Black Water (18 page)

‘You know what.’ The silence had got too much for Farren. ‘Just this.’ He nodded dismissively, although he did not want to
dismiss the place, or Danny, just the embarrassment of the question. ‘Home. Scrub. Water. You bloody know.’

‘Which adds up to?’ Danny kept Farren in his sights like a demanding teacher. ‘A true bloody miracle, that’s what. I’m home, fellers. I
bloody
made it.’ He slapped his hat back on as if it was a full-stop to the conversation and took a limping step forward.

‘Hey, Danny.’ Robbie talked to Danny’s back. ‘Did you mean what you said about not drinking back there? Or, ah –’ He took a small flat bottle of rum from his pocket. ‘Because I’ve got this, you know, ah, just in case.’

Danny turned slowly. Seeing the bottle he straightened, a sly smile stealing over his face.

‘You champion, Sir Robert.’ He put out his good hand. ‘Just what the doctor didn’t order. ’

The boys sat at the table, Robbie’s rum ensconced in Danny’s hand, the rabbit with them in her box.

‘Them coins you left us, Dan,’ Farren said suddenly. ‘Like, where’d you get ’em from? I mean, did you find ’em here? Or did you, like, buy ’em overseas, or somewhere else, or somethin’?’

Danny sipped rum. ‘And what coins’d these be, mate?’ He took another sip as if to reassess, or reinforce, the taste of the honey-coloured alcohol. ‘Did I leave yers a few bob before I went back to Geelong? Well, don’t worry about it.’ Danny shrugged. ‘I got paid when I was away.’ He sat patiently, waiting for Farren’s answer.

Desolation, like a sodden raft of heavy black logs, sat squarely in Farren’s consciousness. In Danny’s face he could see neither the flicker of a fib nor the glimmer of a remembered fact.

‘Fair dinkum?’ Farren searched Danny’s uneven features.
‘You can’t remember? Them coins you left on the table? And the note?’

Danny grinned, shrugged, and rubbed his hair up into little dark stooks.

‘Nah, mate, fair
dinks
, I can’t.’ He came up with a smile so crooked a marble could’ve run down it. ‘But say la vie, eh? Just forget ’em, sport. Because it seems I have.’ He took another quick nip as if he wanted to make sure he would not forget the taste of rum.

From the wharf Farren could hear gulls complaining, a winch grinding, and at the door the wind scraped and scratched, but nothing he could hear, or think of, suggested anything that he could say.

‘Hey, Farry.’ Robbie leant towards Farren. ‘P’raps it might help if you went and got a couple of the bloody things from your tin. That way at least Danny’ll know what we’re on about.’

Farren laid the coins on the table. The note he’d left in the tin. He could get it later if Danny really wanted to see it.

‘On the day you went back to ’ospital,’ he said, watching Danny as Danny watched him, ‘you left these things on here and a note sayin’ you found ’em. And that there was more where they come from. And not to tell anyone.’ Farren was struck with shame about dropping the coin in the bar, but bad luck, that couldn’t be changed. ‘Which we haven’t, really. So this is them.’

Danny picked up a coin, rolling it around between his fingers like a wheel.

‘And
you
say
I
found ’em? Round ’ere?’

Farren nodded. ‘In yer note yer said yer did. But yer didn’t say where.’

‘Farren gave me one.’ Robbie spoke fast, as if to get this admission over and done with. ‘I’ve got it hidden at home. No one’ll ever find it. Although Nerrie Turner did see it, but she’s a top girl, Danny, and she won’t gab.’

‘Oh, yeah, Nerrie Turner.’ Danny smiled as if he’d seen Nerrie out through the window. ‘Yeah, she is a good sort.’ Danny’s forehead wrinkled, each wrinkle translating a measure of his good nature. ‘Now I
can
say I do remember
her
. And it’s not to say that if I tripped over a few of these blessed coins once, that I can’t do it again, eh?’

‘That’s
right
,’ said Robbie, pulling his chair in closer to Danny’s. ‘All you have to do is remember
where
you found them last time, keep your eyes peeled, and bingo!’

‘Well, that’d be nice.’ Danny nodded a little. ‘But let’s remember, boys, that money ain’t everythin’.’ He looked at Farren, his oddly-paired eyes, assisted by his haphazardly healed eyebrows, giving away little of what he might be thinking. ‘You still got that knife I gave yer, Farren? That yankee one?’

‘Yep.’ Farren answered quickly, his hand going to his pocket, even though the knife was in his fishing bag. ‘And I’ll never lose it again. I promise.’

‘No, that’s not what I was drivin’ at.’ Danny stood up, dominating the room, although he was scarecrow-thin. ‘What I’m sayin’ is that history does have a silly way of repeatin’ itself. So who knows what’ll turn up out there?’ He bent slowly to lift Hoppidy from her box, the rabbit hanging like a handful of wet washing. ‘Now what are we callin’ this animule again? Apart from dinner.’

Danny stared into the stove’s firebox, watching a horde of flames feast on wood that Farren had just shoved in. If he was listening to the wind that wailed in the eaves, crashed around the sheds, and shook whatever it could get to grips with, he wasn’t showing it.

‘Biggest blow we’ve had in a long time.’ Farren tried to sound casual. ‘Glad we’re in ’ere, eh? Bet she’ll start bloody pourin’ soon.’ He tried not to think of the storm that had taken their father and Luther but failed; an image of his dad appearing to him, a white face in a wild sea, swimming in the dark with no hope of ever reaching shore.

‘Yep. Reckon.’ Danny held his hands unevenly out to the heat. ‘She’s a bit furious, all right.’

Farren knew this was an automatic response. Danny wasn’t hearing the storm, and as much as Farren might want him to talk about the wind, and so break down its power, he knew he wouldn’t. Silence was now something Danny sheltered in. And often when Farren saw his brother looking across the estuary, or up into the hills, it was without expectation, as if what he hoped to see would
never be there, or what he’d seen in Gallipoli overshadowed everything else in the whole world.

‘How’s that kettle lookin’, Dan?’ Farren hoped to snap Danny out of his silence. ‘Be gettin’ close, eh?’

Danny didn’t take his eyes off the flames.

‘Just about to sing,’ he said vaguely, though the kettle’s whistle had been lost years ago. ‘Be right in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

Farren got the mugs from the sideboard, where they had been pushed up to make room for the small box that held a ball Danny squeezed to strengthen his bad hand, and various silver tubes of vile-smelling ointment that he rubbed onto his wounds, with no visible results so far that Farren could see.

‘You little beauty,’ Farren said, just to say something cheerful to fill in the silence. ‘A bloody good cuppa, eh?’ But Danny offered no response.

Farren poured the tea and gave Hoppidy a fleeting smile. How she’d become so much a part of the household was a mystery to him, but he was glad they had her. Sometimes Danny took her out on his walks, on a soft lead he’d managed to cobble together from old cord and a small collar. Farren had seen them by the water, Danny gazing at the fishing fleet as if the boats were sailing towards him, or away from him, in a dream.

‘Tea, mate.’ Farren put the mug into Danny’s hand. ‘Watch it. She’s hot.’

In the yard the wind bounced buckets and rattled the loose trellis as if it was playing with its toys – or trying to cover up a fragile, distant, insistent man-made gonging that was doing its best to make itself heard over the gale.

‘You hear that?’ Farren listened, the ringing coming and going
on the wind but never vanishing. ‘That’s the bloody wreck bell. God, someone’ll be in strife out there on a bloody night like this.’

‘Could be,’ Danny said. ‘Big waves in a big wind.’

Farren put his tea down and stood, looking around for his coat, seeing it in a heap by the door.

‘I’m gunna go, Danny.’ Never before had Farren gone out when the wreck bell sounded; his dad had told him to stay at home, that he was too young to help the rescuers, but now that Tom Fox wasn’t around to head out into the storm, Farren decided that he would. Pushing his hand down a cold coat sleeve he headed for the door. ‘I’ll see yer later, Dan. I’m off. To see if I can give ’em a hand, eh?’

Danny nodded, almost in time with the distant tolling, as if he was trying to fully understand what the sound of a bell at this time of night truly meant.

‘Yeah, good on yer, mate,’ he said vaguely. ‘Duty calls.’

Farren was running into a hard, pummelling wind when he heard a shout.

‘Eh, Farren! Oi! Hang on!’

Danny
.

Farren stopped, hardly able to believe what he’d heard, and hardly able to see anything else but the house that knelt in front of a few flogging trees. Of Danny there was no sign. He cupped his hands and shouted.

‘Hey, Dan! I’m here! By the bridge!’ Farren waited, the scrub around him moving like a swirling sea, his ears filled with the hard, hollow booming of the wind. ‘I’ll wait!’ He would’ve, for years. ‘C’mon! I’m right ’ere on the track!’

In a minute Danny arrived, a dark, limping spectre in his old
army greatcoat, his head bare, a cigarette glowing defiantly.

‘Geez, Farren, you run like a bloody rabbit.’ Danny heaved in a breath, let out a wheeze, and wiped his nose. ‘Mate, anyway, look, this is the score as it stands. I’ll come cross the bridge with yer, orright? But after that, I ain’t promisin’ nobody nothin’.’

A group of at least a dozen men had gathered at the lifeboat station, the place lit by swinging lamps and surrounded by ti-tree. The wreck bell was now silent and the wind, unable to turn from its raging path to the north, managed only to divert a few errant breaths down into the shelter of the cove. Farren stood with Danny at the rear of the crowd as Jack Haggar addressed them from the back of Will Conellan’s flatbed truck.

‘Accordin’ to the lighthouse blokes –’ Jack spoke steadily, ‘some two-master went aground outside the Heads, was washed inside, and has broken up. The lifeboat’s already on her way down, so the rest of us’ll follow down on the truck. Although I fear all this might already be too late.’

Farren headed for the shed, keen to help load the rescue gear, but when he saw that Danny hadn’t moved he stopped.

‘Yer gunna give us a hand, Dan?’ Farren spoke as quietly as the wind allowed. ‘Come down with us to see what we can do?’

Danny watched men lifting crates of ropes, pulleys, lifebelts and buoys onto the truck.

‘Not much use the way I am, mate.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Maybe I’ll just have a little poke around on me own, eh? An’ p’raps catch up with yers later on, orright?’ He got hold of Farren’s arm just above the elbow. ‘Don’t do anythin’ too brave, all right? Ya hear me?’

Farren understood. ‘Yeah, no, I won’t. See yer, Danny. You be careful, too, orright?’

Danny let Farren’s arm go. ‘As always, mate. See yer later, eh?’ He turned to limp off down towards the beach, stopping once to light a smoke, his face close to the flame. Farren felt such an overwhelming love for his brother that he could hardly breathe.

‘Where’s Danny-boy off to?’ Jack Haggar approached Farren from the dark, clutching a handful of storm lanterns as if he had six dead ducks by the neck.

‘He’s gunna search the beach.’ Farren indicated the track that roamed downhill into blackness. ‘His arm ain’t up to much.’

‘It’s good to see him.’ Jack looked into the dark as if Danny was still in sight. ‘He’s a champ.’

‘Yeah, he is,’ Farren said.

‘Hop on, boys!’ Will Conellan waved from the cab of the truck and gunned the Dodge’s motor. ‘And hang on!’

From a storm-powered sky the wind pelted rain at the men on the clifftop. Farren watched in awe as the beam of the lighthouse lanced across the breaking sea, and listened as one of the lighthouse keepers, a man in a black coat with buttons the size of two-bob bits, shouted information to Jack.

‘We sighted her comin’ up from the south-east.’ The man’s wispy hair looked as if it was going to blow off his head. ‘On ’er run in she got caught broadside and knocked down. Then taken in over the reef.’ The man’s voice trailed away. ‘Not a chance, yer wouldn’t think. But yers never know. Yer never know.’

Following Jack’s instructions, Farren and a few others took the track down to the bay beach, the water there relatively protected on the inner side of the Heads. Even so, he could see that fast-running waves ruled it, the Queenscliff lifeboat taking each like a horse over a fence.

‘A dirty night,’ Jack said to Farren, as they stood at the start of the pier, watching the boat’s precarious search. ‘Someone’d
have to be mighty lucky.’

Farren watched the racing black sea with fascination and fear. Although it had been robbed of strength by rocks and reefs, it still managed to send swell after swell that passed hissing and heaving under the pier. Nobody could survive this, he thought, feeling the timbers tremble. Only Charlie Piper, tied to a rope, had been out to the end of the pier in a vain search for wreckage, survivors, or bodies. And he’d come back looking as if he’d been blasted with a fire hose.

‘Bloody deadly,’ he’d pronounced it as he dragged loose the bowline around his waist. ‘Start prayin’, boys. It’s a bloody nightmare. There’s waves out there like mountains.’

‘Wreckage!’ A fisherman pointed, arm straight out like a trimmed tree branch. ‘There! Windward of the pier. Halfway along. Just come out of the dark.’

Farren, with four or five others, made their way out to where the stern section of a large boat wallowed like a decapitated whale. Another fisherman, Andros Gasowski, huge in soaking oilskins, thrust himself at the rail.

‘
Hullo
za boat!’ His voice was like a foghorn. ‘
Zenny
body zar? C’n you ’ear me?
Hullo
za boat!’

The wreckage wallowed on, as if it was concentrating solely on the process of disintegration. In the passing flash of the lighthouse beam Farren saw her name, the
Huon Messenger
, and her home port, Furneaux Island, written across the stern.

‘She’s groundin’ again,’ someone said. ‘Look at that.’