A Drop in the Ocean. Jenni Ogden
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.
SIX
Pat was standing on my deck festooned with snorkels and masks and flippers. It was a new day, and to my surprise I had slept well. No nightmares, no night sweats. Perhaps I’d wept every last drop of water out of my body yesterday.
“I thought we’d begin in the shallow part of the lagoon,” Pat said. “The tide is perfect for beginners—about a meter over the top of the reef. In just a few flips you can be over sand and standing up without harming the coral.”
“I’m not sure. I think perhaps I need a day or two resting, to get over yesterday.”
“Trust me, this will be better than days of rest.”
“I haven’t got a swimsuit.” The banal words came out of my mouth and I waited for Pat to laugh.
“I have heaps of swim suits, and bikinis too. I never throw them out. Some sort of fantasy about miraculously waking one day to find that my body is thirty years old again—or even fifty would be good. But some of them would fit you; we’re about the same height, and you’re as slim as a reed.” She thrust the snorkeling stuff at me. “Come on. We’ll go to my place first and you can select one.”
Not a hint of a smile. I didn’t think Pat had a sarcastic bone in her body. I was already following her as she turned and strode down the track. She glanced back over her shoulder. “I’ve got spare wetsuits too—a short one will be perfect. You don’t need it in the lagoon but it will make you feel safer.”
The flippers banged against my leg,