* Set in a small east coast community in New Zealand's Far North.
*
CHAPTER 1
Early morning sun cut through the mist as lean and white-haired Bill Soper rubbed under an armpit and once again thought will he or won't he? On six consecutive mornings the fit-looking 70-year old had looked impassively at the boatshed on the edge of the estuary and returned inside his cottage that he no longer shared with his wife.
Betty lay buried in the cemetery outside the small town.
Watchful blue-eyed widow Copeland was out on her porch drinking coffee, a rather early appearance for her, being a late-riser. She called, "Good morning Bill."
"Morning," he muttered, glancing at her.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again Bill, people around here are glad you are back home. Now get out there and begin fishing."
Bill turned and looked directly at Elizabeth, his face impassive. "Why do you say that?"
"Because life goes on. Over the years you have been out there fishing when the tide is suitable and so regularly you have become something of an institution."
"I killed Betty," he said dully.
"Bill, move your ass and get down to that boatshed."
"No."
"Bill, I want you to take me fishing. Give me five minutes to fill a flask of coffee and put on my shirt and shorts. I'll not bother with my face or hair."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I'm a bossy old bitch."
"Old? You're not much over sixty."
Elizabeth snorted and asked what the hell did age have to do with fishing?
Fifteen minutes later the odd couple were anchored in the estuary over a mussel bed and an hour later they came they came ashore. Bill held out his hand and Elizabeth smiled and said, "How gallant." Barefoot, she then stepped out of the boat into ankle deep water.
"How are you feeling Bill?"
"Surprisingly better than expected although I'm still chewed up inside."
"Time cures that. I'll come out again with you tomorrow."
Bill scratched his butt. "Why are you doing this?"
"It's called rehabilitation, steering your life back to normal. Now take one snapper for your breakfast and give me the remainder. The Smithers are coming for dinner tonight. It's time you faced Susan."
"No."
"Now don't be naughty. I'll tell Susan you'll be there for dinner."
"Then she won't come and you'll only have Toby and me as guests."
"You know Susan is not a gutless wonder. She'll come and may think about kicking your ass or screaming at you like she did at the burial."
"No but thank you for the invitation."
"Bill please, don't be a gutless wonder. Susan is scarcely half the size of you."
He intoned, "Woman, are you deaf or were you so busy interfering you can't understand the word no?"
"Talk to me like that Bill Soper and it won't be Susan kicking your ass; it will be me in my hiking boots."
Bill grinned. "You always were a toey bitch from the day you started at school."
"Yes, and the kids picked on me and you being a senior pupil came over and protected me. Why did you do that?"
"You lived in my street."
"Oh Bill I'd not thought of the reason being that simple, but should have guessed. We talked about that incident at the school reunion a couple of years ago. Why didn't you tell them then?"
"You were being bullied on you first day at school. Jesus, what sort of experience would that had been if I hadn't got it sorted. Your mum would have dragged you to school next day and you would have been terrorized."
"God isn't it amazing? I struggle to remember what I did last week and yet clear memory of my first day at school is back with me."
Bill kicked sand and mumbled. "I remember when you married Eric Copeland. That day I thought you were the prettiest woman I'd even seen."
"Well that's gone behind the wrinkles. Make sure you eat all the fish. You have become skinny."
"I'll take the fish. Come over for breakfast in twenty minutes. I'll have the rest of the fish filleted for you by then."
"Oh Bill, thank you. I was so dreading that job."
"It's man's work," Bill said, clipping the steel cable to the dinghy and moving off to inside the boatshed to hand-winch into shelter.
* * *
Elizabeth smiled triumphantly. She'd half-pulled the tough-ass coot out of his paralysis. As she showered -- the smell of oily fish bait was not a favourite perfume -- she chided herself. Perhaps she was pushing it too fast bringing Bill face to face with his nemesis. At the cemetery Susan had lost it. Not only had she flung verbal abuse at Bill as the casket began to be lowered into the grave but she'd charged him, swinging her handbag. Bill faced her, offering no resistance, eyes downcast. A couple of mourners caught Susan and held her and Susan fainted and was carried away.
His much-loved wife Betty had spent most of her working life as a district nurse, visiting people in their homes requiring dressings to be changed or restricted medication to be administered or to bath them. She'd met Bill on a fishing trip and that interest developed into romantic interest. Decades later when Betty retired at fifty-five Bill took early retirement as chief engineer at the district council. They sold their house and bought the cottage with its licensed boatshed beside the property that Elizabeth and her late husband later purchased. Betty and Elizabeth became great friends but Betty's best friend remained Susan; they'd gone through high school together.
On the morning of the tragedy Bill prepared to go out fishing and Betty said she didn't like the look of the sky. She had no wish to be out in a thunderstorm. Elizabeth heard that conversation and had to repeat it in court.
"We can get in half and hour's fishing. When the storm hits it could be too rough to get out for some days."
Betty had said, "I question your judgment Bill" and so did the court judge who sentenced Bill to 30-days imprisonment for 'careless disregard of life at sea' and said it would have been jail for three to six months had Bill actually put to sea amid a storm. Bill was released after 16 days in jail on the grounds of showing remorse and exhibiting good behaviour.
Elizabeth sniffed, drying herself and bouncing her breasts in her hands, wondering if Bill would really be interest in them at his age. It had been bad luck really. She'd been forced to admit she'd not gone out into the estuary with the skies looking the fearsome but clearly the storm was still out to sea and being almost high tide in the estuary the water was quite calm.
But some fifteen minutes later she (and five other witnesses) looked on horrified at a water spout roared in, took out the port signal beacon at the head of the estuary, overturned the dinghy and demolished the clubhouse on the golf course on the other side of the estuary.
Elizabeth called emergency services and then ran to the water's edge. She could see Bill diving repeatedly searching for Betty and then she heard the terrible cry, "Betty!" and the next thing she saw was Bill, who must have been absolutely exhausted, face down in the water.
A rubber inflatable zoomed down from the upper estuary and the two men pulled Bill aboard and one attempted to revive Bill while the other skimmed the boat to shore, having sighted police cars and an ambulance arriving.
Bill was revived but refused to go to hospital for checks, instead jumping on to the inflatable and yelling go, they must find his Betty.
Betty's body surfaced a couple of hours later at the heads on the ebbing tide and was recovered.
"So sad, so sad, but at least I've got him out fishing again," Elizabeth sighed, dressing in clean underwear, shorts and shirt and doing her hair and putting on lipstick before going next-door for breakfast.
* * *
Bill showered and changed into better clothes. He thought twice and grabbed a shave. "If it hadn't been for that interfering woman I wouldn't have to do this," he moaned without malice. Actually having her company out on the water had been good. She'd kept him talking and that was a relief from gloomy thinking. But rethinking that terrible morning was no longer nightmarish. He should have been more prudent and not gone out, he accepted that. But for some time now he'd accepted the mitigating words of his defence lawyer, Alf Morgan's pretty young daughter and mother of two, Beth. The words he particularly clung to were: "The actuality is, your honour, that a freak of nature was responsible for the unfortunate death of Mrs Betty Soper."
Elizabeth the cheeky bitch came in without knocking and he scowled at her when she said, "Oooh, you've dressed up for me. I'd though those smelly fishing clothes were glued to your body."
"You've put on lipstick. Do you fancy me?"
"Get away with you," she laughed easily but Bill noticed she appeared to eye him keenly, perhaps half-keenly. Elizabeth and him? Why on earth would she be interested in him? He'd heard her say, "I enjoyed being out with your this morning" and felt his lips move as he mumbled, "Thanks for having to guts to go out on the water with me."
"Oh Bill," she said, frowning heavily and then said, "Courage is a better word that guts in that context."
"Sorry."
"Bill, I trust you don't mind me saying this but isn't it time you stopped apologizing so readily? You are not a monster ever if that shithouse of a judge gave you a month when we all were expecting a suspended sentence. But you know she was a bloody Aucklander although working in Whangarei so what else could we expect?"
"I hear what you say. You are a good fisher."
"Oh Bill, a compliment. You've made my day."
"I know what you are attempting to do Nurse Copeland."
"Do you now," Elizabeth said. "And is it working?"
"Could be. If it helps I don't regard myself as a criminal. I did what that bloody Auckland judge didn't do. I heeded the words of young Beth, "A freak of nature was responsible for the unfortunate death of Mrs Betty Soper."
As Bill lightly dusted the snapper fillets in flour before putting them into the pan heated with a heavy smear of half butter and half sunflower oil, Elizabeth looked thoughtful, very thoughtful indeed.
"I'll get the juice and bread," she said.
"I don't have juice or bread."
"Oh have you run out?"
"I don't buy then. I serve the fish with parsley and tomato."
Elizabeth opened the fridge and saw it was almost bare. "There's no parsley and tomato here. In fact there's practically not food here. What the hell do you eat?"
"The tomatoes and parsley are on the shelf of the kitchen window just above me. Take them from the fridge and they're tasteless.
"Bill. Listen. You don't seem to have much food here. This is why you are losing weight."
"Well what do you want me to do? Shop at the fucking supermarket where everyone stares at me."
Elizabeth said gently. "Bill I'm going to the supermarket at 10:30 today. Please come with me."
She waited.
Bill turned the fillets and said, "Okay."
As they walked around the supermarket, Elizabeth filling Bill's trolley with things she insisted he required, he said, "We seem to be involved in a lot of duplication here."
"Yes, I had the same thought. Perhaps we should live together?"
And then Bill stunned her. "That's a thought."
"That was a joke Bill."
"Am I not allowed to have a thought riding on a joke?"
