other in a rush to be first onto the ferry. ‘Stay down here. Let them have it. We’re waiting for Jacko.’
‘G’day,’ Jack Nolan said when he joined his friends. ‘No, I take that back. Guess it’s not a good day.’ He acknowledged their gloomy looks and shrugged. ‘A lousy one, right? You’ve all heard?’
‘Yeah, we’ve all heard.’ Zoran jammed his earphones in but kept the scowl.
The water, now that the ferry was tied off and resting, was so clear the leather jackets swimming around the piers were part of the conversation. As was the stranger with the smart briefcase who stood on the jetty above the steps, his dark city suit and his highly polished black leather shoes out of place on Glencairn Island. The stranger leant against the railing, his head inclined towards the kids on the lower step.
‘You know what?’ said Xanthe. 'I reckon we can stop them.’
‘How, Warrior Woman?’ Jack said. 'How?'
‘With dynamite.’
The stranger put his finger against the nose-piece of his dark sunglasses to keep them in place as he bent even lower into the conversation going on beneath him.
‘Dynamite?’ the twins exclaimed. ‘Dynamite? We’re gonna blow it up, you mean? Their bridge?’
The listener standing above them cocked his ear even closer to the discussion.
The Curlew’stransport monitor signaled the five to get aboard but despite Florence Longshank’s impatience, they continued to hold back from the mob.
‘Hey, what did I tell you kids?’ yelled Mrs Longshank when Xanthe and Zoran landed heavily on deck with Jack, Angel and Honey following close on their heels. And only the twins looking a little sheepish to be caught breaking the rules by not using the gangway. ‘You lot want a clip under the ear or what?’ Mrs Longshank growled as they came down into the cabin.
‘Sorry, Leggy,’ teased Zoran, blowing her a kiss.
Xanthe moved straight down the back of the boat, ignoring a pretty freckle-faced girl along the way who had her hand out to collect a high-five.
‘She’s still asking if she can join,’ whispered Angel out of the corner of her mouth.
‘The Fabulous Island Film Unit?’ huffed Xanthe. 'As if?’
‘As if?’ echoed Angel. ‘The Fabs? I don’t think so!’
‘Watch where you’re going, C’mon you lot, in y’go. Hurry up, there,’ yelled Mrs Longshank, despairing that her charges were being more fractious than usual today. What with this being last week of term and all the excitement about the story in the Star,it was proving impossible to keep order this morning.
‘Stop your pushin’‘n shovin’ down the back there, you lot,’ she yelled out. ‘Let ‘em through. Go on, get in there, all of youse. Hurry up! Ken don’t have all day, y’know.’
Amidst the yelling, shouting and pushing, the Fabs made it to their usual places, settling in and kicking their bags under the seat, aware that, as usual, other kids had moved up and made room for them. The tiniest of the ferry’s passengers, with Mrs Longshank’s help, squeezed in among the big children on the wooden benches. The Kindergarten passengers wore lifejacket. Mrs Longshank insisted on it while they were aboard her vessel. Little Lucien Radlic, Zoran’s brother, was usually here, but today wasn’t one of his mainland days. Today, he was at home on the island with his dad.
Among the older students, some bent over their last-minute homework and a couple still chewing on cold Vegemite toast from the breakfast table, the talk was animated. Most students seemed excited by what the Starhad reported as being no longer just a rumour but a fact.
‘Quiet!’ shouted Mrs Longshank from the top step of the cabin. ‘Belt up or youse don’t go nowhere.’
‘Cool!’ came a chorus of cheeky voices from the back of the boat.
‘I’ll give youse ‘cool’!’ said Mrs Longshank, finally taking time out to shine one of her great smiles. ‘It’ll be cool alright if I throw a few trouble-makers overboard, won’t it?’
A loud cheer went up.
One who didn’t cheer, however, was the well-dressed stranger standing behind the transport monitor, the dark sunnies hiding his eyes but not the sourness of his expression. Maybe it was the pursed lips. Maybe it was the shudder, which went through him as he studied the chaos of a boat-load of noisy school kids.
He stepped down into the cabin and made his way around backpacks and skateboards until he reached the rear, where he eventually took his seat opposite the five Fabs. He brushed a blonde wind-blown strand of hair from his eyes and checked his watch. Reaching into his jacket, he produced a smartphone and started texting. He returned the mobile to his pocket and turned to look out at the bay. The self-satisfied smile had little to do with the beauty of the sunshine bouncing off the sparkling water.
Ken Hawley, the Curlew’selderly pilot, with his bushy white beard and sea captain’s jacket, was at the wheel explaining a few things to his son, Ferry Perry, the young pilot who would soon be taking over the run when his father retired. Neither man had seemed surprised to see the slick young business type joining their school run this morning. They had other strangers on board, including a woman reporter from the Star who had already interviewed Ken and Perry, and her photographer who had been snapping away, capturing shots of the photogenic pilot and his First Mate, as well as shots of the old Curlew – a vessel whose days would be numbered if the island was to be joined to the rest of Australia by a bridge, as per this morning’s disturbing news.
A bridge joining Glencairn to the mainland. No longer an island. No longer protected. The ancient sanctuary of wildlife and rock art threatened. A five-star resort to follow. All in the Star,and what had been merely a troubling rumour, now confirmed.
But unlike the two pilots, Florence Longshank wasn’t having any part of posing for pesky newspaper photographers or answering their nosey questions. The Curlew’s transport monitor had more important business to attend to. For twenty-two years it had been Mrs Florence Longshank’s duty to keep order aboard the Curlew on its school runs, making sure her young passengers staid safely below deck until the ferry tied up at Happy Cove and she could stand back and let them off. Only then could she relax and watch the children loiter up the hill to school.
All she had to do then was to clean up after them and wait for it to happen all over again, in reverse, that afternoon.
‘Sorry. Too busy,’ was Mrs Longshank’s terse response when the Starreporter tried for the third time to get this tall, skinny woman’s opinion about the proposed development. Florence Longshank was way too preoccupied with seeing her charges settled in and behaving themselves and, once she was satisfied they were safely seated and reasonably quiet, the veteran of many voyages untied the Curlew’s heavy back-end rope from the wharf with one deft flick of her wrist, a manoeuvre young Ferry Perry had yet to master.
Using the two fingers of her right hand shoved between her lips, she gave her ’Okay’ signal––a piercing whistle. Perry freed the rope from the other pier. The captain tooted his horn. With a loud scrunching noise as it knocked against the piers, and a churning up of lots of white water, the old blue and white ferry backed off. Ken waited
