Sole Survivor
“Here he comes,” she said softly, slipping as deeply into the bath as she could, wishing she’d been more liberal with water and soap. But it was the old story. Too little, too late, too bad.
“Here’s your towel. Got a dry one.”
“How very clever of you.” He hadn’t knocked. He hadn’t discreetly opened the door a whisker and thrown the towel through the gap. No, he’d just marched straight in and stood ogling her.
“Anything else?”
“John, I am a woman. You are a man. I am naked and you are staring.”
“Sorry.” He made no move to go.
“John, leave me the towel. Put it on the rail. And then please go next door and punch Merv the Perv’s lights out. And when you’ve done that, ask him to do the same to you for the same reason.”
“Jesus, Rosie. Here’s your bloody towel. Don’t bother to say thanks.” He left and closed the door behind him. Rosie didn’t move. She knew better. The door pushed open again. “Want a cup of tea?” John looked vaguely disappointed.
“Yes, please. Now do be a good boy and piss off.”
“Did you get any milk?”
“Why would I get milk? There was plenty when I left this morning.”
“I used it on my cornflakes.”
“John, when you’re drinking your black tea, get the paper and look through the flats-to-let section.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. Piss off. Out of my bathroom. Out of my flat. Out of my life. Take as long as you like, but if you’re not gone in one hour you’ll find all your stuff out on the street.”
“You can’t do that. It’s raining. Where will I go?”
“John, you’re still staring. Don’t stare at me. One, I can throw you and all the rubbish you flatteringly call your things out onto the street. You know I can. We know each other well, and you know I’ve done that before. Two, I don’t care if it’s raining. Three, I don’t care a damn where you go. Just go.” Fixing him with the look he’d come to fear, she sat up. He saw her breasts clearly, which is what he’d wanted to see all along, but more than that he saw she meant business. He went.
Rosie sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. John had gone by taxi, but not without argument, not without some of her things as yet undiscovered, and not without asking if he could borrow her car. She was alone again, and wondering if she should cry. The flat was cold and damp and there was no milk. Tomorrow she’d have to begin writing up the report based on the findings of the group discussions she’d conducted. What, she wondered, was the benchmark for removing skid marks, and did anyone really care? There was nothing to eat except limp vegetables, a can of baked beans that John had left behind because he’d put it in the wrong cupboard and a butterscotch-flavored Gregg’s instant pudding, which needed milk. Crying seemed the preferred option when she heard knuckles do a drumroll on her door.
“Come in, Norma, it’s not locked.”
“Hi,” said Norma brightly. “Guess what? You and me are going out to dinner. Loverboy’s had to fly down to Wellington on business. I stopped off at the Bistro and reserved a table.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Rosie. “John rang you to see if he could sleep the night at your place.”
“How’d you know?” Norma seemed genuinely puzzled.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s good to see you, I need a friend and I’d love to go out to dinner with you because there’s nothing to eat here.”
Norma hung her raincoat on the back of the door and flopped down on a chair opposite Rosie. “What happened?”
“Nothing, everything, the usual, what the hell does it matter? In a funny way I’ll miss him. Sometimes I think I’m the most useless creature on earth, then I come home and John’s here and suddenly I feel reassured.”
“Negative thoughts,” said Norma.
“I’ve earned them,” said Rosie.
“There’s never any excuse for negative thoughts. You’re brainy, your whole illustrious family is brainy, and they’re all wonderfully successful.”
“Except me.”
“Except you. You don’t even try.” Norma stuck a Du Maurier in her mouth and lit it. She had the knack of talking while her cigarette sat glued to her bottom lip.
“What do you mean?” Rosie wasn’t protesting but complaining. She was due a good moan, and moans were only good if there was someone to hear them. “I tried. I still try. Trouble is all I ever wanted to be was a beatnik, make pottery and love everybody and throw pink rose petals in the air. Instead I became a doctor and went off to save the world. They sent me to India, which was full of sick people, but didn’t give me any medicines to save them. Instead of curing them, I joined them and had to be evacuated home. It’s all been downhill since then.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I’ve got a bottle of wine in the car. We could drink it now and get another to drink over dinner. What’s this?” She spotted the sodden pile of letters and idly peeled them apart. Bills, more bills and a large envelope with Green Lane Hospital printed across the bottom. Norma raised her eyes questioningly. When she shook the envelope something slid around inside it.
“Probably notification from the VD clinic. That would just about be my luck.”
“Better open it and see,” said Norma.
“You get the wine, I’ll open the envelope. Probably need a drink by the time you get back.”
Norma grabbed the umbrella Rosie hadn’t bothered to take to work with her and dashed out. Rosie picked up the envelope from the hospital and weighed it in her hands speculatively. A fund-raising brochure? A letter from her father? No, he’d know better than to write to her. She could imagine what it would say. “Please find enclosed my written disapproval of the way you are conducting your life.” But perhaps for once the old boy might have got it right. She tore the envelope open and picked up the letter that fell out. She chuckled at the address. “Care of the Professor.” Well the professor had done the right thing and forwarded it on, or at least his receptionist had. She turned it over and looked at the return address, printed neatly on the back though somewhat blurred by rain. “Red O’Hara, Wreck Bay, Care of Col Chadwick, Port Fitzroy, Great Barrier Island.” Her first thought was that she’d won a holiday. She wondered if it was raining on the Barrier.
She pulled a knife out of the cutlery drawer and slipped it beneath the flap. Gingerly she opened the envelope, careful not to damage the contents. She spread the letter and will out on the table and read them.
“Who the hell is Bernie Arbuthnot?” she asked out loud. The name rang a bell, albeit distant. She thought back to when she was a child, accompanying her father on his weekend rounds. She vaguely recalled an old tubercular alcoholic who gave her sweets in exchange for stolen bottles of her father’s beer, and told her rude jokes. She couldn’t remember his name but guessed it was him. “Bernie, you old bastard,” she said.
“Who’s a bastard?” said Norma as she shook out the umbrella at the door. “You haven’t got a dose, have you?”
“Norma, Green Lane Hospital doesn’t have a VD clinic. It has my father instead. Tell me, what do you know about Great Barrier Island?”
“Not much. You can see it away on the horizon on a clear day. Yachties go there, and that amphibian plane flies there. Why?”
Rosie told her.
“God Almighty! You wouldn’t even consider moving there, would you? I mean you’d be mad. No one lives there, well no one with any sense. There’s nothing there.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosie. She didn’t know much about Great Barrier Island, either, but the idea of owning a house and doing nothing but make pottery and grow roses suddenly appealed. Outside, the wind gusted, causing the rain to beat a violent tattoo on the window. She picked up the letter and reread it. Maybe it was a sign, or divine intervention, or simply a stroke of luck out of the blue. A new life beckoned, a better life, a simpler life where she wouldn’t hate everyone and everything around her. She could picture herself at her wheel, shaping the clay, a smile on her face and contentment oozing from every pore. She looked around her flat and thought of a future documenting skid-mark removers and house-training flatmates. Norma shoved a glass of claret into her hand.
“Rosie, I’m telling you, don’t even think of it. You’re not the type.”
“It couldn’t be any worse,” Rosie said softly, optimistically. She took a generous swallow of wine. Somewhere inside her the mischievous young girl who’d wanted to be a beatnik awoke from her slumber.
There was a time when Rosie would have simply walked out of her flat and her job and hopped on the Grumman Widgeon amphibian that flew people out to Great Barrier Island. But age and experience had curbed her impetuosity. The last thing she needed was another disappointment. So the following morning she bought a map of the Barrier and studied it. The first thing she noticed about Wreck Bay was that it appeared uninhabited, the second was that there were no roads that went anywhere near the place, and the third that it was surrounded on three sides by what appeared to be steep and rugged hills, all of which, according to the artist who drew up the map, were covered in dense bush and scrub. There were no trails in or out that she could see. Strangely, she didn’t find any of this the least bit off-putting. On the contrary, she found it intriguing. She knew someone did live there or, at least, had lived there. Bernie had lived there and grown roses. Among the bushes and birds. Gazing out across an ocean that stretched unbroken halfway across the world to Chile. Bernie had managed to live there. How old would he have been, she wondered? She’d thought he was old way back when she was a child. If an old man could live there, so could she. Rosie leaned back in her chair and sipped at her tea and tried to imagine what life at Wreck Bay would be like. No corner stores to run to for milk or bread. No supermarkets. No television or phones. No cars. No electricity. No doctors, apart from herself, and that didn’t count. No voyeuristic neighbors. No neighbors.
No neighbors?
Rosie felt the first tinge of doubt. Surely someone else would live there. She knew she couldn’t handle the loneliness of being all alone. Then she thought of the man who’d left his name on the back of the envelope, Red O’Hara, Wreck Bay. She almost cried with relief. She could be alone but not alone. She picked up the map of Great Barrier Island once more and gazed at the bite out of the northern end. She was staggered that somewhere so close to the bustling city of Auckland could be so remote. Wreck Bay made Easter Island seem like Club Med.
Norma thought Rosie had finally flipped when she applied for two weeks’ leave and booked a flight on Captain Fred Ladd’s amphibian.
“I’m off as soon as I’ve presented my findings on toilet cleaners,” she said.
“You’re mad,” said Norma. All she could do was wonder at the change that had come over her friend. She played her last card. “There are no blokes over there, none that you’d want to go to bed with at any rate, and you’re not cut out for celibacy.” Her cigarette bobbed indignantly.
“It’s only for two weeks,” said Rosie. Her face lit up and she burst out laughing. “I know it’ll be tough, Norma, but I think I’ll survive.”
Five
“Come in, come in.” Lieutenant Commander Michael Finn rosefrom behind a swamp-green metal desk that looked like it had been built from a Meccano set. His office walls shared the same bilious color, and the only relief came from a window overlooking the naval docks that was partially screened off by drab, apple-green venetian blinds, and a painting of the light cruiser Achilles engaged in battle with the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. He’d heard about Red and half expected him to walk in naked. If he had, Red would not have surprised him more.
He wore a gray, pin-striped, double-breasted suit jacket with wing lapels that might have been popular before the war, but had been studiously avoided by fashion ever since. It was at least two sizes too big but helped hide the frayed blue shirt beneath. His trousers were black and stopped well shy of his ankles. It didn’t help that his shoes were brown. Col had done his best and scratched around for clothes for Red to wear but had had to make do with what had been left behind by guests at the hotel. The lieutenant commander had seen Guy Fawkes effigies on bonfires that were better dressed.
“Sit down, sit down!” he said.
Red sat. If someone had shot his legs out from under him he couldn’t have sat down faster. He looked for somewhere to put the package containing the little urn that held the last mortal remains of Bernie Arbuthnot, finally choosing the corner of the lieutenant commander’s desk. He couldn’t help but notice that the blotter was square to the desk, ruler parallel alongside and pens neatly in a cup. He wrongly assumed that the lieutenant commander was responsible for the orderliness.
“That your friend?”
“Sorry.” Red grabbed the package off the desk and looked for somewhere else to put it.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said the lieutenant commander quickly. “Leave it there, it’s okay.”
Red’s hands shook as he placed the urn of ashes back onto the desk. His responsibilities toward Bernie hadn’t ended with the old man’s death. Someone had had to farewell the old boy and nobody else had rushed to put their hand up. The Great Barrier Island community had chipped in for the cremation and to fly the three of them to Auckland on the amphibian. They’d been given a discount to make up for a shortfall in funds on the grounds that a dog didn’t really constitute a person as far as fares went, and Bernie could travel as cargo.
Red and Archie had sat in the little chapel until the coffin had descended. The experience had made Red think of the prayers they used to say over the graves of fallen comrades in Burma and the tears he’d shed over the mate for whom Archie had been named. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” Nobody had warned him that the valley was so long and the shadow so deep.
“I appreciate the fact that you’ve come to see me.”
Red looked up, startled. He’d agreed to the arrangement so that the lieutenant commander wouldn’t send a patrol boat to Wreck Bay but wished fervently that he hadn’t.
“Should I offer condolences?”
“A cup of tea, please, sir. Some water for Archie.”
“No problem. Here, let me take your coat.”
If the man had released Red from stocks he could hardly have been more grateful. Lieutenant Commander Michael Finn smiled. It wasn’t every day people dropped in to his office dressed like pimps with a dog and a fresh urn of ashes. He hung Red’s coat on the back of his door and stuck his head into the corridor. “Gloria! Could you do me a tea, a coffee and a bowl of water please? Yeah. Bowl of water. Ta.” He turned and crouched down to let Archie sniff his hand. He ran his hand sharply up and down the dog’s spine. “Like that, do you?” Archie shuffled and made it plain that he did. The lieutenant commander concentrated on the dog and deliberately ignored his owner. Red was on the verge of hyperventilating, and the officer wanted to give him time to settle and relax. He found the spot above Archie’s tail that all dogs like having rubbed and stole a quick look at Red. The man looked like he was going to bolt out through the door at any moment. “Do you think we should have a beer for your mate later?”
“Sherry.”
“What?”
“He drank sherry.”
“Then we’ll have a sherry for him.” Mickey grimaced. “No. Perhaps not. Beer or nothing.”
Red forced a smile. He looked around the little office. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. At least it had a window so he could look outside if the walls started closing in. The lieutenant commander wasn’t as formidable as he’d feared, either, and showed no sign of shouting at him. He was a big bear of a man and seemingly ill at ease with his size. His limbs flopped haphazardly as if their owner only exercised occasional control. But their looseness also suggested that at one time the lieutenant commander might have been an athlete. They were near the same age, but while Red didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, the lieutenant commander had a few pounds too many and had the least military bearing of any officer Red had ever met. He hadn’t expected a lieutenant commander who got down on his hands and knees and patted dogs, and he found that reassuring.
“Red—you don’t mind me calling you Red?—would you please call me Mickey.” He gave Archie one last pat and stood. His uniform had crumpled into familiar folds. The crease in his trousers zigzagged as if unsure of the way to his shoes. “I’ve been called Mickey ever since I started school. My parents hated it, and I hate it. But when they named me Michael Finn, what the hell did they expect?”
Red snorted, an attempt to laugh by a man who had forgotten how. Mickey’s charm was beginning to bite and had a pleasantly familiar ring, like the laconic good humor of the Aussies. A young woman in naval uniform interrupted them with the tea, coffee and Archie’s bowl of water. She appeared very young to Red, almost too young to be in uniform. But then, they’d all been young once.
“Third Officer Gloria Wainscott, my ever-so-efficient assistant. Red O’Hara.”
Red rose awkwardly to his feet and held out his hand uncertainly. He wasn’t sure that shaking hands with women was the right protocol. Women made him uncomfortable and brought back memories.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. O’Hara.” The young woman blushed, disconcerted. Red was staring at her. No, not at her. It was as if he was staring through her, past her to some distant spot only he could see. Gently but firmly she pulled her hand from his grip, and drew the only other free chair up toward the desk. The lieutenant commander gave her a quick glance and cut in.
“Red, is it okay if Gloria joins us? If you prefer …”
“No, it’s okay,” said Red, anxious to please and get the interview over. He ran a finger around the collar of his shirt, pulled at it until the top button gave.
“Right,” said Mickey. “Take your tie off before you choke. While we have our tea, just let me fill you in. Some of this you’ll know already but it won’t hurt to hear it again. Up until January this year our territorial waters extended only three miles from shore. That’s not a lot of water to protect unless you’ve only got four patrol boats to protect it, which is all we had. Despite the blurb our publicity department put out, we did a lousy job. So lousy that at the beginning of the year the government extended our territorial waters to twelve miles, on the theory that if we can’t catch poachers inside three miles, we can catch them inside twelve. When the navy pointed out that they’d actually increased the area of water we had to patrol by four hundred percent, they solved the problem by giving us two more patrol boats. Bit like sending school prefects out to control the mafia.”
“You’re still better off,” said Red quickly, unsure whether he was allowed to comment.
“True. Except that Japan refuses to recognize the twelve-mile zone and has appealed to the International Court of Justice. It’s just a delaying tactic, of course, because our people in Japan know that five prefectures there are about to follow our example and impose their own twelve-mile limits. In the meantime, the Japanese are grabbing all the fish they can and coming down heavy on our guys in trade negotiations. Japan is a major buyer of our wool, so their kanji kaisha—their champion negotiators—simply linked the needs of New Zealand sheep farmers with the needs of Japanese fishermen. The result? They run rings around our blokes, and our government agrees to license a limited number of longliners to fish as close as six miles from the coast. Give us twelve miles and our Sunderlands stand a chance. Give us six and the Japanese skippers laugh at us.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Red.
“I’ll get to that. How’s the tea?”
“Fine.”
“What the government fails to appreciate is that we’re up against the most sophisticated and aggressive fishing fleets in the world. Everybody’s heard about the cod wars off Iceland, but believe me that’s just a sideshow. We’ve got the Japs, and they’ve got the best fish finders in the world, the best techniques, the biggest nets, the longest lines, the most dedicated crews, and they’ve got radar that can find us, often before we can find them. Their dories are faster than anything we’ve got except the Sunderlands, and the flying boats can only photograph poachers but can’t catch them.
“We’ve also got the Russians, who tend to fish out deeper but are not averse to a bit of poaching, either. Their mother ships are equipped with electronic surveillance gear so they can do a bit of intelligence gathering on the side, which, of course, also means they can keep better tabs on us than we can on them. Then there are the Taiwanese, the Chileans and even our friends the Americans. At any time there can be as many as twenty to thirty foreign boats harvesting the waters around New Zealand. Against this armada we have six Fairmiles. Six pathetic Fairmiles.” Mickey Finn stopped talking and took a long sip of coffee. Red shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“What about the Sunderlands?” Red asked.
“Ahhhh … our ace in the hole. A dozen Sunderlands patrolling night and day and a government with balls, and our problem would sail peacefully over the horizon. At least beyond the twelve-mile limit. But we never have more than one Sunderland up at a time and we’re lucky to get that. They’re not ours, they belong to the air force, Number Five Squadron, so we have to rely on interservice cooperation. They’re not bad, the blokes out at Hobsonville, and the aircrew are as committed to nailing the Japs as we are. But it makes things difficult. For example, I can convince my superiors that an intercept is in order, but they in turn have to convince their opposites in the air force. And those blokes have heavies breathing down the phone at them, as well. The Aiguilles operation was ours. We’d planned to intercept that Jap bastard before he reached the Coromandel Peninsula. By the time I’d convinced our guys, and our guys had convinced their guys, and somebody from both services had put their gold braid on the line, two weeks had passed, and you know what happened then. The air force got egg on its face and flipped it neatly onto ours. Christ, you should’ve been here. The phones were on meltdown. Your unfortunate intervention is only going to make it harder for us to get a Sunderland next time.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s history. We have to accept that the current system doesn’t work, and we have to get a whole lot cleverer. It’s no good you or the fisheries ringing us with sightings of poachers, because by the time we do anything about them they’re long gone. They’re too fast and too smart. Our only chance of success lies in targeting the most incorrigible poachers, learning how they operate and then setting a trap for them. To do that, we need an informal network of dedicated observers to keep us informed. That’s where you come in.”
Red leaned forward expectantly, his nervousness forgotten. Mickey found himself pinned by the most startlingly intense eyes he had ever seen. He forced himself to continue.
“You may have read recently that the navy was throwing additional resources behind solving the problem of poaching. I am those resources, or should I say, Gloria and I are those resources. We have been assigned to the fisheries protection squadron to gather intelligence and formulate strategies to counter incursions by foreign vessels. I have some control over the operations of our patrol boats, but in reality I can’t actually do anything without informing my superior, Staff Officer Operations, who in turn reports to Commodore Auckland. This particular Staff Officer Operations is a button polisher and social climber. Rumor has it that he’s never actually set foot aboard a boat. It’s also fair to say that nailing poachers is not the navy’s highest priority. Nor is it necessarily the government’s. There are plenty of people in power who don’t want us to catch the Japanese, fearing the effect incidents might have on our trade relations. They’re worried the Japanese might stop buying our beef or our wool. The government talks big but isn’t prepared to back its words. Yet despite this, we believe we can have some impact. With your help.”