Tiny crabs scuttle out of the way as Pirate walks further south along the shore. The temperature of the water surprises him: back in town the sea is warm and thick but here, in the shadow of the mountains, it’s refreshingly cool. In places, the jungle comes almost to the water and he wanders over rocks, through boggy sand, enjoying the heat on his bare back, the gentle lapping of the waves. It reminds him of a beach where Jim moored the boat north of Cairns. Craving solitude, Pirate had headed further north one afternoon. Walking walking walking along the shore, picking a path around a rocky headland, an arc of brilliant white sand stretching ahead. He’d run onto the sand, stripped bare and flung himself, naked and raw, into the green sea. And when he’d returned to the yacht, the sun beginning to set, Jim had shaken his head and laughed.
‘Yer a mad bastard, all right,’ he’d said. ‘There’s crocs everywhere!’
1975
Clem loads up the ute with his small suitcase and Rose’s rucksack. They drive to the Railway Motel, two blocks from The Trifecta where Rose served roast dinners and steamed puddings just the year before. Still full from wedding food and with the sound of wellwishers ringing in their ears, they peel back the quilt and scramble into bed. Rose is asleep first, on her back, and for just a moment she looks fragile: her mouth slightly open, her breath softly whistling in and out. Clem watches as the day falls from her skin; her cheeks less full somehow, and it surprises him.
‘I’ll love you to the end, Rosie,’ he whispers, and jostles closer, head against hers, arm across her belly.
*
After bacon sandwiches and stewed tea by the Swan River, they head south. In Denmark they swim and fish. Clem hauls in bream after bream too small to eat, and Rose wanders along the estuary, feeling the grainy sand clean her feet. They eat out every night and fall into bed, reaching for each other, breathless. Towards Walpole, they barrel along a gravel road and see a massive burnt-out tingle tree. Clem reverses the ute into its girth and they stand on the back, looking up into the belly of the tree, a great cavernous cathedral around them. Near Pemberton, they find another towering tree, used as a fire lookout. Rose charges up first and Clem follows, and all he can do to stop feeling crook is keep his eyes on her rump as they climb. At the top is a platform, surrounded by flimsy ring-lock fencing. Clem clings to it, knuckles white. They can see for miles over the heads of karri, marri and jarrah. Birds dart and twist below them.
‘See,’ says Clem, pale, his legs shaking, ‘even the birds don’t wanna be up this high.’
Rose laughs. ‘I had no idea you were scared of heights, Clem.’ And she reaches for him, places her hand on his forearm.
‘It’s strange,’ he says. ‘It’s more a fear of wanting to go up and over, of not being able to stop meself.’
Rose stands on tiptoes and kisses him, and he feels her arms snug around his waist, steadying him.
Clem prays Hail Marys all the way down. At least Eva would have been proud of that.
In the night, Pirate stirs. He hasn’t slept in a bunk since he was eight years old, when his mum had left his dad for good and they’d stayed at his Aunt’s bungalow in Putney. His cousin George slept above him, farting in his sleep. When Pirate was younger still, he remembers sleeping in a guitar case under bar tables or behind lounge chairs until his mum had had enough of moving around and they’d rented a flat near Kilburn Station in London. He remembers, too, hiding behind his mum’s legs, his dad wrestling for him when he walked in after two months on the road with the band, and the three of them standing awkwardly in the hallway by the radiator. Those strange days of getting used to him again: his whiskers like flint clogging the bathroom basin, his battered guitar case by the back door, his stink in the toilet.
The world is just coming light when Beth, a laplap tied around her like a strapless dress, opens the back door and heads across the grass, ducking under Lena’s washing, to the laundry. She hears the twintub battling and looks up to see Delilah leaning against it, smoking.
‘Delilah,’ Beth says, stepping into the laundry. ‘They really smell, you know.’ Delilah looks at the sheets swirling in slate grey water. ‘No. Not the washing. Simuk bilong yu. It stinks.’ Beth knows she speaks Pidgin a stop-start way. ‘Him smell nogut.’ Then she waves her arms, fanning away the smoke.
‘I am fire, Misis,’ Delilah says. ‘Got big fire in me and I tell you that old lady, that lapun meri Aunty, she better watch it.’
Suddenly Beth grabs Delilah’s hand. Delilah winces and tries to wriggle free but Beth holds on tighter. She grips Delilah’s palm firmly, sees olive green leaves drying at the ends, curling slightly, wrapped around the thumb.
‘Delilah,’ Beth says gently. ‘Can I see it?’
Delilah lets out a long slow breath, rests the cigarette on the sink and slowly peels away one green leaf, then another. She closes her eyes, braces herself, grimaces, then seems to go somewhere else as Beth slowly draws back the third leaf. Beth gasps at the thick green worm of pus oozing from the thumb. She tries not to gag, holds her breath and carefully brings Delilah’s thumb closer. It smells like rotting fish. There’s a cut about a centimetre long just near the nail; it weeps greenish liquid and yellowed gunk. Gently, Beth turns Delilah’s hand over. The thumb is swollen down to the palm and the nail is beginning to blacken.
The washing machine stops and Delilah twists free. ‘It’s orait, Misis Beth. Getting better.’ Biting her bottom lip, sucking in her breath, she carefully replaces the leaves one by one, spitting on the top one to make it stick.
‘You need medicine for this, Delilah,’ says Beth, giving the girl a teacher look.
Delilah reaches behind for her cigarette, takes a defiant drag.
‘Okay, okay.’ Beth puts both arms out, placating. ‘But if it gets worse, you tell me, okay?’
The girl says nothing.
‘Okay, Delilah?’
‘Right, Misis Beth,’ she says, and grinds the small stub against the basin. Then she thrusts it back in her bra for later, hauls the sheets into the spinner, and twists the dial on hard, the whirring and rattling of the twintub filling the muggy air.
Pirate struggles out of the twisted sheet and stumbles to the floor. He walks to the kitchen, where Annette is dropping balls of dough into a pot of hissing oil.
‘Morning Mister Pirate.’ She scoops a golden ball from the fat and drops it into a bowl of sugar, turning it over and over. ‘Yu slip gut?’
‘So-so,’ he says. ‘Strange dreams.’ He watches her pour tea from a tarnished silver teapot, pile the golden dough balls onto a plate and load everything onto the faded faces of Charles and Diana, printed on a tray.
‘Come,’ she says. ‘You eat breakfast now.’
Pirate follows her outside. The sky is bruising, the sea churning.
‘This my mummy’s land,’ Annette says, setting the tray on the table. ‘Here we women own the land.’
Pirate isn’t sure what to say. ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ he says, sipping tea.
She smiles broadly. ‘Our husbands follow us.’
But Pirate remembers what Jim had told him, how he’d seen a man thumping a woman—in broad daylight, in the street— and he’d pulled him away, then watched him stagger off with the woman stumbling after him. Domestic violence was rife in PNG, Jim had said: men returning from the mines with money and talk, fast fists and HIV. But right now, as Pirate listens to Annette’s talk about school in Townsville, working at the bank in Moresby, coming home to set up this guesthouse, these other stories seem to belong to another country.
‘You have wife?’ Annette asks suddenly.
That question again. ‘Nope,’ he says shaking his head.
‘Why not?’
‘I like it on my own, you know. Plenty of time for that.’ ‘Not so much time,’ she says solemnly. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘Older than me,’ says Annette. ‘And my husband too. You want children?’
How to answer that question. Maybe
? Want to but can’t? Not a physical thing—he’d got a girl pregnant years ago. Not an ethical thing—the environmental argument. More a knowing thing, a deep knowing: we are who we are.
‘Do you know the saying, a rolling stone gathers no moss?’ he says.
Annette frowns.
‘Well, it means something that’s constantly moving. Nothing sticks to it. Kinda like me. I’ve been travelling on my own for fifteen years. I never stay in one place long. I don’t want to.’
‘Ah, a gypsy,’ she says.
‘Yeah, maybe, something like that. My old man, my dad, was the same. So Mum says, anyway. He was always going. A musician, see. Still is. All that coming and going. I’d never do it to a kid.’
‘We want children,’ Annette says, standing. ‘Please God ...’—she raises her eyes to the sky—‘they will come soon.’ She heads towards the kitchen. ‘The car will leave around ten. That okay?’
‘Sure,’ says Pirate, biting into a dough ball that’s now gone cold. It coagulates in his mouth, a thick blob he has to wash down with tea.
1975
Home early after it hit fifty degrees in Clarkey’s shed, Clem parks the ute under the big red gum. Dog jumps off and heads straight for a saucepan of water and the shade of a tree. After the blistering heat of the ground, the concrete floor of the laundry cools Clem’s feet. He watches in silence from the door as Rose, bent over the deep trough, scoops a saucepan of water from the milk bucket and slowly, from left to right, pours it over her head.
‘I know you’re there,’ she whispers.
And Clem, without a quick word or joke for once, walks to her, and taking the pot from her hand, dips it into the bucket and fills it with water. He places one hand on her back as he gently, slowly, pours water over her scalp, watching her hair pooling in the sink below. The two of them silent as Clem empties three pots of water, rinsing the dark curls. Rose rakes her fingers through her hair and he watches the white froth run down the drain.
Slowly she straightens and turns to face him. He places the pot in the basin, lifts her up onto the twintub. She pulls up her dress as he undoes his shearing belt and trousers. And then he comes to her, smelling of sheep and sweat, and she wraps her legs around him, drawing him into her fast.
Pirate sits on the back of the ute, between his knapsack and an esky full of fish. Within the hour the sky is low and dark and fat drops of rain are beginning to fall. Annette cranes her head through the window and yells ‘Bikpela win! Big storm coming. Use the cover.’ She points to the tarpaulin jammed behind the esky.
The sky splits and rain is bucketing down. Quickly, Pirate unfolds the tarpaulin and hides himself inside a little tent of blue. The ute lurches around potholes, which sends him airborne, then thumps him back down. At other times they slow almost to a stop as Annette’s husband negotiates bursting creeks and flooded bridges. Water fills the tray of the ute, Pirate’s knapsack is soaked, and he’s sitting in warm water like he’s pissed himself.
Every so often Annette knocks on the back window and he twists to face her.
Yu orait? she mouths. He nods and smiles.
Back in town, they drop him outside Lim’s, and he’s sidestepping muddy puddles and locals running for cover, dashing across the road to The Bilas. And when he walks through the gate, he’s relieved to see Jim sitting at the bar. He orders a beer and talks about his trip: the guest house, the cool green sea, the tarpaulin flapping against his head all the way back to town.
‘Bloody hell, that storm’s picking up all right,’ says a bloke ambling towards them, huge beer gut wobbling.
‘G’day Bill,’ says Jim, shaking his hand, and introduces Pirate.
Bill hauls himself up onto a stool and slurps his beer, droplets of froth clinging to stubble.
‘Gonna be a wild one, all right,’ says Jim.
‘Speaking of wild ones ...’ Bill sneers and looks towards the door. ‘See what just blew in.’
‘Hi boys.’ A rangy bloke saunters over and winks at Justice. ‘How’ve yer been, Jim?’ he says. ‘Heard you was in town.’ He turns to Pirate, thrusts out a hand. ‘Haven’t seen you in these parts. Roo’s me name and rootin’s me game.’
Pirate knows about this Roo. Like a snake with its head chopped off, Jim had told him, wriggling all over the place, dangerous as hell. Years ago, Jim had thrown a punch at him for some stupid insult and Roo had knocked Jim to the ground, reached for a beer bottle and smashed it on the bar. Ever come for me again, Jim Saunders, eyes wild, you’re a dead man.
‘Got back a week ago,’ says Jim.
‘Seen that woman of yours?’ says Roo, and gives him a nudge.
Pirate looks at Jim. Woman?
‘Yeah.’ Jim’s voice is steady. ‘I have.’
‘The kids?’ Roo asks.
‘Uhuh.’
Pirate tries to catch Jim’s attention. What kids? ‘Things okay?’ asks Roo.
‘Yeah, Roo, hunky dory. Plenty of work coming up in Indo. Head there next month. How ’bout you?’
‘Good mate, good.’ Justice places a beer on the bar and Roo swoops it up, gulping it down fast. The skin on Roo’s face is thirsty; leathery and tired, tracks of red crisscross the nose. Love tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand, Hate across the right. An old homejob.
‘Yer killing a pig on that gold mine, aren’t ya, Roo?’ asks Bill, lighting another cigarette. He flicks the match over the bar.
‘It’s rollin’ in all right.’ Roo laughs nastily. ‘It’s all this country’s good for anyway—money. And women.’
Bill lets out a half-laugh. Pirate can feel the tension.
‘Youse should have been in Moresby last week,’ Roo says, winking at Pirate. ‘I rented three rooms at the Sepik, you know, right in town, and didn’t leave the hotel once. Room service with all the perks, if you know what I mean.’ His jackhammer laugh punches the air. ‘I got two women in each room and I just go between ’em for three days.’
‘Geez mate,’ Bill says, shaking his head, ‘I dunno how yer do it.’
‘These bitches,’ Roo says, his voice low, ‘they’ll do anything for food and grog.’
‘Easy, Roo, easy,’ Jim says, his face livid.
Roo turns away, looks up at the TV, and Bill leans in, whispering: ‘He’ll be dying up here, I reckon, if he’s not careful. AIDS or something. Reckon he already is.’
And there’ll be no tears when the bastard does, thinks Pirate, taking another drink. Jim finishes his beer.
‘And these fuckin’ women,’ says Roo, and turns back, shakes his head, ‘they keep beggin’ for it, yer know. I reckon I nearly broke it in half last Sunday night trying to keep up with ’em!’
Pirate boils. But he knows it’s useless—and foolish—to say anything.
Jim gives Pirate a signal to leave. Outside, palm trees whistle and bend. The screeching gate is nearly shaken from its hinges. It’s three o’clock and gloomy. People are rushing for cover, dogs are blown down the street in front of them, cars drive past with the lights on. Pirate and Jim hurry toward the boat.
‘Hey man,’ says Jim, ‘good time to leave. She’s gonna blow for sure. Stuff staying out there tossed to Timbuktu. We’ll stay in town.’
A horn blasts behind them and a Nissan ute pulls up, Bill leaning out the window. ‘Weather for mongrels,’ he says, looking up at the low, angry clouds. ‘Need a lift?’
They huddle three abreast and the waves are crashing over rocks, flinging themselves back. The pier is flooded and their boat, barely visible now, is just a faint tottering smudge beyond. Lightning spears the charcoal sky. Just past the Fisheries Department, Bill stops outside a bush hut right on the shore.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Jim shouts against the wind, and waves Bill off. Pirate races after him, leaping over dirty puddles to the hut. Jim walks up the steps and Pirate follows, and when they push into the lounge, they’re both soaked to the skin.
‘Jesus,’ says Jim. ‘Thank Christ for Bill.’
Three small children�
�two on the couch, one on a straw mat watching TV—stare up at Pirate.
‘Jim, don’t come in this house using language, man!’ A hefty, roundfaced woman walks into the room. ‘How many times—’ She stops when she sees Pirate.
‘Sorry, Rejoice,’ Jim says, and turns to Pirate. ‘Mate, this is Rejoice.’ Then, shifting from one foot to the other: ‘My Misis.’
‘Hello Pirate,’ says Rejoice, beaming. ‘We finally meet you.’ She makes the children shake his hand.
After dinner the power goes off, and the six of them sit on the floor around a gas lamp, the storm rushing in torrents underneath them.
‘It’s like bloody Noah’s Ark!’ Jim laughs.
In the night, the whoosh of wind merges with the surge of sea and it feels like the hut is out in the ocean, nothing holding it steady. Lying in the lounge with three kids softly snoring around him, Pirate thinks about Jim coiled around Rejoice in the next room, miffed that in all those days at sea, Jim had never mentioned his family. His thinks of Rob, an Aussie he met in Ghana, who’d fallen for a local woman who worked at a bar ... studying law ... and it was obvious that Cherice liked him too. But her family arranged for her to marry an Ashanti man from up near Kumasi. And then Pirate remembers how one night at Labadi Beach, he and Jim got drunk on Star lager and Rob had staggered in, rambling about Cherice, how colour meant nothing, how they could have made it work, just two people who felt something, who might have had a chance. Pirate, swaying with beer and music, had agreed with every word.
Jim had said nothing.
The wind’s been growling outside for hours, shaking the house on its stumps. Moses comes at two to check that Beth’s okay, which only makes her more apprehensive. She’s used to watching storms roll in over the sea off Fremantle, waves pounding the groynes, or sitting with Clem on the verandah in summer, watching great forks of lightning shatter the sky, black clouds thickening in the east. When she was little Clem taught her to track the path of a storm or cyclone, just like Tom had taught him: when it was all right to stay outside and watch, and when it was time to go somewhere safe. But here she can’t see far; the jungle presses in, and she feels at the mercy of something she can’t predict. Then the power goes out at four. She’s jittery, goes to bed early, lies in the stifling dark. Through the open louvres she can see great flashes of white slicing the sky, hears the rain pelting down and then hail pounding the side of the house. It’s as if the house is teetering on a cliff, a raging river thundering past.
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