Brother Fish (79 page)

‘Correct.'

Bloody hell! Just at the moment I don't need a lesson in grammar.
‘But even if you're
correct
, we don't own a boat or fishing gear and even if the bank will give us a loan, we'll need a couple of thousand quid to get off the starting blocks. That's if we beg, borrow and steal and virtually buy everything second, third, fourth and fifth hand. To equip ourselves properly, that is, to be competitive, we'll need at least ten thousand quid, which frankly is a bad joke.' I was getting steamed up. ‘Finally, we know absolutely nothing about exporting.'

‘Ah, but
I
do!'

‘Exporting crayfish?'

‘Caviar.'

‘Caviar?'

‘Yes, Jack. The fish market is universal. We worked out of Shanghai, exporting to Europe and America. Caviar is fish – well, fish eggs, to be precise.'

‘The virgin sturgeon,' I said, showing her I knew what caviar was.
Christ, what's going to come out next? Is there anything she hasn't done?

I confess I was getting a bit worked up. Sometimes the smallest things set you off. Correcting my grammar was no big deal – Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan did it constantly, had done since I was eight years old. But I guess we were all feeling the strain, and her latest correction had been the last straw. I was also feeling decidedly sorry for myself but, of course, I couldn't allow myself to admit it. Everything was crowding in on me. There was the problem of Jimmy being able to stay in Australia, as well as Wendy's parents turning nasty and making her sad. And then there was the fact that I was engaged to the most beautiful girl in the world and I couldn't even afford a bloody ring! Not even a diamond I'd seen in a Launceston pawn shop so small it didn't seem to refract light. I was earning bugger-all, and now Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan was giving me my hundred-thousandth lesson in English bloody grammar!

As far as I was concerned we'd basically lied to Cuffe about going into export. I didn't mind that – I'd tell porkies until the cows came home if it would help ensure Jimmy could stay. If Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had been correct about his getting a Certificate of Exemption Jimmy and I would have five years to get something under way. But in the fishing game five years is bugger-all. Even if we worked our arses off, we might just about make a reasonable living in that time. That is, if our luck held – fishing is as much about luck as it is about good management and the right equipment. How we'd then scrape together the money for a half-decent boat and the gear we'd need to be taken seriously in all-weather fishing on Bass Strait, the Tasman, and the Tasmanian and Victorian coasts was anyone's guess. We certainly wouldn't be anywhere near doing so in five years.

Most fishermen, even those few on the island with a bit of get-up-and-go, have taken half a lifetime to own a boat they can trust in a big sea. Nothing grand – just one that is not only properly equipped for cray fishing but also able to adapt to another kind of catch that will pay for insurance, tucker, fuel bills and the crew's wages in the off-season. Most fishermen never get close and go broke trying, and it's not only because they drown in alcohol on the way. It's the constant struggle – the weather, lack of money, lack of proper equipment, the bloody banks foreclosing, poor seasons, storms, rip-off wholesale fish buyers, Tasmanian Fisheries making new rules faster than you could haul an anchor in a sudden change of wind. It goes on and on until your heart is finally broken.

Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan ought to have known better. She'd been on the island since the early 1930s. She'd seen it all – the hungry families with barefoot kids, their clothes made from sugar bags, the grinding poverty. No jobs available when the weather gets up and goes bad on you, sometimes for weeks, the men sitting on their hands ashore with no wages coming in. She'd been on the island just after the Great Depression – she bloody knew how hard it was to earn a quid from the sea. Now she was talking about the export market where she had expertise in, excuse me,
caviar
! What the fuck had caviar to do with crayfish? Bloody fish eggs in a tin!

‘I have a proposition to make to both of you,' she continued. She must have seen the look on my face, because she stopped and turned to me. ‘I'm sorry about correcting your grammar, Jack. It was rude and unnecessary – I shan't do it again.' She'd never said that before. To make such a promise was almost more absurd than the ridiculous export idea. English grammar was her passion – she simply couldn't help herself. Then she smiled and hit us with the next bombshell. ‘I'd like to go into the fishing business with the two of you.'

It was only just a little past two o'clock in the afternoon, yet already it felt to me as if I'd been up for forty-eight hours. ‘Beg your pardon? You? Fishing?'
What can she possibly mean?
Clearly I was not the only one under strain.

‘We'll build an export business together. We won't sell locally – cray fetches three and sixpence a pound on the Melbourne fish market; in America we'd clear ten shillings a pound after expenses.'

I was suddenly exasperated. ‘Nicole ma'am, have you looked at a map lately?' I stretched my arm to the far side of the table. ‘Australia's here.' I then drew my forefinger slowly across the red-and-white-checked tablecloth towards where she sat at the opposite end. ‘This is the Pacific Ocean.' My hand finally came to rest next to her half-eaten plate of chicken cacciatore. ‘And this is America! Los Angeles or San Francisco, take your pick. New York is on the other side of the flamin' continent. May I ask how we are going to get fresh cray to America, much less New York?'

‘Qantas has two flights a week to Los Angeles,' she replied mildly. Jimmy could see I was getting pretty upset. That's the trouble with being a redhead – when you're steamed up it shows. ‘Brother Fish, he cor-rect, Nicole ma'am. We ain't got no dough to do no export business. We ain't got da bread foh a boat, even iffen it gonna be a flyin' boat!'

‘But I have.' She said it quietly as if it was no big deal, then, turning to me, she asked, ‘If I recall correctly, you said it would take about 10 000 pounds to equip properly for all-weather fishing?'

I nodded. ‘Yeah, that's right – might as well be a million.'

She reached down to her handbag on her lap and withdrew a sheet of paper. ‘Ten thousand, five hundred and eighty pounds,' she announced. ‘That is, with a good transceiver – I'd rather you didn't get lost at sea.'

She pushed the piece of paper over to me. We were silent for a while – I mean, there's not a lot you can say after something like that. I glanced down at the single sheet, carefully ruled with a column down the right-hand side filled with numbers, and on the left she'd written the items we'd require, the very first being ‘One 45ft fishing boat'. I glanced at the bottom line where the outrageously large sum, 13 987 pounds, sat squatly positioned between two horizontal black lines.

‘Well?' she looked at me querulously. ‘Cat got your tongue, Jack?'

‘What are you going to do, sell the
Gazette
?'

She drew back in horror. ‘Oh, I couldn't possibly do that!' We both looked at her, mystified, and I handed the sheet of paper to Jimmy.

‘I . . . I don't know what to say.'

‘I suppose your reaction is not surprising, Jack. I dare say it's a lot of money and naturally you're curious as to where it will come from.'

That was probably the understatement of the decade – the century! Fourteen thousand quid could buy a house and a car and was the sort of dough it would take us ten years or more to save. That is, if we got all the breaks, which was highly improbable – fishermen never get all the breaks, the sea makes damn sure of that.

She paused and seemed to change the subject. ‘You've been very patient not asking more pointedly about my past, Jack. Thank you for not persisting. After all, I know all about you. James has also been kind enough to tell me most of his personal story. But you know very little about me. If we are to be partners then it's only fair, before you make a decision, that we're completely honest and open with each other. Partnerships are always a tricky business and I would never wish to come between you.' She smiled and looked fondly at us. ‘However, I must ask you to keep what I tell you confidential. A woman's life is not the same as that of a man. The world is quick to judge a female who has, as they say, “a past”. I've made a new life for myself on the island and if it hasn't been everything a gal could possibly want, it's been satisfactory. I'm fifty years old the year after next – by the way, that's also confidential.' She looked up and took a breath. ‘Well, it's high time I stopped dithering.'

We both laughed.
Dithering
was such an inappropriate word for Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, who had practically run the island since I'd been too small to remember it without her. She and the Reverend Daintree (before he started losing the plot), Dr Light from the cottage hospital, and Father Crosby were the permanent brains – the movers and shakers. Although, in truth, Father Crosby was probably more brawn and bombast than he was brain. The rest of the islanders came and went, sitting on the various committees and as members of the town council, sharing the largely ceremonial role of mayor. But these four were the professionals to whom, from birth until death, in one way or another, we all eventually turned.

Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, as I've mentioned, performed a number of different roles on the island. As music teacher and the director of the school concert she had brought a smidgin of culture to the community. As librarian she'd taught the disadvantaged and illiterate to read and write. As justice of the peace she'd kept her finger on the pulse of the island's business affairs, protected the vulnerable and changed people's lives, and in the last few years as editor of the
Gazette
she'd steered things in the right direction or stirred the community out of its customary lethargy. She'd made enemies and friends and often the one would change into the other and then revert once more. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan showed neither fear nor favour, and she couldn't be bought. If all this could be termed
dithering
, then the rest of us might be described as practically flyblown.

But if there were those among the islanders who admired her and those who didn't, she had very few, if any, close friends – with perhaps the exception of the Reverend Daintree. In the old days, before he was in his dotage, she'd spent a lot of time at the manse, and if he hadn't been so old, even then, tongues might have wagged. She still turned up twice a week in the evening to cook something special for him, and I was later to learn that she cooked Chinese meals and that he too had spent some of his early days in China, as a missionary. While she was often the subject of conversation, admiring and otherwise, in all the time I'd known her I couldn't remember any islanders who felt they truly knew her. I was no exception. While I'd regarded her increasingly as a friend, it was still with a sense of wariness.

Jimmy, on the other hand, had seemed to be able to break through her stern, imperious demeanour with apparent ease. I would observe as he pressed on regardless, riding roughshod over her defences, to capture her heart and mind to the point of enchantment. They appeared to understand each other on a different level, and I'd never heard her laugh as often and in quite the way she did in his company. Moreover, while she was interested in his mind, she never corrected his grammar or winced at his pronunciation. She seemed to accept that Jimmy had invented a version of English that was unique, and she didn't tamper with it. He would often disagree with her, but she'd listen without shaking her head in disapproval as she would with me, often before I'd completed the sentence. She accepted Jimmy for who he was, while she had always regarded me as a potential outcome – someone whom she regarded as not yet a finished product.

While I wasn't in the least concerned with their growing friendship, I was now wary of how it might manifest itself in a partnership. The well-worn cliche ‘Two's company, three's a crowd' sprang to mind. Fishing is a male business. Boats and fish are, at best, dirty work involving lots of small decisions, some of which can end up saving or losing your life. The sea is always a dangerous place, and on a two-man fishing vessel your partner is an extension of yourself. I never doubted for one moment that Jimmy and I would work well at sea. However, if Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan was calling the shots from the shore there would be the opportunity for tension between us. Her growing closeness to Jimmy had the potential to split his and my loyalty to each other. I told myself that her imperious manner wouldn't vanish overnight, that she was essentially a loner accustomed to making all the decisions. Local gossip had it that there was a constant exit of employees from the
Gazette
, where it was known to be ‘her way, or no way'.

On the other hand, there was the Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan of tact and charm, who could twist a real hard case like Harry Champion –
‘
the choice of all the Champions
'
– who'd duly received his import licence for the French equipment needed to make brie, around her little finger. Furthermore, the way she'd planned the campaign for Jimmy's Certificate of Exemption had been masterly. Whether he finally received permission to stay in Australia or not, she hadn't missed a trick and her ‘emotional exception' concept had showed how very well she understood human nature.