The Secret of the Lonely Isles

by Joanne Van Os

  ‘Well, how about the movies today? And yes Tyler, go and see if Zac can come too.’ Twenty minutes later they piled into the car and headed off to the cinema at the Plaza.

  ‘If I’d thought of this in time we could’ve given Maddy a lift out here,’ Karen said.

  Jem enjoyed the movie, a new action picture. He never got tired of them. As they were coming out of the cinema, Karen suddenly stopped beside him.

  ‘That’s Maddy!’ she said. ‘I thought the girls were shopping, not going to the movies.’

  Jem looked across the lobby and saw Maddy coming out of a different cinema, except she wasn’t with her girlfriends – she was with a boy. And not a boy really, but a tall, dark-haired young man who looked about eighteen or even twenty. They were holding hands and Maddy was giggling, until she noticed Karen and the boys standing there staring at her. She went pale, and muttered something to the boy beside her, shaking her hand out of his. Karen folded her arms and waited as Maddy walked over to her, looking very nervous.

  ‘I thought you were shopping with Aleisha. What’s going on, Maddy?’ said Karen quietly.

  ‘Well, well …’ she stammered, ‘you wouldn’t let me go to the party! Everyone else went and had a great time, and I had to stay home like a little kid! I wanted to see Drake, and I knew you wouldn’t let me, so …’ Her voice trailed off and there were angry tears in her eyes.

  ‘So you lied to us and sneaked around behind our backs. I’m surprised at you, Maddy, and I’m very disappointed. Especially after last night.’

  ‘Well at least I didn’t sneak out at night! You made me promise not to.’

  Karen sighed and shook her head. Her shoulders sagged and she suddenly looked very tired again. Jem stared at his sister. How could she act like this? She must’ve known how upset their mum would be.

  ‘Don’t tell Dad!’ said Maddy urgently. ‘He won’t understand, he’ll just get really angry again.’

  ‘What, so I’m supposed to lie for you, am I? Your father has every right to know about this, although God knows he doesn’t need any more stress. You should have thought of that before you sneaked out and lied to us, seeing this, this …’ She glanced over at the young man who leaned against a pillar with a faint smirk on his face.

  ‘So you think this is funny, do you?’ hissed Karen softly, taking a step towards him. ‘You stay away from my daughter, and take that silly grin off your face or you’ll be dealing with me, sonny.’

  There was no doubt about his mum, thought Jem. She could terrify you without raising her voice a notch. The young bloke reddened, and stalked off without looking back. Maddy let out a whimper.

  ‘How could you embarrass me like that?’ she said. ‘He’ll never talk to me again!’

  ‘Well that’ll be the least of your problems. How could you do this after what happened last night? You’re grounded until further notice.’

  As Maddy started to protest, Karen hushed her impatiently and herded them out of the shopping centre. They drove home in total silence, and when they pulled up at the house, Zac muttered a quick thanks, and darted through the fence to his house having exchanged a doleful glance with Jem and Tyler.

  Things just seemed to go downhill after that. Maddy of course sulked around the house, refusing to speak to anyone and sighing loudly. Karen was irritated with her, and that seemed to leak over to Jem and Tyler as well, and they made themselves as scarce as they could. Steve was so angry with Maddy he yelled at everyone, as if they were all responsible for her behaviour. At night Jem could hear his parents arguing in muted tones in their bedroom. The only person who seemed happy and unaffected was Neenie. She continued to come upstairs in the lift for her meals, and chat amiably to long dead friends, and occasionally make a little sense. And she still wanted Jem to play snakes and ladders with her every day.

  A few days later Jem, Maddy and Tyler were in the kitchen looking for something to eat. Karen was in the lounge room with Steve, going through his daily exercise program. Jem could tell it wasn’t going well. He could hear his father’s voice getting louder, and his mother’s quieter one trying to stay calm and defuse Steve’s temper. There was a heavy thump, a shouted curse, and another crash that sounded like a table being knocked over, and china smashing against a wall. Karen ran out of the room and slammed the door behind her. She stopped for a moment, chest heaving and her face tight, then noticed Jem, Maddy and Tyler standing in the kitchen doorway staring helplessly at her. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out, and she shook her head and darted down the hallway to her bedroom.

  They could hear scraping sounds and the odd swear word from the lounge room, which was probably Steve trying to get himself back into the wheelchair. Muffled sounds of sobbing came from the bedroom. They didn’t know what to do – try to comfort their mother, or try to help their father get back in his chair. Either choice seemed impossible. Jem’s stomach knotted up and he felt sick.

  Maddy suddenly pushed her chair back, said grimly, ‘I’ll go,’ and stomped off down the hallway to the lounge room.

  Tyler sat at the kitchen table looking very unhappy. Jem hovered in the doorway, unable to make a decision but feeling like he should do something – anything.

  Just then, they heard the thump of a car door being closed, and they raced out to the verandah, each thinking the same terrible thought: that their mother was leaving.

  A tall, slim woman stood at the gate, her hand on the latch. Jem stared down at her, momentarily unsure whether she was really there at all. She was wearing loose-fitting, white cotton trousers, and a floaty kind of pale shirt, and the breeze made the clothing flutter gently, giving the impression that she was drifting across the grass towards them. Her silvery-white hair was pinned up, and loose strands floated around her face like a halo. A necklace of tiny seashells hung around her neck.

  ‘Hello, are you Jeremy?’ she said, in a pleasant, musical voice, as she floated up the stairs. Jem opened and closed his mouth, nodding without speaking.

  Tyler craned his head around his brother to see who was there.

  ‘And you must be Tyler,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Ella?’ Karen’s voice startled Jem and he turned to see his mother staring at the woman as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  The woman smiled, and held out her arms. Karen squeezed past Jem and Tyler, and threw herself into the woman’s arms, burying her head in her shoulder and sobbing again.

  Tyler looked at Jem and muttered, ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Jem whispered back, ‘but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her before somewhere.’

  Ella patted Karen’s hair, and spoke to her in a language that Jem couldn’t understand, and eventually her tears subsided and she stood back, wiping her face with her hands.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you! Ella, it’s been so long …’ she sniffed, her voice cracking. She sounded like a little child, not like the mother of three children. She led the way into the kitchen and the two women sat down, staring at each other and holding hands across the table.

  Jem could hear the clink of broken china being swept up and Maddy’s muffled voice behind the lounge room door, speaking to Steve. Good on you, sis. He relaxed a little, now that he knew he no longer had to brave his father’s anger and try and help him up off the floor.

  Karen blinked suddenly, and looked up. ‘Jem and Tyler, this is my Aunt Ella. You haven’t seen her since you were babies.’

  Ella looked at each of them carefully and shook their hands. ‘Lovely to see you again, boys. You do look very different from the last time I saw you!’ There was a faint accent, but Jem had no idea what it was.

  ‘I didn’t know where you were,’ said Karen. ‘I wrote to you about Steve’s accident but …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Everything’s been a bit – disorganised.’

  Ella patted her hand reassuringly. ‘It’s all right, darling. I haven’t been easy to contact. I sailed directly to Indonesia from New Guinea, and they’re both diffic
ult places for letters to find you, so I’ve had to rely on emails for the last few months, and my laptop’s been very temperamental. But your sister managed to get through to me a couple of weeks ago, so I left and sailed straight here.’

  ‘You sailed?’ asked Tyler, his eyes widening. ‘In a boat?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling warmly at him. ‘In my little yacht Freya.’

  ‘I know! You’re the lady in the photo on the bookcase!’ Jem had it now. There had been a framed photo in the lounge room for as long as Jem could remember, of a woman standing on the deck of a yacht. Ella was that woman, just a few years older. Ella nodded.

  ‘Yes. I left Australia almost ten years ago to sail around the world, and now I’m back.’

  Dinner that evening was a happier occasion than they’d enjoyed for a while. A sizzling roast beef, golden roasted potatoes, buttered peas and honeyed carrots all crowded in the middle of the dining table, which had been set with the best china. A jug of rich brown gravy steamed to one side, and Karen had baked fresh bread rolls. Tyler looked particularly expectant – he’d seen the apple pie in the kitchen, and was eagerly waiting for dessert. Even Steve was on his best behaviour, and joined in the conversation, asking Ella questions about her travels. Neenie had put her pearls on when she was told there was a guest for dinner, and didn’t seem confused at all. After dinner was over, Jem, Tyler and Maddy leaned on the table, mesmerised by tales of sailing single-handed across the Pacific Ocean, and meandering through the seventeen thousand islands of Indonesia.

  ‘Seventeen thousand islands!’ exclaimed Tyler. ‘You’d lose count of which ones you’d been to!’

  ‘Oh Tyler! I didn’t visit them all, or even see them all,’ Ella laughed. ‘But the ones I did stop at were lovely, and the people were too.’

  Jem glanced around the table, and noticed the taut, pinched look had left his mother’s face. His father seemed relaxed and almost happy. It’s like old times, he thought, like before Dad’s accident.

  ‘Aunty Ella, how come you were talking to Mum in a weird language this morning?’ asked Tyler through a mouthful of apple pie and cream.

  ‘Please Tyler, just call me Ella. “Aunty” makes me feel quite ancient. I spoke to your mother in old Cornish, the language that used to be spoken in Cornwall, where we Tremaynes come from. I used to talk to your mum and her sister in it when they were growing up, not that they ever understood much of course. No one really speaks it much any more you see.’

  ‘Cornwall?’ asked Maddy. ‘Isn’t that where they used to have lots of smugglers and stuff, you know, pirate ships?’

  Ella laughed. ‘Yes, there were, and wreckers – people who used lights to lure ships onto the rocks, and then plunder them. It was all very wicked and exciting.’

  ‘Like that painting?’ asked Jem, suppressing a shudder. There was a painting on the wall of a Cornish shipwreck, and Jem used to have nightmares about storms and rocky coasts, and terrified people struggling in dark foaming water. He didn’t like the sea. Fishing on a river in a dinghy was one thing, but the idea of heading out on all that wide water was not Jem’s idea of a good time at all.

  ‘How did you end up here?’ Tyler was fascinated. ‘It’s on the other side of the world!’

  ‘Well, my sister – your grandmother Rosa – left home first, and she went sailing in the Pacific. We all loved boats. You see our father was a fisherman, and we learned to sail almost before we learned to walk. Rosa met your grandfather, Bill, in Noumea where he was building a hospital and they later moved to Australia. A few years later, when I had finished studying, I came to visit them here, and I stayed. I was a history teacher, but I’ve always had a little sailing boat.’

  ‘Boats sink,’ said Neenie. ‘I like the ground better.’

  Ella stayed with them for a few days, and Jem noticed how much more relaxed his mother was. She spent a lot of time with Ella, either walking in the garden, or sitting on the verandah with cups of tea, talking softly. Steve seemed calmer and better tempered, and Maddy, still grounded, stopped sulking and even played a few games of cricket in the backyard with Jem, Tyler and Zac like she used to. She helped them make bows and arrows out of sticks and string and they set up a target behind the laundry and fired wild shots all over the garden, terrifying the chickens.

  Life seemed to be slowly getting back to normal.

  ‘We’re going sailing? In a boat?’ said Jem, in a horrified voice. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  They were standing on the verandah, watching as Ella’s little car rounded the bend and disappeared down the road. Maddy said nothing, she just looked stricken.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Tyler was ecstatic. ‘Man, that’d be so cool!’

  ‘Dad’s specialist wants to see him at his clinic in Adelaide,’ said Karen. ‘He thinks maybe his medication isn’t quite right, and that he should have been making better progress than he has. He wants to put Dad through some different rehab as well, so we’ll be away a little while. Ella’s offered to take you guys away for a sail, so it would work out well for us. Dad and I can go to Adelaide, and you can all have a fantastic holiday on the Freya for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘A couple of weeks? But – but – what about school? School goes back in another week. How can we miss school?’ Maddy threw her hands in the air.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to the principal and she doesn’t have a problem with it. You’ll only miss a week or so.’

  ‘Cool!’ Tyler was ecstatic.

  ‘But – but Ella wouldn’t want to look after us on a little boat. I mean, none of us can sail, we’d just get in her way. It’d be useless!’ Jem looked desperate.

  ‘Well, she’s been sailing alone for years, so I guess she can do that by herself. You won’t have to do anything, just go along for the ride.’ He could hear a note of pleading in her voice. ‘It’ll be fun, Jem, really it will!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tyler. ‘C’mon, Jem, it’ll be great!’

  Jem took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks. It looked like he was going sailing, whether he liked it or not.

  Maddy gave a wail and rushed off to her bedroom.

  Time seemed to pass in a blur after that. Karen and Steve flew south to see Steve’s specialist almost immediately, and Ella moved into the house to look after Maddy, Jem and Tyler until they were ready to leave on Freya. Tyler was ecstatic – Zac would be coming with them. Karen and Carol had been talking and decided it would be good for Zac to have a break away from home too, and he was looking forward to the adventure as much as Tyler. Carol would look after Neenie while everyone was away. Maddy had reverted to sulking again. She spent a lot of time on the phone. She didn’t want to go sailing for two weeks, she wanted to be with her friends. ‘And talk about boys,’ said Tyler disgustedly. Jem just kept hoping it was all a mistake and that they wouldn’t really be going.

  Ella eyed them over her cup of tea at breakfast the morning after Steve and Karen had left.

  ‘Would you people be interested in a treasure hunt?’

  They looked blankly at her.

  ‘A treasure hunt?’ said Tyler. ‘What, gold ’n’ jewels ’n’ stuff?’

  ‘Pirates’ treasure?’ asked Zac hopefully.

  ‘Well, not pirates, but something precious that was lost a long time ago. While I was sailing around the world, I was also researching some history – that’s been my profession for the last thirty years. I’m an historian, and in between teaching jobs, I do historical research. Many years ago I came across some – well, a story that caught my attention, and I search for information about it whenever I have a chance.’

  ‘What kind of story?’ Maddy was in a bad mood. Or a worse one than usual. She’d been hanging round the phone, beating everyone else to it when it rang, and acting as if it was a personal insult when it wasn’t for her. She frowned at the wall as if she really didn’t care about the answer.

  ‘A mystery story. Almost one hundred years ago, a group of people left England and sailed to Australia
with the idea of starting a colony on an island off the north coast, away from the troubles in Europe at the time. The ship was known to have arrived at Batavia, as Jakarta was then called, but there’s no record of it after that. Later on, rumours began coming out of Arnhem Land about a group of Europeans living somewhere along the north coast. They were called “The White Tribe of Arnhem Land”. Most historians think it’s only a legend and that the ship just struck a reef and sank. A few searches were made, and nothing was ever found. But I always think that rumours start somewhere.’

  ‘Well why would you want to find it anyway?’ asked Maddy sullenly. ‘There wouldn’t be anything there now, just a few old skeletons maybe.’

  Ella gazed thoughtfully at her, and said, ‘Well, the ship was carrying something very valuable.’ She sipped at her tea. ‘There was a priceless gold statue on board, which was picked up at Cochin, in India, for the ship’s owner back in England. It’s never been seen again.’

  ‘What kind of statue?’ asked Tyler.

  ‘A solid gold gryphon, believed to be over two thousand years old. The owner had arranged for the captain to collect it from a dealer in Cochin when the ship stopped there on its way to Australia.’

  ‘What’s a gryphon?’ said Zac.

  ‘A gryphon is a beast of legend, very old legend. It was supposed be half-eagle and half-lion, and twice as fierce as both of them. The myths originated in India, but many countries have gryphons in their mythology.’ She reached into a bag at her feet, and pulled out a picture of a strange creature with the head and wings of an eagle, and the body and hindquarters of a lion.

  ‘I imagine the owner was a very wealthy man, and he already had a ship named the Gryphon, so he wanted the statue to go with it. It’s extremely valuable, and people have been searching for it for years, but no one’s ever found a trace of the ship, or the statue.’

  Jem was a bit puzzled. Ella didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d be interested in chasing after a gold statue, no matter how valuable it was.