Tears of the Moon (4 page)

Lily answered in her soft husky voice. ‘I’m actually going on to Broome.’

‘Oh, that’s a great place for a holiday.’

‘I’m going there on business. Family business. How long do I have in Darwin?’

‘Five hours, I’m afraid. You have to change planes.’

The attendant smiled and moved on to the next row.

When she returned later to offer a refill, Lily was lying back with her eyes closed and a wistful expression on her face that didn’t invite disturbance.

Lily was not asleep. But she was tired, emotionally tired as well as physically. She had finalised the storage, sale and charity donations of Georgiana’s belongings. The apartment was clean and empty and in the hands of a real estate agent. She’d had a late night packing and leaving things in order for the housekeeper she had hired for the time she was away. She had been up early, phoning Sami to say she was on her way, and that she would be staying at the Continental Hotel in Broome. She promised to call regularly.

Lily now regarded this trip as something of a turning point in her life. She realised she had been treading water for some time and could not go forward until she had settled the past. It seemed strange to think she had reached her forties before ‘finding herself’, but maybe certain things came along at certain times in your life.

Her marriage to Sami’s father had been conventional. As time went on, it became stale and they began to drift into separate worlds. He into the cave-like world of academia as a university lecturer, while she had begun to widen her horizons, looking for something else in her life.

Four years after her divorce she’d met Anthony Jamieson—Tony—a widower whose wife had died two years before. Her death had led him to withdraw emotionally and, despite his worldliness and professionalism in his job, he was a vulnerable man. At fifty-two he’d had no intention of becoming seriously involved with a woman. He had a demanding job and a grown family which included grandchildren.
But Lily had crept under his guard and into his heart and, he’d confessed, taken up residence in his soul. It had come as something of a wonderful surprise to both of them to discover sexual and emotional passion they’d never experienced before. They thought they had the best of both worlds, for living apart kept the romance and passion burning brightly.

She knew in the beginning he didn’t want the responsibility of another person’s happiness. In her time alone after her divorce, she’d learned the valuable lesson of enjoying her own company, finding her own strengths and taking full responsibility for her own life.

It had been a bumpy road, tears of self-pity and loneliness welling often and unexpectedly, but she’d weathered it and become strong, self-reliant, yet gende and calm. Tony often wondered at the depth of her understanding, warmth and tolerance. She’d become a giver rather than a taker without realising it. But the threads that bind two people to each other are not made of inflexible steel, but stretch and quiver and snap like elastic, and nothing stays the same. Life was a matter of constant little adjustments, tightening and loosening those ties where necessary. But some issues weren’t addressed and now Lily had the space to reassess many factors in her life. And while she mightn’t find what she was looking for, or like the answers she may find, for the first time in a long time she had a purpose in life.

Lily stirred, feeling the plane begin its descent into Darwin. Stepping from the cool interior of the
plane, the blanket of wet warm air enveloped her body and made her think of Asia. The straggly palms, the blindingly bright sunshine, and the smiling man in shorts, long socks and crisp short-sleeved white shirt told her she was in the north. She smiled back at him. ‘You’ll find your bags over on the left,’ he told her.

‘I hope not,’ grinned Lily. ‘They’re supposed to go on to Broome.’

‘Never know your luck, luv. They might too.’

She rechecked her flight departure time then picked up a taxi and asked for the museum.

‘Great exhibition there. Nice building too. You’ll like it. The bureaucrats got it right this time. For a change,’ the driver commented with some cynicism.

He dropped her at a building embraced by shrubs and greenery on a headland near Mindil Beach. As soon as she walked through the glass doors a big display of Aboriginal wood carvings from islands north of Darwin and Arnhem Land attracted her attention and she found herself instantly captivated by the mysterious yet exciting cultural experience. There was something very spiritual about the carvings and the ochre-coloured designs.

Nearby was a huge exhibition of Aboriginal art from many parts of north Australia, works on bark and canvas in styles that owed nothing to Western art but much to an ancient culture and an almost incomprehensible spiritual world called the Dreamtime. As she wandered through the gallery, she felt a curious and exciting empathy with the work, although she didn’t actually understand it.

An arrow and a sign reading ‘Maritime Museum’ caught her eye and broke the trance-like state that she found herself in as she wandered through the Aboriginal display. She quickened her step and soon found herself in a gallery overlooking a collection of sailing craft unlike any she had seen in her life. There were the dugout and bark canoes of the Aborigines, tiny boats with odd-shaped sails and huge trading
praus
from the islands of Indonesia, a Vietnamese refugee boat, and outrigger canoes from Papua New Guinea. But what dominated the exhibition took her breath away.

It was a sparkling white pearling lugger with all sails rigged. Beside it was a display of an old pearl-diver’s suit with bulbous metal helmet. Suddenly she found herself thinking of the dashing seafarer whose photo she’d brought with her from her mother’s bag. She could just see him beside the helm of the lugger and the imagery brought a soft smile to her face. For several minutes she took in every detail of the boat and ran her hands along the curving lines of the hull.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispered, ‘just beautiful.’

From other exhibitions she learned that for centuries foreign ships had been visiting the northern waters and shores of Australia, long before Englishman, Captain James Cook, had laid eyes on the east coast of Australia. Golden-skinned men from Macassar had made this journey each December, sailing their
praus
on the north-west monsoon to trade cloth, metal tools, tobacco and rice for trepang and turtle shell. The dried trepang, sometimes called bêche-de-mer or sea slugs, were sold for a great
profit to Chinese merchants for use in medicines as well as being a delicacy.

For several months these archipelago men lived, laboured and traded with the local tribes before returning when the south-east winds began.

The traders and seafarers who sailed with the monsoon winds were not settlers or imperialists. They were simple traders from the Spice Islands of the archipelago across the Timor Sea. So long as they observed the long-established cultural and trading customs, they were welcome visitors. Less welcome were the occasional off-course Portuguese and Dutch mariners cursing their navigational error of coming too far east from the Cape of Good Hope before turning north to their fortressed trading posts throughout the Malay world. If, through misfortune or need for fresh water and food they did go ashore, they usually fought with the local tribes and there was much loss of life on both sides.

Lily looked at her watch, took one last look at the lugger, then strode quickly to the reception desk to ask where she could find out more about pearling. An obliging young woman telephoned for a taxi after explaining Lily should visit the pearling museum in the wharf precinct in the centre of the city.

This time the taxi deposited her outside an old shed on the harbour below the steep bluff on which the city heart of Darwin had been built. She paid her five dollars and walked into what seemed to be a small dark cinema.

Fluorescent blue fights shone through large aquariums, the hissing and gushing of air inhaled and
expelled with a gurgle of bubbles through an air hose came over the PA system. A small walk-in cave shaped like a half section of a diving helmet housed more exhibits and the glass viewing panel looked into a video screen showing underwater scenes of old-style pearl diving. A video played on a large screen telling the story of modern pearl farming. Panels of spotlit coloured photos showed needles being slipped into the muscle of oysters, followed by open shells exposing their wet and glistening pearls and finally, the fabulous pieces of princely priced pearl jewellery which could be seen in international jewellery stores.

Lily was more interested in the early pearling days and stared at the sepia photos, the newspaper cuttings and the bits of diving equipment, the tools of the pearl ‘peeler’ and a selection of graded pearls displayed in a glass case. Then, in a dim corner, she saw part of the hull of a small lugger. Though it had no rigging, it showed the neat construction.

Photos of this and similar luggers showed decks heaped with mother-of-pearl shell, dark-skinned crews and the Japanese divers, smiling over the brass-ringed neck of their bulky canvas diving suits and cradling their big metal helmets. Lily could almost smell the coir rope, tar and saltiness of the sea.

A voice beside her and a strong smell of tobacco caused her to turn and confront a burly man in a navy shirt with a badge on the pocket which read ‘Dave’.

‘You interested in all this?’ he asked genially.

‘Yes, I am. Do you work here?’

‘Yep. Ask me anything you want.’

Lily smiled and wondered what he’d say if she asked, ‘Tell me who my family are,’ but instead she said, ‘I’m on my way to Broome, so thought I’d do a bit of homework.’

‘You on the three o’clock flight, eh? Well, this is a good place to pass the time. So you’re off to Broome? I lived there for a bit, worked for a shipwright, did a bit of this and that, then went to one of the big pearl farms. All different now compared to the old days.’ He paused to reflect on some of the photographs. ‘Tough life then. A lot of the romance has gone out of pearling now, it’s just another business. Mind you, there’s still some intrigue and in-fighting. Someone gets a new process and then they’re all on to it. Gangs raid the remote pearl farms at night. Those big Broome pearls fetch unbelievable prices overseas. Hundred thousand dollars a strand, some of them. So, who’s your family? Small place, Broome, I might know them.’

‘I doubt it, they’re all gone now. Dead and gone.’ Lily changed the subject. ‘Is there much history of the old days still left in Broome?’

‘Thanks to Lord McAlpine, some of the old buildings—Chinatown, the open air cinema—have been saved. Too bad other developers and outsiders who move in on a small town don’t have the same attitude. If you want to find old Broome, all you got to do is smell the mangroves, walk on broken shells and look at the wrecks of the old flying boats when the tide is out. Wander round the shore and you’re right back in the old days. But take a good look at
this lugger … none of them around any more.’

Lily was starting to feel claustrophobic in the small dark museum where the amplified sound of air bubbles was making her feel light-headed.

‘Thanks for your help, Dave, I think I’ll go down to a hotel and have a sandwich before heading back to the airport.’

‘Try the Hotel Darwin,’ he suggested with enthusiasm. ‘My favourite watering hole and, like this old boat, a blast from the past.’

Lily laughed. ‘Thanks for the tip,’ and she turned to leave.

Dave escorted her to the door gushing with advice all the way. It was with relief that she stepped out into the glare and heat of the midday sun. She put on her sunglasses and walked slowly to the steps that wound up the bluff to the business district, all the way longing for a cold lager and a sandwich in the coolness of the old-style hotel.

CHAPTER TWO

I
t was dusk when the plane landed at Broome, and as she walked across the tarmac, Lily felt the last of the day’s warmth beginning to fade into the tropical evening coolness.

The little courtesy bus was driven by an affable young man who doubled as bartender and receptionist at the Continental Hotel. In the brief research she’d done on Broome she recalled photographs of the grand old ‘Conti’ in its heyday in the early 1900s. But as they turned into the entrance, Lily thought that the long, low buildings looked more sixties motel than colonial splendour. The Raffles it wasn’t, but what it lacked in grandness it made up for with friendly smiles and immediate chatty intimacy. Her room was plain but comfortable, and she turned on the fan rather than the air-conditioning. Lily was glad the room opened on to a private bougainvillea screened garden with a small table and chair.