On a Starlit Ocean

by Charlotte Nash

  Finally, Tristan leaned back in his chair. “I think that’s enough shop talk tonight. But we’ll need to map the island course quickly. I noticed the old trails are a bit overgrown. Who can we get to plot a GPS path, that kind of thing?”

  “I’ll do it,” Erin said. Actually, she planned on asking Travers for help. If anyone would be good at it, she figured he would. Maybe even Skye. She smiled to herself at the thought of the two of them striking sparks off each other.

  “What’s that smile for?” Tristan asked softly.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  He stood, and offered his hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far,” he said, then as the song changed, he drew her in close. “Care to dance?”

  After all the wine, Erin found herself leaning against him, his hands warm on her bare skin, tiny shivers running up her back and across her shoulders. He was wearing that expensive cologne again: she could smell it on his neck and shirt. And that was when Erin realised she’d let her head fall against his shoulder as they slowly danced around the deck. The small part of her mind that wasn’t drunk wondered what the hell she was doing. But it was a quiet protest. The boat barely moved under them, the cabin lights buttery splashes that made the rest of the world fade into darkness. All she could see past Tristan’s shoulder was a slip of moon peeking above Bella’s Leap, a sliver that looked for a moment like a thin woman, standing on the cliff.

  Erin jerked her head up, and the image disappeared. She blinked, thinking it was time to go home. Tristan leaned in close. “Isn’t this nice?”

  “Mmm.”

  Erin realised what was about to happen a moment before it did. Tristan’s lips covered hers, with a demand of long-restrained longing. He pulled her closer, until his body was full against her. But there was nothing familiar about him. Their relationship had been so long ago, he felt like a different man, and as she tried to kiss him back, the fact was only underscored; nothing about this was magical. She didn’t want it. Didn’t want him anymore.

  She pushed away, her hands on his chest, her head spinning. “Tristan, stop.”

  He let his hands slip to her elbows. “Too much wine?”

  “It’s not that.” She pulled him over to the couches, giving herself time to think. Even drunk, she knew to tread carefully.

  “I really don’t want to do this,” she said. “We work together. I want to keep things professional. I think what you’re doing on the island is amazing,” she rushed on, seeing him about to speak, “but it’s years since we were together and you move in a different world to me, now. I hope you can understand that.”

  It was far short of the hell, no she wanted to say.

  Tristan rubbed his face. She saw the flints of annoyance in his eyes. “You can’t blame me for trying, though, right? I mean, that shirt. I’m just human.” He squinted out into the night. “There isn’t someone else, is there? Maybe that nosy diver on your crew?”

  Erin eased further away from him. “Travers is just a ... well, I’m not sure if friend is the right word. But he’s just that. And anyway, he’s got his eye on Skye. Besides, I’m too busy for a relationship.”

  Oh, man, he had her stumbling now.

  Tristan smiled, but it only moved the corners of his mouth. She expected that he’d be hurt; no one liked rejection. But he had a rage in him, and she glimpsed it in the way he held his body.

  She shivered. The soft music was still spilling from the speakers. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear,” she said, before he could ask about Alex, too. “And I’m sorry. I think it’s best if I go now.”

  He nodded. All trace of the rage was gone as they climbed back into the tender; or, at least, he was hiding it well. They said nothing as he took her back to the shore. As she climbed out, she was afraid he was going to tell her that she was fired.

  Instead, he said, “There’s one thing I want to know.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you ask if Patrick was Irish?”

  Erin glanced at the Leap, a chill running over her skin. “Because of the homestead. I thought we could put it on the course.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Bella was Irish.”

  Chapter 14

  The next day, Alex was on hold on the surgery phone, watching the path outside the window in case Erin walked past. He was waiting to speak with Luke Hurley, who Alex had known since medical school. They’d drunk beers together at hospital keg parties, but all that seemed a long time ago now as he came off hold for the second time.

  “Sorry,” Luke said briskly. “Now, you said it’s just the one patient?”

  “One definite – he’s a famous painter. You’d like a celebrity patient, wouldn’t you?” Alex said, picking at the vinyl on the edge of his desk calendar and trying not to let his dark mood over Erin and Tristan leak into the conversation.

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  “Helmut Meyer. He paints seascapes. You haven’t heard of The Woman on the Cliff?”

  “Can’t say I have. I like art, Alex, but I leave the buying of it to my wife.”

  Alex tried another angle, feeling his temper rising. “It’s a postcard-perfect tropical island – bound to be heaps of cataracts and pterygia. I could fill your card for a whole Friday and then you could drink cocktails on the beach all weekend. For any patients who need surgery we can book the theatre on the mainland for the Monday morning. What do you say?”

  A long silence. “My schedule’s pretty full.”

  “Come on, Luke. You play golf three mornings a week. How about trading one of those and throw your old drinking buddy a break up here. We’re isolated and we need your skills.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Luke said, sounding wounded and haughty. “I’ve got a wife to clear it with, and I’ll have you know I do plenty of regional work.”

  Alex sighed silently. He knew Luke’s wife was no impediment when Luke was jetting off to overseas conferences, and that the regional work probably consisted of a few days in Longreach last year, but saying so wouldn’t do any good.

  “Well, bring her along,” he tried. “They’re starting a yacht racing festival up here. Chance to peruse the real estate before the market leaps.” Alex pressed a thumb into his right eyeball. He must be desperate to be invoking Tristan’s plans. “At least tell me you’ll think about it?”

  A sigh. “I’ll think about it.” Then he paused delicately. “I did hear talk about your troubles. Everything going better for you now? You’re back in practice obviously.”

  “Things are great,” Alex said automatically, though his heart kicked into a loud drumming beat. He put down the phone feeling oddly exposed. He hadn’t expected the medical grapevine to stretch all the way to Luke’s fancy offices in the capital. Maybe that was how Tristan had heard about his past. His thoughts were interrupted as Sandy appeared with a steaming mug, which she set carefully on his desk. To Alex, it smelled like dirt.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s camomile tea,” she said. “You sounded as if you were having a rough day.”

  “Fine, thank you,” he snapped. Then he caught himself. “Sorry, Sandy.”

  “That’s fine. Must be terrible coming back after all those night shifts over on the mainland. Shortens your life, you know. Bet you hardly slept last night.”

  “Something like that.”

  He wouldn’t admit to anyone that his poor sleep had been less about his schedule and more because of wild thoughts about Erin on Tristan’s boat. Or that he’d then had a rare but intense nightmare about the accident. He’d woken in a tangled sweat, momentarily convinced the white sheets were foaming water. That he could hear helicopter blades beating in the distance.

  “Well,” Sandy said, eyeing him like a head nurse. “You drink that up, and I’ll fetch you a pie for lunch. There’s no more appointments. Maybe some fresh air would be a good idea? You must have been inside for a week. Go g
et some sunshine and reset your body clock.”

  So that was how Alex ended up hiking up the hillside behind the village, over the ridge that separated it from the rest of the island, scouting for a new vantage for sky viewing, now that the resort had been taken over by Tristan’s workforce.

  Once the beach was out of view, it was easy to forget he was on an island – the bushland looked the same as on the mainland. Dry, dusty, with eroded gullies. The island might enjoy regular storms and significant rainfall, but up on the hill under the baking sun it made little difference. The trees were thin and scraggly along the ridge, and at the highest point, he spotted an old rotunda.

  The place was neglected, each wooden board swollen and warped, but the roof was still intact, and it offered a sheltered position with a good view from the cleared ground around it. He could see all the way out to the smaller southern Haven islands, and to the north, he could see the vast bowl of the island’s interior.

  Down there, it was truly green with a creek glittering between folds in the wooded fields, its mouth spilling out into a marsh at the western shore. And tucked down in the middle of the fields, he saw a roof.

  Pulling out the island’s map, he realised it could only be one place: Bella’s homestead. He checked his watch; still hours before dark. He found the trail and set off.

  The journey was much longer than it looked. Alex kept thinking that around the next bend, or the next, he would find the place, but the bush kept on, the cicadas deafening. The trail was wide as a road and took him across a dry creek bed and through the open gate of a tumble-down fence. Just when he thought he’d taken a wrong turn and should head back, the trees gave way to open grass, and the homestead appeared.

  Close up, he could clearly see the peeling boards, the rusting roof that had fallen in at one corner, the slump of the frame on its foundations. Then Alex’s senses lurched: someone was standing under the giant pine tree that spread its boughs over the house.

  Erin.

  The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dressed up and heading to Tristan’s boat. Now, she wore ragged boat shorts and singlet. She had a notebook in her hand, her head bent as she worked the pen against the paper. Trying not to scare her, he cleared his throat.

  “Don’t worry, I saw you five minutes ago,” she said without looking up. “You were making a lot of noise coming down the hill.”

  Alex squinted over his shoulder at the distant ridge, the rotunda now a miniature against the sky. There’d been loose rocks and sand on the path down. “I wouldn’t have thought you could hear this far away.”

  Erin smiled. “It’s an amphitheatre in here – you can hear the echoes bouncing down from the hills. Listen.”

  Alex stood still. At first he heard nothing, then he tuned into the subtle sounds. A tiny loose of pebbles rushing down a hill. The crack of a dry stick. The shush of the wind driving through the grassland. Each sound came with a trail of miniature echoes, so he couldn’t place where any of it came from. It began to make him feel dizzy.

  “Creepy,” he said, feeling goosebumps erupt over his skin. The pine’s lower limbs were skeletal fingers, the breeze whining somewhere further to the north, where the sheoaks reclaimed the fields and the hills rose up again. He couldn’t imagine living here, but the house bore witness to someone’s long-ago life in its empty window eyes. Erin seemed immune to the eeriness, until he saw her arms were prickled too. She finished scribbling and caught his eye.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a bit ghostly, being Bella’s place and all,” she said. “Travers tell you I was here?”

  “I saw the homestead from up on the hill. Why are you here?”

  “Planning for the next race.”

  When he frowned, she quickly explained the dual land-sea concept, and that Travers and Skye had struck out in the opposite direction down the main beach, in an attempt to cover more ground, mapping the route with GPS.

  “We’re thinking of sending the land race straight through here,” she said. “The homestead’s the most visible part of the island’s history. At least, recent history. There’s middens on the eastern coast that go back thousands of years, but Tristan will say they won’t play well on TV. Do you want to see inside?”

  “Inside here?”

  “Yeah, come on. The side door’s not locked. Unless, of course, you’re scared.”

  “Scared, no,” he said, following her, eyeing the house’s lean, the stain of water damage in the corner with the fallen roof. The timbers were probably rotten through. “Pragmatic, yes.”

  Inside, the place proved more sad than ghostly. The raw wooden floorboards were covered in dust, cobwebs hanging thickly in every corner. Deep shadows fell everywhere, thanks to the pine tree’s shade. A constant buzz emanated from two wasp’s nests growing from window lintels. The air smelled of damp and possum piss, with droppings scattered over the floor. A rusting stove sat in an antechamber at the slumped end of the main room. Through another doorway was a second room, same as the first, but attached to a slim verandah.

  “Hmph,” Erin said, poking her head into the antechamber. “Can’t believe no one fixed the roof.”

  “How long since anyone’s lived here?” Alex asked, picking his way across the droppings and unsticking the verandah door. A gust of fresh air displaced some of the possum reek.

  Erin stepped past him, sitting on the edge of the verandah outside. Alex followed, after checking for wasps. From here, the overgrown field sloped downhill to the creek, its water shining silver in the sunlight.

  “A while I guess. Bella died in 1908,” she said. “After that, the place was abandoned until after the first world war, when someone else took over the pastoral lease.”

  “It was a farm?” he said, sitting beside her.

  “Yeah, sheep. Hence the fences, and the cleared fields. So various people came through after that, from the 20s through to the 50s. No one stayed longer than a year or two though. Everyone said the place was cursed. The house changed over that time. We don’t really know how much of it was Bella’s.”

  “How long was she here?”

  “Twenty years, more or less. She came with her husband in the late 1880s. He died pretty soon after, but she stayed and ran the place herself.”

  “Must have been lonely,” said Alex, as Erin shifted herself closer to him, rubbing her shoulders. Alex moved his arm naturally around her.

  “She was a tough woman,” Erin said. “She’d only have seen the shearers when they came in once a year, and the Indigenous folk of course.”

  She was so close; he could smell a faint trace of apple shampoo, and feel the smooth perfection of her tanned skin, warm against him.

  “I didn’t know there were Aboriginal people on the island.”

  “Used to be.”

  And then her eyes were fixed on his, and he dropped his gaze to the delicate curve of her mouth. She slid her arm underneath his, turning towards him, one hand resting lightly on his chest. Then he was kissing her, the force of their attraction as intense as it had been that night in the old resort. Alex floated on the freedom of how he felt with her, and drowned in the possibilities. He hadn’t had feelings like this for someone in a long time. Finally, when they broke for air, he pressed his forehead to hers.

  “Erin, are you with Tristan?”

  She pulled back, a frown knitting her brows. “No. Why?”

  “I saw you the other night, going to his yacht.”

  “Oh. And I was hoping no one would see me in that get-up.”

  “You looked incredible.”

  It just tumbled out. Erin stopped, a suspicious expression putting lines around her eyes. “Right.”

  “I mean it.” He ran his thumbs over her cheeks. “I was madly jealous. I know you had a work dinner, but I couldn’t help it.”

  She took a breath, as though she might say something difficult, then she said, “Skye made me wear the skirt. But the evening didn’t go so well anyway.”

  “Oh,” he said, the scenario c
hanging slowly in his mind, like a freighter making a turn. “It’s just I know you and Tristan have a history—”

  “People shouldn’t talk so much,” she said, standing up. And then, the moment broke again. Whatever that magic that led to the passionate kissing, it was gone again now. She held her notebook and GPS to her chest. “I need to try to make it to the north-west beach before I head back.”

  Alex followed her out of the house, watching as she closed the door again with care. “I could come with you.”

  “Worried I’ll get eaten by The Beast?”

  “What Beast?”

  “No one told you about the Great Haven Beast?” She beckoned him to follow as she swished through the grass towards the creek. “I’m surprised. Usually that’s the first one the locals try. It’s a legendary animal that’s supposed to live in the northern hills. It’s what the older kids scare the little ones with every time they find a dead possum near the village. Must have been The Beast.”

  “Oh right. Sandy did try that, but I was preoccupied at the time. So, it’s like a dog?”

  “Or a big cat. Or an old ram, gone wild. Just stories. Every small place has a story like that.”

  “Not really,” Alex said, as they arrived at the creek edge, a series of flat rocks making a path across the shallow water. “I’ve worked out west, in Queensland and down south and I’ve never been anywhere with so many stories.”

  “I suppose,” Erin said, hopping across with sure steps. “But on the mainland people can drive away. It’s more cooped here. Breeds a good tale.”

  “Well, what others are there, then?” Alex asked, just managing to avoid wetting his shoes as the last rock moved under his feet.