He shrugged again. ‘What’s home?’
‘I don’t know.’
She started to fade out again. ‘I don’t know.’
ONE WEEK
They buried their dead according to whatever beliefs the departed had lived by. Gathered on the heavily damaged boat deck at the stern of the
Julianne had never known Fifi or Pete to be in the slightest way religious, but while tidying Fifi’s quarters in the days after the last battle, she found an old Gideon’s bible, stolen from a motel somewhere, annotated by her lost friend’s large, childlike script. The story of Noah and his ark had come in for a lot of attention.
It was evidence of a secret, inner life that Jules would never have imagined of Fifi Lamont, and she asked Miguel to add a few Hail Mary’s to the endless rosaries his extended family were sending skyward for old Adolfo, the only casualty their party suffered. Dead of a heart attack a full day after the gunfight.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus…’
Grandma Ana smiled and nodded sadly at Jules and then at the two bundles that had been her friends, and she realised that Miguel’s family, who had been praying in Spanish, had changed to English without her noticing. The Mexican matriarch waved a thin brown hand at Pete and Fifi’s bodies, indicating that the change was for their sake. Out of reflex, an earlier, more cynical Julianne Balwyn would have smirked and rolled her eyes at the idea of an omniscient God needing a translation, but now, on this bright and cold morning, Jules let the tears come freely as the age-old prayer to the mother of Jesus was whipped away on a freshening southerly breeze.
The sea state had dropped down to a long, rolling swell and only a few wisps of cirrus cloud spoiled an otherwise perfect sky. Time at last for a burial. Eight bodies lay wrapped in sheets and blankets on the large, bullet-pocked diving platform at the stern. Fifi and Pete, the last two bundles on the starboard side, she had placed there herself with a lot of help from Shah and Mr Lee. The gravity and sorrow of the moment was undercut somewhat by the frozen stiffness of Pete’s remains. He’d been lying in the largest of the galley freezers for over a month, and Jules wasn’t sure she’d have been able to contemplate moving him had Shah and Lee not helped.
‘Mr Pete, he would have loved this,’ said the old Chinaman, as they struggled with his body. ‘Would have laughed his
And he would have, thought Jules, with a private smile and an involuntary hitching sob.
Fifi, though, she would’ve been really pissed off. Of all of them, Jules thought, her Oregonian friend had most easily dealt with everything that had happened. Perhaps because she’d been alone and fighting for herself most of her life. Mute and numb, staring at the inert swaddle of sheets in which the redneck princess was wrapped, Julianne could not help indulging in a small, bitter moment of self-loathing. If she had been smarter, if she had in any way been worthy of the trust everyone had placed in her, Fifi would still have been with them. Still grinning and shining and lighting up the face of everybody who encountered her.
‘… Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen… Hail Mary, full of grace…’
She was shaking – a slight tremor at first, something she didn’t really notice until it had spread through most of her body. She shivered inside her thick, dark oilskins, and her throat felt so tight she could not swallow. Beside her, the three surviving Gurkhas quietly sang a funeral song for their fallen comrades. Thapa and Birendra, which seemed to magnify the power of
Jules sighed at the petty, meaningless nature of it all.
One would’ve thought that people could have put aside all the silly wretchedness and just pulled together, but no. They couldn’t. Her father would have said it simply wasn’t in their nature. He was an old villain, there was no denying that, but in his own strange way he had a good heart, and he never stole from anyone who couldn’t afford it. There was even a spark of noblesse oblige in him, and he made sure that all of his children were raised to think of themselves as no better than anyone else. Because, as he so often told her, ‘In the end, Julianne, we’re all just as bad as each other.’
‘Miss Jules?’
Lee’s voice in her ear dragged her out of these reveries.
‘It is a warship, Miss Jules. On the radio. From New Zealand.’
She excused herself with a brief hand on Shah’s arm, and turned and left the funeral scene, secretly glad not to have to witness the dumping of the bodies into the deep.
‘He wishes to speak with our captain,’ said Lee, who had contented himself with just a few private words over the bodies of his comrades before everyone came together for the ceremony.
‘Oh, it is nothing bad. I have told him we have Uplifted Americans on board. He asks if we need assistance, and whether we will be berthing in Auckland or proceeding to Sydney.’
