“With Blake and Shona then?” Andrew replied.
“Yeah, OK. Phone me tomorrow night at home and we will discuss it,” Muriel said.
Andrew wanted badly to kiss her but restrained himself. Instead he smiled and then hurried down the steps to the driveway. As the van drove up past the house he saw her waving from the terrace and waved back, his spirits soaring. ‘She wants to see me again!’ he thought happily. All the way home he sat in a haze of romantic euphoria, day dreaming of wonderful things they might do together. To give him hope were the thoughts that she would be at cadets the following Saturday afternoon, and that there was another dive trip planned for the next Sunday.
Only when he and Carmen were dropped off at home did Andrew remember the old photos and think to ask his mother. She nodded and said there were several old albums around, and to ask his father. Andrew did this at once. His father had just got up from his Sunday afternoon snooze and was a bit grumpy but became interested when Andrew described the photos at Old Mr Murchison’s.
Mr Collins led the way downstairs to the storeroom. On the door being opened Andrew’s hopes nose-dived at once. The room was a jumble of boxes, bags and assorted junk. Mr Collins snorted with annoyance and gestured in. “Now, there is a job long overdue! Instead of sailing around the bloody bay you might clean up the house.”
“Yes Dad,” Andrew replied, his hopes sinking even further. “Would you know where the photo albums are?”
“No, but they are in an old brown leather suitcase I think. So, if you really want to find them, get to work, but only after you have done your homework.”
“Yes Dad,” Andrew added with a sigh. His father insisted he show him his completed homework before school every day and he knew there would be no escape from this. Reluctantly he made his way back upstairs.
Thus it was four hours later, at 9pm that Andrew returned to the storeroom. For a while he stood in the doorway, all but overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. ‘This is hopeless!’ he thought, but even as he began to turn away, his stubborn streak took over and he stopped. ‘There must be a smart way to do this,’ he mused.
So he began to systematically clear a path in through the room so that he was able to see what was stacked on either side. The displaced articles were taken out to the workshop area, to be re-stowed later.
An hour later his mother called him from upstairs, “Time for bed Andrew. Give it up and come up for your Cocoa. You’ve had a long weekend and you don’t want to be tired for school.”
“Yes Mum,” Andrew called back without conviction. He backed out along the ‘gully’ he had cleared in the junk and reached for the light switch. Then, just as his finger closed on it, he saw the brown leather suitcase.
CHAPTER 4
FAMILY ALBUM
Andrew seized the brown suitcase and dragged it out of the storeroom. From upstairs his mother called again and he muttered with irritation. His problem was to open the suitcase. It had old snap catches that were stiff and took some working on. At last they flicked open and he was able to lay the suitcase on its base. With some difficulty he prised up the lid. Inside were numerous books, papers and folders.
As he leafed through these, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the musty smell and scuttling of numerous silverfish, Carmen came down the back stairs and called to him, “Come on Andrew. Your cocoa’s getting cold- and Mum’s getting annoyed.”
Feeling frustrated Andrew closed the lid and went grumpily upstairs. He drank his cocoa and cleaned his teeth, then said goodnight to the others and took himself to bed. Here he lay and thought about the events of the day. At the top of his consciousness was Muriel. To his mild annoyance his daydreams about her were tinged with images of sex. Through his mind flitted memories of her in her swimsuit, then of Letitia- in the shower with him, and nude on the beach at Endeavour Island during the family holiday in April. That got him all jealous and aroused.
More memories came to heighten his arousal: Letitia sunbathing nude; Letitia and the Naked Painter having sex on the beach in the moonlight. That one really hurt. Andrew became both very aroused and anxious. Worry about Letitia harming herself by such activities, and his own self-knowledge of desire and jealousy all combined to make him quite emotional. The uncomfortable thought that, if he was given the chance, he might succumb to temptation made him feel confused and hypocritical.
It was a mixed-up and unhappy boy that slipped into sleep- a restless sleep disturbed by dreams. The dream that stuck in Andrew’s mind when he woke, feeling tired and strained, was about diving. He had swum out with the others to where the safety boat waited and they had gone diving. Down in the dark water, which was so deep he could not even see the bottom, he lost touch with Carmen and the others. In his anxiety he turned to look at Muriel to check she was there. She was but he was stunned to see her eyes blazing with anger. Suddenly she reached out and snatched off his face mask. Panic had welled up and he had been sure he was drowning and had swum quickly to the surface, ignoring the threat of decompression sickness. But on reaching the surface he was dismayed to find that the safety boat was nowhere to be seen. On looking around he had found that he was much further offshore than he had realized. Nor were any of the others in sight. Then the waves and current had increased and he had found himself being swept out to sea. Dark shadows had begun to flit around under the water but he had been too scared to put his head under to see if they were sharks. Sweating with panic he had woken up.
‘Oh I wish I had never said I would go diving!’ he thought, shaking his head and feeling drained. How to get out of any further dives without loss of dignity occupied his thoughts as he showered and dressed. He knew there were three more to complete the diving course- and each one of them required fully flooding the face mask under water!
Thus he thought no more about the old photos until he returned home after school that afternoon. Even then he forgot about it until his father came home from work. He came and stood over Andrew’s desk, on which was spread his homework.
“You might have put that suitcase back when you finished with it,” he said.
“Suitcase?” Andrew echoed foolishly. “Oh yes!”
He hurried down stairs and set to work sorting the contents. Most of the papers in the case appeared to be old accounts, invoices and bills but there were also numerous old letters and postcards. Andrew picked one up that had a hand- tinted photo on the cover. “Brampton Island- Playground in the Sun,” he read aloud.
The photo albums were there, two of them. There was also a large brown envelope full of loose photos. They were all ‘black and white’. The very first one was a stern view of a schooner or lugger tied up at a wharf. After studying the background Andrew muttered, “Taken in Cairns, but what ship, and when?”
Turning the photo over revealed part of the answer. ‘Manahaki ready for lay-up’, read the ink handwriting on the back.
At that moment Carmen and her friend Jennifer Jervis joined them. Jennifer was a trim blonde who went to the same school as Muriel. She was English and her father was a Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander on exchange with the RAN. Andrew was a bit wary of him, so was shy with his daughter, even though he thought her very pretty.
Carmen leaned over to look. “What are they?” she asked.
“Grandad’s old photos,” Andrew answered, holding up one that showed the tug Wallaman Falls running at speed on Trinity Inlet.
He passed her the photo. Soon all three were seated on the concrete floor looking at photo after photo. To Andrew’s annoyance many of the photos had no writing on them to say who, where or when. Even so he found them fascinating. So engrossed did the three become that they did not notice the passing of time.
It was Andrew’s mother who reminded them. “What are you children looking at?” she asked.
“Old photos of Grandad’s, Mum,” Andrew answered.
Mrs