Things I Did for Money by Meg Mundell

NIGHTSHADE
    Until that night, when I rowed him across, I’d never been troubled by seasickness or guilt. I didn’t have the heart to cover him up. Such a sweet sleeper: stashed at my feet like a sack of grain, the moon tracing out his shape in the dark. Even as the sea slapped him to and fro, he had a special dignity most others lacked. I’ve seen many men unconscious. But this one was different.
    Bless the Belladonna : a vessel so narrow you’d barely notice her, an ageing lady with slime on her belly and a slow leak somewhere near her centre. God forgive me — her owner is also past her prime, and no stranger to rot and hunger herself.
    Excuses are easy to make. The truth is I’ve played this dark game half a year now. Stealth has become a part of me. It’s been hell on my shoulders hauling this boat back and forth, but it’s made me strong. I know how to row without making a splash. And him, this young one: I rowed him across just like all the others, but his face has haunted me ever since.
    No one denies these are cruel times, but only a few have witnessed their true depths. You must have seen their faces — the lost and the fallen, those women who’ve run out of choices. But is your head full of stumbling men, quick shadows in a hallway; sly things done with smiles and force, bruises blooming one atop the other? Skinny horses chopping past a laneway, the driver nodding polite to the law — while behind the flimsy curtain, a finger searches for a pulse in some sleeper’s neck? A man wakes groggy at the wrong moment; a quick struggle, a deft blow. A woman sits alone at dawn, madly counting coins to ward off sleep … I hope for your sake you have been spared these nightmare pictures.
    But I ask myself: in times like these, what do the men have here ashore but hardship and ruin, lack of hope? Digging ditches if they’re lucky, heading north to skin rabbits for pennies. Who says the sea won’t deliver them a kinder fate? If they can make it to first port, that is, with their faculties intact and their legs adjusted to a tilting deck. I judge my doses carefully and always add a measure of ginger, but some are bound to lack the stomach for the sea.
    One peck of henbane, two of mandrake, one half-bushel of black hyoscyamus. Measure the portions with great care, for errors cannot be reversed.
    That evening the swell was sulky, the water dark as ink. My dreams are strange enough so I seldom watch the sleepers — most times I cover them up with sacks — but this one had me hypnotised: the simple loveliness of youth, a babe rocking in the cold lap of the sea. Eighteen, he was, or thereabouts. Did he have a sweetheart? For sure he had loved ones somewhere, as most people do.
    It was a tranquil scene for a woman well used to vigilance — just the two of us out on the water, the seabirds dipping silent through the night air above our boat. The young man’s knees pointing starward, his hair like dark feathers about his face. And my gaze kept returning to his mouth: an upward curve, a sweet anchor. Idly, I wondered how he spoke, and whether that private smile was a mark of his nature or just an accident of design.
    But we soon had company. Down the far end of the docks glowed the gas lamp of the night watchman — or so he calls himself, the lazy-eyed liar, for it takes no more than a coin to make him look the other way. No, the watchman has never been my worry.
    As the pier loomed up, I saw that outline set against the stars: my Monday-night broker. How I hate this shark of a man, who has dragged so many through the heads of Port Phillip Bay, and taken a sick pleasure in it, I swear. A dirt-hearted man, whose smirk sours the start of every week. But don’t be fooled by my disdain — I know full well that I am no better. As I dragged my boat to a stop the broker leaned over the water and hissed my name: ‘Port-Wine Annie.’Words in the night,