Then we wait. For him seaboss tide fella. You got it?’
Seaboss? ‘Yes, I got it,’ he bluffed.
Squinty slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come. No time for dilly-dally.’ It was too far to go back to the hotel, so Coop took off his boots and yellow socks and rolled up his trousers, in the style of the labouring crew. He unbuttoned his jacket, removed his cigarette papers and tobacco from the right-hand pocket and shrugged the jacket off his shoulders. Wondering if Miss Montague had a point about a hat, he brushed his hair back from his forehead and tied a cotton handkerchief around his head.
Squinty relieved him of his excess garments, rolled them into a sausage-shaped bolster and trotted up the path to the shed.
‘You start remove stuff. Quick smart. Seaboss come soon.’
‘Seaboss tide fella?’
‘Yes, yes, he come cover boats.’
‘Where shall I put the stuff?’
The Malay gestured with his hand towards the red sand dunes, already piled high with baskets and ropes.
Coop rolled a cigarette, and got started. It was backbreaking work. With weeks at sea and only an occasional game of deck quoits for exercise, his muscles were weak and flabby, but he was not a quitter. Back and forth, he squelched through the black mud, dragging the endless contents of the captain’s luggers on heavy-laden pallets through the burning sand, until he could barely see through the veil of sweat dripping before his eyes.
Sucking noisily on a foul-smelling cheroot, Squinty scampered up the dunes. The tide was almost upon them.
‘We stop now. Big seaboss coming.’
Coop trudged up the sand and sank down alongside the assembled seamen to wait for the tide. He framed his face with his hands, giving his eyes temporary relief from the glare. The flies were having a field day.
The tide surged towards them, angry white-topped waves smacking the wooden boats on the stern and surging over the decks. Coop steadied his head in his hands. As the water flooded the holds, thousands of cockroaches clawed and scrabbled over each other, their hidey-holes flushed out. Swirling higher and higher, the tide swept the insects away; Coop retched and swallowed down the bile.
Squinty leaped up and down, his arms pumping, and his enthusiasm ripped through the workforce like a tsunami.
‘Him seaboss strong today. Good fun coming. You need stick.’
‘I’m feeling rough, Squinty. I’ll sit and watch.’
‘Tuan say white man weedy.’
‘He says I’m weedy? Or that all white diver men are weedy?’ Coop pushed himself up off the sand.
Squinty missed the subtlety. ‘He say new divermen weedy. My job make you tired out a lot. So you no think straight.’
Coop sensed trouble. ‘What’s your job on the lugger, Squinty?’
‘I have lot jobs. Maybe sometime I cook little bit. Maybe I clean shell little bit. Sometime I do air hose little bit. I do what Tuan says me.’
Squinty’s eyes were on the circular track. Round and round. Out to sea. Up to the sky and impossible to read.
‘Look, see rats coming up,’ he screeched. ‘You need stick so you can bash him!’
Thrashing in the salty water, desperate to gain dry land, hundreds of terrified rats, blind in the unfamiliar sunlight, made a dash for the shore. Overhead, birds shrieked. In the water, doomed rats squealed for salvation. On shore, the yelling was intense. Someone had laid a bet on who would kill the most and money was exchanging hands.
The sun beat down. The racket on the dunes was too much. Coop clutched his head and tried to cool the scorching thoughts in his brain. What on earth had he signed himself up for?
MARCH ROLLED IN WITH a fresh wave of homesickness.
Maisie sank back in her chair and shut her eyes, trying to recall the detail of the park opposite her parents’ house, with its railings painted midnight black, its bright yellow daffodils and neatly trimmed hedges. In the ten days she had been in the Bay, England would have started to turn green, and the soft spring grass would soon appear in bright juicy tufts. She hated the suffocating humidity, the heat and the pervasive red dust and the endless hours she spent cooped up in the house on her own. She had set out to be a good wife and offer Maitland affection and companionship, but what sort of existence was he offering her when he was out of the house all day and slept alone in his own room at night? She found it both puzzling and worrying that he didn’t seem to desire a wife in the physical sense of the word; he wanted a well-connected facilitator who did what he said and didn’t answer back.
The first time Maisie had entertained Maitland’s friends, four or five days after she arrived in the Bay, Duc threatened to leave.
‘White bossman bad. I tell boss fella. No can work here no more. Knife and fork sit on table. Why’s important who they next to?’
Maitland had insisted he set the table with a white tablecloth and use the new dinner service Maisie had brought from England.
‘I no know who sit next to who. Boss he go shouty mad and smash booze bottle.’
Maisie managed to calm him down and explained that cutlery was put on the table in the order that the food would appear, from outside to in. The soup spoon, dinner knife, dessert spoon, cheese knife on the right, and the side plate, large fork, dessert fork on the left.
In upsetting the domestic applecart, though, Maitland had badly misjudged his wife. He hadn’t in the least expected her to go into bat for their staff.
‘I call the tune on domestic arrangements, Maitland, and let’s be quite clear: you do not raise your hand to nor do you bully Duc. Ever. He is loyal to us both and you are to treat him with respect.’
Maitland looked taken aback. ‘My castle, my rules.’
‘No, Maitland. Duc lives on our property and we are responsible for his welfare as his employers. Anyone with domestic staff has a duty of care whether they live in an English stately home or a bungalow in Buccaneer Bay.’
Maitland was what her father would have called a ruthless social climber. He had backed down in the face of ruffled social propriety.
Propriety … After an early meeting at the church this morning, Maisie had endured an hour at the knitting circle and was now drooping on the verandah, her clothes clinging damply to her skin, her feet puffed up and sticky inside her shoes. She stared listlessly across at the discarded knitting dolly the bishop’s wife had given her and bit her bottom lip.
Winding a strand of hot scratchy wool round and round four pegs held scant appeal. The wool made her hands sweat, and she couldn’t see the point of creating yards of useless rope. She didn’t want to make a teapot cover or egg cosy or, frankly, anything whose purpose was to keep the heat in. She closed her eyes and tried to think of things that would make her feel cold: snow, frost,
