A Boat Load of Home Folk by Thea Astley Read Free Book Online Page B

places like this and at our age,” Miss Paradise said. “At our age.” She repeated the pronoun with intense satisfaction.
    â€œYou mean your age,” Gerald replied.
    â€œI mean ours. You are not nearly as young as you would like others to believe.” Thirty years of spleen were emerging in one convulsion. “I am only fifty-six. You cannot be much less.”
    Gerald was redder and angrier than heat required.
    â€œThe answer, of course, is mind your own business,” he said.
    â€œThen you should not make your squabbles so public.”
    â€œOh for God’s sake!”
    Miss Paradise was wrestling with a cigarette and holder but the end result was a pitiful fracture that she lit nevertheless.
    â€œWave for the dinghy,” she commanded. “We’ll go back and get out of the heat. You are going back, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes.” Gerald was beginning to sulk.
    If it was merely the heat that had been rising from the rank grass they would have been bonded by the sticky sympathy created, but there was a fine scent of dislike. Gerald lit a cigarette, too. He began to wonder if Kathleen could be watching from the
Malekula
through the spyglass of a port.
    â€œActually,” he said, “we’re very fond of each other.” He squeezed his parcel to convince himself and instantly thought of the other woman, while Miss Paradise cackled five chook notes of disbelief. She prodded with her parasol a vicious little hole between thekikuyu roots and dug up a mound of sand and dirt. After a minute she looked back along the road for Kitty but there was no sign, and in an unlikely way she began to worry. She knew herself to be naturally cruel, and only she understood how hard it had been to fight her inner impulses for all those years, to practise a kindness based on the need to retain a companion. Oh, the self-denial of it!
    Gerald Seabrook, she observed, had risen to wave at the
Malekula.
“Hi!” he shouted across the water and made fatuous rowing signs. A deck-boy waved back, but nothing else happened and Gerald was forced to walk along the wharf past the crates and the wire fish-creels. A middle-aged blackfellow lay half-asleep with his old felt hat jammed down, his splayed toes resting on a rope-coil, at home to all the flies.
    â€œExcuse me,” Gerald said absurdly, “we want to go out there.”
    The blackfellow opened his eyes and blinked.
    Gerald pointed to the
Malekula
and remembered something and fished for a coin which the man inspected without passion, closing his eyes again.
    Miss Paradise began to walk along the jetty towards him. Gerald, in rage and lust for escape, cupped his mouth and hailed the boat over and over. At last Brinkman appeared on deck and stared across the blue thick water at him. He shouted something neither could understand, but after a little a dinghy pulled away and came towards the jetty.
    Gerald recalled his manners for once and stepped in ahead of Miss Paradise; but as he turned to hand her in over the side, he dropped his parcel into the harbour and when they fished it out it was a ruin.

   IV

8 a.m., 10th December
    F ATHER G REELY had been a spiritual investigator, the very private eye of ecclesiastical courts, for years. Padding across the tarmacs of airport terminals, through the spurious security of plastic and nylon carpeting in Gauguin colours that went with the terminal bars, he was a sinister figure in his black, much given to gaberdine overcoats and overstuffed briefcases. The nose, the formidable jaw, the baggy eyes and the hard mouth gave nothing away—he was a dangerous poker player—while his habit of reading a paper and watching over the top of it the farewelling unmarried couples gave his whole person an ambience of espionage. He carried his job like a disease.
    Now, having left the others by the Burns Philp Stores, under the awnings with their cameras clicking like crickets, he came up the