by Derek Hansen
At six in the evening, as the sun dipped below the gathering clouds throwing one final pyrotechnic warning of the storms to come, Shimojo ordered the Shoto Maru across the twelve mile limit at full speed. On the aft deck, the new crew quit repairing the net and replacing missing floats and bobbins. Five miles off the southern tip of Great Barrier he reduced speed to six knots and prepared to shoot the net. The nor’-easter would make fishing difficult but also offered compensation. The Navy would not be expecting him.
The first trawl disappointed. Shimojo ordered the helmsman to take them in closer to around three miles. He planned his next trawl in a familiar arc, which would swing them wide of Arid Island before dipping in close to Whangapoua Beach once more. This is where he expected the fish to be, where there were reefs nearby for shelter, and thick beds of scallops, pipis and tuatuas. One hour into the second trawl they began to sweep nor’-east towards Arid Island.
The fish-finder began to glow green with concentrations of fish. The trawler immediately began to zig-zag. On the net recorder the constant trickle of fish became a flood. The boat struggled against the seas, held captive by the heavy mass of fish which grew heavier by the second, dragging behind it like a monstrous sea anchor. The engine strained once more then changed pitch as it answered the call for more power.
On the aft deck, a young crewman raced to gather floats which the pounding waves had bumped free of their boxes. He was fast and nimble on his feet and didn’t bother clipping his safety line back on. As he crossed the opening to the stern ramp he was caught off guard. The propellers bit and the bow rose hard into the swell. He instinctively grabbed for the bobbin bin as the deck pitched violently and corkscrewed, realised instantly it was beyond his reach, felt his rubber boots teeter on the brink of the ramp, felt them slip. He managed one desperate shrill cry before the deck disappeared from beneath him and he tumbled backwards into the water. An hour passed before his absence was noted, by which time any search would have been futile.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Angus was not happy and neither was Bonnie, although for different reasons. Bonnie cried pathetically because she’d been woken up from her warm place beside the stove and put into a cardboard box without breakfast or even a saucer of milk. Skipping breakfast didn’t worry her as much as the significance of the box. The last time she’d been inside a box she’d hardly stopped vomiting long enough to draw breath. It had been only her second journey in a boat, one that she’d hoped would never recur. The return voyage was not a prospect which filled her with joy, and her constant, heart-rending wail was her way of letting the world know this. It did nothing to improve Angus’ mood.
He accepted that taking Bonnie with him to visit the widow had been an error of judgement, but it had not been the last nor the most serious of the errors he’d made. The motive for his extended stay had, he felt, been misinterpreted by the other party, and over the course of the previous days he’d made statements and whispered endearments that had only exacerbated the situation. He’d meant the things he’d said at the time, but he’d said them secure in the knowledge of the distance that lay between them – he at Wreck Bay and avowed to stay there, she at Awana Bay and bound to it by her farm. How could he have guessed that she was prepared to give up the farm for his companionship and his little cottage? Had he even suspected the set of her mind he would probably have stayed at home. In her aspirations and his half-promises he saw an end to his solitude and his orderly ways, and every nerve fibre in his body jangled with alarm. Fiona Campbell was as fine a woman as Scotland had produced, but he didn’t want another woman at Wreck Bay. One was enough, more than enough, and the cause of his predicament. The widow would never have contemplated a life at Wreck Bay if she thought she’d be the only woman there.
‘I’ll be away, then.’
Fiona reached up and embraced him then and there on the beach. She turned her head up for a kiss and he could not deny her. He glanced northwards along the length of Awana Bay towards the smattering of tents in the camping ground, relieved that not a soul had seen fit to rise early and bear witness to their public display of affection. But Angus well knew that seeing nobody didn’t necessarily mean nobody saw them. Not on Great Barrier Island, where unseen eyes always observed anything anyone ever did, and gleefully passed on everything they witnessed.
‘It would appear the wind has risen before you. You’ll not stay dry for long, Angus McLeod. Best leave the pussy in the box inside the cabin, poor thing.’
‘Aye,’ Angus said sourly. He’d hoped for a dawn calm which hadn’t eventuated. In truth, the wind was no more than he expected. When nor’-easters settled in they gave little respite and the saw-toothed horizon left him in no doubt as to what the run north would be like. Cold, wet and bone-jarring. He eased the widow’s arms down and took a pace backwards. ‘Once again, I thank you for your company and hospitality.’
She laughed at his awkwardness and formality. ‘Away with you now! I’ll see you on Christmas Eve. Now take care, mind, and keep an eye out for crayfish pots.’ She watched as he paddled out to his half-cabin, Bonnie caterwauling in the box held chin high, Angus’ canvas and leather carry-all balanced on top of it. Gingerly he lowered both onto the transom and made sure they couldn’t fall. He hauled himself up and aboard, grateful that the low tide had saved him a swim. Nevertheless, he was soaked up to his waist. He stowed both bag and cat securely in the cabin, fired up his diesel and cast off. Fiona Campbell waved and he responded automatically. She was a fine woman and grand company. But why on earth couldn’t she leave it at that? Why did she want to go and change things?
He looked up towards Red Bluff, trying to calculate how much sea room to allow before he rounded the headland to Overtons Beach, and headed for the temporary shelter of Arid Island. The wind and waves were already challenging the helm and pushing the bows out to sea. Angus sighed. Christmas was the peak season for crayfish and the cray fishermen would be out in force with their pots and barely visible floats. He had no desire to repeat the indignity and discomfort of his last brush with them. But going wide meant he’d have to take the swells and steep rising waves head on, and they were precisely the sort of conditions his boat laboured in. He decided to split the difference and run parallel with the shore, trusting his eyesight and the knowledge that the crayfishermen preferred to set their traps closer in. At least this time he wouldn’t be caught by surprise.
He watched a flight of cormorants head out on patrol, wings squeaking in the morning air, then returned his attention to the sea. The wind whipped raw and cutting around his dripping shorts and bare legs. He considered changing into dry clothes but was reluctant to take his eyes off the water ahead. So he did what his father had urged him to do so many years before when he’d complained of the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls of their crofter’s hut. He endured, and took comfort in thoughts of people worse off than himself. Gradually he ceased to be Angus the retired police inspector and became instead a sharp-eyed Scottish boy, alone on the North Sea, bravely scouring the water for telltale signs of U-boat periscopes.
Shimojo handed over command of the bridge just before the six o’clock shift change. He went to his cabin well satisfied. The last trawl had come aboard shortly before five and he’d known without looking that the catch was the equal of the others. The cod end was jammed to bursting with snapper, bringing the night’s haul to over sixty tons. He’d had no hesitation in ordering the Shoto Maru to make full speed due east beyond the twelve mile limit, away from prying eyes. He knew where the school was, knew the speed at which it was moving north, and knew exactly where to intercept it come evening. His last act before leaving the bridge was to send a message to company headquarters and the Japanese Embassy in Wellington, informing both of the loss of a member of his crew.
Angus spotted the large, bell-shaped mooring buoy more than two hundred yards ahead of him and turned further east to run wide of it. Amateurs, he thought to himself, and wondered
how many more he’d come across. At least whoever had laid the pot or pots had made sure he’d find them again. Angus had no time for the cowboys who used old tins or plastic bottles as buoys. Half the time they couldn’t find them themselves when they came to collect them, even though they knew where to look. What chance did he have of spotting them once the wind was on the water? He looked again at the old mooring buoy in grudging appreciation. Nobody would have trouble spotting that, though in all probability the people who’d left it there had considered no one else but themselves. He was surprised at how large it was. How was a crayfish pot supposed to anchor that, he wondered? The thing had probably been dragging all night. He thought of the shiny runabouts that now sat on the moorings out from the camping grounds. Holidaymakers hadn’t a clue.
‘What in the name of charity . . . ?’ He asked the question out loud in disbelief, in shock at what he now clearly saw. He swung the bow towards and below the buoy so that he could approach it up wind. ‘Dear God!’ The figure wasn’t moving, just dangling in the water supported by the buoy and his lifejacket. ‘Ahoy there!’ Angus called, but there was no reaction. As he throttled back to coast up alongside, the wind and waves tried to tear the bows around. Angus fought to hold his boat steady. He’d hoped the man would offer an arm so that he could haul him aboard, but saw at once that the man had tied himself onto the buoy and was unconscious. Or dead. Without thinking, he grabbed his boat hook and slipped it under the rope, fastening the man to the buoy, and pulled hard against the wind. What next? he wondered, and wished fervently that the madman was with him. The force of the wind on his boat threatened to pull his arms from their sockets. He heaved hard to regain valuable inches, leaned over and took a firm hold of the man’s lifejacket in his left hand. He released the boat hook and threw it behind him onto the deck, grabbed his fishing knife from the side pocket and began chopping and sawing at the rope. The wind caught his boat, which reared up and away. Angus grabbed hold of the man with both hands, cursing his impatience and stupidity for not anchoring and backing down to the buoy. His arms shrieked with the strain and he felt the sharp pain of a muscle tear in his left shoulder. He was about to let go and try again when he heard the man groan. He redoubled his efforts and felt the rope give a little where he’d been sawing. He cursed his fishing knife and the bluntness of it. Chopped once more. But knives left on boats never stayed sharp and it was all he could do to cling on as strand after strand slowly gave, unable now to let the man go in case he slipped from his makeshift harness and sank. He ignored the burning pain in his shoulder until the last strands separated and the man broke free. Angus dropped his knife in his desperation to hold onto the lifejacket, braced his legs and dragged the man up onto the gunwale. By the time he’d wrestled him aboard the boat had drifted more than two hundred yards. He dropped the limp body onto the deck, heard him groan once more on landing, and engaged gear. He turned back into the wind and fed the motor full throttle, backing off only after he’d begun to gain headway. He was so exhausted that he was sorely tempted to lie down on the deck himself.
Bonnie coughed wetly and continued her plaintive cries. Angus glared through the open door into the tiny cabin. Bonnie’s cardboard box had vibrated off the padded bench seat and lay on its end in the footwell. Too bad. She’d have to stay like that for the moment. He flexed his aching arms and rotated each of his shoulders in turn. He knew it would take more than a hot bath and a good rub with embrocation before they’d come right. He turned to look at the man he’d saved and noticed the Japanese characters on his lifejacket. He smiled grimly at the irony. Still, a man in need was a man in need and it didn’t matter a whit what country he was born in. He needed help, warmth and shelter, but Angus could offer nothing until he reached calmer waters.
His first thought was to put into Homestead Bay. The family living there had an airstrip of sorts and could call in assistance. But that could still take hours and the man looked like he needed a doctor urgently. There was only one doctor nearby that Angus knew of, though he dreaded to think what Red’s reaction would be.
As soon as he’d anchored up in the lee of Arid, Angus attended to his patient. He was surprised by the youthfulness of the face before him. He found a pulse, weak and slow, and breathed a sigh of relief. Angus had seen all the corpses he wanted to see in his life. He stripped off the boy’s lifejacket and clothes, and half carried, half dragged him into the cabin. Bonnie let him know she was singularly unimpressed to have company. The man born on the shores of the Minch knew exactly what he had to do. He’d been raised in the shadow of hypothermia where a few minutes in the Minch, even in summer, extinguished the life spark in the strongest. He recalled the relay of women who attended the bedside of a fisherman from Achiltibuie who’d fallen into the harbour while painting his boat. The women had taken turns to massage life back into the frozen flesh, vigorously rubbing his body, legs and arms with rough towels. They’d rubbed through an entire day and night, patient, serious women who drove the cold from men who had every right to die or lose limbs to frostbite. But the women had persevered and so would he. Angus forgot his own pain and did what duty required of him, vigorously massaging every part of the boy’s body, rubbing his blue-tinged skin until it flushed burnished pink. He rubbed and rubbed until sweat formed on his forehead and dripped down onto his patient. Occasionally the boy’s eyelids fluttered and he attempted to speak, but he lost grip on consciousness just as quickly. Angus knew he should keep rubbing but was torn by the need to get the boy to a doctor. He took his own dry clothes out of his carry-all and dressed the shivering youth, finally wrapping him in his wet-weather oilskins to trap in any body heat the boy could muster. He secured Bonnie’s box between the hull and the tightly wrapped boy so that it wouldn’t tumble back down into the footwell. Bonnie showed no gratitude and maintained her wailing.
‘I just hope the boy doesn’t wake up to hear that,’ said Angus to his cat. ‘What on earth would he think had happened to him?’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Red rose before sun-up, anxious to resume his familiar and trusted routine, and reassure himself of its rightness. Rosie had begun to question everything he did. She queried his need for a mosquito net in the absence of malarial mosquitoes. Perhaps it was a hangover from his Burma days, but Rosie had yet to spend a summer at Wreck Bay, when the air was thick with sandflies and mosquitoes. She queried the need for a gate on the vegetable plot. Perhaps it didn’t need padlocking but it did need closing. He’d left it open, knowing that it was wrong, but did so only for Rosie’s sake. When the wind had picked up during the night he’d had to get out of bed and close it to stop it banging off its hinges. There were reasons, good reasons, why he did what he did, which he believed had nothing to do with Burma. He exercised, made his fish rice and shared it with Archie. It felt good, the two of them, just doing what they’d always done.
After breakfast he set about scrubbing the benches, table and floors, and the square of linoleum that was Archie’s personal dinner mat. He cleared his kitchen shelves, scrubbed them, and scrubbed his bathroom out as well. He checked the walls, ceilings, cornices and window frames for spider webs, but the spiders had learned not to bother making webs anywhere near where Red could reach them. Satisfied, he checked his garden for snails and slugs and extracted the odd impudent weed. It all felt so very satisfying. He was about to throw himself beneath his summer shower when a little tug alonside his ribs, an annoyance which he mostly ignored, reminded him of his need to get his body back into shape and fully fit. He grabbed a towel and set off for the beach, pausing when he reached the fork in the track that led to Rosie’s bach. It seemed selfish not to give her the opportunity to join him. Archie led the way, tail wagging, eager to feel the hand that spoiled him and slipped him little treats. Red stopped when he saw Archie suddenly break into a sprint, and was instantly glad he’d thought to make the detour.
‘Hello, Archie. Did you bring my penis with you?’
Red stood his
ground and waited for Rosie to appear around the bend in the track. He couldn’t help smiling.
‘Ah . . . there’s the little fellow. And how are you, Red?’ She kissed him perfunctorily. ‘I missed you last night, but at least I could sleep in.’
‘Morning, Rosie.’
She bounced past him, towel over her shoulder, her singlet barely keeping her breasts in check.
‘You’re getting tough, Rosie.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wasn’t long ago you wrapped up at the slightest sign of a breeze and pulled a sweater on if the sun went behind a cloud. Now look at you. Soon you’ll be like me.’
‘I’ll try to take that as a compliment.’
‘Now you’re even going for a swim on a day like this.’
‘It’s your fault I have energy to burn off and, anyway, I want to listen to the penguins.’
‘I’ll take you to their caves one night, if you like.’
‘I’d like.’
‘Low tide tonight?’
‘Thought I’d go out fishing at the pinnacles,’ Rosie said.
‘Wrong tide, wrong wind, besides, they’re probably surrounded by crayfish pots.’
Rosie stopped dead in her tracks. ‘What! What are we going to do about them?’
‘Nothing, Rosie. Every Christmas boats come over from Leigh. They’re pretty good and spread their pots around. Whenever they overfish I empty both crayfish and bait from every trap I find. Those guys don’t like working for nothing. They soon get the message. Had a chat with them one year and explained the rules. They spread their pots all the way down from Aiguilles Island, out and around Bernie’s Point. They follow the reefs a fair way out, too, which is pretty good of them. They don’t just take the crayfish close in.’