Pearls (5 page)

'I'll thank you not to question me in that manner, my girl. You're not too old to put across my knee, mind.'

'I should like to see you to try it, Patrick Flynn. You're likely to get your nose broken again.'

'You'll not speak to your father that way!' There was a strident note to his voice now. Their horse pricked its ears and tossed its head, jolting the sulky. Kate lapsed into tight-lipped silence.

When they reached their bungalow, Flynn jumped off the sulky and helped his daughter down from the running board. Then he climbed back on and picked up the reins.

'And where are you off to now?' she asked him.

'To the hotel. I need a proper drink.' He looked down at her, and his face creased into a frown. 'And don't look at me like that! I'll do whatever I damned well please!'

He jerked the reins and the sulky clattered away up the dirt road. Kate felt like throwing a rock after him. He was drinking himself into an early grave. He was only fifty years old and he looked like a man of sixty.

Dear God.

Men.

She went into the house and removed her bonnet and her shoes. The house was like a furnace. She went out onto the veranda, breathing in the scent of the oleander and Japanese honeysuckle, trying to calm herself.

She slumped into a cane chair and ran her fingers through her hair. Her blouse was clinging to her, it was hot. The surf was breaking on Cable Beach, five miles distant, and the muted roar mingled with the faint and alien melodies from Saigon and Singapore that drifted from the radio transmitting station next door.

She saw a shadow move among the bushes in the garden. She felt a thrill of alarm. 'Who's there?'

A cigarette glowed in the darkness. 'I'm sorry, I did nae mean to scare you,' a voice said.

Kate recognised the soft brogue immediately. She smiled. 'Why, Mister McKenzie,' she purred, crossing her legs. 'What a fright you gave me.'

***

Flynn jumped off the running board, tethered his horse and went through a door which read:
'Niland & Co.'
There was a light burning inside.

George Niland had his feet perched on the edge of the desk, his teeth clenched on a cheroot. He looked up as Flynn entered. 'You said it was important.'

Flynn shut the door behind him. 'Are we alone, my boy?'

'It's Sunday, Patrick, of course we are. For goodness sake, sit down. You're making me nervous.'

Flynn reached into his pocket and took out an old tobacco tin. He took off the lid and removed a roll of tissue paper. 'I thought you might like to see this,' he said. He unwrapped the tissue paper. 'Now then, my boy, tell me if you've ever seen the like in your whole life.'

There was a sharp intake of breath and George sat bolt upright. In the darkened room the pearl seemed to take on a luminescence of its own.

'My God,' George murmured in awe, 'where did you get it?'

'It doesn't matter where it came from, my boy. The question is - what's it worth?'

Chapter 8

The bane of the pearler's life was the cockroaches. They thrived on the reeking gristle that clung to the pearl shells stored in the holds of the luggers; at night they swarmed from their hiding places to feast on the sailor's toenails and the calluses on their feet as they slept . It was impossible to keep them off the boats; all the pearlers could do to keep them in check was sink their luggers in the creeks at high tide every lay-up season and drown that season's infestation.

Cameron stood on the foreshore watching the incoming tide wash over the decks of the
China Cloud
. George Niland was passing on his way to the Niland & Co offices in his sulky. He reined in his horse.

'Good morning, Cam,' he called out.

Cameron saw him and walked up the beach. 'Hello George. Off to count your money?'

'So you've decided to stay on in Broome?'

'Aye. For a while anyway.'

'Have you got yourself a foreshore permit?'

'I do nae intend to build a camp just yet. I'll sleep on the
China Cloud
as soon as my wee guests have floated away on the tide.'

George screwed up his face in disgust. 'It's a hard life, Cam. Not like Her Majesty's Navy, eh?'

'That was hard enough.'

'Yes, but no cockroaches. I was hoping I'd see you this morning. I have a proposition for you.'

'What sort of proposition, George?'

'Have you seen the
Elizabeth
?'

Cameron squinted across the bay where the Niland company schooner rode at anchor. 'Aye, she's a fine ship.'

'We need a new master for her. I suggested to my father that you were the ideal man. The pay's good and the company always looks after its people. What do you say?'

Cameron shook his head. 'Thanks for the offer, George. But I want to be my own man.'

'I admire your sense of independence, Cam. But everyone comes here thinking they're going to make a fortune out there ....' he nodded his head in the direction of the pearling grounds beyond Gantheaume Point. '... but you're more likely to lose everything. You have to be a good businessman to survive here, not an adventurer.'

'Aye well, it's a risk I'm prepared to take.' Cam patted the horse's flank. 'Thanks again though.'

'If you change your mind ...'

'I never change my mind, George. You know that.'

George shrugged. 'Well, be careful, Cam. It's a hard business.'

He jerked the reins and the sulky clattered away down the red dirt road towards Streeter's jetty.

***

George did not go directly to the Niland & Company offices. He stopped first at the office of T.J.Ellies, Broome's foremost pearl cleaner. All pearls had tiny blemishes or indentations that spoiled their value; Tom Ellies had a special talent for cleaning the outer skins of a pearl, like peeling the layers of an onion, until it was smooth and perfect. It required an exceptional, almost psychic, skill for one mistake could cost hundreds, even thousands, of pounds.

When he arrived Flynn was already there.

'You're late,' Flynn snapped.

'My apologies,' George said easily. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small velvet-lined box. He gave it to Ellies, who opened it and took out the pearl with elaborate care. 'A fine stone,' he murmured.

'We've called it the Queen of the North,' George said. 'By the way, we'd prefer to keep the news of our find just between ourselves. It's worth a little extra. Do you understand?'

Ellies sighed. He understood perfectly.

***

The Southern Cross had wheeled through the sky so that it hung almost directly above the tin roof. There were low murmurs of thunder in the distance, flashes of sheet lightning on the rim of the ocean. The Wet was close.

Cam rolled a cigarette and lit it. He told her about his childhood growing up in a tenement in Edinburgh, the second oldest of eight brothers and sisters. 'I remember Friday night was a big treat. My ma used to buy my da' a piece of haddock and she'd give us each a cup of the water she cooked it in and some bread to dip in it. Never owned a pair of shoes till I was twelve. Summer and winter it was all the same.'

'Did your father not work?'

'Aye he worked at the shipyard but everything he earned he gambled or drank away.'

'It sounds like a hard life.'

'Aye, it was. It is. My brothers are still there, they work in the shipyards like my da'. Or like he used to before the whisky got to him.'

'But not you.'

'Not me. I was always good at figuring numbers and such, and my ma hoped I'd get a job in the office at the shipyard. That was the height of her ambitions for me. Then one night when I was twelve years old she sent me down the road to fetch my da' home for his tea. And I went in the bar and there was this sailor, not crew on the coal steamers, a proper skipper, skin like mahogany and he was talking about places he'd been, and everyone in there was hanging on every word. Imagine a cold Tuesday night in Glasgow and here he is going on about white beaches and brown skinned women and pearls as big as bottles toppers. And I stood there listening to him and I thought: that's what I'm about. I'm going to get out of this dirty town and find the sun and find my fortune.'

He stopped and drew on his cigarette, suddenly shy of talking so much.

'So you come to Broome.'

'Oh, there were some detours along the way. I joined the Royal Navy as a rating, sailed around the world a time or two, then I heard of these trials they were doing in the lochs back home, sending men underwater in diving suits. I volunteered.'

'Why would you do that now?'

'The pay was good.'

'You've courage, Mister McKenzie.'

'He laughed easily. 'A man's nothing without it.'

'Do you ever hear from your family?'

'My ma writes every month. All the news.'

'You miss them?'

'Aye but I can't go back. I have it in my mind to be a man of means some day. And I shall. I'll find my pearl and I shall have fine suits and a house like this one and perhaps even a motor car. I shall not have any man look down on me again.'

'Again?'

'Once you're poor Kate you never forget it. It rusts into your soul.'

She reached out and traced the line of a scar on his right forearm, among the dark hairs. 'Where did you get that?'

'A knife fight in Manila,' and then he saw her expression and laughed.

'What's funny?'

'Your face. I was just teasing you. There was no fight. A ship's cat did it.' He laughed and ruffled her hair. It was a gesture of such easy-going familiarity that it shocked her. No one had ever ruffled her hair before.

'And what of you? Do you nae have brothers and sisters?'

'I had two brothers. They were older than me.'

What happened?'

'Jack, he was the eldest, he drowned when I was 12, off cable Beach. Then a couple of years ago Will died of blood poisoning.'

He touched her hand lightly. 'I'm sorry.'

'Life goes on,' she said as her father always said just before he reached for the gin bottle.

'What about your ma?'

'She died when I was a boy. I never knew her.'

'Everyone who loves you, leave you.'

It was what she had thought for years and never had the temerity to say out loud. What an extraordinary man. 'You still think my father stole your pearl from you?'

The silence dragged. Finally: 'He's your father Kate so I would nae expect you to hear a word against him. But yes, he stole my pearl. There's nothing surer.'

'And do you plan to get even with him? Because if you do you should take yourself off my veranda right now.'

'You're a spirited girl Kate.'

'I mean what I say.'

He sighed. 'You're worth more than any pearl.' His fingers traced the contours of her wrist and the fold of her arm. It send a shiver right through her. He leaned forward and she realised with panic that he was about to kiss her. She turned away.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

Why had she done that? She wanted him to kiss her. It scared her, this. She had waited so long to find a man she liked and now he was right here next to her, it terrified her. 'Why are you here? Mister McKenzie?'

'I told you, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my whole life. The first time I saw you, you set my heart racing and it's been doing double time ever since.'

'Were you about to kiss me just then?'

'I was.'

'Then would you mind trying again. Perhaps you'll have better luck this time.'

As their lips touched she heard cursing form the street and the crunch of boots on the shell grit path. Flynn was home.

'Damn!' She jumped to her feet and smoothed down her skirts. 'Go!' she said to him.

Cam kissed her again, hard on the lips, then melted into the shadows of the garden. She touched her fingers to her lips. My God. Flynn and his rotten timing.

***

The dinner had been a stately affair. The tablecloth and napkins were Irish linen, the napkins themselves rolled in carved ivory rings; the tableware was Wedgwood and the cutlery sterling silver. They were served turtle soup, barramundi with saffron rice, and fresh mangos for desert. There was champagne in fluted crystal glasses with every course and afterwards coffee and crème de menthe. Kate could see her father was impressed, even as he marked out his territory on the table with soup and saffron stains.

For their part the Nilands had ignored Flynn's more eccentric behaviour - such as the sound effects that accompanied his enjoyment of the soup course - but she knew from the suffering glances that passed between Henry Niland and his wife, Elizabeth, that they were participating in this social occasion under sufferance.