Читать книгу A Drop in the Ocean - Jenni Ogden - Страница 10

Basil showed up around nine o’clock. I’d been up for hours after a hot and sleepless night tossing and turning on the hard mattress, trying to block out the phenomenal noise of thousands of shearwaters as they made their ghostly howls at each other. Jeff had warned me about this, but it had to be experienced to be believed. At times, as I dozed, it almost sounded like an orchestra, but then a small gaggle of the birds sitting right on my deck would start up—whoooo up the scale and then hoooo down the other side, followed by their mates’ slightly higher whoooo-hoooo, and so on around the entire gaggle, firmly banishing the orchestral illusion. At one point I stumbled out on to the moonlit deck to chase them away, but apart from doing a short sideways shuffle, they ignored me, and continued to whoooo-hoooo. Fortunately for them they were decidedly lovable, and quite impossible to kick—large and soft and dark gray, with a bumbling gait when on land and when landing. Every few minutes there would be a loud swish as another bird hurtled out of the sky, skidding along the ground when it hit dirt. Then it would waddle slowly off to its nest—a hole in the sand, under a tree root, under the cabin, or sometimes right in the middle of the sandy path.

When, at six o’clock, I finally gave up on sleep and made myself a cup of tea, the noise stopped—of course—and, going outside, I saw the last bird waddling rapidly along the track before taking off like a drunken jet plane and spreading its great wings, soaring up over the low trees and out to sea. There, it was in its element—one of the greatest fliers in all the bird kingdom. The sacrifices a parent will make for its babies—not that I would know, but it awes me anyway.

Basil seemed like a nice chap, in his sixties I would guess, and a true-blue Aussie like everyone I’d met so far. Bald as a baseball. He didn’t say a lot, and what he did say I had a bit of trouble understanding as he didn’t open his mouth very wide, but his eyes had a blue twinkle and his grin was friendly. He indicated that he’d empty my rubbish bin as well as the ones in the campground, and he would clean the toilets once a week. He gave me a large book and a small metal box with a lock; the book to record campers’ names and payments—$5 per adult per night and $2 for kids; and the box to keep the loot in. He turned the small key and opened the box to display a pile of notes and coins—change, he said, in case a camper didn’t have the right amount. Most of them would be university students who would come on their summer holidays from mid-November to the end of February, and would stay for two weeks, between Jack’s boat trips.

“What do I do with the money?” I asked.

“When it gets too much to fit in the box, stick it in a plastic bag and give it to Jack. He’ll deposit it in Jeff’s bank account back on the mainland. He’ll take cash checks as well, if you’ve been paid that way, and he can cash your own checks too, if you need any money.”

“He’s the island banker as well as the transporter, by the sound of it,” I said.

“I suppose so. Someone’s got to do it. Give him your grocery list and a blank check as well when you want more supplies. You have to be organized, though, because you won’t get them until he comes back two weeks later.” He looked at me doubtfully, as if he thought I wouldn’t cope with this.

“Thanks. Jeff explained about the grocery thing. I’ll soon get the hang of it, I think.” I grinned to show him I wasn’t being sarcastic. “What about phoning out? Is that possible?”

“Yeah. I have an old computer and satellite broadband—it’s pretty slow—and so does Tom Scarlett.”

“Tom the turtle whisperer?”

Basil guffawed, his mouth opening at last, exposing a crooked row of nicotine-stained teeth. “That’s him, the turtle whisperer. But his place is on the other side of the island. My place is closer, the next house just up the track a bit. If you need to e-mail anyone or phone out on Skype, or in an emergency, just drop by.”

“Thank you. But I’ll try not to impose. To tell you the truth, I’m rather looking forward to a life free of e-mail and the Internet.”

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG TO SETTLE INTO A SORT OF ROUTINE. At first I did find myself worrying about being out of contact and a couple of times had to stop myself from asking Basil if I could use his computer to access my e-mail. But by the end of the first week, I couldn’t give a damn about it. By now I could just about sleep through the ghostly night chorus, and I often rose early and spent an hour walking on the beach before coming back and eating a bowl of muesli and luxuriating in a cup of real coffee, brewed using crystal clear bottled water. The aroma as my little espresso machine farted happily over the gas flame was the aroma of happiness. If I was still hungry I made toast under the efficient gas grill, inevitably burning a slice or two in spite of standing over it. I ate breakfast on my deck, with my Kindle in hand, and it was pure bliss.

It took great strength of mind to close the Kindle after an hour or so of sloth and replace it with my laptop. Then I settled down to writing my “memoir,” as I thought of it. This was usually painfully slow, but on rare days the words fairly flew out of me. I found that my early-morning beach walks were the perfect time to reminisce about my past life—my life, that is, as a researcher. My “memoir” was to be about that. I decided to begin at the beginning—that is, when I landed my first job as a junior researcher in the Huntington’s lab not long after completing my PhD. Then I would write about my rise to senior researcher and becoming the head of the lab in the space of just six years. It bordered on exhilarating, remembering those heady times when I was full of passion for my research, with ideas tumbling over themselves. Writing a cutting-edge research grant was a breeze back then—well it seems so now, looking back—although I also recalled bouts of despair and even depression, not to mention night upon night burning the midnight oil.

I’d stop my memoir writing for a sandwich or piece of fruit when I was hungry, and allow myself another hour of reading, sometimes lying on the bed trying to catch any tiny breeze from the wide-open sliding doors that stretched across the entire front of the cabin. Of course, more often than not, my eyes refused to stay open and I woke hours later feeling hot and sticky and annoyed with myself. But a walk on the beach as the evening began its tropical journey through every shade of yellow, orange, red, and pink soon revived me, and I would sometimes veer off the beach onto one of the meandering tracks through the center of the island, marveling at the thousands of birds chattering and calling as they flew about their business, and breathing in the balmy air with its musty, birdy smell. Dark fell quickly and early, and if I forgot to take my torch I would find myself stumbling over tree roots as I made for the lighter sky reflecting off the sea and, once on the beach, found my way back to the familiar track leading to my cabin. By the time I’d negotiated the intricacies of the shower, concocted something for dinner, and eaten it, sitting as always on the deck—a complete absence of flies, mosquitoes, and other biting insects being one of the glories of being on a tiny coral cay on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef—I was well and truly ready for bed. The solar-powered lights were hardly bright enough to read by anyway.

In that first week I often went all day without speaking to a single soul. Occasionally when I was walking I would see someone on the beach and nod a greeting, but apart from that the only human I saw was Basil, who wandered past on the track about once every two days. He’d grin and raise his battered hat with its shady Aussie brim, but often he wouldn’t actually utter a greeting. But I didn’t feel in the least lonely. No campers appeared wanting to put up their tents—I supposed they were most likely to arrive when Jack’s boat returned—so I was truly in a honeymoon period.

Ten days after my arrival I set off for my hour-long morning walk around the circumference of the little island a little later than usual, heading in the direction away from the wharf. On the home stretch, just as I was coming to the wharf, I saw the turtle boat leaving. I watched it head out over the reef flats and then walked farther along the beach so I wouldn’t be so noticeable. I must have sat on the sand with my binoculars glued to my eyes for two hours, ghoulishly fascinated by the dinghy’s crazy zigzagging and the diving cowboy catapulting himself into the sea before the dinghy had skidded to a halt, bringing turtle after frustrated turtle up to the side. Jack had explained that the turtles were mating, the male on top, allowing the diver to grab the poor thing and measure it.

By the time the boat turned to come in, I could see a small group of people down at the wharf, two of them clearly children by their small size. Probably too small to be in school yet. I did know there was no school on the island, and that the few houses were mostly holiday homes, occupied only in the school holidays. I considered wandering back to the wharf to introduce myself but then felt stupidly shy. I was hopeless with children, and I couldn’t imagine what I would say to the turtle whisperer.

Back at my cabin, I looked at the faded photo on the cabin wall again. I could almost hear Fran’s admonishment—“He won’t bite, you know. Just go and say hi. You’ll have to talk to him sooner or later on an island as small as that.” But it was another two days before I purposely decided to take a casual late-afternoon stroll along one of the tracks that ran across the center of the island to the other side, passing within about fifty meters of the small house nestled in the trees that I had noticed before on my walks. I had seen no other buildings on that side of the island so I figured it must be the turtle whisperer’s home. My legs were already becoming quite tanned, and they were now as smooth as a baby’s bum, but even so I pulled on my light long pants; I wasn’t quite ready to expose myself to that extent. As if the turtle whisperer would even notice the skinny legs of a middle-aged spinster.

My heart sped up as I neared the turnoff to the house, and I walked right past it and onto the beach a little farther on. I stood for ages gazing at the reef, bits of coral sticking out as the tide receded, and the turquoise sea farther out. I told myself that he probably wasn’t there anyway, and turned back along the track. This time I took the side path to his house and as I reached it I could hear him whistling. He sounded as if he were around the back, so I tiptoed past the front of the house with its wide deck, rehearsing what I’d say when I saw him. I was just walking past and heard you whistling so thought I’d call in and say hi. Then I was around the side of the house and he was only a couple of meters in front of me, oblivious to my presence and still whistling. He was standing under an outdoor shower attached to the wall, and was stark naked. He had his back to me and was vigorously soaping his body, his towel hanging between us on a large hook high on the wall. I began to tiptoe quietly backwards, praying he’d keep whistling, but before I’d taken three steps he reached up, switched the shower off, and turned around.

“Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled, my entire body flaming as I almost fell over in my hurry to back around the corner.

The turtle whisperer grinned and reached up and grabbed his towel, wrapping it around his waist in one smooth movement. “Gidday,” he said. “Don’t run away. Anna, isn’t it? It’s nice to see you again. I was wondering what had happened to you.”

I stopped and managed to look at his face. “I’m so sorry. I heard you whistling and it never occurred to me you would be … it wouldn’t be convenient.”

“Well, you weren’t to know I’d be starkers. Don’t be embarrassed. Look, give me five to get something better on than this towel, and we can have a drink.”

I must have looked strange or horrified because his face lost its smile and he added, “I hope I haven’t offended you? Perhaps you don’t drink? That’s okay. We can have a cup of tea or coffee if you’d rather.”

“No, no, I do drink,” I said. “Well, socially only. I’m not a big drinker but I like a wine, or a beer is good too if you have no wine.” I burbled on but he was smiling again now.

He walked past me around the corner of the house, and I followed.

“Have a seat and I’ll be back in the flick of a turtle’s tail.”

I sat on the edge of his deck with my back to the wide-open French doors. I didn’t want to risk seeing him drop his towel. I heard him moving about inside and then he reappeared, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair still damp and roughened from a brisk toweling. “Red wine okay for you?” he asked.

I nodded, and he bent down and put the bottle and two wine glasses on the deck, then disappeared inside, returning with a packet of biscuits and a wooden board complete with two types of cheese—a wedge of blue and a hunk of tasty—and a bunch of purple grapes.

“Gosh, this looks very civilized,” I said, accepting a glass of wine.

“It does, doesn’t it,” he agreed, grinning again. “I like my little luxuries; got to have something to stop myself turning into a wild man.”

“How long have you been here?” I sipped the wine. It was good: rich and round and Australian.

“Six years, off and on. Before that I spent about three months a year here while I was doing my PhD research. Fell in love with the place and decided to stay a while.”

“Your PhD was on turtles?”

“Yep. Addictive creatures.”

“Do you work on them all year round, or only when they’re mating?”

“The full-on field work is now—October, when they’re courting, and we study mainly the males—then November to March, when the females are laying, and through to about May we study the babies when they’re hatching. But there’s plenty to do the rest of the year, analyzing data and writing papers and thinking up new research projects, as well as less frantic field work on the health of the reef more generally, and the distribution of the turtles, what they’re feeding on and so on.”

“How fascinating. It sounds the perfect job,” I said, realizing that I was envious. I also noticed that my stomach had stopped churning and my heart had stopped thumping. Perhaps it was the wine, but I felt relaxed sitting there talking to this unusual young man.

“I think so,” he was saying. “If you’re interested, you should come out one night when the females start nesting. It’s pretty special.”

“I’d love to. I’ve seen documentaries on it, but never the real thing. When does it start?”

“Any day now. At first just one or two females will come up, but by late December and through January we can have any number from fifty to one hundred a night laying.” He poured me some more wine and then refilled his own glass.

“What do you do? Count the eggs?”

“Sometimes. We wait until they’ve dug their nest and started laying, and then we read their tag if they already have one, or if not, we tag and measure them. That way we can keep a record of how often they nest in a season, where they lay, and any damage they have.”

“Doesn’t that disturb them?” I asked.

“Not usually. They’re easily upset before they begin dropping their eggs, but once they’re at that point nothing can stop it. A physiological imperative. A bit like orgasm, or I suppose birth, although I can’t relate to that experience so easily.”

I felt myself flushing and bent to smear some more blue cheese on a cracker. The light was going. I should leave before it became too dark to find my way. I stuffed the biscuit into my mouth and tried to eat it fast without making too much noise.

“What about you?” he was saying. “Are you here for long?”

I swallowed the last of my biscuit and gulped down the last of my wine. “I’m here for a year, looking after Jeff’s campsite and doing some writing.” I wanted to take that revelation back the second my words hit the air.

“What are you writing?” he asked.

“I’m a researcher too. Well, I was a researcher. I lost my grant and thought I’d have some time off to rethink what I want to do. When this opportunity came up it seemed far enough away from what I’d been doing to be very attractive. So far I haven’t had a single camper, so it’s not exactly a big job.”

“What is your research area? Are you writing papers?” He sounded genuinely interested, and I looked over at him, his face blurred in the dusk.

“Not interesting like your research. It’s medical laboratory research. And to be honest, I’m not sure what I’m writing; it’s a sort of memoir on my work. Pretty silly, really.”

“No writing is silly. It’ll happen. Just give yourself some slack. This is a pretty magic place to write. Just let it work on you in its own good time.” I could sense the warmth in his tone and I was glad it was nearly dark. I felt quite shaky. Clearly too much wine.

“Thanks for the wine and cheese. And the company. It was lovely,” I said, getting up. “I’d better make tracks before it’s completely black.”

“Will you find your way okay? Do you want a torch?”

“I’ll be fine. I might go back along the beach. If the moon is up it will be easy to see.” I tried to sound lighthearted. Thank heaven he hadn’t offered to walk me home.

“It should be rising right now on your side of the island, and it’s almost full. Thanks for calling in. I’ll let you know when the girls start laying.”

I made my way along the path to the main track, sneaking a look back towards his house. The light came on inside and I heard his whistle and a clatter of glassware.