Pescador's Wake (25 page)

The Minister's minder addresses the media again, pointing out David: ‘Captain David Bates here, master of the
Australis,
will gladly answer your questions. However, I would like to remind you that because the illegal boat's master has not yet been formally questioned, neither he nor the
Pescador
's crew are available for interviews at this early stage.'

‘No, we can't have them being seen as human beings,' Dave whispers in William's ear. The media scrum breaks up and heads first for the Fisheries Minister, who, Dave suspects, will be out of here within a few minutes and on the next plane back to Canberra.

Cactus, Harry and William are then asked to stand out of the way, as the PR officer directs the cameras' glassy eyes towards the Australian master. Carlos, having been paraded for long enough in front of the cameras, is being shepherded back inside. Dave wonders when, or if, he will have the opportunity to speak with him again.

The journalists fire a barrage of mostly predictable questions. Only one reporter, a middle-aged dark-haired
woman with a Spanish accent asks him a question he hadn't expected. ‘Captain Bates, I noticed that you shook the hand of
Señor
Sánchez. Was that out of respect or sympathy?'

‘I think that will be all.' The government minder claps his hands again. ‘The police need access to the boat now. There will be an opportunity for further questions soon. We'll advise you of a time.'

Dave watches as Carlos disappears inside the
Pescador,
the young South African naval officer's gun at his back for effect. It's difficult to believe this defeated Uruguayan is the same man who mastered this vessel through some of the worst seas on the planet.

Dave turns back to the Spanish journalist and answers quietly: ‘A bit of both.'

Margie Bates studies her husband in profile as he sits, bathed in golden afternoon light, on the back veranda. She can hardly believe he is finally back on home soil. His hair is longer than he normally wears it and he has grown a short beard, but she has decided not to say anything. In fact, she thinks, she could almost grow to like it. He is facing out to sea and leaning forward, elbows on knees, tying knots in the ends of a piece of rope. It's what he does when he's nervous. She checks her watch. Sascha and Scotty were due to arrive a few minutes ago. She tries to distract him.

‘When do they want you back in Fremantle for the hearings, love?'

‘Not for at least a month—maybe two.'

‘Right.' Margie struggles to think of what to say next, her mind also preoccupied with seeing her grandson again.

Bonnie wanders over to Dave and licks his hands. He gives her a pat and looks out to the water, to a swarm of boats gliding downstream on the wide, gentle expanse of the Derwent River.

‘A grandson, can you believe it?' Margie says, deciding to articulate what they're both afraid of. ‘A little Sam.' Tears well
in her eyes and, she suspects, from the way her husband tips back his head, also in Dave's.

‘Nope. It's pretty damned amazing.' Dave's tears overflow.

Bonnie slinks off the veranda, towards an old bone on the lawn, and Margie turns away while Dave blows his nose and wipes his face dry. She goes to sit on his lap, brushing back his faded red hair with her hand.

‘Any more news of the Uruguayan master's son?' she asks.

‘Still hanging on by all accounts.'

‘Listen, there's something I have to tell you about all that…'

‘Let me guess. You've been emailing his wife and have been putting a cat amongst the pigeons in Canberra, trying to get Carlos Sánchez sent home to be tried in Uruguay.'

Margie fails to hide her grin. ‘You've heard!'

‘Yep.'

‘Are you cross?'

‘Nope.' He smacks a kiss onto her lips.

‘I didn't want to get you into trouble. But I'd promised Julia Sánchez that I'd see what I could do. To ask the stupid idiots in Canberra if there was any way Carlos could see his little boy.'

‘Not much chance of pulling it off though, I gather?'

‘No. Callous pigs.'

‘I made a few enquiries myself in Fremantle. There's Buckley's of him being allowed home, even if it's only for a
few days. It doesn't fit at all with the government's hard line on the illegals.'

‘I'm surprised.'

‘I'm not.'

‘No, I mean I'm surprised at you looking into it. That bloke nearly led you to your death!'

‘Don't get me wrong. I think he should get what's coming to him if he was fishing illegally. I just don't think we need to be completely heartless about it. The poor bugger's in a really bad way. Anyway, it's the owner of the boat we should be dragging over the coals. Not Carlos and his crew.'

‘I love you, Dave Bates.'

‘You too.' He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

‘You okay?'

‘I think my leg's gone to sleep. I might have to get you to hop off for a while, love. I'm not as tough as I used to be. And you're a
grandma
now, don't forget.'

‘And that makes me heavier, does it?'

‘Apparently.' Dave winces, complaining of pins and needles in his leg. Margie laughs at the grimace on his face.

‘By the way, how do you feel about having a holiday in South America?' she asks.

‘To pursue this legal stuff?'

‘No, just a holiday.'

Dave stretches his leg back and forth.

‘Do you remember Sam had plans to go there?'

‘Vaguely,' Dave says, trying to stand.

‘I came across an earmarked page in one of his travel books. I'd really like to go. And I'd quite like to track down Julia Sánchez, but only as a social visit. I don't want to make it a hugely long trip, not now that we have little Scotty.'

‘When are you thinking of going?'

‘Sometime within the next year or so.' Margie hesitates. ‘But I'd like Scotty to get to know us first. What do you think?'

‘Maybe. But we'll have to see where I sit with the trial. Let's play it by ear.' Dave is finally standing on both feet evenly, the pins and needles evidently gone.

‘I could be waiting forever.' Margie laughs. ‘Maybe I should go on my own. It'll do you good to be worried about
my
safety for once.' She watches him closely for a reaction. None is forthcoming. ‘But you probably wouldn't even give it a second thought, you ratbag. You'd enjoy the peace and quiet!'

The telephone rings and Margie runs to answer it, after realising that Dave, who was closer to the phone, wasn't going to. He had met her eyes and stepped out of the way, and she saw just how nervous he was about even talking to Sascha again.

After perhaps thirty seconds, Margie reappears on the veranda and takes Dave's hand. ‘They'll be here in about five minutes. She apologised for being late. Scotty has only just woken up.'

Dave opens his mouth to speak, but his voice catches in
his throat. He coughs and tries again. ‘I'm just going to do a bit more work on that swing.'

Margie watches Dave make his way to the bottom of the garden and adjust the ropes on Sam's old tyre swing, which he has tied to the branch of a large eucalypt. It's the same strong, horizontal branch that Sam used to swing from—the first rung in a ladder of branches that spiral to the top of the gnarled old tree. It's ancient, Margie suspects, this stoic giant. What changes it must have endured. For twenty-seven years now, she and Dave have watched the tree shed kilograms of bark—like tired, worn suits—with the seasons. Each shedding exposes smooth white bark underneath, as perfect as the skin of a baby. A previous resident had cut firewood beside the tree and must have lodged his axe in its trunk for safekeeping. In places, these deep, old wounds have penetrated through to the new skin, like memories, but mostly the old bark has taken the scars with it. The giant has healed itself. She respects its resilience. Its capacity to recover and continue to grow. Its preparedness, year after year, to expose its soft inner layers. To be vulnerable.

She hears a car pull up outside. ‘I think they're here, love,' she calls out from the veranda.

‘I'll be right up.' Dave doesn't move. He remains ankledeep in old bark. ‘I'll just finish tying this off. It's not quite straight. And I have to fix the belt. Can't have our boy falling out.'

Margie watches as his practised, sea-worn hands work the knots and secure the ropes, and she imagines that they shake, just a little. It's nerve-racking, she concedes, meeting one's past and future all at once.

She was so beautiful that day, more beautiful even than when we first met. Her skin, softer than I remember it when we were teenagers, her hair still like silk. I'll never forget the way her dress, dotted with red flowers, fell from her shoulders.

Finally, Julia is bringing her baby home. She is nervous and excited in the same heartbeat. As she enters the hospital nursery, this time with both her mother and María, the nursing staff are waiting for her. They have dressed little Eduardo in the clothes Julia had brought in for him and are enjoying a final cuddle. These are the high points for them too, Julia realises. The rewards of working in a high-pressure environment where life and death are such close neighbours. To some extent, little Eduardo must also feel like
their
baby.

Julia is handed her son and gives him a kiss on the forehead. Her mother leans across and strokes his hair.

‘Beautiful baby,' she says through tears.

‘It's the first time you've seen him, isn't it?' one of the nurses asks Julia's mother.

‘I thought it was better luck to wait until today, the day our little boy is coming home,' Julia's mother says. ‘I didn't want to believe it until now.'

‘Can I have a hold,
Mamá
? Please?' María is jumping up and down in anticipation. Julia tells her to sit in a chair before handing her the baby. The nurses remark on the resemblance of the siblings.

‘Can we keep him now,
Mamá
?' María asks, losing herself in her brother's eyes.

‘Si,'
Julia says, but she knows it will be some time before any of them really believe that little Eduardo is now theirs to keep.

The baby turns his head to the side and María notices his folded ear. ‘Look,
Mamá.
His ear is all bent. Just like Uncle Eduardo's!'

‘So it is,' Julia says, wondering why it hasn't yet flattened out. The doctor had suggested it would, given time. She is aware of her mother scrutinising her.

‘Is that why you called him Eduardo?' María persists. ‘Because of his bent ear?'

‘No.' Julia laughs, but there is a sinking feeling in her belly. ‘
Papá
chose that name because Uncle Eduardo was such a good friend of ours. Do you think it suits your baby brother?'

‘Si,'
María says, bending down and kissing him on the ear.

Julia gently straightens out the folded cartilage with her fingers, but when she lets go it bends over again, just as it did when little Eduardo was first born. Maybe the doctor was wrong, she thinks.

She feels the hairs rise on her forearms.

‘Here's his medical book,' one of the nurses says. ‘See how much he has grown since he first arrived. He's three times the size!'

Julia kisses her son on top of his downy head as she scans the information recorded in the book:

Name: Baby Sánchez Pereira

Date of Birth: 4.10.02

Gestation: 27 weeks

Birth Weight: 890g

Gender: Male

Blood group: AB positive

His birthdate seems a lifetime ago but it is his blood group that has caught her attention. Her own blood group is A, and Carlos's, she remembers, is O. She had committed these facts to memory in case of an emergency. The sick, panicky feeling grows, crowding Julia's chest and throat. She has taught biology for long enough to know that in no circumstance can parents with blood groups O and A produce a baby with the blood group AB. She examines her baby's face and scrutinises his bent ear, which, she realises now, has nothing to do with prematurity and everything to do with his father.

She feels the hairs rise again on her arms but this time the panic creeps all the way to her shoulders and across the back of her neck.

‘
Jesús
,' she says out loud.

The nurse turns quickly to the baby. ‘What's wrong?'

‘It's nothing,' Julia lies.

‘It's sad that Uncle Eduardo has died,' María says. ‘He won't be able to make my baby brother a book the same as mine.'

Julia's throat constricts, suffocating her with concealed emotion. ‘Maybe you can share yours with him,' she manages to say before standing up and walking quickly to the bathroom to let out the sobs caught in her throat.

Back at home, Julia lies on her bed and nurses her son, following the contours of his malformed ear with her finger. Had she been in complete denial, even to herself, not to have made the connection before now? But it hadn't even occurred to her. With her medical history, she'd always assumed that she was wholly to blame for the fertility problems that had plagued her marriage to Carlos. She'd thought it was next to impossible to fall pregnant after a single encounter with another man. She'd never really even considered the possibility.

‘Eduardo,' she whispers into his hair. Perhaps she's the only one who needs to know. It's her doing; why should anyone else suffer the consequences? Carlos doesn't deserve this, and neither does María, or Virginia and her daughters. Least of all this new little life in her arms. How could she have been so stupid?

María and her baby brother will only ever be half-sister and -brother, Julia thinks with a shock of guilt. She fears the
secret will stand between them like an invisible wall, keeping them always apart. It's her punishment. Something she'll have to live with. She remembers that Eduardo's son was born the day he died. It's as if their baby was taking his earthly place.

Julia wipes at her eyes, and thinks of Eduardo's parents, and the fact that they will never know that they had a grandson. They will never hold little Eduardo and, in smelling his soft, baby head, know that their own son lives on. She contemplates the comfort—the future—she is denying them.

The phone rings and Julia's mother answers it. ‘It's Carlos,' she calls out.

Julia swaddles her son in his blanket and takes him with her to the phone, blotting her eyes again with the tissue. Her mother looks at her aslant but says nothing. Perhaps she knows the truth, somehow. Perhaps she has always known.

‘So, his first day at home,' Carlos says from a detention house in Fremantle. He and Manuel have forfeited their passports but are, for now, free to move about town. The rest of the crew has been flown home. ‘Is he doing okay?'

‘
Si.
It's wonderful to have him here. María adores him. She won't leave him alone.' Julia wonders whether he can discern – by some change in her voice—her secret.

‘I've been meaning to check if you've managed to see Virginia yet?' Carlos asks. ‘She's much too young to have been made a widow.'

‘Si,
I saw her,' Julia replies, not wanting to elaborate on their encounter at La Paloma.

‘Is she doing all right?'

‘I think so. As well as can be expected. I only saw her briefly. She needed time to herself, and I felt I was intruding.'

‘Well, at least you've let her know you're there for her if she needs you.'

Julia is relieved to hear the familiar strength in her husband's voice and hopes to never again hear him cry. She won't let that happen. She signals to María to come and talk to her father, to deflect the attention from herself. ‘There's someone here who really wants to talk with you.'

Julia holds the phone out to María but crouches down so she can hold it to her own ear as well. Her mother takes the baby without saying a word.

‘
¡Papá!
' María squeals. ‘Little Eduardo has come home. Did
Mamá
tell you?'

‘
Si,
I can't wait to meet him,' Carlos replies, his voice soft and gentle for his daughter. ‘And to give
you
a huge cuddle.'

‘When will you get here?
Mamá
says she doesn't know.'

Julia runs her hands through her hair, her fingernails travelling in parallel paths over her scalp, from her forehead to the nape of her neck. She thinks of how many times she has leant on Carlos—her anchor—and how few demands he has placed on her. She has taken him for granted.

‘Just as soon as I can, my beautiful daughter.
Mamá
will explain more soon. It's complicated, but just remember I love you and I'll be there with you as soon as I can.'

‘All right.
Papá,
Cecilia says you're in trouble for stealing fish.'

Julia is surprised. How dare Cecilia talk with María about any of this.

‘Well, that's what the Australians are saying,' Carlos responds. ‘But it's a big ocean, and it's not always clear whose fish are whose.'

‘Do people own the fish? I thought they were everybody's.'

‘I wish it were that simple. They're so yummy that everyone wants them.'

‘Aren't there enough?'

‘No,
mi chica.
There aren't enough. Not for everybody. Not any more.'

‘Does that mean you'll stop going away,
Papá
?'

‘When I get home, María sweetheart, I'll make sure I don't go to sea again for a long time.'

‘Never?'

‘That's something I'll have to talk to
Mamá
about. Can you please put her back on, my love?'

‘I'm still here,' Julia says as María lets go of the phone. She stands up straight, and María skips back to the book she was reading:
El Pez
by Eduardo. ‘Children certainly ask the hard questions,' Julia says, attempting a laugh, but it sounds forced,
even to herself. ‘So what do you think? Will you be fishing again?'

‘It's not that simple. You know that. But I won't fish if you don't want me to.'

‘Maybe María is right. Maybe it
is
that simple. But let's just take one step at a time. We need to get you home first.'

Julia tries to visualise her husband by the phone in the Western Australian detention house and wonders how long it will be before she sees him again. He has emailed some photographs of himself on expansive beaches and in the shopping malls of a neat, clean-looking city. The locals are all well-dressed. Affluent. Perhaps it's because they have never travelled abroad together, but when Julia looked at those pictures, she was surprised to find herself feeling jealous. Jealous that Carlos could be in such a place without her, and jealous of the seemingly carefree lifestyle of the locals.

‘What are you doing for the rest of the day?' she asks.

‘Probably going for a walk on the beach. God knows how much longer I'll have even this much freedom.'

Julia pictures Carlos dressed in his cap and sunglasses walking alone on the Australian sand. She sees him anew and wonders, for the first time, if her handsome husband will attract the interest of any of the local women.

‘
Te quiero
,' she tells him.