Barbara
Yates Rothwell : Shark Bait
Uncle Doug got eaten by a shark.
It was what he'd always been afraid of; why he never went to sea, not even
in a proper ship. He knew they were out there, waiting for him.
So they went to the marine park, where the sharks are safe behind thick
glass; and Uncle Doug stared at the shark: and the shark, swimming
pensively, stared back at Uncle Doug.
The man feeding the sharks thought Uncle Doug might like to try his hand. He
said no; his family crowded round him and said yes, go on, Dad! Aunt Mave
said, it can't hurt you, look, anyone could do it.
So Uncle Doug rolled up his sleeve and held the shark's dinner in his hand,
and knew it was all a mistake.
And the shark took him and ate him. Some of him, anyway. The bit he couldn't
do without - his head.
Aunt Mave was really surprised. The manager was shattered. I've never heard
of such a thing, he kept saying, and Aunt Mave said, well, you have now, and
what about the compensation? She didn't say it there and then, of course,
that would have been blatant, even for Aunt Mave. She said it over the
lawyer's jarrah desk, and the manager offered to settle out of court if
she'd keep it quiet, and that was how Aunt Mave suddenly became a
millionaire.
Uncle Doug wasn't really missed. By his kids, perhaps, around Christmas.
Aunt Mave's parents had never really liked him, and after fifteen years of
marriage to him she could see what they meant.
She laid low for what she called her 'mourning period', spending her time in
backing horses and losing thousands in the process. But as she said - she'd
always fancied being a bit reckless, and now she could. Besides, it was only
the interest. The million was safely invested.
After a year she reckoned it was safe to emerge. She had as great a horror
of the human shark as the late lamented had had for the marine kind; she
just knew they were out there to get her. So she played a slow, steady game,
buying a house surreptitiously, getting her clothes a garment at a time from
select couturiers in different cities. Funny, really, she still looked the
same baggy old Aunt Mave, even in haute couture.
Her one visible extravagance was a solitaire diamond ring, the sort you
could signal to the shore with after a shipwreck. Not that she wore it
often; but when she did it was a conversation-stopper. You could hear
people's minds clicking: if it's real, they were thinking - but it couldn't
be, could it? But if it is...! So they usually assumed it was genuine, just
in case.
Aunt Mave loved it, all of it - the subtle wealth, the knowledge that no one
(outside the family) was ever quite certain. And that was enough for her,
for a while.
Then she got restless. She wore the diamond once too often and attracted a
boy friend, a creep with dyed blond hair and rippling muscles. We knew what
was going on, but she was oblivious. In love, at her age! We blushed for
her.
But she proved to her own satisfction that he wasn't on the make. He booked
- and paid for - a splendid suite (two bedrooms, she pointed out) on a
floating palace moored off the east coast, and invited her for the holiday
of a lifetime.
She wallowed in it. We had letters. We could tell from the tone of them when
she decided that one bedroom would be enough, and exactly when she had made
up her mind to marry him. Aunt Mave was always basically moral.
They popped over to the mainland for a quiet and secret wedding, and back to
the floating palace to complete the honeymoon. And, as we learnt later, they
took the opportunity to rewrite their wills, leaving everything to each
other.
Pete is all I need, she said in her last letter. He never leaves my side. He
would die for me.
But he didn't. Aunt Mave was the one who slipped and fell, splashing into
the blue-black water one golden-mooned evening while Pete, above, broke into
frantic melodrama and grabbed people by the collar, screaming that they must
bring back his beautiful Mavis. He couldn't live without Mavis, he sobbed.
But he managed to, somehow.
Aunt Mave, like Uncle Doug, was eaten by a shark. But she had sensibly given
her diamond ring to Pete to hold, before she fell. We thought it was ever so
thoughtful of her.
Please note that permission to publish stories from the Scarlet Stiletto Awards 2001 online has been expressly granted to Sisters in Crime Australia Inc. You may not republish, reproduce electronically or in paper form, or otherwise make use of these stories without the permission of the author.