“Perhaps we should invite her down here. Hing and I could do with some moving art around the place.”
Shirley looked around and tried to imagine Midge serving at the table in her finery. “I think you two are too kind for her. She seems to like Japan ordering her around. Not to mention the five thousand dollars cash he pays her each month.”
“Five thousand! Really? God – what does she do to deserve that?”
“Just be Japan"s servant, I suppose. Bit of a slave, really. Perhaps he pays her so well because he"s in love with her.”
That suggestion was rejected by all of them. “Japan never loved anyone in his life,” snorted Tom.
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“Anyway, it"s an interesting village he"s got out there. All the bikies hidden away in the little dips and valleys. He said he"d drive me around next time I"m there.”
“Mmh – that"s unusual for him. Perhaps he"s going to offer you a job.”
“I doubt it. Marilyn pretended I was her girl friend. For protection.”
“You"d need some kind of protection up there. Don"t ever go by yourself or we might not see you again.”
“Japan ver" bad. Ver" bad man,” said Mr Hing. He was looking straight at Shirley and warning her. “You no go. Better.”
“Yes,” said Walter, “Hing"s right. Better to keep away from people like that. They"re dangerous and nothing but trouble.”
Walter made her start the engine herself and take the boat out of Tom"s creek. After that, navigating the Strickland to Port Bruce was simple. She sat in the stern with the wind in her face and enjoyed the freedom of being able to go wherever she wanted on this wide river, and in her very own boat. Walter kept his thoughts to himself.
He did not speak until the jetty was close, and then only to tell her to check the tide and come up to moor against the current. She brought them carefully up to the pontoon and Walter stepped out with the painter.
“Come and let me buy you coffee,” she begged him. She did not want her day to end just yet. And besides, there were the details of her move to plan.
They sat at one of Lulu"s tables and sipped their coffee.
“Tom"s an unusual man…” she ventured.
“Yes. Yes he is. Johnno and I didn"t think much of him when he got
here. Just another hippy. That"s what he looked like, and a foreigner too, but he didn"t go downhill like the rest of them. They come here and it"s all friendly for a while and they"re keeping goats and growing marijuana, and then they get all drugged up or drunk and suddenly they"ve gone and just leave a mess in the bush. Grows over in no time, of course. But Tom was different, right from the beginning. He had a canoe, and he was up and down the river, or out on the north shore beach. We"d see him and he"d wave. Then one day Johnno and I had gone out fishing and
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got the tide wrong – got stranded. We were on the other side of the river there – you can see the channel now. The tide was going out and it was too shallow. It looked as if we"d just have to sit on the sand and wait for the tide to go out and back in again. But Tom happened along and he wasn"t having any of that. He just hitched the anchor line up over his shoulder and dragged the whole boat across the sand back into deep
water. He was much stronger than the two of us put together I think, and young. So we took him back to Johnno"s after that, gave him a feed and some beer.
“He seemed to be around more after that. We"d see him around and
we knew he"d been staying up his little creek. Then one day he asked us in for a barbie and you could have knocked me down with a feather. He"d been doing so much work in there. Wasn"t as good as it is now, of course, but still…”
“When was this, Walter?”
“Let me see. There was just me and Johnno, so it must have been – a bit over ten years, I guess. Yes, it"d be about that. He"s made a cosy place of it since then, of course.”
“And Mr Hing?”
Walter glanced over his shoulder and leaned across the table. “Well, one evening Tom was out walking on the north shore beach. There"s a lot of stuff washed up there and no one from town visits because it"s across the river. So he was just going back to his canoe after doing a bit of beach combing and Mr Hing came out of the sand dunes. He didn"t speak any English at all then but he let Tim know he was hungry and thirsty. He was looking pretty unhappy – the sandflies can be bad over there – so Tim laid him on the back of his canoe and paddled him home. Fed him rice and fish, and slung a hammock for him on the veranda. And he stayed. He was hiding – he made that plain enough when he showed Tom his passport. He"s never been into town and I think there"s only Tom and I that know about him. A couple of times we posted letters for him back to China. We had them carried down to Cairns and posted them there. Don"t know where they went because the only part of the address in English was „China".
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“I worry about him sometimes. He"s up to something, and we think he"s actually met Japan – if that makes any sense at all. It"s not that long ago that he started to study English seriously. Not just enough to get around the house, but reading and grammar too. Tom has the patience of a saint, and he needs it, because old Hing doesn"t have a gift for languages. And you"ve heard him – he doesn"t have much of an ear either. But he does study. Tom"s been borrowing kids" books from the library for him and his reading"s getting along well. I think he"s got some kind of plan and he"s going to be off one day.”
Next morning, Byrnsie delivered her suitcase and shopping down to Lulu"s, and Shirley followed on her bicycle. She ate breakfast and waited with Lulu for Walter to appear around the bend in the river. She bought him a coffee, and then they loaded her things onto the boat. The bicycle would stay with Lulu; she would need it when she came to town.
Tom and Mr Hing were waiting for her. In no time at all they had got her stuff up into the house and Mr Hing was putting her shopping away. They left her to unpack while they moved Walter"s house. It puttered away upstream and now there was nothing between her and the river. She was exposed and wondered how long it would be before this little roofed platform felt like home. She was glad when the men returned to make lunch.
They left her during the afternoon. She knew that Walter was at home, just out of sight along the bank. She would be able to shout and he would hear her. All the same, she was alone in a way that no Londoner ever could be. She decided to take a shower while there was still daylight.
Clean again, she sat with an open book on her lap and stared at the river. There were things to be done to the little house. Starting with the bathroom. She had showered as Uncle John had done, standing naked on the narrow veranda at the back house with a bucket of fresh water
from her rainwater tank. She imagined him doing the same; putting the wooden grating down on the floor and then scooping up water from the bucket to wet herself. Soaping all over and trying to wash off the soap and shampoo with the same mug. There had to be a better way. Not to
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mention the fact that any visitor coming from the land side would be confronted by her standing naked next to her own front door.
The toilet was no better. She guessed that Uncle John had just peed over the side into the river, but he did have a toilet. A little cabin without a door, stuck on the side of the house. It was flushed by drawing water from the river using the bucket and rope beside the door. A pipe led from the toilet straight to the river"s edge.
And paint. The little house badly needed a brush up. She supposed she could buy paint in town. She set her book aside and started on a shopping list. She was going to be here for at least a couple of weeks, so she would at least leave the house in better shape than she had found it.
As the sun dropped out of the sky behind the opposite bank, she lit the two kerosene pressure lanterns as Walter had showed her and hung them at opposite ends of the veranda. They attr
acted flying bugs just as he had warned her, but as she sat in between she was reasonably bug free and had light enough to read. Frogs and insects had set up a chorus as night fell and seemed set to continue all night. She promised herself a radio at least to drown the noise. She dined on coffee and a sandwich,
and went to bed early.
It was comfortable under the mosquito net. She lay with her head on the pillow and looked through the front of her house out over the river. The moon was rising somewhere out of sight and it was silvering the palms and mangroves. She fell asleep.
She was driven from her bed in the middle of the night by the need to pee. The moon was full and high, glinting silver and bright off the river, and she had no difficulty finding her way outside.
Before she turned in again, she stood for a moment in the middle of veranda, wearing nothing at all. The air was fresh but still warm enough to be comfortable. Below her, the river flowed smooth and silent. As she
watched she saw a movement in the centre of the river. Something was moving against the current. A vee of small waves was moving towards her. It came nearer and at last she saw the dark snout and eyes of a crocodile moving majestically up the river. Power and danger at her front door. She followed the waves until they were lost to sight, and went back to bed.
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Chapter 7
Shirley was sitting on her veranda, watching the river flow by and hooking dried paint out from under her fingernails. It was a satisfying activity. Now the walls of her little house were spotless in their new cream coating. She had sanded the kitchen counter back to something like its natural colour and frozen it with varnish. The counter legs and shelf fronts shone in duck-egg blue, and she had done the front door to match. True, there were no doors to hide the kitchen things on the shelves, but she had bought some cheerful fabric from Des at the Bazaar and his wife was going to turn it into curtains for her. She was beginning to feel at home, and for the first time had not left her castle all day.
Now she was enjoying the fruits of her hard labour. She had done
her laundry and showered, and was waiting for the sun to touch the mountain tops before pouring herself a proper colonial gin and tonic.
There was a noise intruding over the insect buzz. It was not Walter – she could hear the distant lilt of his radio to confirm he was still at home.
Someone was coming up the river. Instinctively, she went to the mirror to straighten her hair. She had to look her best for the only human contact she had had in twenty-four hours.
A small boat was coming around the distant river bend. It was in a hurry and its wake was breaking white across the river. Someone was waving to her. Marilyn. She waved back. She would have to pour the gin and tonic a little early.
Marilyn was riding a small aluminium dinghy with an outsized motor on its stern. She powered down and came alongside in a rush.
“Hey Shirl, can I come ashore?”
“Of course – come up. Want a drink?”
They sat side by side, sipping their drinks and watching the sun fall from the sky.
“This is a great spot,” said Marilyn, “I bet you can"t believe your luck.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “I had no idea… I never dreamt that Uncle John would leave me anything, let alone this.”
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“How much land goes with it?”
Shirley did not know. She searched for the papers the lawyer had given her and spread them on the floor. Marilyn understood these things. “Look, there"s your boundary. Nineteen point seven hectares – that"s over forty acres. Old Johnno was smarter than he looked. You"ve got a lot of river bank, so no one will be setting up next to you.
“And that"s the road in
– you know about that, don"t you? Of
course, you told me you rode out here by bike. Well, your boundary"s
just where the road ends. That"s good, because there"s power and
telephone all the way down that road. You"ll only need to put in a couple
of poles and you"ve got electric light and a proper fridge. And fans for
the hot days.
“I suppose you"re on rainwater here? Well that"s fine for drinking and washing, but if you ever want a bit of garden back there, you"ll need a bore. That"s easy back near the road. The water"s good round here, and shallow too. You could make this place into something really special.”
“It"s quite special now ” Shirley said defensively.,
“Well, yes. But it"d be nice to be able to telephone you sometimes. And those gas fridges are not bad, but you don"t get much ice out of them. Oh look, I"ve got some wine in my esky. Are you inviting me to dinner? Shall we put it in the fridge?”
“I hadn"t thought about cooking just yet. I was going to make pasta. A carbonara maybe. Yes , please stay, but can you find your way back at night? Is it safe? I saw a crocodile a couple of nights ago.”
Marilyn smiled. “No problems. I thought about staying the night – if that"s OK.”
Shirley was in trouble. “I only have the bed…”
“Don"t worry,” said Marilyn with a laugh, “I don"t think I"d trust me sharing a bed either. I"ve brought my swag – I"ll just roll it out on the floor.”
Marilyn brought up a large canvas roll and her esky. “There"s thewine, and some steak, and some chocolate as a house-warming present. Shall we start cooking before the gin gets to us?”
They ate their meal on their laps, listening to the night-time noises of the swamp and watching the river. They were not talking much, content
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to enjoy the meal and each other"s company. It was hard to imagine anywhere more comfortable, and Shirley"s energy supply was already beginning to run down.
Before she could doze off in her chair, a noise outside brought them both awake. “What was that?” asked Marilyn.
“I – I don"t know. It"s at the back.” The noise was clearer now.
Someone was on the boardwalk. Another visitor. She opened the door and waited.
Through the darkness came a torch light, its brightness hiding thebearer. Japan stepped into the light of the door, followed by Midge. His spidery form and long hair reinforced her dislike of him, but she was glad to see that Midge had been allowed to wear jeans and a tee shirt.
“Japan ”... She could not imagine what had brought him. She stood aside to let him enter.
He stepped in and looked around. “Very nice.” He sounded impressed but there was no smile on his face. “Very nice. Hi, Marilyn. Nice place you"ve got here.” This last was his acknowledgement that Shirley existed. She stood with Midge, watching him, her hand still on the doorknob while Japan inspected the little house. He walked to the edge of the veranda.
“Your tinny, Marilyn?”
“Yup – she"s mine.”
“Your Dad told me I"d find you here. I was just looking to borrow the tinny, and leave Midge with you tonight. You can put her on the plane tomorrow. That OK?”
“I guess… How long do you want the tinny for?”
He ignored her question. “Good. Good. You settling in for a cosy night then? Well, sorry about that. Look – why don"t you change your plans and take Midge and your girl back to your place for the night? I"ve got a bit of business to do and this looks just the place to do it from.”
Shirley felt her face reddening. He wanted to take over her house for the night? And he was not even asking her permission?
Marilyn held up a warning hand to her. “Fine, Japan. Fine. Just take good care of the tinny. Grab your toothbrush, Shirl, we"re going into town.”
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She wanted to protest but Marilyn was hurrying her off. “The dishes -” she said weakly.
“Don"t worry about them. I"ll put them in water until tomorrow. Just get your things. Come on, Midge, lend a hand.”
Moments later the
three of them were sitting in Shirley"s boat, drifting back down the river while she tried to sort out the motor. It started easily and she pulled out to midstream. “I"ll just tell Walter.”
“What? Walter?”
“Yes – he"s a little way upstream. He"ll worry if I just disappear.”
“Damn, but we"d better tell Japan first. Pull back alongside.”
She shouted up to Japan who nodded, and Shirley took them up to Walter"s house. He was standing on his veranda deck waiting for them.
“Hi Walter, how are you going?” shouted Marilyn, “I"m just taking her off to meet my old man. Back tomorrow.”
Walter waved. “OK – have fun.” He was staring as they turned downstream.
“Damn,” said Marilyn, “Does he know you, Midge?”
“I don"t think so. Does it matter?”
“The less people who know that Japan"s around, the better.”
The frustration came bubbling out of Shirley. “What does he think he"s doing? Kicking me out of my own house? That bastard! Why are we running away?” but Midge was stroking her thigh.
“Don"t fight him, Shirl. It"s not worth it. He always gets what he wants.”
“She"s right, Shirl,” said Marilyn, raising her voice to be heard over the chugging of the motor, “And we"re running away because we"re scared. If you"d said anything outright to him, he just would have tossed you over the side, believe me.”
“But he can"t do that! What about the police? Can"t I live in my own house?”
“Sorry, love. He gets like that. Just let him get on with his business, and he"ll be gone tomorrow.”
“But what"s he doing anyway? Why does he want my house?”
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Marilyn was not looking her in the face. “”I don"t know. Not for sure. But I guess he"s importing something, and I definitely don"t want to know just what. Isn"t it beautiful out here at night?”
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