Frank nodded and smiled, wondering how long Bob would stay for. ‘Can I getcha a drink?’ he asked, thinking Bob would probably say no, that he couldn’t and had to be getting on.
Bob looked at his wrist where there was no watch. ‘Why not? Wet the head?’
Rooting through the cold box Frank’s stomach moaned, but he found the beers anyway, floating among sliced cheese and wet bread. Beer for breakfast. Not a great start.
Bob perched on the steps and lit up a cigarillo. He flapped out a match and delicately put it back into the match box after testing it was completely out with his fingers. ‘Ta,’ he said, accepting the bottle, and seeing as his other hand was full, he angled the bottle head on to the skin of his inside elbow removing the screw top with a quick jerk of his forearm. ‘It’s a good place you’ve got yourself, mate. Always wondered who it belonged to.’
‘Was my grandparents’, long time ago — haven’t been here since I was a grommet, though. Don’t think my old man would’ve either.’
‘Ah — well — I’ve only been here meself a year or so — me an’ the wife are westies, tell the truth. Perth. Other side of the bloody world it feels like some days.’
Frank nodded. ‘’S a big place.’
A fly landed on the outside corner of Bob’s eye and he blinked it away. ‘Good-oh. ’S just you, Frank? You’re not fixing her up for the family or nothing?’
Frank tightened his bum and swallowed his beer in a lump. ‘Just me, I’m afraid…’ he was going to go on and wing it, say something jovial.
But Bob said, ‘Seems like a pretty lonely thing to do.’
Frank looked up at an aeroplane that glinted cleanly.
Bob smiled and shook his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, mate, I’m going on like a lunatic. Thing is we’re all a bit jumpy at the minit. A friend’s girl’s gone missing, been gone a fortnight and we’re all pretty pip to it just now. ’S why I was lurking in the cane there.’
‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Frank. ‘You reckon she’s just done a bolt? Saw the posters in town, she looks about the age to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bob, not agreeing but being polite. ‘Yeah, let’s hope so.’ There was silence and Bob looked into the middle distance.
‘So, do you work the cane?’ asked Frank, the question coming to him like a lightning bolt.
‘Nah, tried it for a bit, but if you don’t know what you’re up to it’s a bugger’s muddle. I do a bit of fixing up of cars, but my wife keeps chooks. We get by — less work than proper farming. We live over east.’ Bob pointed with his chin. ‘You can see our water tower from here — connected by the cane.’
Frank looked, knowing that he wasn’t tall enough to see over the cane. He nodded. ‘Chook farm, eh? Meat or eggs?’
‘Both. You got any need for a couple of hens? Dead or alive?’
‘I could definitely think about it.’
‘You do that. So,’ said Bob, with the look of someone who had finally come to the meat of the conversation, ‘are you a fishing man, Frank?’
Frank shrugged.
‘Some good shores around here. Get your nice pelagic type, come in close to the bays, you can get out there on the right day on a surf ski with a hand line and come back a happy man. Just last week I was out there, trolling — 40-kilo line — light-weighted squid and pilchard duo — bait got monstered, I take off like a steam train; next thing I’m being pulled through a school of bluefins, two or three pretty big bronze whalers feeding in there. Took two hours to get the thing back, had to hold her head out of the water for twenty minutes before I could haul her up. All the time I’m thinking something’s going to come and take the side out of her, or me, or both! Anyway, monster of a thing, 15 kilos. Wife made sashimi the first night and now we’re on to a steak a day. It’s a good freezer.’
Frank’s mouth was dry and he tried to keep up with a look of interest and friendliness.
Bob looked at him. ‘You using an eski? I’ve got a kero fridge you can have if you’re after one.’
Frank felt like a heel. ‘If it’s going spare I could really use it, thanks.’
‘No worries. It’s a nice place you’ve got. Got a nice feeling to it.’ Bob drained the stubbie, unfolded upwards off the step. ‘Righto, Frank — well, you need anything — turn left out the end and we’re second track you come to.’
‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘No wuckin furries,’ Bob said, shaking hands again and smiling with a squint that made the sun always in his face. ‘’Sgood to meet youse anyways. I’ll come by some time soon with that fridge.’
It was awkward not knowing how to see the man off, to walk with him all the way to the end of the track seemed a bit much, but he was still talking, so Frank followed.
‘Looking for work?’
‘Will be. Would you know of anything going?’
‘Could be. I work the marina on and off. Usually there’s something a bloke can do. You look a strong enough bloke, Frank.’
‘I do okay.’ He tried not to pink up. ‘Done a bit of labouring around the place.’
Bob looked at the horizon. ‘There’s a fella, Linus, works the marina — he’s a bit older than the usual — might remember your grandparents.’ Frank stopped, surprised. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I just parked me car round the corner so’s I could sneak up on you — you don’t have to walk me home. Aroo,’ Bob said with a wave and disappeared round the tallest cane.
2
The day the king of England died it was all over the wireless and Leon was supposed to care, even in the heat with the cream on the cakes turning sour and the flies making it in through the fly strips. The Pancake Day decorations in the shop were taken down to make way for a Union Jack, a picture of the dead king cut from the paper to hide the centre where his mother had fouled up the lines. That long face and the hair combed over like a pill, that Pom look like he’d eaten too much butter. Even when his father unveiled a red, white and blue tiered ‘Cake of Mourning’ and put it in the window to melt in the sun, and the butcher’s wife balled a hanky up to her face when she saw it, even then, what held Leon’s attention were the fine rabbit-brown hairs that had started to separate his face into sections. He took his time running his fingers over them, knowing that this was it — this was the thing that would save him from the pet names and public cuddles of his mother. This was manhood in all its creeping stinking glory and it had happened to his face. It was one of the best things, that he was the only boy in his year with a hairy face. It was rumoured that Briony Caldwell had one but she shaved it off, dry, with her dad’s cut-throat every morning.
From the downstairs wireless came the sound of the British national anthem and his father singing boldly over the top of it.
God save our great big king
Long live the lovely king
God save our king!
‘You can’t save what’s already dead,’ Leon’s mother’s voice cut over, but it only made his father sing twice as loud and Leon saw out of the bathroom window how the postman shook his head at the foreign voice that rom-pom-pommed out of the bread shop, and slipped his letters under the door like he always did, rather than bringing them into the shop and risk talking to the European type of loonie that lived there.
Work could start on a wedding cake up to a month in advance. Leon was sous chef and he took the job seriously. Even when he’d been younger there had never been a time when it had been okay to lick the bowl.
‘That is for inbreeders. If you are happy to eat the batter, why bother cooking it at all?’
His father taught him to prick the cake using the thinnest skewer, to make sure it was properly baked. The ritual was carried out with every cake, even though no cake had ever been too wet. ‘It’s all mathematic formula — like Albert Einstein,’ he would say, weighing up the ratio of flour to egg and the weight to the wetness. ‘You make a mistake and it’s only down to your own stupidity,’ sagely extracting the perfectly clean skewer, steaming hot, and fixing Leon with a look that conveyed that something of grave importance was going on.