Solomons Seal

Chapter Three

It was July 2 that I arrived in Sydney, a southerly buster blowing and low cloud obscuring the harbour as we came in to land. It was Australia’s winter, so no problem in finding the people I needed to contact in their offices. I saw little or nothing of Sydney the first two days, moving from office block to office block in the central part around George Street, so that my first impression was of a rather drab, modern, dollar-hungry city full of scurrying raincoats and umbrellas. It took me those two days to decide on Kostas Polites amp; Co. as the estate agents I wanted to handle Rowlinson’s Munnobungle station. They were an old-established firm of Greek origin commonly referred to as Castor amp; Pollux, and they had a branch office in Brisbane, which would enable the sale to be pushed locally with the farming community in Queensland, as well as with the institutions in Sydney.

It was lunchtime on Thursday before I had settled all the details. I had a word on the phone with Cooper, the manager of their Brisbane office, told him I would be flying up to see him the following day, and having booked out on the Ansett flight, I took a taxi to the Ferry Terminal. It was only a short walk along Circular Quay to the sail-like complex of the Opera House, and I had lunch there, looking out to the Harbour Bridge and the bustle of ferries coming and going. The wind was still kicking up little whitecaps in the broad expanse of Port Jackson, but it had stopped raining, and the clouds were broken. I should have been in a buoyant mood, everything fixed and fleeting glimpses of sun through the plate-glass windows. But now that I was on my own with time to think about my own future, I found myself depressed by all the stories I had heard of large properties that had broken the backs of their owners. No doubt the estate agents had exaggerated to emphasise the difficulty of disposing of a place like Munnobungle, but the cases they had quoted were undoubtedly true, and I was beginning to realise how huge and hostile the outback of Australia was.

I had intended having a look round the docks on the off-chance I might pick up information about the Holland ships, but then I remembered the stamp dealer Josh Keegan had asked me to visit. The slip of paper on which he had written Cyrus Pegley’s address was still in my briefcase where I had put it the night I had packed my things. I paid my bill and walked through the Botanic Gardens and The Domain to the crowded streets of Woolloomooloo.

In just over half an hour I was in Victoria Street, in a narrow-fronted shop packed with stamps and coins, talking to a little wisp of a man with an untidy mop of black hair and bright birdlike eyes that peered at me from behind steel-rimmed spectacles of extreme magnification. When he heard why I had come, he handed the counter over to a plain young woman with pebble-thick glasses who might have been his daughter and took me through into an office at the back, where two more girls were busy sorting stamps.

Yes, he remembered the cover. He also remembered the lettering on the seal ship label. ‘It was a blue label, deep blue to be exact. The vertical lettering HOLLAND SHIPPING. SOLOMONS at the top and at the bottom a space for the amount to be inked in and the word PAID. I’ll show you.’ He picked up a pencil and began sketching it for me. ‘A smudged postmark, I remember, the clerk in a hurry presumably and cancelling it when he should have hand-stamped it with a capital T and the amount due of ten centimes. Instead, it was left to the Post Office clerk in Cooktown to slap a Postage Due twopenny red and green on.’ And he added, ‘I was reminded of that cover only the other day, something I read in the Herald. A Holland ship in for engine repairs. It hadn’t occurred to me the company was still in existence.’

‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.

‘Last week, I think. It was only a short paragraph, and it caught my eye because it was headed “War Hero’s Grandson Sails In”. I read anything about the war. I caught the last two years of it, finishing up at Darwin.’

‘What sort of ship was it?’

‘An old warship. Landing craft, I think it said.’

‘Is it still here?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. It was only mentioned I think because of the name and the association with old Colonel Holland. He was one of the coast watchers on Bougainville. Stuck it there until the Americans arrived.’ He turned the piece of paper round so that I could see the sketch he had made. ‘There you are. That’s what it looked like.'

‘Unusual, isn’t it? And the way it came to me was unusual.’ He turned to a filing cabinet and began rummaging through a thick wad of letters.

‘You don’t happen to have any more of those ship labels, do you?’ I asked hopefully.

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Wish I had. I did well out of that sale. But if I’d had any more, I’d have probably sold them anyway. A man came here two or three months ago … Ah, here we are.’ And he handed me a letter written on cheap paper with a Mission address stamped on it in purple.

I am writing on behalf of Mr Minya Lewis, it began, and a little further down I found the information Keegan wanted … his mother died in Cooktown on February 16 of last year. Being her only son and his father not having been heard from since 1911, I am satisfied that he has right of possession to anything that was hers, and particularly to this letter which was in his father’s writing. She was apparently a very old woman and he found the letter in a box under her bed. As I believe there is some value in old stamps …

Lewis! Was this the same Lewis that Chips had talked about, the half-breed aborigine who had killed a man named Black Holland? ‘Can I have this photocopied?’ I asked.

He hesitated, then gave a little shrug. ‘You can keep it if you wish. I can’t see that it’s any use to me now.’ He asked me about the collection I had mentioned, and when I had satisfied his curiosity, he insisted on showing me some of his recent purchases. In the end I came out with a real bargain, a superb mint pair of the first issue Turks and Caicos Islands 3s. purple showing salt-raking against the background of a ship under sail; also a used set of the Papua New Guinea first issue of 1952, which attracted me because they were line-engraved and all of them different, the full set of fifteen stamps conveying a vivid picture of the strange primitive world that lay less than a thousand miles north-east of where I would be in two days’ time.

I must have been in that shop over an hour, for the evening rush hour had started when I reached the Ferry Terminal, intent on checking the docks to see if Holland’s ship was still there. But though the ferry I boarded gave me a good view of the docks, I saw nothing that resembled a landing craft, the ships all too big to be trading in the islands. It was dark by the time we docked at the quay again, a cold, blustery evening. I took a taxi across Pyrmont Bridge to Union Street, found a way into the docks and began searching the wharves on foot. My mood was quite different now, despite the wind and the bitter cold. Chance had presented me with a priceless opportunity, a ship I understood was bound for the Pacific islands. What more could I ask? I felt she must be there, and in the end I was proved right. I found her at last, up in the northern end of the docks, lying with her square stern close against some dilapidated sheds in a part of the docks that hadn’t been modernised, one of the Mark VIII LCTs, and she had HOLLAND LINE slapped across her rusty side in red.

There was no glimmer of light showing, and when I tried to go on board, I was shouted at by an old man with a beard who was walking a mongrel bitch as old and shaggy as himself among the empty beer cans littering the dirty quay. He knew nothing about the owners, wasn’t interested. The agents had given him the job, and as long as he was the watchman nobody went on board without written permission from them. The only information I got from him was that the engineers were still working on her.

I walked slowly the length of the vessel, recalling the cramped quarters, running my eye over her battered plates. She looked old and tired, which was hardly surprising, considering she had been built over thirty years ago. But at least the bridge housing looked well cared for. Her name, painted in black on the stern, was just visible below the flukes of the stern anchor: Perenna — Buka. The fact that Holland, after purchasing the vessel presumably from the Ministry of Defence, had re-named her for his sister started me thinking about her, wondering whether she had got my letter yet, if she was even now on her way to join him here.

Before returning to my hotel, I asked the watchman the name of the agents, and all the way back, walking briskly through the lit city with ragged clouds glowing red and the moon showing intermittently between their torn edges, I was remembering other nights of velvet humidity when I had stood on the compass platform of just such a ship conning her through the Molucca Straits. The things you do as a youngster remain incredibly vivid, and the more I thought about it, the more I was attracted to the idea of trying for a passage on the Perenna when the engine overhaul was finished. There was always the possibility that job prospects in the Solomons might be better than they seemed to be in Australia. But I knew bloody well the real reason was curiosity and the thought that if I could stay close to her brother, I might see her again, perhaps even be able to help her.

I rang the agents from the airport next morning, but was told the man dealing with the Perenna was out. Whoever it was speaking could give me no information about her sailing date, and when I asked whether it was Holland himself who had brought the ship to Sydney, he wanted to know my business and why I was making enquiries about her. In the end he suggested I ring again later and put the phone down.

By then my plane was being called, and once we were airborne I put all thought of the ship out of my mind, concentrating on Munnobungle and the notes in my briefcase. The sun was shining when we landed in Brisbane, and I spent most of the afternoon in the Kostas Polites office going over the details with Ted Cooper. We finally agreed that the auction should be in Brisbane on August 22, six weeks being, in his view, the minimum required to obtain full coverage for the sale in such a large area as Queensland. That evening he and his wife gave me an excellent dinner of mud crabs in a restaurant overlooking the Brisbane River, and the following day I went on to Townsville.

Townsville was the nearest airport to Munnobungle, and McIver, the station manager, was there to meet me. I found him in the airport lounge, a craggy, sun-dried Australian in khaki shorts and open-necked shirt. He was in conversation with a black man neatly dressed in a tropical suit that was almost sky blue, a marked contrast to McIver’s sweat-stained bush gear. ‘You want a beer before we start?’ he asked in a grating voice without any friendliness in it.

‘Just as you like.’ He had every reason to resent my arrival, and I was wondering how best to handle him.

‘Well, I bloody do. Had a flat on my way in, so I only just got here in time.’ He went over to the bar and came back with two cans and glasses. The black man had drifted off, and we drank in silence. Finally McIver said, ‘How’s Rowlinson?’

‘All right,’ I said. And because I wanted to get things straight at the start, I added, ‘Look, the fact that he’s selling has got nothing to do with the result for last year. He doesn’t want to sell, but he’s under pressure — from his wife, and from his business associates.’

‘That’s what he wrote, but it’s hard to believe. I liked the bastard, and I thought he understood. You’ll see when you get to Munnobungle. It’s a tough station.’

There were quite a few people waiting in the terminal, many of them black, some very black indeed with frizzy hair. ‘Most of the people here are from Papua New Guinea,’ McIver said, making an effort at conversation. ‘The Port Moresby plane is in, and they’re waiting to board.’

‘Are there many of them in Australia?’ I asked him, thinking of the man Chips had called Black Holland.

‘Not many in Australia, but here in Queensland, oh my word, yes. They come over to work in the sugar plantations. Not that fella I was talking to, he’s a PNG government official. Been down in Sydney buying road-building equipment.’

The loudspeaker suddenly burst into voice, announcing the departure of the Air Niugini flight for Port Moresby. The black men began gathering up their belongings, and I watched them move to the exit. McIver said something, but I didn’t hear it, lost in the knowledge that here I was at the gateway to that primitive world so beautifully depicted on the stamps I had bought, the world that Chips had talked about with such nostalgia. ‘Another year,’ McIver was saying, ‘an’ I reck’n we’d have turned the corner.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ I told him irritably.

‘No? Then why doesn’t he come out himself, tell me what the problem is to my face?’

‘Rowlinson’s got a business to run in England. He hasn’t the time.’

‘So Munnobungle was just a bloody toy. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘If you like to put it that way.’

‘Jesus! An’ I’ve worked my guts out … ’

We finished our beer in silence and went out to the parking lot. The Fokker Friendship was taxiing now. It took off just as we were driving out of the airport, and seeing its wings glinting silver in the sun as it banked eastward over the sea, I was wishing I were in it, not seated in a dirty utility with a disgruntled man who was worried about the future.

We were headed west, and it was a long, dusty ride, gravel rattling against the mudguards, the last twenty miles all dirt. Having seen the deeds and maps, his reports, all the figures, I thought I knew what Munnobungle would be like. But I was wrong. Nothing, not even Chips’s description of it and the fact that three sheep to the hectare was the best they could do, had prepared me for the aridity of the place. They had had almost a month without rain, which was unusual in winter, and the place was little better than a dustbowl, the scrubland running out to a distant view of purpling hills, and everything hazed in the sun’s glare with the leaves of the eucalypts shimmering to a slight breeze.

I spent three days there, driving more than 100 miles in the Land Rover and covering most of the 60,000-odd hectares. And the more I saw of it, the more I wondered how Chips had ever imagined he could make a profit and who the hell would be fool enough to buy it off him. The percentage rake-off he had promised me faded like a desert mirage. ‘Looks different when we’ve had some rain,’ McIver said hopefully that first evening. And his wife, a quiet, solid woman, added, ‘It’s real beaut then, the grass coming green, and the flowers.’ They had two young kids, a boy and a girl. They were a nice family, and I was sorry for them, hoping that whoever bought the station would let them stay on. They seemed to love the place, something it was hard for me to appreciate, seeing it in a dry spell with nothing growing and the sheep looking gaunt and half-starved.

But by the third day Munnobungle was beginning to get under my skin — the wide skies, the sense of space, and the birds flocking round Deadman’s Hole, a pool in a dry tributary of the Burdekin. It was only 5 miles from the homestead and about the only water I saw on the place. I was riding a horse that day and beginning to understand why Chips had so enjoyed the time he’d spent on the station.

It was my last day there, and that evening I persuaded McIver to drive me over to the hotel at Mushroom Rock on the Burdekin, which was the nearest place I could buy him a beer. I still needed clarification on some of the sale details I had prepared, and I thought it would be easier to discuss them away from the homestead. By then he had become resigned to the inevitable, and we were on reasonably friendly terms, so that when I had got the information I required, I began to tell him about my own problems. I think that was when I first saw him smile. ‘So we’re both of us in the same boat, eh, wondering where the hell we go from here?’

He was no help to me, merely repeating what the estate agents had said, but more colourfully and in greater detail. ‘It’s a tough life, a tough country. No place for a Pommie unless he’s got a helluva lot of capital and doesn’t mind how much he loses.’ When I asked him about the islands, he shrugged. ‘There’s the copper-mining and plantations, that’s about it. Some smart boys, Canadians some of them, are doing well selling to the indigenous population. That’s in PNG, government contracts mainly. It’s what I hear anyway. I never bin there. But I might,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I might pack it in here and try my luck, ‘cept that I got a family to provide for.’

I told him about the Holland Line then, and asked him whether he knew anything about it, or the family. But he shook his head. ‘There was a Holland on Bougainville became something of a war hero. One of the coast watchers. I remember my father talking about him. Stayed on when all the others had left and fought his own private war.’

‘Was that Colonel Lawrence Holland?’

‘Could be.’ He nodded. ‘He was a colonel, that I do remember.’

‘Did Rowlinson mention a man named Black Holland?’ I asked.

‘Yes, that’s right. He did.’ He frowned. ‘I remember now. He came back full of some story about an aborigine he’d met. Tried to sell him a share in a mine. The Dog Weary gold mine. That was it.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Oh, I don’t recall that. Only the name Black Holland. It seems the abo killed him in a brawl over the ownership of the mine. I remember Rowlinson was full of it at the time, thought it a damned funny story.’ And when I asked him whether the killing had happened locally, he said, ‘Oh, dear, no. Cooktown, I think. Rowlinson had just been to Cooktown to see where Captain Cook had repaired the Endeavour after she’d hit the reef.’

He couldn’t tell me anything more, but when we got back to the homestead and I showed him the letter the stamp dealer in Sydney had given me, he agreed the aborigine’s name might have been Minya Lewis. ‘Reck’n that’s it. Welsh and Cornish miners, they were in on all the gold strikes, and the Palmer River was full of the stuff until the Chinks mined it all out.’

He could tell me nothing more except that there was an amazing graveyard out beyond Cooktown that included a Chinese burial place, also an old Edwardian hotel with frosted glass windows and a large wall painting that included some of the old-timers that still hung around the bar. He had been there only once. Took the wife and kids up there, but it’s a helluva journey unless you fly up with Bush Pilots Airways.’

Had I gone to Cooktown then, I might have had some warning before I got myself involved in the tangled background of the Hollands. As it was, I flew back to Sydney next day knowing nothing about the trail of greed and death that had its origin in the Dog Weary mine, or the relevance of that stamp collection, only that there was probably some connection. I had a window seat, and coming in low over Sydney Harbour Bridge in the late afternoon, the sky clear and the sun just setting, I thought I could see the repair yard where the LCT had been lying. But now there was only a coaster alongside. The plane tilted slightly, giving me a view of the bridge and the whole broad expanse of Port Jackson right out to the Heads. That was when I saw her, a squat little toy of a vessel out beyond Fort Dennison. I thought for a moment I had missed my chance and she had sailed. But as we steadied on our course for the airport on Botany Bay, craning my head, I caught another glimpse of her below the tailplane. I could see the wake then. She wasn’t outward bound. She was heading back into port.

As soon as we landed, I rang the agent. This time I had no trouble, probably because the man who answered was in a hurry to get home. The Perenna had just completed her engine trials. There were still some minor adjustments to be made. These would be carried out tomorrow. She would be taking on cargo Friday morning and sailing for Bougainville that same day. It didn’t give me much time, for I still had the legal side of the Munnobungle sale to deal with, as well as currency and land sale regulations to check. I went straight to my hotel, left my bags and took a taxi to Observatory Park, where I knew I would have a good view of the dock area.

It was a cold, very clear evening, and from the steps above Kent Street I looked across Darling Harbour to wharves thick with shipping and more vessels anchored off in the dark expanse of water. It was some time before I picked her out. She was half hidden by a big container ship, just her bows showing, and then she was completely lost to sight, for the container ship was under way with two tugs in attendance.

When the container ship was clear, I could see her plainly, small and slab-sided among the freighters over towards Peacock Point. There were no taxis, and it was a long walk across Pyrmont Bridge to the dock area and the gate leading on to the wharves. I was almost an hour wandering about under the stars among ships and cranes and the blank walls of the storage sheds before I was lucky enough to find a launch lying alongside some steps out by Donkey Island. It was taking on the crew of a Japanese freighter anchored off, and the coxs’n, who spoke a few words of English, agreed to drop me off at the LCT. It was just on eight when we left, a stiff breeze blowing up the harbour and all of us huddled under the canopy. He made for his own ship first, and when we were alongside, there was a great sorting out of packages and souvenirs before the crew members finally went chattering like a group of starlings up the gangway. ‘Your ship ex-war?’ the coxs’n asked me, his teeth showing in a grin.

‘Not my ship,’ I told him.

‘You visit?’

I nodded, and he turned the launch towards the LCT, now only three or four cables away. ‘How you get shore?’ he shouted above the sound of the engine and the crash of the bows.

‘They’ll have a boat.’

‘No boat.’

I didn’t say anything, watching as we approached the familiar shape of her. She looked even older than when I had seen her last, the paint flaking from her flat side, the letters HOLLAND LINE showing red and streaked with rust in the glimmer of the shore lights, and her plates all buckled by years of work. And then that name again as we rounded the stern to come alongside under her lee.

No gangway, and no sign of anybody on board, only a light high up in the bridge housing aft. It came from what used to be the wardroom. I hailed her, but there was no reply. A rope ladder lay flat against her side, and I seized hold of it as the launch bumped. ‘You send a signal Yamagata,’ the little coxs’n said, ‘I come take you shore.’

I thanked him, and then the launch was swinging away and I was climbing the rusty side. And when I reached the catwalk, and stood looking down at the empty tank deck with the storm and ramp doors at the far end, it was all so familiar that it was like that first time I had gone aboard an LCT at Helensburgh, a young National Serviceman nervous at the thought of going to sea in such a strange craft.

‘You, what you like?’

I turned to find a man in thin blue trousers and a heavy sweater standing below the bridge housing. He was very black with a great mop of frizzy black hair. ‘Is the Captain on board?’ I asked him.

He stared at me, the whites of his eyes showing, and there was a long silence. ‘You like to see him?’

‘Where is he? In the wardroom?’

‘What you want him for?’

I hesitated. ‘Is his name Holland?’

‘He not seeing anybody.’

‘Tell him I have news of his sister.’ I had moved along the catwalk and was now quite close to the man. He was shivering slightly, and the glossy smoothness of his black skin had a blue tinge as though he had been dipped in indigo. ‘You’ll get cold out here,’ I said, moving past him towards the bridge ladder.

‘Okay. I take you.’

‘Don’t bother. I know the way.’ I went up the ladder to the bridge wing and slid back the door to the wheelhouse. It was dark inside, only the glow of the shore lights to show me the dim outline of the wheel and the engine-room telegraph. It was very quiet, no sound of movement or voices, not even a radio, and the hum of the ship’s generator muted to a gentle persistent murmur deep down below me. I went through into the passage leading aft, past the captain’s cabin and the signals office with its radio equipment. Light showed in the heat cracks of the wardroom door, and I pushed it open.

The layout hadn’t changed, a black grease-stained leather settle around two sides of the mess table, some chairs and the inevitable ship photographs and Service plaques on the walls. The mess table had a chart spread half across it, and there were books open, one of them an Admiralty Pilot, and beside it a sheet of paper with some notes. There was also a half-empty bottle of whisky and a china jug with the lip broken. All this I took in at a glance, my mind slipping back twenty years and my eyes fastening on the man slumped at the far end of the settle under the porthole, his legs up and his head leaning back against the corner. He had dark hair, almost black, a square freckled face, very sallow with deep lines creasing the forehead and his mouth hung slightly open.

He looked ill and tired, and I thought for a moment he had fallen into a drunken coma. But then his eyes opened, staring at me wide with shock. Suddenly he sat up, a quick startled movement. ‘Who are you?’

‘You’re the Captain, are you?’ I asked him.

He nodded slowly, his eyes still wide and that startled, almost frightened look. I told him my name, but he didn’t seem to take it in. ‘Who sen’ you?’ His voice was soft, a little slurred. ‘Wha’ you want?’

He wasn’t ill. He was just scared. I could literally smell his fear, the nerve twitching a muscle in his cheek, his self-control almost gone.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, trying to reassure him. ‘I just came to see if you had room for a passenger. They told me you’d be sailing on Friday as soon as you had taken on cargo.’ I was talking fast, trying to give him time to accustom himself to my presence. ‘I’m from England, on business, but I’ve got over a month to kill and I thought-’

‘Who told you I’d be sailing on Friday?’

‘The agents.’

‘An’ you wan’ come with me, on this ship?’ The creases on his forehead deepened as he forced his brain to concentrate. ‘Why? Who put you up to this?’

‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘I’ve just told you, I’ve time to kill and I’ve never been to Bougainville or the Solomons. I’d like to sail with you, that’s all.’ And then, because he bore no resemblance to Perenna Holland and I wanted to make doubly sure of his identity, I asked him if he were the owner as well as the captain.

‘Yes, I own this ship.’ He was staring at me, breathing hard. ‘Didn’t you know that? Didn’t they tell you?’

‘You’re Jona Holland, then.’

‘Who told you that? My name’s Jonathan Holland. Nobody calls me Jona, ‘cept — ‘cept my sister.’ He sounded confused, fear giving way to resentment. ‘I don’t know who you are, what you’re doing here. I’ve got things to consider — decisions — must think clearly, work it out.’ He pushed his hand up through his hair, staring with glazed eyes at the bottle. ‘Tomorrow night and the nex’ night and the nex’. No sleep. Five nights and then-’ He looked up at me suddenly. ‘You know Perenna?’

‘I’ve met her.’

‘In Suffolk?’

‘Yes, at the house in Aldeburgh.’ And I started to explain the circumstances, but he wasn’t listening. Even when I told him she wasn’t there any more, he didn’t seem to take it in, muttering to himself, ‘She doesn’t understand. About money, I mean. The difficulties-’ He checked himself, staring at me with a surprised look as though suddenly conscious of my presence. ‘Sit down. Have a drink.’ He waved vaguely to a chair. ‘Strange girl, Perenna. Tough. She won’t stay there, will she? Not now she’s put him in a home. Did she tell you she’d killed a man? She was with Mother in the kitchen when they burst in, an’ she fought them off with a meat cleaver. Killed one and wounded another before they-’ His eyes were wide open, reliving the scene. ‘She was only seventeen. Blood everywhere. Always remember it. Terrible sham’les.’ I thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears, but then he pulled himself together, a conscious effort. ‘Glasses in cupboard. Wha’ d’you say your name was?’

‘Slingsby,’ I said. ‘Roy Slingsby.’ I got a glass and poured myself a drink, appalled at the scene, at his vivid recollection of it. ‘What caused the natives to behave so violently?’ I asked.

‘Cargo,’ he muttered darkly. ‘Bloo’y Cargo. They go crazy.’ He shook himself as though to get rid of the memory. ‘Why d’you wan’ to go to Bougainville anyway?’ He pronounced it Boganville.

‘I’ve always wanted to visit a Pacific island.’

‘Coral beaches, white sands, blue sea, blue sky, eh?’ He laughed, but on a high, tense note. ‘Bougainville’s not like that. Just rain and mountains and rainforests, and copper, bloo’y copper. Copper and gold. Gone to their silly heads.’ He reached for the bottle, looking round vaguely for his glass, which was lying on the floor. I got it for him, and he mumbled his thanks. Then, suddenly suspicious again: ‘Who you going to see on Bougainville?’

‘Nobody. I don’t know anybody there.’

‘Bloo’y liar.’ The bottle rattled against the glass as he poured the whisky. ‘Nobody goes to Bougainville without a reason.’ He looked up at me, his eyes focusing, his forehead creased with the effort. ‘You going to make trouble, start organising things?’

I hesitated, but his behaviour was so odd … ‘Are you expecting trouble?’ I asked. ‘Is that why you’re scared?’

‘Scared?’

‘Yes, scared. You’re scared of something.’

He shook his head vaguely. ‘Drunk too much,’ he muttered, pushing the glass away. ‘Copper an’ gold. They think it’s Cargo. You know about Cargo?’

It seemed a pointless question, but when I said, Yes, of course I did, he got very excited. ‘You’ve been briefed. They’ve briefed you, and now you want me-’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m just an estate agent acting for a friend of mine in England. I know nothing about Bougainville, only that you operate out of the Buka Passage.’ I told him about Munnobungle then and having to wait until August 22 for the sale. ‘I’ve time to kill, and this seemed a good way of doing it.’

‘You mean just a tourist trip. To Bougainville!’ He said it incredulously, glaring at me, his bloodshot eyes still doubtful. ‘Why don’t you fly, then?’

‘I like the sea.’

‘An old bucket like this? If we got another southerly buster, you’d be sick as a dog and so bloo’y frightened-’

‘I know what these ships are like in a blow.’

He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘She rolls and rattles and flops around like a limp sheet of tin. One day she’ll break her bloo’y back.’

‘You don’t have to tell me. I’ve sailed on LCTs before.’ And I added, ‘Maybe on this one. I served in three of them.’

That got through to him at least. ‘Three? You’ve been on three?’ He put his glass down carefully, leaning forward, the frown deepening as he tried to concentrate. ‘This one came from Singapore. There was a number on her. Can’t remember now. I’ve got it somewhere. The British were pulling out, and they were going to scrap her. She was so old they wouldn’t risk sailing her back. Were you in Singapore on LCTs?’

I nodded. ‘I had almost a year there. Before that I was on the St Kilda run. The Outer Hebrides and the North Atlantic. I wouldn’t think you could throw anything worse at me down here than we had on that run.’

He smiled then. ‘You were Army, were you? These ships weren’t Navy ships. They were run by a Maritime Detachment of the Army.’ His uneasiness returned. ‘What was your outfit?’

‘RASC Water Transport. I was doing my National Service.’

He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, of course. They changed the name. Were you an officer?’ And when I told him I had been newly commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, he said almost eagerly as though now, suddenly, he wanted to believe me, ‘A deck officer?’

‘Yes. A very junior one.’

‘How much do you remember about running these ships?’ His voice was no longer slurred, his manner almost urgent. ‘You say you like the sea. Have you done any navigating since?’ And when I told him I owned a sailing boat and occasionally raced her in the East Anglian offshore races, he leaned back, laughing quietly to himself. ‘And you just walk on board, like manna from bloo’y heaven. You know these buckets, you sail your own boat — Jesus Christ, there must be a catch in it somewhere.’ He paused, staring at me hard. ‘If I gave you a berth, would you be prepared to work your passage, take a watch? Not officially, of course. Officially my first officer is Pat McAvoy. But unofficially?’

‘What’s wrong with McAvoy?’ I asked.

‘He’s an alcoholic. He’s ashore now. He’s been ashore all during the engine overhaul. I know where he is, an’ his condition. But he’s on the list, and I’ll get him on board before we sail so they can’t stop me.’

‘What about the second officer?’

‘Luke? Luke is from New Britain. Inshore he’s fine, but not on this run. A fisherman’s son, passed his exams, but can’t be left to navigate an ocean passage. He knows the theory, but panics when he’s out of sight of land.’

‘So you’re on your own.’

‘For the run to Bougainville, yes. Coming over, I was five nights on the bridge. Five bloo’y nights with no sleep.’ He straightened up, leaning forward, his voice urgent again as he said, ‘Well, is it a deal? You sign on as a deckie, as one of the crew; then once we’re at sea I make you an acting ship’s officer, okay? There’s no union where I come from, so no problem, and that way, if anything goes wrong, I’m covered.’

‘Nothing I’d like better.’

He laughed then, suddenly relaxed as he reached for the bottle and poured me a stiff drink, slopping some of it on to the table in his excitement. He tipped the rest of the bottle into his own glass, then raised it. ‘Welcome aboard, Mr Slingsby. If you’re what you seem, then for once I’ll have had a slice of luck.’ He gulped down most of his whisky. ‘Bit of a change, that. Luck and I don’t seem to have been on speaking terms for a long while.’

We finished the whisky, and as I was about to leave, I asked him whether he had ever come across an aborigine half-caste named Lewis. But the name meant nothing to him, and he had never heard of Black Holland. ‘Red Holland, yes — but no’ Black Holland. No blacks, only mixeds in my fam’ly.’ And he gave a drunken titter. He tried to get up to see me off, but by then he was almost out on his feet. Slumped back on the settle again, he pulled himself together sufficiently to say, ‘See you Friday morning.’ And then with a great effort, ‘You meant it, didn’t you? ’Bout standing watch.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Send a boat for me at nine. Darling Island, I’ll be there.’

He nodded. ‘Dar’ing — ‘arling Island. Nine. Boat. I’ll be there. Tell Luke.’ His head lolled back, his eyes rolling, the whites yellow.

‘You all right?’

‘Sure. Sure I’m awright.’ His eyes closed, his mouth falling slightly open.

I hesitated, wondering what it was had started him off on a lonely drinking bout. Something he was scared of, but it wasn’t the sea or the condition of his ship. And it wasn’t the prospect of five sleepless nights. Well, doubtless I’d get it out of him in due course. I went back through the wheelhouse and down the bridge ladder. I didn’t have to signal the Yamagata; there was a big inflatable with outboard at the bottom of the rope ladder now, and the man who had greeted me ran me the short distance to the wharf steps.

Before stepping ashore, I asked him his name, and he said, ‘Luke Pelau.’

I told him who I was and that I’d be sailing with him. ‘Remind Captain Holland to meet me here at o-nine-hundred Friday morning. Meanwhile, get him to bed.’ I was on the point of making some comment, but he didn’t look as though he was in the mood to respond to a touch of humour, his black face blank, almost sullen.

‘Gutbai,’ he said, and gunned the engine, swinging the inflatable out into the dark waters of the harbour, heading back to the slab-sided hull of the LCT, a black silhouette now against the headlights streaming across the Harbour Bridge.

It was a long walk back to the hotel, and I had plenty of time to consider Holland’s strange behaviour. I suppose it was that, and the realisation that in two days’ time I would be at sea with him, that started me thinking again about Carlos Holland and the disappearance of the Holland Trader. I had sandwiches brought up to my room and scribbled a note to Josh Keegan, passing on to him the stamp dealer’s description of the Solomons Seal ship label and enclosing a copy I made of the missionary’s letter confirming Lewis’s ownership. As soon as I had posted it, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. It was the thought of being on the bridge of an LCT again, this time heading out into the Coral Sea towards an unknown Pacific island — I was as excited as I had been that first time, years ago joining ship in the Clyde, and as nervous. But it was a different sort of nervousness now, more a feeling of uneasiness, almost trepidation.

First thing the following morning I went to the Maritime Services building in George Street. To my surprise they not only had records going back to the year 1911 but were able in a very short time to produce the details I had asked for. The Holland Trader had arrived from England via the Cape on July 4, 1911. She had discharged one member of the crew, a seaman, and had signed on two others. She had taken on coal and sailed for Port Moresby on July 10. They were even able to give me the names of the crew members who had been shipped at Sydney. One of them was named Lewis — Merlyn Dai Lewis. He had been signed on as a stoker.

I would have tried the newspaper offices then, to see what had been said about the ship’s disappearance, but I hadn’t time. The restrictions covering currency remittances overseas were very tight so that I had the bank as well as the lawyers to contend with. In the end I only just managed to purchase the additional items of clothing I thought I would need before the shops closed.

Friday morning everybody seemed to be checking out of the hotel at the same time, and on top of that I had to wait for a taxi. It was past nine before I reached the Darling Island docks, sun glinting on the water and the wharves seething with activity.

He was there waiting for me, pacing up and down, a stocky figure in dark blue trousers and jersey, cap pushed back from his forehead. His face lit up as he saw me. ‘’Fraid you’d had second thoughts about it.’ There were dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise he seemed himself. He was even smiling as he took my bags. ‘Well, let’s get the formalities over.’ He passed my gear to the two black crew members manning the inflatable, told them to wait for him, and then we took my taxi on to the Maritime Services building, where I signed on.

Just over an hour later we were back on board, the engines thrumming under my feet and the anchor coming in. We loaded at a roll-on, roll-off ramp, the cargo reconditioned Haulpaks for the Bougainville copper mine, and shortly after noon we had cleared and were steaming out under Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I was in the wheelhouse then, checking the instruments and following our course through Port Jackson towards the Heads. Besides the helmsman and the pilot there were just Holland and Luke Pelau on the bridge, no sign of McAvoy, and when I asked Luke where the first officer was he said, ‘Mr McAvoy little tired this morning.’

Holland heard him and laughed without humour. ‘You won’t see Mac on the bridge unless he’s in one of his moods. Then he’ll come and tell us how to run the ship. That’s right, isn’t it, Luke?’ And the black officer nodded.

‘How long has he been like this?’ I asked.

‘Since my grandfather’s death. They’d been together a long time, and he never forgave himself for being away after a woman when the Colonel started out on his last voyage.’ He was staring out towards the Heads, which were separating now to show the empty heaving expanse of the Pacific in the gap. ‘Go down and check those Haulpaks are properly secured, will you? She’ll be rolling a bit when we get outside.’

Down on the tank deck the Haulpaks were huge, their fat rubber-tyred wheels standing taller than myself. The crew, all black, were tightening up on the securing chains. The bos’n, an elderly man with a great mop of frizzy black hair streaked with grey and a broken-toothed smile, was standing over them. The ore trucks were larger than anything they had carried before, but he knew his stuff, and though I went round every vehicle I had no fault to find.

Already there was movement on the ship, the faint beginnings of the swell coming through the Heads. I went for’ard to the storm door and, having checked that, climbed the vertical ladder to the port catwalk. For’ard, under the ladder to the foredeck, was the bos’n’s locker and workbench. The watertight door leading to the controls for the electric motor powering the bow door thrusters was open. One of my jobs had always been to check the bow doors and the ramp before sailing. I ducked through to the narrow platform that looked down into the well behind the bow doors, and there I got a shock. The steel cross-members that should have been bolted into their transverse position to hold the bow doors securely shut were still in their vertical housing.

I hurried back and yelled for the bos’n, telling him to get some men on to the job right away. But he didn’t understand what I wanted. Even when I took him with me and showed him, he only shrugged and pointed to the hydraulic thrusters, indicating in a complicated mixture of Pidgin and English that that was what kept the doors shut. ‘No use ol ain girders,’ he added, referring to the cross-members.

‘Well, you use them this trip.’ And I told him to get on with it. Good God! With the sort of seas we might encounter on the run across to Bougainville, the bow doors could be burst wide open. What really appalled me was the knowledge that they must have come all the way to Sydney with the bow doors held on the thrusters only. This was apparent as soon as the cross-members had been dropped into position. They couldn’t find the securing bolts. ‘Better get hold of the Chief Engineer,’ I told the bos’n, who seemed to understand what I said even if he couldn’t speak proper English. ‘If he hasn’t got any the right size, then he’d better make some quickly.’

He was just leaving, looking puzzled and unhappy, when one of the crew, squatting on his hunkers below the workbench, held up one of the missing bolts. All eight of them were there where they had fallen, covered with dirt and a pile of steel and wood shavings. The place looked as though it had not been cleaned out since the ship had been handed over by the Army.

I stayed until the cross-members were securely bolted together; then I took the bos’n with me up to the bridge. Holland had to be told. A first officer who was drunk, never took a watch, never checked the cargo, was one thing. But not checking the bow doors, leaving those cross-members unsecured — that was something different: gross negligence that endangered the ship and everyone in her. But we were dropping the pilot, and Holland wasn’t on the bridge, only Luke. I turned to the bos’n. ‘Where’s Mr McAvoy’s cabin?’ I was so angry I decided to have it out with the man myself. ‘Where is he?’ I repeated as the bos’n stood there gazing dumbly at his feet.

‘Okay, kum,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Mi suim.’

I was thinking McAvoy must have some hold over his captain; otherwise Holland would never put up with it. But that was no reason why I should. And then to find him tucked up in his berth in the obvious place, in the first officer’s quarters right across the alleyway from the spare cabin I had been allocated aft of the wardroom. He was lying flat on his back, his pale blue eyes wide open, a vacant stare, the skin of his face haggard and drawn, and so drained of blood he looked positively yellow, as though he were suffering from jaundice. ‘McAvoy. Can you hear me?’

He must have been getting on for sixty, a hard little monkey of a man with battered features and a scar running white under the hairs of his half-bare chest. ‘Why aren’t you up on the bridge? Why haven’t you secured the bow doors?’ I didn’t expect any reply, but I thought I saw a flicker of comprehension in those dull, lifeless eyes. They were like two pebbles that had dried out and lost their lustre. ‘Where do you keep the stuff?’

That at any rate got through to him, his eyes suddenly wide and alarmed. ‘Fu’off. None of your fu’ing bus’ness.’

I started searching his cabin then, emptying drawers, lockers, the lot, and flinging everything on to the floor. ‘Ge’out,’ he screamed. ‘Ge’out, d’ye hear me?’ He had hauled himself up to a sitting position, his head gripped in his hands as he groaned. ‘Wha’ye looking for?’

‘You know bloody well what I’m looking for.’ I reached over the bunk and shook him. ‘The bow doors. Don’t you know enough to have them braced? Now come on. Where is the stuff?’ He started to fight me off, his nails clawing at me, his teeth bared. ‘All right,’ I said, flinging him back on the bed. ‘I’ll find it in the end. And when I do, I’ll break every goddam bottle. Understand?’

‘You do that,’ he breathed, ‘I’ll kill ye. Aye, I will.’ He was staring at me, his eyes alive now with malevolence. ‘Wha’ are ye doing on this ship anyway?’

‘Standing in for you, you useless bastard.’

The malevolence deepened to blazing anger. ‘You call me that again-’

‘I’ll keep on calling you that until you’re on your feet and sober enough to do your job. You’re supposed to be the first officer. You’re a bloody menace. A danger to the ship, do you hear me?’ I left him then, knowing I had got under his skin and wondering just how dangerous he’d be when the drink was out of him. If I hadn’t been so angry, I might have been a little gentler with him.

The bos’n was waiting outside the door, and I made him show me all the likely places. In the end we found it tucked away in a locker behind the life-jackets, half a dozen bottles of whisky and two of vodka. We carried them through the wheelhouse and out to the bridge wing, where I jettisoned the lot. We were out through the Heads now, and the ship was rolling.

Holland came into the wheelhouse just as I was getting rid of the last bottle. ‘What’s that you’re throwing overboard?’ he asked me. And when I told him, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ He didn’t wait for me to explain, but added as though to justify his forbearance, ‘He suffers from melancholy. He’s a manic-depressive. I think that’s the medical term. Without a drink inside of him he’s no good at all.’

‘Well, he’s no good with it, so it makes no difference.’ And I told him about the bow doors. ‘If you’d had that southerly buster when you were coming down the coast … ’

‘Well, we didn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘Anyway, they’d have held. We never use those cross-members. Takes too much time. And Mac,’ he added, ‘he needs his liquor. Without it he goes crazy. He’s afraid.’

‘Of what?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Death. Devils. All the dark imaginings that inhabit men’s minds. He’s quarter French and quarter Mortlocks.’ He didn’t tell me what the other half was. He didn’t have to. It was Glasgow Irish, the accent unmistakeable. ‘He was with my grandfather through the war, and afterwards. Fought with him, ran the schooners, taught me most of what I know about the sea. Never mind,’ he added. ‘I’ll see he gets enough.’

I was about to argue with him, but then I thought better of it, knowing that men who have been together a long time develop ties that are sometimes closer than blood relations. Shelvankar would fill me in on the details. It was Shelvankar who had shown me to my cabin, a talkative little Indian Fiji who acted as radio operator when he wasn’t dealing with stores, fuel, cargo inventories and bills of lading. He came in shortly afterwards with the latest weather forecast. It was good; easterly Force 3 decreasing, sea calm with a slight swell, some rain showers, visibility moderate. The general situation indicated that conditions would further improve as we headed north to the Queensland coast.

Holland spiked it and turned to me. ‘Care to take over, Mr Slingsby?’ I nodded, the formality not lost on me. ‘Course 010°. Keep her about five miles offshore.’ He stayed there for a while, watching as I entered up the log, checked the chart and the Pilot. Apparently satisfied, he said, ‘Luke will relieve you at four. I’ll take the last Dog.’ And he left me to it.

There was only one ship in sight, a coaster heading north up the coast and about two miles ahead of us. A shower of rain was drifting across the sea to the north-east. I stood for a while by the portholes, watching it as it swept across the coaster, enjoying the movement of the ship under me, the lift and roll as the blunt bows breasted the swell, the steady throb of the engines under my feet. The tank deck below me, made strange by the ungainly bulk of the Haulpaks, rose and fell, the heavy vehicles straining at the chains as she rolled. Once, trying to make the lee of Barra, we had been caught out in Force 10. If we’d had this sort of a load, I thought, we’d have gone to the bottom.

I was alone except for the helmsman, everything so familiar, yet because of him it was different, the skin of his face a glossy black below the woolly halo of his hair and no means of communicating with him except in Pidgin. He was from Shortland Island. I checked it out on the Solomon Island Chart 214; it was a small island just south of Bougainville. ‘Are all the crew from the Solomons?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Sampela long Bougainville en Buka. Buka bilong Solomons wantaim. Nau Papua Niugini.’

I went back to the charts, found the one that gave the planned details of the Buka Passage, and with this and the Admiralty Pilot I began to familiarise myself with the approach. It was something I always did. I have an orderly mind, and I like to know what lies ahead of me before I make any sort of a passage. When I had finished with that, I turned back to the chart we were currently using, the Pacific Ocean 780, South West Sheet. It was old and faded, much used, with many pencil marks only half rubbed out in the area of the Solomons. Looking at it, I wasn’t surprised that Holland was worried about navigation. Sometime in the second night out we would be off Sandy Cape. We would have to leave the Australian coast there, just short of the Great Barrier Reef, and head north through the hazards that littered the chart between Queensland and New Caledonia. Variation between true and magnetic at that point was given as 10°E.

‘You know where Captain Holland is, please?’

I turned to find Shelvankar behind me, a message pad in his hand. ‘Isn’t he in his cabin?’

‘No, not in his cabin or the saloon. Maybe in the engine-room.’ He smiled. ‘It’s about the two extra vehicles we take on tomorrow night. It can wait.’ He put his thick-lensed glasses firmly into place, peering at the charts. ‘I have entered you as acting first officer now. On Captain Holland’s instructions. You are a good navigator?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He is damn nearly asleep on his feet when we come south to Sydney.’ His English was very precise, spoken with a high-pitched lilt that reminded me of a Welsh friend of mine who lived on an old Thames sailing barge up the Blackwater. ‘The sea is not my natural home, and when the Captain is tired and his mind is on other things-’ He gave a little shrug expressive of an unwilling fatalism. ‘I am relieved to see you checking the charts so conscientiously.’ He said it on a note of uncertainty, and I realised that he knew nothing about navigation and was afraid I might be trying to pretend I knew more than I did.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I can navigate all right. It’s just that I don’t know these waters.’

‘So you find out from the chart and the Pilot.’ He nodded, smiling his relief. ‘That’s fine. That’s very fine, very sensible.’

‘What’s this about loading two extra vehicles?’ I asked, glancing down at the tank deck, where the four Haulpaks had been loaded aft in a tight huddle that left a clear space between the lead vehicle and the storm door.

He didn’t reply, and when I asked him what the message was, he said, ‘It’s nothing important. Just a change in the time the vehicles will be at the beach.’

‘At the beach? Are we loading direct off an open beach?’

He nodded, a shade reluctantly.

‘What about Customs?’

‘No Customs.’

I stared at him, conscious of his reluctance to talk, remembering Holland’s strange behaviour two nights back when I had walked unexpectedly into his wardroom. ‘Where is this beach?’ I pushed the chart towards him. ‘Show me.’

But he shook his head. ‘You ask Captain Holland. I do not know where it is.’ And he scurried out like a small spider that has weaved a bit of a web and then been frightened off it. He could have kept his mouth shut. But I realised that wasn’t in his nature. As a source of information he would always be unreliable, but at least he was a source, somebody I could talk to, and I guessed he had been with Holland quite a time, knew the family’s history.

Luke arrived in the wheelhouse a little before four, which was a good sign. He seemed to know nothing about the beach. And when I raised it with Holland in the saloon over tea, he refused to discuss it, his face blank. ‘Two trucks, that’s all. Nothing to do with you.’ And he began discussing navigation, confirming that we’d leave the Queensland coast at Sandy Cape, steering 05° Magnetic to pass between Saumarez Reef and Frederick Reef, both lit. I had already pencilled this probable course on the chart. ‘Where’s the beach?’ I asked him.

He hesitated, then said, ‘In the vicinity of Tin Can Bay, just south of Fraser Island.’ It was at the northern end of Fraser Island that Sandy Cape marked our point of departure for the Coral Sea.

He wouldn’t tell me anything more, sitting there sucking on an empty pipe, the creases in his forehead deepening and his mind far away. He was so tense, so uncommunicative that I was certain this was what had started him drinking that night. I went to my cabin and lay on the bunk, but I couldn’t sleep. There were some dog-eared paperbacks on the shelf above my head, including Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus, but I couldn’t concentrate, which was probably just as well, since it wasn’t the ideal book to read in the circumstances.

I was on watch again at eight, and as Holland was handing over to me, Shelvankar came in. It was dark now, and I was concentrating on locating the stern light of the coaster ahead of us. I heard a muttered curse and turned to find Holland staring down at a message in his hands, his face gone pale and looking as though he couldn’t believe it. He was staring at it so long he could have read it through half a dozen times, and the little Indian standing close beside him as though enthralled by its dramatic potential.

Suddenly Holland turned to me. ‘Didn’t you tell me you’d met my sister?’

I nodded.

‘When was that? How long ago?’

‘About a month.’ And guessing what the message must be, I said, ‘She’s on her way to Sydney, is she?’

He didn’t answer that, staring at me, very tense. ‘How did you come to meet her? Was it about the house?’

‘Yes.’ And when I started to explain, he said, ‘I know all about the sale. But that was to provide for Tim, and she’d taken a job as a stewardess. I didn’t expect her out here for at least another month. Somebody must have given her money.’

He sounded so suspicious that instead of asking him about his brother, I found myself having to explain the value of the stamps. And all the time I was speaking he was staring at me, very pale, and still with that tenseness. ‘So you arranged for two thousand pounds to be put to her credit in a bank at Southampton. And you didn’t tell me.’ His voice was harsh, a little out of control. ‘Why are you here? Did she ask you to contact me?’ And without waiting for a reply, suddenly aware of the little Indian standing close beside him, avidly taking it all in, he said, ‘We can’t talk here. Hand the bridge over to Luke; then come to my cabin.’ And he left abruptly, the flimsy still clutched in his hand.

His cabin was next to the wheelhouse, and as soon as the second officer had taken over, I joined him. He was sitting on his bunk, staring fixedly at nothing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he muttered again, almost petulantly. ‘If I’d known she was going to fly out … ’ He looked up at me. ‘That night when you came on board, if I’d known then … you should have told me.’

‘I didn’t think it was the moment,’ I said.

He stared at me, finally nodding his head. ‘No, perhaps not. And you seem to have done the best you could for her. I’m grateful.’ He said it as a matter of form, nothing more. And then he was silent for a long time, lost in his own thoughts. The odd thing was he didn’t seem at all happy at her imminent arrival, his reaction one of alarm rather than pleasure.

‘When did you last see her?’ I asked.

‘What? Oh, let me see, it must be about five years ago now. I went over to England, to discuss things with my father.’ Remembering Mrs Clegg’s description of the father, I thought he probably took after him, and wondered what the mother had been like, the two of them, brother and sister, so completely different. ‘She shouldn’t have come,’ he muttered to himself.

‘What did you expect her to do?’

He shook his head vaguely. ‘It’s no place for her,’ he mumbled, but I knew it wasn’t that. For some reason he was afraid of her. ‘I never thought she’d come, not suddenly like this. She talked about it, of course. She was always writing to me. Once a week, regularly.’

‘She’ll have told you then — about your brother. She says it’s sorcery.’

But he didn’t seem to take that seriously. ‘Ever since Mother was killed … ’ He shook his head, his mind on something else. ‘It’s Hans,’ he murmured. ‘It must be Hans.’ He looked up at me. ‘Hans Holland,’ he said. ‘We have a partnership arrangement. Perenna doesn’t approve.’

‘He’s a relative, is he?’

He nodded. ‘A bit removed, you might say.’

‘Was he in England two or three months ago?’

‘Yes. I think he’s still somewhere in Europe. He’s got big ideas, you see, and he’s looking for an ore carrier now.’

‘And he’s got red hair, has he?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I think he visited them in Aldeburgh.’ It seemed to worry him, and I said, ‘Are you afraid your sister will ask awkward questions, about the partnership, I mean? You’re still a separate company, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I had his attention now, his eyes on me, his fingers drumming nervously. ‘And the ship’s still mine.’ He sounded defensive. ‘I’ve had to borrow, of course, but we’re still solvent. It’s been a company since 1947, when my grandfather started it going after the war. He was running all sorts of craft then. Even when I took over, we still had some schooners. But it wasn’t until Hans began to undercut us that things became difficult. He started from scratch with two of those ugly little ramp-propelled lighters. RPLs. I had to make a deal with him then, and for that we needed something better than beat-up old coasters and the schooners.’

‘So you bought this vessel and named her after your sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why don’t you want her out here?’

I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, ‘Perenna and I … ’ He gave a little shrug. ‘The point is, whether it’s a house or a ship or a business, she wants to run it herself. The last I heard from her, she was at Southampton. That was before I left Buka. Now there’ll be letters waiting for me at Chinaman’s Quay.’ He smiled wearily. ‘If I’d been at Madehas instead of in Sydney, I’d have known all about you and those damned stamps.’ He sighed. ‘What the hell do I say to her? This’ — he tapped the message — ‘is an inflight from a Qantas aircraft en route from Singapore to Perth. She knows I’ve been in Sydney for engine overhaul, and she expects me to meet her at the airport. You think she’ll have enough cash with her to fly on to Bougainville?’

‘Why not tell her to meet you at that beach you’re putting into?’

‘No.’ He said it quite violently. ‘No, she can’t come on the ship.’

‘Why ever not?’

He stared at me, a puzzled frown and his eyes worried. ‘There’s no place for her, no proper accommodation. I can’t have a woman on board. Not Perenna. She’d — she’d be difficult.’ He had got to his feet. ‘I’ll tell her to contact the agents. That’s the best thing. They can arrange hotel accommodation and fix it for her to fly on to Kieta. Better still, she could stop off at Perth and stay with her aunt for a while. Yes, that would be best.’ And he nodded, smiling nervously as he pushed past me, pleased at having worked out a solution.

I went back to the bridge and took over from Luke again. The coaster was still there ahead of us, and nothing to do but follow her. The chart showed Kieta as the main port of Bougainville. I tried some star fixes then. The night was very clear, ideal for sextant practice, but after I had twice made a nonsense of my calculations, I gave it up. I just couldn’t concentrate, my mind on Perenna Holland instead of star charts and correction tables. I slid the starboard bridge wing door open and stood thinking about it in the cool night air. Well, I had done my best. I had tried to explain, and if he didn’t share his sister’s belief about sorcery, it was none of my business. But it still didn’t make sense expecting her to fly on to Kieta when she could so easily join ship at this beach we were putting in to. And she certainly wouldn’t stop with an aunt in Perth, not when she had come so far, working her passage until I’d got her the money to fly the last part.

I found myself gazing for’ard over the backs of the empty Haulpaks to the gap left for the two trucks we were going to load from a deserted beach in the small hours of tomorrow night. No Customs, the Indian had said. I wondered what those trucks would be filled with — drink, cigarettes, or was it something more serious? Drugs? Was that what he was afraid of, that she’d find out he was smuggling drugs?

There was a light on in the signals office, and suddenly my mind was made up. I went back to the chart table, wrote out my message and then took it to Shelvankar. He was alone, sitting at a portable typewriter, a cigarette burning in an old tobacco tin, the air thick with smoke. The place was littered with cardboard boxes, and as he glanced up at me, dark eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, he looked more like a storekeeper than a radio officer. I handed him the message I had written. ‘I want that sent right away.’ He read it, taking his time. Finally he put it down.

‘You know Miss Holland?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He shook his head uncertainly. ‘I will have to ask the Captain.’ He was getting to his feet, but I pushed him back into his chair. ‘Just send it,’ I told him.

‘But Mr Slingsby, I cannot do that. It is very difficult, you see. Captain Holland has already sent quite different instructions to his sister. She is to fly to Kieta.’

‘At his expense?’

‘No, he don’t say anything about who pays for the ticket. He just tells her he can’t meet her and if she doesn’t stay with her aunt at Perth she must fly on to Kieta.’

‘So, after coming all across the Pacific to see him, she’s fobbed off with an aunt or else she has to fly up to Townsville, get the Air Niugini flight to Port Moresby, then switch to another flight to Bougainville.’

‘Is none of my business, Mr Slingsby. If you do not agree, then you talk with Captain, please.’

‘I’ve already talked to him. He’s worried about that beach cargo.’ I hesitated, sure that this little man knew what it was, but not certain I could wring it out of him. ‘You keep the ship’s accounts, don’t you?’ I saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Well, don’t you?’

‘Yes. But I don’t see-’

‘Then tell me this. Just how much are you in the red? You’ve been losing money-’

‘The Hollands, they run very good shipping line. Is very important for the islands.’

‘I’m not talking about the Hollands. I’m talking about this ship. It’s been losing money, hasn’t it?’

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘There is a recession, you know. All over the world. In the Solomons and Papua New Guinea, too. Everyone is affected by it. But we were all right until we have to go to Sydney for engine repairs. This is very old ship now.’

‘And Holland’s in debt — to his partner?’

He didn’t have an answer to that, and because I had already come to the conclusion that Jona Holland was no businessman and relied entirely on this man for cargo arrangements and all the accounts, I said, ‘You know everything that goes on in this ship, Mr Shelvankar, so I’m sure you have discovered what my normal business is. I deal in land and big estates, which means I know all about figures and can read your books the way an accountant can. Do you want me to get Captain Holland to let me check through them?’

There was a shocked look in his eyes as he said quickly, ‘I assure you, Mr Slingsby, there is no need for that. Everything is accounted for very meticulously. I am a most meticulous person.’

I knew I had him then. In total control of the business side, he didn’t have it in his nature not to fiddle something. ‘You send that message. Quote the flight number and ask for it to be delivered to Miss Holland on board the aircraft.’

For a moment he sat there staring up at me. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, I send it. But on your responsibility, you understand. I am not responsible.’

‘Just send it.’