The Seal Wife * 16

 Pearl and Finn

“I have a present for you,” he grinned. The teeth behind his upper canines were missing. She liked his gappy smile. It made quite the ruffian of him.

He dropped some ice cubes into two tumblers and they went outside to the muscular old karri tree. They sat at the wooden picnic table. She watched the light dapple across the grass as he poured the drinks.

She was a queer creature, he thought as he glanced at her. A strange combination of genetics; tall and strong with dark skin. If he didn’t know her parents were Scottish immigrants, he could think she was ... something else. But then there were the freckles across her nose and that voluminous hair. And those eyes. He willed her to look at him. She turned up her gaze from the ground and he spilled Drambuie all over the table. It seeped between the boards and onto his crotch.

She laughed, not unkindly. “Where have you been?”

“What? Oh. I’ve been up the coast.”

“For the whole week?”

“The wedgies look after my fruit while I’m away.”

Finn had devised a protection racket with guinea pigs to save his fruit from the birds. He fenced the guinea pigs into the orchard and let them breed to their heart’s content. The parrots stayed away because the Wedgetail eagles and hawks circled the orchard, eyeing off the furry fodder.

“Do they ever get a feed?”

“Occasionally. I give the guinea pigs drain pipes and stuff to hide in. That’s just good sportsmanship, don’t you think?”

“A fair chance for all,” she agreed. “So where did you go?”

“Well, I have a story for you now,” he handed her a glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers. Tell me a story.”

“I went up the coast, like I said, to this inlet I found years ago. It’s about eighty kilometres away. Remember the sealer’s camp I told you about? It’s on the far side. You have to swim or row a boat over there, there’s no track and it’s on the opposite side to the camping ground where all the bloody signs and rangers are. So I took the tinny down this time. Last time, I swam over and found the foundations of the old stone hut and some terraces. There was some really old wood there too, like ships timbers, just lying about. It’s a strange spot.” He stopped and stared at her black eyes. “I was there, the first time and I got all kinda sad, like I didn’t want to leave, you know?”

“You belong there?”

He wished he could articulate what he meant but sometimes her direct gaze threw him and while she was waiting for words, he’d lost them to the foggy reaches of his mind. “So I went back, this time for a bit longer than a day. I took the tinny over with some beef jerky and two minute noodles and I did the wild man thing.” He laughed. “Get this. I took the metal detector too because I wanted to have a hunt around for stuff. I mean, whoever lived there once would have left ... I dunno, tobacco tins or an axe or knives or something. But you know what? When I got over there and unloaded my gear, I got the metal detector out and it was bloody useless!”

“Flat battery?”

“No!” Finn shook his head. “Remember the Trappe brothers went down in that plane, about six months ago?”

“Yeah. It was full of government men or coppers or something, wasn’t it? Crashed up the coast from here.” She nodded as she started to realise what he was saying. "The Trappe boys ... they were good men, in their own way."

 

The Seal Wife *15

 Pearl and Finn

Pearl walked along the road intending on taking the dogs to the shore for a swim, clean them up a bit. Both had indulged in an early morning cow pat roll. She’d seen them wriggling in the bitter green patches of grass in the far paddock and then they galloped back to her, all gleaming smiles and shaggy, stinking pelts.

What happened though, was that she turned into the driveway at the corner, before the creek trailed out to the town harbour, as she always did when she walked in this direction. It was like she held divining rods ahead of her. Stop in for a cup of tea and watch the dogs lolling under one of the orchard trees, buy some fruit and then head home again with a juicy little tremor of potential rolling in her belly.

He was hunched over weeding out the blueberry section, his floppy cotton hat obscuring the view beyond the soft, emerald milk thistles. The dogs leapt through the neat rows of calendula seedlings to get to him, their tails like flags, pocking the freshly turned earth. He straightened and put one hand to his lower back. Then he saw her and his whole being gladdened.

“You won’t have to dig holes for that next lot,” she pointed to the dogs’ tracks. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

He growled at them and shooed them off. “I’ll teach them one day. When you’re not looking. They’ll never do it again.”

“Hey, Finn,” she pranced. “It’s my birthday today.”

“Well. Happy Birthday To You!”

“Shall I put the kettle on?”

Finn lived in a shed that was split into rooms by wardrobes and tea chests. Despite the apparent chaos of gutted cars, motorbikes and ropes of drying onions and chillies, he was meticulously tidy and always served Pearl properly brewed tea in porcelain cups.

He looked at his watch. “We can do better than that.”

Inside the gloom of the shed, he washed his hands at the sink and pulled an unopened bottle of Drambuie down from the kitchenette.

The Seal Wife *14

 Autopilot

He noticed that over the years Andrew’s sexual habits had become more predatory. He tended to avoid women he could fall for, he didn’t stick with anyone. Hazel stayed with him longer than anyone. What a beautiful situation – revenge and gratification in one dose. Most of the time Andrew would prefer to follow some girl around the pub, until she was drunk enough to escort home. Trappey watched him do it a lot. Perhaps it all came from that day on the wharf. Maybe he was just like that. Girls said he was attractive. Hazel said so ...

He wanted to climb out of his own brain sometimes. He had to do something, he knew that. He wondered about family secrets and how they so often circled around sex. Something nasty that happened in the wood shed. Maybe one day he should just come out with it to Andrew. Apologise for being such a useless coward. Andrew would probably clout him but it would be a start. Better than being glowered at every day and watching the bastard grow bitter with the women and having those poor girls on Trappey’s doorstep, asking him what was wrong with them.

He radioed into the base and let them know his position. Then he coasted back towards the mountain. As he rounded the great hill with twin peaks, he spotted the inlet gates; two huge granite bosses, moulded into neat squares the way granite does in this sort of country, like the Peruvian stonework in the great temples. They flew over the little pool of the inlet, ringed with orange rocks, the water still, and opaque, tinted by the river.

“You know, one of our ancestors mistook his brother for a seal and shot him,” Andrew told Arkie. “Further along the coast somewhere.”

“You are kidding me.”

“I’m not. His brother was wearing a seal skin and our great grandfather shot him dead. Straight through the neck.”

“He wasn’t wearing the seal skin. He was pegging it out. The gun misfired,” Trappey said. Andrew loved that story but he always told it wrong.

“Straight through the neck. Then he took off in a little boat to get away from the law and he was never seen again.”

“How can he be your great grandfather then, if he was never seen again?”

“He had two sons, babies, before he went away sealing.”

“There they are!” Cowie’s shout blasted into Trappey’s earphones.

At the eastern end of the inlet a wooden Indonesian boat bobbed in the water like something out of a movie set, her gunwales painted bright blue. She’d done a rough voyage.

“Fishermen,” said Stuart, pointing to the winch on the deck. “Sharker.”

Trappey couldn’t see any people, just the thirty footer, but as he turned to do another pass he saw something breaking the surface of the water. With the sun flashing on the skin of the inlet, it was difficult to work out what it was.

This time he flew low over the water. Stuart was on his mobile phone, speaking quickly. Cowie was taking photographs. As they neared the boat, something rose out of the water, someone. Her. There she was, with wet red hair clinging to her like kelp and travelling down her spine. She stood thigh deep in the murky inlet and raised her arms up to the plane, her mouth open like she was singing. Trappey knew her black eyes were upon him.

For a long, long moment there was silence inside the cabin as everyone watched the red headed woman. Entranced, nobody but Trappey realised that the engine had cut out, stalled in the air. Trappey felt her in the hole in his stomach as she sung him down. He felt sorry for the others, for their mothers and their kids. He knew what would happen. Somehow he’d been waiting for this.

The engine started blurting and the sick noise threw the passengers out of their reverie. Then, silence again – except for the whistling of wind against the plane’s body. Trappey looked in the mirror and saw the pasted on faces of Stuart and Cowie staring back at him.

“I’m sorry Andrew,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” Tears tracked down Trappey’s face. Andrew nodded and dropped his head into his lap. Then Arkie started screaming as the inlet flew beneath them, the orange stones rushed them and the water was a blur of silver, the red haired woman far behind.

This is the last episiode of Autopilot in The Seal Wife series. Sorry folk, but Trappey et al get it in the neck. Stay tuned for the next episode:  

Pearl and Finn.

x Sarah