Thirteen Pearls (8 page)

Leon snorted. ‘More like you're teaching Red than the other way round.' He gave a languid, big-cat stretch as he yawned. ‘I'm earning a ticket to go see my girl.'

Lucky girl
, I thought before I could censor it. It was almost impossible to remove my gaze from those beautiful biceps and that strong square jaw.

Out loud, I said, ‘I'm beat. Got to hit the sack.' I'd been here fewer than five hours and I was already flattening my vowels and talking like a ‘dinkum Aussie'. Mum would be appalled. I was starting to sound like Leon. Welcome to Far
far
North Queensland.

Like a sleepwalker, I navigated my way back into the shed and crashed on my own bed. At some stage during the night, I woke for a second time. From outside came the soft rhythmic shushing of the sea. The heat inside was stifling and a mosquito buzzed around my face.

From Aran's bed came a whimper, then another, and he began to sob. Sighing, I reached down, bundled up his skinny body and hauled him up into my narrow bed. I tucked an arm around him and used my spare hand to wipe his forehead, just like Dad used to do with me when I was sick. Instantly, he stopped crying. He tucked his thumb into his mouth and nestled against me.

I was surprised by how tender this made me feel. Perhaps I'd been wrong and he wasn't the monster I'd imagined him to be only hours earlier. Maybe he was frightened about having someone new come into his life, especially with his mother so far away. I decided that I'd been wrong about the kid. Tomorrow we'd wake up, I'd forage around to make him a relatively healthy breakfast and then we 'd spend the day searching for shells and making cubbies in the mangroves and playing pirates and explorers.

A
N EARSPLITTING – COCK-A-DOODLE-DO
reverberated inside my skull. (Roosters were meant to be a delightful nursery rhyme creature that welcomed the day beneath a big smiley-face sun, but to me the crowing was far more malevolent.) It was still practically dark, for heaven's sake.

Aran slept soundly through it, and the next siren blast.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DO!

I groaned and rolled over into a warm, smelly puddle. I patted it gingerly. Not exactly a puddle, more of a soaked patch reeking of ammonia.

I instantly recalled Leon's confiding whisper last night, ‘Aran wets the bed.'

Fantastic. There were clumps of dried spaghetti in my hair, patches of mangrove mud on my legs, and now I smelled like one of the winos in Fogarty Park.

I pulled a sarong around me, ripped back the curtain and stumbled into the kitchen to wash my hands, only to stop short from slamming straight into Kaito.

For a moment I watched through bleary, sleep-deprived eyes as Kaito made tea. He was using real tea leaves and not just dangling a teabag like Tash's mum did (my mum only drank coffee). Instead, Kaito swirled hot water from the kettle into a waiting cup to warm it; the only cup not crawling with unmentionable micro-flora and -fauna.

He poured the tea with mesmerising precision with a series of small pauses, as he tilted back the battered aluminum teapot and then allowed the steaming liquid to flow freely into the cup again. When the ritual was complete, he offered me the cup.

I shook my head and croaked, ‘Water.'

Kaito searched about helplessly for a glass that wasn't clouded with milky residue or covered in greasy finger marks.

At this hour of the morning, I could never do niceties. ‘Where 's the shower.'

He pointed. ‘Out through that door, behind the bamboo screen. It's not really a shower. More of a bucket situation.'

My arms and legs goose-pimpled as I scooped ice-cream container after ice-cream container of water out of the plastic drum, sluicing off wee and mangrove mud and spaghetti. Finally, when I smelled and
felt
clean, I towel-dried my hair with the sarong before wrapping the damp rectangle of fabric around me, and returning to the shed.

I was human again. But when I looked at the kitchen my heart sank. I had no idea how to tackle such foul detritus. I mentally attempted to clear some bench space on which to stack things to rinse and . . .

‘Who used up all the water?' Uncle Red stomped into the shed, his face thunderous. ‘I'd just filled a whole drum.'

I gulped. ‘Um, me. Sorry. Aran wet the bed.'

Red stared.

‘My bed,' I clarified. ‘Is there a water shortage on the island?' I came from Cairns: water was never an issue – six months of the year it rained. How was I meant to know it would be a problem up here?

‘Yes,' Red said coldly, ‘There
is
a water shortage on this island. Even though it's the wet season, we're in a rain shadow from the bigger islands. In the future, you'll need to keep your water use to a minimum. We can't afford to run out.'

I fought hard to not collapse into a quaking schoolgirl. I could understand now why Mum hated him – he
was
a bully.

And I wouldn't be my mother's daughter if I didn't counter: ‘What about washing? I saw the heap of Aran's wet sheets. They look as though they've been piled there for weeks.'

At least Uncle Red had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘You'll have to hand wash them. The machine uses too much water.'

‘And all this washing up?'

It was weirdly pleasurable to see him on the back foot. But he wouldn't meet my eyes. ‘Things got a bit crazy here after Lowanna had to go. She did all the female jobs. Obviously you'll need to use water for that.'

I could almost see my mother fainting and falling from our rickety verandah at this crude demarcation. Pink jobs and blue jobs. Dad would have shaken his head, wondering how two such different people could have come from the same family. My mother never washed up. She said it gave her eczema, but I've yet to see a rash on her lily-white hands. Basically she just resented the whole business. Said it was pointless – all the dishes clean and gleaming and then they got mucked up again the next day and the day after that.

I pressed on. ‘Does Aran actually talk?'

Uncle Red shifted his tree trunk legs (it was a wonder the concrete didn't crack beneath them) and his eyes darted from one side of the shed to another, glancing anywhere but at me. ‘He and Lowanna used to talk in Thai.'

‘Yeah, but does he speak any English?'

Uncle Red's gaze alighted on a spanner half-buried beneath a pile of rolled socks, old tobacco papers and a beer coaster. ‘There it is! Boys need it down at the plant.' He strode over, grabbed it, and stumped out.

I watched, mouth open, fascinated by this act of unapologetic subject-avoidance. If I'd tried that on with Mum and Dad they would have hunted me down and badgered me for an answer. Or I would have hunted them down – bursting into the bathroom while Dad was shaving his sideburns, or interrupting Mum mid-typing to get the answer to my question. And just imagine trying to do that in school!

I took a deep breath. Four thousand dollars and the
Ulysses
would be completed. Well, complete enough for me to sail enough to get my sea legs at least.

I ducked into our bedroom partition. Aran was still sleeping in the patch of wee – poor kid. I'd let him sleep and then wrangle him out later to the blue shower drum. I tugged on a singlet and shorts and for good measure grabbed my iPod too. Then I doubled back to run a brush through my hair and tie it in a ponytail so that strands wouldn't flop in my face while I tackled THE NIGHTMARE BEYOND THE CURTAIN.

There was no discernible mirror, which was good in terms of vanity, but unnerving too, with two disturbingly cute guys around and no way at all of knowing if there would be spaghetti in my hair. But it didn't matter what I looked like because the boys were down at the plant.

I surveyed the towers of stacked skanky plates and knives crusted with stuff that had stuck like cement, the festering little mould farms in the bottoms of bowls, something that smelled nauseatingly like off milk, and the piece de resistance – a drowned mouse in a frying pan partly filled with water that shimmered with oily globules.

The greatest thing about music is that even the most dire situations can be rendered cool and manageable, if the right track accompanies it. When I was younger I could barely listen to music because it all sounded like white noise. Then something happened and music turned into lyrics with big, symphonic swells of emotion. Something I could get lost in. I'd found Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians'
Shooting
Rubber Bands at the Stars
(Dad said she was big when he was a teenager) on iTunes, and as a bonus I could even make out her lyrics!

When my favourite track came on I swung my hips and grabbed a couple of plates to shake as tambourines. In my mind, I pictured the spoons kicking out in a chorus line, Disney-style, while brown-ringed mugs howled the low part. I spun around, waggling the plates in the air and . . . crashed into Leon, donking his head with a tambourine plate.

‘Sheezers!' He grabbed the side of his head.

I stared, less concerned about hitting him than I was at being busted pulling such cheesy dance moves. I held up the offending plate. ‘Um . . . air-tambourine. Only more solid.'

‘Right.' He was still clutching his left temple.

‘It's actually quite complex,' I continued. ‘Needs a 5/4 rhythm to really shine. Trying to invisibly convey the tinkling of those jingly bits takes real skill.'

Leon winced again. ‘You don't know anything about music, do you?'

I shook my head, ashamed. My lack of musicality could be directly attributed to my mother, who could neither dance nor sing nor keep time to save herself.

‘It's called a time signature, not a rhythm. Myself, I prefer to play air-organ. I can show you if you like.' Leon mimed rolling back the cuffs of his non-existent sleeves (in the process, drawing my attention to his perfect arms) and gave a curt, tight-lipped bow. Then – he went for it, tousled hair flying as he glared and pounded against the invisible keys like Mozart on amphetamines. At the end he bowed in every direction, one hand tucked behind his ripped jeans, and sweat gleaming on his forehead.

I plunged my tambourine plates back into the sink and applauded fiercely. ‘Bravo! Bravo! Encore!'

Leon shook his mane, dismissing my praise as if I were an amateur beneath contempt. ‘I stuffed up the third movement.'

‘I would never have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out.'

‘There's never enough time to practise up here, and the sea air makes the organ pipes rust.'

Uncle Red's voice boomed through the open door in an incomprehensible rumble.

Leon rolled his eyes. ‘Boss sent me to get another spigot. Reckons he left it under the sink.' He bravely ferreted in the dark recesses of the sink cupboard (where clearly no man had gone before) and dragged out a worn, blue metal wheel attached to a tap fitting.

Leon turned at the doorway and gave the thumbs up. ‘Good to see you're going troppo so soon. Second day too.'

‘When did it happen to you?' I asked.

‘Years ago, mate, years ago.'

‘So you've lived up here for a while then?'

He shrugged. ‘Come from a family of cane-growers down at Tully. Left school in Year 10, did some professional pig-shooting for a while until I got sick of losing my dogs, and did my fitter and turner apprenticeship instead. But I got bored with that too and lived on a hippie commune and ate coconuts and sanded didgeridoos. Made a killing doing that, but then I met a Danish babe, fixed up a Kombi and we hit the road.'

I flicked away a prickle of girly envy. I'd never be described as a Danish babe. Obviously because I wasn't Danish, but also because I simply don't rate in babe category – that rarified status belongs to people like Tash.

‘So what happened to the Danish . . . um . . . girl?'

‘Visa hassles.' Leon twisted the spigot in his palm. He had big hands with thick, calloused fingers. ‘She had to go home to start her medicine degree anyway. So that's why I'm here – saving to go see her.'

‘Couldn't you have earned more money fitting and turning than being an oyster hand?'

Leon tilted his head, considering. His strong profile and green eyes made him look more lion-like than ever. He 'd been named well. Not for the first time, I wondered if the names we're given at birth shape who we are and what we become, or if it's the other way round. Leon was like a lion. Uncle Red had a red-hot temper on him. Kaito was a smooth mix of sea and stars . . .

‘I like variety,' Leon said. ‘It's cool learning new things. I get bored once I know how to do something. And Red promised if I work through until March he 'll let me choose a few exceptional grade pearls and have them set into earrings and a ring for Kristiana.'

Kristiana. Sounded like a supermodel name. Unlike Edith – which is the sort of name for someone who wears a body cage and marries a gay Russian painter. I shook myself out of it. Who cared what Leon's girlfriend looked like? I didn't even want to think about that sort of stuff. I would be sailing solo (alone, by myself, without others) around the world –
remember
?