by Roxane Dhand
Taking an eye-watering sip of the noxious liquor, Cooper leaned forward. ‘How many luggers are in this place, Sid?’
‘Mebbe more than three hundred.’
‘Does each one have a different owner?’
‘Nope. Some mebbe two, mebbe three. Big Tuan boss Mayor, he has lots, mebbe twenty.’
‘Captain Sinclair has how many?’
Sid took a swig of gin and held up three fingers.
‘How many men on each lugger?’
Sid explained that each lugger held two divers: a number-one diver – usually Japanese – and a trial diver, who was less experienced than the principal. They dived in turns. The diver had a man on board who tended his equipment, which made a total of three diving-related people. A common crew comprised the cook, four men to man the air pumps in shifts throughout the day, and the shell-opener, swelling the number to nine. Sometimes the owner-captain worked on board too. So, as far as Cooper could make out, there were generally nine or ten people on a lugger.
‘Does Captain Sinclair go out to sea?’
‘Him’s no sea legs.’
Cooper chopped at his windpipe and contorted his face. ‘Is the diving dangerous?’
Sid laughed. ‘You’s a scaredy-cat?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘No. The diving I’m used to is much more dangerous than here.’
‘Japanese dive best.’
‘Why?’
‘Have lotsa guts.’
‘And the best crews?’
‘All mix-up. Then no fighting.’
‘And do the Aborigines work on the boats?’
‘He no work on boats. White man don’t like blackfella.’
‘Why not?’ Cooper knew that imported labour was an issue in Buccaneer Bay, but not to use the abundant local workforce seemed like lunacy.
‘Blackfella scared of diving gear.’
‘So, the crews do not originate from here.’
‘All crew come work for three years then go home again. All very snug.’
Somewhere close to midnight, Cooper fell asleep over a glass of rum. Someone shook his shoulder and hefted him up the stairs to his balconied second-floor room, and he had woken the next morning at nine o’clock, slumped across the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked underneath him, still drunk.
He squinted at his watch. Captain Sinclair wanted him at his office before ten. The initial meeting with the captain on the steamship had made him jumpy. He’d been expecting a big welcome party, along the lines of the fanfare at Port Fremantle, but the captain had barely acknowledged him and had completely blanked John Butcher. Cooper had accepted the four-page contract from his poker-faced employer but had refused to sign it unread. The captain’s pale grey eyes had not been friendly. Perhaps Cooper was misreading it. After all, the man could not have known of Cooper’s attraction to the woman he’d watched the captain wed or that his bride looked like she’d made a dreadful mistake.
Cooper leaned back in the wicker chair and began to roll a cigarette, booze-shaky fingers making heavy work of the task. He licked the sticky edge of the cigarette paper and placed one end of the slim tube, pointed like the sharpened lead of a pencil, between his lips and lit up. He shook out the match, inhaled deeply and crossed his legs, shutting his eyes against the glare of the morning sun.
‘The view isn’t up to much, is it?’ a young-sounding female voice said.
Cooper cranked open his eyes, his roll-your-own smoke dangling from his lip.
‘Black mud and luggers. That’s all you can see during the lay-up.’
‘I wasn’t really looking at the view.’ He struggled to his feet.
‘I’m Dorothea Montague.’ She held out a gloved hand.
Cooper looked into the girl’s face. Dark hair piled up under a hat, round blue eyes, her mouth wide and soft. ‘William Cooper.’
‘I know who you are. My father is the mayor. We’ve been anticipating your arrival with great enthusiasm.’
‘We are all excited to be here,’ he batted back. ‘And keen to get started lifting shell off the ocean floor.’
‘A bit of a wait then for you, I’m afraid. Until the Wet’s over.’
‘Wet?’
‘Gosh, I always forget that Britishers from England don’t know what that means.’ She giggled. ‘It’s the time from November to March when the threat of cyclones keeps the fleets and crews onshore. Everyone gets drunk all the time and we have lots of parties. It’s great fun. And the repairs are done to the luggers. I expect you will be given some jobs to do. The paid workers are expected to muck in.’
‘Are not all Britishers from Britain?’ he queried.
‘No, silly boy. We are all Britishers in Buccaneer Bay. White people. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, I do see. Thank you.’ Although he didn’t. He stole a glance at his watch. ‘Please don’t think me rude but I have to be at Captain Sinclair’s office before ten o’clock.’
‘Oh goodness. That’s right at the other end of town. Would you like me to give you a ride in my buggy?’
‘Would your father be happy for you to ride with a stranger?’
‘Of course. White people have to stick together, and we don’t go in for that chaperone Victorian nonsense that goes on in England. There aren’t enough women, silly boy. It’s no trouble, and I could call on the new Mrs Sinclair. She arrived last night and I heard her to be about my age.’
‘Yes, she is.’
The blue eyes expanded. ‘You know her?’
‘I’ve seen her. We travelled on the same ship from England.’ Cooper thought of the slight, blonde-haired girl with her pearl-white skin, and wiped a handkerchief over his forehead. Oh yes! He’d seen her walking on deck with an older woman he’d assumed was her mother. Last night she had married Captain Sinclair in the most bizarre wedding ceremony he’d ever witnessed. She is now his, he told himself, but the realisation gave him no joy.
Miss Montague twirled her parasol, shading pale skin. ‘You should buy a hat. Your skin will really darken with the sun, and you don’t want people mistaking you for a coloured. That would be suicide, socially. Our people won’t invite you to anything if you’re all brown.’ She pointed at a horse trap tethered to a rail under the hotel’s awning. ‘Shall we go? The sulky is just there.’
He was sweltering and nauseous with a hangover beating a call to temperance in his skull. Without altogether thinking it through, Cooper accepted the offer and followed her out. He regretted it seconds later.
Miss Montague, he learned, had no mother. Of course, she corrected herself, she did have a mother once but she died of neglect. Or incompetence. No-one really knew the truth of the matter. Her Mama had developed an infection from a cut and went to see the white doctor, at the government hospital. Everybody said she should have gone to the Japanese doctor but her Dada wouldn’t hear of it. Dada said that Asian people were inferior to white people and he wouldn’t fall so low as to allow his wife to be treated by an immigrant. But the white doctor was busy with the divers who needed to be passed fit to work – even though some of them weren’t – and there was lots of paperwork to fill in. So, he forgot about her Mama, and the infection spread and Mama died. Now Miss Montague was alone with darling Dada, who still hated the Asians, the mixed-race people, the poor whites and the Aborigines. Dada was thrilled that the white divers had arrived to swell their number. He had said so at breakfast.
They clattered down the backstreets past a maze of whitewashed iron-and-timber constructions and houses so jammed together that a stray lit match would have torched the lot. Rows of shops with fronts opening straight onto the road were cluttered with cheap merchandise, and everything for sale was being peddled by bawling tradesmen. It reeked of spicy food, fish, frying onions and the sickening odour of insanitation. Cooper tried to breathe through his mouth as they slowed for a corner, his ears ringing with horses’ hooves and the echo of underprivilege.
He craned his neck. ‘What’s going on over there, Miss Montague?’
A line of Aboriginal men was approaching, each one barefoot, the whole pageant trudging one behind the other in a dejected convoy. At the head of the column a white policeman in a heavy twill uniform shouldered a rifle, whistling idly, keeping himself company. The black men behind him, each wearing nothing but a loincloth, were skeletally thin, their ribs sticking out like toast racks. They were tethered together by steel neck chains.
Miss Montague halted the horse and turned to her companion. ‘Those are the Abos who spread the white shell-grit on the roads. You should see them later on when they’ve finished for the day. They get covered in white dust and gleam in the dark like ghosts. It’s terribly spooky!’
‘Why are they chained up?’
‘There’s only one warder for all the prisoners. How else is he going to control them?’
Cooper didn’t understand. ‘But why are there so many of them?’
‘I think someone once calculated that you need fifty men to build a road, so they try to keep the numbers up.’
‘What did they do?’
She shook up the reins. ‘Killing cattle, mainly. The Abos are quite docile really, until they’re hungry or full of drink. Then it’s a different story. But I think they have quite a nice life as prisoners. Dada says some of them get themselves caught on purpose. They are fed three times a day and the gaoler’s wife cooks them treats from time to time. They get two hours off at lunchtime and then a swim in the creek after work to get the dust off.’
‘Are neck chains used for European prisoners?’
‘Of course not. White people don’t work on chain gangs. It wouldn’t be civilised, would it?’
Cooper stared at her for an instant as she in turn looked at him, expectant. Rather than searching for words he couldn’t summon, he changed the subject. ‘And how do you fill your time, Miss Montague? Is there much to keep you occupied?’
She lifted her chin, her voice rather high. ‘Me? Goodness, there’s so much to do! Bridge parties, croquet and the tennis club … then we have picnics and lots of balls and concerts and fundraisers at the Catholic school. There isn’t a single minute to get bored.’
Miss Montague pulled hard on the reins and smiled a little too brightly, Cooper thought. ‘Here you are, Mr Cooper,’ she said, nodding across the street at a cluster of whitewashed shacks. ‘Delivered safe and sound. Captain Sinclair’s office is in the packing shed over there.’
She pointed the tip of her parasol at a sandy path that snaked down to the beach. The tide was out. A flat expanse of black mud was littered with luggers, some on their sides but the majority dug deep into trenches and sandbagged upright, temporarily beached by the receding tide.
‘And don’t forget about the hat. I declare you’re two shades darker now than when I picked you up!’
Cooper took a deep breath of air and wished he hadn’t. It reeked of putrefying fish.
‘Thank you for the ride, Miss Montague. I am most obliged.’
Her lashes flickered. She reached out and with a small, gloved hand touched a lock of his hair. ‘It’s what we do out here,’ she said. ‘Look after one another.’
As the sulky pulled away, Cooper shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand and squinted at the iron shed. The sun was a bastard. He patted his jacket and reassured himself that his contract was still safe inside. He was anxious to discuss it before finally signing on the dotted line. Funds were running low and he wanted to know when he could get out to sea. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out the items he needed to roll a fresh cigarette and turned towards the foreshore. For as far as he could see, luggers lined the beach. Sid was right. There must have been several hundred hauled up onto the sand, their masts stripped of rigging like dead trees. He had expected the boats to be bigger. Loaded up with diving equipment and supplies, there would be scant room for all nine members of the crew. He shook his head. Sid had probably made the numbers up, and anyway, what was a little discomfort when a fortune was out there to be made?
The beach was teeming with sturdy, short-legged men, trousers rolled up, crawling over the boats. Repairs and maintenance of the fleet was in full swing and Miss Montague expected him to keep out of the sun? All of them, from their heads to their calf muscles, were burned brown. He took a last drag on his cigarette, crushed the butt beneath his heel and set off down the path.
Captain Sinclair spoke like a machine gun in brittle, strident bursts. A one-man firing squad.
‘So, Cooper. Good news. I’ve just had a cable from New York. Our last shipment of shell sold for three hundred pounds per ton. A record price. Where’s John Butcher?’
‘He may be a little late.’
‘Tarts?’
Cooper shook his head and winced with the movement.
The captain clenched his pipe in his stained teeth. ‘Is he reliable?’
‘JB? He’s the best tender I could hope for,’ Cooper affirmed. ‘I won’t dive without him.’
‘What diving experience do you have?’
‘My years in the Navy. I trained at the gunnery school in Portsmouth.’
He banged the pipe bowl on the desk. ‘We need to discuss your contract. I am supposed to pay you thirteen pounds per month and your tender six pounds.’
Cooper dipped his head in agreement. ‘That was what we were offered to leave England.’
‘Thing is, Mr Cooper, for a month I can get a Jap diver for three pounds, a Malay for two pounds, and a tender comes at about one pound. I’ve already paid twenty-four pounds for you and your John Butcher just to get here from England and I have no idea if you can find shell. What guarantee can you give me of return on my investment?’ Captain Sinclair’s face was unfriendly.
‘I don’t see how we can fail, sir. The Navy’s finest has trained us. If the Asiatic can come here and make a success of it you have my assurance, Captain Sinclair, that a Navy man can do better.’
Maitland threw back his head with such force he almost toppled over backwards in his chair. ‘You pompous arse! You’re not in a position to assure me of anything! Do you know what shell looks like, Cooper?’
Cooper had assumed it would be obvious to spot. He hadn’t considered it an issue.
‘Come with me.’ Sinclair led him to the adjacent packing shed and plucked a half-shell from a sorting bin. The mother-of-pearl glinted in the sunlight.
‘This is what you are diving for.’ He tapped the shell. ‘But this is not what you will see. It’s a different thing when it is lying on a tidal bank at twenty fathoms down. It’s the colour of the sea bottom. It takes a top Jap diver a number of years to become proficient at spotting the stuff by himself, and you are a novice on contract for twelve months.’
‘I thought we were to dive in pairs to begin with. To learn the ropes.’
‘I’m not sure that you quite understand the situation, Cooper. To take you on, I shall have to lay off one of my experienced Japanese divers. The Japs are getting demanding. They can afford to be. They know they are the best and won’t sign on for the season unless they have an advance on their earnings. That way, if they croak – and lots do die – they have something to send home. I have paid out money to someone who is not going to earn his keep. That, Mr Cooper, is not good business.’
Cooper stared at his employer. ‘Then why exactly am I here, Captain Sinclair? Your representatives in England insisted that all the master pearlers in Buccaneer Bay were on board with the idea that white-manned luggers would be a more efficient and profitable option than the foreign-crewed boats you normally operate. We were told that the Australian government is committed to this belief. All of us have come out here to prove the point. If the sums don’t add up, why have you brought out a boatload of white divers to work for you on the pearl beds?’
The captain folded his arms across his chest and blew out his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Cooper, if I sound a little unfriendly. You must understand that from now, until the fleet goes to sea, we are swamped with work. The costs of buying, equipping and running a lug
ger are crippling. It’s a business of continual risk, and many things can go wrong. It makes us all jumpy. But it is not your fault and not your concern, and I apologise if I have given you the impression that you are unwelcome. I have high hopes that you English blokes will be great and make us all a pile of cash. Then we will be able to send the foreign crews back to where they came from. You mentioned just now the possibility of learning the ropes before you put out to sea properly after the Wet. How would it be if you spend the next few days working with Squinty?’
Cooper wondered at the sudden change in attitude, but money was money and he was running short. ‘Sounds good if you’re going to pay me. I don’t work for free.’
‘How about ten bob a week?’
Cooper looked at his boots. ‘Rent’s thirty bob a week at the Seafarer’s.’
The captain shook his head. ‘I must be out of my flaming mind. Thirty bob, then, till the Wet’s over.’
When Cooper nodded, the captain added, jutting out his chin, ‘Go outside. I’ll send Squinty to you.’
‘How will I know him?’
The captain looked Cooper in the eye. ‘Take a wild guess, mate.’
Cooper left the packing shed with a sigh. It was marginally cooler outside but his ears still seared. He shaded his face with his fingers. It was now mid-morning and the sun was hot enough to blister paint. There was also a slimy heaviness in the air that made breathing a chore, and fat black flies were queuing up to suck the salty moisture from his eyes and mouth. He flapped them away irritably.
He could see the tide was on the turn.
A young Malay – who could not have been more than twenty – picked his way across the hot sand, barefoot and saronged. He wore a chain round his neck on which hung a studded leather pouch, which swung from side to side as he walked. ‘You Cooper?’
‘Everyone calls me Coop. You Squinty?’
The Malay nodded, his eyes rolling in different directions. ‘You working with me today. We’s chasing the vermin off luggers. But we need be quick.’
