by John Harris
The spring wasn’t far from the beach but the path grew more rocky and eventually Frankie began to stumble.
“Let’s rest,” she panted. “I can’t go no further. I’m going to bust.”
“Come on, kid,” Willie said, not taking his eyes off the path ahead. “You got no stamina. Not far now. Keep it going. Give us your hand. I’ll give you a heave.”
With Willie half-dragging her behind him, they stumbled through the thinning undergrowth until he stopped dead. A long way behind, they could hear Rosa and Joe blundering after them and Joe’s voice raised in a wail of despair.
“Nearly there,” Willie said, still holding Frankie’s hand. “I can hear the water now.”
He practically dragged her the last few yards upwards until they stood on the brink of the pool together, Frankie drooping against him, laughing hysterically with exhaustion.
“Gawd,” she panted. “You go at things like a steam-engine. You oughta take it easy.”
He laughed back at her, then their eyes met and Willie became conscious of having his arms round her while she leaned against his chest.
She was staring at him, admiration in her eyes, and his laughter died abruptly as he looked back at her a little breathlessly.
Frankie opened her mouth to speak. “Willie–” she managed at last.
Willie said nothing, as though he hadn’t heard her.
“Willie–” Frankie said again “–what you gawking at?” and Willie started abruptly and frowned. Then he pushed her away quickly, almost roughly, and bent to the water so that she could have bitten her tongue off in sheer misery.
“Willie,” she whispered. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, kid, why?” he said sharply. “Come on, we got to hurry.”
Frankie knelt alongside him, shyly trying to glance up at him under her eyebrows. But Willie’s face was expressionless and discouraging and in the end she gave it up, wondering if she’d been imagining that first warming look of gentleness.
They had finished filling their containers long before the other two had arrived, and Frankie started to arrange hers about her, thinking with dismay of the rocky path downwards.
“’Strewth,” she said slowly, feeling the weight on her shoulders. “I never knew water was so heavy.”
Willie looked round, then he slowly put his own containers to the ground again and crossed towards her.
“Here,” he said. “Let me have a couple of those.”
Frankie looked up at him, her eyes resting on his face.
“’S’all right, Willie,” she said. “I can manage. I’m not complaining.”
“I know you’re not. But they’re too heavy for a girl. I’ll carry ’em.”
“Honest, Willie, I can do it.”
“I’ll carry ’em, I said,” he reiterated gruffly. “A girl can’t go lugging things about like that.”
Without a word, Frankie lowered her containers to the floor and Willie felt their weight one after the other, then he took the two heaviest and placed them with his own.
“Willie, honest–”
“I’m trying to help you, aren’t I?” he said sharply. “Now dry up.”
“Yes, Willie.”
Meekly, Frankie hitched the remaining containers about her body, Willie helping to fix the ropes and arranging his shirt over her shoulders so they wouldn’t cut the skin, then they sat on the brink of the pool and waited for Rosa and Joe.
They were both still preoccupied with their own thoughts as they up-anchored again, their tank full, and circled the island towards the village inside the lagoon.
The old ship bowed her queenly way into the pass, rolling as the current and the waves threatened to drive her on to the fangs of rock, like an elderly stage star acknowledging cheers, even the surf unable to chivvy her into lack of dignity.
Purposely, they dropped anchor as far as possible from the village and immediately two or three native pirogues set out from the shore and hurried towards them, skimming rapidly across the mirror surface of the water.
“OK,” Frankie said nervously, as she watched them approach. “Here we go. Who’s going ashore?”
“Willie,” Rosa said at once. “He’s the smartest. He’ll not drop anything out we don’t want dropping out. He can keep his mouth shut and spy out the land at the same time. ’Sides, he’s got the money and he knows how much we can afford to spend.”
“What’ll I say?” Willie asked, his eyes on the pirogues. “They’re bound to be curious.”
“Tell ’em we’re trying to get to America. Anything you like. Kid ’em on a bit. Tell ’em we’re going all the way. You can think of something. You know where we’ve been. Go and have a look at the charts before they come, then you’ll know what you’re talking about.”
Willie looked at her, then at Frankie. “You reckon it’s best for me to go alone?”
“You scared?” Joe asked quickly.
“’Course he’s not, you old fool,” Rosa said. “Go on, Willie. If Joe goes, he’ll let the cat outa the bag straight away. When he opens his mouth, he sounds like he oughta to be poling a gondola.”
The pirogues were manned by islanders, fair-skinned men with flowers in their hair who, as soon as they came alongside, offered them a lift ashore.
Rosa pushed Willie forward. “Go on,” she said as he climbed over the side of the Boy George.“Tell ’em the rest of us got work to do. Tell ’em a good story. You can do it fine. If it’s OK here, I’ll get ’em to take a letter for Lucia.”
Willie sat in the stern of the leading pirogue, tense with the responsibility of aiding their disguise by what he had to say, then Frankie waved to him from the high bow of the Boy George as they drew away.
“Go it, Willie,” she shrieked. “Give it ’em good!”
Willie grinned and waved back, the tenseness in him snapped, and turned his eyes towards the village in the distance.
As they drew closer, he could see a white man waiting on the beach, and Willie began to wonder what he was going to say, what questions he was going to ask, and tried to concentrate on the story forming in his mind as he stared at the terrifyingly brilliant sand that hurt his eyes with its glare as it caught the centre of the sun and flung it dazzlingly upwards.
“Pleased to meetcha!” He could hear the man on the beach shouting in a high cracked voice as they drew closer to the shore. “Pleased to meetcha.”
The man was wading out towards them now, grinning all over his face and waving. “Glad to have you here,” he was yelling. “George Villiers is always glad of company.”
Willie felt better as he heard the old man’s name. So Joe had been right, he thought, and perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult after all.
“Saw you off-shore last night,” the old man was saying. “Wondered what the hell you were doing. Picked up water, they told me. Why didn’t you come inside the lagoon and get it here? Coulda had a meal with me.”
Shabby and withered with the heat, his trouser-bottoms soaked, he met Willie as he stepped ashore in front of the store, doing an excited double-shuffle that kicked up the fine sand in little puffs, gambolling round him like an elderly puppy, offering him drinks, hospitality, food, supplies, anything he required, garrulous to the point of embarrassment, until his very effusiveness put Willie on his guard.
“Sorry, can’t stop,” he said as they crossed the beach. “Got to pick up another passenger in Papeete. Just dropped in for flour and tinned stuff and salt and kerosene.”
Old Villiers’ face fell with disappointment and his excited shuffle stopped. His eyes stared back at Willie out of a well of loneliness. “Can’t stop? But everybody stops here. I always put on a meal. Nobody’s in a hurry here. I rely on people for news.”
“Sorry!” Willie was adamant, feeling the responsibility for the Boy George weighing heavily on his young shoulders. “We’re all out for speed.”
“What ship are you?”
“Boy George. Trying to get from Auckland to Los Angeles
.” Willie was enjoying the story he had made up and he brought it out with zest, still not too old to have lost the joy of hide and seek. “We just come from Palmerston,” he said. “Heading for Tahiti and then the Marquesas before we make the crossing. Two of us aboard, that’s all.”
“Can’t you come round for a sundowner?” Villiers pleaded. “Just for the evening. I can promise good tucker. Bring your friend. Bring anybody. Glad to see ’em. Always glad to see people.”
“Sorry. Just come to take on supplies. You got supplies to sell, I suppose.”
Villiers nodded eagerly, obviously snatching at anything that might prolong the stay. “Sure. Plenty. Pleased to be of assistance. Take all you want. Anything else? Charts? Courses? Tell you my friends along the way if you’d like to call on ’em. Only got to mention my name. Can’t you even come in for a drink?”
As Willie persisted in his refusal, the old man’s eyes clouded and he began to sulk. “Don’t see many people here,” he complained, his voice almost a whine. “I keep looking. I see everything that passes. Haven’t seen anything of an old sloop, have you? Name of Tina S. Got two Italians and a kid on board. Been told to watch out for her.”
Willie hesitated before offering a cautious reply and made a point of keeping his face averted. “Nothin’ at all,” he said. “We kep’ off the trade routes.”
Villiers was studying his face intently. “You a film star or something?” he asked unexpectedly.
Willie stared, startled by the question, then he grinned quickly. “Sure. You seen any of my films?”
“Not that I remember. But I must have seen your picture in the magazines I get sent out from Brisbane or something.”
“That so?” Willie felt a jab of the old fear and turned his face away as though he were squinting back at the Boy George.
“Felt certain I knew you,” Villiers went on more cheerfully. “Face’s kind of familiar.”
He peered across the lagoon to where the Boy George lay at anchor. The bowsprit they had rigged gave her a rakish look when she was lying beam-on.
“Fast-looking ship you got there,” he said.
“Fast as hell,” Willie agreed. “How far away are these people in the Tina S supposed to be?”
Villiers shook his head. “Dunno. Somewhere around.”
“Who’s been asking for ’em?”
“Police. Message came over the radio to look out.”
“Where are the police now?”
“Cook Islands. That’s where the message came from. Resident Magistrate put it out, I guess. Two-three weeks ago. Can’t say for sure. Time’s no object here. Tavita Ohoa – he looks after the store for me – he got it on the receiver. He was with the Yanks during the war and he learned radio. Resident Magistrate makes him an allowance now. Only sending station this end of the George IIIs.”
“Think they’ll find ’em?”
“They got a good chance. Why don’t you stick around and help look for ’em? You can stay here. Good spot.” Villiers glanced at Willie, hopelessness in his eyes. “Get things squared up before you move on. Have a good time.”
Willie showed no sign of wavering and, as the islanders loaded their canoes with flour and canned goods, Villiers stood on the beach and watched him disconsolately, his thin shoulders hunched despairingly, his fists in his ragged pockets. Then Willie shook his hand.
“Thanks for all the help,” he said. “If we make Los Angeles, we’ll send you the papers. It’ll be in all the papers. We sure got away from here fast, thanks to you.”
Villiers watched the native canoes skimming across the lagoon, his heart empty within him. The talk of Los Angeles made him feel miserable. He still had memories of big cities, though they were faint enough now to have only the substance of mirages. He heard the shouts of laughter from the vessel lying out in the lagoon and, wondering what the joke was, unhappily decided they were laughing at him and began to worry again where he’d seen the boy who’d come ashore.
Going to his verandah, he ruffled through the pages of the magazines that reached him in the hope of finding some clue to his identity. But, his mind already vague, he saw no connection between the stilted official descriptions he had received over the radio and the brown-faced healthy young sailor who had bought stores from him, no connection between the uncertain accounts of the matronly Tina S with her single mast and wheelhouse and the newer looking boat across the lagoon with her yawl rig and rakish bowsprit.
On board the Boy George, Willie was relating his adventure ashore. “Asked me if I was a film star,” he said and they all rocked with laughter. “I told him I was and asked him if he’d seen any of my films. Any of my films! He never recognized the Tina. Said what a fast-looking ship she was.”
“Fast!” Joe slapped his fat thigh. “If he only knew. She waddles across the ocean like a drunken Latvian coming down Bourke Street.”
Willie grabbed Frankie’s hands and they began to waltz round the foredeck, while Joe began to clap his hands and stamp. “Mama,” he said over his shoulder, “it just shows. He don’ know who we were. We’ve done it fine.”
Willie’s posturing subsided slowly as he saw the trouble on Rosa’s brow and Frankie let go his hands. Rosa was staring thoughtfully at nothing, and Joe’s clapping and stamping slowed to a stop.
“What is it, Rosie?” he asked. “Don’ it show we disguise her good?”
“Sure it does,” Rosa said slowly, her voice flat and heavy as she flapped the air with a piece of cardboard for a fan. “But it shows something else as well. It shows they’re looking for us. They’re not just sitting on their backsides in Sydney waiting. They’ve come after us.”
She looked at the sheet of cheap notepaper in her hand, the beginning of the letter she had hoped to send to Lucia, and screwed it up into a ball and tossed it into the sea.
They all watched it bob lightly away on the tide, all of them conscious of a feeling of deflation as their pride in their disguise was drained away in a sense of anxiety.
Joe stared at Rosa, his dark eyes amazed. “All that way,” he said. “Just for a old-a boat and a bad debt.”
Willie had turned towards the stores they had bought from Villiers and he poked at a carton of beans with his toe. “Don’t you kid yourself,” he said slowly. “It’s not you they’re looking for. It’s me.”
Joe looked quickly at Rosa and became silent. Frankie’s smoky dark eyes grew big and puzzled, her thin face and figure making her look younger than her age.
“We’d best get away from here quickly,” Rosa said and their laughter had completely disappeared.
“Get away from here?” Joe’s face reddened. “Don’ we only just come? Don’ we ever going to stay nowhere? Don’ we ever just laugh and sit around? Don’ we ever get-a no fun? Don’ we ever go ashore and have a drink?”
“What you going to buy drink with?” Rosa asked.
Joe looked sheepishly at Willie and began to rub the palms of his hands up and down across the seat of his pants. “I think perhaps–” he paused and licked his lips “–perhaps a small loan. Since we have so much money–”
“The money’s for stores,” Willie said shortly. “Not booze.”
“Ain’t no reason not to spend a little of it,” Joe wheedled.
“I don’t want to.”
“Always ‘I don’t want to’,” Joe exploded, flinging his arms upwards. “You come on my boat. You eat-a my food. You use-a my sails. Why ‘I don’ want to’?”
“Because I say so and it’s my money.”
“You got proof-a that?”
“It’s in my money belt. That’s good enough.”
“Oh, no, it ain’t good enough–” Joe began, but Rosa silenced him with a gesture.
“Look,” she said. “While we’re arguing the toss, somebody ashore there can be in touch with the police by radio or something. Let’s head for Tyburn and turn for the Societies. We can keep to the south of them so we aren’t seen.”
“OK, Captain Mama.” Willie
grinned and spoke gaily to break the sudden tension. “You’re in charge.”
He glanced towards Frankie, and Rosa was quick enough to catch the expression on their faces as their eyes met; and the anxieties she had felt as they had pushed on ahead of her up the slope to the pool the previous day crystallized into an unexpected fear.
“Come on, kid,” Willie said. “Let’s push on.”
“Push on,” Joe grumbled, as he shuffled towards the wheel. “Always ‘push on’. Christmas ain’t-a far away and we don’ even get the drop of booze. Just push on. Soon we push on so much we drop-a off the edge of the earth.”
Old Villiers watched them leave from a wicker chair on his verandah, shaking his head in exasperation. He was still ruffling through the magazines as he squinted across the water to where the sun caught the sail, making it white against the darker clouds hanging over the islands to the east that showed above the sea in a line of palm tufts and coral fragments.
Two
It was a week before it suddenly dawned on the old man on Fleet where he had seen Willie before. He had spent seven sleepless nights worrying about it, racking his tangled brain as though he were searching into a junk room, restlessly shifting the rubbish there from side to side in search of a treasure. Then, when he was working in the office at the back of his store, he suddenly dropped his ledgers and dived for the shelf where he kept all the out-of-date newspapers that came to him from Brisbane and, flinging them open and casting them aside one after the other in a rumpled heap, he stopped dead at last, kneeling on the floor, his eyes fixed on a group of pictures on a centre-page spread. Willie’s face, blurred to dimness in a pumped-up snapshot, stared back at him from a frame of Rosa and Joe and the old Tina S.
Villiers crushed the paper into a ball and, stumbling down the wooden steps, set off running on his spindly legs towards the hut of Tavita Ohoa.
