Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  It seems hardly worth saying, but the boat advertisement Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan wrote brought nearly thirty inquiries: twenty-four from the Hobart Mercury and the Launceston Examiner combined, and five from the little old Gazette – one of them, one of the four finalists. It had taken us all the time Jimmy was away to sort the finalists out. These four seemed almost too good to be true, and three of the owners were willing to come over to the island to enable us to sea-trial their boats. The fourth baulked at the idea of a sea trial, despite our offer to pay for the fuel to get to the island, the wages of one crew member to sail with the skipper and, of course, the provisions for the days out on the Strait.

  Arranging to get the three boats to the island to sea-trial them took us another month and proved an ideal opportunity for Jimmy to relax and get over his nightmare tour of America. All three boats were good, and while they had a fair bit in common they also possessed marked differences. Finally we selected a sixty-five-foot boat called the Janthe owned by a bloke in his mid-thirties named Michael Munday who’d flown a Dakota during the Second World War. Mike was a fourth-generation fisherman. When I asked him why, if he loved the sea, he hadn’t joined the navy, he replied, ‘I’m a fisherman, mate. My family have been fishermen for more than a hundred years – it’s in my blood. Out here on the Strait and in the Southern Ocean I’m in charge, on my own – no bastard to tell me what to do. In the navy or the army it’s all pack drill with some bugger kicking arse for all the wrong reasons. I reckoned if I couldn’t have the sea to myself, the air was the next best thing. Surfing the clouds in a Dakota is almost the same. You’re in control, nobody to tell you what to do.’

  ‘So why are you selling the Janthe?’ I asked him.

  ‘Got an offer to fly for a mining company in New Guinea for six times what I’ll make as a fisherman, with a house in Port Moresby and my kids in boarding school in Hobart thrown into the package.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Tell you what, though, look after my boat and I’ll buy her back from you in five years when my contract’s up.’

  The Janthe wasn’t a new boat, but the best of all things, a truly good old one. She was built entirely of Huon pine and, like all the older boats, was both sail and diesel powered. She had belonged to Mike’s father who, like his son, had kept it in tip-top condition. She was fitted with a Lister low-revving diesel engine and a Paragon gearbox and they don’t come any more reliable. Better still, she also carried a Kelvin Hughes echo sounder; they’d only just come onto the market and I’d not seen one before. Steve had pointed it out in a fishing magazine and we’d all speculated as to when we might get them in Australia. It said something for Michael Munday – something like that on board was not only a tremendous help to find the fishing grounds, but also an essential piece of safety equipment when navigating among the many reefs in Bass Strait.

  ‘What about the echo sounder, hey?’ I remarked.

  He grinned. ‘Wouldn’t be there if I’d known I was going flying – cost several boatloads of cray to pay for and a lot of hassle from customs to bring in.’

  ‘I’ll bet it makes a difference?’

  ‘You’re damn right – I reckon it adds thirty per cent more to my catch.’

  I pointed to the huge light mounted high up on the front of the mast. ‘Never seen one of those.’

  ‘War surplus, landing light from a C47, a Dakota,’ he explained. ‘Cost a motser – don’t use it often because it’ll blind you at 200 yards, but in the big storm of ’52 I reckon it saved us.’ Most fishing boats have no light and some of the more cautious blokes fit a headlight from a car, but I’d never seen anything like this before. I even wondered if it wasn’t a bit of overkill, like extra chrome on a motor car.

  The sails too were in tip-top condition as was the gear on board, right down to the thirty craypots and the glass floats. We’d lucked in – Mike Munday was a perfectionist and you’d bet on him being a good pilot. It can’t have been easy for him to part with this beautiful boat.

  Mike was a big bloke himself and according to him, his father was even bigger, so the two bunks built below deck in the fo’c’sle were each long enough to accommodate Jimmy (just) while I had enough room to swing a cat. The Janthe also came equipped with an almost brand-new dinghy with a twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard that hung off the back on davits.

  ‘How come the dinghy’s new?’ I asked Mike. In an older boat the dinghy, which is usually used for fishing in areas too dangerous to take the bigger vessel, is generally a bit of a battered affair, usually fitted with a donk that’s been reconditioned several times. Stupid, of course – a sound dinghy and outboard has saved many a life out at sea. But there you go, fishermen are always strapped for cash and the dinghy is where you cut insurance corners to lower the premium.

  ‘The old one was swept away by a freak wave in that big storm of ’52 – torn right off the davits. The insurance paid out,’ he replied.

  This told me two things: the Janthe had not only survived one of the worst storms in the Strait for the past decade, but its owner also earned sufficient from fishing to insure his boat properly.

  There was only one problem: he wanted 1500 quid more than we had estimated we would need. I’d given the Countess a carefully worked-out figure to which she’d agreed, but at the time she’d said quite firmly, ‘Jack, please don’t cut corners. Take everything into consideration, but the figure you give me must be the final one.’ I couldn’t bring myself to go cap in hand to ask for more.

  ‘What about the boat without the dinghy?’ I asked Munday, the point being that he’d have no trouble selling the beautiful little clinker-built boat also made from Huon pine and the almost-new Mercury outboard, or he could choose to keep the dinghy himself. ‘Put her on a ship and take her to New Guinea with you – the barramundi fishing on the Sepik River is supposed to be tremendous.’ We’d easily enough find a good replacement with a reconditioned outboard.

  But Mike was adamant. The bugger was about to make 15 500 pounds and he wouldn’t budge. ‘The Janthe is the best cray boat, best fishing boat sixty-five foot or under, in Tasmania,’ he asserted. ‘Can’t have a shit bucket hanging aft, mate.’ Then he added, ‘She’s a proud lady – if you’re gunna compromise her I’d rather not sell.’ Pretty blunt, but you had to respect him for it.

  We told Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan we’d decided on Four Winds, a good enough cray boat in different circumstances, just under fifty feet in length. We’d have to fit a new bunk for Jimmy, but even that would be a pretty tight fit. ‘Better practise sleeping with your toes curled,’ I laughed. All the same, we were pretty disappointed.

  ‘That’s nice, Jack,’ she said, then added, ‘why?’

  ‘It’s a good boat – all three we sea-trialled are,’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  ‘It’s not what you want, is it?’

  ‘Yeah, all we’ll have to do is build in a new bunk for Jimmy – there’s just enough room.’ I grinned. ‘I haven’t told him we’ll have to break his ankles so they’ll grow back both of ’em turned thirty degrees to port.’

  But she wasn’t fooled. ‘Jack, it’s been nothing but the Janthe all week, and now Four Winds? Michael Munday wants more than your budget, is that it?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred pounds.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’

  I had to be honest. ‘Nah. She’s worth more than our budget, maybe 500 pounds more, but that’s it. I’ve had several of the local fishermen and Steve go over her with a fine-tooth comb, and they agree.’

  ‘Let me talk to him, Jack.’

  Two hours later Mike Munday came out of the Gazette office shaking his head. ‘Jesus, I’m a foreign correspondent,’ he said, plainly bemused.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A foreign correspondent – journo for the Gazette. What’s more, it’s cost me 1000 quid!’

  I tried hard not to break up, but Jimmy kept a straight face. ‘Dat fine, man! Dat a good new
spaper!’

  ‘It’s a heap of shit,’ Mike replied, scratching his head. ‘But then I’m not much of a writer, I suppose – always wanted to be, though. But there you go, too busy fishing.’

  ‘What does she want you to write?’ I asked, curious.

  ‘It’s what she calls a “regular monthly column” – “News from the Islands”. File once a month.’ ‘File’ was obviously a new word he’d just picked up from Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, but you could see he liked the idea of calling himself a journalist.

  Mike took the plane back to Launceston the following morning.

  I drove him to the airport in the Ford Prefect. ‘Good luck, Jacko. It’s broken my heart, but I’ll get the Janthe back one day,’ he said, shaking my hand as we parted.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I replied, grinning.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Jacko, if ever you find yourself in a tight spot, big storm or something, and you’ve got to stay alert, look in the first-aid box – the Bex packets.’ It was a strange thing to say – to stay awake wasn’t why Gloria took Bex. To each his own, I thought at the time.

  Later Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan explained how she’d persuaded Mike Munday to knock 1000 quid off his price. ‘Everyone has a secret something they’d like to do, but feels that there are more important priorities. Find out what it is and allow them to indulge the dream without disturbing the status quo and they’ll usually cooperate.’

  ‘But 1000 quid? That’s a helluva lot of cooperation.’

  ‘It’s all about perception. In New Guinea they’re not going to know the Gazette only has 2000 readers. They’ll see Michael Munday’s name and picture in print. Just as importantly, the people he needs to impress in Port Moresby will be reading about themselves. Munday is a namedropper – he wants a bit of notoriety. He’ll make sure the paper lands in all the right places. I’ve promised him ten copies every month. We all want to be local heroes, Jack. Take John Champion. He dreams of making his Queen Island cheeses and cream the best in Australia. That’s his ambition, but it’s not his secret something. His secret something is that he will receive a knighthood from the queen as a thank-you from a grateful Tasmanian Government.’

  ‘He’s a rough bugger – how’s he gunna do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we’re working on it. Some of these things take years. It’s a matter of being bipartisan in politics, regular donations and . . .’ she laughed, ‘making sure your cheese lands on the tables of the governor and the premier every night.’

  I was beginning to understand why Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan could get all the dairy produce she wanted from John Champion, a bloke who wouldn’t normally give you the time of day. Gloria would sniff when his name came up: ‘Hmmph! The school bully, that one.’

  So, there it was, for 500 quid more we had what we thought was the best fishing boat in Australia. She didn’t need a drop of paint and the hull had recently been scraped and was clean as a whistle. Even the spud sacks that carried the cray ashore when they were taken out of the boat’s fish well were washed and neatly stacked, and the gas stove on board was practically new. Oh, yes, only one other thing – we wanted to rename the boat ‘Shanghai Lil’. But, as part of the deal Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had struck with Mike, we were to retain the Janthe as the vessel’s name. He was dead serious about buying her back one day.

  We took Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan out on the Janthe for the day to celebrate, making for Hunter Island, about six hours out of Livingston Harbour. We left the thirty craypots on deck so she would get the feel of a fishing boat going out to sea, and started out early. The idea was to have an early lunch in a sheltered cove at Seal, and then make our way back well before sundown. This trip would also be, we decided, an ideal opportunity for her to tell us more of her story – perhaps even complete it. I’d brought Jimmy up to date, so he too was anxious to hear what happened next. It was mid-spring, and it dawned as one of those magic days you get in the Strait at that time of year.

  We laid anchor in the deep, sheltered bay immediately below the light on Hunter Island and took the dinghy to the beach, where I collected driftwood and made a small fire to boil a billy among a group of tall rocks that sheltered us completely from the sun. Jimmy had brought two of the newfangled ‘wet suits’ from the States and, somewhat unnecessarily, we’d stripped down, climbed into them and in a matter of twenty minutes caught three nice crays. I served the tea in tin mugs and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan began to talk as we cooked the crayfish.

  ‘Now, let me see – it was raisins, wasn’t it, Jack?’

  ‘Yoh got dem raisins up to yoh neck an’ ship’s comin’ in wid more raisins an’ yoh don’t know if dem Chinese dey gonna eat raisins to make demself a boy chile,’ Jimmy reminded her, making her laugh.

  ‘I see you’re up to date, James. That’s good – we can move right along. Raisins for fertility, but only for male children. It was, to say the very least, a decidedly tricky proposition, but Big Boss Yu loved it. The ship arrived, its hold filled with the surplus product of the Sun Maid Raisin Growers of California. They were unloaded into a huge warehouse Big Boss Yu owned and it took the harbour rats less than an hour to find them. Coolies were paid extra to camp in the warehouses at night to keep the rats at bay, and rat poison mixed with sticky rice was placed everywhere – which, by the way, the rats soon learnt to ignore, much preferring the raisins. Big Boss Yu was most anxious to get going. He had several small steamers that plied the China coast between Shanghai and the ports of Ningpo and Hankow, to name just a few. He also planned to pull his coolie boats operating to Vladivostok to be a part of the raisin fleet.

  ‘This was all very well, but I had to sell the idea to six million Chinese peasants. The first thing I did was to get Sapajou, the cartoonist on the North China Daily News, to create a poster for me. It contained four pictures, the first depicting two peasant houses in a typical Chinese village with a childless couple outside each. The second showed the same two couples, one couple eating life-sized raisins, and the other couple eating from bowls of rice. The third picture showed the two couples somewhat older, the first with the husband beaming and four boys and one girl standing beside the couple, and the rice-eating couple with the reverse order – four girls and a puny-looking boy. The inclusion of at least one girl among the boys in one family and a boy among the girls in the other made the promise believable. The final picture showed a strong-looking Chinese juggler juggling a circle of ten raisins above his head along with the sun and the moon. This was to indicate that ten raisins was the minimum number to be eaten by husband and wife each day. The poster, for those who could read, simply stated, “Eat womb-fruit and be blessed with more boys.”

  ‘I started in the Chinese City, getting the posters displayed in shops and stalls and selling the raisins in bulk packets at a very low price, allowing the vendors to decide the size and price the market could afford. As we’d expected, the going rate was twenty raisins wrapped in a twist of rice paper for a small coin. I then worked back, calculating the vendor’s profit, and priced the bulk packs accordingly.

  ‘We hired the football stadium in the Chinese City and put on a concert free of charge to introduce the marvellous new womb-fruit. We featured acrobats, dancers and contortionists, all of them eating womb-fruit and loudly extolling its virtues before commencing their act. I sang in Cantonese after doing the same. Then we gave away a twist of raisins to everyone who attended. Thirty thousand people turned up, and if Big Boss Yu hadn’t had half the Shanghai police force on duty, the distribution would most certainly have caused a riot.’

  She must have noticed the incredulous looks on our faces, for she paused to add, ‘You may be pondering the morality of such blatant manipulation, but remember those were different times. I imagine I salved my conscience with the thought that raisins were good for them anyway – a lot better than cigarettes, whose advertisers traditionally made the most outrageous promises. One brand I recall even promised a “lucky cough”. Another claimed their brand created genuine dragon’s
breath that made you both powerful and invincible against your foes, and must have led to the untimely death of a great many Chinese.

  ‘In two years we were distributing raisins along the China coast and throughout southern China as far as Qingdao in the north and Shantou in the south, and as far inland as Nanchang. The raisin business grew so large so quickly that Big Boss Yu required more small steamboats for coastal work, and needed short-term finance. To my dismay he brought in the Three Musketeers of the French Concession – the three gangsters, Smallpox “Million Dollar” Yang, Chang Shig-liang and Du Yu-sen – to be a part of his business. This involved two china crockery factories I’d purchased on his behalf and built up to be very profitable. We needed a non-porous product we could send to America in the hold of the raisin ship that was returning to San Francisco empty, as the hold was permeated with the sweet smell of raisins and so couldn’t take the cheap cotton goods that were the main export from Shanghai. Crockery was ideal. It didn’t pick up the smell and the stickiness that clung to everything loaded into the hold, and could be washed off by the purchaser when it arrived at the other end.

  ‘While I’d helped to build the raisin business, the crockery was something I loved and felt very proud of. I deeply resented that the business was being handed to the three gangsters, and that they stood to profit from my hard work. I had worked for Big Boss Yu without salary as I regarded him as my family and expected to be rewarded finally for my efforts. I had secretly hoped that the crockery factory and export business were to be my ultimate reward.

  ‘As it was, he refused me nothing but gave me very little cash of my own. In addition to my work as the raisin distributor, I was expected to act as Big Boss Yu’s social partner. His various businesses were expanding due to the profits from the raisins and he was expected to match the European taipans in lavish hospitality. I now realised why I had been given to Mrs Worthington to be coached in clipped-and-roundeds.