Thirteen Pearls (20 page)

We sat together companionably on the beaten-up lounge, our feet propped up on the battered coffee table and watched a DVD that involved a whole lot of people trying to kill one guy who had a secret that could bring down a major company. Original, I know. That's Uncle Red's taste for you. I hadn't been quite so aware of how suffocating his presence had been until he was gone. It was as if we were all able to be bigger, to stretch our arms and legs more, breathe deeper – a dark thunderous cloud had lifted.

Halfway through the DVD, Leon stood, stretched, and left the shed. He was back a few minutes later with a book.

‘Watcha reading?' I asked.

He flashed me the cover.
Toilers of the Sea
by Victor Hugo.

Kaito caught my surprise. ‘Leon came top in his school,' Kaito said. ‘The principal cried when he left.'

Leon glanced up from where he was rifling through the well-thumbed pages. ‘I should never have told you that story. It was tears of joy, mate. Tears of joy.' He turned to me and rolled his eyes. ‘See? Told you we'd already run out of things to say.' He added with a quiet fierceness, ‘I might be a tradie, but I'm not stupid.'

I hadn't thought he was dumb for a minute. But neither had I thought that he was the kind of guy who'd prefer to read a nineteenth-century French novel than watch an action movie.

‘Yep. I'm a Victor Hugo fan.' Leon said through the whirr-click of my brain recalibrating as I struggled to fit this new gem into my assessment of his character. ‘What do you like to read?'

Here's my big confession. Even though I bagged out Tash for never reading, I actually wasn't much of a reader myself. In terms of novels that is. At home, every room was crammed with books, and technically I recognised most of the authors. The house
smelled
of silverfish and dust, it came with the sociopolitical territory. Mum was an unemployed smart person and Dad had discovered reading when he realised he had very little in common with his peers in his one-horse–many-sheep country town. Dad read proper novels incessantly, and Mum always had her nose buried in a sheaf of papers or an obscure clothbound book that was falling apart at the spine.

I had learned to be snobbish about readers and non-readers. I had been taught that I should admire people who had Jane Austen and Dostoevsky and Noam Chomsky on their shelves and feel superior to people who had fat hardcover blockbusters with bright covers that featured author names three times the size of the title.

That meant judging people like Tash's family. They had one tiny little shelf, and, amid a stack of Reader's Digest abridged editions and
That's Life
with half-completed puzzle page, the only two books were
The Da Vinci Code
and
1001
Jokes To Read On The Toilet
. Okay, I made up that last book, but that's where the joke book always was, down near the stack of toilet rolls. In contrast to that puny little shelf, they had an entire DVD and computer games library. Which meant, according to my inherited wisdom, they were trashy. They ate meals Mrs H microwaved in packets and the TV was never ever switched off. But here 's the thing: they were all laid-back. Tash included. She didn't for a moment think she had to do something extraordinary to justify her existence on the planet. Neither did her brothers or her parents. And they were
happy
.

I had always secretly thought of myself as better than people from book-poor backgrounds. But the secret truth was that my preferred reading material was
The Australian Sailor Magazine
and non-fiction accounts of great sailing voyages around the world. I was a fraud – a fraud impressed by Victor Hugo.

‘What's it about?'

‘The sea,' Leon said. ‘And a man who is prepared to sacrifice his life for a woman who doesn't deserve it.'

Ouch. Good thing Kristiana was a hemisphere away.

I changed the subject. ‘What do you guys want to do for Christmas?'

‘We could go over to T.I.?' Leon suggested. ‘Sink a few beers, play some pool.'

Kaito wrinkled his nose. ‘Doubt anything would be open.'

‘Anyway, there 's Aran,' I reminded them.

‘He could play pool,' Leon said. ‘The kid's got good motor coordination skills.'

I pictured the virtual bad guys body-count and winced. ‘We could do something for him here. It'd be great to do a big seafood feast, then we could all go out and scuba dive.'

Leon and Kaito exchanged glances

I added hastily, ‘Or free-dive?'

‘Red would have a fit if he found out we took the boat out for that,' Leon said. ‘But then again . . . what he doesn't know can't hurt him, right?'

‘Right.' I could barely contain my excitement. I hadn't been diving for a couple of months and here were two experienced divers to learn more from. Besides, I was secretly hoping I could find a wild oyster with a pearl inside. Chances of that were probably as good as winning the lottery – well, actually, a little bit better because I didn't have a ticket in the lottery. Ever since Kaito had spoken about his great grandmother, the diving mermaid, I'd been having dreams about collecting treasure from the sea.

From behind the curtain came a wail. The mysterious nightmare had reared again. I said a swift goodnight to the boys and crept in to cuddle Aran back to sleep.

‘Watch it!' I warned Aran as he narrowly missed being donked by a swinging plank of wood. If I didn't give him a job to do soon he'd get bored and that's when he was at his most destructive. But I was balanced in the crook between two branches and it was more dangerous to have him up with me than it was to have him tottering around beneath.

With a sigh, I swung to the ground, landing with a dusty thump. ‘Should we go water the garden?'

Aran nodded so eagerly my heart wrenched. If he 'd been my shadow before Uncle Red had left, for the past three days he 'd stuck to me like chewing gum. Though I'd tried limiting his drinks after dinner and taking him out to wee on the hibiscus just before getting him off to sleep, the bed-wetting was chronic. In IBIS, I'd found nappies for older kids. They were disposable and no doubt responsible for half the landfill in Australia, and while my eco-self was dismayed, when I'd convinced him to wear one, the nappy had been soaked, but nothing else, including me! I was learning that childcare was one long, helpless slide into compromise and forsaking principles for moments of peace (and dry linen).

Aran hadn't liked the nappy and had kicked and screamed while I'd patiently explained that if he could wake up dry he wouldn't have to wear them anymore. And in the meantime it meant I didn't have a lovely bunch of wee-soaked bed sheets to wake up to each morning. It also meant my skin had gone back to smelling more like me – salty, sunlight-soapish and reasonably clean.

The nightmare, whatever it was, happened around about the same time every night. Aran would start to moan, then cry, and then he 'd find his way blindly up to my bed where he'd press against me like a hot water bottle – not what I needed in the muggy tropical heat.

Mum's flaky friend Akasha had four kids and let them sleep with her on a huge king-sized futon. She was always banging on about how sleeping apart has been the greatest social experiment for the past hundred years. Before that, humans always slept in the same spaces, just like any herd animal. She said it was unnatural to put a baby or small child in another room at night. Which made sense. Only I was completely grossed out after Mum told me Akasha had also breastfed her oldest kid until it was four . . .

In a way, it suited me that Aran needed someone with him at night, because it gave me the perfect excuse not to have to sleep in Kaito's tent, which might have been expected now that Red was away and there was only Leon to judge us.

Aran pressed the hose nozzle into my hand. I found the other end, attached it to the tank and turned it on. I scraped back the sheet of iron that formed the gate and Aran trotted proudly along our meagre rows of plantings that had struggled to life as flimsy sprouts.

As I watched him watering the plants, making sure he didn't accidentally trample anything, my thoughts turned to Kaito. It was confusing – I honestly didn't know how I felt about him. He was so . . . elusive. I felt as if I couldn't get to the heart of who he was. It was almost as if all emotions slipped off his flawless skin, flowing around him like a rock in a stream. Did he absorb anything? Or was he empty? Secretly, I hoped for a more passionate demonstration of his need for me, but he remained calm and steady as ever.

Once, I'd broken away when were kissing and asked, ‘How would you feel if I wasn't here?' (Subtext: would you miss me?)

‘The same as before,' he 'd said.

That was
it
? I knew it wasn't worth getting all hoity about it because it wasn't as if I was pining for him either when he was down at the plant, washing off oysters and cleaning the racks. But the whole thing just seemed too
convenient
. For both of us. I liked the way he touched me, but then I liked getting massages too (especially from Akasha, who was a
lomi lomi
masseur).

The main problem with being stuck on a tiny island was that it made little things big. Every single thing that happened or didn't happen seemed hugely significant
because nothing else
was happening
. There was so little that was new in each day and there was no escape beyond one hundred metres, where the ocean lapped like a watery prison wall.

A boat was like a tiny island as well, of course. But there was one critical difference – a boat was a tiny island that
moved
.

My thoughts were turning round and round in circles. I blamed it on the heat. Not dry desert heat, but more like the heat we got in Cairns – one hundred percent humidity where the air was like a hot doggy tongue. Overhead the clouds glowered, but never delivered the longed-for rain.

When Leon loped over to take Aran fishing off the new jetty, I sought out my special mangrove spot and sat on the crumbling concrete jetty, dangling my toes in as baby shark bait and welcoming the shady canopy's soothing magic. I was restless, bored. I'd crested my learning curve and I craved a new challenge.

I wished I could be more like Tash and her family or Uncle Bill and Aunty Sally, chilled out and happy to flow with whatever the day did or didn't bring. I wished I could groove with
ailan tim
. But I was starting to chafe. Aran's present was almost finished, I had the cooking and cleaning under control, I had explored every single inch of the island and I wanted
something to happen
.

That something I yearned for so desperately came two days before Christmas. I'd been snappy with Kaito when he dumped tea leaves in
my
sink and didn't wash them down the drain, had narrowly restrained myself from slapping Aran after he 'd emptied a jar of instant coffee on the clean washing, and had almost bitten off Leon's head when he'd innocently asked what was for lunch . . .

‘You need to get out of here,' announced Leon. ‘Time to go diving.' He turned to Kaito. ‘Kaito, you lazy bugger, I'm going to take Edie out diving this afternoon. Yours is the only wetsuit that'll fit her. Can you look after Aran?'

Kaito didn't look pleased, but after glancing at my face, he nodded.

‘C'mon then, Edie,' Leon said. ‘Don't worry about lunch. Don't want to get cramp. You right to wear Kaito's wetsuit?

I nodded.

‘Cool. I'll go load in the tanks.'

Motoring out onto the grey sea, I felt a rush of relief and exhilaration at moving again. This time, I noted that Leon had tucked a spare jerry can under his seat and there were snorkel sets as well as the wetsuits and masks and flippers. He sped the tinny away from Thirteen Pearls until the island glimmered in the distance.

‘This is one of the best bits of untouched reef,' Leon said, cutting the motor. There was a long scraping sound as he gathered up the chain and hurled the anchor over the side. ‘Top insider secret. One of my T.I. mates let me in on it.'