On a Starlit Ocean

by Charlotte Nash

  “That’s it really. Just The Beast. And the wreck. Oh, and the waterhole.”

  “I’ve seen both of those marked on Skye’s map.”

  Erin laughed. “You remember I told you Skye drew that when she was a kid. The wreck’s real enough. It’s an old ship that went down off the east coast, near the point rocks. Supposed to be full of Spanish gold. It’s pretty much collapsed though, so not many divers bother. Travers might have been down there. The waterhole, though, that one’s a mystery. It’s meant to be somewhere in the northern hills, which is why Skye put it on the map. Big enough to swim in, supposedly, but no one’s ever found it.”

  “So you think it’s just made up?”

  They were approaching the end of the field now, where the sheoak grove whispered like the distant sound of the sea. Erin stopped to take a waypoint on the GPS.

  “It’s not impossible. We have springs, as you can see from this creek. The northern hills have some deep gullies, and difficult terrain. But it’s an island after all – there’s only so much land. If it was there, you’d think it would have been found years ago.”

  “I wonder why the story hasn’t died then.”

  “Nothing to wonder about there. There’s actual records.”

  “What sort of records?”

  She stopped again, just inside the cool shadow of the sheoaks where the dappled light draped her skin in a pale lattice. She turned away from him, staring down the path. Without turning around, she said, “Bella wrote about the waterhole. In her letters.”

  Alex shivered in the cool shade. “Let me guess – The Beast is also supposed to be her dog, or her ram, something like that?”

  A nod. “It all comes back to Bella around here.”

  They pushed on through the whispering sheoaks, the smell of shellfish and seaweed growing steadily stronger.

  “Will you tell me her story?”

  “I’d really rather not right now, okay? Besides, no one really knows what happened to her.”

  Her tone surprised him. It was the same reluctance Stella had had, as though talking about it made them uncomfortable without knowing why. He let it go.

  “Okay, then. Let’s go back to the race. Where does the trail go from here?”

  She grinned. “Don’t tell me you’ll be looking to join a team, Dr Bell?”

  “I’m thinking about how many broken ankles we’ll have.”

  “Hmm,” she said, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her. “Maybe we should bring you on as a consultant.”

  And that was how they passed the rest of the day. After a scramble up a short headland, then down the other side, they came to the stretch of the north-west beach, a wilder shore than the main bay, the beach deserted but for seagulls. The mainland was still visible across the sea, though, and the waves were lazy. Erin pointed out where they were on Alex’s map, their conversation now all about the race and the various medical travesties Alex could foresee happening on the way. What was their plan for emergency evac? How many water stations would they have, and where? Erin adjusted her plans accordingly, pulling the route away from inland to keep to the beaches so that any emergency help could come in from the sea. She avoided the northern hills, except where the route must cut across headlands not navigable around the rocks.

  They drifted together, fingers touching here and there. Alex might have been frustrated about what they were to each other, except that Erin fascinated him too much. Just being in her company enraptured him.

  As they retraced their steps back to the village, she was saying, “The new route will work better for the coverage, too. If we keep people out of the trees, they’ll be able to use drone cameras, and if we need a rescue we’ll be faster by boat off a beach.” Then she caught herself. “God, I sound like Troy. I wonder how far Travers and Skye got.”

  “Second base?” Alex said, feeling relaxed and happy as they made the crest at the top of the ridge.

  Erin laughed. “You noticed too, huh?”

  But as they reached the village again, when Alex was about to suggest they move their dinner to tonight, he spotted Sandy waving from the path to the surgery.

  “Patient for you,” she said.

  “I better go,” Erin said quickly, turning to go.

  “Wait, Erin,” he said, but then he found he couldn’t say anything because Sandy was hovering. “Don’t forget to check for ticks. That grass was pretty long,” he said, feeling like a lame idiot.

  Sandy popped her eyebrows at him as Erin left. “Where have you two been, then?”

  “Patient in the surgery?”

  “Oh, yes, but that can wait. Tell me all about your exploring.”

  Annoyed, Alex paced back ahead of her, hoping the waiting patient wasn’t urgent. If he walked in to find someone bleeding, Sandy was going to get an earful.

  “Out by the homestead,” he said finally, when she didn’t let up. “Erin’s making a route for the next race.”

  “Oh, that’s so exciting, isn’t it? We all heard this morning and everyone’s already preparing. We’re going to put on a concert, hopefully encourage people to stay the night.”

  Alex glanced around the empty waiting room. No one was in the consult room, either, or the second room. Sandy was still rabbiting.

  “Sandy. Sandy?”

  “Yes, what?” she asked, finally breaking the flow about event plans and foreign yachts.

  “Where’s the patient?”

  “Oh, around the back. It’s Monster again. Tim says he ran away on his own for a while, and can you look at something in his eye, please?”

  Chapter 15

  Tristan, Erin reflected, was in the foulest of moods. They’d been in this meeting since nine, yesterday’s exploring of the island a dim memory in the white room where tension seemed to be coming out of the air-conditioner. No one could meet Tristan’s gaze as he hammered them about all the things they hadn’t done.

  “Come on, now people. Where are we with the banners? Hamilton Race Week starts in two days and we need our advertising there and visible.”

  “I’ve been on the phone, Tristan,” one of the team bravely said. “They’re trying to rush it, but it’s tight. It’s not like getting things done in Sydney.”

  “I think it will be Mr Drummond today,” Tristan said in a low tone. “Are you telling me it could be done faster if we just pay to fly it up from Sydney? Why the hell wasn’t that the first thing you said.”

  “Tristan,” Erin said.

  “What?” he barked.

  Erin was through with this. She’d seen enough captains take frustrations out on their crews and there was no faster way to screw morale. She might have begun this process as an outsider, and the team still wore expensive shirts while she wore cut-off denim, but they’d all worked hard on the successful pilot race. She stood and forced herself to speak calmly.

  “Tristan, can I talk to you outside please?”

  Out under the pandanus, he put his hands on his hips. “You going to waste my time, too?”

  Intuition kept Erin from quipping back at him, like she might with a worked-up captain, or as she might have years ago. She’d learned since then, and wondered if this was all about the other night, but she would never ask him that directly.

  “Is there something going on I don’t know about? Did Patrick pull out or something?”

  For a second, she thought he was going to lose it. Then he huffed a breath. “No. Everything is fine. Or it would be if the team would do their jobs.”

  “You under a lot of pressure?”

  “That shouldn’t be surprising.” But he seemed to be calming.

  “Look, I can’t imagine what stress it is to be CEO. But I know crews, and this lot is going to work harder if they aren’t being reamed at every step. Can you maybe tone it back a bit? We can make this happen.”

  “Then let’s stop screwing around.”

  He stalked back to the meeting, leaving Erin with a black feeling inside. It was about the other night. Not all of i
t, perhaps, but some of it. Was this how it was going to be? She would quit on the spot, but for the people around the table inside that meeting room who’d all worked hard. And she’d be quitting on Skye and her mother and the rest of the village. Again. She couldn’t do that. Even if she didn’t plan to stay long-term, she wanted them to have a better next five years than the last five had been.

  So she went back to the meeting, and kept working. Tristan didn’t change into Mr Sunny, but he didn’t explode again. Eventually, he stalked back to his office, saying he had business to take care of in Sydney.

  Benny blew out a breath as everyone packed away their materials. “Don’t worry, Erin, he gets like this sometimes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Shelly agreed. “When that merger was going on and he caught that manager out? It was ugly like this for a week. No, two.”

  The others murmured their agreement.

  “What’d he catch the manager doing?” Erin asked.

  Kit grinned. “Having a good time in the stationery cupboard with the project admin assistant. Everyone thought it was kind of funny ... but Tristan didn’t. He went nuclear. They were both off the team after that.”

  Erin was glad the rest of them seemed unfazed, but Tristan’s mood made her nervous. She was glad to get away from him. Dinner with Alex was just what she needed. But, later in the afternoon, when she called in on Skye to combine their maps and discuss the northern join-up for the race, Skye said,

  “And can you stop past the store on your way to the jetty and get some butter? I want to make bread tonight.”

  “Whatever for?” Erin asked. “Sandy’s bakery is right around the corner.”

  “I want to make it personally. It’ll be nice with Tristan coming for dinner.”

  Erin felt the dark feeling return, twisting between the memories of the morning’s meeting, and the time much longer-ago. “Since when?”

  “He called earlier and I invited him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Skye.”

  “Why? You’re coming too.”

  Erin imagined being in the same room with Tristan after this morning – let alone the other night – and how awkward that would be with Skye and their mother trying to do pleasant chit-chat, and then Skye wanting to know what was wrong. Erin couldn’t pull it off, not today.

  “Tristan’s under a lot of pressure,” she said. “He was in a foul mood today. I just don’t think we should add to it with dinner as well.”

  “What, so you get to see him all day at work, but we can’t have him for dinner?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? You’re always off doing your own thing. For once you can come and have dinner with Mum and me. Family’s very important to him.”

  Around the mountain of guilt, Erin groped for words that she had other plans, without having to tell Skye those plans involved Alex, and staying as far from Tristan as possible. Skye would see only selfishness. Instead, she hastily said she would get the butter, but her stomach was rolling on storm swell. At the beach road, she had to stop and suck a breath, just as Travers appeared with a dripping pair of fins and snorkel in his hands.

  “You sick?” he asked.

  “Think I might be coming down with a migraine,” Erin lied, the excuse bringing instant relief, even if it meant she would be standing Alex up. She handed Travers the butter. “Can you take this to Skye and tell her I won’t make it? I’m going to go lie somewhere dark and quiet.”

  Two hours later, when the whole world had turned to night, Erin was in the front cabin, curled around a wrinkled Jilly Cooper novel with a map light clipped to the pages. An hour ago, the jetty had been alive as a fishing boat offloaded part of its catch. Now, there was nothing but the gentle liquid tinkling of the waves, and the growling of Erin’s stomach.

  Shoving an old chandlery receipt into the book, Erin threw the two balled-up chip packets she’d already emptied towards the bin and prowled back to the pantry. She kept the light off, but she didn’t need it. The contents were the same as ten minutes ago when she’d last checked – half a packet of stock cubes, a jar of satay sauce, and an open packet of biscuits that were stale, because she’d never sealed them properly. She’d been lax in provisioning, eating too many dinners during the long work days with Troy, Benny, Kit and Shelly on Tristan’s account. She couldn’t go up to the cafe now; she’d be spotted, and that would get back to Skye and Tristan.

  She pulled down the satay sauce, which had expired in 2016. She’d eaten some bad stuff over the years on long sailing journeys, but this was a new low. She was just contemplating pulling out her fishing gear when she heard creaking footsteps on the jetty. She put an eye to the port window. A dark shape stood beside the boat. She hadn’t even heard them coming. Only Skye was that sneaky.

  “Hello? Erin?” Alex called.

  Relieved, she mounted the cabin stairs and stuck her head out the hatch. He was wearing a pair of cut-off track pants and a t-shirt with a ripped collar, completely at odds with the dark leather bag in his hand.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

  “Well I exhausted the courtesy bread at the cafe and I’m here to exact my revenge as the stood-up date,” he said, in good humour. “Seriously, Travers said you had a migraine. Came to see if you needed anything.” He lifted the bag and shook it.

  Erin hesitated for a bare second. “Hurry up and come in here before someone sees you.”

  Erin gripped her hands on the tiny galley sink as Alex climbed down the cabin stairs. Even in the dim reflected jetty light, she could see the frown pulling at his brows. Looking around the dark cabin, he said, “You have photophobia?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The light hurts your eyes.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not really sick.”

  “Oh, so you did stand me up.” A pause. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No ... I’m avoiding Skye. She was having dinner with—it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to go, so here I am, pretending a migraine like someone in a bad movie.”

  Alex slid the doctor’s bag onto her table and sank into a couch seat with a chuckle. “Seems a bit extreme.”

  “You don’t know Skye. She is a force of nature. This is easier, believe me. What do you have in there, anyway?”

  Alex ran a hand fondly over the bag. “Oh, all the good stuff. Tramadol. Morphine.”

  “Pizza?”

  He opened the bag and tipped it forward. Erin grabbed a flashlight from the wall mount and shone it in. Bandages, syringes, vials in a clear-topped box, a yellow sharps container, and a bunch of other unidentifiable packets. Much as her father’s visiting bag had been.

  “Dammit,” she whispered. “Would it kill you to keep two minute noodles in there?”

  “Wait a second,” Alex said, taking her light and digging around in the bottom. “Oh, yes. Here.”

  He threw a tiny packet, which Erin managed to catch. Lumpy. Taking back the torch, she let out a grateful moan.

  “Oh yes! Jelly beans!” She tore into the packet, devouring half of them before she offered him one, which he refused, an amused expression pulling his lips. Even in the dim light leaking in from the jetty lights, she could see only kindness in his eyes.

  “You do realise,” he said. “You’re eating my stock of bribes.”

  “I’ll replace it,” she said, popping the last one in her mouth and chewing.

  “That’s really not a suitable dinner. Would you like a lecture on diabetes?”

  “Don’t start. I don’t have any food in the pantry – well, not edible food. Before you got here, I was about to go fishing. That’s where I’m at.”

  “I can’t think of anything better than sitting on a dark boat fishing with you. But …”

  Then he closed the bag and stood.

  Erin pushed up off the sink. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah. I need to if I’m going to bring back some real food. You’ve never seen me fish; we’d starve first. So that means
back to Plan A – me cooking.”

  Erin’s lips tingled with anticipation. In the dark, close cabin, he was a warm presence, reminding her of the kisses they’d shared on the resort roof, and at the homestead. Both those times, memories had intruded, but tonight those thoughts seemed at a safe distance.

  “Don’t take too long,” she said.

  Chapter 16

  Forty minutes later, Erin licked her fork and half-stood to peer at the stove.

  “No, it’s all gone,” Alex answered, from the other end of the half-moon table. “But you can have the rest of mine if you want.”

  Erin eyed his plate. “No, I’m not really hungry anymore. It’s just so good.”

  “It’s ten-minute pasta, bacon and beer,” he said, with a laugh. “You must have been starving.”

  “I cite my previously mentioned fishing plans as evidence to the fact. I’m impressed you had the makings of a fine dinner in your room. No man I ever knew could have brought more than the beer. Mind you, I can hardly talk with my pantry.”

  “You don’t have much room in here for provisions,” Alex said, collecting their plates and edging out the tight space around the table to put them in the sink. “Especially with being cut down for racing. Every live-aboard racing sailor I ever saw ate in the bars.”

  “Oh? Racing where?” she asked, interested. Both their eyes had long ago adjusted to the dim lighting, Alex taking up the challenge of cooking by torch and jetty light, so as not to scuttle Erin’s migraine story. He slid back into the other side of the table, stretching out. And while he hesitated, his previous reluctance seemed to slide away.

  “Mostly small meets, up and down the east coast. But I was at Kiel Week, once,” he said, his voice soft like a confession.

  “Really?” Erin edged around the bench seat towards him. Kiel Week was the largest regatta in the world, held in Germany and attracting thousands of boats. Despite the places Erin had crewed and raced, Kiel had always eluded her. She’d been on a crew to go one year, and then the owner’s business had ended up in some trouble and the whole trip was cancelled. “Tell me what it was like.”