Thirteen Pearls Read Online Free PDF Page B

– a great guffawing wheeze of delight as he slapped his skinny thigh.
    â€˜I used to be a pearl diver,’ he said.
    â€˜Really?’ It was hard to keep the doubt from my voice – he was so shrunken and scrawny.
    â€˜Yep. I had one of those big hard hats with the air tube to the top. Used to go down the deepest, they reckoned.’ He added, ‘Had to come back up real slow, or we ’d get the bends.’
    I nodded. Learning about how to avoid getting the bends had been part of my PADI dive certification. Only once had I come up too fast and that was after encountering a bull shark. I’d been so terrified that I’d forgotten to take it slow to the surface and was then stuck for hours in a decompression chamber.
    â€˜I got a photo. You want to see it?’ Uncle Bill beckoned me after him.
    I hesitated. A couple of islander kids sat on the rotting steps of a house opposite, playing with matchbox cars. They stole shy glances in my direction. Really, how dangerous could this old guy be?
    â€˜Yes,’ I said.
    We walked up the street, past more rows of houses.
    I reached into my pack and broke off some of my lamington to share. Uncle Bill wolfed the piece down and grinned, his remaining teeth now flecked with chocolate. ‘My favourite,’ he said, smacking his lips. When we came to a building up on the crest of the jutting coast, I assumed it was the shell of an unfinished garage. But then I noticed that the raw concrete was greasy and stained with weather and time. We wandered into the garden and crunched across a snowy carpet of fish bones picked clean by birds.
    Uncle Bill saw my expression. ‘You like fishing?’
    I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
    â€˜Well some time when you’re back here, I’ll take you out to a secret spot. Best place for catchin’ coral trout.’
    At the entrance to the house, I hesitated again. If this guy was actually a fiendish lamington-eating psychopath in disguise then I was about to do something really dumb. But then again, his knees practically knocked together and his hand trembled on the unlocked door handle, so I figured one of Dad’s self-defence moves would work a treat.
    The house consisted of three rooms: cavernous, unpainted, drab. Two big cement tubs served for kitchen sink and laundry. A faded brown sarong draped over a chair and a laminated table held a carved wooden bowl of mangoes on it.
    Uncle Bill shuffled up to a protruding strip of concrete that formed a mantelpiece and took down a photograph. It was a reprint of an old sepia photo. A guy with a straight nose, almond-shaped eyes and electric smile held a big old-fashioned brass dive bell in one hand. It was still attached to a tube that fed into his puffy white suit.
    â€˜Me.’
    No way. I shook my head. He ’d been gorgeous.
    He twinkled. ‘Would have liked to have met you back then.’
    I laughed, but a part of me was close to tears. It was so sad – seeing this glorious young man shrunken to a toothless guy with gammy legs. It made me resolve to not waste my youth. To sail the Ulysses. To have adventures. To savour them.
    My attention was caught by another object on the mantle, sandwiched between a couple of tattered greeting cards – an open shell, all creams and silvers and whites with five huge teardrop pearls arcing across it like splayed fingers.
    â€˜That’s what they gave me when I retired,’ he said. ‘Thirty years diving for the company, when I wasn’t cane-cutting.’
    â€˜It’s beautiful.’
    Uncle Bill smiled. ‘Better than a watch,’ he agreed. ‘No good having watches up here, we ’re on ailan tim . And the springs rust up.’
    What time was it? It was already late afternoon and I had no idea where I’d be staying. ‘Do you know of a hotel on the island?’
    Uncle Bill nodded. ‘Yep. One just up from the bakery.’

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