Pearls (29 page)

***

George allowed himself a tight smile. 'So that's the man you said you admired so much,' he said. 'He's nothing but an oaf and a bully.'

Jamie was silent.

George shook his head. 'Extend the hand of friendship to that kind, and you just lose your fingers!'

Jamie looked around. The tomato juice had already dried to a crust on the leather upholstery. He wondered what had made McKenzie so angry. They had only been trying to do him a good turn, after all.

Chapter 47

The western veranda of the house had been enclosed with mesh, and converted into Jamie's bedroom. It was the most pleasant room in the whole house, open day and night to any cool wind coming from the bay. Kendo had lit camphor wood and strong incense to keep away the mosquitoes.

Kate sat down on Jamie's bed and brushed the damp curls from his forehead. She felt him flinch. He did not like her touching him anymore. He was growing away from her. He would be a young man soon and would be banned from coming into his bedroom to kiss him goodnight.

She brushed her lips against his forehead. 'Goodnight, Jamie.'

'Goodnight, Mother.'

Just as she reached the doorway he asked her: 'Do you know a pearler called McKenzie?'

She felt her heart skip. 'Mister McKenzie? Yes, yes, I know him.' She tried to sound casual.

'He was rude to us today.'

'Rude to you? Why?'

'We went over there in the car, to take him and his family some food for Christmas. Because they're poor.'

'We?'

'Me and Father. It was an enormous hamper. You would think people would be grateful when you do things for them.'

George had not mentioned this to her, of course. 'What did Mister McKenzie say?'

'He got very angry. I don't know why.'

'Well, perhaps he was hurt.'

'Why should he be hurt? Father was just being kind.'

'I dare say he offended Mister McKenzie's pride.'

'There's tomato stains all over the car. He practically threw them at us! Father should have had him arrested.'

'Well, perhaps you'll understand when you get older. Go to sleep now.'

She went out, turning off the carbide lamp on the wall. Then she went to sit on the veranda to wait for George to come back from the office.

He was working late again. These days he spent more and more time at the office. It added weight to what Conrad had told her. Something was very wrong.

She looked up at the night, at the scattering of stars across the black sky. Looking into the void like this makes our own problems seem so insignificant, she thought. Yet if you believe what the astrologers said, the stars had a hand in everyone's fate. They said it was like the workings of some enormous clock, each piece interlocking with another, each tiny cog and wheel turning something else. Every life interconnected. Was that the way it was?

She wished she could decipher her own code among all those celestial messages. Where was she going with her life? It had all turned out so differently from her childhood dreams. Just a handful of bad decisions had brought her here; Cameron's baby, George's compromise.

The one thing she did not regret was Jamie.

Perhaps, when he was a man, she could start thinking about herself again; if there was anything left to think about by then. She was, after all, a woman in a man's world.

Chapter 48

The kerosene lamp hissed and spluttered, the night insects dancing around it. A tribe of Djuleun were dancing
corroboree
behind the ti-trees, the rhythm of their dancing sticks haunting the hot, still night. Cameron pushed away his dinner plate and lit a cigarette.

He looked around the barren kitchen at the stained canvas chairs and the bare iron walls and thought about his home in Edinburgh and the grinding mediocrity of his life there that he swore to leave behind and thought: all I've done is exchange one kind of poverty for another. Instead of grey, terraced houses and cold, misty rain there is mosquitoes and stultifying heat.

Rose reached across the table and took his hand. 'Don't look so sad.'

'It was nae meant to be this way, Rosie.'

'Let's leave here.'

Cameron shook his head. 'It's like admitting I'm beaten.'

'The pearls are gone, Cam. The days of quick fortunes are over.'

'I keep thinking that if I can just hold on for one more season ... just one good pearl, Rosie. That's all it would take. One good pearl.'

'If you want to stay, I'll stay.'

He brushed a wisp of hair from her face. 'I was going to dress you in silks!'

'Can't milk the goat in silk, Cam.'

He kissed her. 'One day I'll find my pearl, Rosie. And you'll have everything a woman can want. You'll see!'

***

Jamie passed an old Malay grandfather near the jetty. He was hauling four enormous white enamel billy cans, balanced on a bamboo pole he carried across his shoulders. Seawater slopped from the cans which each contained scores of small cockle oysters gathered from the rocks below Cable Beach. The old man would get a shilling a beerpot measure for them in town.

Just then he heard a high-pitched mewling, like the sound of a baby crying. Jamie looked around, but could see nothing. As he walked out onto the jetty, the sound grew louder.

He peered over the edge. There was a hessian sack sinking in the mud directly below him. Something was moving inside it. The sound was definitely coming from there.

He found a split boom mast lying halfway up the beach and dragged it back to the tidal edge. The sack was lying in the thick mud about ten yards out. Jamie was reluctant to go out there, not in his school clothes. His mother would kill him.

He tried to hook the sack with the end of the pole and drag it towards him. Whatever was in the sack squealed even louder, and sank further into the glutinous mud. Jamie tried again, overbalanced and sank ankle deep into the mud.

'Hell!' Jamie said.

He tried again with the pole. It was useless. Well, he had one shoe full of mud already, he supposed another wasn't going to make much difference. He waded in. It was like walking through sticky black treacle. He reached the sack and tried to lift it, but it was heavier than he imagined and had sunk fast. So then he grabbed it with two hands and tried to drag it. His hands slipped on the wet hessian and he fell backwards into the mud.

'Bloody damned bloody rotten bloody bloody hell!' He stood and looked at his clothes. What a mess. He was done for.

Just then the sack came alive again. There was something inside it, trying to get out. Jamie took care to get a firmer grip this time and dragged the sack back to the beach.

The sack had been tied off with rope and the seawater had soaked the knot making it difficult to loosen off. He picked at it with his fingers but it was impossible. Instead he found a tear in the sack itself, hooked his fingers inside and tore it open.

He reached in to rescue whatever was inside.

'Hell!'

It bit him.

A tiny black puppy wriggled out and stood there yapping at him. Jamie leaped back. He was bleeding! 'You ungrateful little mongrel! I should have let you drown!' The pup snarled, bearing its small, needle-white teeth. 'To hell with you!' Jamie turned and stamped off down the road. But the puppy followed, dogging his heels, ignoring the rocks and curses he hurled in its direction.

***

'Well look hyar,' Wes said.

Jamie stood on top of the dune, his long grey socks and bare knees crusted with mud. A small black dog stood a few paces behind him.

'It's Jamie Niland,' Elvie whispered.

'I knows it,' Wes answered. He put his big, ham fists in the pockets of his dungarees and shouted. 'Mebbe you belong at school right now, boy.'

'So does she,' Jamie said, pointing at Elvie.

'Mebbe so.' He grinned. 'What can I do fer you, boy?'

'I'm just standing here.'

'Guess you is,' Wes said. He looked at Jamie's legs. 'Sweet Jay-sus, what you done to yo'self?'

Jamie did not answer. He turned to look for the black pup but he had already wandered down the dune and was sniffing with interest at Elvie's leg. She bent to pat it, wrinkling her nose against the smell. It needed a good bath.

'Is this your dog?' she shouted.

'No. It bit me.'

'I knowed a feller got bit by a dawg,' Wes said. 'He up and die.'

Jamie blanched. 'I don't care. I'm not scared.'

Wes's teeth flashed white. 'That so, boy?'

Elvie picked up the little dog up in her arms. It began to make soft, mewing noises. 'Can I have him?' she said.

Jamie couldn't believe it. Why didn't the damned dog bite her as well? 'I don't want him,' he lied. To cover his disappointment he shifted his attention to the rowboats heading to and from the Roebuck. 'What are you doing?' he said.

'Loading provisions on the
Roebuck
for the season. Mebbe you want to help.'

'Can I?' Jamie said, and immediately regretted how eager he had sounded. 'I mean, I don't mind. If you think you need a hand.'

'Mebbe I do,' Wes told him. He walked up the dune and put his arm on Jamie's shoulder. 'Come on, boy.'

Elvie watched them walk away down the beach, unsure what to make of this. She knew her pa did not like Jamie's father. She had seen him throw tomatoes at his car. Perhaps she was supposed to hate him too.

But here was Wes putting his arm around Jamie Niland and talking to him like ... well, like he talked to her. It was confusing.

And Jamie had given her his dog.

She carried it over to the water tank in the foreshore camp. 'You need a good bath, mister, you stink,' she scolded it. 'Then we'll have to think of a name for you, won't we?'

Chapter 49

The next day Cameron was supervising the loading of the rest of the provisions aboard the
Roebuck
, when Wes caught his arm and pointed to the foreshore. A small boy was picking his way through the jumble of iron and timber shacks of the McKenzie camp. Cameron felt a familiar clutch of loss. It was him.

'Hey, Jamie!' Wes shouted, waving.

Jamie waved back enthusiastically, then hesitated when he saw Cameron. He stopped a dozen paces from where they were standing, put his hands in the pockets of his shorts.

'This hyar the skip,' Wes said. 'Mebbe you go wid him today, hokkay?'

Jamie said nothing.

'Hello Jamie,' Cameron said to him.

'I don't know about this,' Jamie mumbled.

'You want to know 'bout pearls, reet?' Wes coaxed him. 'Da skip, he knows everyting dere is. He tell you more better even than me.'

Jamie shuffled his feet.

'Why do you want to learn about pearling, boy?'

'I want to be like my father.'

Wes and Cameron exchanged a look. 'Like your father?'

'I want to be a big pearler.'

'Aye, well. That's a noble ambition. Come by me then.'

He walked off. And after a few moments, Jamie followed.

***

He rowed him out to the
Roebuck
in the lighter. He gave him a quick tour of the lugger, and then tossed him an oyster shell.

'A pearl!' Jamie said, in wonderment, fingering the small round in the hollow of the shell.

'Your first lesson, boy,' Cameron said, taking the shell from his hand and crushing the round under his thumb. An ooze of mud spilled out of it. 'It's just a blister. A borer worm gets into the shell and the water pressure does the rest. It looks like a pearl but it's nae real. Worthless.' He tossed the shell back onto the deck. 'Here's a pearl!' He reached into his pocket and took out a small leather pouch. He dropped the contents into the palm of his hand; a small pearl, slightly misshapen, thirty or forty grains. 'If it were only a wee bit larger, a wee bit rounder, it might be worth something to someone. But it's aye a bonny thing, do you nae think?'

Jamie stared at it and nodded. 'Do all shells have pearls?'

Cameron laughed. 'One in a hundred. And most of them are too small to be worth nae more than dropping in a barmaid's jar! Do you ken how a pearl is made?'

Jamie shook his head.

'It's made by the tide. The tide is the pulse of the sea, it keeps the ocean and everything that's in it alive. The oyster feeds off the tide, eating tiny things called plankton that's carried in the current. But sometimes a speck of sand finds its way inside the shell and the oyster cannae get rid of it, it's like having a wee stone in your shoe, I suppose. So it puts a kind of saliva around the speck of sand, to protect itself, and there's nacre in it, and it gets hard and forms a pearl. Some pearls are misshapen, that's what they call barrack, you can buy them from any of the pearlers by the carat, they keep them in jam tins. But a good round might be worth anything. It all depends on the size, the lustre of it, the colour, the smoothness. A man might wake up one morning poor, by sunset he can find a pearl and be rich as a czar!'