On a Starlit Ocean

by Charlotte Nash

  “This is your group now, E. You’ll do great. Give me a call when you’re through the agenda. We’ll talk.”

  He turned.

  “Wait. There’s something else.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t flake out on me now, Erin. I’m late.”

  “I have a condition for doing this,” she rushed out. “Non-negotiable.”

  That stopped him, though he slowly smiled. “You have a condition? Would it involve a private dinner and candles?”

  Erin ignored him. “This pilot race. I want to be in it.”

  “You’re on the organising committee.”

  “No, I want to race. None of this office stuff is worth it for me if I can’t be out on the water.” She’d known that for sure the moment she’d described the course; she could already feel the salt water spray on her face, the adrenaline running hot through her body.

  “You’re expecting me to put up a boat and crew, too?”

  “Nope,” she said. “My yacht, my crew.”

  “What crew? And that yacht of yours isn’t racing material.”

  Erin bristled. “She is. And the crew’s my affair.”

  Tristan narrowed his eyes. “How are we supposed to run things on the day if my Racing Director is out on the water?”

  “That’s your problem,” she shot back. And suddenly, this seemed as familiar as all those years ago, when they’d fought, and often ended up in bed afterwards. The way Tristan was staring at her now, all heat in his eyes, she wondered if that was what he was thinking, too.

  “All right,” he said slowly, “I’ll let you race, but you owe me a dinner. Agreed?”

  “After the pilot race.”

  He slowly shook his head, a smile growing on his face. “And you think you’re not cut out for business. You’re a woman of surprises, Erin Jacobs.”

  With that, he winked and pushed through the gate, leaving Erin to bring her breath under control before she went back to the meeting. The idea of sailing had gotten her blood pumping, it was true, but it was also Tristan. That was what she remembered from when they’d been together: he’d always had power, even before he owned this huge company, and that was exciting – like a twenty-five knot wind pushing in the sails, flying across the water.

  Right against the edge of falling over.

  Travers’ cabin was dark later when she walked up the front steps, and she would have assumed he was out, but for the front door being cracked open. She stuck her head inside and found the place empty.

  “Hello?”

  “Up here,” he called.

  She tipped her head back and finally found him three-quarters of the way up the nearest coconut palm. “What in merry hell are you doing?”

  “What do you think. Attempting to get a coconut. One fell down yesterday and it was great after a night in my fridge.”

  “So you were after more?”

  “As you see.”

  “Why aren’t you moving then?”

  “Can’t,” he said shortly. “Seems I’m good enough to climb this far, but no further. It’s pretty hard, you know.”

  Erin, who had climbed the palms plenty as a kid, knew how difficult it was and was impressed such a big man had made it so far. “Can’t get down, can you?” she called.

  “That part will take care of itself one way or another.”

  She laughed. “You want me to call the fire volunteers? They have a ladder.”

  “Hell, no. But you might need to call Alex after I break my neck. Now, move off the soft sand and turn your back.”

  “What?”

  “I said, turn your back.”

  Erin complied, still laughing, and after a good deal of swearing, grunting, and finally a thud that scattered sand up the backs of her legs, she turned around to find Travers dusting himself off.

  “Any damage?”

  “Skinned hand, mild ankle sprain and deep wound to pride. Might need stitches,” he said. “Want a beer?”

  Erin accepted, figuring it was the best way to put Travers in a receptive mood, and pulled herself onto his porch railing. Travers retrieved her a beer, but for himself pulled a roll of strapping tape from the huge medical kit stowed by his front door.

  “Really looks like you know what you’re doing,” she said, watching him loop a strip down the outside of his leg, around his heel and back up the same side.

  “I have bad joints,” he said. “Had surgery on my ankle, a knee and a shoulder. Strapping tape and me are mighty familiar.”

  “Alex said you were in the army,” she said, easing towards her objective.

  “Corporal in the infantry for ten years,” Travers said, chucking away the tape roll and reaching for the Dettol. “Then a medic for five more after that.”

  “No experience on yachts, then?”

  “Not unless you want me to shoot at one.” He looked up suddenly, a new idea on his face. “Should have thought of that for the coconuts.”

  “Gus sells hooked poles for coconuts. I’ll buy you one,” Erin said. “But back to yachts: do you know which end is the bow and which is the stern?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What do you want, Erin Jacobs?”

  Erin sipped her beer. “Looking for some crew.”

  He laughed heartily, until he dripped neat Dettol onto his hand and winced. “Me, on a yacht? I said army, not navy. Besides, I thought you were leaving the island.”

  “Maybe I’m not, just yet.”

  He shook his head, but she saw the interested glint in his eye. “You heard me mention my lousy joints?”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Does it pay anything?”

  She smiled sweetly. “If we win.”

  Travers got up and limped into the cabin, returning with his own beer. “Who else is going to be on this boat? Not that dick, Tristan?”

  Erin frowned. “What’d he do to you?”

  Travers shrugged. “I like this place the way it is. He’s a developer. Some things shouldn’t change.”

  “Most of the island would disagree,” she said. “But no, actually. I was going to persuade Skye.”

  She watched for his reaction. And there it was, that little dip of his eyes. So, she hadn’t been seeing things at the dance.

  “She probably hasn’t been on a boat in years,” Erin said slowly, calculating. “She might need help. Or, and this is probably likely, she’ll take over schooling you like the good teacher she is.”

  Travers gave her a hard look. “Yeah, okay. I’m in.”

  By the time Alex had finished the patient list the next day, another bank of cloud had rushed across the sky, and it was dark enough for dusk. Surprised to find it was only two in the afternoon, Alex went down to the dunes with the island map in his hand. Sandy had tried to convince him to come down to the hall, where the village committee was organising events to coincide with the pilot race, but Alex had a more pressing destination in mind. Besides – and he wouldn’t have admitted this to anyone – he knew Erin would not be at the hall. She was down at the old resort every day, working long hours for Tristan apparently. Patient gossip had brought that news, and it was stirring an envious finger in his gut.

  He stopped at the store to buy sunglasses, then struck out along the main beach, one eye trained on the tip of Bella’s Leap. There was no one there today, but ever since he’d had that imagined glimpse of her, he felt the lure of the rock, as it had obviously lured Helmut.

  At the end of the main beach, instead of turning inland to the pathways, Alex climbed across the rocky shore that ringed the base of the cliff. The tide was still way out, leaving pools of clear water and darting fish. Beyond that was the oyster line, the purple shells wet and glistening.

  He picked his way across the large boulders, hugging the coast. He breathed air wet with salt and the freshness of the approaching storm, enjoying the pure rush of freedom. Around the headland peak, the rocks became flat mesas. Alex looked up. The cliff face was pale like bone. He was right under the Leap here, the very t
op grey as the clouds. But still, he didn’t see Bella. He really must have imagined her last time. The mind was so suggestible.

  He went on, through a miniature bay of white sand, and around the next headland, after which a longer beach went on and on to a distant rocky point. At the start of that beach was where he found the path, beaten down the hillside.

  He climbed, and before half-way up, caught sight of an iron rooftop, level with the trees on the ledge above. Ten minutes later, his nose raw from the salty air, Alex burst from the trees beside a hexagonal hut, its huge windows facing out to sea.

  Helmut appeared in the open doorway, paintbrush in hand. “Dr Alex,” he said, beckoning, as though expecting Alex all along.

  Inside the studio, the walls were three-deep in canvases, and others rested on easels, placed around the rotunda at different angles to the sea. Many paintings reflected those angles, but the greatest number were of Bella’s Leap. Alex recognised the view instantly as the same one from the painting at the hospital’s charity auction. From here, the real Leap was a striking, window-filling headland, framed with the sea, the sky, and the distant smaller islets. Helmut had a fresh canvas out, the primer still shining, and a beaten box of brushes and paint tubes on a low table alongside.

  “You choose a good time for painting,” Helmut said, rubbing his hands and nodding towards the Leap, which was luminous under the dark clouds. Alex was struck by the weirdness of the light, the way the heavy sky fought the afternoon sun, washing the whiteness of the cliff face into pale lemon yellow.

  “You paint this view so often,” Alex said, coming to watch as the artist chose a brush and began blocking the cliff’s shadows in pale grey strokes.

  “She is my muse,” Helmut said, with a flourish towards the cliff. “No one else would live up here with the storms. But I never want to be far from her.”

  “Who’s your muse?” came a woman’s voice.

  Alex turned to find Stella, as flamboyant as she had been on the plane, leaning in a doorway between the stacks of canvases. She had a cocktail glass pinched between two fingers, her other hand playing with the drape of her filmy yellow kaftan.

  “We have a visitor,” Helmut said, not pausing between brushstrokes.

  “Ah, the dashing Dr Bell,” she said with a dazzling smile. “I’ve been hoping you’d visit us. I’m Helmut’s other muse. Not that he’ll admit it.” She winked, seeming utterly unoffended with Helmut’s preoccupation. “Now, you’re looking much better than when I last saw you. White as a sheet, he was, Helmut. I thought he was going to bring up his lunch all over the aisle of the plane.”

  “I do not like the flying either,” Helmut put in, his attention still on the painting. “Planes, they are no good. Better to be on the sea.”

  Or on land, Alex thought, as Stella squeezed his arm.

  “Now, come with me darling. He’s going to be working a while. I’ll fix you a drink and we can watch at a safe distance. He thinks he’s going to see her today.”

  “Who?”

  “Isabella. Now, come.”

  Goosebumps prickled Alex’s arms as he followed Stella into the kitchen at the back of the rotunda, a partition wall separating it from the studio.

  “You must have seen Bella before,” Alex said, as Stella drew unlabelled bottles out of the freezer and filled a fresh glass with clinking ice.

  “Once,” she said. “I think. But that might have been the gin talking.”

  More ice and clear liquid splashed into a cocktail shaker, followed by a good slug of juice that smelled of passionfruit.

  “Can you tell me Bella’s story?”

  Stella’s hand paused on the way to the glass. “Oh, we don’t talk about that. It’s bad luck.”

  Alex was soon back out in the gallery, where Stella installed them both in deck chairs, to the side of Helmet’s workspace where they could see, but not impede the artist’s view. From here, the floor to ceiling glass made Alex feel he was sitting on the edge of the cliff, nothing to prevent a fall but the thin floor beneath. Surreptitiously, he inched his chair back.

  “Helmut paints best when the weather is coming in,” Stella whispered. “He says ‘beauty is what is seen in the tempest’.”

  “This is true,” Helmut murmured. “And also, the light is better. See, I show you.”

  He put down his brush and paced to the shelves, where he pulled a finished canvas from the rack. It was a picture of a yacht, red-hulled, sailing under blue skies on a perfect blue ocean, tiny white caps on the waves, the crew proud and carefree as they manned their stations. Every line was immaculate, the work of a master. “Yes, you see it?”

  “Yes. Wonderful.”

  Helmut shook his head, and held up a finger. The canvas disappeared and another took its place. It was the same boat, though Alex didn’t realise that at first because the palate was muted, the red hull a dark streak of blood in the midst of a black storm. The sky was a mass of clouds, the waves towering, the rain driving down from sunless heavens. And now, the crew were hunkered in their shining oilskins, soaked and desperate. A sail was torn, another about to tear free, a sailor’s hand reaching for its rope, forever captured a moment too late. Another man crouched too close to the railing as a wave rose from behind, ready to wash him overboard. Alex felt the dread punch him in the chest like the blow from a heavyweight. These sailors were fighting for their lives.

  “Yes, you see,” Helmut said. “This is where the work of life is. In the storm, in the broken and desperate times. That is where there is strength, and transformation.”

  Alex blinked, and then the canvas was gone, and Helmut was back at the easel, working as before.

  Stella smiled and took Alex’s arm. Alex was caught between watching Helmut – the tension in his arms as he laid paint down, the picture emerging from nothing – and the gathering darkness outside. The storm was a clean band of ink black cloud now, which had covered the daylight and was raising white peaks far out on the sea. And then he saw the sails.

  “Someone’s out there,” he said, as Helmut’s strokes became more furious.

  “Ah, Erin,” Stella said. “You see that Helmut? Just like old times.”

  The painter grunted, dragging his brush through a puddle of Prussian blue. Alex peered down at the yacht, its sails tight with stormy air. He could see a single figure on the deck, behind the wheel. Definitely Erin. Alex took a slug of his drink to quench his dry mouth, trying to estimate how far she was from the rain front.

  “God, that’s strong,” he said, coughing as the fiery fruit mix burned across his tongue.

  Stella patted his arm. “Sorry love, but what’s the point of being up here if you can’t make a decent drink. It’s not like we have to go anywhere. And it helps with the worldly cares.”

  “How fast will that storm come in?” he asked, as memories of kissing Erin on the resort roof dragged themselves before him.

  “Oh, she’ll make it back, don’t worry,” Stella said. “The front’s a while out and Erin’s first home was always out there. Probably needs to blow off some steam now she’s working for Tristan Drummond. Can you believe it?”

  Stella’s eyes sparkled, as if this was the juiciest piece of gossip for a long while.

  “Erin knows this water better than anyone,” Helmut said, as the yacht slipped out of view.

  Despite Alex’s thundering heart, the drink did seem to help. By the time he was half-way down the glass, he’d shuffled his chair as close to the window as his knees would allow, watching the waves crashing into the rocks under Bella’s Leap with increasing power. Erin had long disappeared into the main bay. Outside, the trees were bending under the wind gusts, the whine of it howling around the hut. The first drops that splattered into the glass sounded like pebbles. Alex glanced at Helmut and found the artist had stilled, his body tense as he stared towards the headland. Before him, the picture glistened.

  “What’s he doing?” Alex asked.

  “Waiting for her.”

  It mus
t have been the drink, because Alex found himself watching too. The closer the storm came, the more the cliff became its own place, like a tower divorced from the island, a pinnacle of land in the boiling sea and sky.

  When the storm finally broke, the rain lashed down in great waves against the glass. Helmut continued to work, though Alex had no idea what the painter was seeing through the deluge. Alex finished his glass; or he thought he did. When he next picked it up, he found it full again. Time seemed fluid and slippery.

  Finally, the storm began to pass over them, leaving a tail of cloud that shifted from grey to apricot, leaving a washed sunset behind. Water dripped from the eaves, and he could hear it still rushing through the gutters, more drops showering down as the wind tossed the trees dry. The air smelled of clean loam.

  Helmut was cleaning brushes, muttering to himself, the canvas still incomplete, especially the detail atop the cliff.

  “He doesn’t finish if he doesn’t see her,” Stella whispered, collecting the empty glass.

  Alex tried to stand and abruptly realised he was very drunk. He had to put a hand out to the chair to avoid toppling over.

  “Best storm in a long while,” Helmut said, finally glancing at Alex. “But maybe she doesn’t like visitors.”

  “I’m sorry to deter the muse,” Alex said, but Helmut waved it away.

  “No, she comes when she comes. I wait, I wait.”

  “And I should go,” Alex said, then he realised he really had no idea how to find his way back, especially half-cut. The inland paths were completely unlit, and there was no way he should be climbing over the rocks in his current state. He’d never be heard from again.

  “You could always stay here,” Stella said.

  “Patients in the morning,” he said, squinting out into the night.

  Stella grabbed a lantern. “That’s what I thought you’d say. I’ll show you the way back to the main beach.”

  So Alex followed into the gloomy bush, all sound hushed after the storm, water still dripping into his hair. He had no idea how Stella was navigating; the lantern only lit a puddle a few metres wide. But after fifteen minutes heading gently downhill, he heard waves lapping, and she brought him out at the end of the main beach. The old resort crouched just to the north, hidden in the darkness, while the lights of the village invited him at the far end of the sand.