Pearls (27 page)

'Guardian of the Shirts. Is that my role in life now, George?'

'I have no intention of discussing it further. You know my feelings about the matter.' George picked up his knife and fork and started to eat his breakfast.

Jamie emerged from his bedroom and George frowned at him. 'Why are you so late? You're going to miss school.'

'It's holidays,' Jamie said.

George looked to his wife for confirmation. 'Is it? Well I hope you can find something useful to do. You can take my shirts down to Ah Song's for a start.'

Kate studied her son. He had grown into a fine looking boy. He was tall for his age and she guessed he would be as tall as his father - well as tall as George anyway - before his fourteenth birthday. It was disconcerting how much he looked like Cam, those same piercing eyes and shock of dark hair.

'Can't I come to the pearling sheds with you?'

'There's nothing for you there,' Kate said.

'Why not?'

'Your father's already shown you everything there is to see.'

'Perhaps he should,' George said. 'He might as well start learning a few things. I could show him the stores and the packing sheds.'

'Please, father, can I?'

'I have never heard such a nonsensical suggestion. The boy's only eleven years old.'

'He's bright and enthusiastic and he wants to learn.'

'Can I go on a lugger?'

George put down his knife and fork and pushed his plate away. 'I am down to my last good suit, thanks to your mother. I most certainly will not take you on one of the luggers. The last time I couldn't get the stench out of my clothes. I had to throw away a perfectly good pair of trousers. Mitsuki might show you around, if you're that interested.'

Jamie looked at Kate. 'Please,' he said.

Kate shrugged. 'Oh all right!'

George wiped his mouth with a napkin. 'Hurry up and have your breakfast. I'll not have you make me late!'

Jamie looked at his mother and grinned. 'Thanks,' he said.

Perhaps a day down there will get it out of his system, she thought. I think this family's had enough of pearling. My son was meant for better things.

Chapter 44

Cameron had taken the lease on a run-down bungalow with a baked red iron roof and corrugated iron walls. Unlike the shaded, green Edens of the master pearlers the garden boasted just two sad bauhinias, and the buffalo grass struggled to put down roots in the hard red dirt.

The house was out on the edge of the town, where the white shell-grit streets merged into the scrub. Some nights the aborigines gathered in the brush behind the shack for
corroboree
, the rhythm of their karlis
clack-clacking
long into the night in an ancient land-old rhythm.

Rose sat on the veranda, her hands folded across her swollen belly. It was a cruel irony that they had had to wait so long for another child. She felt it kick and gasped, shifting her position. A lively babe, livelier than Elvie had ever been. The time was getting close now, and she was frightened. Elvie's birth had been difficult. She had lost a lot of blood and it had taken her weeks to recover from the labour. She hoped it would be easier this time.

She did not know how they would quite afford another baby, but she supposed they would find a way, they had so far.

She squinted into the sun and saw an enormously tall figure heading up the wide, white road. She suddenly realised it was Cameron with Elvie on his shoulders. 'Cameron!' she shouted and struggled to her feet.

Cameron was running now, making Elvie squeal. Rose had barely reached the bottom of the steps when he was there, throwing his arms around her.

'Rosie! Rosie, my God woman, look at you. Do you think it's twins?'

She was embarrassed about her size after he had kissed her she pushed him away. 'You've seen enough whales at sea,' she said.

'You look beautiful, lass.'

'He found a pearl!' Elvie said.

Rose tried to look pleased. Cameron had found a lot of pearls, but only ever small ones. None of them were ever really worth anything. It was the shell that was important now.

'Was it a good voyage?' she asked him.

'No, I mean I found a real pearl,' he said. He rattled the wooden pearl box in his left hand. 'We're rich, lass!'

'And what about the shell?'

Cameron took her by the shoulders. 'I mean it! Nae mind the shell! It's the biggest pearl you ever saw in your whole life! It must be over two hundred grains!'

Rose could not really comprehend what he was telling her.

'I'm going to take you down to the city and dress you in the best dresses money can buy! We won't have to live in this shack nae more! We'll get a bungalow in the town - I'll even buy myself a motor car! I told you I'd find my pearl, Rosie! We're rich!'

***

The Niland and Company offices and stores had been built on the shore between the Streeter and Male jetty and Dampier Creek. George drove the red Buick to the front door, and as he stepped out the clerks and accountants were already lined up along the veranda to greet him.

'Come along, come along,' he snapped at Jamie and hurried on ahead. Jamie leaped out of the car and ran along behind to keep up.

A junior clerk got into the Buick and parked it in the shade of the Poinciana tree at the back.

George put his briefcase in his office and told his chief accountant, a middle aged man with a green eye shade, that he was going to the store. He led him down the beach to the foreshore camp.

It was a cosmopolitan mix of Japanese carpenters and sailmakers, Malay and Manilaman packers and Koepangers in transit after their three years indenture. Order was maintained by George's bos'un, a big-boned Japanese called Matsuki. He was built like a Sumo wrestler and maintained a cast-iron discipline in the camp, with his fists if he had to.

He was down on the beach, supervising the unloading of shell from the
Mary Jane
. George called to him from the wharf. He wasn't going to dirty his trouser cuffs by trudging through the sand.

'Boss,' Matsuki said in greeting.

'I want you to show my son around the camp and the sheds,' George said. 'Answer any questions he has.'

'Plenty work this morning,' Matsuki said.

'Please do as I say.'

Matsuki looked at the young boy as if he would rather break him in half with his hands. 'Yes, boss,' he said.

'Aren't you coming with us?' Jamie said.

'I'm very busy this morning. Matsuki will bring you back when you've seen enough. Then you can see where the real work's done!'

Jamie looked up at the big Japanese bos'un. 'Hello,' he said.

Matsuki spat into the sand.

'Well,' Jamie said brightly, 'shall we start with the packing sheds?'

Chapter 45

Tom Ellies sat cross-legged, his pipe in his mouth, and turned the pearl in his fingers. If he was impressed by its size, he gave no sign of it. He never showed any emotion whatever when he was cleaning pearls. He considered it unwise.

'Well?' Cameron said, eagerly.

'I have seen more tragedies than Shakespeare in this little room,' he answered, carefully.

'That's nae answer.'

'It has some dirt spots here and here,' Tom said, pointing to a nest of tiny black pinpricks on the pearl. 'It is impossible to tell if they go right to the heart of the stone. You may have a fortune, you may have nothing.'

'What do you think I should do, Tom?'

'It is not my stone, Mister McKenzie. The decision is yours. You could sell it to a buyer now for ... perhaps four, five hundred pounds. Let him take the risk. If I clean it, it could be worth five thousand. Perhaps ten thousand.' He sighed. 'Or perhaps it is worth nothing at all.'

He laid the pearl on the black velvet cloth. Cameron stared at it. It seemed to glow and pulse as if it had its own tiny heartbeat.

Cameron swallowed hard.

'Clean it,' he said.

Tom Ellies put his pipe in the ashtray. 'Come back in the morning, when the light is better. In the early morning sun I can see into a stone's heart, perhaps unlock its secret. In the afternoon, like now, the sun is too harsh.' He picked up the stone and handed it to Cameron. He never kept pearls on the premises or worked on them when the customer was not there. That, too, was unwise..

Cameron put the pearl in his waistcoat pocket. 'I'll see you in the morning, then,' he said and got to his feet.

'Sleep well,' Tom said.

Cameron gave him a grim smile. 'I doubt it, Tom,' he said and went out.

***

The dentist had his surgery at the back of the barber shop in Spring Moon Lane. He looked apprehensive as Wes lowered himself into the chair. His name was McKimmon. He was a good dentist when he was sober, but he wasn't sober often, which was the reason he had left Perth and set up practice up here.

'Toothache?' he asked, turning from the primitive array of instruments on the little cabinet.

'Toof is hokkay,' Wes growled. He had never been to the dentist in his life, but he had seen plenty of men who had, cotton wool plugged in their jaws to stop the bleeding, groaning with pain.

He peered at Wes over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. 'If your teeth are okay, what are you here for?'

'Want a gol' toof. Like dat Assan.'

'Assan's tooth was rotten.'

'I want a gol' toof. No, mebbe two gol' toof. More dan dat Assan. Yep.'

McKimmon frowned. 'It's expensive.'

Wes shrugged. He reckoned that with his commission from the big pearl he could afford a mouthful of gold teeth if he wanted.

'Well, open,' McKimmon said. He picked up his instruments and bent to examine Wes' mouth. Just then he felt a massive fist close around his testicles.

'Now,' Wes whispered, 'we ain't gonna hurt each other ... is we?'

***

From when he was a small boy, Jamie had imagined his father as a modern day Viking, a cross between King George V and Douglas Fairbanks. Each morning he watched him climb into the red Buick and drive away. He supposed he climbed aboard a lugger every day and sailed out of the bay, standing at the prow in his white tropical suit and solar topee, to return each night with the decks behind him piled up with chests of huge, gleaming pearls.

There was no one day when he realised his father did not spend every day at sea; it came to him gradually, as part of the erosion of dreams that accompanies the passing of every boyhood. Santa Claus did not ride along the palm-fringed streets each Christmas Eve in a sleigh loaded with toys, the tooth fairy did not leave threepence under his pillow for each molar he put there, and his father got sea sick on anything bigger than a rowing boat.

But even this sketchy knowledge of reality had prepared him for that first adventure inside the mythologised offices of Niland and Company. He had expected grandeur; but there were only some desks, a few ancient calculating machines, and dusty piles of ledgers. It had all the romance of a hardware store.

He had dealt with his shattering moment of disillusion in the spirit of the redeemer. If his father was flawed with inaction, then he would himself restore the ideal by fulfilling those failings in his father's character.

He would provide the daring, while his father took care of the books and figures. This was how they would grow to know and admire each other as men.

***

He sat in the corner, his tie askew, his face beet red form the heat. George finally appeared at the door of his office and seemed surprised to find him sitting there. It occurred to Jamie that he had forgotten all about him.

'So. Did you enjoy your little jaunt around the stores?'

'It was good,' Jamie said.

'This is where the real work's done, of course. I can teach you all you need to know right here.'

'When?'

'When you're old enough.'

Jamie decided he would rather be boiled in oil than spend a minute longer behind a desk than he had to. 'Why don't you ever go out on the luggers?'

'What an extraordinary suggestion.'

'Some of the pearlers do.'

He laughed. 'Not many.'

'Mister McKenzie does.'

'Mister McKenzie has no other choice. He can't even afford to pay for divers. Besides, I have more important things to do here.'

''Can't I go out on the
Mary Jane
? I've got two weeks before I have to go back to school. Matsuki says she'll be out and back in ten days.'

'Ridiculous.' He checked his fob watch. 'It's time for your lunch. Weston, take Master James home please.'