Taking an eye-watering sip of the noxious liquor, Cooper leaned forward. ‘How many luggers are in this place, Sid?’
‘Mebbe more than three hundred.’
‘Does each one have a different owner?’
‘Nope. Some mebbe two, mebbe three. Big Tuan boss Mayor, he has lots, mebbe twenty.’
‘Captain Sinclair has how many?’
Sid took a swig of gin and held up three fingers.
‘How many men on each lugger?’
Sid explained that each lugger held two divers: a number-one diver – usually Japanese – and a trial diver, who was less experienced than the principal. They dived in turns. The diver had a man on board who tended his equipment, which made a total of three diving-related people. A common crew comprised the cook, four men to man the air pumps in shifts throughout the day, and the shell-opener, swelling the number to nine. Sometimes the owner-captain worked on board too. So, as far as Cooper could make out, there were generally nine or ten people on a lugger.
‘Does Captain Sinclair go out to sea?’
‘Him’s no sea legs.’
Cooper chopped at his windpipe and contorted his face. ‘Is the diving dangerous?’
Sid laughed. ‘You’s a scaredy-cat?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘No. The diving I’m used to is much more dangerous than here.’
‘Japanese dive best.’
‘Why?’
‘Have lotsa guts.’
‘And the best crews?’
‘All mix-up. Then no fighting.’
‘And do the Aborigines work on the boats?’
‘He no work on boats. White man don’t like blackfella.’
‘Why not?’ Cooper knew that imported labour was an issue in Buccaneer Bay, but not to use the abundant local workforce seemed like lunacy.
‘Blackfella scared of diving gear.’
‘So, the crews do not originate from here.’
‘All crew come work for three years then go home again. All very snug.’
Somewhere close to midnight, Cooper fell asleep over a glass of rum. Someone shook his shoulder and hefted him up the stairs to his balconied second-floor room, and he had woken the next morning at nine o’clock, slumped across the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked underneath him, still drunk.
He squinted at his watch. Captain Sinclair wanted him at his office before ten. The initial meeting with the captain on the steamship had made him jumpy. He’d been expecting a big welcome party, along the lines of the fanfare at Port Fremantle, but the captain had barely acknowledged him and had completely blanked John Butcher. Cooper had accepted the four-page contract from his poker-faced employer but had refused to sign it unread. The captain’s pale grey eyes had not been friendly. Perhaps Cooper was misreading it. After all, the man could not have known of Cooper’s attraction to the woman he’d watched the captain wed or that his bride looked like she’d made a dreadful mistake.
Cooper leaned back in the wicker chair and began to roll a cigarette, booze-shaky fingers making heavy work of the task. He licked the sticky edge of the cigarette paper and placed one end of the slim tube, pointed like the sharpened lead of a pencil, between his lips and lit up. He shook out the match, inhaled deeply and crossed his legs, shutting his eyes against the glare of the morning sun.
‘The view isn’t up to much, is it?’ a young-sounding female voice said.
Cooper cranked open his eyes, his roll-your-own smoke dangling from his lip.
‘Black mud and luggers. That’s all you can see during the lay-up.’
‘I wasn’t really looking at the view.’ He struggled to his feet.
‘I’m Dorothea Montague.’ She held out a gloved hand.
Cooper looked into the girl’s face. Dark hair piled up under a hat, round blue eyes, her mouth wide and soft. ‘William Cooper.’
‘I know who you are. My father is the mayor. We’ve been anticipating your arrival with great enthusiasm.’
‘We are all excited to be here,’ he batted back. ‘And keen to get started lifting shell off the ocean floor.’
‘A bit of a wait then for you, I’m afraid. Until the Wet’s over.’
‘Wet?’
‘Gosh, I always forget that Britishers from England don’t know what that means.’ She giggled. ‘It’s the time from November to March when the threat of cyclones keeps the fleets and crews onshore. Everyone gets drunk all the time and we have lots of parties. It’s great fun. And the repairs are done to the luggers. I expect you will be given some jobs to do. The paid workers are expected to muck in.’
‘Are not all Britishers from Britain?’ he queried.
‘No, silly boy. We are all Britishers in Buccaneer Bay. White people. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, I do see. Thank you.’ Although he didn’t. He stole a glance at his watch. ‘Please don’t think me rude but I have to be at Captain Sinclair’s office before ten o’clock.’
‘Oh goodness. That’s right at the other end of town. Would you like me to give you a ride in my buggy?’
‘Would your father be happy for you to ride with a stranger?’
‘Of course. White people have to stick together, and we don’t go in for that chaperone Victorian nonsense that goes on in England. There aren’t enough women, silly boy. It’s no trouble, and I could call on the new Mrs Sinclair. She arrived last night and I heard her to be about my age.’
‘Yes, she is.’
The blue eyes expanded. ‘You know her?’
‘I’ve seen her. We travelled on the same ship from England.’ Cooper thought of the slight, blonde-haired girl with her pearl-white skin, and wiped a handkerchief over his forehead. Oh yes! He’d seen her walking on deck with an older woman he’d assumed was her mother. Last night she had married Captain Sinclair in the most bizarre wedding ceremony he’d ever witnessed. She is now his, he told himself, but the realisation gave him no joy.
Miss Montague twirled her parasol, shading pale skin. ‘You should buy a hat. Your skin will really darken with the sun, and you don’t want people mistaking you for a coloured. That would be suicide, socially. Our people won’t invite you to anything if you’re all brown.’ She pointed at a horse trap tethered to a rail under the hotel’s awning. ‘Shall we go? The sulky is just there.’
He was sweltering and nauseous with a hangover beating a call to temperance in his skull. Without altogether thinking it through, Cooper accepted the offer and followed her out. He regretted it seconds later.
Miss Montague, he learned, had no mother. Of course, she corrected herself, she did have a mother once but she died of neglect. Or incompetence. No-one really knew the truth of the matter. Her Mama had developed an infection from a cut and went to see the white doctor, at the government hospital. Everybody said she should have gone to the Japanese doctor but her Dada wouldn’t hear of it. Dada said that Asian people were inferior to white people and he wouldn’t fall so low as to allow his wife to be treated by an immigrant. But the white doctor was busy with the divers who needed to be passed fit to work – even though some of them weren’t – and there was lots of paperwork to fill in. So, he forgot about her Mama, and the infection spread and Mama died. Now Miss Montague was alone with darling Dada, who still hated the Asians, the mixed-race people, the poor whites and the Aborigines.