Last Long Drop

by Mike Safe

  ‘Wow, Kirsto, two guys down in the one day,’ said Jack.

  For a second Harcourt remembered Silas blurting out to him only days before that he loved Kirsten. So much for that moment of confession. Still, he was happy to see both Silas and Harrison out of his daughter’s overly eventful life.

  ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ asked Tess as Kirsten’s phone went silent.

  ‘Yes, Mum, I’m fine,’ came the reply. ‘Okay, I might have a little cry somewhere along the way, but, hey, life goes on, right? I’ll let you have any updates. Love you all.’

  And with that she was gone.

  ‘She’s one tough girl,’ said Jack.

  It was hard to disagree.

  The next morning the swell had come up and Jack talked his father into going surfing. It was Jack’s first time in the water since returning from London and he dug his favourite board out of the backyard shed and could hardly contain his excitement as they headed down to the beach and across the sand, still cold from the night. It had just gone nine o’clock and the first cohort of the day’s surfers, the schoolkids and fulltime workers, had headed off to classroom or office. The waves were head-high-plus and clean, a building swell from a southern storm front and a harbinger of what the winter might bring.

  Jack muffed his first two waves but was soon back in the swing of it while Harcourt thought this was about as good as it got for a local beach where you spent a lot of time putting up with the bad to indifferent to score the occasionally pristine day like this. They were soon joined by Brown, who never missed the good ones, and then a bunch of the older guys, some just as feral as frothing teenagers when it came to catching as many waves as possible. Still, the sets were nicely spaced and easily turned over the crowd.

  Later, after a breakfast of badly scrambled eggs and instant coffee, father and son met Randy Wayne and Buzzy at the Sand Bar for a further rehearsal of Jack’s songs. They were joined late by a grouchy Carpark, who had been held up at yet another of his real estate meetings. ‘Crooks should stash their dirty money in some dodgy Cayman Islands bank, not try to wash it in my real estate deal.’ Adding to his crankiness he had just driven by the beach and seen the near perfect waves rolling in. ‘By the time we finish here the tide’ll be too low, nothing but closeouts.’

  Anyway, the rehearsal, under Randy Wayne and Jack’s guidance, went well enough, although there was still a lot to get together and Harcourt remained unsure how much he had to contribute. Afterwards, they shared a few more Lone Stars – Harcourt abstained – and Randy Wayne put on a collection of Allman Brothers Band tracks from their golden period, the late sixties through the early seventies. As was his way, Randy Wayne then started one of his all in musical discussions, that being who was the better guitarist, Duane Allman or Dickey Betts, the pair who’d initially led the group’s twin guitar attack.

  As far as Jack and Buzzy were concerned the Allmans were something from the mists of time so they didn’t have much to say on the matter. Indeed, the group with its southern roots jam band sound had never been mainstream in Australia.

  Into the afternoon, Harcourt was tempted by Jack to go for another surf – the swell had picked up even more. But he had to get his What Men Want column written in a hurry and the earlier lecture from Randy Wayne on the virtuosity of the Allman Brothers’ guitarists had given him the basis of a column in which to argue that rock music had fallen in a deep and dull hole after the sixties and seventies from which it had never escaped. Sure, it was an exaggeration and hardly original, being similar to his first column, but that, according to What Men Want editor Darrell Farnsworth, had upset twenty and thirty somethings, so why not piss them off on the same note all over again? Somehow, he managed to stretch this out to a thousand words – and what would be a thousand dollars of walking-around money – and he was giving his argument a self-satisfied final reading when his phone rang.

  It was Vinnie Vincenso. ‘Johno, Mike will see you in Fiji tomorrow. I’m emailing you your ticket. Sorry’ bout the short notice, but he wants to eyeball you, not talk on the phone.’ Vinnie kept rattling off instructions. ‘Dexter, Mike’s guy – you met him up at Noosa, right? – will meet you at the international terminal. He’s flying the movie money men back to the main island in the morning to catch a flight back to the States. Then he’ll take you down to the island.’

  ‘He’s got a plane?’

  ‘Yeah, Mike leases a seaplane when he’s there, one of those things with floats on it. Dexter will fly you, but he’s got to get back there before the light goes. It’s pretty isolated. I don’t even know if they’re allowed to fly the damn thing at night – not that you’d want to, I guess. It’s got to be tied up to a pontoon or some such messing about – hell, I don’t know, I’ve never been there.’

  ‘How long am I staying?’

  ‘Only a couple of nights. Oh, and Mike said to tell you to bring your board shorts. The surf is about to turn on or some such surfie talk.’

  SIXTEEN

  The single engine aircraft was engulfed by blue – sky above, sea below – as it bumped its way southwards. Harcourt was Dexter Dutton’s lone passenger, the ex-Navy Seal piloting the little De Havilland Beaver float plane towards their destination, Lailai, or Small Atoll. The speck of land was located to the southwest of Kadavu, the centrepiece of a scattering of Fijian islands across what was known as the Great Astrolabe Reef, a prime diving destination and emerging tourism hot spot for the South Pacific nation. Kadavu was almost an hour’s flying in the Beaver from Fiji’s international airport at Nadi on the main island of Viti Levu before tracking to Lailai, the freehold of which had been bought by Vargas a decade or so back for some millions of dollars, ranging from two to five, depending on what business page or gossip column you believed.

  Dutton, his head encased in headphones, as was Harcourt’s, was in a relaxed mood. He had flown three Hollywood money types back to Viti Levu that morning, allowing plenty of time to make their connection to Los Angeles while he’d loaded supplies – principally booze and foodstuffs so it seemed – into the Beaver by the time Harcourt’s flight from Sydney touched down. Dutton had picked him up at the airport and driven them to the nearby seaplane site where the Beaver was tethered to a pontoon and so they made a quick getaway with the afternoon light and flying conditions excellent all the way back to Lailai.

  When he’d first seen the float plane, Harcourt had been apprehensive. It was old, very old. Dutton had seen his look and smiled. ‘Yeah, they stopped making them back in sixty-seven, but they’re as tough as old boots. There’re still hundreds of them operating all over the world, mainly in remote situations, doing STOL stuff.’

  ‘STOL?’

  ‘Short take-off and landing.’

  Harcourt had flown in float planes a couple of times before, back in the days when newspapers ruled and there were assignments to exotic locations – not this era of being chained to a desk and researching via Google – and now he was being reacquainted with the weird way they hardly seemed to move through the air, just lumbering along like an old Volkswagen Beetle in an F1 racing car world. But it was kind of fun and the panorama before him was inspiring – the vast canopy of scrubbed clean sky and grand sweep of lightly rippled water all the way to the horizon. He was somewhat puzzled about why he’d been invited – no, summonsed – to this speck in the middle of nowhere, even if it was a wonderful nowhere.

  Last night and the early hours of the morning had passed in a grind as he’d packed a small bag with tee-shirts, shorts, toothbrush and, yes, board shorts, as commanded by Vinnie, before emailing his What Men Want column, apologising to Jack and Randy Wayne for opting out of rehearsals and finally getting himself to the airport on time through Sydney’s diabolical early morning traffic. He knew better than to ask Dutton about Vargas’s state of mind or what having him fly all the way out here was about, even if the former soldier probably knew.

  Then as the sun began settling towards the west Lailai came into sight, at first
a grey-green fleck on the deepening blue of the afternoon ocean and then as they came closer a gaggle of palm trees ringed by sand with an outer surf-specked reef. There appeared to be a rambling main house located along a central part of the beach and various smaller buildings and a garden of some sort. There were a couple of battered-looking vehicles, maybe old Mini Mokes, thought Harcourt, having owned one of these death traps as a second vehicle back when he’d been young and foolish. The lagoon inside the reef was smooth as a table top with a small jetty and attached pontoon down the beach from the principal dwelling.

  Dutton flew low over the house and then circled back, bringing the Beaver in for a landing that gave the impression the floats might have contacted concrete. Harcourt had further vague recollections that this was the way it was with float planes and this one seemed none the worse for the experience as it skittered across the flat water. Dutton throttled back the boisterous engine and they chugged slowly towards the shoreline pontoon.

  As they drew alongside, one of the vehicles – yes, it was a dinged-up old Moke – came driving down from the main house, a small cloud of shell grit dust in its wake. It was being driven by a tanned woman, sun-bleached fair hair flying – Poppy Parmadour. Oh, well, fair enough, thought Harcourt, I guess there’s more to it than a one-night stand.

  ‘Welcome, lovely to see you,’ she called, grabbing the lines to tie the plane to the pontoon. ‘I’m Poppy.’

  She shook Harcourt’s hand and smiled. Okay, he thought, no doubt about this one, straight from beach babe central in her ragged cut-off denims and red halter top.

  ‘Nice to meet you – I saw you surfing when I was up at Noosa recently,’ he said. ‘You ran rings around me.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, really. Well, once a surfer, always a surfer, right?’

  ‘Well, kind of. They reckon you’ve only got so many paddling rotations in your shoulders – a million or something like that – and I’ve just about used up all of mine.’

  She laughed, perfect teeth, green-grey eyes. The provisions were loaded into the Moke, they climbed aboard and headed up the beach towards the house, Poppy gunning the rackety engine as the wheels spun before gripping on the shell grit. It was now late afternoon in that balmy tropical island kind of way, barely a breath of wind as the red ball of sun dropped towards the palm trees on the island’s western edge.

  Vargas met them as they arrived at the house. ‘Welcome to paradise, our version of it at least.’ Bare feet, khaki shorts and a threadbare tee-shirt. They shook hands and were joined by Poppy as they went inside the weathered wooden house with its spacious verandah and open doors. Dutton remained by the Moke with a couple of Fijian men, who began unloading the provisions.

  Poppy offered Harcourt an icy cold Vonu Lager, and it went down easily. She showed him to a bedroom off the main living area, sparsely furnished but adequate, with a communal bathroom next door. He was surprised how minimalistic the house appeared to be, kind of shabby more than chic and nothing like the concrete and glass of Vargas’s Noosa bunker. They went back out to the verandah where Vargas was pacing up and down, Vonu Lager in hand while talking on a satellite phone, its funny little aerial pointing heavenwards.

  He guessed Vargas drinking beer was a good sign – maybe the script was finally finished, and maybe he’d coaxed additional money for the movie from the Hollywood visitors.

  Off from the verandah, Dutton was tending what the Fijians call a ‘lovo,’ or cooking pit, where the food, both meat and vegetables, wrapped tightly in banana leaves, was covered in earth to be cooked on fire-heated stones. He explained to Harcourt that it was a widespread custom among Pacific Islanders – the Maoris in New Zealand called it ‘hangi’ – the cooking taking at least a couple of hours. When unwrapped, the food had a signature smoky fragrance.

  Apparently the two trusted Fijian hands, who acted as part-time caretakers and maintenance men when Vargas was away from the island, which was most of the time, had caught several sizeable trevally in the lagoon that morning and fired up the cooking pit for what would be the evening meal. Meanwhile, the flames of several torches had been lit to provide a gently wavering light as Poppy set about loading a wooden table with wine and several fresh salads, some of the ingredients having been flown in on the Beaver. Vargas finished his pacing and phone call and came over to join the others by the cooking pit.

  ‘Well, it’s looking good for a slice of the film’s budget. As they say, my people in LA have been talking to their people – the “their” being the guys who left this morning – and two of them are willing to commit and the third is wavering somewhat but still interested. Two out of three isn’t bad, but three out of three would be better. So we’ll see.’

  ‘How much?’ Harcourt asked, knowing he was being more than a little impertinent.

  Vargas gave him a wry grin. ‘Oh, that’s confidential. But more than a few million. In fact, more than a few million more than I’d hoped for when I decided to ask them out here.’

  ‘So that was part of the plan?’ asked Harcourt. ‘Getting them here?’

  ‘Pretty much. Just for a couple of days remove them from that LA smog, away from all that who’s the main man in the room stuff. I mean, it’s pretty basic here. These big money types, just like movie or rock stars – yes, like me, I guess – are used to having it all laid on, hot and cold running everything, but once here, in the middle of this wonderful nowhere, they think, hey, this is great, no need to put on a show, to have to big note myself. Just sit around chewing the fat, drinking beer, let a few days slip by, sun comes up, sun goes down.’

  ‘And so you get them all relaxed and then start whispering in their ears – “hey, guys, now about this movie I’ve got coming up…”’

  Vargas put on his best leading-man grin. ‘Yeah, something like that, maybe a little more subtle.’

  ‘And the fact that they’re being schmoozed while on a movie star’s mystery island in the middle of the biggest ocean in the world only adds to their collective contentment.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ Vargas smiled. ‘See, I knew you were a smart guy. You know what really makes the world work.’ He looked at Poppy who had a glass of white wine in her hand and an amused look on her face. ‘And then I just happen to have a beautiful woman like this around who’s travelled the world and been hit upon by everyone from surf heroes to princes, billionaires to, well, movie stars … She’s the hostess with the mostest and immediately has these Hollywood bean-counter types lining up.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about lining up, but whatever I did I managed to do it while keeping my knickers on,’ she deadpanned.

  That brought a laugh.

  Dutton and the two Fijians unearthed and unwrapped the fish and vegetables – taro cut into thick chips and uvi, a sort of wild yam – and everyone piled their plates with the smoky-flavoured fish and accompaniments.

  The Fijians, a father and son, known as Big John and Little John, who was actually taller and wider than Big John, ate with them. Their extended family was on Kadavu and the pair always made the trip out to Lailai whenever Vargas showed up. They loved it if Dutton went to pick them up in the Beaver, which Vargas hired from some American billionaire who spent even less time on his island, just another of the more than 800 islands, big and tiny, that made up Fiji. Big John was a former professional fisherman who knew boats and the surrounding seas and reefs better than anyone. Periodically, the father and son would come out to Lailai on the family’s work boat, a formidable journey if the weather turned bad and the seas came up, to do maintenance on the house and other facilities as they did for other properties on other islands.

  ‘Sea coming up next day or so,’ said Big John, savouring the fish he and his son had caught. ‘Pretty quick, I reckon, from down there, the southwest.’

  ‘Hey, we’ll catch a surf in the morning,’ said Vargas. ‘Poppy and I have had some nice little waves the last couple of days. We call the break “The Passage”, down the end where there’s a channel through the
reef and you can get a small boat in and out on the high tide. It’s a lefthander, short and sharp if the swell’s from the southwest or a bit more lined up and longer if it’s from the southeast. But it can turn scary big in a hurry – I’ve seen it go from dead flat to triple overhead in a matter of hours.’

  ‘I think my triple overhead days are done,’ said Harcourt. ‘That’s if they ever existed.’

  He remembered his big wave misadventure down the coast in summer with Carpark and Brown but didn’t raise it. Every surfer who’d been around had war stories, close encounters of the near-death kind. They tended to get tiresome, a bit like fishing stories – my fish was bigger than your fish – and he didn’t want to get into such a discussion with Vargas, nor with Poppy, who was sure to have seen her share. Instead, he told them how the surf had picked up considerably in Sydney yesterday and so Big John was right.

  Vargas agreed. ‘He’s better than any surf forecaster or internet predictor you can name. He feels it in his bones or some goddamn thing, the old salty sea dog.’ Big John gave a laugh. ‘Like I say, it will probably hit here and get big fast. Those massive cold fronts that sweep below Australia and across New Zealand and then charge out into the open Pacific, well, there’s nothing but a lot of open ocean between them and us, the swell they generate doesn’t refract towards the coast like it does with the Australian east coast, and there’s no continental shelf to slow it down or put a bit of order into it. Anyway, we’ll be out of here in a few days. Poppy and I are going to LA to wrap up some more of the film business.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be doing film business,’ said Poppy.

  ‘And you’ll be surfing Malibu, I guess,’ said Harcourt.