boat. Red used his thumbnail to scratch off seagull droppings. Wherever there were seagulls there was no place for idle hands. He hated idleness in the same way he abhorred dirt and untidiness. There was always something that needed attending to. He’d seen blokes stop working one day and be dead the next. The two went together.

  ‘I’m amazed you even let your boat get wet.’ Red looked up to see Col on the wharf above him, a carton of supplies under each arm. ‘Reckon I could eat my bloody dinner off it. I’ll have to go back for the sherry.’

  They manhandled a fresh drum of diesel over to the edge of the wharf, secured it, swung out the jib arm and lowered it gingerly onto the deck. Red jumped aboard and untied the ropes.

  ‘You seen the Jap longliner yet?’

  Red looked up sharply at Col. ‘Tuna? I freed some birds.’

  ‘Nah. Snapper. I’ve been getting reports of a Jap longliner sending its dories in to within one or two miles of the shore, night after bloody night, all the way up from Mt Maunganui. He’s following the bloody snapper, ripping out millions of the buggers. He’s been working the Coromandel Peninsula for the last week. They reckon he was off Whitianga a couple of nights ago. He’s not like the others. This bloke doesn’t use lights. Bastard’s ripping out the fish. Just wondered if he’d made it up as far as you.’

  ‘Tell the fisheries?’

  ‘Reckon. Rang the fisheries but they already knew about it. Apparently the Navy’s been informed.’

  ‘They doing anything?’

  ‘Dunno. They sent a Sunderland flying boat down around Great Mercury Island. Didn’t come up with nothing.’

 
; ‘I’ll keep an eye out.’

  Col smiled. He knew Red would, too, and it would serve the Japs right. He was still chuckling as he made his way back up to the store to fetch the two flagons of sherry. Red might not be able to do anything about the snapper the Japs had already stolen, but he’d give them something to think about if they tried to steal fish from his patch. Col tried to put himself in the place of the Japanese fishermen in their dories when a raging, naked Red descended upon them. What on earth would they think?

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  It was pitch dark when Shimojo Seiichi, the skipper of the Aiko Maru, gave the order to lower the dories. He hadn’t come six thousand miles to pull up six miles short of his objective. The nor’-easter had freshened and the helmsman battled to keep head on to the sea. The crew were grateful for the rehearsals their captain made them do blindfolded every month for they worked without lights. The sliver of moon had been and gone, and the stars might as well have been hidden behind clouds for all the light they gave. The four dories edged slowly away from the unlit Aiko Maru in a staggered line astern. The skipper watched until they were swallowed up in the darkness. He couldn’t help feeling apprehensive about fishing so close to New Zealand’s major naval base, the home of the Sunderland flying boats. If the Navy got wind of their presence and dispatched a Sunderland, it would be upon them within twenty minutes. Then there’d be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. But the potential rewards justified the risk. They were right on the Navy’s doorstep, and about to steal the rice from their mouths. That would be something to boast about later, in the bars around the docks at Kitakyushu.

  The wind whipped the tops off waves and showered the crouching dory crews with spray, stinging eyes and leaving a bitter salt taste on lips and tongues. But it was the lot of all fishermen to taste the sea. Almost to a man, the crews came from fishing families. Their fathers had lived off the sea and their fathers before them, though none had ever ventured far from their little fishing villages and rarely out of sight of land. Now they were living their fathers’ dreams six thousand miles from home, catching more fish in one voyage than their forebears had caught in their entire lives.