Secrets of the Sea

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  He plucked the coin from Kish’s hand and framed it against the steering wheel and studied it.

  “Victorian Bun Penny. 1841. Cheapest type of copper. I found one of these once. Worthless, like yours. Found it at the bottom of the sea. You might get eleven dollars for it. Ten, more likely.” And handed it back. “Now if it was 1843 you’d be in the money. 1843, then you’d be talking, Knish,” and chuckled. “Or maybe, if it was you, you wouldn’t.”

  Kish grabbed at it. “You bastard.” His eyes blazed with darkness and he jerked out his hand. In which a knife flashed.

  For a millisecond there was an offer of violence to Joseph, who with one hand took the knife off him and said in a fantastically calm way: “We’re working together, don’t fuck about. It means nothing to me whether you kill me. It’s quite late on in my life. But while we’re here, wake up. I don’t give a bugger why you’re on the run. Nonetheless, I quite like you. And while I don’t mind sharing the back of the van with you, I don’t need to share your criminal and emotional baggage.”

  He slowed down to let two girls in bikinis with dripping hair cross the road. “I say,” he murmured, “they rather appeal to my aqueous humour.”

  He watched the girls pick their way barefoot along the gravel towards a shack and then turned to Kish.

  “There you are, there’s your knife. And it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you took it and found a sheep that we could cut up and cook.”

  He put the van into gear and drove on, concentrating on the road.

  They had been driving in this way for a while when he threw Kish another look. “You all right, old dumpling? You look like the proverbial grave in which something’s been spinning.”

  “I’m OK.”

  Joseph nodded. “I wonder if—” His sentence broke off, like a pencil pressed too hard. Once more his eyes roved down over Kish’s spiky hair, his earring, his spectacles, his oversized white shirt, to the hand that fretted with the coin. “I don’t want you to swallow this the wrong way, Knish. But it’s struck me on a sudden that we’ve been sitting here nattering contentedly for the best part of ten weeks, and yet all I know about you is that you’re a total orphan who has no idea who his father was or his mother. Absolutely no idea. And that you came to Tasmania under full sail. Oh, and that you have a girl who’s not especially musical.” Joseph looked back at the road ahead and stared at it in a hurt way. “Now, old soul, I hope you will agree that’s not much. I mean, that’s not much to show for ten weeks of sharing the same precious space, day in, day out. Not when I’ve told you all about my life. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Why do you have to know anything?” It was almost a hiss.

  “Why do I have to know anything?” Joseph repeated slowly. He shook his head. Whatever Kish was, he was not a day at the beach. “Because I’m interested, you oaf. Because it passes the time. Because it’s polite. Because I’m a bit of a uomo universale, you might say. I mean, what are your interests? I’ve got my goggles and flippers. Just as you’ve got your knife and penny. But what do you like doing? That’s what I can’t work out. What floats your boat, eh?”

  Kish leaned back. He slipped the coin into his jeans alongside his knife and glowered. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Then tell you what. Let’s play a game. What do you hate? What sickens you?”

  “Fuckwits asking questions.”

  “Come on. Don’t be like that. That’s not the point. What are your favourite words? Mine are elbow, biltong, claret.”

  “What’s biltong?” asked Kish.

  “Biltong? You don’t know what biltong is?”

  “No, I don’t know what biltong is.”

  Joseph smiled. “I’ll say one thing, old dumpling. You keep your cards pretty close to that chest of yours. Jeepers, I can’t tell if you’re happy, if you’re angry, if you’re out of your fucking ugly tree, or what you are.”

  At any rate, Kish must have thought about what Joseph had said because all of a sudden he flung out his hand over the tray of geraniums and pointed at a green flag that dangled from the driving mirror.

  “What’s that?”

  “Irish. Everyone loves the Irish.”

  “You don’t sound Irish.”

  “I didn’t want to draw attention to a colonial bastard. But, hey, you’re getting the point. You don’t get anywhere without asking questions. I mean, nowhere.”

  Then: “What does it mean, The Long Haul?”

  “What does it mean?” incredulous. “What a question! What. A. Question.” But once Joseph had stopped shaking his head, he confessed in a voice more solemn: “Actually, I’m toying with the idea of a name change. And maybe, Knish, you’re the one to help. There are myriads of possibilities, as well you may imagine, but after a lot of aggro–a lot of aggro–I’ve boiled them down to two.”

  He paused. Now the moment had arrived to reveal his choices, he seemed strangely vulnerable. “Either DELIVERANCE”–he turned to gauge the reaction–“or BUT IT MOVES.” And when Kish still looked blank, explained: “E pur si muove. Attributed to Galileo after his recantation, although generally conceded to be apocryphal. So which one takes your fancy, eh?”

  They were passing a refrigeration plant on the Huon. Kish looked out of the window at two sailing boats and touched his earring and mumbled something. Whatever it was did not reach Joseph.

  “Hey, blabbermouth, don’t keep it from Silkleigh. Not when your words are such gold.”

  Kish turned. He said in a hard voice: “I have so much anger that sometimes it can near kill people.”

  “Is that so, old soul? Is that so?” And picked his nose. He seemed relieved that the subject had moved on. “I used to be angry like that until I realised it was just frustration coming out the wrong way. Ah, here we are. Dover. Now where do you suppose this bookshop is? I’ll just park on the dirt and ask that nice old lady.”

  For four months, Kish busted his gut doing manual labour. Punishing, healing, galvanising himself. The whole time flipping the severe young woman into the air and catching her and trying to outstare her. Waiting for her to give him some sort of direction. More direction anyway than BRITANNIA REG FID DEF, whoever that was when she was at home.

  A conviction took hold that the letters contained a message that would tell him what to do. He tried patiently to work it out, this loop of meaning, but all he felt was desolation. Like when he was going clean for the first time after using heavily. The effort hardly seemed worth it, it was so hard; and what was to be gained? Such a small plus in the middle of such a big mess.

  Once or twice he came close to asking Joseph, but always at the last moment he pulled back. This was something that only he and the woman could settle.

  There were moments when he hated her long sharp nose. The ringlets of hair tucked over her ear and gathered into a bun. Sometimes he had the feeling that, like him, the penny was really bad. Most of the time he felt that it was a compass, leading him round in circles, leading him all over the island in his quest for reparation. He still did not know what he ought to do, but he never lost faith that the stern face might one day rouse itself from its coma and fix him in the eye and tell him.

  One autumn morning, they were in Gladstone–a tin-mining town in the north-east–to deliver a widow’s furniture. He opened the back of the van, waking late after their mutton barbecue, and saw Joseph, legs up on a bench, outside the store in the street where they had parked for the night. He was talking to a bald, red-faced man in wire-framed specs who nervously rolled his gaze over the top of Joseph’s knees to Kish.

  “Hey, Knish,” said Joseph. “This is Mr Beeley.”

  “Hi.”

  “I was saying to him I bet this place has a lot of kink.”

  Mr Beeley gave a frightened laugh.

  “I’ve also been telling him about my book. The Making of Me.”

  Mr Beeley had three large mosquito bites above his brow and his moustache was frosted with ice cream. “Sounds most intriguing,” he said c
harily, and smiled at Kish. “Talking of books,” looking from one to the other, “I had a visitor this morning.”

  “Really?” said Joseph, suddenly not very interested. He tucked his propelling pencil back into his T-shirt and picked up Mr Beeley’s newspaper. “What kind of visitor would that be, pray?” as he scanned the front page headline: EAST COAST SALE SCUPPERED. Plans to develop Talbot’s General Store at Wellington Point mysteriously fell through yesterday when owner 84-year-old Albert Talbot took the property off the market…

  “I was just cutting the front lawn when she opened the gate. A nice lady, she’d wanna be on her way to sixty. I thought: Oh dear, oh dear. I said to her, ‘Last week, I know I was busy and put you off. But I’m very, very busy today.’”

  The sound of rushing air made Joseph raise his eyes. “So who was she?” distracted. He had forgotten to water his geraniums.

  “I don’t know her name. She lives with Mr Twelvetrees,” said Mr Beeley. “But I reckon she’s a Jehovah’s Witness is what she is.”

  “How extraordinary,” watching the flock of birds move at great speed over the roof of the van.

  Kish followed his gaze.

  Mr Beeley was not to be distracted.

  “Anyhow, she gave me a big thick Bible and said: ‘I can help you,’ and I said: ‘Leave it there.’ She said: ‘To make sure you know the full gist of what’s going on, turn your Bible to Peter, Chapter 1 and you go to Verse 23 here, and that tells you for sure. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.’ Well, I looks at her and I say: ‘When you go to the Bible, it’s all right up to a point,’ and she said: ‘What do you mean?’ I said: ‘Jesus was nailed on the cross and so forth, but if you think it’s right to bring Him back, it can’t be done.’ She said: ‘Oh, yes, it can. Where do you think we go when we die?’ I said: ‘Under the ground.’ She said: ‘No. God will tell Jesus. He’ll instruct him and they’ll bring you back to life.’ I thought: Oh dear, oh dear. She said: ‘If you want to, you can give a donation,’ and I said: ‘No. You might get a donation next time. But there’s a lovely pair of gentlemen over the road. They only arrived last night and I’m sure they’ll spare you something. Would you like to see them?’”

  “You didn’t,” murmured Joseph.

  “I did, too.” Mr Beeley lifted his spectacles and rubbed an eye and giggled. “I’m surprised she hasn’t been ’long already.”

  “When was this?” stirring.

  “Round twenty minutes ago.”

  Joseph’s eyes scouted the road both ways. “Time we got going,” tossing the newspaper aside and standing up. He consulted his notebook. “Knish and I have a delivery to make,” he apologised to Mr Beeley. “Hey, Knish! Let’s go and find this Mrs Bowman and give her her furniture.”

  But Kish was watching the birds. They flew in squabbling circles above the roof of the van and settled on it repeatedly as if the van exerted some sort of pull. He wiped his cheek with his shirtsleeve and his eyes followed their short glides, one flat curved wing beating faster than the other, and the sound of the wind rushing through their feathers, until they rose from the van and this time circled upwards into the sky in high-pitched screeches.

  “Wonder what they are…” Joseph said half to himself.

  Until the specks were too tiny to see.

  Kish dropped the hand that shielded his eyes. He rucked up his trousers. Then he went and closed the back of the U-haul and bolted it. He knew now. He did not know why he wanted to do it, but he wanted to do it. For the solvency of his conscience, he had to go back.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TALBOT’S NEWSLETTER. EDITORIAL

  I think I have an old man and a soldier’s right to say that whereas we listen to a great deal of codswallop about the peaceable intentions of our powerful northern neighbours, you can take it from me that the nation that laid waste the New Guinea archipelago, that visited a regime of terrible brutality upon the genuinely peace-loving natives of New Britain–well, I saw it all with my own eyes, so I can say it and to hell with your political correctness–I would just like to put a marker down for the next generation. Don’t fall asleep, my friends and fellow citizens. That dragon may rise again. A.T.

  On the eve of Merridy’s return, Alex walked one last time through the house and checked that there was nothing he might have overlooked. He made a bouquet of her favourite flowers and arranged them in a vase beside the bed: white hammer-headed stylidium gathered from beneath their window, red rugosa from down by the beach, pink tubular correa. He rehung the samplers, back from the framer’s and repaired by a seamstress in Sandy Bay, as well as the cockatoo and her pencil drawing. He stocked the fridge with meats from the Wursthaus Kitchen in Hobart. And in the waning light went into the room that he had prepared for the child.

  His eyes passed over the cot, the black felt Tasmanian devil on the pillow, the red wheelbarrow, the sieve. The room was cold and he noticed that Madasun had left the window open. Beyond Moulting Lagoon, the sea crashed down with a personal note. He stood listening to the waves before he fastened the latch. Then he turned out the light. The luminous paint had dried on the ceiling that he had retouched that morning, and before he closed the door he waited for the lemony stars to begin competing with the darkness gathering outside.

  He waited until last to go into Merridy’s study.

  For more than a week he had taken to coming in here, shutting himself away once he had finished speaking to her, working without pause, at times until daybreak, hunched over an empty gin bottle. Now his work was finished.

  Years had passed since Alex had attempted such a project. And yet something troubled him. He suspected that for all the pains he had taken with this particular ship his wife would be disappointed.

  He picked up the bottle from her desk and took it into the living room.

  Alex added a log to the fire and sat down under the goose-neck reading light.

  He was still inspecting his model of the Zemmery Fidd when he heard a noise and saw that the door had opened.

  A shadow stretched into the room. As if it had detached itself from one of the frames in the corridor: white shirt, his very own jeans, a rustic satchel and a gold earring.

  The room lurched and all sorts of emotional somersaults went through Alex’s head when he saw the father of his child. This was the one thing that he had not factored into his resolution to look after Merridy’s baby. It never had occurred to him, not once. Kish was a wanderer, a blow-in who had blown out. He had gone and was probably on the mainland. He certainly was not going to come back to Moulting Lagoon Farm.

  “Kish?” He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “Kish?” and put down the bottle. “Is it you? You’ve changed.”

  “Mr Dove, you look a little different, too. How are you, Mr Dove?”

  “I’m fine. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been in the north, in the south, all over the island. I’ve been with Mr Silkleigh.”

  “You look all bushed,” preparing to get up. “You’d better come and have a cup of tea.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve had the place cleaned.”

  “And Mrs Dove, how is Mrs Dove?” unfastening his satchel.

  Alex sat back. “Mrs Dove is coming back tomorrow. Mrs Dove is going to have a baby.”

  “A baby? That’s wonderful news.”

  “Do you think so, Kish? I’m happy to hear you say that. Because I very much hope that you didn’t come back to claim this baby. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve made up my mind to adopt the boy and bring him up as my own.”

  Kish laughed in disbelief. “You’ve made a mistake there, Mr Dove. I haven’t come back to see your wife.”

  “Then what are you doing here? What do you want?”

  Kish walked across the room and opened his satchel and took something very reverently out of it, wrapped in cotton wool, that he laid on the glass-topped table at Alex
’s elbow.

  “What’s this?”

  As soon as he let it go, Kish felt a rush of lightness to his head. He sat down opposite Alex and crossed his legs and smiled. “Mr Dove, the only reason I came back is to give you this.”

  Alex looked from Kish to the cotton wool and picked it up. Inside, a tarnished Queen Victoria, the colour of shoe-leather.

  He examined the young monarch’s face without taking it in. Then returned his gaze to Kish, who was acting as if he had been a good boy. Pleased that he had done what he had to do and now was waiting to be thanked.

  Kish said: “I’m here, too, to tell you that I’m very, very sorry for what I did.”

  Alex stared at this boy whose life he had saved. Who still wore his–Alex’s–clothes, for Christ’s sake! Who had done everything to destroy his marriage. Who was suspected of murder.

  “You come in as if you own the place,” he said slowly, “you sit in my wife’s chair…”

  He should have left him to drown.

  And remembered when they brought him in, his pheasant flesh all blue and plucked. His guts expelling an awful, bad breath. He had been so touching in his helplessness.

  “I suppose you want a reward for returning my own property?”

  “A reward? Mr Dove, I’m not after no reward.” His brow crinkled at Alex’s misjudgement.

  Alex looked again at the copper penny. Competing in his head, treacherous thoughts about Kish–and also a bewildered delight at this tribute or penance. In a very extraordinary way, he was grateful to see Kish. His reappearance rounded the whole thing out.

  He put down the coin and it rolled off the edge of the table, onto the possum rug.

  Kish stared at it with dismay; Alex impassively, without seeing it. “I thought you’d be missing it,” muttered Kish.

  “I don’t give a damn about the penny,” in a cracked voice. “The penny I care about is in my wife’s belly.”