by JH Fletcher
He watched the gill flaps pulsing lethargically. Like all fish, sharks drew their oxygen from the water. Whereas he … If he didn’t get to the surface fast, he’d drown. He had to do it, shark or no shark.
Its eye, yellow and expressionless, seemed to be watching him, yet the shark did not move. Could it be asleep? The tail fin flapped, once, like a black sail, and the cloudy water swirled. So much for that idea.
He was completely at its mercy, the idea of his helplessness more terrifying than the shark itself. No point thinking about it.
If it wants to come for me, it must.
On impulse he stretched out his free hand. Very gently, he touched the shark’s skin. He had expected it to feel slippery, like other fish, but it was not, it was as rough as sandpaper. He drew back his hand at once. So alien, so unknown … The realisation disconcerted him. Why had he touched it? To warn it he was here, so that it should not be startled and go for him? To tell it he was a friend? That was a joke, from a man who had made his living out of killing fish. He did not know why he had done it.
Strange, mad notions, murky as silt-water in his oxygen-starved brain.
And still the shark did not move. He was past it now. If it wanted to come for him, for the legs dangling like fruit in the water above its head … But he no longer had the time or energy to worry about that. All his thoughts were focused on one object: to get to the surface as quickly as he could. He feathered his feet in the water and went up.
The silvery glow brightened, became a blaze filling the world above him. He could see the surface. It rippled like a flag caught by the wind, sunlight guttering between gently breaking waves.
Just before his head broke into the air, he looked down for the last time. The shark was gone.
Or at least had moved. Perhaps it was circling, that great tail driving it, even now, into the attack.
Water streaming, Charlie’s head and shoulders burst into the heat and blinding glare of sunlight. His starved lungs sucked air. Overhead, the promontory rose into a brilliant sky. The relief … But the shark might still be there. He wasted no time but turned on his side, the shell still clutched in his left hand, and began to stroke himself through the water towards the beach where Arch waited to greet him.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Arch doing a dervish dance in the coarse and yielding sand. ‘How far down was it?’
‘A long way. I don’t know how far. There was a fish. A shark …’
Horror. ‘A shark? What did it do?’
‘Nothing, fortunately. I touched it.’
Arch looked at him askance. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No. I put out my hand and touched it. Deliberately.’ Although here on the warm beach it seemed hard to believe.
Arch looked at the shell Charlie had brought up with him out of the depths. ‘It’s a clam. Why did you bring it? To prove to me you’d been to the bottom?’
‘To prove it to myself.’
They put on their clothes. They went back up the path to the gharry, still patiently waiting. They returned to the ship. The beach, the dive, the shark were gone. By the following day, as Pilsna made her way southwards through the Malacca Strait, Penang itself was gone.
Yet was not. All of it — the feeling of the hot sand beneath his feet, the deep and cloudy water, the ghost-like menace of the great fish silhouetted against the distant light — remained. The experience had become part of Charlie’s being, as real and enduring as the big shell that now was part of his baggage.
4
The day before they docked in Fremantle, Arch asked him again. ‘What you going to do after we land?’
‘Look for a job.’
Arch looked dubious. ‘Not many jobs around.’
‘I’ll find something.’ Charlie made a joke of it. ‘I’ll have a problem if I don’t.’
‘Why don’t you come to Broome with me?’
‘To do what?’
‘I’ll have a word with Dad. I’m sure he can find you something. When I tell him how good you are in the water …’
‘To catch pearls?’
‘You told me you were a fisherman, back in France. That’s all this is, a different kind of fishing.’
Charlie thought about it. Australia was a strange land, far from everything he had known. Looking up at the stars that patterned the night sky — even those were different — he knew it would take far longer to get used to it than he had imagined when he had first boarded the ship. He’d studied the map and knew that Broome was on the other side of the continent from the Cloud Forest, but the Cloud Forest could wait. To have a friend in this new place could prove invaluable.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shall come to Broome with you.’ He slapped Arch on the back, laughing. ‘Who knows? Perhaps I shall find the biggest pearl in all the world and make my fortune.’
THIRTEEN
1
‘What’m I supposed to do with the bugger?’
Digby Hackett’s voice, raspy as sand, blew like an angry wind through the open windows of the hut, while Charlie sat in the dirt outside the door and waited for the decision that would determine whether he stayed in Broome or went on.
‘I got no work for strays! A bloody Frog, too!’
‘He’s Australian.’ Arch trying to reason with his firecracker dad.
‘My oath he’s Australian! He can’t even speak proper English, for God’s sake!’
‘You want to see him in the water. When we were in Penang —’
‘We don’t have European divers in this business. You know that.’
‘Why not? You told me two of your blokes had gone back to Japan and you couldn’t find anyone to take their place. Well, Charlie’s your replacement.’
Digby Hackett shied like a horse, the idea too revolutionary for him. ‘No bloody way …’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the others wouldn’t stand for it. A white bloke, working with a bunch of Japs?’
‘Ask ’em, why doncha?’
Digby looked outraged, the suggestion striking at the core of his attitude to business and the world. ‘Tell you somen. The day I ask the blokes working for me what I’m supposed to do is the day I retire. I tell ’em, and that’s an end to it.’
‘What’s the drama then? Tell ’em you’ve taken on a new diver.’
It was true that Digby needed a replacement diver. Even so …
‘He’ll want more pay than the others, different food.’
‘No, he won’t. I told him the set-up.’
‘Look, I’m busy,’ Digby said. ‘I don’t have time to argue with you. You clear off out of it now and I’ll think about it. Okay?’
Arch went out into the hot sunlight. Charlie was on his feet, face tight.
‘I’ll get moving then.’
Arch grinned exultantly. ‘You’re going nowhere, mate. I know the old man. You’re in.’
2
It was tricky, to begin with. The two Japanese divers weren’t sure about this new man. The whole industry used Asian divers; they wondered whether bringing in a white man might not be the first step towards getting rid of them altogether. He was sure to want special treatment, more money. He couldn’t speak Japanese either. They could both get along in English, after a fashion, so actual communication would not be a problem, but they cherished the idea of all the divers being able to talk to each other without the boss knowing what was going on. A white man had no business being a diver at all. That was at the root of their objections: like Digby Hackett, they were deeply conservative men. They did not want Charlie Mandale working with them because it had never been done.
They decided to go and see Digby, try and persuade him to change his mind.
‘Not good to have white man working with Japanese divers,’ they said. ‘More better you get rid of him. Find Japanese diver to take his place.’
Digby would do no such thing. He had been talked into giving Charlie a go, despite the problems that he knew as well as they did. Now he wo
uld not change his mind.
‘There aren’t any Japanese divers to be had.’
‘Then we work alone.’
‘You know that’s no good. We gotta have another bloke. This is the only one available and you’re going to have to get used to him, same as I am. You might as well make the best of it.’
They weren’t happy, but they went along. Next, Digby got hold of Charlie.
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen in March.’
‘Right. No favours, okay? You do what they do. You’ll be treated the same as them: same pay, same grub, same everything. That clear?’
‘I understand,’ Charlie said.
Digby nodded. ‘Best get on with it then.’
3
Life was good. He found digs with Mrs Ransom, a widow. Within a month, he was on good terms with the others, after all; they would never be bosom buddies, but at least they were able to communicate, be comfortable with each other and know they were all part of the same boat.
It helped that he was not Australian; it gave them something in common that they had all come to this land from somewhere else. There were obvious differences, of course. He was white and they were not; that was the great difference, because it was something you could see. As long as Charlie kept his mouth shut he could pass as an Australian, which they never could. The second difference was that he intended to stay whereas they, as soon as they’d saved enough money, would be off back to Japan.
‘What will you do when you get home?’
They laughed. ‘Buy a boat.’ Elbows nudged, gleefully. ‘Fuck all night, dive all day, get rich.’
‘Maybe I’ll do the same.’
What else was there, after all?
For now, however, there was little chance of anything but work. Out to the pearling grounds, the long dive through the deep clear water, up again … Over and over again, until the air flared red and their lungs burnt in their chests.
A hard life. Only young, fit men could have done it, but Charlie qualified on both counts. One more thing, even more important: he found he enjoyed it. He had thought of pearling as something to do until he got established in this new country but, by the end of the year, he was already thinking of staying where he was, getting himself a life in this remote town in the high tropics.
Alan, a mate who worked as a mechanic for Henry Michaels, a big shot who owned more pearlers than the rest of the fleet put together, tried to talk him out of it.
‘I was born here, but you … You’d be better off in Sydney, some place like that. A man could live there, I reckon. See a bit of life.’ His eyes shone, there was a longing in his voice; it seemed that he wanted very much to go. Yet in truth there had never been anything to stop him. Why was he still in Broome if, as he repeatedly claimed, there was nothing to do in this dump?
‘Wait till you see a cyclone,’ he threatened. ‘That’ll change your mind for you.’
There were horror stories of the tropical storms that scoured these coasts: winds so strong that palm trees became javelins, buildings were blown to pieces within seconds and bodies of humans and animals were flung a hundred yards through the air.
Alan had known a few, or claimed he had; storms when the wind had been strong enough to strip the bark from trees and drive the fragments so far into the wooden frames of buildings that they could never be removed.
Well, maybe, but Alan was a bloke who loved having you on, and Charlie only half believed him. He thought Broome was all right.
4
It was true that there wasn’t much social life, but there was a pub and every month a dance was held in the hall, with a gramophone playing the town’s precious handful of dance records. With eyes watching your every move, Alan had warned him that the dances were a dead loss. On the other hand, it was a way to pass the time. Two months after his arrival, Charlie — borrowed tie and a hat that had seen better days — decided to give it a go.
He could hear the music as he came down the dusty street. Light was spilling through the hall windows, bugs beating themselves to death against the screens as he opened the door and slipped inside.
There were around twenty people there: blokes at one end; at the other, girls dressed in frocks with stiff, stand-out skirts that looked as though they hadn’t been used since the last dance. Most of them were about his age, a few younger, although there were a couple of older women, too: probably to keep an eye on things. By the gramophone, its chrome-plated horn shining in the unshaded lights, a fat girl with teeth, spots all over, was changing the record.
The door batted behind him as he came in and everyone turned to look at him. No one spoke so he did it for them.
‘Good evening …’
Maybe someone grunted an answer, maybe they didn’t, but there were looks, especially from the fellas. Aussies might be the easiest-going blokes on earth — certainly, they were always going on about it — but white men had no business diving with Asiatics, and there were those who thought Charlie’d let the side down.
Yet having French blood helped, if only to a point: he could get away with behaviour they would never have accepted from anyone else, but that didn’t make him one of them. Quite the reverse. So some of the blokes nodded, some did not, and all turned their backs. Let the Frog get on with it.
Still, not everyone thought like that. For the most part, the girls had known every man in the town from birth; sometimes, or so it seemed to the more restless of them, from before birth. They had no surprises left, whereas Charlie was a newcomer, a foreigner, altogether an unknown quantity. There might be surprises aplenty with him, and more than one bored young woman was willing to take a chance to find out.
One of the grannies swooped, heading towards him with a brilliantly polished smile, all teeth and enthusiasm. ‘How nice you were able to come … Do you dance?’
Not that it seemed to matter; before he could open his mouth, she had him out with her on the dance floor, trudging through what might have been a waltz. She talked incessantly, while he tried to avoid falling over her feet, or his own.
All the time she was explaining to him how she hoped he would have a wonderful time, taking the trouble to explain that she was only trying to be a friend. As a newcomer, she wanted him to feel at home. She made such an effort to stop him having ideas that he could have laughed. She was old enough to be his mother; any ideas he might have were not directed at her.
Ideas he certainly had. He was young, fit and more than willing to have a go, if he got the chance. Or make his own chances, which he did, almost at once.
The old bird off his hands, he strolled up to a girl who had caught his eye and got her to dance with him. Little more than a kid, by the look of her, but looks could fool and at once she clamped her body to his, her breath hot in his ear. She held him so close it was hard to talk but Charlie quickly decided there was no need for words.
In the meantime most of the young bulls had been sharing the beer that someone had smuggled in against the rules and were standing in a defensive huddle at one end of the hall, eyeing what passed for the talent. They’d intended to take their time before getting together with the sheilas; that was the way it was always done and in any case there was no rush: most of them knew who they were going to end up with anyway.
None of which made them feel any better about this drongo jumping the gun. Beer makes a bloke brave and within minutes there were several willing to have a go at the foreign dickhead who seemed to think he could shove his nose — and maybe more than his nose, as Gareth Chisholm said — where it had no business to be. In the meantime they thought they’d better get into the dancing business, too, if only to protect their interests. They did so and soon everyone was at it, the girls having fun much sooner than usual, with most of the blokes still sober.
The evening passed. Charlie told himself he was having a good time, but was he? They were a bunch of kids, mostly. A lot of them were no younger than he was, but they’d done nothing and knew nothing, and he
felt as comfortable with them as a pig in a cactus. All the same, it might be worth checking out the girl who’d come on to him at the beginning of the evening.
She was dancing with someone; when the music stopped, they walked away from each other. He watched her across the hall as she joined a couple of other girls. Within seconds they were laughing together, chattering fit to burst, and he strolled over to join them.
‘Hallo …’
She looked at him, her expression halfway between a smile and a frown, and a question mark clear in her voice. ‘Hi …?’
He’d hoped to cut her out from the others but it seemed her feet had taken root.
‘It’s a nice night,’ he said, not willing to give up so easily. ‘I wondered if you’d like to step outside and have a look at it with me?’
Round eyes, then, both from her and her mates, as though they couldn’t believe what they were hearing; no more smiles, now.
‘No,’ she said, very loudly and clearly. ‘I would not like.’
Whatever next, her tone was saying, but her outrage didn’t wash: only an hour ago she’d been climbing all over him.
‘No need to get on your large horse,’ he said. It was an expression he’d picked up from Arch and he knew, even as he said it, that he’d somehow got it wrong.
‘What the hell you playing at, mate?’
So that he knew he’d got something else wrong, too.
He turned, deliberately taking his time, and stared at the man who’d spoken: Gareth Chisholm, looking like he thought he owned the world and all the girls in it.
‘You spoke to me?’
‘Do yourself a favour,’ said Gareth. ‘Why don’t you just piss off?’
The girl, obviously a lost cause, was forgotten. ‘Planning to make me?’ Charlie wondered.
‘It’s a nice night,’ Gareth mimicked. ‘You want to step outside with me and take a look at it?’
