On a Starlit Ocean

by Charlotte Nash

  “Anaemia can sneak up,” he said. “And there’s a couple of tests I’d like to do to make sure there’s nothing sinister going on.”

  “Like bowel cancer?”

  Alex ghosted a smile. “Of course. I shouldn’t forget how many years you worked in the surgery. But yes, I’d like to rule that out. And we should talk about your diet.”

  Anna sighed. “I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time. I suppose with the way food supply is on the island, that might be some of the problem.”

  “Can’t be helping. Has iron deficiency been a problem for you before?”

  “Never. Barely needed a doctor my whole life.”

  Alex made a note, resisting the urge to ask Anna about Erin. He was still ripping himself for how he’d behaved the other night, and desperate to apologise. But he needed to remain professional, and something about Anna still concerned him.

  “Mrs Jacobs, I don’t know how to say this delicately, but I know your husband’s passing must have been incredibly hard. And now my being here and opening the practice again, it might be dragging up memories. It’s not uncommon to feel depressed, even years afterward. I know Skye and Erin are worried.”

  Anna glanced out the window and Alex saw the tears shine in her eyes, before she blinked and faced him again. “They’re good girls. Even if they are very different. I thank you for your concern, Dr Bell. But things are as they are. Now, I imagine you’d like me to take a supplement?”

  It wasn’t until Alex returned to the clinic to file Anna’s test results that he remembered the blood work reports he’d found two weeks ago. They showed anaemia, too.

  He frowned. Anna had been adamant she’d never had this issue before. Surely she wouldn’t have forgotten? He scanned over the header, printed in faded dot-matrix ink. All it gave was Dr Jacobs’s details, no patient.

  Then with a jolt, Alex realised the doctor’s name was printed in the patient box.

  So, these weren’t Anna’s results. These were Dr Jacobs’s blood tests. Anaemia, and elevated blood glucose.

  Alex was still mulling on this the next morning as he wandered down the main beach. The day was bright, Bella’s Leap a clear outline against a sky stuffed with white clouds, a stiff breeze announcing good sailing weather. To cement the fact, two new boats had appeared, and he spotted a racing crew in matching shirts at the end of the jetty, downing coffees and laughing. Alex, who’d been hoping to run into Erin, or chance another visit to her yacht to apologise, noting that her boat was moored further out, unreachable unless he dragged a kayak down from the old water sports hut. In its place at the jetty was a forty-foot racing yacht, blazoned with Drummond Industries logos on the hull.

  Alex abruptly realised the crew at the end of the jetty were Tristan’s, and a moment too late he realised the man himself was there among them, one foot up on the railing, an expensive weather-beater vest over his racing skins.

  “It’s the fine doctor,” declared Tristan, jumping down and jogging over. The man seemed in high spirits, but Alex hadn’t forgotten his visit to the mainland hospital, or Travers’ opinion, or Erin’s distress.

  “Mr Drummond,” he said carefully, accepting the handshake, which Tristan held a fraction too long.

  “Out for a walk?” he asked, the question pointed, something glittering in his eyes. “Come and meet my crew.”

  Alex found himself being introduced around the group of men, clearly all professional sailors, who likely staffed Tristan’s racer year-round, delivering it wherever he wanted it. Alex had known plenty of sailors like them when he’d been in the club scene. Easy-going, until the competition was hot, and then they became ruthless with a tendency to hard drinking. Among them, Tristan stood out like Bella’s Leap against the sky.

  “We’re just heading out for a light training run around the island,” Tristan was now saying. “You should join us, Doctor. Best way to see the place.”

  The others mostly smiled at him at this point, even as Alex’s stomach was diving into the waves near their feet. Screw you, Tristan. Alex hadn’t been on a moving sailing vessel in years. Tristan couldn’t have known that, but he did know Alex’s history. And clearly, he was getting just the reaction he’d wanted.

  “Oh, no thanks,” Alex said quickly. “I’m just on my way to breakfast.”

  “Well, no problems there,” Tristan said, pointing at one of the crew, who found a spare breakfast pie from Sandy’s. “We’ve got you sorted. And you’ll love it. You used to race up north, right?”

  Tristan’s carefully constructed comment plucked the nerve it was no doubt meant to. The man knew what had happened up north.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. Some small voice inside him said that he could just walk away, that he could say he had to be on the ferry back to the mainland in a few hours, ready for his five days of night shifts. But Alex knew the hot current that was burning in him now wouldn’t allow him to walk away. Not from this man who’d once been with Erin. Someone then put a coffee flavoured milk in Alex’s hand. He glanced at the label; he was pretty sure it was a company Tristan had some kind of stake in: certainly it wasn’t a brand that Sandy usually stocked.

  “Not intimidated are you?” Tristan asked, pausing for just a second, before he said, “Because I know we’ve got a mean reputation, but there’s really nothing to be worried about.”

  And there, in this stupid schoolyard situation in front of men he didn’t even know, Alex found himself cracking the milk, and slamming it back. It was cold, just like the fear coating his heart. He didn’t want to feel that way any more.

  “Lead on, then,” he said.

  They broke the edge of the bay fifteen minutes later, running under two sails, the wind across their beam. Alex took one sidelong look at Bella’s Leap, pulled on a life vest, then focused his attention back on the boat. At first, Tristan had tried to send him forward to the mast, but even the crew recognised that Alex’s lack of familiarity with the boat was hardly helpful. So Alex came back to the pit, manning a winch, which put him right under Tristan’s scrutiny from behind the helm.

  “Going to wear that pansy life jacket the whole time?” asked Tristan jovially at one point. Alex ignored him.

  He was probably imagining things, but Tristan seemed to put them through harder tacks than necessary, delighting in the spray, flirting with the danger marker that stood of the end of Bella’s Leap.

  Delighting, perhaps, in Alex’s discomfort.

  Alex kept himself very quiet, focusing all his attention on what was in front of him. He knew his face was white and that he was unable to respond to the questions or banter the other crew tried to start up with him. Instead, he watched the jib, trimming it each time they corrected course, or the wind shifted, so that even Tristan had nothing to complain about. Two of the crew patted him on the shoulder.

  So, it really was like riding a bike.

  Except it wasn’t, not really. He might know the moves, but the feel of the boat provoked such polar emotions in him, from remorse to longing. He’d never imagined that his first time back on the water would be like this, so exhilarating and yet so poisoned. The only thing holding him together was pure, belligerent machoism. He wouldn’t give Tristan the satisfaction.

  What seemed an endless time later, Alex only conscious of the way the sun had shifted around them, they pulled within the bay’s shelter and the crew were up and madly dropping the sails.

  “How was that then?” Tristan asked, still looking like a cologne commercial at the helm.

  Alex shrugged. “Maybe next time we’ll get a decent wind.”

  He hoped that Tristan couldn’t see how much the nonchalance had cost him.

  They were almost to the jetty when Tristan shifted position, pretending to adjust the motor revs. “And how was Erin last night?”

  Alex met Tristan’s eyes the implication crackling between them like blue fire. “Anna’s doing fine, now,” Alex said. “Anything more is private.”

  Tristan straighten
ed. “No such thing on the island,” he said. “But I’ve been meaning to say, that change in position we spoke about a while back isn’t available anymore. I figured since I hadn’t heard, you weren’t interested in being here full-time.”

  Alex had no intention of changing the arrangement, especially not with this man. He clamped his molars. “That’s fine.”

  “Pity,” Tristan said, as they pulled into the dock. “So many better things on the island. You take care, Dr Bell.”

  In another time and place, Alex would have dropped the guy in the ocean. At school, he’d been a boxer, and he’d never lost the slug in his right hook. But he’d done too much work these last years to forget there would be no satisfaction in doing it in front of the crew, and much as it killed him, Erin was far from his to fight over.

  “You too, Tristan.”

  Sunday afternoon, Erin stretched her aching back as Travers and Skye flaked the mainsail, both of them subdued after their three-hour training run.

  “That’s it, I’m out,” Skye declared, the moment the sail cover was on.

  “You can’t go yet – we still have to plan the next one.”

  “Erin, I need to prepare classes for tomorrow. So unless you’re going to start paying, you can drop by later and tell me the plan. I’m already in this beyond what I agreed.”

  “Fine,” muttered Erin, as Skye’s long legs made an exit along the jetty, Travers watching her go.

  “Hey, no slacking off,” Erin snapped at him, knowing she was being unfair.

  “Give it a rest, E. Even you have to admit that was a hard run.”

  Erin relented. Around the north of the island the wind had been screaming in at twenty knots, the waves white-tipped. They’d all had to work hard to stay on course, to keep the yacht level as they smashed through the swell. They’d managed, but Erin worried about the actual race when Travers would be completing the land-leg and it would just be Skye and Erin on the water. That would be tough if the conditions were like today.

  That wasn’t the only concern. Erin glanced at Travers, who was now slinging the jib sheets into tidy bundles and looping them over the hatch winches. She had no doubts after their time mapping the course that he had skills in navigation, but he was also damaged in his joints, which even he admitted was a disadvantage.

  “What?” he asked, glancing up at her from his last rope. Erin stopped staring and reached for the instrument covers. She should only be proud of what they’d pulled together in so short a time, in no small part because Travers didn’t do things by halves. When she looked back, he had taken up a piece of old rope and was practicing knots. Erin went below and dug two beers out of her ice box.

  “Still working?” she asked him, sitting beside him against the cabin and offering the beer. Travers took it, but set it aside as he finished the loop of a bowline.

  “Skye said there’s going to be a test tomorrow,” he said with a grin.

  “You know she’s kidding about that.”

  Travers leaned back, retrieving the beer. “She really isn’t. She set me an exam in points of sail yesterday.”

  “Spending some time together, then?”

  Travers tipped his beer at her, but said nothing. Instead, he squinted across the bay to where Tristan’s pleasure yacht and racing yacht were anchored alongside each other.

  “How’s things in the evil empire?” Travers asked.

  Erin detected that same simmering resentment again.

  “What’d he do to you, Travers?”

  A pause. “Nothing personal. It’s the island, the resort. The whole thing is one big dodge. What, don’t tell me you didn’t know?” he added, when Erin frowned.

  “I don’t have anything to do with the resort development,” she said.

  “But surely there’s talk?”

  Erin shrugged. “We’ve been on tight schedules. Tristan has all the meetings about the development and most of them are back on the mainland. I’ve really no idea. Why, what do you know?”

  Travers’ mouth was working now, as though his beer suddenly tasted sour. He flicked his eyes from Tristan’s boats to Erin.

  “There still something between you and Tristan?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, loyalty-wise. You still on his side about all this stuff?”

  “Travers, what do you know?”

  He tipped his head to the side. “How familiar are you with the reefs around the island?”

  The question took Erin by surprise. She’d been a sailor all her life; reefs were underwater hazards, like rocks, but beyond that she’d never had any interest. She’d been snorkelling a few times as a kid, but never dived. She’d always been too ready to get back under sail.

  “I know not to run into them,” she admitted.

  Travers shook his head. “Thought as much. There’s fifteen different reefs around the island, not including the one on the wreck off the east point. I did a bunch of surveys for a university study earlier this year. They are some of the most brilliant hard coral formations I’ve ever seen, and the marine life ... there’s some species here that the academics are excited about. Things they haven’t seen before.”

  “If that’s true, how come we’re not inundated with diving tourists?”

  “Probably because the island does a shit job of marketing itself. Well, that and the diving’s hard like the sailing is. The currents are tricky. You need light to see the colours, because the reefs are fairly deep. Did you know you lose colours of light as you dive down?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Progressively up the rainbow. Red disappears first. So if you cut yourself deep under, blood looks green. Cool huh?”

  Erin swallowed. “I guess.”

  Travers grinned, but it quickly disappeared. “You ever wonder why the previous owners of the resort never developed it like Tristan’s trying to?”

  “Island businesses always have problems making the economics work.”

  Travers snorted. “That’s not it. All of them had problems getting approval. Everyone wants to build a huge resort, put a marina in, things like that. And that means pollution, run-off. It all ends up out in the water. So why, suddenly, does Tristan get around that? I’m no bleeding heart hippy, Erin, but there’s something dodgy going on when three previous plans all got shut down for environmental concerns, and Tristan’s goes through.”

  “Maybe he’s done other things to compensate. Recycling or something.”

  Travers raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, maybe.”

  They sat in silence drinking beers as the light faded to blue, and the first scent of fish and chips cooking came down on the breeze. Erin’s stomach growled, but her attention was on the resort as it faded through sunset into the island’s green. The old restaurant wing with its roof terrace was just visible against the darkening hills. It seemed an age since she’d been up there with Alex.

  As if Travers could hear her thought, he said, “So what happened with the doctor?”

  “What are we doing next, brushing each other’s hair?”

  Travers laughed. “It could do with a cut actually, if you’re offering. But the guy goes off yesterday with hardly a word after moping around for a week. Not too many things put a man in that frame of mind. Believe me, I’ve had some experience.”

  “What did he say?” Erin said, annoyed Alex might have confided in Travers.

  “He’s not one to talk. But it’s hard to hide a man walking down a jetty in the morning back to his own house.”

  Erin punched him in the arm, her cheeks burning. She stood. “Come on, then. Help me move back off the jetty.”

  “Nope,” Travers said. “First, I’m going to buy you dinner. That chip smell is driving me nuts, and we need to talk about the race plan. You’ll have the perfect opportunity to start a new rumour.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, the rumour about you and me’s already done the rounds,” Erin said, thinking of Tristan’s comments a few weeks ago. “Though I do admire your work ethic.”


  “It’s not entirely altruistic,” Travers said, climbing over the railing and down onto the jetty. “You have a bad habit of waking me up early in the morning for this stuff. I’m just trying to avoid that tomorrow.”

  As she went to bed later that night, Erin couldn’t help staring out at the ocean surface, glassy and starlit in the night. She’d never thought much about what was under it before, or about the resort redevelopment. It wasn’t her department. But she had seen the reality of what went into to organising a regatta – the iceberg of work and plans and workarounds that stretched under the visible tip. And now, she wondered what the resort was hiding beneath its glossy-brochure surface.

  Chapter 19

  By Wednesday, Tristan had rejoined the meetings, and seemed in a much better mood. Skye had returned from the potential sponsor’s dinner the night before in great excitement over details she couldn’t talk about. So it was clear that while Erin had been moved from the inner circle, whatever calamity had been bearing on Tristan’s mind last week seemed to have passed. He was back to the Tristan who’d come to the town meeting: confident, reassuring, ready to conquer the world. The whole racing team played off his energy, and they soon had achievements to celebrate. Two more high-profile teams had signed on for the land-sea race, the cable channel was keen to broadcast again, and a chandlery had taken up one of the lower tier sponsorships.

  “Not a Rolex-level deal, but that’s progress,” Tristan said.

  Erin shifted in her seat, uneasy. A week ago, he’d have chastised them for not upselling. His change of mood made no sense to her, but no one else seemed to notice. Maybe she was imagining it.

  Or maybe it was just that Alex was due back tomorrow, and she couldn’t think straight after their argument.

  “We have less than two weeks,” Tristan said, finishing up. “Our courses are set down, and we have a good long-range weather forecast. Patrick Donnelly’s on board to sponsor this time around, but we need to convince him to commit for the long-haul. Now his divorce is behind him, he’s looking for distraction and he has the time, so let’s make sure we don’t give him any reason to doubt the future of this place. Okay, that’s it. Work hard, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”