Harbo’s boat went up on New Year’s Eve, and they say you could see the flames from a mile away up the canals. He tried to put it down to fireworks but no one was going to buy that, particularly the council. He’d got it all wrong, they reckoned – the time, the place, the prevailing wind. Along at the wharf they thought it was part of the show, just going off early, but then they heard the sirens.
‘It was a gust,’ he kept saying. ‘A flamin’ gust.’
But from the way the Stella Maris burned it was pretty clear the gust had started on the inside. Lucky he’s one of the flock.
Sometimes I come here on my bike, sometimes the bus, but with each day’s work we get a little closer to putting the Stella Maris back into the water, and Harbo back with it. He doesn’t like the land much. He reckons it rocks. He’s a boatie through and through, and water’s like the land to him.
I’m sandpapering. That’s today’s job, yesterday’s and today’s. We’re still on the coarse stuff so it’ll be a while yet before it’s done.
We’re all chipping in, money or time. That’s how we do it at the Blessed Virgin at Wurtulla. Even those of us who might have been mighty deep in the poo for about three weeks and four days now. That’s me. I’m on the outer, and that’s all there is to it. It’s a complicated state of affairs but, suffice to say, I’m not exactly crowded out up here, standing on a plank between two trestles at the starboard side of the bow.
They passed the hat around after Harbo’s boat went up. First to get it lifted off the bottom, then to get the experts in for major structural repairs. Budgeting for that pretty much emptied the hat, so that’s when Father Steele really went to work, talking charitable acts out of all kinds of people – two colours of paint, a second-hand gas stove, a bit of space at the corner of Brown’s Slipway where the Stella Maris could be hoisted up so we could fix her.
I’m sandpapering outside and Tanika Bell’s sandpapering inside, as far as I know. I can see her there, imagine her exactly. There’s the thickness of new wood between us, nothing more, but it might as well be miles. It’s like one of those prison scenes in movies where the people put their hands flat up on the glass and line them up with each other. Except the glass is wood and our hands have got sandpaper in them, but there’s a few seconds sometimes when all the big machines shut up and I can hear the sanding going on inside. Tanika Bell, back and forward, back and forward, down near the bow, starboard side. Her hand and my hand, as close as they’ve been for three weeks and four days.
But the sun’s setting and the bus is here. Mr Bell’s calling out to us – to everyone in general and some people by name, but not me. There was a time when my name would have been one of the first, a time when I was famous round here for my hard work, always the first to pitch in and lend a bit of muscle to something. Bugger it, those days are gone. I’m pitching in harder than ever, but they’re still gone.
I give my arms a shake but the dust from sandpapering sticks to the sweat. I’ll have a bath when I get home, a shower to wash it off and then a bath. Just me lying there in cool water floating my tired arms and my tired legs and getting less annoyed. These days are long and hot and hard – work for the council, work on the boat. And we don’t even get to talk now, Tanika Bell and me.
Mr Bell’s at the door of the bus, but he looks down at the ground when it’s my turn to get on. Word wasn’t supposed to get out but of course it did, despite Steelo’s plan. You can’t sack two Magi from your nativity play ten days out from Christmas and not expect talk. Rumours and speculation, then specific questions and it’s out there and there’s no stopping it. No stopping it turning from just a story going round into some great big deal.
So Tanika doesn’t turn round on the bus any more, and my whole family got demoted. Wayne, Mum and me – we’re two rows further back now, and everyone knows your position on the bus is some kind of sign of your accomplishments. I was the one who had to break it to Wayne. Not that I broke all of it but, since he’s the quiet type, no one else would have told him anything and he might have taken it internally. Father Steele’s been onto that one for a while – Wayne’s tendency to take things internally. It makes a mess of his guts and puts him off his food.
If there’s a difference between having Wayne around the house and having a pet, I’m not always sure what it is. No, that’s not fair. Wayne’s Wayne, and Wayne’s all right. And most pets don’t live as long. I had a lizard once.
‘It’s all down to me,’ I told him straight up, as an example of how to take it like a man or, alternatively, like an adult. ‘We got bumped a couple of rows because I kind of racked up a negative accomplishment. My behaviour standards took a bit of a tumble at nativity rehearsals.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘You’re usually the one who’s Mr Too Cool For School.’ And I think he even smiled, so at least one of us got something out of it.
Tanika gets on the bus, and she stares out the window as though not one of her fellow passengers exists. So many things have changed, and not for the better. She’s looking out at the sea, across the park and through the she-oak trees with their branches swaying around in the onshore breeze. There’s not a boat in sight, not a thing out there, just the darkening water and sky, night coming down. And the water would be cool and clean and I’m caked with sweat and sawdust, and if we swam down there it’d be just the two of us, goosebumps coming up on Tanika’s skin with the first shock of how cold it was.
‘So how’d you go with the sanding today, Wayne?’ It’s not one of life’s big questions, but if I don’t say something the silence’d get me thinking the wrong things. You usually start off with sins of thought before moving on to word and deed, Father Steele tells me.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘The wood’s hard but. So I did my shoes.’ He pulls them off and shows me, and he’s sandpapered both heels completely flat.
‘That’s good Wayne. They’re more moccasin-style now, and that’s pretty interesting. You’ll probably be ready for the wood tomorrow then, hey? I’ve got to say it’s a neat job though. Those heels are flat as.’
‘Thanks.’
‘See, this could be useful for you, so you should keep at it. If you can do that to timber, well, the ability to use coarse sandpaper could be the first step on the road to you having a marketable skill. “Job-ready”, Wayne, that’s what you could be. In a while. When you’ve picked up what you can from school.’
Tanika Bell – I can see the back of her head over Mrs Vann’s shoulder. I can see the back of her head and remember how her hair felt when I slid my fingers into it. A few rows back from here, a few weeks ago. And how her mouth felt and how other things felt in that amazing second before Father Steele appeared at the top of the stairs. And we were gone, out of the nativity play right away, never to return. Fornication.
We’re not even supposed to talk to each other now. Not a word. That’s down to Mr Bell, mostly. Steelo says these things take time. Everyone gets a second chance as far as he’s concerned, it’s just that sometimes there are other people who don’t want them to get it right away. The day will come, he says, when Tanika and I can talk again, but it’d be best to have a good and proper purpose.
The water’s not that cold now anyway, thinking about it. Not cold enough for goosebumps. That’s just how I’ve imagined it on some of these nights.
Harbo’s hands got burned in the fire and he’s still got the bandages on. Up to the wrist on one side, most of the way to the elbow on the other. I’m onto the fine sanding when he shows up. Apparently they’ve started painting inside and he wanted to see.
He stands at the gate of Brown’s Slipway, sizing it all up. This is all he’s got, the Stella Maris, all he’s got in the world. His bandages are so white they practically gleam. It’s like he got dressed up in his best bandages to come and see how she’s going. There’s a bandage on his head as well, and one around his right leg. He sees me looking, and he gives me a wave.
Steelo brings him over and I ask him how he is.
‘Oh, no worries, mate,’ he says. ‘Coming along fine. But don’t let me stop you working. You don’t want to waste your time yacking to some old idiot who can’t fix his own bloody boat.’
‘You’d do the same for me.’
‘Yeah, but don’t you go looking like this.’ He lifts his hands up, as if I wouldn’t have noticed the bandages otherwise.
‘Come on, it just looks like strapping. Like you’re about to slip them into a couple of boxing gloves and go a few rounds.’
‘A round or two for a pound or two,’ he says, and he crouches, fakes at jinking back and forward, throws a couple of soft practice punches.
‘Come on old guy,’ Steelo says to him, ‘we should get you inside before you start getting big ideas. Old salts, Kane, they never forget the scraps they got in when they were youngsters. Hey, Harbo?’
‘Never lost one, mate. At least not how I recall it.’ It’s a big claim, but he laughs as soon as he says it. ‘Nah, I’m a lover, not a fighter. That’s what they say, isn’t it?’
And he gives me a wink and his whole ugly old face crinkles up. Steelo smiles, gives a bit of a laugh himself, like a man who’s heard a few of Harbo’s stories in his time, and they leave me to the fine sandpapering of the bow and head down the back. Harbo goes up the ladder first, and not quickly, but Steelo’s hands are both there waiting in case things go wrong.
Harbo’s been laid up at someone’s place, convalescing. He can’t even roll his own smokes at the moment. They say he hasn’t been doing so well, so Steelo told us he’d be dropping in from time to time for a ‘morale boost’. He used to run some pretty big ships, years ago. Freighters, all around Asia. He spent a few years working a Brisbane River ferry too, not that that seems like much after time in international waters. He’s been up here at least ten years now, retired at the coast, him and the Stella Maris. And he makes things out of wood for church fetes – boats and trains and things – so he’d hate the bandages, I’d reckon.
‘Hey.’ It’s Tanika’s voice, saying ‘hey’ quietly like it’s still in my head, like it’s one of all the bits of her voice I’ve stored up to think about these past three weeks and five days. ‘Hey, chippie, you with the sandpaper.’
She’s on the deck, right above me. When I stand back on the plank, as far back as I can go, she’s there, leaning over the railing and looking right down at me. Tanika Bell, in sunlight, late afternoon light, making her cheeks look brown and her hair all kinds of colours.
‘I’m looking for paint,’ she says. ‘They’ve sent me out to get more paint, so I thought I’d check and see if you had any.’
‘Good idea. So, what are you looking for? White or blue?’
‘What have you got?’
‘None at all. Just sandpaper. But if I find some paint, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘And if I need some sandpaper . . .’
Then someone shouts out, ‘Found some.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she says, still looking down at me.
‘I . . .’ She looks around. I think there’s no one there. ‘I miss you, you know. Heaps.’ She looks around again, then back down to me. ‘And this isn’t over.’
Then she’s gone. Maybe I can hear her feet on the deck, maybe I can’t. She’s a quiet walker. She saves her energy for when she means it.
She misses me. And it isn’t over. Tanika Bell. We had ten seconds there, ten or twelve, and she didn’t waste them. That’s her all over. Much more dynamic than most of these people realise and, one day, that’ll give us an edge. Tanika, up there in the light, coming for paint she knew I wouldn’t have, folding her arms on the railing and leaning over, showing us both twelve seconds of how things might have been if the past month hadn’t happened. How things might be, when enough time’s passed. Maybe.
These might be early versions of the thoughts that Father Steele says are lustful thoughts, but they might also be the kind that he said were quite okay. We did some counselling after the incident, and that was supposed to see me right. That was Steelo’s plan. It was only when Mr Bell got wise to what had happened that it all turned bad and I ended up on the outer. So did Tanika. She didn’t see the outside world till Christmas, other than work and groceries and the trips to church for her sessions with Steelo.
Mum said I was an idiot and I could spoil it for the whole family and hadn’t I learned anything? Anything from the past, from her and dad, and me coming along when she was seventeen? Didn’t I know how that kind of business could wreck your life?
And, sure, she had a point to make but thanks very much Mum, by the way. Sorry for wrecking your life, and that. Mum, who would be a millionaire rocket scientist now if I hadn’t come along then, right? Mum, who would have invented Microsoft and been prime minister by now if I hadn’t come along. Mum, who’s bigger than doorways and spends her days dealing with fungus and rum and the heat of summer.
If only Kane hadn’t come along and wrecked all those plans that she never got round to having. Kane, who does his best and answers to the call of lust no more than once. And answers to it with Tanika Bell, of all magnificent people.
Forget the lust. I also have the ‘clean thoughts of meaningful attachment’, and what about those? Steelo said those were fine, but where’s the attachment when Mr Bloody Bell stands in the way, looking at the ground, waiting for you to pass like you’re a bad smell and he’s downwind and he’s had a faceful of you already.
I can do without him in my head. I lean in against the boat, get back to sanding. It’s Harbo I’m here for and it’s worth remembering that. This is about getting Harbo sorted out and back in the water.
My father had a boat. The Stormy it was called. We had a couple of good years with her. I’d already been around a while and I’m pretty sure Mum’s life wasn’t wrecked at that stage, despite the version we’ve been getting lately. We had Wayne too by then, so Mum had lost the downstairs parts but other than that things were hardly wrecked at all. She got a scar from Wayne, and a big one since they had to go in quickly to get him out or to sort out the damage. Something like that. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it. She always wore a one-piece to the beach from then on, back in the days when she went to the beach.
I can remember a few trips out on the Stormy. Dad liked nothing better. The Stormy heading out past Point Cartwright was like Christmas morning for him. And Wayne was okay when he was lying-down size, but he was a goner as soon as he grew and got vertical. Wayne threw up so much on the Stormy that Dad got him his own permanent bucket and he said that, if he wanted to be a seafaring type, he had to tough it out. But by the time Wayne was four, or maybe not even four, the Stormy was gone and Dad was gone and that was that.
I hadn’t thought about those days for ages, but Brown’s Slipway smells like varnish and paint and diesel and the sea, and that can only say boats. So to me it says Stormy. They were good times.
‘Hey, what’s the story?’ Wayne says when Mum’s in bed and we’re watching ‘The Best of the X-Files’ summer repeats.
‘Well, a lot of it gets back to what happened to Mulder’s sister,’ I tell him. ‘Or what might have happened. You see . . .’
‘She was taken by aliens, dickweed. I’m not stupid. What’s the X-File on you and Mr Bell’s daughter? That’s the one they’re really talking about.’
‘Who’s talking about? Who’s been talking to you about that?’
‘No one. No one talks to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t listen sometimes. You were sprung up the back of the bus, that’s what they reckon. And you might have been nude. And people found out, so . . .’
‘We were not nude.’
‘Oh. You’re sure?’
‘Sorry to disappoint you. We were mostly clothed.’
‘Mostly? Then what’s the story?’
‘We were showing poor judgement. We answered the call of lust.’
‘Really? Cool.’
‘Oh my god. My god. You mean you did it. That’s what you mean. Like, “it”. The big “it”. Up the back of the bus. With a girl. That was your answer to the call of lust. Doing it. The call of lust actually said “Kane, do you want to do it?” and you said “yep”.’
‘Yeah, look . . .’
‘What was it like? How did you know how? How did you know how to do it? It’s got a few steps to it, hasn’t it? You don’t just set the ferret on her straight up.’
‘Wayne, this is more than you’ve spoken the past two years. It can’t be good for you to try and get all these words out at once. You’ll only hurt yourself.’
‘God. God. Getting in trouble for doing it.’
‘And that ferret talk. I don’t know about the company you’re keeping . . .’
‘Slung out of the nativity play for doing it. You went and did it in a play that’s about the little baby Jesus. And you got slung out. Awesome.’
‘We walked, mate. We walked, as we should have, and then we got slung out. To make it official. And we got the ban on talking to each other until further notice and all of that. They had to send out the right signal and . . .’
‘This is so cool. It’s like a movie. A movie from America, ’cause in a lot of European countries you could still be in the play after that. After doing it. With Tanika Bell . . .’ He lets out a big sigh. And why wouldn’t he? ‘Tanika Bell . . .’ He rolls his eyes and clenches his right hand into a shaky fist. ‘What was it like? How much room is there, like, in a woman? Generally speaking.’
‘Wayne . . .’
‘How about that? All that practice by yourself downstairs in your hammock at night, and finally . . .’
‘Yeah, righto. You know, I think this is “The X-Files” episode where some really ugly alien penetrates your dreams and rips you in half trying to get out of you. Rips you open like a zipper with its razor sharp claws, and your guts just pour out like lumps of fresh roadkill. Like a bag full of dead cats. Slopping all over the floor like chunks of whales sliced up by big Japanese knives. But it won’t happen unless you fall asleep, of course, Wayne.’
Wayne shuts up. Shuts up and his eyes bulge and his upper lip gets quivery and it’s like there’s a big lump of something pushing up against his throat from down inside. But something more like tea than like an alien.
‘Kane, I’m bad with that stuff,’ he says eventually. ‘You know I’ve got a very active imagination. It’s in one of my school reports, in the maths bit. You’ve seen it in writing, you bastard.’ There’s a scratching sound above us, a possum running over the roof. Bad timing. ‘What’s that noise? That noise outside?’
‘Dunno. Could be the alien, ripping a few sleepy possums apart for practice. Or maybe it’s not. I guess we’ll see. Those of us who dare to fall asleep tonight.’
‘Now wait a second. With “The X-Files” . . .’ Wayne’s getting a bit wobbly with the talking now . . . ‘with “The X-Files” when there’s that light and they come to get you . . .’
‘Wayne, remember I said we could only watch the show if we didn’t have to have the talk about aliens again.’
‘Yeah, but what if, like, really truly . . .’
‘Okay, Wayne. There are no aliens. Or if there are, they’re basically grey and peaceful and kind of globular in the head and just here to check a few things out.’
‘Kane, even the quiet aliens take your temperature using your butt. I’m not stupid.’
‘There are no aliens. I made up that stuff with the ripping and your dreams. You were doing that breathing that gives you a turn, so I had to slow you down a bit. Now, back on the subject of the other thing, I knew we’d get to it some day, and maybe this is the day. To start with, the question of room and the female parts. Let me just say first, man to man and in a respectful way, it’s not like you’re rattling a sausage around in a lunch box . . .’
I don’t know where to begin with Wayne and sex, but I figure I’ve got to start off mechanical to get his attention. Well get nowhere with a lecture on ‘clean thoughts of meaningful attachment’. I can’t tell him that, with Tanika Bell, it’s not just about the bit where you roll your eyes back and get shaky. It’s about the two of you taking in the night sky, shutting everything else out for a while, shutting out all the crap in the world. It’s about the minutes or even seconds when there’s no one else, and she gives you one of those looks that no one else gets. And she says just a few words that will get you through the crap, and that’s what it’s about.
With the first coat, the wood soaks up the paint and makes it look like a bad job – makes the Stella Maris look patchy and us look like the amateurs we are.
It’s hot and I stink and my legs itch from the grass from Whipper Snippering for the council. There’s been some rain lately and the grass has gone mad, meaning lots of cutting and lots of seeds, and the seeds tunnel down into your socks and bug you all day.
Some days, I just want Harbo’s boat finished. And I want these people to treat me better and talk to me like they used to. There’s fornication all over this coast, and plenty of people keep right on doing it. I’ve done the right thing since Christmas, and they should give me a break.
‘Tanika – you know, Joe Bell’s daughter,’ Harbo says to me on his next inspection tour, and I think I’m in trouble. I think some of my sins of thought might have become sins of word while I wasn’t concentrating. ‘She was saying she thought she’d hang back a while this evening and do some more of the other side. Not that I’m trying to push you into staying, but she reckoned she’d get her dad to drop all the others off and then come back for her. And maybe you if you were up for it, but . . .’ Not trouble at all. The opposite of trouble. ‘Anyway, there’ll be a second run happening. For the two of you if you aren’t doing anything. If you don’t have plans.’
‘Just painting plans.’
‘Well, if that’s . . .’
‘Harbo, is there no one else you can yack to? I’m a busy man. Someone’s got to give this baby a second coat.’
He laughs and says, ‘Good on you,’ and I keep pushing the brush along the timber, focusing on the job and not the turn things are taking.
Tanika Bell. Tanika Bell and me working on the boat, and practically no one else around. If we worked all night till it was finished, maybe we could just push it into the water and leave. Cruise the high seas.
‘I should have brought beer,’ he says. ‘I should have brought a cold beer or two to pass up to you right now.’
‘Hey, I’m on the job. You can buy me as many beers as you like when we’ve got you back in the water.’
‘I’ll tell Tanika you’ll be staying then?’
‘Sure. Actually, it’d be good if you could tell Mr Bell when he gets here with the bus. It’s, you know, a passenger issue.’
‘No worries.’
No worries at all.
Mr Bell gets here right on time and Harbo meets him at the gate. I dunk the brush in the paint again and slide it along the wood. I paint like a quiet machine, I look like a worker, I think only of Tanika Bell. The sun’s getting low but it’s still hot on the back of my shirt and the sweat’s running down my chest. The second coat looks better than the first. This time the timber stays white and looks painted.
Towards the front the boat narrows, and Tanika’s somewhere just over there on the other side, working away in the shade, loading up her brush with white paint and doing plank after plank. Like me.
I can imagine just how she looks right now, trying to keep her hair out of her face and getting flecks of paint in it, blowing it out of her eyes the way I’ve seen her do, tucking it out of the way but it doesn’t stay. I know her from watching her, not recently but last year. I suspect I remember more about Tanika Bell than they think I do, and this isn’t over.
Mr Bell goes round the back of the boat, with a look on his face that lets me know why they call the back part the ‘stern’. There’ll be talk going on round there. I keep painting, taking the new white paint right to the top of the hull where the blue trim’s going to go. I keep painting and looking straight ahead at the timber, as if it’s the only thing on my mind.
‘Kane.’ It’s Mr Bell, back already. But he hasn’t said my name in a while – that’s what takes me by surprise. ‘Kane, just clarifying this evening’s movements.’
‘Sure, Mr Bell.’
I turn around and he’s looking up at me with the sun glinting from his sweaty head. He’s got his hand up to his face and he’s squinting, even though the sun’s behind him. It’s the white paint that’s making him do it. The glare of the sunlight from the white paint.
‘You see the difference with the second coat?’ I figure a comment related to the job could be a good choice. ‘The wood just soaks the first one right up, so I thought I’d stay on and do some of the second. At least give myself some sense of accomplishment.’
‘Yes. Good. Well, I’ll be twenty minutes and then I’ll be back. Twenty-five at the outside. And Mr Harbison’ll be here the whole time. So keep at it.’
‘That’s the plan. See you in twenty.’
He keeps looking up at me, as if he’s about to say something more, but I haven’t done one new thing wrong so he has to go. He turns round at the gate. What’s he looking for? Fornication in a matter of seconds up on a plank in Brown’s Slipway? I give him a wave. I’d shout out to him, something friendly about twenty minutes, but there’s a circular saw going over at a boat nearby.
So I wave and I smile and I let him know that it’s me who’s looking at him as much as the other way round. He nods – that’s all I get for my wave – and he leaves.
The bus pulls away, and I watch it go.
I paint, towards the bow. Twenty minutes isn’t long so I paint quickly, starting with a band of second coat running along just below the deck.
Around the bow, on the other side, I can hear a brush tapping on the rim of a paint tin when the sawing’s stopped. Boots sliding along a wooden plank with the small sideways steps of a painter.
I get closer to the front and I can see a trestle round there, lined up with mine, and the end of a plank sticking out. Then a foot, an ankle, another foot, a calf. Tanika Bell. Then the other ankle, a knee, a thigh. Fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes at least. That’s how long Mr Bell’s been gone.
I load up with paint, push further forward, load up again and push till the brush is dry, right to the edge of the bow.
‘Beat ya,’ Tanika says as her brush hits mine and pushes it away.
We each take a step towards the water, and we’re standing on our planks face to face. She’s got paint in her hair, like I knew she would, and a daub of it on her forehead.
‘Hey worker,’ she says. ‘Who would have thought these things got so narrow at the front they just ran out? It’s not like the back at all.’
‘No, if we were at the back we’d still be miles apart. No wonder they call it the stern. There’s no fun there.’ Okay, my stern joke isn’t brilliant but I might as well get something out of it.
‘You must be hot in the sun,’ she says. ‘Even round this side it’s so hot I’m sweating like I’m having my own wet T-shirt contest.’ She pulls her shoulders back and of course I stare right at her front. ‘Ha, made you look.’
‘Well, you were making certain claims. I had to see if the evidence stacked up. About the sweating.’
‘So, how’d I go?’
‘I don’t think you want to know. I think I should be painting. I think you did fine. It’s a hot day. You stacked up. You sweated, quite a lot. Actually, I think I might be going from “clean thoughts of meaningful attachment” to something altogether less appropriate and possibly deeply lustful.’
‘Sure, I get that too.’
‘We’ve got to, um . . .’
Tanika Bell’s shorts are creased at the front from bending, and most of her T-shirt’s wet and there’s sweat above her upper lip and down her neck. She’s smiling, smiling the way she did the night we left the nativity play and before word got out. And that’s not the same as the regular smile people get from her on the bus. There’s a subtle but definite difference.
We should have known there was going to be trouble. I think we did know, back at her place that night. But we didn’t have our stories straight, and you’re not supposed to have a story anyway.
‘Mr Harbison’s gone for some smokes,’ she says. ‘He reckons they might sell them at the fish and chippie next door.’
‘And he’s a slow old walker at the moment, Harbo. It must be frustrating the heck out of him. It could take him ages.’
‘Ages. Yeah, ages.’
She spins the brush in her hand but it’s spiky with drying paint and none of it comes off.
A bus horn honks at the gate. Tanika ducks back behind the bow.
‘That wasn’t twenty minutes,’ she says. ‘That wasn’t even eighteen.’
And there’s another of those careful tapping sounds as she dips her brush and takes the extra paint off and gets back to work.
Tanika told her father that the nativity play just wasn’t her thing. That’s what she said to him later that night, after we ate sausages on their deck and she drove me home and then went off to fill the bus with carollers who were finishing their stint at a shopping centre. I don’t even know which shopping centre and I don’t know exactly when and where she spoke to her father, but she tried to play it down, as if it wasn’t such an issue to change your mind about being in the play. It only made him ask around. Apparently he was worried she wasn’t fitting in, since they’re relatively new in town.
He found out we left together in the break. He knew he was onto something. And the most interesting rumour people had already come up with happened to be the truth, so we just had to cop it then. By the next rehearsal it was probably common knowledge, and talked about by everyone there other than Steelo, Wayne and the baby Jesus.
And Mr Bell told Tanika that their family had responsibilities, and the church was his job. All that kind of stuff. Responsibilities and disappointment – we got to hear a lot about them and they’re two things I’ve known about for years, so I’m not sure I needed it, to be honest.
On the bus on the way home tonight after working on Harbo’s boat, the two of us sit in our regular seats, four rows apart with all the other seats empty, and no one says a word. Mr Bell keeps checking me out in his rear-vision mirror. After a while I get sick of it and I give him a wave, since that strategy’s working for me today. He pretends there’s a bug on the mirror and wipes it with his thumb. He drives through a red light.
‘Dad,’ Tanika says, telling him off like the back end of a boat. ‘There’s no hurry.’
There’s practically no limit to ‘stern’ jokes, that’s what I’m thinking.
Stormy. That boat was trouble. ‘Trouble from the start,’ that’s what Mum said. ‘Should have been called Trouble.’
I don’t know though. We had good times on the Stormy. And Mum thinks a lot of things are trouble. The problem with trouble is that she’s just too used to it. Most things are trouble for her, unless they categorically aren’t. Fungus in your creases, movement, humidity – trouble, every one. Advertising, Wednesdays when the money runs low, the way people talk these days. All trouble.
I’m putting on more white paint and the Stella Maris is coming up well. They fitted the new stove today, so Harbo’s inside tinkering around with it. Trouble? That could be trouble. The last time Harbo got his hands on a stove he burned a hole in the side of the boat and sank it. Harbo plus gas plus a naked flame – and my mother thinks fungus is something to get stressed about.
‘There’s nothing fresher than new paint,’ he says when he’s back on the ground and he’s wandered round my way. ‘I had that on a calendar once, from an old auntie in England. “Fresh as new paint at Whitby” it said, and there was this harbour full of fishing boats. I had the picture up on my wall for years. Here, give me one of those brushes and I’ll do some of the low-down bits.’
He’s got a new bandage now and there’s more room for his fingers to move. Not a lot more, but enough for him to keep hold of the handle. He slaps the paint on in great sweeps, round about waist high since he can’t bend down much further.
‘You’re doing a good job there,’ he says, exactly when it’s obvious to both of us that he’s twice as quick.
But it doesn’t seem to take long for his hand to start to hurt, and he has to stop.
‘Bloody thing,’ he says. ‘Ten minutes of painting and it’s no good any more.’
‘That’d be ten minutes more than yesterday, wouldn’t it? And about half a boat more too.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve had practice.’
‘Burned a few in your time, have you?’
He laughs. ‘Parked them under too many fireworks displays, maybe. I’m always where the excitement is. You don’t have to do all this you know.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘No, mate, you should be off doing what young people do. “Raging” – isn’t that what they call it? You shouldn’t be hanging round here like it’s some penance.’
‘Penance? I’m hanging round here to work on your boat. No one’s making me. And you’d do the same.’
‘Yeah, maybe I would, I don’t know. But I appreciate it. You and your friend, you’re doing a lot. She said she’d be driving Mrs Vann and the Skerritts home in a while and coming back to do some more, and that you’d probably be up for it too. She said I should put it to you. Like yesterday. But you don’t have to.’
‘I know I don’t have to. I know all that stuff.’
I nearly go off at him then, but I don’t. He’s probably just embarrassed that he can’t do more. In which case he shouldn’t have said penance. He shouldn’t have brought that kind of thing into it. This is not a religious deed. I’m painting his boat because he can’t paint his boat. I’m painting his boat because it’s a good thing to do. I haven’t done some deal that says however many hours of painting gets me off the hook for something.
Something. Bugger them. I have the right to have feelings about Tanika Bell. Look at her – the way she stands, the way she talks, the way she paints and drives the bus when her dad’s busy and shows her sweat off only to me. I want her style, I want to talk to her for hours, I want to put my hands on her again. But respectfully, of course.
Okay, it’s not all about Harbo and good deeds. It is about that, but it’s not all about that. And I’d still be here working on Harbo’s boat if the Bells had never come to town. That’s what I do, what we do. It’s one of the better things about this group of people. Even Mrs Vann comes to help out, and she’s next to useless.
Soon enough, Tanika rounds the others up and they’re off. She leads them across the yard, tossing the keys in the air and catching them again, and she stops at the gate and looks back at me. She waves in a way that her dad never could, not even at the best of times, and she shouts something. There’s an angle grinder going, so I only catch some of it but I know what she’s saying. She’ll be twenty minutes, twenty-five at the outside.
If Tanika Bell was driving the bus, you should expect community singing. By which I don’t mean ‘Kumbaya’ – I mean those cheery songs about the bus driver. People should just burst out and do it. That’s how they should feel. But it doesn’t happen. Her dad spoils it, turns the driving of the bus into a dreary thing. He slouches across the yard as if he’s on his way to pay a parking fine, so everyone takes a serious approach to transport.
These people, simply, undervalue Tanika Bell. Tanika Bell is a bright light regularly hidden under a bushel by this crowd. To them she’s the girl who got sacked from being a Magus for doing it with Kane. The girl who got sacked even though we walked first, and who will be forever banned from nativity plays and maybe also the three-legged race at the church fete. That’s what they think of her, probably. That’s my guess, because I’m pretty sure what they think of me. Three-time shepherd, one-time near-Magus, gone. And I reckon I know them well enough to be pretty sure that our three-legged-racing status is in doubt. That’s how far this goes – all the way to a stupid picnic months in the future.
She should drive the bus wearing a cap. She would look hot in a cap. And maybe boots. Is there such as thing as bus-driver boots? They’d go at least up to your knee, wouldn’t they? And be black and shiny? And if there’s any mucking up, Miss Tanika takes you down the back and sorts you out.
Yep, they’d go for that at the Blessed Virgin at Wurtulla.
Tanika Bell and thigh-high shiny black boots. Classify that thought under seriously lustful, my friend. That’s what I tell myself, as if I’m doing Father Steele’s job since he’s not around. But it’s just a fashion garment, Father, I’d tell him. It’s what all the young folk wear when they go out raging. Harbo, mate, where did you get that old word from?
Paint goes on, white on white. Fifteen minutes of it, more. This must be the last coat for this part of the boat.
Where is she?
I take a look around, in case the bus is back. There’s been some fire in the hills today and the sun’s going orange as it gets down closer to them, settling in the smoke. I can see along a couple of canals from up here, big houses like castles with their own jetties, and new developments inland, new canals. And I can see past the beachfront apartment blocks to Mount Coolum, and over the fence and through the she-oaks to the beach, though there’s not much of it with the high tide. That’d be enough for me. If we could sit down there and just be left alone to watch the sea getting dark, that’d do.
Just us, once the families have folded their umbrellas and had their last fight about getting out of the water and packed up their stuff and walked off up the sand. And we’d talk, in a way we can’t talk here. And it’d be night soon enough, and I’d sit on Tanika’s left side so that the light from the unit blocks and maybe the moon would be there on her face, for only me to see. That’d do.
I could, in all honesty Father, forsake the bus-driver boots. Most of the time.
When Tanika gets back, Harbo’s on the deck doing something that looks very like farting around. Fidgeting and looking into the distance like a sentry with wrapped-up hands and no real idea who the enemy is. Like someone Joe Bell’s had a quiet word to. Maybe, maybe not. Tanika goes straight to her side of the boat.
Harbo sticks his head over the rail. ‘I’ll be inside, if you need me,’ he says. ‘Not that I think you’ll need me.’
So I paint. I paint and I edge my way to the right, to the bow. She’s waiting when I get there.
‘So, hi,’ she says.
‘Hi. How’s your side coming along?’
‘Good. Who knows, actually? It’s pretty dark round here. Too late for painting.’
‘We’ve got to talk,’ she says. ‘Before anyone else sticks their head up somewhere.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, what happened, with the nativity play and that . . . You’ve talked to Father Steele, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And he wanted to know if it was impulsive, or if it meant more than that? Did you have to think about that one, too?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, for me it wasn’t so much impulsive. Given the two choices. I’m not really one of those people.’
‘Yeah, I know. And the same for me, right?’
‘Smoko,’ Harbo calls out, pretty much right above us.
He manages to have quiet feet just when you don’t want him to. Clatters round like a drunk old bastard in there most of the time, scaring you into thinking an explosion’s imminent, moves like a ghost when it’s just you and Tanika Bell under the bow with issues coming up.
‘It’s getting dark anyway,’ he says. ‘And I’ve worked out how to boil water on this bloody thing. I’ve made us a pot of tea, so get yourselves up here.’
The cabin looks different this evening, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. It’s not a shell any more, and there’s a mixture of old things saved from the fire, new things just brought in and the mess of unfinished work. But he’s been tidying it, as much as he can, stacking the tins of varnish at one end and making space for the three of us to sit.
‘I hope you don’t mind your tea Chinese style,’ he says. ‘There’s no fridge yet, so nowhere to keep milk.’ He starts pouring, and then stops to sniff the spout. ‘Smells like lapsang souchong. The teapot was here in the fire and maybe it’ll take a while before it stops smelling smoky. Hope the tea’s okay. Here, give it a try.’
He hands me a mug and I taste it. ‘Seems fine, good. A bit different, but I’m pretty much used to Bushells, Australian-style – white with one. I don’t know much about the lapsang kind.’
He gives Tanika a mug as well, and takes a sip at his own.
‘Yuk, it’s foul,’ he says, scrunching his face up. ‘Can’t even make bloody tea any more. Smells like a firework and tastes bloody worse.’ He puts the mug down and leans back in the bench seat, easing his body back slowly as though his healing burns need careful handling. ‘Still, we’re getting there I suppose. Not that you two aren’t giving me headaches along the way, putting in all this hard work turning the old tub into something rather deluxe and making me feel like a guilty old bludger.’
Tanika laughs. ‘Don’t feel guilty, you old bludger.’
‘It’s the “deluxe” bit that’s the real problem of course. How am I going to look, an ugly old mongrel like me, skippering something spiffier than the yacht club commodore’s? He’ll think I’m putting on airs, getting above myself.’
He pulls his shoulders back and goes for a serious snooty face and sits with his head half-turned, like the boring portrait of a retired admiral. Or as close as Harbo could ever get. Not too close.
‘So how long have you two been an item then?’ he says, like it’s a regular question, the next thing to get to after talking about boat repairs and the feelings of commodores.
A hot mouthful of bad tea gets stuck in my throat.
‘Depends how you look at it,’ Tanika says, since one of us has to answer him. ‘We don’t always get to see a lot of each other. It’s a bit complicated. A month maybe. But it feels like longer to me. Longer in a good way, like it’s good that it feels longer, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Some things, if they feel right, they feel like they’ve been around a while already, hey? You just didn’t notice them before. You know, you’re lucky, you two. I never got to be a teenager, not in the way you can be one now. I was off on ships from when I was thirteen or fourteen and most of those months felt pretty long, and not for the best of reasons. I think it sort of stunted my growth socially. That “girl in every port” lark’s not what they say it is. I was a shy kid, but. Maybe that was part of it.’
We didn’t have enough of a plan. That was the problem. We left the rehearsal, we drove back to her place, we ate the sausages and we checked out the night sky. And there was this weird mixture of excitement and the fear of what was coming next. We should have had a plan, but we didn’t. Not that we would have lied. We would just have been very careful with the truth. We would have let it out on our own terms, but that’s not how it ended up happening.
‘The others’d get as much rum in them as they could when we got into port,’ Harbo’s saying, ‘rum or beer, and then they’d be roaming round looking for the first chance to swing the leg over. And I’d done nothing up till then, not even kissed a girl. Anyway, that’s how it started for me with the sea. But what am I telling you that for? That was years ago. That’s where it started, and this is where it’ll end. Me and Stella. Nice and quiet. This’ll do me.’
‘Why’d you call her Stella Maris?’ Tanika says. ‘And who is she?’
‘Who’s who?’
‘Stella Maris.’
‘Stella Maris? She’s an Italian movie star from the fifties. Very deluxe. No, I’m kidding. She’s the star of the sea. It’s Latin. Someone else called her that. It’s not really right for her, is it? She did a good few years fishing off here, then some bloke bought her and refitted her so that he could live on her. He went broke and he had to sell her pretty cheap since she was neither one nor the other – not really a fishing boat any more, but not really a cruiser either. Anyway, how’d we get onto that? That’s right – I think he might have given her the name. But, look, I shouldn’t be keeping you here, at least not until I can make a decent cup of tea. Stop drinking it, Kane. It’s bloody awful, and I don’t require that kind of politeness.’
He grins and I realise how old and wrinkly his face is, or how old and wrinkly it’s become, how many years it must have spent on decks in the sun and wind. Thrashing-down weather, endless sunlight beating into his skin, making wrinkles and cancers. He’s had bits cut off here and there – the top of one ear, chunks of scalp, and something at the corner of his mouth. He looks as though the mice got at him during the night and, with the sun setting and not much light coming through the porthole behind him, the last of his hair is like a wisp of pale grey smoke. The sea has worked him hard, every cell of his body, and it’s no surprise he likes it nice and quiet now.
There’s a cool salty breeze coming in from the east when we get back on deck, and the last orange piece of sun on the hills.
‘I’ve got a few blokes to catch up with,’ he says when we’re down on the concrete and Tanika offers him a lift home in the bus. ‘A couple of boaties at the yacht club for a couple of beers. Just to get me measured up for that smart white skipper’s cap I’ll need to go with the new-look Stella. Lots of gold braid and shit, hey?’
‘No worries, skip,’ she says. ‘I’m sure it’ll suit you. So, you’re right for a lift after that?’
‘Yeah, they’ll drop me back at the place where I’m staying. I’ll be right.’
We walk with him to the gate and watch him as he heads over to the club. Big old Harbo, all limping and bandages and creaky old parts that aren’t quite up to what they used to be. Lumbering through the darkness of the car park, then stepping into the light of the yacht club foyer, showing his wrapped-up hands to the receptionist in lieu of a signature in the book and taking a seat to wait for his boatie mates.
‘You got much on tonight?’ Tanika says. ‘Any Friday night things happening?’
‘Sure. But family, you know. Fridays we do takeaway if we can. And I’ve got a Domino’s voucher. Two pizzas for fourteen ninety-five if you pick them up yourself.’
‘I’d take you home,’ she says. ‘But, you know, that’d be you and me in the bus by ourselves. Just us and your pizzas. And you can guess my new deal for driving the bus. The new rule they came up with for me as regards passengers.’
And here, in the car park, when the evening’s become night, with the chandlery lights glinting in Tanika Bell’s eyes, I could break a lot of other people’s rules and kiss her and she’d kiss me right back. I feel her fingers on my arm, touching it so lightly it’s hardly a touch at all, hardly even a bend in a rule but still there anyway.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve got my bike.’
And she says, ‘Yeah,’ but slowly.
‘I’ve got my bike, so that’s probably good. No dilemmas, then. We can toe the line tonight and look totally respectable. Fine upstanding members of the community. But, like you said, this isn’t over, hey?’
Rules apply on Saturday too. The rest of the church crowd are off to see a band – some Christian country group – but Tanika and I still have an event ban slapped on us.
So, today we win. And they don’t even know.
Wayne knows. Wayne who was shouting at Mum as she slicked down his hair. Something about ‘Kane fornicated so he gets out of it. It’s totally unfair.’ And Mum said there’d be some soap heading for his mouth quick smart if that trash talk didn’t stop.
‘But Wayne,’ I said to him as I put my boots on, ready for Brown’s Slipway. ‘You love a bit of music, don’t you?’
Wayne loves music all right, a few kinds of music but particularly metal. Big grunting thrashing metal. Not Christian country. Wayne loves the metallest metal so much that he hates Metallica for selling out and doing that Symphony album, and he hates AC/DC for being old. It turns out Dad was into them and we’ve got his records from about 1980, only Wayne didn’t know they were from 1980. Wayne, mate, they’re records. You could have thought it through.
Wayne thinks Acca Dacca ripped him off, as if they were young and angry and loud and totally convincing, and then they whipped twenty years away from him behind his back and turned fifty and rich to embarrass him. ‘Fifty’s not so bad,’ I said to him. ‘Nanna’s fifty-four remember. You playing Acca Dacca’d probably give the two of you something in common. She probably even knows them. Like, from school.’
So Wayne checks the dates of things now and he likes Rammstein and Sepultura, and he doesn’t mind that Nine Inch Nails song with the animal reference that’s not consistent with Christian practices.
It’s not fair that they should send Wayne to a Christian country band, not unless he’s done something very bad. It’s just not him.
The bus pulls up outside our place and we take our usual seats.
‘Country songs about God, Wayne,’ I whisper in his ear. ‘You all have a good day now, you hear.’
He belts me in the thigh and glares out the window.
Mum’s head whips around and she says, ‘Stop it you two,’ in that crabby voice of hers that never takes the facts into account. ‘Country music’s changed, Kane. You know that. And you could be a bit more open-minded.’
She turns to face the front again and Wayne points forcefully at the back of her seat and looks at me and says, ‘All day. Right? That and country songs about God.’
‘And respectful of other people’s tastes,’ she says, louder this time, since upping the volume is easier than turning. ‘What about that Heartaches and Highways album I wanted for Christmas, Kane? And you got me Powderfinger instead . . .’
She has this habit – and it’s not a good one – of finishing what she’s saying, then totally ignoring what anyone else says and starting up again with an And, as if she never stopped in the first place.
Wayne just looks at me – gives me a blank look that says, fill in the blank with whatever look’ll do justice to the next six hours of my life.
Mr Bell stops the bus in the street outside Brown’s Slipway.
‘Okay, you two,’ he says as Tanika and I walk past him and down the steps. ‘Mr Harbison’ll be around all the time for advice or anything. So you should be right. I’ll be back for you later this afternoon.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Tanika says. ‘Have fun.’
The door swings shut and the bus drives off, Wayne looking straight ahead but discreetly giving me the finger through the window.
And the day gets better. The work on the boat’s nearly done, and Mrs Bell gave Tanika money for the three of us to have fish and chips for lunch. First I thought I was back in with the flock, but then I figured she might have been planning to buy lunch for Tanika anyway and it’s Christian to do things for Harbo, and in that case it could have looked pretty un-Christian to cut me out.
We all go to the fish and chip shop together, since Harbo reckons he should be there to sweet talk them into a couple more potato scallops. We get it takeaway, all wrapped up in paper, and we go across the road to the ocean side and grab a table with a view. It’s a family picnic table with a bench seat on each side, and Tanika sits next to me and she fights me for chips sometimes.
‘Oh, all right,’ she says when she wins a particularly good one. ‘Here you go then.’ And she puts it straight into my mouth.
‘It’s like feeding time at the zoo, watching you two at work,’ Harbo says, just as a big chunk of potato slides out of the scallop he’s holding and slaps down onto the table. ‘Bloody thing. No wonder they give ‘em away.’
He tosses the piece to a seagull and it picks it up from the grass and takes off, flying back across the road and over the slipway. We’ll finish the boat today. It’s over there now, nearly done. Fresh as new paint at Whitby. We’ll finish the boat, and then what will we do? It’ll be back to Sundays on the bus and only Sundays on the bus, four rows apart. Tanika Bell, a person in the distance I’m barred from talking to without a good and proper purpose. That’s all we’ll have, that at the most. That’s how it’ll be.
She sees me looking at her and says, ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘White with blue trim,’ Harbo says, looking back at the boats. ‘Would the Stormy have been white with blue trim too? Your dad’s boat, Kane?’
‘Might have been. She was certainly white.’
‘Yeah, I think she was, you know. White with blue trim. Of course, I’d only just come back here round that time and it’s one of your more common colour schemes. It was a bugger all that, all that business.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t think anyone knew your dad had so much owing, with that and everything else. And no insurance.’
‘Didn’t think he’d go though. That’s the bit I remember. I knew she sank off the coast, and I knew he left, but I didn’t know the money side. Until not so long ago. I thought they just . . . it was just . . . We don’t talk about it much. Actually, we don’t talk about it.’
‘Oh, sorry mate. I didn’t mean to bring it up if it’s a problem.’
‘No, it’s not a problem. It’s just, well, it’s just life, isn’t it?’
Is it? Is there any more to say than that? She went down straight out from this beach, in deep enough water. The sea’s dark blue off here, and that works well on postcards but it means it’s deep.
He gives me a sad kind of look, but Harbo’s face was probably made with looks like that in mind. Tanika feeds a few more chips into her mouth and looks out to sea.
‘Not fair though,’ he says. ‘But you wouldn’t want to hang around waiting for fair, I suppose. You liked that boat though, didn’t you?’
‘Sure. Some of the best times I can remember, frankly. From when I was a kid anyway. I liked her a lot.’
‘Well, maybe you’ll have one of your own one day.’
‘Not this side of a Lotto win, I don’t imagine. But that’s okay. I’ve got . . . plenty.’
Three African violets growing in pots. That’s what I’ve got, once the Stella’s fixed.
I think Harbo can tell he’s depressing me, so he starts talking about himself again, something about starting off on coastal steamers because he was just a kid and the war was on and he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near combat.
I don’t want people feeling sorry for me. I don’t need it. We worked out years ago that we were better off without Dad. So we don’t talk about him. There’s nothing to talk about. He was pretty much a jerk anyway, Mum says. Just a jerk, and there’s no need for us to talk about the money. What’s done is done.
Three African violets, a hammock, a bar fridge, a steady job with the council, and this is just a pothole I’ve hit at the moment.
I was already depressed because of finishing the boat. That’s the main problem. It’s not so much Harbo bringing up the Stormy or the changes in the family situation. I’m okay with how things are, always have been. And it’s not like we get much of a shot at Lotto anyway. Mum says there’s some of that gambling gene in the family on account of Dad, and we can’t take any chances. She’d rather the money went on rum. And she does go through a bit of rum, so I can see what she means.
But when the boat’s finished, I won’t be meeting Tanika at the bow again, or sitting here eating chips with her, and that’s just not fair.
‘And then the Japs sunk that hospital ship, the Centaur, right off the coast from here,’ Harbo says. ‘So there you go. So much for nowhere near combat. Not supposed to call them Japs any more though, are we? It’s racist or something. So people had probably better stop calling us Aussies too then, hey?’
He tells us it’s not a bad life, the sea, sometimes. Not that he’s got much to do with the sea any more, but he’s used to the movement of water and it’s good to still have that. He doesn’t mind waking up in the middle of the night with a change in the weather and the boat rocking on waves coming up the river.
Lately, on land, he’s been dreaming of the boat rocking and then slamming into something or running aground, and as he comes out of the dream the first thing he knows is that he isn’t moving at all, so it might be true. Twice he’s swung his feet onto the floor to check if the Stella’s taking on water, then he’s realised it’s a bedroom he’s in, the small third bedroom of a brick house owned by people who mean well but ask him too often how he is and get him too many fresh towels.
He carried it all in his time, when he was properly at sea on freighters. Spices from exotic places, but tyres and shoes and office furniture from the same exotic places too. That’s the world for you.
‘Got shot up once,’ he says. ‘By pirates in the Straits of Malacca. There wasn’t a lot of that going on in those days. Not that they were up to much. They were only pirates ’cause they had machetes and a couple of guns. Otherwise they would’ve just been a bunch of layabouts with an old fishing boat. I was married then, sort of. Well, no sort of about it. I was married but she nicked off with my best mate not too long after that.’ He looks up, as if his piracy story’s suddenly turned strange on him. This was a story about being shot up, an adventure story. Life got mixed in and caught him unawares. ‘So, who’s your best mate, young Kane? Better watch him with this little lady.’
He’s making a joke, but he hadn’t expected to and he doesn’t know the score. We’ve been pretending, Tanika and me. With Harbo we’ve pretended this is more than it’s allowed to be, and I don’t know what’ll happen after today. Suddenly, this could kick me in the guts again, and my plan was to toughen up. Where did that go?
‘Sabine, her name was,’ Harbo says. ‘She had a Dutch father – actually, a Belgian father – and an Indonesian mother. I learned a bit of cooking from her, you know.’ He stops and nods, thinking back to something. Something a long time ago, and that he hasn’t thought of for a while. ‘Anyway, what is it Buddhists say? Shit happens? Sometimes it does, but not always. It’s worse, I reckon, when people make it happen. When some of the better stuff’s around and people stand in the way of it. Don’t you think? There’s a lot of bull gets talked about how people conduct themselves. Isn’t there? But I don’t reckon much of it’s worth listening to. I reckon, a lot of the time, people should mind their own business a bit more. They don’t get it. You shoot up a boat, you bust up a marriage, that’s bad stuff. But there’s a lot of stuff people make a fuss about for no good reason. Hey? And some of it might even be important, or good at least, but they’re just too used to looking at it the wrong way. That’s what I think. About a lot of things.’
Harbo declares an end to all the bulldust he’s blowing up, and he says he’s not usually given to this much philosophising unless he’s got a good few full-strength Fourexes in him.
It’s hot inside the Stella and he starts unpacking some boxes of supplies, but he’s asleep soon enough. Flat out on a new mattress up in the bow, away from the light, grunting his way through overheated middle-of-the-day dreams, like a man fighting pirates. Or the ghosts of pirates, coming up at him out of the dark.
Tanika and I finish off. Everything but the name on the stern, and there’ll be a signwriter over on Monday to do that.
‘I put a bit of the boat varnish on my nails,’ she says when I find her in the cabin again after I’ve washed out the brushes. ‘What do you reckon?’
She shows me, all ten glossy fingertips, and I have to walk away then because I’ll kiss her if I don’t. I have to get out of the cabin and up into the daylight, even though there’s nothing more to do outside.
‘We should have something to drink,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll get some drinks.’
Joe Bell comes back around sunset.
‘She’s looking good,’ he says to Harbo, and he pats the white side of the Stella.
My work, and he’s putting his grubby hands all over it. But that’s all right for once, since this conversation’s about to get better than he’s expecting. So I can just smile, and take my share of the compliment.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Harbo tells him. ‘But it’s a good job all right. I thought we might have a barbecue or something, maybe next weekend, to thank everyone who helped out.’
‘You don’t have to do that. It’s a very decent thought, but you don’t have to do it.’
‘No, but, you know, everyone’s been decent to me. And I’d like to acknowledge that. So I thought we’d have a barbecue next weekend, and I’m planning to have these two young ’uns round on Monday for tea. That’s the day she’s launched again, and they’ve put in a lot of effort, you know. They were working all day today, finishing off, and I was yacking on and I got to boasting about my fancy Indonesian cooking. So I’ve got to show them I can come up with the goods, haven’t I?’
Mr Bell says nothing.
‘It’s a matter of honour, hey? Can’t let ’em think I’m some old guy who’s all talk and no action. And the bandages come off my hands on Monday. So, that’s it then. Tea at the captain’s table, with the skipper back on deck. Tanika was pretty sure she was free. She’s not doing anything on Monday, is she? Oh, how was today? How was the music?’
‘All right,’ Mr Bell says, with mean vanishing lips that’d rather say nothing at all.
I’d high-five Harbo right now if his hand wasn’t wrapped in bandages, and if the gesture wouldn’t look a little obvious. Like a master yachtie, he’s tacked right around Joe Bell and left him bobbing up and down with nowhere to go.
He told us he’d fix it. He asked us to dinner once he’d woken up and taken a look around, but Tanika said she wasn’t sure that her dad’d be up for it. There were circumstances, she said, and coming here to fix the boat was one thing, but . . . And Harbo smiled, a cocky old-bugger smile, and said, ‘Yeah? Watch me. Christians are putty in the hands of the elderly and infirm. Supposed to be anyway. We’ll be right.’
We get on the bus – Tanika row one, me four rows back, the usual seats. Harbo’s already on his way into the yacht club. He’s got quite a few mates who, it turns out, don’t mind a beer. More mates like that than we first realised. I don’t know why I thought Blessed Virgin people were the only people he knew.
He started unpacking boxes again once it got cooler, and that’s when the suggestion of dinner came up. The church people had kicked in to replace the food he’d lost, but most of them had given him tinned pineapple or Spam and, as he said, ‘There’s only so much Hawaiian pizza a man can stomach.’ Not that he was ungrateful.
He’s sick of the bandages. You can tell. The fixing of the boat’s kept him going, watching it getting closer to finished every day, but he wants his hands fixed too. He wants them to feel the simple pleasures of life again – that’s how he put it, and then he told us that meant how cold a beer glass is late on a hot summer afternoon, the second a fish takes your bait on the end of a hand line, things like that. And he wants to get back to cooking and making things, and from that point of view he’s not so much into tinned pineapple and Spam. He learned things from Sabine about spices, and you don’t forget them just because she ups and leaves you.
The street lights are on by the time we turn onto the Nicklin Way this evening, and there’s a shop I have to look out for. One where Harbo says there’s an Asian lady who stocks just the right stuff. I think I know the one, but I’ve never been there. He gave me a list of the things he’ll need for Monday, and he gave me some cash. She’s somewhere near the big fruit barn.
Joe Bell moves around in his seat while we’re waiting for the lights to change, and he reaches forward and does something I can’t quite see. Tanika leans over and takes a look. And I’m stuck, of course, watching the back of her head. Like someone sitting a couple of rows back from their own life, waiting for a second chance. I don’t need another reminder of the prison scene in movies with the window and the hands – everything real out of reach and just for watching, and then gone.
Country music starts to play, Christian country music.
‘This is that group we went to today,’ Mr Bell says, his head half-turned so he can call out over his shoulder. ‘That band.’ Said loud enough for me to hear it, loud enough for row five, not just row one, and that’s a change. ‘Thought you might want to listen to them.’
Tanika says something I don’t quite hear, and I shout out ‘Thanks’ since it seems like the smart thing to do, whether I want to listen to them or not.
‘Why don’t you come up the front, Kane?’ he says. ‘Next to Tanika. You’ll hear it better here.’
I stand up, but then I wonder if I’ve heard him right, so I don’t move.
‘Hurry up if you’re coming,’ he says. ‘The light’s gone green.’
Tanika slides along the seat to make room, but she keeps looking out the window rather than anywhere near me. And I sit down next to her, just like he said, but with one buttock practically sticking out into the aisle I’m so careful not to make a mess of this. We sit there frozen, a good third of the seat empty between us, and we say nothing, all the way back to my place. Tanika and me, staring out at the cars, abiding by the rules as we understand them, listening to some song about how the Lord saved a man from his loneliness after his heart got broken. And fair enough. That kind of thing can be intense, I’m sure.
So I forget to look for the shop where I’m supposed to pick up the food for Harbo.
Mr Bell pulls up in our driveway and I say ‘See you’ to both of them, but only when I’m on the steps and getting out.
‘Good work, Kane,’ he says.
And I say ‘What?’ before I remember my manners, and that now would be a particularly good time to use them.
‘With the boat. With Mr Harbison’s boat. Good work.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
And it’s not quite a smile on his face, definitely not a smile, but it’s also not that you-fornicated-with-my-daughter glare that I’ve come to know and not love over the past month. Tanika says nothing, just watches. It’s as if we could break this spell of slight improvement with just one wrong word.
The bus drives off and I stand at the gate for a while, wondering if something’s actually changed. And wondering what I’ll do if it has or, at least, if it’s starting to. Wondering just how accommodating I’ll be to any change of mind from Mr Bell. Pretty accommodating, I would think. This is the world I’ve got to live in, and it’s not a time for pride.
‘Hey, dickweed.’ It’s Wayne’s voice, shouting out from the verandah. The outside light’s off but I can see him there, standing in the doorway. ‘Get your butt in here. I’ve made tea.’
‘Good work. What are we up for?’
‘Nachos. And it’s getting cold. Mum’ll lift the cheese off the top of yours and eat it for you if you don’t get up here.’
‘Good on you, Wayne.’ I’m not particularly hungry, but nachos is Wayne’s second-best meal (second-best of two). ‘What did you think of the band? Mr Bell played the tape in the bus just then.’
‘So you know they sucked. Obviously. How was the boat?’
‘We finished it. We finished the painting. And the Bells shouted us fish and chips for lunch and Harbo told us about getting attacked by pirates, back in the old days.’
‘Pirates? Like, pirates with cutlasses and that?’
‘Cutlasses and buried treasure. A bit of plank walking and the odd beheading. Fair bit of flogging. I’ll tell you about it later. Once your tea’s gone down.’
‘Cool. Pirates, hey? So what did he say about them?’
‘Oh, lots of stuff. He reckons they were pretty tough. You know, those pirates used to flog people just for interfering with themselves, Wayne. Flog ‘em nude. They’d creep up on them in their hammocks while the lights were out and catch them at it. So Harbo reckons.’
Wayne gives me the look of someone about to introduce their pants to a bad surprise. His mouth moves, but no words make it out. Tonight, he’ll barricade his bedroom door and get up every ten minutes or so to check that his windows are locked. Terrorising Wayne would have to rank relatively high on my list of life’s simple pleasures. Poor Harbo. He never had a brother, so he had to get his fun fishing with a hand line. It’s just not the same.
Harbo’s new hands grind the spices while some seeds roast on the grill, and the smell of it all makes you realise why Hawaiian pizza could never really meet his needs.
‘It’s a banquet,’ Tanika says when he fills the table with food, and the smells of the meal grow big enough to hide the smells of varnish and paint and turn the cabin a step further back into a place where someone lives. ‘Like one of those twenty-four ninety-five per head minimum four person ones. A total banquet.’
‘That was the idea,’ Harbo tells her. ‘But don’t worry, the other idea was that I’d get a couple of reheats out of any leftovers, so there’ll be no offence taken if it’s not finished.’
It’s almost ceremonial, the way he serves it out a small amount at a time and tells us about each dish – the spices, the idea behind it, the tricks of the trade.
‘So there we go,’ he says. ‘She was worth some of that trouble, Sabine. Before she came along I was limited to the old hundred-and-one-ways-to-reheat-beans style of cooking.’ He shovels in another mouthful. ‘But maybe, cooking aside, this’d be a good time to make a bit of a break from the past. What do you reckon, Kane?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, conquer the past, more than just break from it. That’s probably more like it. Do you ever want to do that?’
‘I don’t have much of a past. No Japs except tourists. No pirates.’
‘Anyone who’s lived has a past, mate, even if there’s only eighteen years of it and all on this coast. I was thinking something symbolic, maybe a new name for the boat. Stella Maris always struck me as a bit . . . pretentious. So I cancelled the signwriter and I’ve got him coming back later in the week. How would you be about the name Stormy? Do you reckon it’s time to give it a run again? Partly recognising all the work you’ve put in. I’d only do it if you were happy about it, of course.’
‘Stormy? Yeah. I don’t know how Mum’d feel though. Not a big fan of the Stormy mark one, as I recall. But I’d like it. Maybe a name with Stormy in it, Stormy and something more, another word or two. Anyway, she’s a bit more flash than the Stormy now, after the refit.’
‘Yeah,’ Tanika says. ‘Deluxe. That’s what you called her, Mr Harbison. The Stormy Deluxe. How about that?’
‘Stormy Deluxe,’ Harbo says, trying it out. ‘Sounds like a racehorse. I’m up for it if you are, Kane.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.’
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Next issue. The long-term future of said Stormy Deluxe.’ He puts down his fork. ‘Here’s the bit you don’t know. You’d be thinking, to look at me, that I’d have a few years left, right? A few years, but not a lot of years. It turns out it might be quite a bit less than that, but there’s no drama there. Nothing to get worked up about. While I was in hospital that couple of days for the burns, they picked something up on my chest X-rays and it doesn’t look good. They said I should play it safe and start making a few plans, and I don’t have any kids – I’ve got no family at all – but what I do have is this old tub that’s now been turned into a prize specimen.’
He looks around, at the varnished wood and shiny fittings and cushions everywhere like you’d see in a magazine. But it’s not about that. He’s not telling us about the boat. They’ve told him to make plans.
‘I felt bad about that for a while,’ he says. ‘People putting in money and time, fixing the old Stella for me when I’d sent her to the bottom out of my own stupidity and now I’m going to peg out on them some time anyway. But how do you stop people fixing a boat for you with that piece of info? You can’t stop all that generosity by killing the mood and telling them maybe they should just prop you in a corner somewhere ’cause you might not be worth their bother. So she’s fixed now, spectacularly, and it’d make me feel a lot better if someone like you two could take her on when the time comes. If you don’t blow up the stove, she shouldn’t cost you much to look after, and she might show you a few good times.’
I have to look away from him, but I make the mistake of looking at Tanika and she’s stopped chewing mid-mouthful and she looks like she might cry. I feel sick. He’s fed us with all this amazing food, and now I feel sick. So I look at the table and tell myself it’ll be okay. Harbo looks good, not good but sturdy. Like an old tree that once got hit by lightning but got through it. Nothing’ll bring him down for a while yet, surely.
‘But don’t feel sorry for me,’ he says. ‘Here’s how I look at it. I sink my boat, and stacks of people turn up wanting to help me. You two most of all. I know I keep myself to myself sometimes, and that suits me – it’s suited me since Sabine jumped ship – but it can leave you wondering if people notice you’re there at all. And now I know. They notice, and they want to help me. That’s about the best thing that’s happened to me in years. See? And that’s enough. That’s better than I was expecting. And now there’s this bigger thing they can’t help me with – the shadow on the X-ray – but that’s okay. They would if they could. I know that. And I’ve got a bit of money set aside, so I’ll talk to Father Steele about that and see if there’s anything he wants done. But I wouldn’t mind it if you two took the Stormy Deluxe.’
There’s thunder outside, and a cool wind blows through the hatch and into the boat.
‘There we go,’ he says. ‘Like bloody King Lear. The old bugger comes to grips with his own mortality and that, of course, portends a storm. I think portends is the word. Did you ever see that one? King Lear?’
‘So what’s going to happen?’ I’d rather not ask it, but I need to know.
‘We’ll see. They haven’t even finished the tests yet. But I wouldn’t get too worried about it. I’m pretty well set up here, whether it’s weeks or months or whatever. I just thought you should know. Before they turned up at one of your houses one day with a bloody big boat. I wanted to run it by you, that’s all. And I reckon you two don’t always get a fair hearing from some of those church people, so . . . So, have a boat instead. Something like that.’
He laughs, and I laugh with him since it’s not a choice anyone gives you. So, Kane, it’s up to you – would you like the fair hearing or the boat? Like one of those dramatic game show moments, when you can take the cash and leave or risk it all on the next question.
‘Well, thanks,’ Tanika says. ‘I don’t think we thought you’d . . .’
‘Of course you didn’t. You were here to help. And maybe to spend a bit of time with each other, but mainly here to help. What do you reckon, Kane? You wouldn’t mind having one of these, would you? A smart-looking tub like this one?’
‘Well, it’d be great, but . . . I hope it’s yours for a long while yet.’
And maybe it’s reassurance that I’m looking for, but he says it doesn’t really bother him either way and he tells us he’s pretty tired now and he might have a lie down. But just tired – all gourmeted out – and fully expecting to wake up tomorrow, so we shouldn’t look so worried. It’s been a big day, seeing the boat go back in the water and his hands come out of bandages.
And we shouldn’t bother with the dishes. He’s the host, so he’ll fix them up later.
‘Might even leave them till morning,’ he says. ‘Just this once.’
Outside, the wind’s picking up, tossing around leaves and rubbish, and the stars are all gone. There’s a flash of lightning over the hills and thunder rumbles across us.
I pick up my bike from where I left it near the fence and a warm heavy drop of rain lands in my hair.
‘Any second now,’ Tanika says. ‘We’re going to cop a pounding.’
‘Not a lot we can do about it.’
‘I reckon, in the circumstances, I could probably give you a lift home. You and your bike, in the bus. I think that’d be okay. You know, Samaritan. It wouldn’t be safe for you out there.’
‘You sure?’
Rain slaps down onto the concrete, each drop practically a handful at a time. Just a few so far, but plenty more to come.
‘Yeah, I’m sure. So come on.’
I follow her to the bus and the bike tyres bounce as they hit the steps on the way in. Rain lands on the roof, lumps of it, more than before but still not yet the real thing.
Tanika stands there next to the driver’s seat, leaning on the steering wheel as I lead the bike past, and she says, ‘Father Steele and my mother both talked to Dad.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And it’s not like it’s all fixed, or anything, but I told them about my feelings. So, we’ll see. Anyway, Dad reckons he’s been not quite right about you. The family-man side of him got the better of the rest of him for a while there. He figures you’re a good bloke who just succumbed to lust before he’d really had the chance to think it through. He’s wrong of course. You succumbed to me. But that’s their problem, the stupid way they think of things. I thought it was a top night that night, and I couldn’t give a rats about the nativity play, if truth be told.’
‘I was kind of over it myself. Steelo does it the same way every year. I know you can’t change the story, since it’s the birth of Jesus, but he doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. And, if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t have been up for it this time around if I hadn’t heard you were lining up for one of the other Magus spots.’
‘Good,’ she says, and the rain comes down harder. ‘Better drive this thing, I guess.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hey, I’m the bus driver, so I make the rules, right?’
‘Sure. The driver’s ultimately responsible for whatever happens on board. But the usual rule is just sit down and shut up, in the interests of safety. A bit more imagination wouldn’t go astray.’
‘Exactly. Well, my rule is you should kiss me now. Or this bus isn’t going anywhere, pal.’
‘All right, that’s probably fair. Harsh but fair, and who am I to question the bus driver? But I thought it was just a Samaritan act, you driving me home.’
‘No one in the Bible kissed like the Samaritans, they reckon. They were just careful about it. Kept it to themselves and didn’t push it too far before the time was right. So when they wrote the Samaritan story, they just looked like a bunch of people who’d go out of their way to help an old guy when he was down.’
She lets go of the steering wheel. Car headlights through the windscreen light up her face, streaky with the rain on the glass.
It’s dark again when my hand reaches her arm, when my arms move around her, when my mouth finds her mouth for the first time in weeks, here in the stale warm summer air in this unlit bus with my bike squished between us as the edge of the storm is replaced by the worst of it, clattering down on the roof so nothing else can be heard. No cars, not the change in my breathing, not the quiet thing Tanika says to me when the kiss comes to its end.
I take the seat right behind her, the seat that’s usually hers, and I put my hands on her shoulders for a second. It’s as if Joe Bell could turn up now, or Father Steele, and any time I touch her could be the last, so I don’t want to stop just yet.
She flicks the indicator on, and she drives.
I watch the road ahead of us, the lights blurring with the rain washing all over the windscreen, parked cars passing below us to the left and the dull shapes of boats on the water beyond them.
I’m leaning forward and I think I can smell her hair, the fragrance from her shampoo with new rain mixed in. Ill remember that tonight, later. There’s a lot not to forget. Harbo, the Stormy Deluxe, the things I didn’t know about life. My life and his. And sometimes you get to know things slowly – they take weeks or months – then other times they come in bunches, fast, almost too fast. Onto you like this rain. Harbo and the shadow on his lung, his past with Sabine and the pirates and the ultimate piracy of his best mate. But sometimes those things happen. My father leaving all those years ago. Tanika Bell, turning up last year, doing the nativity play, telling me it wasn’t over and meaning it.
I keep leaning forward, listening to it all, watching it all, remembering everything from then and now. Glimpses of other times and this, the deafening sound of water pounding steel, Tanika’s white hands on the wheel when the lights catch them, working the bus through the streets of Mooloolaba and onto the Nicklin Way, into the mad face of this thrashing pounding storm, the worst of the summer.
She shouts something out to me, something about the storm and how wet I’d be if I was out there on my bike. And I don’t mind being wet, I don’t mind storms so much, but I tell her, This’ll do me.’ And she doesn’t hear any of it. ‘You, me and rain on a tin roof. That’ll do.’
And the words don’t seem to make a sound, but we don’t really need them to. Not now.