The Unforgiving Shore Page 6

  Now Paul’s mind alternated between gritting his teeth and helping to clean up, waiting for the fateful hand on his shoulder, or running to the Village and hiding out at Charlene’s cabin until… until when?

  Dinka and the other maids had their backs bent restoring order, their task vast. Paul found the barman, Harry, emitting a strong stench, snoring in a flower bed, a florid stain over the front of his white dinner jacket. Dinka muttered instructions to Paul as though he wasn’t a fugitive. He began to help, carrying dishes to the kitchen, scraping off the ravaged food into waste buckets, folding chairs and tablecloths. Emma came up suddenly behind him. She was in a different dress and looked calm. He could not speak. She smiled as though they shared a sweet secret and handed him a paper bag.

  “Here’s your clothes, Paul. Don’t mind Mother. She’s a bit old-fashioned.” And she skipped away with a snigger.

  6

  Paul stayed on a few weeks at the Hill with Ellen after Ted’s funeral and although they talked occasionally, they were remote from each other. His qualification for a light aircraft licence enabled him to make some money flying one of Mirabilly’s planes, doing stock-checks and short errands to nearby towns in the outback. He had no commercial licence but that didn’t worry Dick Mather.

  Paul also had to decide how to deal with the place he had obtained at Sydney University to study law, a choice of Ellen’s, made from almost complete ignorance, which he had passively accepted. It was soon confirmed that Ted’s debts would wipe out everything Ted owned except the furniture in the house. Ellen offered her insurance pay-out, but Paul pointed out that it was plainly insufficient for courses lasting years. Neither of them had any clear idea how he could earn during his studies. Ellen agreed that Paul would have to postpone his education for a year or perhaps two years.

  In the meantime, he was happy to join one of the small outback airlines and get a commercial licence. He knew the pilots who were flying into the station regularly. He was particularly friendly with Nick Karantis who worked for Dart Airways. Nick persuaded Paul to come to Darwin to meet the proprietor who was looking for another pilot. Nathan Dartmell was only around thirty but he had the clipped, bossy way of a big executive. “So you can fly,” he said. “You don’t have a commercial ticket. We’ll get you one. Join a real outfit, Paul. Have a career!” They shook hands. “Nick’s word is good enough for me,” Dartmell said on the issue of references.

  *

  Paul moved to Townsville first, then Darwin. He had a room in a widow’s house near the city; it looked over a field of goats. He bought a third-hand Honda 125 bike to get around. He liked, but didn’t love, flying. In the first few months he hardly ever seemed to be on terra firma and then only for a quick meal, or to go back to his room to sleep. He began to hear whispers about Dartmell’s private life.

  One night, in the bar of the Flying Club, a wooden shed near the Darwin field where the pilots lounged when they were off duty, Nick took Paul aside. “Nat’s in trouble.” His dark Greek eyes were wide.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Booze, a woman who ain’t his wife and a father-in-law who wants his lolly back. Nat’s in pieces. He barks at us as though he was on cloud nine, but it’s the gin talking.”

  “Shit! We’re going to be out of a job.” Paul had a sudden feeling of helplessness.

  Nick and Paul sipped their beer quietly, thinking, and then started to criticise Dart’s organisation.

  “Are you going to go to Nat with a rescue plan?” Paul asked.

  “Nah. He’d never listen. Too far gone.”

  “So why don’t we get in on the act?” Paul said, having no clear idea how they could do this. But the idea that it could be done was simple and logical.

  “Yeah,” Nick said slapping him on the back. “I been thinking the same! Dart’s reputation’s going down. The customers are nervous. We know that. Slip-ups with deliveries. And the word about him is on the wire.”

  *

  Nick and Paul resigned, collected their pay on their last day with Dart and headed for the Flying Club to develop their plans. They sat at a table under the trees by the roadside and ignored the occasional dust that settled on them as the heavy trucks passed. They could see the shimmering airfield through the wire fence; light aircraft were continually landing and taking off, each one drilling urgently at their thoughts.

  Nick urged Paul on. His idea was to hire two planes and when they had some business, go to a bank and borrow money to get planes on long-term leases. Easy. Paul wasn’t entirely convinced but Nick’s enthusiasm was infectious.

  “Let’s have a go!” Nick said, raising his stubbie in a toast.

  “I’m not sure my savings are enough,” Paul said, grinning.

  “How much have you got?” Nick asked seriously.

  “About a thousand dollars.”

  “Ha! Me too! Hell, we won’t need much. My old man will stump up a few thousand bucks for the first few weeks. We just have to get out there and get those deals!”

  Both Nick and Paul had contacts with the bosses at the stations they had been servicing. Mirabilly was Paul’s baby and he approached Dick Mather. He flew down in a Cessna 235 hired for the day. He had an edge with Mather who was having an affair with Ellen and Mather knew Paul knew. Paul didn’t like Mather, who reminded him of the sleek seals he’d seen in the Townsville Aquarium and he felt sorry for Betty Mather.

  He sat opposite a confused-looking Mather in the shadowy office at the Big House. “I heard Dart was in trouble. The service has been flagging,” Mather said, “and I’ve been talking to one or two of the boys about what we should do…”

  Paul had no scruples about spinning Mather a yarn. “My partner has finance for a small fleet of aircraft and we want to pick up as many of Dart’s contracts as we can. We know the business. We’ve been flying the routes.”

  Mather wasn’t going to refuse Paul readily. He seemed more interested in personal gossip, the fall of Nathan Dartmell, the drinking and infidelity which must have resonated with his own pecadilloes. He scratched his scurfy head, wriggled his neat moustache and looked for catches.

  Paul imagined his mother in bed with Mather; it hardened him from a kid asking for a favour, to a deal-maker. “No catches. We pick up the Dart load at the same rates.”

  Mather was silent for a moment. “Can’t see what we have to lose. It’ll save me looking round. I’d only be having this conversation with somebody else. Damned if I thought I’d be dealing with you, Paul. How old are you?”

  *

  Nick and Paul weren’t doing anything extraordinary; they were two of a number of pilots freelancing around northern Australia in beaten-up hired machines, making a small turn on the traffic. It was touch and go whether the new firm of Karantis & Travis would get enough work to keep them flying. The loads had to be small because they didn’t have the capacity to haul heavy freight; they had to be medical supplies, perishable foods, mail and payrolls and any small delivery that was urgent, plus the occasional passenger: a dog, a cat or even a human.

  7

  Paul used to fly in to Mirabilly every week and occasionally take the time to see Ellen, who after almost two years from Ted’s death was still living on the Hill. He didn’t know whether his visits to Ellen were out of consideration for her, or to lacerate himself. The atmosphere between them had hardly changed since Ted’s death; a superficial calm covering dark, forbidden spaces.

  On a visit he met Dick Mather coming out of the house as he approached through the neatly clipped and watered lawns; they exchanged uneasy greetings. Mather hustled past in embarrassment. Paul pressed on through the screen door into the house.

  “What did Mather want?” he asked, although he knew already, as Ellen came out in her dressing gown, drying her hair with a towel and humming a tune. “I ran in to him as he was leaving.”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to move in a few weeks. Dick’s a friend. He’s going to get me a house and a job in the Village.�
��

  “Yes, a very good friend.” Paul was sickened at the thought of Mather pawing his mother.

  “I can manage Mather,” Ellen replied in a biting tone.

  Indeed, she had managed him quite skilfully for almost two years.

  “And what’s more I believe he’s done you a good turn or two,” she said.

  Paul was grateful for Mather’s early support with the Mirabilly work. At the same time he was nauseated, knowing the leverage which earned the favour.

  “You’ll hate it in the Village, Mum.”

  “I’m not leaving Mirabilly.”

  “You ought to get a house near Maude Geary’s at the Creek, or in Townsville. I’ll look after the rent. You could probably get a job there.”

  “It’s final, Paul.”

  It would be a wrench for Ellen to leave this place, the head stockman’s house with its neat white walls, glassily polished floors, bright rugs and the seclusion of the garden; but she didn’t share a word of that with Paul. She, and Ted at her direction, had worked hard to make it a showplace, but hardly a home. Ted had definitely not been allowed to bring his mates home.

  Ellen called the homes in the Village doss-houses. She loathed the style of the villagers. In fact, they had money and their cabins were in good repair. They were the people Paul had grown up with and liked on the whole. She would protest, “The women smoke cigarettes and talk in loud voices; they wear trousers and dig the garden. And the men sprawl on the front porches and drink beer. The dogs chew bones under the kitchen table and go to sleep on the children’s beds!”

  Paul cringed inside at the thought of his mother moving from the Hill to the Village amongst the Mirabilly workers, because of her view of them and because what had happened to her was as plain as if she had shouted it from a rooftop. She was snidely laughed at by many and perhaps pitied by some. She had often been referred to behind her back as Lady Jane and Paul couldn’t, when he first heard that kind of expression years ago, understand why. He understood now. Dumped by Marchmont, impoverished by Ted Travis, in bed with Dick Mather and now set to live and work in a community of jackeroos whom she despised. Paul’s flesh crawled as though it was happening to him.

  Later, Ellen was allocated one of the better cabins in the Village; but it was still a cabin rather than a house, in a row of similar cabins, surrounded by a few yards of lawn and a chicken wire fence. Mather also got Ellen a job in the commissary and sometimes she worked shifts in the cafeteria. She retained her profound contempt for the families around her. She was always curling her mouth at what she described as the shouty, dirty, sozzled men, their ever-pregnant wives and wild kids.

  Ellen never mourned for Ted in any visible way that Paul could detect and never mentioned him affectionately. He was like a distant acquaintance who was no longer around. Ted had eventually become one of Ellen’s many taboo subjects and this left Paul unable to reconcile, for himself, the essentially gentle man of the outback whom he knew as a father, with the improvident gambler and deceiver who had emerged after his death.

  Two years after Ted’s death was the time to which Paul had agreed to postpone his further education. He had seriously meant postponement at the time, because he had been attracted by books and study and was disappointed at having to wait. Ellen was now questioning him month by month about his intentions.

  “Isn’t it time you got on with your studies?” she would say and he would reply that he was ‘working on it.’ He hadn’t entirely dismissed the idea, but instead of the savings Ellen thought he must have accumulated, he had big personal debts and a commitment to Nick Karantis. If he pulled out of their business Nick’s livelihood would collapse or be severely damaged.

  “I’ve decided not to go to university,” he told her at last. He wasn’t going to say to her that it was impossible because he had no money.

  Ellen was quick to condemn. “A plane is more fancy than a car, but you might as well be a cab driver.”

  But a living had developed around him by his own efforts and imagination, aided by Nick. He had a genuine reluctance to give it up quite apart from the lack of money. The thought of writing papers for academics seemed to belong increasingly to a part of the past that he had missed and to which it was becoming too late to return.

  *

  Nick’s early, perhaps reckless confidence had boosted them into business, but Paul was surprised how quickly Nick’s spirits sank as their borrowed capital was eaten up by unforeseen expenses and their cash flow slowed down. Paul decided that he was not going to give up without pushing further. He argued that they had to get cheaper and better planes. He found, from a classified advertisement in Flight Monthly, that a firm named Burrundie Finance of Darwin were offering four repossessed aircraft in good condition for sale or lease. He persuaded Nick to look over the planes which were stabled in a compound near the field. The security guard stood at the wire gate jangling his keys and keeping the dogs quiet. They patted the noses of the planes in a friendly way as though they were horses.

  “We’d never be able to afford the Beechies,” Nick said, “but that’s what we need.”

  Paul pulled his head out of the cabin of a Piper Apache. “These old buses are OK.”

  Their next stop, the next morning, was the office of Burrundie Finance. “Huh,” Nick said, eyeing the hairdressing salon on the street front and peering upstairs into the gloom. “A back-street outfit. Run by bean-counters creaming it off as money-lenders. Whadda y’ think they know about flying?”

  Nick and Paul had dressed in their best and only dark suits; in Paul’s case formerly Ted’s second best. They both wore white shirts and dark ties.

  “OK,” Paul said, “we play it very calmly this time. Say little. No attempt to deal.”

  “Right,” Nick said, straightening his tie and looking at his partner. “Goddamn it, Paul, you look five years younger’n you already are in that outfit!”

  Upstairs, the receptionist was impressed with Mr Karantis and Mr Travis. She lingered huskily over their names and then opened a door behind her to reveal a shiny-bald man in rolled shirtsleeves and braces, wedged behind a desk. He didn’t get up.

  “Come in and siddown boys,” he said, hardly appearing to glance at them. “You wanna take the planes or are you enquiring on account of your daddy?”

  Paul was confused. It was their first real business meeting. Getting freight loads from station managers and suppliers had been like talking to friends. This was different. Nick showed for the first time a quality of temperament that was to be important to them. A red coin-sized spot appeared on each of his cheeks and his eyes swelled. “We been flyin’ fuckin’ aircraft for years, mate!”

  The accountant’s face wrinkled up and he paid attention with his damp eyes behind his spectacles. “Just kidding, boys, just kidding,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “No, you tell us,” Nick said, pushing over the desk a long and quite professional list of questions that they needed to answer to assess the planes. Paul had got a girlfriend of his to type it.

  The man held the list between finger and thumb delicately as though it had a bad smell. He studied it for a short time and said, “Yeah, I can get you this stuff but can you guys deal? Premium. Bank guarantees. That crap.”

  Nick’s olive cheeks were suffused now and his eyes focussed hypnotically on the accountant. “Listen, Mr Burrundie…”

  “Dooley,” the man said.

  “You give us the info. Then we consider it. Then we come back to you if we like it with a deal.”

  “We need bank guarantees, fellers.”

  “We’ll prove our credentials and experience and give you a third party guarantee. Forget the premium. And the bank guarantee. It’s a buyer’s market, mate. We’re looking at other aircraft when we leave here.”

  “I understand the market, boys. We’ll talk about it when we’ve got the details.”

  “If the birds are up to scratch,” Nick growled, jerking his head at Paul to signal their departure.

/>   Over a beer at the Macquarie Hotel, Paul realised he had learned something. Nick had established an emotional dominance over Dooley and by agreeing to talk later, Dooley appeared to have cast aside the bank guarantee and the premium.

  “You did great, but what about this third party guarantee?” Paul asked.

  “My old man has three bakery shops. As soon as we’re under way I’ll repay the old man and get a bank guarantee.”

  “We already owe your dad a bundle.”

  “You know what he said to me when I asked for the advance? ‘I’m seventy-five years old, son. You have it now – or later’.”

  Nick and Paul thought they had nothing much to lose. They weren’t worried about bankruptcy because they didn’t fear or even understand the stigma, but they had been and probably would be a hair’s breadth from it for years. And Nick didn’t seem to be worried about the risk to his father. It was an advance on his inheritance.

  They leased the planes and soon Paul was working harder than he had ever worked in his life. They never seemed to have any money. At first, they paid a girl in a secretarial agency to act as receptionist and booking clerk and flew every hour they could, serving six stations and small towns spread out over the Northern Territory and Queensland. When they were in Darwin together, they were up until three or four in the morning with bookkeeping and business arrangements. They were enjoying themselves in a masochistic sort of way, but they could see this couldn’t go on for very much longer.

  Nick and Paul named their company Northern Airlift. In 1975, when Paul was twenty, their office was at the end of Trafalgar Street in Darwin, where the town started to run out and the suburbs began.

  The office was in a two-storey building with a fish and chip shop on the ground floor and their office up a flight of stairs over the top. The smell of frying fat came in the windows on most days and it was too hot to close them. Their office, two rooms, was looked after by Melda Turner, a middle-aged married woman whose children were in high school. She lived two doors along the street and could be relied on to be at the office at odd hours or during the weekend. She was an expert typist and telephonist, once a secretary for a mining boss. She had taken to ‘the boys’ as she called them.