Thirteen Pearls (5 page)

The pick-up arrangements from T.I. had been vague. Uncle Red had been almost impossible to talk to. The phone had kept ringing out whenever I'd tried to call to find out what to pack, what sort of toys Aran liked, what they might need from Cairns. From what I'd gathered in our one brief conversation since he 'd told me my flight times was that I was to go to the bakery and wait to be picked up.

Sleepy buildings lined the main street. A poster announcing a diabetes support group for islander women caught my eye. The shop fronts were sun-faded relics from the fifties, but the merchandise through the windows was modern enough. At the top of the street I turned, attracted by a glimpse of blue sea, and meandered back towards the coast, where huge mango trees dripped yellow-green mangoes. The road was spattered with a gluey mess of fruit pulp and bat guano.

I took a deep appreciative breath. Ahhh . . . the sweet smell of the tropics.

The bakery was opposite the sea. I wove my way between the tables and chairs and gazed through the display window into a carboholic's worst nightmare.

A man behind the counter asked, ‘What do you want? Haven't got all day you know.'

I snapped out of my daze. ‘Oh, sorry. I'm waiting for my uncle. I um . . . Could I have a chocolate milkshake please, with malt, and a lamington?' Junk, junk, junk, but who knew what opportunities there 'd be for empty calories on a pearling island?

I took my goodies to a picnic table by the water. Late afternoon sun shone on the tide-raked beach, exposing shards of broken bottles and chipped shells. Not exactly a postcard-perfect vision of an idyllic tropical island.

Across the road, someone called out after me. It was the same guy who'd served me. ‘You don't want to be sleeping down on that beach. If I was you I'd find a place to stay tonight, especially if your uncle 's running on island time.'

‘But . . . wait!'

He turned back, batting a cloud of flies with flour-dusted fingers. ‘Yeah what?'

‘Do you know him? Redmond Warren. He owns Thirteen Pearls. Did he tell you what time he 'd meet me here?'

He shrugged. ‘It's all
ailan time
here.' He vanished inside the bakery.

The sun was sinking lower over an island across the channel and soon would be swallowed by the rising hill. What if Uncle Red had mucked it up? I only had fifty bucks until I got paid. Dad had slipped the fifty to me when Mum wasn't looking, ‘for emergencies'.

Don't be such a wuss!
At least everyone here spoke English. I'd walk around the island, get a better look, and see if I could find any backpacker accommodation, just in case.

On the ferry there 'd been a framed map of T.I. showing a five kilometre road that circled the entire island. Trudging back to the wharf, I picked my way through the sticky, green-skinned mangoes and drained the dregs of my milkshake. A row of paint-faded fibro houses edged a road above the mangroves. Littered throughout the stubby mangrove roots were drifts of rubbish – plastic bottles, chip packets, soft drink cans and beer bottles. Disgusting. Dumping my pack on the embankment, I clambered down and started picking up some of the rubbish until bit by bit I accumulated a decent-sized mound.

‘Oi!'

I spun around.

A shrunken brown face with laughing, almond-shaped eyes and a halo of grizzled white hair peered down at me. ‘You better come up from there! There 's crocs living down in them mangroves.'

I scrambled up the bank at light speed, suddenly convinced I could smell the rotten breath of a croc snout centimetres from my backside.

The old man pointed at me, doubling over with laughter. ‘Gotcha, didn't I?'

I kept my face blank. ‘You mean there aren't any crocs?'

‘Nah. I'm not saying that. Some big salties like this spot. It was just funny seeing your hair flying like a wild thing and your face so white like you seen a ghost.'

I caught my breath. ‘There 's so much rubbish. Doesn't anyone care?'

The old man shook his head and tsked in agreement. ‘No respect. Specially some of the young ones. But you got to remember. For hundreds of years, we had something to throw away – it was fish bones or coconut husks.'

Though he was missing a couple of teeth, the old man's grin lit up his face. ‘I'm Uncle Bill. You're new to T.I. then. You being looked after?' he asked, as if I'd just arrived at a party and my host was still too busy showing others around.

I shook my head.

He hobbled closer and squinted up at me. ‘Who you looking for?'

‘My Uncle, Redmond Warren,' I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘He owns Thirteen Pearls and—'

I was unprepared for his reaction – a great guffawing wheeze of delight as he slapped his skinny thigh.

‘I used to be a pearl diver,' he said.

‘Really?' It was hard to keep the doubt from my voice – he was so shrunken and scrawny.

‘Yep. I had one of those big hard hats with the air tube to the top. Used to go down the deepest, they reckoned.' He added, ‘Had to come back up real slow, or we 'd get the bends.'

I nodded. Learning about how to avoid getting the bends had been part of my PADI dive certification. Only once had I come up too fast and that was after encountering a bull shark. I'd been so terrified that I'd forgotten to take it slow to the surface and was then stuck for hours in a decompression chamber.

‘I got a photo. You want to see it?' Uncle Bill beckoned me after him.

I hesitated. A couple of islander kids sat on the rotting steps of a house opposite, playing with matchbox cars. They stole shy glances in my direction.
Really, how dangerous could
this old guy be?

‘Yes,' I said.

We walked up the street, past more rows of houses.

I reached into my pack and broke off some of my lamington to share. Uncle Bill wolfed the piece down and grinned, his remaining teeth now flecked with chocolate. ‘My favourite,' he said, smacking his lips. When we came to a building up on the crest of the jutting coast, I assumed it was the shell of an unfinished garage. But then I noticed that the raw concrete was greasy and stained with weather and time. We wandered into the garden and crunched across a snowy carpet of fish bones picked clean by birds.

Uncle Bill saw my expression. ‘You like fishing?'

I shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘Well some time when you're back here, I'll take you out to a secret spot. Best place for catchin' coral trout.'

At the entrance to the house, I hesitated again. If this guy was actually a fiendish lamington-eating psychopath in disguise then I was about to do something really dumb. But then again, his knees practically knocked together and his hand trembled on the unlocked door handle, so I figured one of Dad's self-defence moves would work a treat.

The house consisted of three rooms: cavernous, unpainted, drab. Two big cement tubs served for kitchen sink and laundry. A faded brown sarong draped over a chair and a laminated table held a carved wooden bowl of mangoes on it.

Uncle Bill shuffled up to a protruding strip of concrete that formed a mantelpiece and took down a photograph. It was a reprint of an old sepia photo. A guy with a straight nose, almond-shaped eyes and electric smile held a big old-fashioned brass dive bell in one hand. It was still attached to a tube that fed into his puffy white suit.

‘Me.'

No way. I shook my head. He 'd been gorgeous.

He twinkled. ‘Would have liked to have met you back then.'

I laughed, but a part of me was close to tears. It was so sad – seeing this glorious young man shrunken to a toothless guy with gammy legs. It made me resolve to not waste my youth. To sail the
Ulysses.
To have adventures. To savour them.

My attention was caught by another object on the mantle, sandwiched between a couple of tattered greeting cards – an open shell, all creams and silvers and whites with five huge teardrop pearls arcing across it like splayed fingers.

‘That's what they gave me when I retired,' he said. ‘Thirty years diving for the company, when I wasn't cane-cutting.'

‘It's beautiful.'

Uncle Bill smiled. ‘Better than a watch,' he agreed. ‘No good having watches up here, we 're on
ailan tim
. And the springs rust up.'

What time was it?
It was already late afternoon and I had no idea where I'd be staying. ‘Do you know of a hotel on the island?'

Uncle Bill nodded. ‘Yep. One just up from the bakery.'

T
HE ABORIGINAL AND ISLANDER HOSTEL
was ‘carbolic clean' (as Mum would have said) and cheap, with meals included. Aunty Sally served up a stew that would have kept me stodged for three days if I hadn't made a swift trip to the bathroom to instantly expel it after she 'd explained that the lumps of sweet meat were dugong.

I wasn't going to blow my fifty dollars straight up so I told her my uncle would pay tomorrow morning. Aunty Sally seemed unfazed by this, and after my reaction to the mention of dugong, she was anxious to make amends. When her nephew came in with a catch of crayfish, their legs still clacking, she laughed.

‘You come back here again and I'll take you to my island and cook you up some cray. It's the most beautiful island in all of the Torres Strait.'

Sometimes, when Dad had finally triumphed over a client's waste-of-space boyfriend, he 'd take us out to Charlie 's Seafood all-you-can-eat buffet. There were crabs and prawns and oysters, but never lobster.

Aunty Sally told me about the neighbouring islands, especially hers – Hammond Island – where the sand was white and the water was so blue it could fool fishermen. On her island, she 'd cook up the crayfish and ate them in the sea, letting the juices run straight into the water and tossing the cracked shells to flotillas of tiny fish.

My stomach audibly rumbled.

I nodded. ‘I'd love that.'

The buzzer rang from out the front and Aunty Sally smoothed out her dress, a big blue muu-muu with pink frangipanis, and went to see who it was.

‘Grab your stuff. Got to get back before dark.'

Startled, my head snapped up from my weak cup of tea.

A big, freckled, sunburned man with a strawberry blond crew-cut blocked the doorway, jiggling his leg and rapping the wall with a set of keys.

‘Uncle Red!'

‘You ready?'

‘I didn't know where to find you!'

He frowned. ‘I told you to wait at the wharf.'

‘I don't remember you saying that.'

He loomed forward and glared into my face. ‘While you're working for me you'll listen to what I say. It's life or death out here. Life on Thirteen Pearls is like being on a ship and I'm the captain. You do what I say.'

Behind him, Aunty Sally rolled her eyes, exactly like Tash, as if to say, ‘Whatever.'

I tried not to giggle as I scraped back my chair.
Or what –
you'll make me walk the plank?

Uncle Red hefted up my backpack, reached into his wallet and slapped the other sort of lobster on the table before storming out.

I followed behind, feeling like a naughty child even though he must have said something about the bakery because otherwise I wouldn't have even known to go there.

I was his niece and we hadn't seen each other for over eight years, and he couldn't even be civil. No wonder Mum couldn't stand him.

But there had to be something redeeming about him. Tash hated this about me; she believed it to be yet another sign of hippie tendencies. Unlike Tash and her family who believed that rapists should be castrated and murderers should be hung, drawn and quartered, I tended to follow my parents' party line that people start off good and stuff happens to them along the way that twists them up. And all it takes is, say, twenty-nine years of government-funded therapy, to make them human again . . .

So the question gnawing at me as I stumbled after Uncle Red, marching past the coconut trees on Victoria Parade, was –
what
was eating him?