Sailmaker by Rosanne Hawke Page A

earrings they wear. And the amount of letters in their names. That almost makes me grin.
    â€˜Now your grandmother, she’s a mighty fine woman.’ He says this in almost the same tone he used about the island. Gran? How’d we get onto her? His eye is twinkling like a lighthouse at dusk. ‘Knew your grandad – we used to play footy together.’ And he sighs. ‘But he was the one that got your grandmother.’ He’s quiet some more. Man, the things you find out that happened years ago! No wonder Gran had been so concerned about him.
    â€˜Maybe a man can get lonely. You’ll just have to face that, boy – got to take things as they come. If you’ve got a foundation under you like that there lighthouse, you can stand straight against whatever happens. Few more years of bad storms like we get here and this island could disappear forever, but that lighthouse will be the last thing to go.’
    I think of the sandcastle inside me and how easy it is to crash it down – any thought, anything I hear. Even Shawn Houser can do it. Vern makes me feel like I’ve got to have rock, not sand. Yeah, Dev’s always on about stuff happening in your head – that’s where you make it or break it. That’s where he stops fighting. Maybe I’d better build a better castle in there. Sand’s no good. I’ll be forever patching it up and one day the tide might take it all before I’ve got time to get the sandbags out.

15
    I ask Vern today whether the ghost scares him, but he just laughs. ‘Ghosts don’t bother me, boy. I’ve seen a few things in me time. A ghost or two is neither here nor there.’ It’s cool helping Vern do his jobs. He’s worried about the boxthorns and I have a go at helping him chop a few down. ‘They don’t belong here,’ he says, ‘but we can’t take too many either. The cormorants are nesting on them now. Have to watch the wind erosion too. That’s the biggest problem on this island.’ Not to mention the tide eating it away, but I don’t like to draw his attention back to that.
    As we work in the park, there are birds diving, screaming, annoyed we’re disturbing them, even though Vern hasn’t got the chainsaw out and we’re using the axe. Then I hear this piping call above it all. I stop; I’ve never heard that before. Vern hears it too. ‘That’s the grassbird, boy.’ And then, I don’t know whether it’s because we are here, but suddenly a whole pile of cormorants start forming ranks like they are a grey and white army on a parade ground and march off together to take a dip. Their necks are stretched up, all trying to see something the others can’t. Vern is chuckling so hard, his beard’s going up and down, but Olsen barely moves an ear. I think Vern must have trained him not to take notice of the birds. Vern’s awful proud of those birds. ‘Some even visit from Canada and Japan, boy.’
    Just after tea Vern and I go down to the beach with a torch. Vern shows me a good place to sit where we’ll get to see the action, and then we keep quiet and wait. Soon, up out of the water come those little penguins, flip-flopping around. Mei’s right; they look kind of cute. They splash in the shallows, hundreds of them. ‘Breeding time,’ Vern says.
    Vern’s full of stories too. Like the bull sea lion that visits him from time to time from Kangaroo Island. ‘He knows me, boy. Hangs around a few days, says goodbye and off he goes again.’
    I’m grinning about the bull, just lying in bed thinking about everything, so when I hear the first clang above the wind, I don’t catch what it is. By the second one I do. It’s true-blue clanging. It’s what Vern’s been telling me about; Mei too. So it’s for real.
    I creep out; take the torch. Vern doesn’t lock any doors so it’s easy to get outside