Thirteen Pearls (4 page)

‘What about Nanna?' I demanded.

‘Her either,' he admitted.

‘So you're telling
me
?'

Red grunted. ‘Life just seemed to run away with me. Got so busy. Never seemed to have the time.'

‘You didn't have the time to call your own mother to tell her she had a grandson?'

‘Steady on. The boy's Lowanna's. From a previous . . . ah . . . relationship. I guess I just forgot to mention it.'

Forgot to mention it? Hid it from us, more likely. I felt a wash of warmth about being who I was with the parents I had. We might speak like characters from a sitcom, but we always told each other the
truth
.

‘So how old is he?'

‘Aran?'

‘Yeah. Is that his name?'

‘Yeah, Aran. He's four.' Red broke off. I glanced at the doorway, half-expecting to see Mum standing there. He started up again, his tone desperate. ‘I'm not great at handling a kid, Edith – Edie. And this is a busy time at the pearl farm. I rang because I uh . . . I need a babysitter while Lowanna's away. I didn't just want to get in anyone from the island. I want someone I can trust. Family.'

He hadn't seen me for eight years. How did he know I wasn't some self-cutting screw-up?

‘Are you on school holidays yet?' he asked hopefully.

‘Nope. Three weeks of school left.' Three-and-a-bit weeks of guilt-free air conditioning and unofficially doing nothing. Then six sweltering weeks of officially doing nothing.

‘So there 's no chance of you coming up straight away? I'd need you until at least after New Year.'

Hold your horses, mate. I hadn't even agreed to go up. I remained silent.

‘I'll pay you,' he said.

Yeah? How much?
I thought about Tash and how she was with Jason and any of the other three hundred boys after her.
Play hard to get.
‘Actually, I kinda had plans and I don't know if . . . '

‘How much do you want?' Uncle Red demanded.

‘Four thousand dollars.' I said. ‘Cash.'

There was a sharp indrawn breath from the other end of the receiver.

I thought – give or take a few hundred bucks.

He grunted. ‘Three weeks is a bit far off. How soon can you get here?'

I should have added that few hundred. My exams were over. ‘Should be able to get up there on Wednesday.' I didn't want to give him any reason whatsoever to back out.

‘I'll book your flight.'

It was only afterwards, as I jumped up and down screaming so much with elation that the floorboards bounced and the whole falling-apart house shook on its stilts, that I remembered about nature 's oracle.

This had been most unexpected.

‘Y
OU'RE NOT SERIOUSLY GOING ARE YOU
?' Mum toyed with a limp strip of tempeh before plunging it back into the stir-fry and fishing out a water chestnut instead; it was Dad's night to cook. ‘You've never even looked after a child for an hour, let alone two whole months.'

‘I'll be fine,' I said, feeling not fine. I had been dazzled by the prospect of easy money – the exact amount I needed to finish building my boat. But now that the flights were booked and I was definitely going, I was secretly packing it. It was one thing to take Uncle Red's money and do a good job; another thing entirely to go up there without any babysitting skills whatsoever. The last time I'd interacted with a small child had been a week ago when I'd pushed in front of it to grab a Weiss bar from the ice-cream freezer. What would Aran eat? Did I have to teach him things? Would he talk? Would he be able to wipe his own bum?

‘Don't make her doubt herself, Coral,' Dad said, shaking half a bottle of tamari onto his rice. ‘This will be character-building for Edie. Besides,' he whistled through his teeth, ‘four thousand smackeroos . . . I'll tell you what kiddo. You stay here and type up forms to deal with waste-of-space boyfriends in unsuitable living arrangements and I'll look after the kid.'

‘I'm not worried about Edie 's capacity to take care of herself,' Mum said in a defensive tone that betrayed her true feelings. ‘Red is a bully. Look at what happened when Dad died. Redmond practically forced Mum into that horrible nursing home.'

I looked down at my cooling stir-fry and poked aside a stick of zucchini to reveal the glazed blue fishes beneath. This was an issue to stay out of. Personally, I thought that if Mum was really so upset, she could have had Nanna come and stay here. But there was her thesis and the dodgy front steps and the fact that Nanna twittered on from morning to night. It would have driven us all nuts. Besides, it wasn't as if Mum owed Nanna dutiful daughterliness or anything. Nanna had scarpered when Mum was only nine, off to sit in an ashram at the feet of Swami Somethingorother.

‘And what about Dad's legacy money that went missing?'

Dad shrugged. ‘Looks like Edie 's going to recoup some of it for you.'

Mum's springy red curls glowed in the citronella candlelight as she tossed her head and let her fork fall to the plate with a clatter. ‘I don't like that he went and got himself a—'

‘Mail-order bride?' I finished for her.

Her face twisted, wresting with the extreme political incorrectness of this term.

‘Who knows what he told Lowanna about himself when he met her,' she muttered.

(Subtext: Red is a self-aggrandising skunk.)

‘And he told Edie he
forgot
to tell us she already had a kid.'

(Subtext: He probably proposed the day he met her because he was thinking with a certain part of his anatomy.)

‘I'm worried he 'll exploit Edie,' Mum continued. ‘Red's mean. He's always been one to extract a pound of flesh, one way or another.'

Dad laughed. ‘Let's hope he chooses to stop her smart mouth.'

Ha ha.

Mum's delicate red eyebrows rose. ‘I don't like his attitude towards women. Whenever he came off the rigs he was always banging on about how women should be submissive and wear make-up and be freshly scented.'

‘Well Edie can teach him different,' Dad said.

I kicked his shin under the table.

He yelped, but his smile was fond. ‘That's my girl.'

‘I, Edie Jocelyn Sparks, leave all my worldly goods, this being the half-finished
Ulysses
to my father, Gary Robin Wilkes, with which to escape my mother's teeth-gnashing, hair-tearing stupendous grief.'

Mum twisted in her seat and treated me to a pained expression, her eyes rolling to the dented car roof that was still covered in crayon drawings I had done when I was five. ‘Just try to survive okay?'

‘Yeah. Or I'll have to take you up on that offer,' Dad said.

I sniggered. But as the old Corolla coughed and clanked its way up the Cook Highway, I felt a bit sooky about leaving the
Ulysses.
And, okay, the teensiest little bit about leaving Mum and Dad. Tash had been uninterested in my holiday plans until I'd mentioned the four grand. Then she 'd suggested she come with me so we could split shifts, plus the pay. No way José. Didn't she have Jason to dazzle on Christmas day?

‘Practice,' she 'd said, waving her hand airily. ‘Only practice.'

As the car chugged into the airport car park, there was the thunder of a plane landing. A thrill ran through me. The moment Dad pulled up at the concourse, I burst out of the car.

‘Edie!' Mum called.

I swung round, my backpack flying so that its trajectory almost propelled me full circle. ‘Adventure!'

Dad grinned. ‘Are we allowed to come in with you?'

‘Nope. Mum will try and run after the plane.'

Mum unbuckled her belt and shoved open the car door. She sprang out, threw her arms around me and squeezed hard. ‘Don't let my little brother give you any crap, okay?'

Dad joined her and gave me one of those three-way cuddles that I used to adore when I was seven years old. But I wasn't seven anymore, I was seventeen. And right now a seriously cute surfer with blonde dreadlocks and a Malibu snuggled into a chenille bedspread bag grinned at us.

‘Let me go,' I said, elbowing my parents away. ‘You've got to stop clinging to me. One day I'll be out on the ocean on my ownsome. You're both way too umbilicular.'

‘Ring me,' Mum said.

‘Yeah yeah. You'll have your textile workers to console you.'

‘My baby . . . '

‘Oh puhlease.' I hefted up my backpack and marched into the terminus.

I had never been further than Cape Tribulation, and then only by four-wheel drive with Tash's oldest brother. No, he hadn't been interested in the pristine rainforest; he wanted to thrash his jeep on the Daintree 's rutted roads. I stared out at the glossy green mountain forests spilling into muddy turquoise sea and I wished I could be down there with the
Ulysses
. There had once been a hippie colony further north in Cedar Bay that Mum had visited for a few months as a kid with Nanna. People had lived in dome houses or beneath tarps and had eaten paw paws and coconuts and fish. Mum told me how she'd run wild with the other kids. There was no school and she 'd learned to swim by being chucked into one of the creeks that gushed out of the rainforest to the beach and where bright snakes wriggled beneath the crystal clear water. Mum and Nanna had helped plant fruit trees and used dragnets to catch fish for dinner.

But when they'd gone back years later the colony was abandoned, water lines had been ripped up, and the orchards had grown wild and were overrun with feral pigs. The government had revoked the original miner's licence, kicked out all the people and burned their houses. Mum and Nanna had both burst into tears when they saw the devastation.

I imagined what it might have been like, sailing into Cedar Bay when Mum was there the first time. The calm sea swishing softly against the
Ulysses'
sleek sides. Kerosene lamps and flickering candlelight winking welcome against the black velvet of the mountain encircling the bay. Swirls of phosphorescence in the water . . .

The double propeller plane bumped in a pocket of turbulence. Below, lush forests gave way to an army of spear grass that marched over the flat red earth. Rivers twisted and spiralled in a complex system of tributaries like a tangle of silver snakes that blurred the land's edge into a muddy red-blue swirl.

Horn Island airport was tiny. I'd always bagged out Cairns as being the last outpost compared to say, Sydney or Melbourne. A fluttery rush of insecurity trammelled up from my gut. Where
exactly
was I going?

I waited to get my bag, then caught the shuttle bus to the ferry that took me across a narrow stretch of water to Thursday Island. Wind scoured my flushed cheeks, a welcome relief from the stifling heat, as the ferry ploughed through the sea to the small island with a dense scattering of houses above the mangroves and a hill at its centre. From what I had read, Thursday Island lay smack in the middle of two seas. From it you could watch the sun rise over the Coral Sea and set over the Arafura Sea. I leaned against the bow railing, enjoying every salty gust, and tried to imagine my reunion with an uncle I hadn't seen for years.