Читать книгу A Drop in the Ocean - Jenni Ogden - Страница 12

“Magic, isn’t it.” I heard his quiet voice and knew immediately whose it was. “How long have you been there?” I whispered, turning around to see him sitting in the sand behind me.

“About half an hour,” he whispered back.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“Nothing to say.” I could see his smile in the soft dawn.

“Shouldn’t you be tagging or measuring her or something?” I ducked as a spray of sand hit me in the chest.

“She already has a tag, and I didn’t want to break the spell for you. See that metal tag on her left front flipper? I’ll check her number when she’s on her way back to the sea.”

We sat in silence, watching her. The wide pit filled up rapidly and when she was satisfied that it had been obliterated, she slowly rotated her great body, flipping sand and leaves about until there was no evidence there had ever been a hole. She rested for a few minutes, then swished her front flippers back and rowed herself down the gently sloping beach to the sea. Behind her she left wide tractor marks, picked out by dimpled shadows in the glowing sand. When she was about ten meters from the edge of sea, Tom scooted down and grabbed her front flipper, shining his torch on the tag. She increased her pace, almost lifting up on her flippers, and he let her go and picked up the clipboard he had dropped on the sand, writing her tag number on the sheet. He stood and watched her slide into the tiny waves swishing onto the beach, and then she was submerged, first the top of her shell and then just her head sticking out as she swam over the reef and out to sea.

“That’s her first laying this season,” Tom said as he walked back towards me. “You’re honored. Eve is one of the first turtles ever tagged on this island.”

“So you won’t see her again now until next summer?”

“Oh yes, she’ll likely come up to nest a number more times yet over the next three months, but then we won’t see her again for two or three years.”

“How amazing it is. All that effort. I’m so glad I saw her,” I whispered, although the need for whispering had obviously passed. “Do you have names for all your turtles?”

Tom dropped down onto the sand and wrapped his arms around his bent knees. “No, only Eve. The others are just tag numbers. Scientists aren’t meant to get close and personal with their subjects; it might bias their research.” His grin flashed in the luminescent light.

“Yes, it’s rather the same in my line of research. Best to keep it impersonal,” I said. Tom didn’t comment, and we sat for a while in what felt like a comfortable silence. Then Tom shifted, and looked as if he were about to get up.

“Was Eve the only turtle nesting tonight?” I asked.

“Two others, a bit earlier. Eve was cutting it fine. They come up to lay on the high tide but need to leave enough time to get back before the tide goes out again and it becomes too shallow for them to swim back to the deep water. It’s early days yet, and by December on some nights there might be eighty or more turtles coming up.”

“Ben was telling me you had been to one of the other islands looking for nesting turtles.”

“Yes. Two coral cays close to here. I visit them fairly regularly. One of them seems to attract more loggerheads than here for some reason. I found six nesting on one cay last night.”

“Eve is a green turtle?”

“She is. Greens are by far the most common turtle here, then loggerheads. Just occasionally we get a hawksbill nesting; they’re much more common farther north, around Cairns.”

“Are the coral islands you go to inhabited? By people, I mean,” I asked.

“No. That’s their beauty. They’re pristine.”

“Not even a hut to sleep in?”

“No, not even that. At this time of the year, a sleeping mat is all I need. The main downside is being used as a landing site for shearwaters. But I don’t get much time for sleep usually, once the turtle nesting season is in full swing.”

“It must be amazing, sleeping there under the stars, the only human in the middle of all that ocean.”

“Everyone should sleep on a beach under the stars at least once in their lives,” Tom said.

I felt the jagged edge of pain slice through my chest and tighten my throat, and I turned my head away from Tom’s gaze.

“You should try it one night before there are too many turtles coming up.” Tom’s voice was quiet.

I swallowed, and waited as the pain receded. “I’d like that,” I finally managed to croak. “Once, when I was a kid, I slept on the beach with my father.”

Tom was silent.

“We were going to do it again, but my father died, and I’ve never been anywhere since where it would have been possible.” My fingers felt for my dolphin pendant.

“Until now,” Tom said.

We sat for a while, not speaking, as the sun rose out of the sea and the light lost its early magic. The tide was rapidly retreating, exposing bits of coral.

Tom yawned and then laughed. “That’s my day job over. If I want to get in some shut-eye before lunch I’d better be on my way.” He got up, and made a funny sort of wave-salute in my direction. “I’m glad you met Eve. If you want to give us a hand later when the nesting is in full swing, let me know.”

“Oh yes, please,” I said. “I would like that.”

Tom nodded, smiled his lovely smile, and walked away.

BACK IN MY CABIN I TREATED MYSELF TO A FEED OF pancakes, made in the English way as my mother used to make them for me when I was a child, not artificial and puffy like the American ones. In the small fry pan I fried three rashers of bacon while I mixed a batter of flour, egg, milk, water, melted butter, and a pinch of salt, beaten to the consistency of runny cream. I took the large fry pan, melted a lump of butter in it, and poured in just enough batter to film the bottom. When bubbles began to form and pop, I flipped the pancake over with the help of my only spatula and browned the other side. Two minutes and then it was ready to be flipped onto a plate, slathered with lemon juice and sugar, and rolled into a long sausage. While I consumed the first pancake with one of the crisp bacon rashers, my next pancake was cooking. After three large pancakes, I could hardly move, so I lay on my bed and fell fast asleep.

Apart from a walk on the beach late that afternoon, I didn’t do much else, but after a solitary meal that evening—just a slice of cold ham and a green salad after my breakfast extravagance—I sat at my computer, trying to decide whether I should continue with my account of my research career or write more of My Life. Truth to tell, I had been thinking about my father all day, and I suppose it was inevitable that I would feel an urgency to write it down.

It was in the Bahamas that I slept under the stars with my father. It was our third summer holiday after he and Mum broke up, and we—Dad and his girlfriend, Louise, and me—were staying in a holiday apartment right on the beach. One night, Dad said he had a surprise for me, and we drove quite a way to a secluded little bay along the beach, away from the houses and apartments. Louise didn’t come; she said this was to be a special father-daughter treat. We had brought a large tarpaulin, pillows, and our sleeping bags. I was beside myself, I was so excited.

We spread the tarpaulin out on the sand, not far above high tide mark, and snuggled into our sleeping bags, although it was warm enough not to need them. Dad had brought a plastic box of supper—cold chicken, bread, cheese, cake, and mangoes. We ate the lot, and then after sneaking into the trees higher up the beach for a pee, we lay in our sleeping bags looking up at the starry sky. Dad pointed out Orion and lots of the other constellations, although I think he made some of them up. We talked about everything: school, my favorite books, what I wanted to do when I left school—that was easy, I wanted to be a journalist like him, and travel the world—and the scuba diving adventures we’d have on our holiday. He told me about all the adventures he had had that year, seeking out stories.

When I woke up it was just getting light, and the sea was pink. I felt as if I’d died and gone to heaven. When Dad woke up, we changed into our swimsuits and went for a swim and then a run along the beach. After that we went back to the apartment and went out to a café for breakfast with Louise. We had pancakes, of course. All the next year, whenever I felt gloomy or sad, I’d think about that night under the stars, and count the months, then weeks, then finally days until our next summer holiday, this time to Belize. Dad and I had made a solemn pact to sleep under the stars again.

I stopped writing then. Enough was enough. I wandered down the beach but the sea was way out. The turtles wouldn’t start coming in until around two in the morning, on the incoming tide. I walked along the beach until I came to the spot I’d stopped that morning, when I talked to Tom. I could just make out the disturbed sand where Eve had covered up her nest, and I sat on it thinking about the eighty-two eggs beneath me and the millions of eggs that had been laid by turtles over millions of years on isolated beaches like this. How Dad would have loved it.

SIX NEW CAMPERS ARRIVED ON JACK’S BOAT ON Saturday. It was mid-November, and the end-of-year university exams were over. Jack had given them two letters for me, and my boxes of food arrived on Nick’s trailer. One of the letters was a long one from Mum, and I put it aside to read later. The other was from the secretary in my old university department. I had asked her to open my mail and send on any she thought I would want. She had enclosed a letter from a small funding body I had applied to before I left. The letter politely declined my application for a pitiful amount of research money. The other enclosure was a reprint of a recently published research article I had had accepted almost a year ago. I could hardly understand the title it was so full of jargon. About the only term that made any sense was “Huntington’s disease.” A slither of nostalgia—or guilt, perhaps—froze my snigger as I scanned the list of co-authors—all my research assistants and my last doctoral student. I wonder what they’re doing now?

The campers were loaded up with the usual scuba equipment. Four of them had never been to Turtle Island before, and I found myself telling them all about the birds and turtles as if I had lived there for years. I’d been finding out more from Basil and Pat. By now there were more than one hundred thousand birds nesting on this tiny island. The most numerous by far were the wedge-tailed shearwaters, with their ghostly night cries, and the charming noddy terns busily putting the finishing touches to their scruffy nests, which balanced precariously on every branch of the sticky Pisonia trees—sometimes thirty nests in a single small tree. Reef herons also nested there, and quaint little buff-banded rails fussed about on the sandy ground, bobbing their heads. Tiny silvereyes darted through the trees and I had learned to identify the common migratory birds—ruddy turnstones and eastern golden plovers—who returned from the Northern Hemisphere every September, and flew north again every March.

Pat was a mine of information about the birds, and we were on our way to becoming firm friends. We had begun to meet up for morning walks. Pat would stop every few minutes to watch birds through her binoculars, and although I wasn’t devoted enough to follow suit, I was content to stand quietly until she was ready to move a little farther. Sometimes our walks took up to two hours at this pace, and by the time we got back to the wharf we were both ravenous. Often we would go to one or other of our places and brew up some coffee to enjoy with bowls of muesli and slices of toast. If Pat had spotted an unusual bird she would get out her bird books and study them intently, pointing out the color patterns that distinguished her discovery from other similar-looking birds. We’d talk about other things as well: her life before she retired, and mine before I lost my grant. One morning, as we were sitting on her deck relishing our second cup of coffee, she asked me again why I didn’t swim or snorkel, and this time I told her.

“When I was a kid I was a good swimmer, and I even tried scuba diving a few times. My father was an experienced diver and spent every summer somewhere in the tropics where he could explore new reefs. He took me on snorkeling trips to Egypt and the Bahamas, and when I was twelve we went to Belize.”

I pulled myself out of my chair and walked to the edge of the deck. The sea sparkled through the trees. Pat didn’t speak. I swallowed, and felt the unfamiliar prick of tears at the back of my eyes. I could feel the hot sun of Belize on my hatless head, and the smell of sea and birds. “It was early afternoon when we got to this little island where Dad had booked a cabin for two weeks. Louise—his girlfriend—was with us. We’d had a long trip, and Dad thought we should take it easy that afternoon and have our first snorkel the next day. But there was a local there who had a dinghy and was going out for a fish, so Dad decided he’d go for a quick dive just to check it out. Two hours later they weren’t back and it was beginning to get dark. Then the dinghy came back and the man was by himself. He couldn’t speak much English and he was in a state. Louise was shouting and screaming and then other people from the resort were there.

“I kept expecting Dad to swim up to the beach, but he didn’t, of course. It wasn’t until much later, when the local police came over and we found someone who could speak reasonable English, that we managed to piece it together. Apparently Dad hadn’t come back an hour after he’d left the boat for a dive. The boatman had been fishing and after another half hour he’d gone in himself—he just had snorkeling gear—and couldn’t find Dad, so in the end he came back. They took a motorboat with big lights out to look around but it was hopeless. It was dark by then. At dawn next day they started a proper search but didn’t find him. They never found him. All anyone could come up with was that he must have got caught somehow and used his air up before he could free himself. It wouldn’t take long for the sharks to find him.”

“My god,” I heard Pat say. Then I felt her hands on my shoulders and I turned around and buried my face in her neck as she held me.