Home to Turtle Bay

by Marion Lennox

  I might give him my VC though. It’s just a lump of metal but he seems to think it’s worth something …

  VC? I knew what that was. VC stands for Victoria Cross. Richard collects medals and I remembered his triumph when he’d found one online. It had been a posthumous medal, Australia’s highest award for bravery, the equivalent of our Medal of Honor.

  I remembered feeling a bit uneasy, seeing Richard handle it. He’d bought a medal with money, a medal won at such cost.

  I flicked through more letters, searching for some reference to the action where he’d won it, presumably the action where he’d almost lost his life, but I couldn’t find one. The letters held the minutiae of life; there was so much information to sift through.

  He’d wanted me to know him but he’d never contacted me.

  I needed to read them all. I needed to know what had gone wrong with Muriel. How he felt about my mother. His injuries.

  The stuff that hurt.

  What I found was surfing.

  Dear Jenny,

  I’ve just been out cleaning the surfboards. Better than basket weaving, yes?

  I should put them in the shed.They’d keep better there than out in the salt, but who wants boards in the shed? Besides, I like looking at them.

  The balsa one’s your grandmother’s. Okay, it’s glassed, but underneath it’s balsa. It was old-fashioned even when we got it, but she read about it and she knows her mind, your grandmother. I told her about this place when we first met, and by my next leave she’d read everything to know about surfing and was aching to try. It was my wedding gift for her. We had it shipped out here ready for when we…

  Well, we never came, at least not like we intended. But she did use it. Every day, over and over.

  A couple of times she dinged it on the rocks. I wasn’t supposed to know. I got it mended.You need to plug the balsa and then re-glass. Roy McAlister used to do it. His nephew still does. I hope he’s still on the island when you come.

  You need to wipe it clean with turps, Jenny, every time you use it. It’ll keep the surface looking good. And keep it on the east side of the shed; it can’t cope with west sun.

  Maybe I should put it in the shed but well cared for, nothing seems to worry it. It just sits there.

  Waiting…

  Waiting for me?

  I set the letters aside and stared out at the surfboards. In New York every single minute of my day was accounted for, but not now. It was too early to visit Muriel, and would she want me there anyway? Jack would be long gone.

  Why not surf?

  Or try.

  Before I could change my mind, I was changed and outside again, deciding which board.

  I picked the littlest surfboard and carried it down to the beach, feeling quite excited. That lasted all of five minutes. I floated it in the shallows and tried to stand.

  I ended up flat on my face in the water.

  Okay, so I needed power to balance the thing. I’d watched Jack. I knew what to do.

  I lay full length on the board and paddled like crazy.

  The first wave—a giant in my eyes, at least eighteen inches high—rolled towards me, face on.

  What did Jack do?

  I turned, clutching the board for dear life and held on.

  The wave picked me up, rolled me and dumped me. I surfaced, spluttering, my nose full of seawater. Then I chased the board.

  I tied on the leg rope. Guess that part’s important, huh? Who knew, but I wasn’t giving up.

  I dragged the board back out to deeper water. I waited for a wave, turned to face shore, and lay on the board. I grabbed the tip. The wave caught and tumbled me, head first, over and over. I got more seawater in the wrong places, though at least this time I didn’t have to chase the board.

  I tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Up on the cliff the cows were lined up at the fence, watching. I was sure Christabelle was smirking but I seemed to have left my pride in Manhattan.

  I kept right on trying until my arms ached and exhaustion made me give up.

  I needed to go visit Muriel.

  I needed to talk to someone about putting this place on the market.

  So I hauled the board back to the house but as I did I knew I’d be back.

  Jennifer Kelly does not give up.

  9

  gnarly adj. heavy, intense waves or situations.

  For the next few days I seemed to operate in limbo. Back in Manhattan I woke every morning with a list a mile long. Here, my daily list was absurdly short.

  I helped Steve and Heather milk the cows.

  I visited Muriel. That meant sitting beside her while she ignored me. Apparently it was still All My Fault.

  I visited Mary and her baby. That, at least, was satisfactory. Mary was recovering nicely, cuddling her tiny daughter and counting her blessings.

  ‘We were so lucky you were here,’ she told me, and I thought, how had I ever feared that I’d be sued? There were no Lionels in this place.

  ‘You should have taken Jack’s advice and gone to Sydney,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s easy for Jack to say. I have a husband and four other children. How could I have left them?’

  But if it hadn’t been for Jack, I thought, Mary would be dead.

  ‘The island so needs another doctor,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider…’

  No!

  I shopped—if you can call it that—in Main Street. The shopping was dismal but I got my dose of local gossip. Everyone was interested, and they were nice to me now. I gathered what I’d done for Mary had made me acceptable.

  ‘You ought to help Doc more while you’re here.’ Mrs. Firth— Maggie to the locals—was ready to organise me as she laboriously totalled my purchases. A calculator lay unused beside her. Why use it when this way gave her much more time to talk? ‘Old Ken Campbell died at home yesterday and Doc was fantastic. He was there whenever Ken’s daughter needed him, and at the end he sat with Ken for hours. Doc’s only been back on the island for six months. We know he didn’t want to come, but now … Nothing’s too much trouble. He works so hard … If you could decide to stay…’ She gave a shamefaced grin. ‘We’d even be nice to your grandma.’

  No!

  After my shopping expedition I decided to check out the rest of my legacy. Harold, the guy who’d rented us the buggy, had the keys to the building at the end of the main street that was listed as part of my inheritance. The old hotel was converted now into what the legal documents called a hostel. I wandered through behind Harold, seeing ten four-bed bedrooms, each with big, open bathrooms. It looked like it had been set up for disabled use. It also had two self-contained apartments.

  ‘Henry spruced it up thirty or more years back for his daughter and her friends,’ Harold told me as the guided tour progressed. ‘From what I can tell they only used it for six months or so, and then the place sat empty, to the point where it was almost derelict. Then he got some bee in his bonnet that it had to be done up. He put in new bathrooms, new furnishings, these apartments the builders called staff quarters. No one knew what that was about. Place was finished twelve months back but what did he do? Boarded it up again, that’s what. He had some sort of official party come out to see it, guys in suits. We thought maybe he was going to use it as a school—that was the time he put that sign on his shed—but nothing came of it. He’s funded one of the local lasses to come in each week and keep it nice but we don’t know why. So … You planning anything?’

  The place looked great, with a sunny, open dining room, a sitting room with big, comfy furniture, everything painted with bright happy colours. But what for?

  ‘I’m selling it,’ I told him.

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’ He grunted. ‘Who’d want a hostel here? Yeah, itinerant surfers sometimes hitch a ride on the supply boat but they mostly camp. They’d never pay enough to make this viable.’

  We came outside and he padlocked the cyclone fen
cing as it had been padlocked for years.

  Weird.

  And that was the end of my list of things to do.

  I went back to surfing (if you can you call lying on a board in the shallows surfing), reading letters and waiting for Muriel to come home. Like I was looking forward to that! Playing nursemaid to Muriel for weeks filled me with horror. Luckily Jack seemed content to keep her in hospital for a while longer, so all I had to do was fill in time.

  What had Muriel done with herself all those years ago? I’d even tried asking. The look of scorn she gave me would have put a prune to shame.

  ‘Go away,’ she said simply, so I had.

  In the end I even got desperate enough to try gardening. There was a neat vegetable garden that needed weeding. The day I tried, it had rained the night before so the soil was soft and warm. The sensation was totally strange, kneeling on damp ground tugging weeds. It made me think of Henry and a small Jack and their strawberries. The thought made me smile.

  Where was he? I hardly saw him. A lone surfing figure at dawn. A hurried doctor giving a quick greeting when he saw me in the hospital, or giving me a fast update on Muriel.

  The island was getting on with life but that life didn’t include me. I felt extraneous and useless.

  The thought of what was happening in Manhattan without me made me feel ill.

  Sunday. I’d been on the island for eight days and I was going stir crazy. That night I couldn’t sleep—again. The moon was full. Sod it, I thought, and donned my gumboots and headed out to the garden. Weeding by moonlight? I know, it sounds crazy, but it seems I wasn’t the only crazy one.

  Jack came.

  I heard his van and he came striding down the track in the moonlight in his faded jeans and torn shirt. I rose and he stopped dead.

  ‘Jenny,’ he said blankly.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Then, ‘Oh God. Muriel?’

  ‘Muriel’s fine,’ he said swiftly.

  ‘Then what—’

  ‘I came to attack your snails. It’s been raining and they’ll be out.’

  I believe I gaped. ‘You came at this hour—to work in my vegetable garden?’

  ‘You see, until you arrived last week, it was partly my veggie garden,’ he said apologetically. ‘Henry and I have been working together over the last few months. It was … sort of good for both of us. After he died…’ His voice trailed off.

  And all at once I understood. ‘You miss him.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Why are you still wearing his pyjamas?’

  Act cool. ‘They’re comfortable. And I thought no one would see me out here weeding in the moonlight.’

  There was more. Inexplicably, I liked wearing Henry’s pyjamas. It wasn’t as if they’d really been his. They’d still been in their packaging and all my stuff seemed sort of wrong here. It might be dumb, but for some reason they made me feel as if I had a place here—like a little bit of me belonged.

  I couldn’t say it out loud. This man could have me certified.

  ‘Don’t you need to sleep?’ I asked him. ‘You’re exhausted. Everyone’s telling me how overworked you are.’

  ‘I can’t sleep. When I can’t sleep I come here.’

  ‘What will you do after I sell?’

  Silence.

  I was about to sell Jack’s easy access to the beach. Jack’s vegetable plot. I was about to walk away.

  There was a soft moo behind me and the sound made me jump.

  Christabelle. Salami.

  Not. My. Problem.

  ‘Maybe you could buy this farm and combine it with yours,’ I ventured.

  ‘Are you kidding? Do you know what this place is worth?’

  ‘No.’

  It was true. I didn’t. I’d promised Richard I’d get onto it right away and I hadn’t.

  ‘Where’s Drifter?’ I asked, more for something to say than because I wanted to know.

  ‘With Muriel.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Last time I saw her she was curled up on the foot of

  Muriel’s bed. They were both sound asleep.’

  ‘Muriel hates dogs.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘So Drifter came with me on my ward round tonight.’ I must have looked stunned because he explained. ‘I know. We don’t work by city hospital rules here. Anyway, Drifter hopped up on the coverlet, licked Muriel’s face and Muriel almost smiled. I offered to take her away and she ignored me. I left Drifter while I finished my rounds and when I came back they were asleep. Drifter knows she can go into my office if Muriel tires of her. The staff will look after her.’

  ‘My grandmother is sleeping with a dog?’ I thought of Muriel’s reaction to Drifter back in New York and couldn’t believe it.

  ‘It’s not your nice hygienic Manhattan hospital,’ he said, smiling himself. ‘We have dogs and cats and budgies—but then again, we don’t have golden staph.’

  ‘Dogs and cats and budgies? You let animals—’

  ‘Families have to take responsibility for them,’ he said. ‘And we only let them stay overnight in special circumstances. We put that rule in a couple of months ago when we forgot Mrs McLeod had her peke in her bed. Deirdre pulled back the covers to take her blood pressure and the peke bit her. It did no end of harm to Deirdre’s blood pressure, as well as Mrs McLeod’s.’

  ‘That’s another thing I don’t understand. Deirdre looks as old as Muriel. Why is she still nursing?’

  ‘You think we should put in compulsory retirement?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Deirdre’s one of the best nurses we have. Sure, she has trouble finding a tricky vein, but she cares about every islander, and the islanders know and trust her. With the attitude some of the island women have about male doctors, that’s invaluable.’ He hesitated. ‘But I didn’t come here to talk about work. I came to forget it.’ He looked down at my handiwork. ‘You’ve been doing some great weeding.’

  He was still smiling. He had me thoroughly disconcerted. ‘What’s wrong with my weeding?’

  ‘Those things over there.’ He pointed to my neat pile of weeds. ‘They’re chives.’

  ‘Chives?’

  ‘Herbs. Used for cooking.’ The laughter was growing in his voice. ‘C-O-O-K-I-N-G,’ he spelled out helpfully. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not familiar with that, either?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ Toast. With eggs, even. ‘They’re an island thing, I bet. Like frangipani and cows and stupid birds whose dawn calls make traffic in Manhattan sound like a gentle purr.’

  ‘That’ll be it,’ he agreed equitably, his smile almost wicked. ‘So tell me, Dr Kelly, why is it that you are in your grandpa’s pyjamas at the dead of night in a strange garden attacking the Deadly Nautilus Island Chive?’

  I glared at the Deadly Nautilus Island Chive I had in my hand and carefully added it to the pile.

  ‘Missing your fiancé?’

  ‘No … Yes!’

  He seemed to think about that for a moment and then nodded, his face grave again.

  ‘Okay, Dr Kelly. No more questions. This seems to be filling a need for both of us, so we should keep on weeding. Only … can I give you a basic botany course first? Because you seem to be homing in on my oregano and I value my oregano. Unlike New York, on Nautilus we can’t buy it at the local store.’

  So we weeded. Or I weeded and Jack replanted the chives and removed snails from the strawberries and then weeded. For the first fifteen minutes I was acutely aware of the man weeding with me—too aware of my crazy pyjamas, too aware of how ridiculous I must seem. But gradually a sense of peace seemed to seep upwards through the moist, rich earth and I found myself moving into another space. It was almost like meditation.

  Tai Chi in gumboots? How would that go in Central Park? But as my fingers delved under the soil for roots, carefully working each weed free, I had to acknowledge this farm was the most beautiful place I’d ever been in. With the full moon, the garden was lit almost like day.
The sea was a soft murmur all around, a rhythmic caress that seemed to say God was in his heaven, all was right with the world.

  All was not right with my world, but for now the rest of the world could take a running jump. For now, this was where I wanted to be.

  Home.

  The word drifted insidiously into my head.

  I had no home. It was an illusion. New York was my base, and this island, surrounded by cows, snails, ageing grandmothers and surfing doctors, was surely a topic for future dinner party conversations. Nothing more.

  Maybe it was even too weird for that.

  Maybe I was asking too many questions. For now, all I did was weed.

  It was almost one in the morning when Jack called a halt. He rose and stood staring out to sea, and I had an insight of a man refuelling—gathering strength.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ he said at last, and there was real reluctance in his voice. ‘I need to sleep sometime.’

  ‘You can come back whenever you want.’

  ‘We’re running out.’ But he wasn’t looking at the garden. He was still staring out to sea.

  Maybe it wasn’t weeds he was referring to. We were running out of … what?

  ‘We could always extend the garden,’ I suggested. ‘After all, there are only twenty odd cabbages here. Surely we can eat a lot more coleslaw and boiled cabbage than that.’

  That brought a smile. Great. That was what I’d been aiming for.

  Despite my first impression of a constantly loafing layabout who thought life was a joke, there definitely wasn’t enough joy in this man’s life.

  Joy was a strange concept—something I’d barely considered. Life until now had been about survival and ambition. Joy came somewhere far down the list.

  This was strange. How could I think about joy now, when faced with the man who’d possibly ruined my career? But my career was a long way away from this garden, this night. From now.

  ‘Tell me about Bridget,’ I said, and I saw his face shutter. It wasn’t my imagination, then. The shadows.

  ‘Some other time. I need to sleep.’

  But still I probed. ‘Bridget lives with you all the time?’