named Agnew,’ I said. ‘Joe Agnew. Know him?’
He shook his head and unlooped the rope. ‘Nope. Have a good trip.’
‘Hold on. Look, this is just on spec. I don’t really know this bloke but I want to have a word with him. He’s a bit younger than me, smaller. Dark, I think. I’m told he wears a blue uniform sometimes.’
He scratched his stubbled chin. ‘Well, you know, I’ve been here for donkey’s years. They come and go. Lot go by ferry. I don’t think I know anyone like that.’
‘He’s a photographer. Probably carries a camera, maybe a couple of cameras, lenses and that.’
More chin scratching and then he gave a tug on the rope that almost upset me. ‘Yes, sure. Now you mention it. There was a feller like that. Took photographs. He worked for the Customs someone told me.’
‘Customs! Yeah, that fits. Have you ever talked to him?’
‘Me? Nah, just seen him around, you know. But not lately. Not for a few years at least. I don’t think you’ll find him there now, mate.’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look anyway.’ He threw me the rope. ‘Thanks for the help.’ He nodded-he thought I meant help with the boat. I started the motor and took the boat out into the channel, Shetland Island is about two miles from Bayview. The island is roughly circular, very roughly, and about a mile across. I’d only been there once and that was for a picnic as a kid, about 30 years back. I remembered a park in the middle of the island, a lot of bush and nothing much more.
It was late in the afternoon and cool on the water. I’d put on a zipped jacket to give me a deep enough pocket to put the Colt in, but I was glad of it now for the warmth. Navigation was simple: the island was there, dead ahead over the slightly choppy water. All I had to do was head for it. Landing might be a bit tricky: were there beaches, a public wharf, private jetties? I didn’t know.
In other circumstances it would have been a pleasant run. Some yachts looked graceful off to the east and I was passed by a cabin cruiser also heading for Shetland Island. The helmsman gave me a wave which I returned as I bounced across his wake. The breeze whipped at my hair and the spray stung my eyes but I wasn’t in the mood for the beauties of aquatic nature. If Agnew was a Customs officer that made sense of the entries in the notebook. K was KLM, Q was Qantas, P was Pan American and so on. The numbers referred to flights and the other letters to pieces of luggage. I didn’t think that Joseph Agnew was on the lookout for native birds or Aboriginal artefacts.
The island, green in the distance, was multicoloured closer up. I could see houses on the hills, roads paved and unpaved and different kinds of foliage. The side I approached first was rocky with a light surf beating against the cliffs. I kept well back and circled to the east. There was an indentation in the coast which offered some protection which jetty builders had taken advantage of. Several wooden structures edged out from the beach; there were some boats at anchor between them and others tied up to the piles. Gulls circled overhead and swooped down to duck their beaks under the deep green water. More natural beauty I had no use for. I turned the boat towards the largest of the jetties, cut the motor too far out and had to drift in with oar at the ready to prevent bumping. Off to the right, a couple of houses occupied a short promontory; they were half-surrounded by water and I could see rough timber walls and low, long verandahs. Great spot to get away from it all, if you had a hundred thousand bucks not working.
No-one challenged my right to tie up at the jetty. A couple of people were working on their boats, a few were lounging on theirs, and I wasn’t worth their attention. That suited me fine. I had the simple map of the island in my head: outer ring road; inner ring road with several streets radiating off it towards the park in the centre; and one road bisecting the island. Bougainville Street was one of the radials. I reached the outer road by stepping off the end of the jetty right onto it. It was a wide, well-made road with a narrow gravel strip on either side. Things had changed on the island since little Cliff’s visit in the faraway fifties. It was the smells that brought the memories back-gum trees, perhaps a peculiar combination of them, intermingled with the smell of cut fennel where someone had been mowing an unruly lawn. There were many more houses now and more big ones. The outer road had been a rutted dirt track back then and it seemed that we hiked for hours to get to the park. Not so now; the road had been graded and followed the contours of the land easily; it was uphill to the bisecting road, but gently. As I walked I got glimpses of the water through the trees and eventually over the tops of them. It was going to be a soft, mild night with a breeze. The treetops waved and the water turned darker. Christ, I thought, you’ll be admiring the sunset next. You’re here to work!
From the road I could see an untidier part of the island, down near the water’s edge where small, old houses clustered together like bits of driftwood. Up here it was all solid constructions and cement driveways. A football came sailing towards me as I walked past one of the houses. I caught it awkwardly, surprised at its shape. It was an American football, smaller than the ones I was used to, and pointed.
‘Throw it!’ The order came from a kid standing twenty feet away. I could see him through the sticks of a high tea-tree fence. It’s an old habit-when told, asked or challenged to throw or jump something, the odds are I’ll do it. I’d seen the quarterbacks on TV; the way they gripped the ball, shuffled and threw. I tried it: the ball sailed in a perfect, looping spiral into the kid’s hands.
‘Hey,’ he cried. ‘You’re good!’
He threw it back in the same way and I caught it again.
‘Just luck,’ I said. We both approached the fence. ‘You don’t sound like an American,’ I said.
‘My Dad is.’
‘I see. D’you play baseball too?’
‘Naw. Prefer cricket.’
An all-round kid. ‘Am I heading the right way for Bougainville Street?’
‘Yeah. It’s up there.’ He pointed.
‘Know a man named Agnew who lives in that street?’
‘Naw. It’s a crummy street. You wanna have another throw?’
‘One more.’
He tossed the ball over and turned his back to the fence. He was a stocky kid wearing jeans and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. He was strong-looking, with an air of concentrating on the job at hand. ‘You yell “hike”, he said. ‘I run back. You count three and then throw. Try to throw straight and keep it away from that fuckin’ bush over there. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ I felt silly. ‘Hike!’ I said.
The kid ran; I counted and threw. The ball wobbled and looked like falling short. The kid spun around, dived and caught it inches above the grass. I raised both hands in the American athletes’ salute, felt the gun bump against my ribs, and walked on.
Bougainville Street let the rest of the area down badly. For one thing it straggled and dog-legged where the other streets were straight. For another, the houses had more fibro cement in them and less timber and brick than was the rule. Number 2 was at the bottom of the range-a wide bungalow set back in an over-grown garden. The fence in front was a ruin and the grass had become tangled and matted at about knee height. The gate hung at a crazy angle and I stepped around it and went up the path, scarcely discernible in the grass, to the front door. No deep, shady verandahs here; just a mean little structure of rotting timber and rusty iron, overhanging the front door.
The houses on either side were better tended but had the look of weekenders, infrequently visited. This was Friday; maybe there’d be neighbours in residence tonight, maybe not. Across the street from this house and the few on either side of it, the land fell away too sharply to allow building. It was the perfect setting for a house to be left empty, neglected and ignored. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed; I hadn’t expected Agnew to be out there mowing the lawn, but the neglect looked discouragingly old. Still, you never can tell. A man on the bottle lets things slip; the desertion could be contrived rather than real; or things might look different around the back.
I pushed the gate further open and walked to the front door. There were two wooden steps in front of it, one of which disintegrated when I stepped on it. A heavy knock brought no response other than to cause more paint to flake off the door. The glass in the transom was cracked and mended with insulating tape. Blinds were drawn down over the two front windows. I walked down the side of the house pushing aside stalks of woody weeds that jutted up from the fence and from the foundations of the house itself. One consolation, I told myself-no dog.
Behind the house the neglect intensified. The outhouse toilet was a ruin; some of its boards had collapsed, letting in the weather and the weeds. A rusted bicycle with cobwebs growing all over the frame and between the
