The Devil's Eye (8 page)

‘What day is it today?’ asked Willie Tanna.

He was standing on the deck of the
Zoe
with a tin mug of coffee, looking to the east. A bank of red clouds ranged along the horizon.

‘Thursday,’ said Sam, beating the diving suit into shape. The helmet was in its bucket. He’d cooked breakfast. The crew, though, had hardly eaten and they stumbled over each other in a stupor.

They were all particularly dull that morning, except Charley, who sang in spite of their threats to throw him overboard.

The
Vision
had come alongside the night before, creeping up under a half moon and a close-reefed mainsail, no stern light, Joe Harry’s grin appearing suddenly, friendly enough, asking how much shell.

Sam had turned and gone below, but Willie shrugged.
It was a common enough question and he’d plucked a figure from the air.

‘Ten crates.’

Joe Harry whistled.

‘Not just here,’ Willie had said.

Joe Harry’s grin widened. ‘Any pearls, Kanaka?’

Willie had laughed, as he was expected to.

Bending over the bulwarks Joe Harry hissed, ‘You still alive I see, Kanaka. Mrs Porter wanted to know today about you and your cook. You are a healthy man, Kanaka? You seem to be.’

Willie smiled, ‘Yes,’ he said.

The
Zoe
’s sail flapped when Joe Harry breathed into his face and whispered, ‘That Thomas, he’s not coming back.’

‘Who?’

‘You have another pearl,’ said Joe Harry. ‘I know this. I give you a good price.’

He had handed Willie a bottle of gin and loudly asked if he minded the
Vision
for company that night. Willie didn’t want the
Vision
anywhere near the
Zoe
, but he said, ‘Please yourself,’ handed the bottle back and retired to the main cabin, where he found Sam.

Sam said, ‘Joe Harry looking for pearls again?’

Willie grunted and collapsed on his bunk. So Mrs Porter had come down to join her husband. But why did she ask about his health? It unnerved him more than Joe Harry’s visit itself.

Sam was saying, ‘The devil is reasonable when he wants to buy your soul.’

‘Is that right?’

‘That crocodile today was Joe Harry, I’m sure of it. He can change shape, Willie. Good thing we won’t be doing business with him.’

‘Joe Harry says Thomas isn’t coming back. What does that mean?’

Sam didn’t reply.

The crews had been quiet enough. Willie heard Joe Harry’s voice only once telling them to shut up, and then no more. He woke during the night and smelt opium.

The
Vision
was gone by morning, and Willie faced a red sky in the east. He had an uneasy feeling that something bad had happened. Mrs Porter had asked after him and Joe Harry was sniffing around.

Perhaps Joe Harry was indeed the devil.

It was Sam, though, who wanted Willie’s soul.

Few divers were as lucky as Willie. He found more shell than most, the
Zoe
the most successful of the
Crest of the Wave
luggers last season.

But in the lay-up, when they ate in the kitchen of the Residence, Sam had told him that if he
was
the luckiest diver in the fleet, he must also be the unluckiest.

His reasoning went like this: Willie never knew if the shells he fished concealed a pearl, and by law he had to
deliver the shell unopened to the schooner. Pearls, being inside the shells, belonged to Mr James Clark.

So, said Sam, Willie had no doubt held a fortune in pearls in his hands and given them away.

Willie agreed repeatedly that it was unfortunate.

Unfortunate? It was a
sin.

‘Don’t blame Mr James Clark,’ Sam told Willie. ‘Until the oyster’s opened, no one but God and the oyster know what’s inside. But Willie, the contract between the oyster and God is broken when the oyster’s opened. Whatever’s inside belongs to the man who opens it. It is no longer inside the oyster so it doesn’t belong to Mr James Clark either.’

Sam was a hornet about his ears.

The sun rose and Willie descended. A school of small, playful fish accompanied him down until a mackerel snapped by, leaving a shower of tiny silver scales dancing in front of his face plate.

Poor Tommy de Lange sat in front of the fleet’s books. He was at the table in the main cabin with a pencil behind an ear and a cigarette smoking between his fingers, staring at the deck above.

‘Mrs Porter, do you know how many pearls are found? The ratio of pearls to shells?’

Maggie, on the other side of the table, said she did not.

‘One in nine hundred and twenty-nine. A good round pearl that is. No seed or baroque. One in nine hundred and twenty-nine.’

Poor Tommy had hardly caught up with the books. Maggie had offered to help, but regretted it.

Alice was on the floor. The windows were open and so was the cabin door, but if there was a breeze it was no danger to the loose sheets.

Tommy looked down and his pencil began scratching away, transferring numbers from scraps of paper to the bound books.

Maggie asked, ‘Why did you join the fleet, Tommy?’

Tommy leant back into the captain’s chair. ‘I know a lot about pearls and shell,’ he said. ‘Mr James Clark said I could be of some use.’

‘Shouldn’t you also know something about the sea and ships?’

‘Mrs Porter! There are fifteen men aboard this schooner who know more than enough of all of that. Anyway,’ he said, ‘Mr James Clark didn’t employ me to pull on ropes.’

Maggie waited.

Tommy continued, ‘He employed me for my scientific knowledge.’

‘Your scientific knowledge?’ she said, and half expected him to deny that he’d said it. ‘You’re talking about your knowledge of pearls.’

‘Pearls
and
shell.’

After overhearing his conversation with Joe Harry, Maggie didn’t know what to believe about Poor Tommy. Her doubt must have shown on her face.

‘My father,’ he said, looking solemn, ‘did some work for Mr Saville-Kent.’

‘And I suppose he taught you about pearls?’ said Maggie.

‘Everything there is to know about pearls
and
shell,’ he said. ‘God rest his soul.’

Tommy’s gaze wandered out the window and Maggie forced herself back to the letter she was composing to her father.

‘Yes,’ he said eventually, as if answering some question Maggie hadn’t heard. ‘Mr James Clark, as you know, is now cultivating the mother-of-pearl shell.’ He added, ‘
Meleagrina margaretifera.
’

Tommy held the words in Latin above him for a moment and then said, ‘He’s had some success, you know. In farming shells.’

‘Has he?’

‘But, Mrs Porter,’ said Tommy, and he lowered his voice to a confidential murmur, ‘did you know that Mr James Clark now wants to cultivate the oyster for
pearls
?’

Maggie looked up. He seemed to be pleased to get her attention again.

‘It’s a secret,’ he said, ‘but I know you won’t tell anyone.’

She thought Poor Tommy was making this up. Why would Mr James Clark confide such a thing to Tommy? Perhaps he’d learned it from his father.

Maggie asked, ‘How does he propose to cultivate pearls?’

‘It’s at the experimental stage. It may be a matter of putting a grain of sand under the lip. In any case, though, as I said, if you cultivate enough shells, you should naturally get a certain number of pearls.’

‘One in nine hundred and twenty-nine.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tommy, nodding. ‘And if the price of shell happens to fall, which it will one day, the value of pearls fished per ton will eventually exceed it.’

‘Mr James Clark offered you a job before your father died?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But not with the fleet?’

‘Not at sea at first, no. In the office on Thursday Island. I graded shell.’

‘And pearls?’ asked Maggie.

‘That’s right.’

‘And then he realised how much you already knew.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘And you looked at the amount of shell all the fleets harvested last season, and you told him that there should also be so many pearls.’

‘Mrs Porter! How did you know that? Mr James Clark is interested in science, and this,’ he tapped the table with a finger, ‘is science. Don’t you see? I know how many pearls each lugger, each diver, should be able to find. Based on the figures from previous seasons, it’s obvious that a good many pearls aren’t being turned in. Pearls are being stolen.’

‘Stolen?’ said Maggie.

Poor Tommy was smiling and holding up a piece of paper he’d previously been doodling on.

‘Let’s say the average shell size this season is seven inches and that a lugger will collect, say, six tons of shell. That’s seven thousands two hundred pairs. Of oysters, Mrs Porter. Do you see? That lugger should then, according to my calculations, also produce seven good round pearls.’

‘Like the pearl you showed me?’

‘Well, that one is even rarer in these waters, but yes.’ Tommy sat forward again and whispered. ‘And I’ll wager that there are others like it in the pockets of the men on the luggers. In fact,’ said Tommy, ‘did you know, Mrs Porter, that it’s likely the lugger that fished that pearl, also fished others like it? My father always said that pearls love company. Types of pearls are found together. Take any species. Of anything. There are racial variations.’ He pointed to the deck above. ‘And some shell beds produce shells with certain features. Black, white, yellow. Different shapes, or wormy. It may be that one bed of pearlshell is in a particularly strong current and the shells ingest a lot of worn grit. The grain is coated with nacre and,
bingo
, a nice round pearl from time to time. Or perhaps it’s in mud. A baroque. Or another might be plagued with some parasitic shell-boring crab. A blister. Different infections, if you like, produce different diseases, a different way of making pearls. But find one type of pearl and the chances are that nearby are pearls of a kind.’

Tommy certainly sounded like a man of science, thought Maggie. ‘And you learned all this from your father?’

‘And Mr Saville-Kent. That’s all they talked about.’ He finished his cigarette and put his hands behind his head, leaning back again in Porter’s chair.

Alice was still playing on the floor. There were footsteps on the deck above. Tommy went on quietly,
‘Everyone’s after pearls. They’re being bought and sold illicitly, not only within Mr James Clark’s fleet, but among
all
the fleets. It’s quite a business.’

‘And Mr James Clark wants you to stop them?’

Tommy stared out the deckhouse window. ‘No.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Maggie.

‘Mr James Clark wants me to buy the pearls back. Before anyone else does.’

‘You’re buying stolen pearls?’

‘Mrs Porter! Don’t you see? Bowden has sent a pearl buyer down to the fleets to do the same thing. Say a cheeky diver somehow opens a shell and steals a pearl that should rightly belong to the fleet owners. He has to keep it secret until he gets ashore, and then he has to find an illicit dealer. He makes a few quid, but he knows he’s going to be fleeced and it’s a big risk even bringing it ashore. All luggers and crew are searched nowadays when they get into port, so the diver will sell it before he gets to port if he can. But that means he’ll get even less for it. A pearl dealer who can buy pearls at sea makes a lot of money very quickly. But if the fleet owner enters the market, as it were, and buys his own pearls back, he still makes a substantial profit and he can drive the illicit dealer out of business.’ Tommy seemed to be enjoying himself.

‘Is that really happening, Tommy?’

‘Mrs Porter! Everyone knows it’s happening. And Bowden’s buyer has been going around
all
the fleets already this season buying snide pearls.’

‘Snide?’ asked Maggie.

‘Stolen. Some of the best have already been posted off to London. Mr James Clark has simply been forced to respond, by putting his own buyer into the field.’

‘So your job is really to buy illicit pearls?’

‘Of course.’

Maggie’s head was swimming. ‘But, Tommy, you can’t be leaving the schooner. How do you buy pearls from the luggers?’

‘Mrs Porter. I don’t need to.’ Tommy winked. ‘The snide pearls will come to me.’

Maggie, wanting fresh air, picked up Alice and went on deck.

A south-easterly had picked up.

‘Now this is a damned sight better than bobbing about in a hot bath,’ Porter called to her. ‘Maggie?’

She said, ‘A breeze. Lovely,’ and she went to sit under the awning in her chair. Alice played with the shell spoons that the crew carved.

Porter kept glancing at Maggie. Surely he must now be able to guess what she was keeping from him. He was standing behind the cabin; she could see only Captain Porter’s head, as if someone had placed it carefully on the cabin roof. It turned and smiled at her, a handsome head. She smiled weakly back at it and then closed her eyes.

Maggie Douglas and William Field Porter had married on Thursday Island and then gone by steamer to Auckland, where she was introduced to his family at Arney-road. She feared they would hate her, but they were overwhelmingly kind.

Within a few short months she was back on Thursday Island at the Residence, and Porter was off pearling. The wedding might as well have been a dream, and sometimes she could believe that it was, that she was the one going mad. Hope was there, of course, but she had her work at the hospital.

Her father was increasingly grumpy and spent much of his time in court and at Pearson’s. It wasn’t what she imagined married life would be at all.

‘Maggie,’ said Porter, when he returned five weeks later and she had frightened him with her intensity. ‘Live with me on the schooner.’

She had told him, half jokingly, her eyes still blurred by tears, that living with head hunters and a hold full of stinking shellfish might be better than living at the Government Residence, but it still wasn’t her idea of a place to raise a family.

He seemed so genuinely hurt by the criticism of his ship that she, briefly, pitied
him.
And that infuriated her; that his pride could in a moment submerge her
months
of anguish.

‘Where do you want to live then?’ he said.

‘With you,’ she said, pressing her head against his chest.

‘What’s wrong with here?’ This said on the Burns Philp Jetty.

‘Well, Paris,’ she said with a quick laugh.

‘What about Auckland?’

‘Will you be there?’ but she knew he would not. She felt tears coming again and she bit her lip.

‘Live aboard the schooner with me, Maggie. It’s not so bad.’

She hit him then, as hard as she could on the arm. Her father was already horrified that she had married a pearler.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said.

She’d spent the next few months turning the schooner into a home. The windows of the deckhouse were covered with curtains. She even clipped recipes from magazines and pasted them into a blank ledger: the
Australian Home Journal
,
Mutual Help Bureau
,
Making Good Wives Better.
She began to feel like a wife; at least, she made a good show of it.

But before all of that, on their first night on the schooner, lying crossways in a hammock with their heels on the steps and the cabin door open, the stars before them, Porter suddenly jumped up.

‘When you said “raise a family”…?’