Maisie looked at him. ‘No girls?’
‘No. Just him and me here, Mem.’
Maisie drank her pot of tea and washed down the rock-hard scones, which were stale enough to endanger teeth. She had only intended to eat one but had allowed herself to become distracted by her new surroundings. In the daylight she could see that the house was built on concrete legs, and from the shady west-facing verandah she looked down onto a stretch of sand alive with activity. The tide was out and it seemed as if an army of tea-coloured locusts was stripping the beached sailing boats of their contents. Coils of rope, baskets and lengths of anchor chain were being lugged up the sand. Sails were taken down from the riggings and dragged up the dunes where they were spread out for inspection across the high ground.
She shifted her gaze towards the lighthouse, which was as clean and bright as tooth powder. Next to it was a collection of iron sheds and warehouses. Two men were separate from the rest, deep in conversation. The shorter of the two was waving his arm at the task force on the beach. The other, she saw, was William Cooper – the tall English diver from the steamer – his dark head framed by the brilliant blue sky. Something tugged within her and she stared, her chest tightening as she took in the tilt of his head, the set of his shoulders. Even from this distance she could see that his skin was glossy with sweat. It glistened on his face like sunlight on water, and she could almost feel his body heat. She watched him twist off his boots and socks, and fold his trousers in neat pleats to the knee. He looked as if he was going to walk down to the water’s edge and paddle in the sea.
He patted his trouser pocket and pulled out the makings of a cigarette. The process made her frown. She knew she had seen him do it before but she couldn’t remember when.
Duc shuffled into view, his big toes straddling a Y-shaped strap on flat, slappy shoes. ‘You all done tea, Mem?’
Maisie tore her gaze from the figure on the foreshore and tried not to stare at Duc’s feet. She had never seen footwear like it. ‘Yes, thank you, Duc.’
She drained the last drop of lukewarm tea from her cup and rose from the chair. Her dress, the same dress she had worn for her marriage ceremony the day before, clung determinedly to her skin. She pulled at the neckline and flapped it up and down, trying to find some respite from the stifling heat.
‘Perhaps you could show me round the house?’
Duc beamed, his eyes sparking with what she thought was happiness.
Maitland’s bungalow – he had named it Turbine after a winning racehorse he had once backed – was a large oblong. Elaborate white fretwork surrounded wide latticed verandahs framing the house. The bungalow was set away from the acre-block housing she would learn was the ‘English’ part of town, and Maisie couldn’t help but wonder why he had built his house so far from the centre of things. At the front of the house, Turbine’s lush green lawns rolled out to the edge of a blood-red cliff that overlooked the ocean. They had no neighbours.
The bungalow was designed to be airy. Duc explained that the boss fella’s house had been built to follow the construction lines of a ship.
‘This housie builded by them Jap fellas.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Them Jappy fellas in Asia Place. Before him government say bye-bye to best workers.’ Maisie let his remark pass. She had been force-fed a diet of racist extremism since she boarded the steamship to Port Fremantle almost two months ago and was still struggling to digest the bigotry.
‘Mem Tuan. You listen?’
‘Yes. I’m listening. Tuan?’
‘Means boss. Them Jappy fellas build things good and use same wood for lugger boat. So him deck become verandah, inside boat is inside bit of house and sails on boat is big blow shutters.’
Duc was speaking a language she couldn’t comprehend, and she found herself mirroring his expression, stretching her mouth wide in a mirthless grin till her jaw ached with effort. She waved at steel cables that crossed over the roof like rigid string, anchored to the ground by fastenings sunk deep into cement.
‘Is for big-blow windies, Mem. Keep house on spot.’
She pointed at the metal-capped cement pillars beyond the verandah.
‘Hims is for creepy-crawlies and snakes and eaty ants.’
‘You eat ants?’
Duc rolled his eyes. ‘No eaty ants, theys eaty house. We no eat-im.’ As they continued the tour of the house she pointed, he explained, and neither comprehended the other. She thought that the house perfectly reflected her husband: flat and stretched sideways rather than up.
The dining room was next to the kitchen at one end of the west verandah. The walls were covered with framed pictures of hunting scenes – slaughtered deer, tigers and elephants immortalised in their final moments. Huntsmen and hounds posing by their bleeding quarry. She imagined she could hear the call of hunting horns, and tried not to look.
At right angles, the verandah widened to accommodate the lounge furniture, which, Duc explained, was made of cane imported from Singapore. At the far end of the same verandah was a long, partitioned space.
‘This, Mem,’ Duc paused, waving his arms like a policeman, ‘is mosquito room. Where you and boss have sleep. Afternoon time.’
Maisie steadied herself on the back of a chair. So, this is when it would happen. The consummation of her marriage would be this afternoon – in the mosquito room – with Duc listening in.
Duc explained that the quasi-dormitory area was enclosed by fine steel mesh to keep out the biting insects. Full-length iron shutters protected the space from the elements.
‘And do you have a room in the house, Duc?’
‘I’s live at back near to boss fella’s room.’
Maisie was shown a further small verandah at the back of the bungalow that faced the garden, which Duc told her was his space, or words to that effect. At the back was also a small shuttered area the boss used as a second home-based office, and a large storeroom, which housed an impressive larder of canned food.
‘The three of us will be totally self-sufficient if the sky falls in!’ She laughed.
Duc looked at her with a broad grin, his eyes wide with hope.
‘What you say you teach me cook, Mem, so we okey-dokey when sky falls in?’
THE SEAFARER’S REST HOTEL, built of iron and wood and overlaid with latticework, sat on a rise at the Japanese end of Royal Avenue, its elevated position giving it a good vantage point over the rest of the town. Buccaneer Bay had no high street in the traditional town-planning sense. There was no nucleus to the collection of buildings that had grown up behind the coastal sand dunes. As far as Cooper could tell, its only excuse for existence was that its inhabitants all shared the same unshakeable belief that there was a fortune to be made from pearl shell and another from the occasional treasure within. It was why he, too, was there.
It was ‘lay-up’ in Buccaneer Bay, a season of unrestrained madness. The lugger crews had lived and worked for nine months of the year in conditions in which even the most placid dog would have savaged its handler – and school was now out. Captain Sinclair had billeted both of his new employees, William Cooper and John Butcher, in the Seafarer’s, and the rent would cripple them until they could get out to sea and start hauling the pearl shell. The Englishmen found themselves hunkering down among men of every nationality who were steadfastly working their way through their pay. Drinking or gambling were the preferred nightly pastimes. There was little else to do.
Cooper paused now on the doorstep of the hotel and lowered himself gingerly onto the pale cane seat. His head