Brother Fish (74 page)

So there it is, I'm not good enough.
I wanted to tell him to stop calling me ‘man', that I had a perfectly good name, but instead said, ‘Wendy's pretty special and I'm pretty ordinary, but I won't always be!' I don't know where that last bit came from – it was just spur-of-the-moment stuff. He was right in this respect – I wasn't exactly God's gift. Then I stupidly added, ‘There's good money in cray if you go about it the right way.'

‘For godsake, what's the matter with the stupid girl?' he burst out. ‘She could have any young man in Tasmania! First she chooses a manic depressive who runs away to be killed, and now a bloody fisherman!'

‘Why don't you ask her, doctor?' I said, finding it increasingly difficult to control my temper.
Don't, Jacko, don't let the bastard have
both barrels. Stay calm, mate, don't lose it now.

He'd almost drained the second glass. ‘Hmmph! Look here, we've got a bob or two. What do you want? You
are
a fisherman, aren't you? A fishing boat?'

Gotcha, yer bastard!
I was learning from Jimmy – ‘
When in doubt
bluff it out. Smile, dat da style
.' I attempted to give Wendy's father a cheeky grin. ‘Set you back a few quid – forty-footer, Perkins marine diesel engine, radio transceiver, thirty craypots, scallop dredges, fish traps, compass, echo sounder . . . There'll be no change out of 10 000 quid, doctor.'

We could probably have done it for less by cutting tea-tree in the bush and making our own craypots and effecting various savings and compromises. In fact, the reconciliation I'd worked up for Jimmy and me starting in the cray business was based on everything second-hand and cutting corners like mad. It had come to a little over 2000 quid, still way out of our reach. The figure I'd given Dr Kalbfell was pie-inthe-sky stuff and was never going to happen in a million years. I was expecting him to say he had a tinnie runabout with a little putt-putt outboard in mind. To my astonishment he walked over to the far side of his desk and, pulling out the top drawer, took out his chequebook.

‘Give me a chance to call my bank manager this afternoon,' he said.

Alf hadn't given me much advice in life, but one of the things he'd always said to me was that you never drink when you're making a deal. Wendy's old man's judgement was clouded and he wanted to big-note himself in front of me by appearing to casually write out a cheque for what, in anyone's language, was a large sum of money – write it out in his illegible doctor's hand, rip it dramatically from the chequebook and hand it to me, all without changing expression. What a pathetic twit, but at least the bastard wasn't under-valuing me. I waited until he'd taken the top off his fountain pen before I said, ‘Only kidding, doctor.'

‘What? What was that?' he asked, not sure he'd heard correctly.

‘I don't want your money, sir.'

He paused, momentarily confused, and laughed. ‘Of course you do!'

Pompous prick
. ‘Wendy's not for sale.'

‘For godsake, man! You've only known my daughter for a little over two months. I'm offering you a fortune to get out of our lives.' He stooped over the chequebook, fountain pen poised. ‘McKenzie – MAC or MC?'

‘Make it out to Wendy McKenzie, M, small c, big K. It can be her dowry.' I was overreaching by miles. I still hadn't summoned up sufficient courage to ask Wendy to marry me. Her old man was right – I was a pretty lousy prospect. The money I'd accumulated as pay while a prisoner of war was nearly all spent, and while Jimmy and I were talking about going professional cray fishing it was all pie in the sky at that stage. We didn't have the money to outfit ourselves and I didn't even know if he was going to be allowed to stay in Australia, in which case we'd discussed moving to another country. Wendy and I hadn't talked about any of this.

‘I see,' he said, capping his fountain pen. ‘Well, we'd better go in to lunch.' Just like that, calm as you like.

‘Wait on, doctor!' I protested. ‘You've insulted me, you haven't even had the courtesy to call me by my name, you've denigrated my social status, you've tried to get rid of me by offering me a bribe and you've disparaged your own daughter! Now we're all going to sit down calmly to lunch, is that how the better classes behave?'

He shrugged. ‘Now you know how we feel,' he said calmly.

‘
We
? You and your wife?'

‘Yes.'

‘And Wendy?'

‘Wendy? What does Wendy know about life? Wendy's just a silly young girl who doesn't know what she wants. She feels guilty about Harry Walsh going off to war and getting himself killed, and you're the war hero intended to alleviate her guilt.'

‘Bluey Walsh didn't
get
himself killed. He died a horrific death at the hands of an American pilot who dropped napalm on us. Do you know what napalm is? Let me tell you, doctor. It's liquid petroleum that covers you in a sheet of flame that penetrates the skin in seconds right down to the bone, and then starts to burn from the inside out. It's almost impossible to stop. Bluey was lucky to die quickly – but he nevertheless died in agony!' I was unaware that I was shouting.

I felt as though I had been hit in the stomach with a pick handle. There was nothing more I could say. What if Dr Kalbfell's version of events was true? My face burned from humiliation just thinking about it.
Jacko the prop holding his daughter together while she overcame the guilt she felt over Bluey Walsh's death. Two and a half months isn't a long time to know the ins and outs of anyone. Wendy was engaged to Bluey Walsh for two years. This bloke's a doctor, he ought to know these things.
I was very close to tears – part humiliation, part anger and more than a good measure of despair.
Think, Jacko. Stay calm. Don't lose your block again – this bloke's trying to make you say something you'll regret.
I swallowed hard, trying to calm my racing heart.

‘Wendy was engaged to Bluey Walsh for two years – that's a long time. Why didn't they get married?'

‘The boy was a manic depressive – not his fault, I suppose.' Wendy's father was now on his third Scotch and each of them had been doubles.

‘A manic depressive.' It was a comment rather than a question.

‘No point in explaining – you wouldn't understand,' he said dismissively.

‘Mood swings – big highs and terrible lows, the lows sometimes lasting for long periods.' I thought of Rick Stackman sitting on the crane, refusing to go to Korea.

He looked surprised, and then suspicious. ‘Oh? You've encountered it? What – in your own family, is it?'

‘In the army. It's not uncommon.' If there had been anyone in our family with such a mental condition there would be no chance they would have been diagnosed – just another misfit to adjust to. In all probability there'd been dozens of manic depressives on the Kelly side and a fair few on the McKenzie. On the other hand, I'd read somewhere that artists and poets were prone to the condition, and that definitely wouldn't include our lot.

‘Precisely. It was the reason Harry Walsh ran away to fight in Korea. He was in a deeply depressed state after having a row with Wendy.'

Hence her guilt
. ‘I take it you didn't approve of Bluey Walsh?'

‘The boy was mentally ill! It's not a condition you recover from.'

‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire, eh? Is that what you're thinking, doctor?'

‘I think I've made my thoughts perfectly clear.'

‘Were you his doctor?'

‘Passed him on, not my area – needed a psychiatrist.'

‘But you were kept informed?'

‘I put him in the hands of a good man, yes.'

‘And he let him go to Korea?'

‘Of course not. Harry left without informing anyone.'

‘I see. But when you knew, or the psychiatrist did, didn't anyone call the army to explain his condition?'

‘He wasn't my concern.'

‘But nonetheless, it was very convenient?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about. I'd referred him on as a patient.' He glanced as his watch. ‘And now, I dare say, it's time for lunch.'

I didn't press the matter. I think he was beginning to realise that I wasn't going to be bullied or panicked. I'd gained the upper hand simply by remaining calm. Well, except for the napalm bit anyway. Maybe before I'd gone to Korea he would have intimidated me, but not now. I'd done a whole heap of growing up in the meantime, and I reckon I'd paid my dues and had the right to be my own man. If I appeared to have no prospects it wasn't because I wasn't prepared to work.

Then, apropos of nothing, the thought occurred to me:
I bet the bastard approves of the White Australia Policy
. ‘As a matter of interest, doctor, do you agree with the White Australia Policy?'

‘Ha! Wendy told me about the blackfella you brought home with you. Jimmy somebody, isn't it?' He smiled suddenly. ‘Jimmy crack corn and I don't care!' The Scotch was beginning to get to him.

There was a tap on the door and Wendy's voice called out, ‘Lunch, you two!'

‘Well we don't want to disappoint the ladies, do we?' he said, his slightly slurring vernacular crisping up the way a hardened drinker can steady himself by concentrating. The bugger still hadn't referred to me by name. The presumption was breathtaking – he seemed quite oblivious to the effect his words would have on me. It was as if he thought that people of my class didn't have the same feelings as those of his own. ‘Brutish' was the word that came to my mind. Perhaps he thought we islanders lived in caves on the cliff face.

This silly notion served to help me overcome my emotions and see him for what he was – a man relying on his social status as the sagacious doctor to add effect to his words. It was the insensitivity of the physician telling his patient he is going to die under the mistaken belief that being blunt and to the point is the best way in the end. Or worse, accustomed all his life to doting parents, the approbation of teachers and the sycophancy of patients, he'd assumed his superiority and never learned how to conduct himself in a basic man-to-man relationship.

He ‘possessed' (I imagined that was the word he'd use in his own mind) a beautiful daughter – a Miss Tasmania, no less – who had brought credit to his family and was expected to make a good marriage, have nice kids and live a blameless life. It wasn't an unreasonable ambition for an only daughter blessed with looks and intelligence.

Instead, she'd taken up with a sometime fisherman, someone smelling of slimy mackerel with fish scales up to his armpits. For her mother this would be the ultimate social humiliation – her daughter married to a descendant of convicts on both sides. Heaven forbid! Can you imagine the whispering at the bridge club! Then there were the children to consider – in all likelihood ginger-haired, their pale-pink skin covered in multiple freckles the colour of rust, the result of the inferior convict blood coursing through their veins. My medal would have counted for little – acts of bravery were usually committed by foolhardy men who got lucky on the day. Not the kind of men to make lasting partnerships built on solid foundations.

Anyway, Wendy's mum would certainly have had a hand in all this. First the nagging, then her planned circumvention, allowing her husband to see me as the emotional exception, maybe even suggesting the bribe to send me packing. Emotional exceptions didn't need to have altruistic motives. She'd have persuaded him it would be a test of my character, worth every penny they'd invested in the rescue of their precious daughter. She'd have convinced him I was bound to fail and Wendy would be saved from a fate worse than death.

Wendy would, of course, be unaware of the circumstances of my departure. With my future as a fisherman secure, I certainly could be relied on not to spill the beans. She might be sad in the beginning, but in the end she'd recover and together they'd reset the course of her future life and it would be plain sailing from there on. They'd even have clear consciences – after all, anyone who'd take a bribe to get lost was not the right man for a precious daughter.

I now found myself in a dilemma. If I stormed out of the house and down the street a distraught Wendy would have to come after me, or worse – be forced to choose between us, me or her parents. There would be a scene and I'd be forced to give her some sort of ultimatum, an either/or, come or stay, which I knew would be foolish on my part.

Then a wonderful possibility occurred to me. Wendy had obviously told them how she felt about me. It must have been that she wanted me for keeps, otherwise why the premature panic from her parents? If this was the case, then I couldn't believe my good fortune.

Perhaps my febrile imagination and sense of inferiority were inventing some of this, or most of it – I could turn shadows into monsters better than most. But if all this was mere conjecture, there was no mistaking the proposition Dr Kalbfell had put to me. Besides, my instincts, which had always served me well, told me I wasn't too far off the mark. If he thought he could bully me, then compared to Lieutenant Dinh, the interrogator at the POW camp, Dr Kalbfell's devious mind was chocolate fudge wrapped in cellophane.