Dead Man's Chest (11 page)

‘That’s the top cocky,’ Harry informed him. ‘Bluey.’

Tinker saw a lanky redheaded kid directing operations. He had a peaked cap, which was the only part of his attire not torn or faded.

‘He from Queenscliff?’

‘Nah,’ Harry spat. ‘He’s Point. Bit of a bastard. Hates us Queenscliff boys. But he’s good at trucks,’ he added reluctantly.

‘That he is,’ responded Tinker. The truck was emptying like magic.

‘He’ll have the hide off you if you don’t do as he says,’ Harry told him, spitting again. ‘Or jump to it fast enough to suit his fancy. He’s a slave driver, he is.’

‘What happens to all the stuff?’ asked Tinker.

‘Into the cargo shed,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t you think of wandering in there. It’s off limits to us boys unless we’re actually carryin’. And don’t think of nickin’ anything. They say that Jim Ellis killed a boy who took a penny he found on the floor of the shed.’

‘Oh, yair?’ asked Tinker with just the right amount of scorn. I’m good at this, he thought to himself.

‘Yair!’ declared Harry the Fisho.

‘And when was that?’ asked Tinker, taking off his tweed cap and scratching his scalp. He had got used to being clean in such a short time, he marvelled. The habits of a lifetime overturned in a moment.

‘Sometime.’ Harry waved off the question.

Tinker thought of his sisters’ skipping rhyme: ‘This week, next week, sometime, never.’ He diagnosed this story as ‘never’ and hoped that was true.The glaucous eyes of the boss fell on him for a moment and he shivered. On the other hand . . .

‘That’s us,’ said Harry as another big truck rumbled into the yard. ‘Come on, Eddie.’

Tinker left Gaston sitting behind the brick wall, where he would be safe from the guard dogs, which appeared to be very similar to illustrations in his school book
Animals of the World
labelled ‘timber wolves’. Then the boys were beside the truck. The redhead was selecting his team.

‘Bates, Billy, Harry,’ he said. ‘You new?’

‘Yair, I’m Eddie,’ said Tinker. ‘I need a job.’

‘I’m short a man, so you’ll have to do,’ he told Tinker. ‘Do just as I say and we’ll be sweet. Cut any capers and you could be dead, even if the boss don’t kill you. Trucks are dangerous and so is cargo, and I know how to unload it. See?’

‘I see,’ mumbled Tinker.

He saw. His name was written down on a list which was fixed to the back of the truck. Then the doors flew open and the world was full of boxes.

Jane and Ruth knocked politely at the front door of the Mason house and enquired for the boys. The acidulated butler gave them a warning frown.

‘You be careful of those young limbs of Satan,’ he advised, before admitting them and sitting them down in the parlour. Ruth was still wondering about Impossible Pie.

‘It’s marvellous,’ she said to Jane. ‘How can it know that it’s going to be a pie?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Jane replied. ‘It can’t. No more than any chemical reaction knows that it is going to be an oxide.’

‘Then why does it work? When I watched Dot mixing all those things together I thought it was going to be a mess.’

‘It must be a matter of density,’ Jane considered. ‘Coconut is less dense than milk or sugar, flour is less dense than coconut. It settles like a pond when you stop mixing it. The eggs make it miscible. With the addition of heat to fix the reaction. And so you have pie.’

‘I still think it’s wonderful,’ said Ruth.

‘It is,’ said Jane. ‘Chemistry is wonderful. All of your cooking is chemistry. That’s why you ought to pay more attention at school. Think about the physics of egg whites and meringue.’

‘Not now,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m on holiday. We’re agreed, though? If these boys turn nasty, we run away?’

‘Very fast,’ agreed Jane.

The boys shoved through the doorway and stood in a group, mute, panting a little. Jane was reminded of a pack of dogs. They always stayed within touching distance of each other, though they never touched without bruising; punching, thumping, pushing. She made a mental note.

‘The mater’s giving us a lift to Swan Island in the Bentley,’ announced Jolyon. ‘To see the filming. We’ve got a picnic. Come on! She gets into a frightful wax if anyone keeps her waiting.’

Jane and Ruth followed.

Mrs Mason was sitting in a long, black saloon car. Ruth swallowed.

‘She won’t drive like Miss Phryne,’ Jane whispered.

‘No one can,’ replied Ruth. ‘Perhaps we could just walk and meet them there?’

‘Courage,’ said her sister.

They allowed themselves to be loaded in. It was a tight fit. Jane found herself faced with a choice of sitting on someone’s knee or perching in the rumble seat with the picnic basket. As she was not sure of her balance she chose Kiwi as a suitable cushion. The boys hooted. Ruth blushed. Jane didn’t.

‘Boys,’ reproved Mrs Mason. She pulled out into Mercer Street and drove very carefully and circumspectly towards the sea.

They subsided a little. Kiwi tried in vain to find somewhere to put his hands which did not impact with Jane’s body. As they passed the railway station he tried a conversational opening.

‘This is where Benito is supposed to have hidden his treasure,’ he informed Jane. ‘Of course, no one really believes that it’s here but it’s fun to look for it.’

‘Why look for something if you don’t think it exists?’ she asked in her clear voice, unembarrassed by the closeness of the boy.

‘Because it might exist,’ explained Kiwi.

‘Then you should start off by believing that it does,’ she informed him. ‘And then devise experiments to test your hypothesis.’

‘Yes, I suppose . . .’

Ruth smiled. Suddenly she felt much better.

Jolyon intervened to rescue his friend.

‘This is where the phantom pigtail snipper haunts the shore,’ he growled.

‘Really?’ asked Ruth, instinctively clutching at her long braid.

‘Just along here,’ agreed Fraser. He had not previously spoken. It appeared that he did not approve of adding a sweet feminine influence to this alfresco outing. ‘He creeps along behind young girls and—slice! Their hair’s hanging by a thread.’

Ruth squeaked in alarm.

‘Here’s a couple of hairpins,’ said Jane, holding them out. ‘Coil up your plait and pin it under your hat. Then no attacker, however silent, can get at it.’

‘What about you, then?’ asked Fraser, his eyes glinting.

‘I don’t care,’ Jane told him. ‘It’s only hair. It’ll grow again.’

‘Boys,’ said Mrs Mason again.

The sweep of Swan Bay was before them. A few other cars were parked under the trees. There were several tables and benches, erected by the council, but Mrs Mason firmly ignored the pleading glances that the boys directed to the picnic basket.

‘You’ve only just had breakfast,’ she told them. ‘A nice little walk will give us an appetite.’

Jane looked at Ruth and shrugged. The boys were wearing boots. Mrs Mason had walking shoes. They were wearing sandals. But perhaps it wouldn’t be very far. Mrs Mason did not strike them as a hiking sort of woman. And it was a very nice day. The sun was strong but not burning, the sky was blue, and little boats with ivory-coloured sails scudded across the sea. Jolyon and Fraser picked up the basket and blanket and followed Mrs Mason along the sandy path.

‘See the ’couta boats?’ Kiwi asked Jane. ‘That’s the fishing fleet.’

‘Why do some of them have advertising messages on them?’ asked Jane. ‘Look, there’s Lifebouy Soap.’

‘Cheap canvas—they call them poverty sails. The fishos live over there, behind us. Fishermen’s Flat. They sell the stuff that isn’t ’couta to us. Kingfish, whiting, salmon trout, crayfish. ’Couta goes to Melbourne to the fish-and-chip shops. I’m hoping for garfish. Mrs Cook has a real good way of cooking them.’

‘And you buy them off the pier?’ asked Ruth. ‘How does she cook them?’

Kiwi looked astonished at the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he said in a faintly insulted tone. ‘I don’t know anything about cooking.’

Ruth turned her gaze out to sea. Boys, she thought.

‘And that’s Swan Island?’ asked Jane.

‘Yes. Because of the swans, see? There’s always lots of swans.’

‘What else is on the island?’ asked Jane, labouring a little as Ruth had withdrawn from the conversation.

‘Game,’ said Fraser. ‘Hunting. Ducks, rabbits, quail, pigeon—and swans, of course.’

‘You eat swan?’ asked Jane.

‘Nah, they taste of fish. We just shoot them,’ said Jolyon.

‘Barbarian,’ said Jane, losing patience with civilised discourse.

‘Yair, that’s us,’ agreed Fraser, seemingly pleased.

However good the picnic, thought Jane, it was not going to be worth a moment longer in such company. She took Ruth’s hand to suggest that they were leaving when the path led down onto a long narrow beach and the film company stood revealed.

There were only three. A young man was tending the tripod-perched camera. He was wearing overwrought plus-fours and a horrible checked cap. There was a tall muscular man in bathing costume and gown, who seemed to be directing, and a woman in a fuji dress, clutching a bundle of papers. Lily was sitting in a chair combing her long hair, now set into ringlets. They were surrounded by a fascinated collection of Queenscliff idlers, some of whom had other places to be, such as the butcher’s boy Amos, staring at Lily with his mouth dropping open and a look of unbearable longing in his eyes. Such as the fishmonger’s boy, complete with trike and basket.

‘No wonder his fish are stale,’ murmured Ruth to Jane.

‘I wonder how that camera works?’ murmured Jane.

Ruth knew that they were staying on that beach until her sister had an answer to her question, and resigned herself to a daydream about garfish.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hunger is the best sauce in all the world.

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote

Phryne was idling on her balcony when she heard a knock at the back door and realised that the Irish maid Máire had come and there was no one to let her in. Dot had taken her costume and gone swimming on her own. Phryne suspected she had gone to find her affianced Hugh, and why not?

Cursing lightly, she ran down the stairs and admitted the young woman, struck afresh by how positively translucent she was.

‘Come in, Máire, no work today, but you must let me give you breakfast—provided you cook it for yourself,’ said Phryne. ‘And since we are retaining you, here is the money for the next three days as well.’

‘That’s too much, Missus,’ the girl exclaimed.

‘Fair wage,’ said Phryne. ‘Now just take it, there’s a good girl, and you could cook me a slice or two of toast while you are at it.’

‘Of course,’ murmured the girl. She undid her headscarf, put on her apron, and began slicing bread. She seemed to divine where everything was by some sort of housekeeping sorcery. Phryne settled down at the kitchen table. She liked kitchens, as long as no one expected her to do any work.

‘What can I use in your fine kitchen, Missus?’ asked the girl.

‘Anything your heart desires,’ replied Phryne. ‘You ought to get a hat, though. That scarf isn’t going to keep the sun off your skin.’

‘I don’t wear it for that,’ said the girl, putting the big frying pan on the stove and melting a chunk of butter. ‘Could you fancy a few eggs and some bacon, now, and a little soda bread?’

‘If you want to cook it. I would really like a toasted sandwich with tomatoes and bacon.’

The girl took down the haunch of bacon which Ruth had purchased and began to slice it.

‘Fine bacon, now, I’d love a taste of the bacon. Not that fish isn’t good,’ said Máire a little hastily. ‘But when it’s nothing but fish you begin to crave for flesh. Now I’ve got some pennies we can buy some bacon, butter and lard and some more flour.’

‘What about potatoes?’ asked Phryne. ‘Oops. I mean, you need chips to go with the fish.’

Máire did not take offence at her assumption that the Irish needed perpetual potatoes.

‘The dad and Gráinne have an agreement with one of the market gardeners. They let us take tatties, neaps and parsnips and carrots—and fine strong cabbages—and we leave him fish. His wife cooks this sort of fish soup. They’re from Italy, to be sure. Take any trash fish, octopus and mussels and prawns—the dad picks ’em out of the bait basket. So we got bags of tatties and a fine meal they make. But I cannot take to them tomaties. New taste to me.’

‘Never mind, you’ll get used to them. And you may eat as much bacon as you wish.’

There was another tap on the back door.

‘My cousin Michael, he’s come to see it’s all right with me,’ apologised Máire. ‘I’ll send him away.’

‘Call him in,’ suggested Phryne. ‘He looks like he could do with a bit of bacon, too.’

The boy with his basket peeped in at the door. Phryne sat back with a pang.

She had once been dragged along to a soup kitchen in London by her Fabian Socialist sister Eliza, and she knew that look of heart-wrenching hunger. Food enough to keep body and soul together was provided. Treats, no. The expression made Phryne abrupt. She gave orders.

‘Come in, have some bacon, if you refuse my invitation I shall be cross. Cook some more, Máire. What a nice lot of handsome little fish! Are they for me?’

‘For you, Missus,’ husked the boy, salivating at the ambrosial scent of frying. ‘Garfish.’

‘Put them in the sink,’ said Phryne. ‘Ruth shall deal with them when she gets back.’

‘I can be after filleting the little beauties for you, Missus,’ offered the boy. His cousin cuffed at his ears.

‘Later,’ she told him. ‘Slice that cabbage for me, now, the bacon’s almost ready. Then you can wash your hands before you sit down,’ she added.

‘I will,’ promised the boy.

As the scent of bacon wafted through the house, the company was joined by Molly, who had been walking the grounds, delighted at the removal of her rival. She sat down at Phryne’s feet. Molly knew where the power in that kitchen resided. Máire produced Phryne’s sandwich and dished up two huge plates of bacon and cabbage for her cousin and herself. Then she sat down with a blush and recited grace in Irish. It was a short grace but heartfelt. Phryne nibbled her sandwich and watched them, feeling benevolent.

Tinker felt that he could not heave up another box and was about to resign when he thought of Miss Fisher and stiffened such sinews as he still had. The work was punishing and carried out at top speed. This was the third load of wooden crates which chinked suggestively and had been consigned, Tinker read, from Bundaberg, Queensland.

Tinker’s arms were aching, as was his back. His eyes were full of dust. As the third truck was emptied and reloaded with other cargo and roared off, a ten-minute break was decreed by the lanky redheaded slave master. Tinker and Harry the Fisho shared his remaining lunch, with assistance from Gaston, who was preserving his low profile behind the brick wall on which the boys were sitting. They drank deep from the bottle of cold sweet tea.

‘They was slap-up sangers,’ opined Harry. ‘Your mum make ’em?’

‘Nah,’ replied Eddie, thinking fast. ‘Got ’em give to me by a lady. Told her cook to make me some lunch. I did some yard work for her.’

‘Which lady?’ asked Harry. ‘Come on, Eddie, ain’t we pals?’

‘Nah,’ said Tinker, grinning.

‘Us Cliff boys gotta hang together,’ urged Harry. ‘’Gainst these Point bludgers.’

‘Back to work,’ said Bluey.

Jim Ellis had not moved from his rush-seated throne. The trucks rolled to a stop in front of him, received a nod and a wave, and then the driver got out, handed over his lading bills, and went off to the house for a cup of tea and a massive bun. The boys spoke enviously of these buns. Mrs Jim made them and they were reputedly cooked in a baking dish. And full of unnumbered currants.

‘You, you, Eddie, Harry, furniture into the shed,’ ordered Bluey.

Harry groaned. ‘Furniture’s the worst,’ he told Tinker. ‘Remember what I said about picking any little thing up.’

‘I remember,’ said Tinker.

‘Two to a table, one each for chairs, watch the bloody corners or I’ll dock yer,’ added Bluey.

Tinker was unimpressed. He was already being paid. He and Harry took up a large and very heavy mahogany table with great difficulty and staggered with it to the third shed.

This was the last shed, and Tinker needed to look around before he quit, which he meant to do with alacrity. Surely the storing of furniture was going to require more time than just lumping crates of illegal rum?

So it proved. Bluey stood inside the big, dusty shed and directed every movement. Tinker wondered if he was a relative of the Ellis family or, if not, why he worked so hard, as though every moment was being deducted in pennies from his money box.

‘Left side,’ he told Harry and Tinker. ‘Against the wall, on its legs and wrap it up nice in a blanket. Scar the top and I’ll skin youse both.’

There was no doubt in Tinker’s mind that he meant it. They hefted the table into its corner and leaned on the wall, panting, while Bluey examined the glossy top, grunted, and swathed it in an old blue blanket evidently stolen from a naval hospital.

‘Four chairs on top,’ he ordered Tinker and Harry, and bustled away.

‘I’ve had about enough,’ wheezed Tinker.

‘Hard work,’ agreed Harry. ‘But I can’t go home without sixpence. That’s for chips for tea. I already got the fish. Hauled in a boat this mornin’. Come on, he’ll be going crook in a jiff.’

That was when Gaston made his move.

He had followed Tinker into each of the sheds as he entered them, slinking along next to the galvanised iron wall and escaping the notice of his large-fanged cousins, whom he suspected would not feel any family or even species loyalty to a fellow canine, but might consider him more in the nature of an entree. Like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, his motto was ‘run and find out’. The first two sheds contained only smells which made him sneeze and cartons which clinked. Below the notice of a nobly bred dog.

But in the third shed there was a scent, faint but familiar, and he dropped his small nose to the floor and tracked it. He knew this smell! It was the fragrance of his own people!

He pursued it to a large collection of furniture, faced with a big wardrobe, tied together with a rope and marked
Sale
. Their smell was there. But they weren’t. Struck with sudden unbearable loss, he put up his muzzle and started to howl.

Tinker put down his chair and ran. Gaston was scrabbling at the back of a dresser and howling like a small banshee. Tinker grabbed for the dog, but Bluey was before him.

‘No dogs,’ he yelled, snatching at Gaston and lifting him into the air. ‘Who owns this mutt?’

‘Me,’ said Tinker. ‘Give him back!’

‘I’ve a mind to break the mongrel’s neck,’ snarled Bluey, swinging Gaston out of reach. Tinker jumped for him and missed. Bluey laughed.

At this point Gaston made up his mind. Small dogs have their dignity and his was affronted. Those who would treat a terrier in this abandoned way must be snubbed, and, in Gaston’s opinion, firmly bitten. He twisted, snapped, and Bluey dropped him to clutch at his hand.

‘I quit,’ yelled Tinker, grabbing Gaston and tucking him under his arm. He ran out of the shed and confronted Jim Ellis on his chair.

‘You owe me threepence,’ said Tinker.

The yard fell silent. The drivers, watching from the verandah, clapped ironically. The boys gave out a murmur of admiration. From the shed they could hear Bluey swearing in pain. Tinker held out his cupped hand.

‘Here’s your threepence,’ said Jim Ellis after a nerve- shattering interval. ‘If I see yer here again, I’ll feed yer to the dogs. You and yer mutt.’

‘Bye!’ said Tinker. He walked to his bike, unchained it, put Gaston in the carrier, and rode nonchalantly away.

When he was out of sight he rode for Queenscliff as though wolves were after him.

‘What is the cameraman humming?’ asked Jane. They had insinuated themselves to the front of the audience.

‘Miss Phryne has a record of it,’ said Ruth, who liked music. ‘From an opera. It’s “The Anvil Chorus”. You remember, the anvils all sounding? Clang, clang, ca-clang, ca-clang, ca-clang . . .’

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Jane, who considered music to be interesting only in a mathematical sense. ‘He must be using it to pace the turns of the reel. Four-four time, of course.’

‘Quite,’ said Ruth, who had no idea what her sister was talking about.

‘Well, you couldn’t turn a wheel—it looks like twice a second or so—to a waltz or a polka. I wonder why he doesn’t just use a metronome, like we have on the piano back home?’

‘Because it’s boring,’ said the cameraman, who had finished a scene and was now waiting for the director to arrange and instruct the large crowd of people who had turned up, dressed as pirates. ‘I’m not a machine, so I like to sing.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘I see.’

‘It is two turns a second, by the way,’ the young man told her. ‘That’s sixteen frames a second or one foot of film. And in case you are interested in facts, a reel of film is one thousand feet long and that will play for about thirty minutes.’

‘Correct,’ said Jane, to whom calculations were second nature.

‘This is a Bell and Howell 2709, best camera on the market,’ added the camera operator, pushing back his horrible checked cap. ‘Pity about the film, but there you are. You local?’

‘No, we’re visitors,’ said Ruth.

‘Thought you must be. This is a bit of a backwater. No one’s been interested in the machine before,’ he added, somewhat hurt. ‘Just the charmless dressed up to please the brainless.’

‘This isn’t the sort of film you want to make, is it?’ divined Ruth.

‘It buys shoes for the baby,’ admitted the cameraman. ‘Until I can form my own company and do the sort of films I want. Horror. Dark doings. This’d make a bonzer spot for some blood-sucking ghosts. But there it is.’

‘Ruth.’ Ruth put out her hand. The cameraman took it.

‘Ginger, they call me. Drop in again tomorrow and I’ll let you try the camera,’ he offered. Jane beamed.

‘We’ll be here,’ said Ruth resignedly. ‘We must go. Mrs Mason is calling us.’

Mrs Mason was suggesting a bathe in the sea beyond the crowd of pirates. The boys had not been able to get close to the camera but were convulsed with merriment at the acting.

‘There she was, standing in the sea, one arm stretched out, mouthing, “Come back!”,’ giggled Jolyon.

There she was indeed, Ruth observed. Lily was sitting in a canvas chair, dressed in a crinoline and bonnet, and a woman was painting her face afresh. She waved a hand at Jane and Ruth and smiled. Lily was in Paradise. She glowed with joy.

‘Where shall we swim?’ Ruth asked. It seemed very unkind to mock a girl who had attained her heart’s delight.

‘Boys, carry the picnic,’ ordered Mrs Mason.

They obeyed, muttering. Mrs Mason forged ahead, the young persons followed, and came onto a sandy beach with no one else in sight.

‘Here,’ she decided.

The boys stripped to their one-pieces and ran shouting into the water. Jane and Ruth, who had their bathing costumes on under their clothes, removed their dresses and followed. The water was refreshingly cool. Jane, not a confident swimmer, stuck to the edge, where the sand was firm underfoot. Ruth stayed with her.

Then the boys pounced on them, shoving and splashing. Jane went under and struggled and could hear their laughter above her. They were strong and there were three of them. Fraser grabbed her by her plait and ducked her. She had not taken a breath and when she struggled to the surface he ducked her again, holding her under by her hair.

Ruth dived into the middle of the fray, seized her sister and hauled her up into her arms. Jane wheezed and choked, red-faced and furious.

‘Beasts!’ yelled Ruth. ‘Leave her alone!’

‘Girls,’ said Fraser disgustedly. ‘Can’t take a joke!’

‘Get out of here,’ threatened Ruth with such venom that two swam away. Kiwi remained, anxious that the joke had gone too far. Fraser really was a bit of an animal.