Pearls

by Colin Falconer

  He planned to spend ten day of every fortnight out with the fleet, then go back with the supply schooner and spend the rest of the time at the office and in the stores. That way he could keep an eye on every facet of the operation, according to McKenzie's credo. He checked all the diving gear himself and the shell was packed and weighed under his supervision in the Niland and Company sheds. When he was at sea, he opened all the shell; that measure had alone increased the take of pearl and baroque fivefold in the first few weeks. He hated was the office work, but he forced himself to learn how to read ledgers and balance sheets, even to work the adding machines in the office.

  But the work was long and monotonous and the conditions at sea primitive. He could not understand why his father and McKenzie loved the business so much. He discovered his father now earned rather less in wages than a teacher in the local school. Perhaps if he had been around in the Roaring Days ...

  ***

  They had just one diver today. Ramatzu had diver's sickness and was groaning and tossing in his bunk, though he wondered if Ramatzu's reluctance to dive was because of bends or their location. They were off Dead Man's Rocks, and some Japanese said it was considered an unlucky place. Years ago a diver had died here and some of them thought his ghost still patrolled the reef.

  His number one diver, Suzuki, had gone down without protest at first light. He was bringing up good shell. Jamie opened another, throwing the oyster's slimy flesh into the water. A copper fish, bloated and fat on the easy pickings, golloped it down, before lazily re-attaching itself to the hull.

  Suddenly Wes shouted a warning and began to haul on the lifeline. Jamie threw down his knife and ran to the port gunwale.

  ***

  Suzuki was shaking by the time they got him onto the deck. He couldn't even speak until they had him out of the suit and sat down on the little stool by the mainmast, a lighted cigarette in his hand.

  'No more dive,' he gasped. 'Bad luck too much down there. Bad spirit.'

  'What is it?' Jamie asked him.

  'Monster fish.'

  'What sort of fish? A shark?'

  'Not shark. More bigger than shark. Bad spirit fish. No more dive.'

  'Did it attack you?'

  'No more dive,' Suzuki said. 'Maybe dead man in fish. No more dive.'

  Jamie couldn't get any sense out of him. He turned to Wes, leaning on the port rail. 'Damn! We're on good shell, too. Best patch we've had all season.'

  'Mebbe, dat's da reason.'

  'You mean it's so good down there he's going to leave it for Tanaka's boats?'

  'Mebbe.' Wes shrugged. 'Mebbe not. When I sail wid da skip, he say he find a real big daddy grouper roun' here some place. We lose diver hyar, nearly lose da skip also. Bad place hyar, I reckon.' He touched the ju-ju at his neck.

  Jamie shook his head. It wasn't like Wes to be so gloomy. 'All I know is it's the best patch we've found all season.'

  Jamie beat the palm of his hand against the rail. Out on the horizon a fleet of six luggers were moving towards them, on a slow drift. What was he to do? Leave the shell for some other, less superstitious divers? Last night had showed him the truth of what Mackenzie had told him; if you wanted men to follow you, you had to get their respect. If the Japanese wouldn't go down, then he would get the shell himself.

  'Get Ramatzu's suit,' he said.

  'You ain't goin' down, boss?'

  'The shell's there for the taking.'

  'Mebbe so, but you be a try diver two year befo' you can take shell like Ramatzu and Suzuki hyar, and den only if you a Japan feller. Doan you be foolish now.'

  'Who's master here?' Jamie said.

  Wes's eyes flashed. Even the skip had never imposed his position on him; and now this pup of a boy thought he knew it all. 'Dis hyar's dangerous waters, young Jamie. Only two tings can happen. Mebbe you doan find shell or mebbe you die down dere.'

  'Get the suit!'

  Wes made the sign to ward off the evil eye and went below.

  Chapter 67

  Jamie tugged once on the lifeline to tell Wes he'd touched bottom and then adjusted his air valve to the greater pressure of the water, as Wes had shown him. Almost immediately he found himself walking forwards. The strong tide was like an invisible hand pushing him in the back.

  He was breathing much too fast, too shallow, because of the cold and the fright. He had never imagined it like this. Air bubbles gurgled from the valve at the back of his helmet. The smell of engine oil sucked down his air hose made him nauseous.

  He concentrated on trying to slow his breathing.

  A huge sawfish, perhaps as much as half a ton, swam suddenly into his vision. Jamie froze. Its saw was longer than he was. Then it vanished into the green mist.

  A small fish pinged against his helmet and darted away. A thick jelly-like mass of shark eggs, glued by silky thread to a long tangle of sea grass, drifted past on the current. His lifeline played out and the tide dragged him forward.

  He heard another sound then, like the tolling of a bell. Dead Man's Rocks. Wes had told him the legend about the huge submarine boulder that rang like the clapper of a bell with the motion of tide and current. He had thought it was just another of their tall tales.

  A dark cliff loomed ahead of him, tiny emeralds winking along the face. As he came closer the emeralds were transformed into the tiny eyes of rock lobsters.

  Where was the shell? When Suzuki was down, he had been sending up a full bag every half hour. He could not see anything. He knew he could not come up empty-handed, that would be too humiliating.

  He groped on through the gloom. He spotted, briefly, the luminous and doleful eyes of an octopus, deep in its lair.

  The tide was getting stronger, he felt as if he was walking down a steep hill; it was getting harder to check his own movement. He felt a sharp tug on his lifeline and brought up sharply. He thought the signal came from Wes and stopped but the pressure on the line did not slacken.

  He turned around.

  Oh, dear God.

  His lifeline and air hose had snagged around a coral niggerhead. He jerked on the lines to dislodge them but they were drawn tight as bowstrings on the tide. He tried walking back to the niggerhead but the current was too strong. It was like walking into the teeth of a gale.

  He looked up at the copper green hull of the Rose. She was stopped also, held against the fast running tide by his own lifeline. How long could it hold?

  Wes warned you, he thought. Why can't you ever listen? 'No,' Jamie shouted into the echoing vault of the copper helmet. 'No!'

  ***

  Wes felt the sudden tension on the line and knew what it meant. He started screaming orders to the crew. They had to turn the lugger about and beat back against the tide and they would have to do it fast.

  'Up mainsail! Heave up jib! Up foresail!'

  Chain rattled out of the stern and splashed into the water as the drag anchor went out. Wes tried to ease the strain on the lifeline, the muscles bunching in his giant's arms. But the tide was too strong for him. The line went slack in his hand and the Rose surged with the tide. Then the air hose parted. Wes grabbed a lead line, made the end fast to a watertight tin, and heaved it overboard.

  It was a futile gesture, a bobbing headstone for another man's underwater grave. Jamie was alone now, in sixty feet of water, and in a few more minutes he would be dead.

  'Jay-sus! Oh, Jay-sus ...' What was he going to tell the skip?

  Chapter 68

  Cameron had been fishing King Sound for almost a week. He dreaded the tides and currents and whirlpools of these dirty waters but it was it another bad season and desperation had driven him here.

  He had spotted the solitary lugger an hour before, as he beat to windward. As he got closer he saw it was the Rose. He had intended to heave to, before he sent his divers down, to if find out if they were on shell. He was about half a mile away when he saw the black flag hoisted on the mainmast. They had lost a diver.

  As they sailed alongside Wes hailed
him from the deck. 'It's Jamie!' he shouted. 'He broke his lifeline!'

  Jamie? What in the name of God was Jamie doing in the water?

  He screamed at his crew to break out the diving dress. He remembered Mitsura, and the giant grouper tearing at his body inside the diving dress.

  No, he couldn't lose him this way, this just couldn't be happening. He swore at his crew to hurry. He had to get down there, he had to save his son.

  ***

  Jamie had watched helplessly as first the lifeline, then his air hose, had parted. He had immediately shut down his air valve to trap as much air as possible in his suit. It was a futile gesture. Soon, the little air he had managed to save would be used up and he would die anyway.

  He looked up. The Rose was just than sixty feet above him. It might as well be sixty miles. Before the snag, the click-clack of the pump and the hiss of the air bubbles had been comforting, his connection to the world of the air and sky. Now there was utter silence, except for the tolling of Dead Man's Rocks.

  But he was not entirely alone. Two huge eyes were watching him from a cave in the lee of the underwater cliff.

  ***

  It took up to half an hour for a man to put on the cumbersome diving dress. Cameron broke all records; he did not bother with flannels, just put the rubber suit straight on over his shirt and white trousers. He would not be down there long enough to worry about the cold and muscle cramps. Minutes would tell the story.

  He used the lead line that Wes had thrown overboard as his marker. After his tenders had strapped on the lead-weighted boots, he hung over the port side while the copper breast plate and helmet were screwed into place, cursing at his Japanese tender all the while for his slowness, hurry up, damn your rotten soul. He did not wait for this signal, as soon as the face plate was screwed in he threw himself off the ladder, feet first, into the deadly waters of the Sound.

  Wes's marker put him within fifty metres of Jamie. Even then, he was invisible in the swirling, muddied water. It was the trailing red air hose, waving in the tide, that led him to his boy. Cameron had entered upcurrent, and now he let the sea carry him towards his marker.

  ***

  Jamie felt himself falling forwards, but the heavy lead boots held him upright against the tide. Each breath was an effort. There was a crushing weight on his chest and a terrible pain behind his eyes. A parrot fish darted up to the face plate and peered in at him, curious, then swam away again.

  Wes, you were right. You told me I would find nothing or find a bitter death. You were right, right both times. What a fool I am.

  And what a waste, to die over a shellfish. In the end I was my father's son after all, ready to risk everything to prove a point to myself, to Fate. Stubborn just like him. I wanted to fly. Now I'm going to die without even a glimpse of blue sky.

  I'm going to die because of George, because he couldn't let go of the damned company, because he just couldn't bear the thought of Cameron beating him. It was all so stupid. Tanaka and the rest of the Japanese ran the pearling now. Even if I had won back a few shares, what was there left at Niland and Company for George, for Cameron, for me, for any of us?

  He stared at the shadow on the sand as the grouper moved out of its cave and finned a little closer to the strange creature in the copper helmet, now bowing slowly forward at the waist, like a humble subject before its emperor.

  The pressure was building behind his eyes, like it was going to squeeze them right out of his head. His lungs dragged at the stale air in the suit. There were black spots in front of his eyes. He felt himself slipping away, taking refuge in the darkness, relief from the panic and the pain.

  ***

  Jamie was bent double, arms limp, his helmet almost at the level of his lead-soled boots. Cameron untied the lifeline at his waist and looped it around Jamie's waist. What if he was already dead?

  Stay calm, he thought. Worry about life and death when you're at the surface.

  He gave a series of rapid tugs on the lifeline: Haul up till the rope breaks!

  He watched the slumped, helmeted figure straighten with the tension on the line then rise quickly towards the copper hull of the Rose.

  A shadow moved at the edge of his vision and he turned around. The grouper had moved out of its lair, and as he watched it opened its jaws on their massive hinges, so that its eyes, the whole head, became invisible.

  'Jesus,' Cameron muttered.

  He opened up the air valve on his helmet. The air hissed in and his suit expanded quickly. Cameron felt himself start to rise from the bottom. The whaleboats should already be in the water by now. He prayed that they were.

  ***

  Jamie opened his eyes. A huddle of faces peered down at him, swimming in and out of focus, all of them shouting at once. His head drummed with pain. He tried to move his arms to his face but he could not raise them even a few inches from the deck. He was still in his suit, he realised. Only the corselet and helmet had been removed.

  The sun was in his eyes. He groaned and turned his head to the side.

  'Where is the tuan?' he heard Marab, Cameron's bosun, repeating over and over. 'Where is the tuan?'

  ***

  He heard the mournful notes of a funeral bell. He looked up and there it was, the boulder rolling in the underwater tunnel at the Graveyard. He felt himself being pulled backwards, the Roebuck drifting with the current, the sails not set right, the wind and current dragging her back across the reef. Why didn't they start the engines? Then he remembered the Roebuck did not have engines, he had removed the compressors during the layup, to save money. Didn't think he'd need them.

  He watched helplessly as his red air hose pipe tracked across the face of the reef watched it bend and stretch round a coral snag. He held his breath, helpless. It split and broke, with a roar of bubbles. He screwed his air valve shut, all the time knowing it was useless. This is it, he thought, My day to die.

  Without his lifeline he was lost on the bottom of the ocean. He imagined Wes and his own number one on the Roebuck sending down new divers but by the time they found him it would be too late. How much oxygen was left inside the suit? A minute or two at most, he supposed. The suit started to deflate with the pressure of the water.

  I never thought I'd die down here like this.

  He saw something looming out of the shadow of the cliff. He supposed it was the giant grouper come for his dinner. But it was only Flynn, in his white linen suit, a gin bottle in his hand and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.

  He staggered across the reef, worse for wear even in death, and clapped him on the shoulder. 'Well look at you, my boy. What a fine old pass the two of us have come to. This is what you get for not knowing when to quit.'

  'Is this your doing, Flynn?'

  'Me, my boy? No, not me. I've enough of the world to interfere in it any more. You did this. It's all your own work!'

  'Is this is, then?'

  'Well, sure as hell looks like it. You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? Kate tried to tell you.'

  'I'm not sorry. At least I saved my son.

  'Aye you did that. You can tell that to Saint Peter when you see him and maybe it'll help. You'll need all the help you can get Cameron, believe me. Well, I'll be seeing you soon. Don't keep me waiting!'

  He vanished into the murk.

  Cameron listened to the echoing silence of the helmet. Yes, he mustn't keep Flynn waiting, not when there was gin to be drunk in heaven. Already he was feeling a little sleepy. His breath echoed like a gale in the shrouds.

  Kate look after Elvie for me. I don't know what she'll do without me, so look out for her, will you?

  Chapter 69

  The Roebuck came back the next day flying the black flag, the Rose following her in. Kate knew what it meant. She waited down on the shore with Tanaka and Kendo and Sergeant Clarke, watched the whaleboat come in, Wes and Jamie sitting in the prow. She didn't wait for them to beach, waded into the water in her long skirts. His body was covered up with a bl
anket in the bottom of the boat.

  Wes and Jamie carried him up the beach and set him down. She bent down and drew back the blanket, kissed him on the lips one last time. She didn't mind their shocked faces, didn't care who saw. He was blue and he was cold. Not like Cam at all.

  She looked up the beach and saw a little girl standing on the dunes. As soon as she saw them she turned and ran. Sergeant Clarke started up the dunes after her but Kate stopped him. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I should do this. Mister Tanaka, will your driver take me to the McKenzie bungalow please?'

  ***

  Elvie sat on the front steps. Her school satchel had been thrown in the garden, books lay face down in the dirt. Elvie sat with her head between her knees. She was very still, not crying, not even a tear, just staring at nothing.

  'I knew this would happen,' she said.

  Kate sat down next to her.

  They sat for a long time saying nothing.

  'You'd better come home with me,' Kate said eventually.

  'You're not my ma.'

  'No, but I should have been. It's not too late, even now. It's what he would have wanted, you know.'.

  She stood up and held out her hand. Elvie hesitated then reached up and took it. Kate led her to the car and they drove back into town.

  Epilogue

  Tom Ellies took out his pipe and rolled the pearl across the black velvet on his work table.

  'Well?' Kate said.

  'It's perfect Mrs Niland. The most beautiful pearl I've ever seen in my life.'

  'How much is it worth?'

  'Even these days you might get ten thousand pounds for it in London. It's a rare gem. May I ask how you came b y it?'