A Drop in the Ocean. Jenni Ogden
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