‘I’ll get it for you.’
‘Don’t snakes bite you?’
‘I’m tough.’ There was that grin again—mesmerising. ‘More to the point, I’m wearing boots so thick they’d break their fangs. As opposed to you. That footwear might be all the go in the States…’
‘I told you—they’re Henry’s flip-flops.’
‘We call them thongs over here,’ he said, his grin widening. ‘There’s a recipe for international misunderstanding. If I were to tell a chap from, say, California that our women wear thongs to do their grocery shopping, he’d get all the wrong ideas.’
‘I guess he would.’ The night was spinning away from me once again. I took a deep breath and tried really hard to sound sensible. ‘My phone’s in the box thing between the seats. Would you mind grabbing it?’
‘Sure. Drifter, stay and guard the lady. One phone coming up.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it. Your grandpa would expect me to be nice to you and I abide by his wishes.’
That was the end of my first neighbourly visit and it left me badly shaken.
As soon as Jack handed me my phone and reversed the van containing Drifter and the turtle, I bolted into the house. I headed for my pink and sandy bedroom, checked reception—good, thank heaven—and phoned home almost without pausing for breath.
‘The place is awful,’ I told Richard.
There was a pause while he thought things through. He never moved in a rush, my Richard. It was one of the things I loved about him. Living with Muriel had been chaotic. Richard was an oasis of calm in comparison. Unflurried. Considered.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Is the farm worthless? Have you wasted a trip?’
‘I don’t know. It’s sort of…’ There was a sudden loud croak from under the window and then a responding bellow that must have come from a cow. I was still shaking and the noises didn’t help. ‘I saw a turtle and it was cool but the whole place is really … rustic.’
‘It is a farm.’
‘Yes, but it’s sandy.’
‘So it’s a farm by the sea.’ He was laughing at me. Okay, I was being dumb.
‘I’ve lost my baggage.’
‘The airline rang here and apologised,’ he said, patient as well as amused. ‘It’s in Sydney now. Luckily there’s another seaplane out to the island tomorrow morning. You should get it then.’
Richard steadied me. He always did. He was my fiancé who loved me.
‘There’s no need for you to stay if the place is a knock-down proposition,’ he said, moving on. ‘Check the property prices tomorrow. That’s really all you need to do. Once you’re sure of values we can put the place on the market from here.’
‘It’s not completely derelict,’ I admitted. ‘And maybe I do need to find out about Grandpa. Richard, Henry’s been writing me letters he’s never posted. They’re all here. And this place … Old surfboards. Signs. It’s weird.’
‘I can believe that,’ Richard said dryly. ‘If he was anything like Muriel then weird’s almost a given.’
I sighed. Richard’s opinion of Muriel has never been flattering. Okay, neither has mine, but it’s always felt wrong for Richard to criticise her. Richard has a prestigious and supportive family. I have Muriel. She’s not ideal family, but she’s all I have.
‘Maybe I need to stay because of Muriel,’ I told him, thinking it through as I talked. ‘Maybe she needs to lay some ghosts.’
‘She can lay all the ghosts she wants from here. Put it on the market and come home.’
I stared down at my feet, wiggling my toes in my … thongs. I’d swept the sand from the room but not thoroughly enough. My toes were wet and there was sand sticking to them.
‘I’ve come too far not to see this through,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay a few days and see if I can’t get any information out of Muriel about Henry. But I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Just cross your fingers that the Clayburgh baby doesn’t come early. It’s a risk.’
‘It’s not much of a risk. We discussed it.’
But Richard had moved on. ‘I need to go.’ I could imagine him glancing at his watch as he turned from his window framing the Manhattan skyline. ‘I’m operating in forty minutes before heading back to the conference. If there’s nothing else…’
‘There’s nothing else.’
‘Goodbye then, sweetheart,’ he said and the phone went dead before I could reply.
I should be relieved. I’d done what I’d needed to do. Now I could sleep.
I wiped my feet, then settled into my little-girl bed and tried to conjure up Richard’s face. My fiancé. My future.
It didn’t work. I did drift off eventually, but it wasn’t Richard I was thinking about. It was turtles and Joe Blakes and a grandpa who wrote me letters.
And pirates?
3
snake v. to cut into another’s wave; the worst of all surfing offences.
I woke at six, confused and thick-headed. A bird was screeching in the trees above the house and its call was being echoed by seemingly every bird on the island. Combined, they sounded like an out of tune rock band on a dysfunctional boom box.
Was Muriel lying in the other bedroom listening with as much confusion as I was?
Maybe not. Muriel would be familiar with these birds. After all, she’d lived here before.
It couldn’t have been for very long. Long enough, though, for her to put her stamp on the place. Last night I’d recognised her taste in the faded furnishings, though not in my room—she’d glanced in here and winced and turned away.
How strange for Muriel to be back here now, sleeping again in her marriage bed. How was she feeling?
I couldn’t ask.
I glanced across at the bureau. I could read some more letters. Even that felt strange. If Henry hadn’t posted them would he have wanted them to be read?
Why had he kept them?
Unsettled, I sat up in my too-narrow, too-short bed. Out the window, in the cove below the house, a lone figure in a wetsuit was on a surfboard at the back of a low-rolling swell.
The scene was breathtaking. Dawn was painting soft fire over the sky, and the sight of the surfer with the morning sun behind him was so beautiful it made me gasp.
Maybe I could learn to surf. It didn’t look too hard.
Dr J.R. Kelly’s Surfing School…
Who was I kidding? I liked city things. Shopping. Coffee. Shoes. The odd jog in Central Park to keep me fit, and spin class when the weather was lousy.
But surfing did look cool.
The distant figure caught a rolling swell out past where the waves broke. He moved easily with his board—with the wave—cruising up to the line of white water as it broke and then sweeping forward, making a white arc on the wave’s green surface.
As the wave reached the shallows it seemed that he was finished. He hauled his board up the beach and disappeared behind the dunes. Maybe for him surfing was a precursor to his day; a moment of pleasure before his real job.
What was my real job? What first?
I checked my phone to find another text from Isabella.
Bub’s kicking!! Ow!! Lol! Hurry back!
‘You’re not my friend, Isabella,’ I said out loud. I could text her all about the turtle, but that’d be crossing the line.
I lay back down and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. The bed was too small. The birds were too loud. This place was too … foreign.
Finally I read another few letters from Henry. They were addressed to me. I’d already read a few. It couldn’t hurt to read more.
Dear Jenny,
There were a couple of kids surfing below the house today.They usually surf out past the headland because there’s no access here apart from across my land. I saw their van parked by the dairy, but somehow today I didn’t have the heart to kick them off.
I sat and watched.
They were good. A guy and a girl.Young. Happy.
<
br /> I could have surfed like that with your grandmother if I’d had the choice.
When your mother was here there were boys everywhere, but there was never just one. I kept hoping she’d meet an islander…
Hope doesn’t work, though. Hope would mean posting these letters. Posting would mean trying to retrieve something from the past.
I hear you’re doing well at school. Good for you.That’s the way, Jennifer. Good results. Solid. Sensible.You do it right for all of us.
Henry
How did he know I was doing well at school?
In the distance there was the sound of cattle moving towards the house. Their gentle lowing. A dog’s bark.
Cows.
Tentatively I opened the back door to look across—and there, on the back step, was my Gucci bag.
The airline had found my gear.
Yay.
But surely a delivery person would have knocked? Surely they wouldn’t just drop it and run? Didn’t these things have to be signed for?
A lone cow sent a mournful moo into the peace of the morning. I could hear the soft thrum of machinery.
Someone was milking the cows. My cows.
The thought made me giddy.
Still, having decent clothes was good. Life, here we come. I was back in control.
Sort of.
The woman who emerged from the house twenty minutes later was transformed. No longer Jenny Kelly, a waif in her deceased grandpa’s pyjamas, this was Dr Jennifer Kelly, dressed for a bright, clear day exploring her sunlit, ghost-free seaside farm. I’d donned white linen cargo pants, a crimson and white striped singlet with a deep-scooped neckline, and a pair of crimson loafers on which I’d spent half a week’s salary. They were even flat, I thought, admiring their effect on my toes. Just the thing for a farm.
Sadly, my hair straightener didn’t work with the island’s strange electricity set-up, but I’d dampened my crazy red curls and nailed them as flat as possible. I used a tiny bit of makeup—just enough to hide the jet lag and the strange effect spray tan was having on a redhead’s freckles. The coffee was disgusting but I’d live. I was ready to face the day.
Milking. The dairy. Cows. Right.
Feeling like an alien—but quite an excited alien—I made my way to the dairy. In the outer shed, gears and pulleys and clear plastic pipes combined to pump fresh milk into two stainless steel vats. A stream of creamy milk was surging through the overhead pipes.
Despite the dilapidated state of the dairy, the equipment looked sleek and modern. It gleamed with cleanliness. Neat.
There was a sort of antechamber between the dairy and the room holding the milk vats. I stepped through and paused. A wetsuit, still dripping, was hanging on a hook on the inner door. Was my milker the man on the surfboard?
And then I saw Drifter. She was draped on the concrete floor, as if guarding the wetsuit. She wagged her tail in greeting, but she didn’t rise. She had sand on her nose, her coat was damp and she had the air of a dog who’d been surfing herself.
The depression seemed to have lifted. She seemed at home, and it was obviously time for a snooze.
Uh-oh.
But Drifter didn’t necessarily mean Jack, I decided. Drifter was Henry’s dog. Maybe she just visited. Maybe she didn’t spend all her time with the grinning, six-foot-two pirate.
I turned into the dairy. A huge platform was slowly rotating. Pipes ran everywhere. Clusters of rubber cups hung at the ready, waiting for cows to step on the platform.
Cows were in the yard, jostling and turning towards me.
Large cows.
The nearest one reared in fright—like one of those Lipizzaner horses, up on its back hooves—and the cows behind reared in sympathy.
There was a man on the platform. He was trying to put cups onto a cow but the cow reacted like the others, jerking backwards, tossing her head, rolling her eyes and shifting in fear. The man swore and straightened—and I was face to face again with Jack McLachlan.
‘You!’
If anything he looked even worse than last night. His eyes were bleary as if he hadn’t slept. His clothes were disgusting. His sunbleached hair was damp and spiked upwards, and his five o’clock shadow was almost to beard status.
His grin had gone.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ His voice was a deep, threatening growl and I backed away almost as fast as the cows.
‘I just wanted to see—’
‘You’re spooking the cows.’
‘But they’re my cows.’
I knew, the moment I said it, that I’d made a mistake. Jack stilled. The cow beside him swivelled to stare at me, and her big brown eyes seemed to say, ‘Are you kidding, lady?’
Jack closed his eyes—whether it was from exhaustion or a need to count to ten before losing his temper I didn’t know. He wiped his hands on the sides of his tattered jeans and gave the cow a pat on her rump.
‘They are your cows,’ he said. ‘So I’ll be leaving them to you.’ He jumped from the platform and walked right past me, snagging his wetsuit from the hook and clicking his fingers to Drifter. ‘You’ll be needing to milk them twice a day or you risk all sorts of problems.’
What was he doing? The cows were all around, surging towards me as curiosity replaced fear. The ones at the back were pushing the nearer ones forward.
‘No!’ It was as near to a scream as made no difference, and the cows reared away again.
‘What?’ He paused in the doorway. ‘You don’t want me to go?’
I launched myself at him, clutching his sleeve like a madwoman. ‘Don’t leave.’ If it came out as a whimper I couldn’t help it. ‘Please.’
Exhausted or not, his laughter sprang forth. ‘Scared of a few cows, Dr Kelly?’
‘Yes. I’ve never seen one. Not up close, I mean. I don’t have the slightest clue how to milk them.’
‘Yet it’s your farm.’
‘And you’ve been doing the milking.’ I tried frantically to think of the pile of correspondence from the lawyer. Jack McLachlan. The name wasn’t familiar. Surely the neighbour doing the milking wasn’t Jack McLachlan?
He answered the question before I could ask. ‘It’ll be Clive McConachie you’re thinking of.’
‘Then why—’
‘Clive and his wife, Mary, welcomed Henrietta McConachie into the world at four o’clock this morning. Clive will now be fast asleep. He’s no use to your cows.’
‘So you’re milking for him.’ I was still clutching his sleeve. I felt myself turning crimson as I released him, but I had to keep going. ‘Oh, help. And I was rude.’
‘Not rude. Possessive, maybe.’
The cows were edging nearer. I could see the whites of their eyes. They still looked frightened. ‘It’s a bit hard to be possessive when the cows are looking like I’m planning to shoot them,’ I managed.
‘Are you not?’
‘Am I not what?’
‘Planning to shoot them?’
‘What? Of course not.’
‘I was under the impression,’ he said flatly, ‘that you’ll be putting the farm on the market.’
‘I am, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But I’ll sell the cows with the farm.’
There was silence at that. Even the cows seemed to freeze. They were all looking at me—thirty or so big-eyed cows and Jack. Oh, and Drifter.
Jack was the first to break the silence and his voice was bleak.
‘You know how old these cows are?’
‘No. I have no idea.’ I gazed around at each bovine face. They were all a soft cream and white with huge brown eyes—eyes that seemed to bore right into me. Accusing. ‘Does it matter?’
Wrong answer. ‘Of course it matters,’ Jack snapped. ‘Your grandfather was winding down the farm when he died. He had advanced coronary disease and he knew he didn’t have much time, so for the past five years he’s been selling off his heifers.’
‘Heifers?’
‘Girl calves. Replacements for his milking stock. He has good breeding stock so his calves get good prices, but it means his herd now has an average age of about twelve. Maybe more. Henry wasn’t looking to the long term, and besides, he loved his girls. So now we have—no, you have—a herd that’s past its use-by date. He’s even kept Christabelle.’
‘Christabelle?’
He motioned to a skinny little cow about to come off the platform. ‘Christabelle’s almost twenty. Henry stopped milking her years ago but come milking time she’s always at the front. He didn’t have the heart to cull her, so now she rides the platform twice a day, just for kicks. If you sell up, then Christabelle will end up at the knackery the day after the sale goes through. They all will. They wouldn’t fetch the price of a boat ticket out of here.’
Oh, great. So now I was facing thirty cows I’d condemned to death. I took a deep breath, fighting for reason.
They were only cows, right?
‘Maybe it’s sensible,’ I managed. ‘After all, people eat cows. I mean beef.’
‘Sensible?’
‘Yes! I mean…’ My voice wasn’t working right. ‘Look, cows don’t know they’ll be steak.’
‘Salami. If they’re lucky. They’re old and tough and dairy cows aren’t bred for their meat.’
‘Do you have to say it out loud?’ The cows were still looking at me. Salami?
‘You needn’t worry. They’ll be too busy staring at you to be eavesdropping.’
‘Why?’ I was confused.
‘For a start you’re clean. White pants, eh? Interesting choice for a farm. Then there’s your top. Your standard Nautilus farmhand wears overalls, buttoned to the throat.’ His eyes turned thoughtful. ‘Though maybe that’s a shame. Maybe you can start a trend.’
His eyes moved on, ignoring my rising colour. ‘Then there’s those cute red shoes and hair to match. Everything about you perky and fresh. Except maybe your foot.’
‘What’s wrong with my foot?’
‘You’ve walked through a cow pat. I wouldn’t mention it, but seeing you’ve asked, there it is. Sad but true. Do you want me to keep milking your cows or not?’
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