Sailmaker (3 page)

5

I haven't been out to the island for a while. Not since Gran and I went to see the baby penguins a year ago. The tide's out so Mr Pengelly has to put his long boots on and pull the Shark Cat in until we reach his rusty old tractor. He puts a towrope on and the tractor winches us in to the lighthouse. There's all this sand around it and I can see that when the tide comes in it'll be up to the lighthouse walls. Years ago the lighthouse used to be in the middle of the island.

Mr Pengelly's starting to do his tourist spiel to the overseas and interstate visitors; their eyes are big and excited as they ‘ooh' over being dragged in to the island. Like the
African Queen
, one old duck said, gushing all over poor Mr Pengelly. Some people are so dumb; I bet Africa is nothing like this. Mei says she was talking about a boat.

Mei and I take the sail and hot-tail it up to the old keeper's cottage where Vern Solomon lives. It's unnerving knocking on the door of someone you hardly know, especially someone you've only heard quirky stories about. According to Gran, he's a bit of a recluse.

I knock on the door. We both move closer, like it'll be better to have a united front. Don't they do that in wars? Then I hear this clatter from inside and a voice.

‘Someone's at the door, ol' son.' I know about guys calling their kids ‘ol' son'. Dev does it to me sometimes. It makes me feel warm just to remember it. Then I hear another voice: ‘Yeah, Dad.'

‘Better see who it is, then.'

‘Yeah, Dad.' The younger guy sure doesn't sound like he wants to answer the door. Must be visiting.

‘Well, go on then. Open the door.'

‘Okay, Dad.'

And just then the door opens. There's this really old guy standing there in shorts and boots. He's got a long grey beard, but you can tell it must have been ginger at one time. His eyebrows are so long they stick out like a two-piece galvanised iron verandah and underneath them he's wearing huge brown-rimmed glasses. ‘What do you want?' he says.

Mei takes a step backwards which means I have to take a step forward.

‘W-we heard you were a sailmaker.'

‘So?' He's sure not making this easy and for some weird reason I think of Nancy and how she hugs you first off, and drags you inside. Not that I want this guy to hug me but a bit of a ‘howdy do' wouldn't hurt.

‘I wondered if you could help me fix my sail.'

The old guy's standing there, watching us. Mei gives me a glance; she's thinking what I'm thinking – we shouldn't have come.

Then, surprise, we get to go inside. He stands aside while I try to see where the guy is who must be the son but all I can spot is a shaggy golden retriever sitting by the table. It must be old – it didn't even come to the door to check us out. Just puts its nose down on its paws as it looks out of the corner of its eye at me, and barely moves its tail when Vern Solomon brushes its head as he walks past. ‘Okay, ol' son,' he murmurs. Maybe the old guy's lost his marbles.

He leads us through the kitchen with a two-way radio murmuring, to a room where there's an ancient sewing machine. It looks weird, not like Gran's. This one has a very long neck. Not only that, but it's set into the floor. You'd have to sit down under the floorboards to use it. The old guy sees me staring.

‘That's for sewing sails. Some of ‘em are too big and heavy to fit on a table. The floor's the table, see? And you'd never get canvas to fit through the gap on an ordinary machine.' Sails aren't made of canvas much any more are they? Is he even going to know how to fix a windsurfing sail? Then he starts getting talkative.

‘This is my sail loft. In the old days that's where sails were made. We knew how to make sails back then, heh, heh. None of this computer business. Then, you had to work out the wind velocities yourself, design ‘em so they worked. Now all they think of is speed. Speed and winning races.'

He's watching us as he keeps talking, like we're a wind he has to read to know which way to tack. ‘Now the Vikings, they used wool for their sails, not cotton.'

Vikings?
How'd he jump to Vikings? Mei's trying to be polite. ‘Wouldn't wool have been too heavy?' Unless she's actually interested.

‘Had different sort of ships then, didn't they? They spun and wove it before it was sewn. Sewed it with a bolt of horsehair.'

‘Horsehair?' Holy moly, is he crazy or what?

There's something in the man's eyes I can't work out. Gran would call it a twinkle. Wonder if he's taking the mickey out of us.

‘Horsehair was more flexible. Adjusted better to wind pressure and all. Those were the days, eh?' I'm not so sure.

‘So you still make sails?' I ask. Maybe we've wasted our time.

‘Not much any more. This is a fishing town. Just mend some of the sails for the tourists while they're here.'

‘You've done one for Dad,' Mei chimes in.

‘Have I now?' He squints at Mei like the light is dim. ‘That'd be the trawler then. Surprised I was, that he'd use them. Thought things were changing.'

Just then the old dog walks in – staggers, more like it.

‘Here, ol' son,' and Vern Solomon pats an old cushion down on the floor. It takes a while, but finally the dog sits down. Only half of him lands on the cushion though. He decides it's too much effort to do it all again. ‘Olsen's been me mate for sixteen years. Long before you were born I ‘spect.' He only calls the dog Olsen when he's talking
about
him – it's heaps confusing. ‘Saved my life once, didn't ya, ol' son?' The dog lifts his head, shows his gums. It's like he's grinning.

Then Mei says, ‘We thought your son was here, Mr Solomon.'

The old guy chuckles. ‘Did you now. By the way, me name's Vern. Yeah, but Olsen's like me son, see. Have to talk to someone – wouldn't want to forget how to do it now, would I?'

Put like that it doesn't sound so weird.

‘Come on then, loft out the sail, boy . . . Lay it out,' he says, when he sees I don't understand. We put it on the floor. ‘Hmm,' as he looks it over, ‘one of those, eh?'

There's a low table by the machine with tools on it. He picks up a leather thing like a glove and puts it on his hand. He sees us staring. ‘This is what I always used. It's called a palm. See?' We look and there's even a part where the needle can hit and it won't hurt your hand, like Gran's thimble. Then he gets these huge scissors and cuts off a length of black Dakron. Never thought he'd have modern stuff like that. I check out the gear on the table – a magnifying glass (hope he can see okay), a hook that looks like something you'd catch a baby shark with, an old spoon, a ruler and a thick pencil.

‘This is the only way to mend these sails, boy. We'll stick a bit of this on.' He sits while he's peeling the paper off the back. ‘And then we'll stitch over the top. It should fix it for a while.' I don't like the sound of his ‘a while'. And besides, wouldn't superglue be easier? He puts the strip down where the rip is, just like the tape Dev uses on old wires, then he takes this long needle out of an ancient tin with oil in it, wipes it on his trousers, threads it with the thickest black thread I've even seen and starts to stitch. He's sure done this bit before.

He invites us to sit on the floor and I suddenly wonder about payment. Mr Pengelly let us on his boat because we're local and he knows us but I can't expect everyone to do things for nothing and I wonder how I'm going to bring it up. Wish I could think of things beforehand.

‘Um . . .' I say, but it's like he knows. He glances across at me. It's hard to tell because of the beard all over his mouth, but I think he's smiling; his beard moves a fraction.

‘This is just a little job. You come and visit me again. Next time you get a rip I'll show you how to do it, eh?' Does that mean he doesn't want payment? The payment is the visit? Mei's nodding and saying thank you.

‘Would you like a cuppa?' he asks as he breaks the thread in his teeth. I wonder how he does that; it looks as strong as fishing line. The sail sure doesn't look like the princess of sails, but hey, it'll still take the wind.

It's when we're drinking the tea in the kitchen, Olsen finally under the table, that the old sailmaker tells us about the ghost.

6

‘Ghost?' Mei's horrified, I can tell. Gran's never been one for ghosts; guess I'm not either. Vern's enjoying Mei's reaction.

‘Yeah. He's been real quiet for years – just a clang up the lighthouse stairs every now and then – but lately,' he shakes his head, ‘I've heard him at night – here – in the kitchen. Rustling.' It's like Vern's voice is rustling too and he leans closer; so does Mei.

‘Rats?' I say, before I think how they'd get on an island.

‘Bigger noises than rats, me boy.'

I glance across at Olsen. Maybe he gets in the kitchen at night. Vern sees me. ‘Olsen sleeps with me, don't you, ol' son?' Olsen gives his tail a weary lift. ‘He's too tired to make noises in the night.'

Or to chase ghosts, I bet.

The pupils in Mei's eyes are huge. I can't tell where they finish and the other part starts. ‘So what do you do?' she asks.

‘I came out and looked one night. Nothin' 'ere. Can't see ghosts. They just move things around.'

‘Why?' This is stupid and it's scaring Mei.

‘How do I know? I'm not a ghost . . .' he chuckles and coughs before he says the last word, ‘yet.'

Something he said earlier makes me ask another question. ‘How do you know it's a he?'

‘Someone died, boy. Heard the story years ago. Can't remember who now, but it was a man. Keeper of the lighthouse most prob'ly. That'd explain the clanging up there.'

‘Must be the wind,' I say.

The sailmaker just stares at me a moment. ‘Regular little sceptic, aren't you, boy? If you stayed here a night with me, you'd know what I mean.'

It's a cool idea. Stay on the island. It usually costs tourists heaps to stay in the other old cottage. ‘Thanks,' I say. ‘I think I will.'

Mei shows me this shocked face, but I just grin at her.

‘Don't leave it too long,' the sailmaker says. It makes me pull up my head to look at him closer. Grandad used to say things like that just before he died. Then I can see Vern's mouth smiling through his beard. ‘This is a chocolate island, you know. It's melting by the day.' I know what he means and nod, though it's a weird way to describe it.

Vern tells us we can pat Olsen then. I can tell he's been a really good dog at one time. He seems to catch on to stuff Vern wants him to do. Follows him everywhere like a shadow – though it's in delayed action. I wouldn't have thought a dog would have been a good idea on a conservation park island with a bird sanctuary but Olsen's past chasing birds, anyone can see that.

Mei and I take the sail out on the verandah and we walk over the wooden walkways to the sanctuary. Mr Pengelly's tourists are eating packed morning tea, bobbing their heads up and down just like a flock of nesting cormorants. Beyond them is the tern's colony. Mei catches her breath. She looks kind of nice, her black hair is wisping round her face under that blue denim hat she always wears. Now she has this look of wonder on her face, her eyes tilting up even more than usual. She's right too: how ever many times you see it, the colony catches at you just the same. It's like looking at a black and white movie, thousands of those birds crowded together and when you really squint against the sun you can see their yellow beaks, like they were painted on later. The little black crests stick out on their heads like baseball caps put on backwards.

We walk down through the same boobialla bushes that are near the beach on the mainland. We can't get too close to the terns or they'll all start flapping, but we hear a few penguins grumbling in the boxthorns. Mei sees one.

‘They're so cute.' She starts to croon. Bet she hasn't been here for ages – she must have forgotten what they're like. Cute's right, they'll take off your finger if they get a chance. She should know it too but every time you see them you wonder if you're wrong. That is until they start to hiss and growl. Like this one is doing now. Mei backs away gently with the little bird stalking after her. Nah, nothing fairy-like about little penguins. I tell Mei how it must be nearly nesting time. When we go back to the beach we might see tracks where they've gone into the water in the early morning.

It's on the way back to the boat, after picking up the sail, that Mei nearly steps on the razorfish skeleton. She's got her sneakers in her hand, staring up at a cormorant flying in, looking for a place to land, when I see the washed-up fish in the sand. Right where Mei's about to put her foot. There's no time to warn her – I just yank her towards me. I pull too hard because she lands on top of me and we both lie sprawled on the sand.

I think of the sail first – it's okay; and then I face Mei as she gets up. She's going to be wild for sure, anyone would. I hate being pulled
anywhere
. I get ready with the explanation but I stop. She's got a really weird look in place, as if she wasn't annoyed at all.

‘Why did you do that?' is all she asks, and I point out the razorfish in the sand. Her eyes fade a bit; don't know why. I'd be glad to be rescued from having my foot all sawn up by one of those. They're like thin broken glass.

‘Thanks,' she says. ‘You never miss a thing.' She looks like she wants to say something else; you can tell, when people fiddle around a bit, but she gets over it.

On the way back I'm wondering how to talk Gran into letting me stay on the island with the sailmaker. If I can prove to him he's got rats, wouldn't he get a better night's sleep?