On a Starlit Ocean

by Charlotte Nash

  Tristan shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But that’s the fun of it. When Erin and I were teenagers, we used to do it all the time. Take a boat out around to the north, and then race the storm back in. Exhilarating. Erin would be cheering her head off.”

  Tristan laughed, but he kept his eye on Alex, as if daring him to imagine the pair of them sailing together. Alex felt his stomach close like a fist, even aware Tristan might be goading him. He imagined the two of them in one small boat, Erin carefree and bold, her hair flying in the breeze, racing the storm.

  “Those were the days,” Tristan went on. “She’s an amazing sailor, amazing woman. Don’t you think?”

  Now Alex knew Tristan was looking for a fight. That he was a cocky bastard, and in a moment he was going to find something really explosive to say, and hope that Alex threw the first punch. Alex could feel the familiar anger boiling up inside him, the kind that he’d had no control over after the accident. A few years back, Tristan would already have been on the ground with a broken jaw. And then Alex would soon be packing his bags off the island and probably heading to court.

  That Alex was in the past, but the challenge couldn’t go unanswered. Erin was in the middle. Alex knew that if he failed to face-off this time, Tristan wouldn’t forget it.

  Tristan gave him a sly smile. “Not afraid of a little storm, are you Dr Bell?”

  Oh, that old nugget. It sounded so trite and ridiculous. And yet, Tristan’s delivery – backed with all his power and influence – gave the schoolyard taunt new dimensions. It wasn’t just about the sail and the storm. It was about Alex’s career, and Erin, and what he was prepared to stand up for. Alex tamped down the rage just enough, so that he could feel it throbbing in his fingertips.

  “Lead the way,” he said, and followed Tristan up the jetty.

  Chapter 23

  An hour later, and Erin’s flight would have been cancelled because of the storm. As she walked off the tarmac, the pilot was already taxiing the plane around at the end of the runway, about to push off back to the mainland before the weather could break. The north sky was a growing mass of thick cloud, the air heavy. Erin could smell it in the high parts of her nose: it was going to be a bad one.

  She expected to see Alex waiting at the terminal hut, but no one was there. Ten minutes later when she knocked on the door of the clinic, she found it deserted. By then, the wind was whipping sand off the paths. It stung her legs as she turned the corner, and found Sandy pulling down the shutters at the bakery. She could hear Tim calling out for Monster somewhere behind the dunes.

  “Going to be a wild one,” Sandy called. “Your boat still tied on the jetty?”

  “No, I moved it off yesterday,” Erin said. “Have you seen Alex?”

  “Went up the hill to see Helmut after the clinic. Thought he’d be back by now. Maybe he’s staying up there for the storm.”

  “Okay.” Erin swung to look towards Bella’s Leap, frowning. Alex had said he’d meet her, but if he’d been checking on Helmut, it made sense he might stay up there.

  Just then, Tim burst out from the side of the bakery, fringe askew, a dog lead swinging from one hand. “Have you seen Monster?” he asked, and chewed his lip when they both said they hadn’t. Tim cast his own look towards the Leap before dashing off across the path, still calling to the wayward dog.

  “I guess I’ll go down to the jetty, see if anyone needs help securing their boat,” Erin said.

  “Travers beat you to it,” Sandy said. “He went down there a half-hour ago.”

  Erin went anyway. From the dunes, she could see all the boats had been moved away from the jetty, which would only become a smashing post in a storm. They were all huddled in the curve of the bay, tugging on anchor chains as the breeze whipped white caps over the water. A few had people still on the deck, tying down before they took the tenders back to shore. Only one boat was still moored at the jetty – the Green Dream. Squinting, Erin spotted Travers unravelling a line nearby.

  She broke into a jog through the soft sand, her calves aching by the time she reached the dock. When she reached the end, Travers had the line untangled and was preparing to throw it into the boat.

  “Leaving it a bit late aren’t you?” she called.

  Travers grinned. “Not at all. This is called perfect timing. Not a minute wasted.”

  “Were you planning to swim back?” Erin said, meaning once he’d anchored the boat, he’d be stuck. His boat was too small for a tender.

  “Nope. Gus is picking me up.” Travers nodded towards one of the forty-foot yachts, where the sailmaker was busy finishing his own tie-down.

  Erin held the line for Travers as she ran her eyes again over all the boats in the harbour. Tristan’s Seven Seas was there, more splendid than ever under the stormy sky, her hull gleaming clean. Wait.

  Erin made another two sweeps through the crowd of masts.

  “Hey Travers, where’s Rough House, Tristan’s racer? He take it back to the mainland?”

  “It was there this morning,” Travers said, scanning the boats. “You’d think he wouldn’t risk it. Thing must be worth a couple of million.”

  Erin felt the skin between her eyes pull together, and she jumped in the boat, pushing them off the jetty. “Let’s go ask Gus.”

  Travers shrugged and revved the engines, carving a lazy arc away from the pier and towards the anchored yachts. Gus was just climbing into his dingy, the wind tangling his white hair into a mop across his forehead.

  “Erin!” he exclaimed at they pulled alongside. “I heard you went to the mainland, so I checked your yacht over myself, made sure she was all battened down. Travers, there’s a good spot for yours in there.” He pointed to a gap in the anchor chains.

  “Where’s Tristan’s racer? He take it back to the mainland?”

  Gus scratched his rough cheek. “Now there’s a silly thing,” he said. “I figure he must have.”

  “Wait, what’s silly?”

  Gus gave a dismissive wave. “I ran into him on the dock when I first came down to check my boat, couple of hours back. He had the racer pulled up to the jetty, said something about going out to race the storm. Now, I remember when you did it as teenagers, but surely you’ve grown out of it by now. He was laughing. Figured it was a joke.”

  Erin felt her stomach turn.

  “Anyway, next thing I look up, and there’s the racer heading out of the bay. I could only see the two of them, so they’re not crewed for racing. They have to have made a break for the coast. Maybe Tristan’s giving him a hitch back to the mainland.”

  Erin looked up sharply. “Who?” she asked.

  “The doc, Alex Bell.”

  “Why the hell would Alex go out in this?” Travers asked. “Gus must be senile. He’s seeing things.”

  But Travers didn’t look convinced and Erin had a very, very bad feeling. The air was almost thick enough to drink.

  “He said he was going to meet me at the airstrip,” Erin said. “He didn’t show.”

  “What’s this about racing the storm? Is that some kind of local tradition I don’t know about?”

  “Hardly. It only happened a few times, and it was a stupid thing to do,” Erin snapped. “Tristan got the idea to go out and race the storm front back to the island. He claimed it was a rush, but he was terrified, too. Those fronts have winds at sixty knots, and the tide’s running straight into it, which creates a hell of a chop. It’s like sailing in a washing machine.”

  She paused, her hand gripped on the wheel of Travers’ boat. She wouldn’t have believed Tristan was capable of such madness. Then again, she’d seen the look in his eyes when he’d watched her coming out of Alex’s room last week. She could certainly believe he was capable of doing it just to scare Alex. To assert his dominance as the bigger man of the island.

  Shit.

  “Hello, Erin?” Travers said. “Can I drop this anchor now or what?”

  “Wait a sec.”

  She pulled out her phone, two bars of recep
tion from the old resort’s tower holding in the wide open bay, and called the marina on the mainland.

  “We’re preparing for a storm out here,” she told the controller when she connected. “Someone saw the Rough House leave Haven about ninety minutes ago, have you got her there in the marina?”

  “Nope,” said the guy jovially. “It’s at least a two hour trip in, but no one’s radioed for a berth and we’re full with Hamilton coming up.”

  Erin hung up, then she pushed the throttle and spun them out of the anchorage.

  “You’re not thinking of going out there I hope,” Travers said. “I haven’t owned this boat for two years yet. I’d prefer it didn’t end up on the bottom.”

  Erin didn’t answer, just rummaged in the console while she steered. Finally, her hand closed on a set of binoculars. She just wanted to look. She wasn’t going out there. No bloody way. Especially as the further they went, the more the swell peaked and the wind lashed drops into the backs of their heads like tiny missiles, until the Green Dream was bouncing up waves and bursting through their crests. Finally, Erin cut the throttle at the edge of the bay, the boat settling into uncomfortable rolling. She squinted out past Bella’s Leap and down the channel, where the last of the blue sky was disappearing before the roiling cloud. Towards the coast, the sky was clearer, but all that would end soon as the front swallowed them.

  She knew in her marrow that Tristan hadn’t gone back to the mainland. He’d gone through the channel, out around Bella’s Leap and the eastern headlands, and north towards the storm.

  His timing had better be as lucky as it had been all those years ago.

  “Hell,” Travers yelled over the wind. “Why would anyone go out in this?”

  “He can’t leave it much longer to come back,” she said. Tristan might be aggressive enough to do this, but Gus was right – his boat was worth a packet of money, and even Tristan didn’t have a death wish.

  The binoculars were useless in the swell; all she could see was a blur. Instead, she stood on the pilot seat and stared into the water, as the sky turned grey and green and the water turned to foam. Five minutes. Ten.

  “Erin.”

  “Another minute.”

  “Erin, we need to go back in.”

  “Another—”

  She saw it. There, right in the channel, almost invisible against the grey blur of the sea and sky. If it wasn’t for the mast, making a hairline against the clouds, she’d have missed it.

  “I see her!” she yelled, dragging Travers around to look, and finally he had to admit that it did look like a boat. Relief washed through Erin, bright and clean. They would make it back. Even fighting the tide, and even when Erin could clearly see they weren’t sailing well. As the Rough House inched closer, she could see the flapping end of a torn sail, the spare spinnaker halyard that had been used to lash the boom, which looked to have snapped the pin holding it to the mast.

  And finally, the boat was close enough to spot Tristan himself, grimly behind the wheel, who gave a frantic wave. Erin experienced a fresh wave of relief. Tristan appeared unharmed, and she couldn’t see anyone else. Gus must have been imagining things. Alex was probably up the cliff at this moment, drinking coffee with Helmut.

  She shook her head. Why the hell Tristan had even thought to take the boat out single-handed ... then she realised he was cupping his hand around his mouth, trying to yell over the wind and waves.

  White-knuckled, Travers took the wheel inched the boat alongside, while Erin threw fenders over the edge so the hulls wouldn’t crash together. Then, risking her neck, she timed the swell and stepped over the Rough House railing, the metal spar slipping under her fingers. She stumbled down to the wheel.

  “What the bloody hell—” she began, but Tristan was yelling over her.

  “I said get on the radio. Man overboard, for the fifth bloody time!”

  Erin felt as though she’d run into a glass door. Stunned, she couldn’t process what he’d said. “What?”

  “Bell. Freak wave pitched us and turned the stern right into the wind. The main gybed round and he got smacked straight into the water. Can only hear static on the radio.”

  The stunned feeling morphed into a tight coil of anger and disbelief. “What the hell were you doing?” she yelled, smacking into him with her fists.

  “Get off! He wanted to go. All taken with the idea of racing the storm like we used to.”

  “Bullshit!” she yelled. “And why aren’t you looking for him? You just turn around and head back.”

  “Boat’s disabled, Erin. Now help me get back in to shore and we’ll call a search.”

  “Did you mark the waypoint where he went over? What position?” Then she saw that both life rings were still on their hooks behind the boat. He hadn’t even thrown one in.

  “The instruments are screwed, but it was somewhere around the east side, maybe two headlands over.”

  Erin had turned her back and was stumbling up towards the guy wires. Travers was still holding his position, two feet off the side of the racer. Erin didn’t even wait this time; she climbed over the railing and threw herself back into his boat, landing heavily against the fibreglass side and smacking her shin. She found herself being hauled upright, one of Travers’ meaty hands under her arm.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “He went into the sea,” she rushed out, pointing crazily towards the east, something shaken loose inside her mind. “We have to, we have to ...”

  She grabbed for the wheel, shoving Travers back and pushing the throttle and turning them away from Tristan’s boat and towards the east headlands. She grabbed the radio and frantically made the call to the relay station on the shore. She had no idea if they’d heard her or not.

  “Are you nuts? Erin! Turn around!”

  She killed the throttle and dragged a life jacket out from the console. “You want to get off?” she asked, shaking it at him as the sea lurched beneath them. All she could think about was Alex, alone and in the water, in the menacing, heaving water. Again. After the story he’d told her, she could imagine his fear. Just like her own the night her father had died. The dark, despairing fear of facing a terror alone.

  Travers must have seen something in her eyes, because he took the jacket and shoved it on. “This boat isn’t designed for this,” was all he yelled.

  Then they were off, cutting into the raging swell outside the bay, waves dumping slosh over the sides, the bilge pump cutting in and out to deal with it. As they rounded Bella’s Leap, Erin realised the enormity of the odds against Alex. She could no longer see the difference between the water and the sky. The rain was a grey sheet, the visibility ahead barely twenty metres in front of the bow. The waves created deep valleys where an entire boat could hide. How would they even spot him? Cloud fingers were rolling down over Bella’s Leap, and Helmut’s studio was invisible among the trees on the next headland. Wind was screaming down from the north.

  “Where do you want to look?” yelled Travers, as he took the wheel and tried to steer the bow into the waves.

  Erin mouthed helplessly. All she could think was to try the navigation line she’d have taken herself, to imagine how the tide might have carried Alex from there. The tide was running north-west now, but the wind was so savage it may well be reversed in the top water, and in any case large eddies formed all along the east coast of the island.

  “That way.” She guessed a direction, scanning every patch of ocean for a speck, anything that was different to the foaming water.

  But as ten minutes dragged past, the conditions worsening, she had to begin to accept this was ludicrous. Even someone in a helicopter would be having an impossible time at the moment. They cut back and forth for another five minutes, until a large wave broadsided them and dumped a half-foot of water in the boat.

  “Erin,” Travers said with a quiet urgency she fully understood. They had to go back. But the idea turned her frantic. She was back on her empty yacht that night, her fath
er gone, guilt and anger and grief replacing every other thought. In desperation, she spun back towards the island, rain stinging her eyes. If she could see a clear path back, they could stay out a little longer. It wasn’t time to turn back.

  And that was when she saw Bella.

  At the crest of the Leap, like a wraith of clouds, a woman stood gazing out to sea, her body slowly turning, her misty dress lifting around her. Chills raced across Erin’s scalp. The rare other times she’d seen Bella, they’d been mere glimpses, easily imagined away. Now, she could make out the dark dents of her eyes, the profile of her arms and body, enough to understand where she was looking. And she was looking. Bella’s attention was somewhere under the cliffs, in the heaving water, just before it smashed onto the rocks of the next headland. Erin saw the ghostly hand lift, and point.

  Erin followed the direction into that foaming swell, and saw a tiny wink. A light.

  “What do you see?” Travers yelled.

  Erin didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on the tiny flash before a wave rose up and covered it.

  “There!” She thrust her finger towards it, numb, as in the edge of her vision, the clouds were still swirling around Bella’s Leap.

  Travers swung the wheel, pointing them close in to the rocks.

  “Hang on,” he said, as the waves came on the stern and shoved them towards the coast.

  It seemed to take hours to reach the spot, fighting the waves and current, and Erin was half terrified that her gaze had shifted. She only saw the point of light once more on the crest of a wave. But then, as the cliffs seemed to be looming right over them, and the rocks far too close, she saw a definite shape in the water. A mass with a flash of dull orange, and that single tiny point of light.

  “Take the wheel,” yelled Travers, fumbling for a grappling hook as the swell tilted the Green Dream on her side. Erin hooked a turn to point the bow up-swell and threw the motor in reverse, her hands slipping as the eddies tried to spin them.