Pearls

by Colin Falconer

  'Dey say fer true?' he mumbled. 'Dat one pearl no good?'

  'Aye, it's true,' Cameron told him. 'She was a bitch right to her heart.'

  Wes spat in the dirt and half of the wadding came out. Where there had once been two perfect white teeth there was now just a bloody gap. 'How Wes gonna pay for gol' toof now?' he wailed.

  ***

  Cam watching the steady rise and fall of Rose's swollen breasts under the thin fabric of her nightdress. He reached out and laid hand on the tight swelling of her belly. The infant felt his touch and gave a kick.

  Rose gasped and put a hand to her belly. Cam jerked his hand away, guiltily. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I made him wake you.'

  'He does it anyway. He likes to kick.'

  'You think it a boy then?'

  'Elvie was never like this.' It was hot. She blew a long strand of hair off her nose. Cameron stared at her in the moonlight.

  'Don't look at me.'

  'Why not?'

  'I'm the size of a house.'

  'You look just bonnie to me.' He stroked her cheek. 'I love you, Rosie.'

  'Do you, Cam?'

  'Have you ever doubted it?' He moved closer. 'Rosie, I dinnae want to hurt the bairn, but ...'

  She laughed. 'I'm not a piece of china.' She sat up and finally managed to manoeuvre herself into a kneeling position. 'It doesn't hurt. It's just hard to get the right position. Do you think I'd say no, Cam? I've been six weeks without you.' She rubbed herself against him, felt herself getting wet. She ran her fingers through the tight curls of his chest, feeling the hard bands of muscle beneath his skin.

  'Say it again, Cam.'

  'Say what, lass?'

  'Say you love me.'

  'I love you, Rosie.'

  'Again.'

  'I love you.'

  He didn't love her, of course, but she liked to hear it. She guided him into her and as she moved on him she felt the baby kick again, in protest.

  So good to have this man as her husband. She missed him so much when he was gone. He was a good man, no matter what the Nilands of the world said about him. She needed him to love her, needed to believe it, wondered if she ever would.

  ***

  George's Buick rolled to a stop outside Cameron's red-roofed shack. He got out from behind the wheel. 'Get the hamper for me, will you?' he said to Jamie. Rosie came out onto the veranda. 'Mister Niland,' she said, surprised. 'What can we do for you?'

  George took off his topee and gave a slight bow. 'Good day, Mrs McKenzie. Is your husband at home?'

  The screen door banged open and Cameron came out. 'George,' he grunted. 'This is an unexpected pleasure.'

  'I heard you had some bad luck.'

  'Aye well. It happens.'

  'Things must be difficult.'

  'Nae more than for anyone else.'

  George nodded to Jamie, who was struggling to heft a large wicker basket from the back seat of the Buick. 'We thought you might need a little extra food this Christmas. I realize times are hard and I'm not averse to a little kindness for the less well off.'

  Cameron's face flushed the colour of bronze. 'Put that back where you got it, young Jamie,' he said.

  Jamie had just wrestled the hamper clear of the running board as Cameron came striding towards him. He had never seen anyone look so angry in his whole life and he dropped the basket on the ground; the tinned meat, tomatoes, bananas and bags of flour his father had just bought from the Centaur tumbled into the red dirt.

  He looked at his father. 'I'm sorry,' he mumbled.

  Cameron stood there, his fists clenched at his side. 'George, you'd better pick that up and take it out of my sight right now.'

  'Now, look here, Cam ...'

  'Get it out of here, George! Now, or I'll break your bloody neck!'

  George replaced his solar topee with a gesture of patient forbearance while Jamie scrambled in the dirt for the tins of meat. 'Leave it,' he said.

  'You'll nae leave it!' He picked up a handful of tomatoes and tossed them in the back of the Buick. One split open and the juice spattered over the upholstery. Cameron hurled the rest of the tins and flour bags in after them. 'Now get out of here!'

  George climbed back behind the wheel. 'Come along, Jamie.'

  Jamie was terrified, but as he climbed in the passenger seat he looked back at Cameron and thrust out his jaw. 'Imbecile,' he said, a word he had learned at school.

  George started the car and drove off.

  Cameron watched the fancy American motor car disappear back up the street. Rosie came to stand beside him.

  'Cam ...'

  'The bastard! The dirty, filthy bastard!'

  'Come away.'

  'That little scene was just arranged for Jamie's benefit, you know that, don't you, lass?'

  He turned around. Elvie was standing there in the doorway, she had seen the whole thing. Jesus Christ! He kicked the gate off its hinge and stormed away, so that he could be alone in the scrub and yell obscenities at the galahs and the boabs all he wanted.

  ***

  George allowed himself a tight smile. 'So that's the man you said you admired so much,' he said. 'He's nothing but an oaf and a bully.'

  Jamie was silent.

  George shook his head. 'Extend the hand of friendship to that kind, and you just lose your fingers!'

  Jamie looked around. The tomato juice had already dried to a crust on the leather upholstery. He wondered what had made McKenzie so angry. They had only been trying to do him a good turn, after all.

  Chapter 47

  The western veranda of the house had been enclosed with mesh, and converted into Jamie's bedroom. It was the most pleasant room in the whole house, open day and night to any cool wind coming from the bay. Kendo had lit camphor wood and strong incense to keep away the mosquitoes.

  Kate sat down on Jamie's bed and brushed the damp curls from his forehead. She felt him flinch. He did not like her touching him anymore. He was growing away from her. He would be a young man soon and would be banned from coming into his bedroom to kiss him goodnight.

  She brushed her lips against his forehead. 'Goodnight, Jamie.'

  'Goodnight, Mother.'

  Just as she reached the doorway he asked her: 'Do you know a pearler called McKenzie?'

  She felt her heart skip. 'Mister McKenzie? Yes, yes, I know him.' She tried to sound casual.

  'He was rude to us today.'

  'Rude to you? Why?'

  'We went over there in the car, to take him and his family some food for Christmas. Because they're poor.'

  'We?'

  'Me and Father. It was an enormous hamper. You would think people would be grateful when you do things for them.'

  George had not mentioned this to her, of course. 'What did Mister McKenzie say?'

  'He got very angry. I don't know why.'

  'Well, perhaps he was hurt.'

  'Why should he be hurt? Father was just being kind.'

  'I dare say he offended Mister McKenzie's pride.'

  'There's tomato stains all over the car. He practically threw them at us! Father should have had him arrested.'

  'Well, perhaps you'll understand when you get older. Go to sleep now.'

  She went out, turning off the carbide lamp on the wall. Then she went to sit on the veranda to wait for George to come back from the office.

  He was working late again. These days he spent more and more time at the office. It added weight to what Conrad had told her. Something was very wrong.

  She looked up at the night, at the scattering of stars across the black sky. Looking into the void like this makes our own problems seem so insignificant, she thought. Yet if you believe what the astrologers said, the stars had a hand in everyone's fate. They said it was like the workings of some enormous clock, each piece interlocking with another, each tiny cog and wheel turning something else. Every life interconnected. Was that the way it was?

  She wished she could decipher her own code among all those celestial messages. Where was s
he going with her life? It had all turned out so differently from her childhood dreams. Just a handful of bad decisions had brought her here; Cameron's baby, George's compromise.

  The one thing she did not regret was Jamie.

  Perhaps, when he was a man, she could start thinking about herself again; if there was anything left to think about by then. She was, after all, a woman in a man's world.

  Chapter 48

  The kerosene lamp hissed and spluttered, the night insects dancing around it. A tribe of Djuleun were dancing corroboree behind the ti-trees, the rhythm of their dancing sticks haunting the hot, still night. Cameron pushed away his dinner plate and lit a cigarette.

  He looked around the barren kitchen at the stained canvas chairs and the bare iron walls and thought about his home in Edinburgh and the grinding mediocrity of his life there that he swore to leave behind and thought: all I've done is exchange one kind of poverty for another. Instead of grey, terraced houses and cold, misty rain there is mosquitoes and stultifying heat.

  Rose reached across the table and took his hand. 'Don't look so sad.'

  'It was nae meant to be this way, Rosie.'

  'Let's leave here.'

  Cameron shook his head. 'It's like admitting I'm beaten.'

  'The pearls are gone, Cam. The days of quick fortunes are over.'

  'I keep thinking that if I can just hold on for one more season ... just one good pearl, Rosie. That's all it would take. One good pearl.'

  'If you want to stay, I'll stay.'

  He brushed a wisp of hair from her face. 'I was going to dress you in silks!'

  'Can't milk the goat in silk, Cam.'

  He kissed her. 'One day I'll find my pearl, Rosie. And you'll have everything a woman can want. You'll see!'

  ***

  Jamie passed an old Malay grandfather near the jetty. He was hauling four enormous white enamel billy cans, balanced on a bamboo pole he carried across his shoulders. Seawater slopped from the cans which each contained scores of small cockle oysters gathered from the rocks below Cable Beach. The old man would get a shilling a beerpot measure for them in town.

  Just then he heard a high-pitched mewling, like the sound of a baby crying. Jamie looked around, but could see nothing. As he walked out onto the jetty, the sound grew louder.

  He peered over the edge. There was a hessian sack sinking in the mud directly below him. Something was moving inside it. The sound was definitely coming from there.

  He found a split boom mast lying halfway up the beach and dragged it back to the tidal edge. The sack was lying in the thick mud about ten yards out. Jamie was reluctant to go out there, not in his school clothes. His mother would kill him.

  He tried to hook the sack with the end of the pole and drag it towards him. Whatever was in the sack squealed even louder, and sank further into the glutinous mud. Jamie tried again, overbalanced and sank ankle deep into the mud.

  'Hell!' Jamie said.

  He tried again with the pole. It was useless. Well, he had one shoe full of mud already, he supposed another wasn't going to make much difference. He waded in. It was like walking through sticky black treacle. He reached the sack and tried to lift it, but it was heavier than he imagined and had sunk fast. So then he grabbed it with two hands and tried to drag it. His hands slipped on the wet hessian and he fell backwards into the mud.

  'Bloody damned bloody rotten bloody bloody hell!' He stood and looked at his clothes. What a mess. He was done for.

  Just then the sack came alive again. There was something inside it, trying to get out. Jamie took care to get a firmer grip this time and dragged the sack back to the beach.

  The sack had been tied off with rope and the seawater had soaked the knot making it difficult to loosen off. He picked at it with his fingers but it was impossible. Instead he found a tear in the sack itself, hooked his fingers inside and tore it open.

  He reached in to rescue whatever was inside.

  'Hell!'

  It bit him.

  A tiny black puppy wriggled out and stood there yapping at him. Jamie leaped back. He was bleeding! 'You ungrateful little mongrel! I should have let you drown!' The pup snarled, bearing its small, needle-white teeth. 'To hell with you!' Jamie turned and stamped off down the road. But the puppy followed, dogging his heels, ignoring the rocks and curses he hurled in its direction.

  ***

  'Well look hyar,' Wes said.

  Jamie stood on top of the dune, his long grey socks and bare knees crusted with mud. A small black dog stood a few paces behind him.

  'It's Jamie Niland,' Elvie whispered.

  'I knows it,' Wes answered. He put his big, ham fists in the pockets of his dungarees and shouted. 'Mebbe you belong at school right now, boy.'

  'So does she,' Jamie said, pointing at Elvie.

  'Mebbe so.' He grinned. 'What can I do fer you, boy?'

  'I'm just standing here.'

  'Guess you is,' Wes said. He looked at Jamie's legs. 'Sweet Jay-sus, what you done to yo'self?'

  Jamie did not answer. He turned to look for the black pup but he had already wandered down the dune and was sniffing with interest at Elvie's leg. She bent to pat it, wrinkling her nose against the smell. It needed a good bath.

  'Is this your dog?' she shouted.

  'No. It bit me.'

  'I knowed a feller got bit by a dawg,' Wes said. 'He up and die.'

  Jamie blanched. 'I don't care. I'm not scared.'

  Wes's teeth flashed white. 'That so, boy?'

  Elvie picked up the little dog up in her arms. It began to make soft, mewing noises. 'Can I have him?' she said.

  Jamie couldn't believe it. Why didn't the damned dog bite her as well? 'I don't want him,' he lied. To cover his disappointment he shifted his attention to the rowboats heading to and from the Roebuck. 'What are you doing?' he said.

  'Loading provisions on the Roebuck for the season. Mebbe you want to help.'

  'Can I?' Jamie said, and immediately regretted how eager he had sounded. 'I mean, I don't mind. If you think you need a hand.'

  'Mebbe I do,' Wes told him. He walked up the dune and put his arm on Jamie's shoulder. 'Come on, boy.'

  Elvie watched them walk away down the beach, unsure what to make of this. She knew her pa did not like Jamie's father. She had seen him throw tomatoes at his car. Perhaps she was supposed to hate him too.

  But here was Wes putting his arm around Jamie Niland and talking to him like ... well, like he talked to her. It was confusing.

  And Jamie had given her his dog.

  She carried it over to the water tank in the foreshore camp. 'You need a good bath, mister, you stink,' she scolded it. 'Then we'll have to think of a name for you, won't we?'

  Chapter 49

  The next day Cameron was supervising the loading of the rest of the provisions aboard the Roebuck, when Wes caught his arm and pointed to the foreshore. A small boy was picking his way through the jumble of iron and timber shacks of the McKenzie camp. Cameron felt a familiar clutch of loss. It was him.

  'Hey, Jamie!' Wes shouted, waving.

  Jamie waved back enthusiastically, then hesitated when he saw Cameron. He stopped a dozen paces from where they were standing, put his hands in the pockets of his shorts.

  'This hyar the skip,' Wes said. 'Mebbe you go wid him today, hokkay?'

  Jamie said nothing.

  'Hello Jamie,' Cameron said to him.

  'I don't know about this,' Jamie mumbled.

  'You want to know 'bout pearls, reet?' Wes coaxed him. 'Da skip, he knows everyting dere is. He tell you more better even than me.'

  Jamie shuffled his feet.

  'Why do you want to learn about pearling, boy?'

  'I want to be like my father.'

  Wes and Cameron exchanged a look. 'Like your father?'

  'I want to be a big pearler.'

  'Aye, well. That's a noble ambition. Come by me then.'

  He walked off. And after a few moments, Jamie followed.

  ***
<
br />   He rowed him out to the Roebuck in the lighter. He gave him a quick tour of the lugger, and then tossed him an oyster shell.

  'A pearl!' Jamie said, in wonderment, fingering the small round in the hollow of the shell.

  'Your first lesson, boy,' Cameron said, taking the shell from his hand and crushing the round under his thumb. An ooze of mud spilled out of it. 'It's just a blister. A borer worm gets into the shell and the water pressure does the rest. It looks like a pearl but it's nae real. Worthless.' He tossed the shell back onto the deck. 'Here's a pearl!' He reached into his pocket and took out a small leather pouch. He dropped the contents into the palm of his hand; a small pearl, slightly misshapen, thirty or forty grains. 'If it were only a wee bit larger, a wee bit rounder, it might be worth something to someone. But it's aye a bonny thing, do you nae think?'

  Jamie stared at it and nodded. 'Do all shells have pearls?'

  Cameron laughed. 'One in a hundred. And most of them are too small to be worth nae more than dropping in a barmaid's jar! Do you ken how a pearl is made?'

  Jamie shook his head.

  'It's made by the tide. The tide is the pulse of the sea, it keeps the ocean and everything that's in it alive. The oyster feeds off the tide, eating tiny things called plankton that's carried in the current. But sometimes a speck of sand finds its way inside the shell and the oyster cannae get rid of it, it's like having a wee stone in your shoe, I suppose. So it puts a kind of saliva around the speck of sand, to protect itself, and there's nacre in it, and it gets hard and forms a pearl. Some pearls are misshapen, that's what they call barrack, you can buy them from any of the pearlers by the carat, they keep them in jam tins. But a good round might be worth anything. It all depends on the size, the lustre of it, the colour, the smoothness. A man might wake up one morning poor, by sunset he can find a pearl and be rich as a czar!'