A Drop in the Ocean. Jenni Ogden
intended to homeschool them until they had to go to secondary school. Lucky, lucky kids. Bill, one of the two men who assisted Tom with the rodeo, was her husband. She invited me over for lunch on Sunday so I could meet some of the other islanders.
As for Tom, I saw him in the distance once, on his boat leaving for another rodeo. I stayed well away from the wharf for the rest of the afternoon so I wouldn’t have to talk to him when he returned. I’d had some success in banishing his body from my thoughts, but what if he was at this lunch on Sunday? At least he was unlikely to be naked.
On Saturday there was the excitement of the supplies boat arriving. On Jeff’s instructions I had given Jack a grocery list and a blank check when he brought me over to the island, so I got three more boxes of food and drinkable water, and a letter from Fran. In return I gave Jack my next grocery list and a letter for Fran, and another for my mother, on the other side of the world in the Shetlands. Strange to think Mum and I were both living on remote islands—not a prediction either of us would have made five years earlier. Fran’s letter made me both homesick—they had already had their first snowfall—and happy that I was here in the tropics and not there for the long winter ahead. It brought home how much I missed not having Fran to talk to, although in truth we never talked more than fortnightly when I was in Boston. I couldn’t quite see Violet becoming a soul mate, nice though she was.
I’d just finished reading Fran’s letter when four people—two guys, two gals—showed up at the cabin, large packs on their backs and each carrying a food box. My first campers. I think I disguised the fact that I was a newbie and didn’t have much clue about what my role was other than to show them the campsite and tell them how much it would cost. I asked them how long they were planning on staying and they said they didn’t know, but two weeks at least given they were dependent on the supplies boat to get away. They seemed happy enough, and I left them to it.
At midday on Sunday, I trotted off to Violet’s lunch, carrying a bottle of wine and feeling like an adolescent going to her first teenage party. Whatever would these Aussies make of me? I could hardly be more of a fish out of water.
I was the first to arrive, and Bill was in the process of cleaning his barbecue. He looked about forty, and he told me that he and Violet had been on the island for three years, ever since he’d been made redundant from his job in Sydney. Apart from helping Tom out when he needed it, he and Violet managed a group of four holiday cabins for an absentee owner, and also ran a low-key café in the holiday season. They loved it and intended to stay until the kids had to go to secondary school.
Over the next hour four other guests appeared, including Basil, Ben—the third rodeo man—his partner, Diane, and Pat Anderson, a gray-haired woman who looked as if she might be in her early sixties. Ben and Diane were from England, in their twenties, and working their way around Australia. They had been there since June and planned to stay until April of the next year. Diane was helping Violet with the cabins and Ben was helping Tom. Their real love was scuba diving, and that’s what they talked about most of the time. Pat was a retired teacher. After her husband died a few years earlier she’d decided to live on the island, in their holiday house, permanently. She told me she swam and snorkeled every day, and invited me to join her. I explained I had a writing project that took most of my time and that I wasn’t a swimmer. If you can float, she informed me, you can snorkel, and if you are going to live here, snorkeling is a no-brainer. I smiled and changed the topic to books, another of her passions.
By this time we all had plates piled high with the most delicious seafood I had ever eaten, some of it caught by Bill and some brought along by the other guests. I discovered that there were areas nearby where fishing was permitted, and Bill and Ben both offered to drop me off a fish from time to time. It seemed that the entire permanent island population was there now except for Tom. I could feel myself relaxing and enjoying the balmy air, and the laid-back conversation. I pushed away the little niggle of disappointment. Perhaps he was off island? Perhaps he went back to the mainland with Jack for some reason? I finally managed to bring his absence up in a conversation with Ben about the turtle rodeo.
“Tom seems like he’d be a good person to work with,” I remarked. “Isn’t he into social occasions like this?”
“He’s a bit of a loner, but he’d usually be here, especially if it’s just the locals. He’s not so keen on the tourists. But he’s off on one of the other islands for the next week checking for nesting turtles; they’ve just started coming up.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize the turtles laid on other islands. Are they far away?”
“Depends. There are a few small cays within about two hours from here that Tom goes to regularly.”
“How does he get there? In Jack’s boat?”
“No. He goes in the tinnie we use for the rodeo,” Ben replied.
“Tinnie? What’s that?”
Ben laughed. “That’s what the Aussies call a dinghy.”
“Isn’t that a long way to go in such a small boat?” I asked.
“Not for Tom. He knows what he’s doing. It can be dangerous if the weather gets up, especially in cyclone season, but that’s a few months off yet. Don’t worry, he’ll be safe as houses.”
“Goodness, I’m not concerned. I was just curious, that’s all.” I laughed gaily, and Ben grinned.
“Ah yes, he’s an intriguing fellow, our Tom. A man of mystery.”
OVER THE NEXT WEEK I BEGAN TO FEEL AS IF I BELONGED. I wandered every track on the island, spent a couple of evenings talking with the campers and sharing some beers with them, and stopped by Basil’s house for a cup of tea one morning. He offered to let me check my e-mail, so I did, but found that I could delete all but about six messages without even reading them. Of the six I did read, five were related to leftover university business. The sixth e-mail was from Rachel, telling me she was enjoying her retirement but missed the lab sometimes. Fran knew not to e-mail me here. I logged off with a sigh of relief and a firm decision not to bother with e-mail again. It was too much of a reflection of my sad social life.
One moonlit night, right before high tide—when I had been told that the nesting turtles came up—I walked the beach, and was disappointed when I didn’t see a turtle. I did meet Bill, who was also checking for turtles, and he told me that it was still too early in the nesting season for there to be many. For some reason they started nesting a week or so earlier on some of the uninhabited cays where Tom had gone.
On Thursday morning, Violet, Diane, and Pat appeared with a plate of scones and a banana cake, and said they had come for their gossip group. I was quite overcome. I can’t imagine such generous sharing of friendship happening so easily in Boston, or for that matter in England. My new friends told me they rotated around each other’s houses every Thursday morning, and I was the first American they had ever had in the group. I explained that I was in fact British by birth and upbringing—and I thought by accent—but they said they would overlook this. They stayed for two hours and the conversation never faltered. They talked about books, food, star signs, education, politics, and their families, and drew me into every topic without me noticing. My memoir writing fascinated them, and when I tried to explain, rather unsuccessfully, what the point of it was, they enthusiastically interrupted with their own ideas. They didn’t know what they were talking about, of course, because they didn’t know me and my limitations, but later I wondered if I could write a sort of parallel personal memoir about my life. The problem is—and of course I couldn’t admit this to them—I didn’t have a personal life. That had stopped around the time I completed my PhD.
Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to try. I could write up bits and pieces about my past life, just to see if I could write more creatively. As a kid, I loved to write. So on Saturday, after I had eaten the fish Ben had dropped off earlier, I opened a new Word document and headed it My Life. I thought I’d begin by writing about my friendships at school as a sort of comparison with these easy relationships my new Australian friends shared. Had I always been so bereft of friends? Surely not. By midnight I had had enough of feeling miserable,