Laughs, Corpses..... And a Little Romance
The River Postman and his Two Sons
Author Mike White
Copyright 2013 Mike White
All film and TV rights reserved, Mike White 2013
Cover photo by the author, copyright 2013
All characters and events described in this book are completly fictitious.
Part One, TED
I guess everyone gets the occasional morning when they wake up feeling full of beans, in tune with the world, and life seems just about perfect. I started off that way one beautiful spring morning, right up until the moment, that is, when I spotted the corpse.
I’m Ted Farley, a river postman and ferryboat man, and my boat is the “Lady Annabelle” or “Annabelle” for short. At 5.30 that the morning we heaved ourselves out of bed, all except Jack of course, as usual I had to yell at him. My missus in her old blue dressing gown and slippers made us a bit of breakfast, plates of cereal for the boys and a poached egg on toast for me. We ate our breakfast hurriedly and pretty much in silence; not much to talk about when you’re all still half asleep. We climbed into the cab of our old truck and I backed out into the street. We drove through the town just as the sky was getting lighter. The street lights were still on, and a few folk were about, scratching and yawning, and trying to get their brains into first gear. I turned along the wharf, where Annabelle was floating quietly at her moorings, covered in dew. She looked as if she was just struggling to wake up too. We set to work squaring her up ready for the day’s work, but I paused for a moment and leaned on the starboard rail, savoring the perfect start to the day. In the dawn hush there was scarcely a breath of wind. The air was balmy, with a hint of floral perfume. The reflections of boats and masts on the water were barely shivering. The boat yard was silent, but across the harbour a winch rattled on a fishing boats back from a night at sea. I took a deep breath of cool salty air, feeling very relaxed and contented.
I put the kettle on and soon it was gently sizzling in the back of the wheelhouse. Jack was drying the dew off the passenger seats with an old towel in a slow-moving sort of way. Tim had the hatch up over the engine, and was down there polishing and fiddling. When the kettle came to the boil I brewed three mugs of instant, and the entrancing smell of coffee filled the wheelhouse. I called to Jack and Tim. Jack dropped his towel and came immediately, ever ready to stop work. We’d half drunk our coffee and Tim still hadn’t appeared. Jack snorted in disgust. “He's playing with that bloody engine again.” Annabelle has an old-fashioned slow-running diesel engine, the sort that lasts forever if looked after by an expert, but otherwise they can be a real pain in the ass. “Well at least he keeps it running smoothly” I said, “I just wish sometimes you could get off your backside the way he does”. Jack looked away from me. He’d heard that sermon too many times already.
I shouldn't refer to Jack and Tim as my boys really. Jack is twenty-two, and Tim nineteen, and they are as opposite as port and starboard. You can tell the difference from their bedrooms. Jack’s room is always a mess, clothes all over the floor, and posters of the latest rock bands and racing cars stuck up on the wall. Tim’s room on the other hand is neat and tidy, with everything put away, and the only poster on the wall is a picture of an old steam locomotive.
Jack is a biggish bloke, curly brown hair, brash and self-confident, but, alas, idle with it. He could have done much better at school if he'd wanted to, but he preferred to mess around and waste his time. Now he spends a lot of time fussing over his appearance and trying to impress the girls. I had hoped he would get his master’s ticket and take over the business from me, as I had from my dad, but gradually I’ve come to realize that he’ll never make it, he just can't be bothered. Still, he does have one redeeming talent; he has a quick wit, which often makes me smile.
My younger son, Tim, was small as a child, quiet and almost painfully shy. “Tim for Timothy and Tim for Timid” my missus always said. At school he never gained good results even though he tried, and he was always picked last for any sports team. However he has one skill he picked up hanging around in boatyards as a lad, he’s a wizard with anything mechanical. It isn't anything he's learnt from lessons; he just seems to have a knack for it. A mechanic only has to show him something once and he can do it too, just like that. The tradesmen in the boatyards didn't seem to mind a kid hanging around, helping out, like an old-fashioned apprentice. They quite like explaining their skills to an interested boy, and soon he was getting paid for doing odd jobs. Now he can charm any machinery into working. Give him an old outboard motor, and within half a day he’ll have it stripped and reassembled. A bit of grease in the bearings, a magic tweak of the carburetor, and it starts purring like a contented cat He never thinks of himself as skilled. He can't understand why anybody can't do the same as he does. Because of that he never gets paid what he's really worth, but at least I know he'll always be able to earn a living.
Annabelle doesn't really need a three-man crew, two can manage quite easily, but I can hardly fire one of my own sons, so Jack collects the fares, does a little cleaning, and tries to chat up the girls, while Tim does most of the maintenance and keeps the engine running like new. Any other employer would fire Jack, but if I did that he’d probably end up unemployed, and I’d sooner have him work for me than hang around town getting into trouble.
We earn a living on the Hawkesbury River, north a bit from Sydney, a big tidal estuary with lots of islands and side branches. Our harbour is really a summary of life on the river. It’s a jumble of jetties and rusting sheds, and a small fleet of fishing boats, prawn trawlers, oyster boats, ferries, tour boats, private yachts and expensive cruisers. There’s a busy boat yard with a slipway and the smell of fresh paint. There’s a flashy marina with beaten up motorboats for hire. Shoals of tiny fish swirl and dart in the shallows around a neglected hull half sunk. There’s a fish co-op where the professional fishermen clean their catch, and where you can sit outside in the sunshine and get a grand feed of fish and chips. In the cool of the morning our harbour is a busy bustling place, but often in the heat of a summer afternoon it drowses quietly. We moor Annabelle at the inner end of the harbour, handy for the car park and the railway station. You can catch a train from there right into the centre of Sydney.