by Judy Nunn
'What about you Ash? Are you American?'
'Canadian, Ontario.' Ash wasn't being nosy, he was always interested in people and their stories, and he now happily launched into his own.
'I came to Perth in '62 for the Empire Games and never left,' he said. 'Fell in love with an Aussie girl. We got married and moved up here, and then I fell in love with the Pilbara, and that was that. No going back now, we're both hooked on the place.'
'The Games? You mean as a competitor?'
'Yeah, I was with the Canadian track team.' Mike looked duly impressed, but before he could respond, Ash laughed. 'No big deal, I assure you. I was reserve runner in the four by one hundred relay, and didn't even get to compete. At twenty-nine I think I was past it.'
He laughed again, and his laugh was so infectious that Mike grinned. Ash was very engaging.
'It must have been an honour to be part of the team though,' he said.
'Oh, most certainly.' Ash drained his glass and fetched the bottle from the esky. 'What about you, Mike?' he asked as he poured them fresh beers. 'Are you a sports-man? You look pretty fit.'
'I was big into rugby at uni.' Suddenly Mike found himself relating his own potted history – there seemed no reason not to, Ash was such an easy conversationalist.
'A marine biologist, eh?' Ash appeared most interested. 'We could do with your kind up here. Industrial development's posing a bit of a threat to marine life.'
'A bit of a threat! What about Dampier Salt?' Mike had forgotten, in his self-imposed exile, how much he'd missed conversation, and before he knew it, he'd launched into a diatribe about the creation of the Dampier Solar Salt Farm. 'Hundreds of hectares of prime mangrove swamp flooded and destroyed! It's criminal. Do you realise what that does to the ecology of the area?'
Ash didn't reply, presuming from Mike's impassioned attack that the question was rhetorical. He was right.
'I mean, do you realise how important the mangroves are to the coastal marine environment? That's where all the primary energy conversion starts, to say nothing of their importance as nursery areas for most fish species. The man-groves are the powerhouse of the entire marine system!' Mike spread his arms wide in an all-encompassing gesture, spilling his beer in the process but not noticing. 'Which means Dampier Salt's got one hell of a lot to answer for.'
He trailed off, aware that Ash had been nodding attentively but hadn't said a word. 'Sorry, I got a bit carried away.'
'Don't apologise, it's good to hear someone so passionate about the environment.'
'Old habits die hard, I suppose.' Mike smiled. 'God, I haven't mouthed off like that for a long time. Anyway, enough about me,' he said, changing the subject. 'What are you doing up here, Ash?'
'I'm a mining engineer for Dampier Salt.'
There was a pause. 'Whoops,' Mike said.
Ash threw back his head and laughed.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean any offence . . .'
'None taken, I assure you.' Ash grinned. 'Hey, I'm pretty green myself, I'm Canadian, remember? I'm on your side.' His smile faded as he continued. 'I've been following the policies adopted back home. Rachel Carson started the ball rolling . . .' Mike nodded; he'd read Silent Spring, the revolutionary book on the environment published in 1962 in America. 'And I tell you what, Mike, I'd bet even money that it's only a matter of time before we see the introduction of environmental legislation here in WA. Let's face it, with all this industrial development going on we sure as hell need to do something.'
He swigged thoughtfully at his beer. To Ash, it seemed his meeting up with young Mike McAllister was most opportune.
'You know, the boss was talking just the other day about the possibility of Dampier Salt developing some potentially profit-making biological side products.'
'It'd be a good idea,' Mike agreed. 'There'd be a lot of marine activity in the ponds, particular in the primary levels before the salinity becomes too concentrated.'
'Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it. Even I can see that.' Ash smiled self-deprecatingly. 'A civil engineering degree gives me an understanding of basic geology, but I don't know shit from clay when it comes to things like mangroves or what attracts fish to where. It seems to me like you're just the guy we need. Hey, why don't I have a word with the boss?' He was eager-eyed and enthusiastic, the prospect was exciting. 'You'd like Maurie, he's a great guy, and I bet he'll just jump at the chance to have you on board. What do you say, Mike?'
The conversation had suddenly snowballed into a job offer and Mike found himself backing off. He wasn't ready to join the work force.
'Well, thanks, Ash, that's very kind of you,' he said, uncertain and self-conscious, 'but I'm happy on the prawn trawler. For the moment, anyway,' he added. He didn't wish to appear ungrateful. 'Perhaps sometime a little further down the track.'
Ash was intrigued. A little further down the track from where? How strange, he thought, that a highly qualified young man with such a passion for his chosen field should decide to opt out. But he didn't pursue the subject.
'Right you are,' he said affably, swilling back the remnants of his glass. 'Help yourself to another beer while I clean the fish.' He lifted up the wet hessian sack covering a bucket in the corner of the cockpit to reveal a healthy catch of coral trout and red emperor.
'Good haul.' Mike stood, polishing off his own beer. 'I'll give you a hand if you like.'
'You're on, but only if you lend a hand with the eating as well.' When Mike hesitated, he added, 'No point in cleaning fish unless you get a feed out of it. How about dinner tonight with me and Beth?'
'Thanks,' Mike smiled, 'I'd love it.'
'Good.'
Ash hauled out a couple of cutting boards and conversation ceased as they immersed themselves in fish guts, pelicans gathering for the heads they threw overboard and seagulls swooping in to squabble noisily over the entrails.
After they'd finished cleaning the fish, they had another beer. Then Ash took the boat back to the reef and Mike's tinny, before heading for the Bluefin's mooring, which was at the far western end of the bay.
Mike slipped over the side and trod water. 'Thanks for the beers. My shout tonight, I'll bring some along.'
He knew the cottage where Ash and his wife lived. It was a converted fisherman's hut; there were several at the far end of the bay. 'The one with the red tin roof,' Ash had told him, 'and the two extra bedrooms tacked on either side.'
Mike swam to the tinny. 'Make it around seven,' Ash called. Then he revved up the engine and the Bluefin took off.
'You're Mike McAllister.'
The woman who opened the flywire door and greeted him as he stood on the small front verandah was in her late twenties. Fair-haired and freckled with a strong, sporty body, she was a little too muscular and her face a little too square-boned to be classed as pretty, but, like her husband, Beth Crofton-Asher was instantly engaging. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled.
'I'm Beth, hello.'
'Hello.'
Mike shifted the bottles he was carrying in a brown paper bag to his other arm and shook the hand she offered. He'd nicked the beers from the supply the brothers kept aboard the trawler; he'd replace them the following day. Before Beth could usher him inside, a ball of energy in the form of a four-year-old child charged across the room behind her and out onto the verandah.
'And this is Pete,' she said as the little boy screeched to a halt and stood gazing up at Mike, huge intelligent brown eyes demanding an introduction. 'Say hello to Mike, Pete.'
'Hi, Mike.' The little boy offered his hand and they shook.
'Hi, Pete.'
'Come on in.'
The interior of the cottage was simple. One comparatively large room served all purposes, with doors leading off either side to the two tiny bedrooms. Armchairs and a sofa sat in one corner, a small Laminex-topped four-seater dining table in the other, and at the far end an island bench divided the kitchen area.
Ash looked up from the bench where he was filleting the fish. 'Hi there, Mike,
pull up a pew,' he called, gesturing at one of the nearby stools. 'I'm just about done here. Hey hon,' he said to Beth, 'grab us a beer, will you?'
Beth took the bottles from Mike, opened one and poured glasses for the three of them while Pete clambered up onto another of the stools. He perched precariously, elbows on the bench, chin in his hands, and studied Mike.
'I take it you two have met,' Ash said.
'Yep, we've met.' Mike winked at the little boy, whose face cracked into a smile. 'How old are you, Pete?'
'I'm four. How old are you?'
'Twenty-six.'
'I can read.'
'Wow, that's fantastic!'
'And I can write.'
'That's even more fantastic.'
'He gets special tuition,' Ash explained. 'Beth's a kinder-garten teacher with radical methods. She thinks kids should have fully developed literacy skills before they're five.'
'Not fully developed,' his wife countered good-humouredly as she positioned herself beside him and started making the salad. 'But they should be able to read, and to write to a certain extent, before school age. If the parents have the wherewithal, of course,' she added. 'Many around here sadly don't, which is a bit of an indictment in my opinion.'
'Beth's a militant when it comes to education.' Ash grinned at Mike and proceeded to talk about his wife as if she weren't there, but his pride in her was evident. 'She runs a kindergarten in Roebourne set up by the community service. The kids are mostly Indigenous and they adore her. They'll do anything she says, which includes learning to read and write. Mind you, she's very clever the way she goes about it – she makes the whole process such fun that they don't even realise they're being educated. It's a total con, but it works. The parents are barely literate and their four and five year olds are regular little Samuel Pepyses.'
Beth laughed, but as she proceeded to talk in more detail of her work, it was quite obvious she was deeply committed. Mike found the discussion fascinating, and he felt very much at home as the couple chatted away. They were easy company. Ash's interjections were more often than not at Beth's expense, but she fobbed him off good-naturedly with an expertise born of practice.
The fish having been filleted and the salad prepared, they adjourned to the small patio Ash had built out the back, where the vestige of a breeze did little to alleviate the sticky heat of the night. The patio was complete with a homemade brick barbecue, which was already smouldering in readiness for the fish, and at the rear of the yard, beside the ramshackle wooden dunny, a single lamp glowed a fluorescent mauve-blue. The air around it was thick with insects, the blue hues of the light attracting the mosquitoes and moths away from the more subdued yellow lighting of the patio.
They sat at the wooden table, Pete eating his dinner of crumbed fish sticks which Beth had fried up on the stove inside. 'He prefers the frozen kind,' she said ruefully. As they picked at the cheese and olives she'd put out, Ash pouring another beer, Mike asked where they'd met.
It had been during the Empire Games, Ash told him, Beth had competed in the springboard diving. Before Mike could comment, Beth took over. Like her husband, she was surprisingly self-effacing.
'I probably wouldn't have made the team at all if I hadn't been a Perth girl, born and bred,' she said. 'There was a big local contingent – no travel and live-away expenses, you see.'
'Rubbish,' Ash said. 'You were damn good.'
'I didn't get a place.'
'At least you competed! She made the finals too,' he added proudly to Mike.
'Well, you're both far too humble in my opinion,' Mike said. 'If I'd been chosen to represent my country, I'd brag about it.'
'I do,' Ash insisted. 'I brag about her.'
'Me too. I brag about him.' Beth laughed. 'Oh my God, don't we sound like the most awful double act.'
After Pete had been put to bed, they opened a bottle of wine, cooked the fish in foil with butter and lemon, ate two large servings each, and demolished the salad. They talked non-stop, and Mike told them all about himself without feeling in the least threatened. Even when Beth asked him if he had a girlfriend.
'I did once,' he said. 'I mean a serious girlfriend. We were together for about a year and a half, but I messed things up. I wish to hell I hadn't now,' he said.
How strongly Jo came to mind in the presence of these two, he thought. Perhaps it was because he envied what they had, or perhaps the wine on top of the beer was making him sentimental. At least that's what he told himself, but he knew it was neither envy nor alcohol. It was regret. Ash and Beth were a reminder of what might have been if he'd acted differently. But then he couldn't have acted differently, could he? He wouldn't have known how. He'd behaved true to form, accepting Jo's love and offering nothing in return. He didn't like himself for it, but there was no going back, so why live with regrets? What was the point? The point was, he missed Jo. He suddenly missed her terribly.
Noting his introspection, Beth felt sorry for Mike McAllister. So it was a broken love affair that had caused him to bury himself away as he had, she thought. Well, they'd just have to find him another girlfriend. Despite a shortage of women in the area, it wouldn't be difficult, he had to be the most eligible man for miles – good company, intelligent, and he looked like a Greek god. What more could a girl want?
An hour later, as Mike took his leave, she set the wheels in motion.
'We're having a bit of a gathering at Skippers next Sunday,' she said, glancing at her husband, who looked surprised – it was the first he'd heard of it. 'Why don't you join us?'
For months Mike had been deliberately avoiding Skippers, the popular local restaurant overlooking the beach – in fact, the only one in the area. He now found himself accepting the invitation with alacrity.
'Great, I'd like that,' he said, and as he did, he realised that he'd been hoping they'd suggest another meeting. He would have done so himself, but he could hardly invite them aboard a prawn trawler.
'Thanks for tonight.' He shook Ash's hand, and as Beth kissed him on the cheek, he said, 'I'll bring you around a load of prawns tomorrow.'
'Is that a promise?'
'It's a promise.'
'Well, it's certainly the way to this woman's heart.'
Half an hour later, as they prepared for bed, Ash disagreed with Beth's theory that a broken heart was responsible for Mike's opting out.
'No, I think he's trying to escape. Don't ask me from what, but a guy doesn't lose his ambition and throw away a career over an eighteen-month love affair,' he said. 'But if you want to line up a woman for him, you go right ahead, because one thing's for sure: he's lonely.'
Ash climbed into bed naked, pulling the thin sheet over him. 'Mind you,' he continued, 'I'm not sure if it's a woman he's after. I'm going to work on him to accept a job with us. I'll introduce him around at the yacht club too, and take him to the pub with a few of the guys – he could do with some male company.'
Having stripped off, Beth wriggled in beside him – the two always slept naked. 'Spoken like a true misogynist,' she said.
Then they turned out the lights and made love.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Crofton-Ashers had unwittingly revealed to Mike the extent of his loneliness, and as the weeks passed he welcomed the change they brought to his life. He thought he'd been happy enough in his solitary existence, but he knew now that he'd just been marking time.
