by John Harris
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Joe moaned. “We’ll be drowned! Cut it loose!”
“Not overboard,” Rosa insisted. “Not overboard!”
The wind had dropped as suddenly as it had sprung up but the waves were washing against the stern and down the length of the boat, sloshing into the cabin and against the three struggling figures on the foredeck. While Rosa and Joe held his legs, Willie managed to reach over the side and secure the rope that Frankie passed him to the broken end of the mast. Then the four of them, cursing and falling over the loops of wire and the folds of wet canvas, heaved the broken spar inboard.
“Get the mizzen squared up,” Willie yelled, struggling towards the engine-room hatch.
All the saints Rosa was busily invoking under her breath as they worked came to their assistance at last for, with the seas threatening to roll the Boy George over on her beam ends, the ancient engine started at the first swing and the thrust of the screw held her more steady against the coral.
Joe hurried to the wheel and they put the Boy George astern, her keel grinding murderously off the reef. Slowly, they manoeuvred her about and put her dead slow in the opposite direction, the engine coughing sturdily below, while Willie, his face drawn and anxious under the blood that was smeared from a cut on his temple, watched over every clank and rattle of the old machinery.
Rosa stood in the bows, staring ahead into the darkness.
“Good St Christopher guide us,” she was muttering to herself. “Good St Christopher protect us now.”
Within half an hour, with the rain slashing down in another squall, the bows had struck again, flinging them all to the deck once more.
“We gotted in the middle of a reef somehow,” Joe moaned.
“Thank God the wind’s dropping again,” Willie said. “Let’s have a look at the chart.”
“We oughta be here,” Joe said, jabbing a thick finger at the stained paper down in the lopsided cabin among the littered pots and pans and the stove torn from its moorings. “Only, this chart is so old she is no good. Look-a here.”
He pointed to a scratchy pen-and-ink picture of a sailing ship bowling through a reef which was set in a corner of the chart with the words, “HMS Pelorus Entering Harbour.”
“I bet old MacGillicuddy got this one at Martin’s Pawn-Shop,” Frankie commented. “Or mebbe the School of Art.”
Joe bent closer to read the fine lettering, his eyebrows performing a pas-de-deux on his forehead. “‘Dangerous ground not much-a surveyed’,” he intoned carefully. “‘No survey of these waters’.” He swung the chart round and peered again, his voice rising in alarm as he read. “‘PD.’ That means ‘position doubtful’ and it is over a reef, Mama. The chart is dotted with Mister PD. We do everything that is wrong. No wonder we get stuck. We oughta be swimming now.”
For another hour they raced the engine, trying to manoeuvre the boat about for a passage to safety, then as the wind slackened to nothing again, they dropped the anchor and Willie and Joe lowered the dinghy and rowed round the light Rosa lashed to the stump of mainmast, probing for a deep passage through the coral.
“There’s nothing deeper than a fathom,” Frankie wailed as she hauled in the dripping lead line for the twentieth time. “We’re stuck.”
“Let’s chance it then,” Willie shouted back above the noise of the waves. “Let’s go ahead. If we can’t go back, we might as well go forward.”
They pulled to the Boy George and Willie started the engine again.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Don’t you go letting us down, y’old bastard.”
“Starboard a bit, Frankie,” Joe shouted from the bows as the engine started to cough. “Then steady as you go.”
Rosa said a decade of the Rosary quickly and called on St Christopher again.
Willie shoved the engine into gear and the Boy George jerked forward.
“We sink,” Joe panted, staring over the side. “Try again.”
Once more they crunched and ground their way ahead another few yards, rumbling and quivering as though they were an old tram on broken wheels.
“Again,” Joe shouted more cheerfully. “Soon we sink. Try again.”
For an hour, with heart-stopping grindings, they moved forward in lurches and stumbles, their keel hardly ever free of the broken coral below.
“I hope we’re not much longer,” Willie muttered anxiously. “We’re down to the last pint or two of fuel.”
“Never mind-a the fuel,” Joe shouted gaily. “Again. This-a time we drown for certain.”
They were all hanging over the side, staring into the water for obstructions when the Boy George met with no more resistance and floated decently upright in calm water.
“We’re across it,” Frankie shrieked running from the wheel to where Willie lay half-out of the engine-room hatch. “We’re in a lagoon. Oh, Willie, you were right. We’ve done it.”
She flung her arms round his head and shoulders and hugged him.
“Sure, we’re across it,” Joe said, his high spirits disappearing as he became aware of his aching feet. “Now we pump her out. Then, when we can’t get out again, we sit back and starve.”
Six
The squalls which drove the Boy George across the strand of coral left Flynn cursing his luck in Papeete, whither the Teura To’oa had been driven back by the rising wind, a fact which brought on a blazing row between Captain Seagull and the impatient Flynn that was concluded with threats and left them both determined never to set foot on the same deck together again.
“We had ’em cooped up in Tyburn,” Flynn said furiously, “and now, thanks to that old fool, we’ve lost ’em again.”
He was sitting near the overgrown coral sea wall, under a frangipani tree that starred the ground with ivory blossoms, sitting where he could glare at the Teura To’oa moored with her stern to the quay among the vista of masts and rigging and cabin tops, the solitary light that shone from Seagull’s cabin porthole dusting the moving water with diamonds. Voss sat smoking silently, watching the Tahitians in denim trousers talking in groups to the girls.
The sun was slipping rapidly behind the steep hills and the valleys above Papeete wore an ever-changing pattern of light and shade. With the sunset, the shadow of the stumpy spires groped towards the slopes at the opposite side of the bay, and crept higher and higher until only the mountain tips where the clouds swirled like smoke were touched to gold by the sun. And then even they were dark, and the saw-edge peaks of Moorea, nine miles away, disappeared into the night.
As Flynn watched, the lights of the honky-tonks and the bars began to appear and behind them in the poorer streets, the lamps of the shanty quarters and the Chinese stores. A jukebox started up somewhere in a jangling French tune that marched across the quiet air like an advancing army until it was cut to pieces by the chatter of a mini-bike.
“Papeete’s not so romantic when they turn on the radios,” Voss said.
“What did you expect?” Flynn demanded. “‘The Pagan Love Song’?”
Voss grinned and Flynn stared at the flame of his match as he lit his cigarette, then he savagely obliterated it.
“Damn Seagull and his lousy boat to everlasting hell,” he said. “I’ve never been nearer to taking Keeley in. I suppose the old fool’s picked up some trade and wanted to be back here to clinch it. I’ve heard he’s preparing to disappear as soon as the weather clears. We had them in the palm of our hand. Now we don’t know where they are.”
“Perhaps they’re at the bottom of the sea.”
Flynn stared at Voss, shaken from his anger by the other’s expression.
“Not they,” he growled uncomfortably. “A blow like that wouldn’t sink ’em. They’ll be all right. If that damn’ silly radio announcement hadn’t been made they wouldn’t have gone scuttling deeper into the Tuamotus.”
He stood up and stared at the Teura To’oa for a while before continuing. “I’ve been with the police to the radio station,” he said eventually. “They’re going
to make a series of announcements about the search. And they’re going to send it out in English and repeat it from Fiji so that if they’ve got a radio – and we know they have–”
“Sure, we do,” Voss commented, without looking up. “Lucia told us they had. Or, at least, they had when they left Sydney. Mama hasn’t mentioned it since.”
Flynn glanced at him. “Well, now they’ll hear a new broadcast. This one will tell them we’re concentrating on the Tuamotus and that we’re searching everywhere but the Societies round Tahiti. That’ll send ’em scuttling back here where the islands are well populated and nice and close to each other.”
Voss watched him silently, saying nothing.
“And this time,” Flynn ended, “we’ll tell ’em about the reward that’s offered for Keeley.”
“It’ll never work,” Voss said immediately.
“Why not?”
“Because Mama Salomio isn’t that kind, I’ll bet. After all this time with that kid aboard, she’ll be bursting at the seams with maternal instinct. God help ’em, women wear themselves out with emotion. But I’ll bet he’s a better kid than he was.”
“OK. If it doesn’t work with the old lady,” Flynn said confidently, “it’ll certainly work with the old man. He’s just the type to be interested in five hundred pounds.”
Voss said nothing and Flynn took his silence for disapproval and broke out defensively. “I’ve got a job to do,” he said. “If your son had been stabbed or beaten up or robbed and the police allowed themselves to get sentimental over the man who’d done it or the people who were helping him to escape, you’d feel pretty sick, wouldn’t you? There isn’t room for sentiment in the police force.”
Voss bowed slightly with his head. “Touché,” he admitted. “You have a point there. But I can’t help feeling just a little admiration for the Salomios.”
“Hell, neither can I,” Flynn snorted. “But as far as I’m officially concerned, they’re a set of interfering busybodies and I wish Keeley had never heard of them. By God, if he hadn’t, he’d have been in custody four months ago now and there’d have been at least one pair of parents a lot happier because of it. But the blasted newspapers have completely clouded the issue by playing up the Salomios.”
“It’s made a wonderful story,” Voss smiled, undisturbed. He took two or three newspaper clippings from his pocket and showed them to Flynn. “Look at these: ‘Salomios Sail To Glory,’ Sydney Sun; ‘The Courage of the Salomios,’ Morning Herald; ‘Where Are They Hiding?’ Brisbane Courier-Mail. Notice that? ‘They.’ No need to mention their name any more. They’ve become simply ‘they’. Everybody knows ’em now. Look–” He flipped through a whole bundle of clippings and sat back, watching Flynn’s reactions. “Melbourne. Adelaide. Perth. Everybody’s interested. New Zealand papers too. Wellington Post. Auckland Star. Dunedin. Christchurch. See this? Fiji Times and Herald. Even the Americans in Honolulu and Los Angeles. Even the French in Noumea. I can’t read French but I can see ‘Salomios’ there in the headline.”
He stuffed the clippings away and lit a cigarette quickly.
“They’ve reached London and America, Flynn,” he went on happily. “They’ll soon be pushing the politicians off the front pages. Believe me, it’s the biggest thing since the end of the war. From being an old couple in debt they’ve become famous. They’ll be met by the Lord Mayor when they get home.”
He paused before continuing. “It might interest you to know that the money they owe on the boat has been offered by some philanthropic old jerk who owns a couple of sheep farms. All this has done his old heart good. The pioneer spirit’s not dead, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah. And he’s not alone in his sentiments either. Have you noticed that there are now three other newspapermen in Papeete?”
“I have. What do they intend to do?”
“Apart from attending the Préfecture de Police for news – which they certainly won’t get before you and therefore before me as well – they’re waiting for the Teura To’oa to leave harbour. And when she does, they’ll set out after her. That’ll be fine if we’re not aboard as it seems we won’t be.”
“How do you know all this?”
“They cornered me in a bar – last night when you were in conference with the police on the next move. Pity they didn’t realize that there’s nothing I like better than being cornered in bars. Besides, I can afford not to worry. I’m always one jump ahead of them. I’ve got Lucia in Sydney.”
“She hasn’t come across much lately.”
“They’re probably out of touch with post offices, or money, or both. Or they’re scared. Probably a little of all of them. Especially since that broadcast. It could be that Mama’s started getting wise to us. We’ll have to watch that daughter of hers in Brisbane in case she sends her news via her. Fortunately we’d thought of the daughter as well as the daughter-in-law.”
“And now you’ve got all of them neatly parcelled up and working for the paper?”
Voss looked over his shoulder at Flynn. “We’ve even started the poll I told you about,” he said gloomily. “We’ve removed Lucia, by the way, and taken her with the boy out of reach of the other newshounds.”
“It’s a dirty game,” Flynn said slowly. “You’re making capital out of their suffering.”
Voss wagged a finger. “Flynn, you’re jumping through my hoop now. But, take it easy, they’re suffering far less now that they’ve got some money in the bank and plenty to do and see than they were when they’d no money in the bank and nothing to do but sit and bite their nails. Lucia’s going to be all right.”
Flynn frowned. “Sometimes, you seem so anxious for these damned Salomios and all their hangers-on I wonder whose side you’re on.”
“Yours every time when it comes to personalities,” Voss laughed. “Theirs, when it comes to sentiment. If only they’d write a few letters and give us some real stuff. They’re playing cautious now and I live for lost causes. They mean good solid circulation. That’s why the Charge of the Light Brigade always packs ’em in. That’s why all the readers in Australia and even further afield are jumping out of bed every morning and fighting each other for the paper as they’ve never done before. The Salomios are a lost cause. They can’t win. We all know that. But we’re all wishing like hell that they could and hoping by some miracle that they will.”
Seven
The night seemed a lifetime of anxiety and there were times when the crew of the Boy George thought the dawn would never come. They huddled together with their stale cups of tea in the unlit cabin over the littered table, their feet among the damaged crockery, the dislodged stove, and the pans that their crash on the coral had flung to the deck.
All the time, as the water sloshed about her feet, Rosa kept asking herself if this tremendous task she had set herself was worth while, a thought that had begun to occupy her mind more and more in the solitude of darkness before sleeping. It had all proved so much bigger than she had expected, so much more difficult, and at times even her stout heart wavered at the thought that it had to go on and on – and on. They could never go back.
She needed help and advice. She needed the church about her with its coolness and the warm light of the sanctuary lamp and the Latin mutter of the priest. If she could have walked round the corner and sat in the bare green waiting-room of the presbytery with its smell of dust and its picture of the Pope and waited for Father Gilhooley to come in and take the weight of responsibility off her shoulders, she would have felt sustained.
“I’m sick of climbing ladders and looking through portholes,” she said out loud. “I’m sick of kerosene stoves and water out of petrol tins. I want a house and stairs and a gas stove.”
As the others looked up at her, startled, she pulled up short, throwing off her sea-weariness.
“I got to forget that,” she reproved herself sharply under her breath. “I got to forget all that.” Sighing deeply, she rubbed her hand across her mouth and brushed her hair back. As she remembered Lucia
and Tommy back home in Sydney, she forced the feeling of defeat from her mind and set her face resolutely against the odds.
Her eyes rested affectionately on Joe sitting huddled on the bed opposite her – irresponsible, gay, ridiculous Joe, bewildered by all the hardship, Joe who could never have saved them from poverty – and on Willie dozing on a box his young strong face smoother now that the weather and a little decent responsibility had ironed out the mean lines.
His arm was protectively round Frankie, who curled against him like a puppy seeking warmth, her young face pinched with weariness. Looking at them together, heartbreaking in their youthfulness, Rosa felt even more determined to go on, and was surprised to find that Willie’s cause had become as important to her as her own, for she knew what he had done back in Sydney was too big to be judged by her alone.
When the eastern horizon faded to a dirty grey, it showed skies that were still scarred by ugly squall clouds, but the violence had gone from the waves. They crept on deck in the first light, their eyes full of the sand of too little sleep, and surveyed the damage. The Boy George looked a derelict, her decks a mass of halyards, wire shrouds and torn canvas.
“There’s one thing,” Willie said, “she’s not leaking. There’s not enough water to drown a mouse in the bilges and I pumped her out last night.”
“I heard you,” Rosa said heavily, remembering the squeak-clank squeak-clank that had broken through her dozing.
“Rudder’s had it, though,” Willie continued. “She’s all splintered to hell and gone and the ironwork’s bust. But–” he pointed across the water “–there’s a pass over there where we can get out if we can get her going.”
“The Lord had mercy on us,” Rosa said.
“We need-a more than the Lord’s mercy.” Joe was surveying the decks. “We need a boat-a-yard just now.”
Willie was gazing across the lagoon to where the encircling land rose a little. “There’s some trees there,” he said quickly and Rosa’s heart leapt at his undefeated spirit. “Straight ones. Why can’t we rig new masts?”
