Home to Turtle Bay

by Marion Lennox

What must you already know? If Muriel hasn’t spoken, then here are some facts.

  I was born in Australia but visited Nautilus as a young man, falling in love with the place. I joined the airforce. I met and married your grandmother. I was shot down, burned, made a prisoner of war. I came back here and Muriel followed me. I tried every way I knew to stop that happening.

  I paused again. This had me feeling like I was on the edge of something huge, and doubts were resurfacing. Did I have the right to step back into Muriel’s past? A past she’d guarded so closely.

  There was hardly a choice. Not if I wanted to help her. Besides, I’d inherited Henry’s life and these letters were a part of it.

  But I needed time to take it in. I carried the letter out to the kitchen and sat at the table. Drifter appeared—where had she been? On the beach with Janet? Wherever she was needed? Now she stuck her head under my arm as if she’d read, too.

  I hugged while I read. The hug helped.

  And obviously Henry had paused there, too.

  I just read that back.You need more. Hell, it hurts to write but you deserve … she deserves the whole truth.

  Jenny. I assume you know about Nam.The plane crash.The burns. Prison. Rehab in the States. Then my decision to come here, the ends of the earth.To hide.

  Hiding wasn’t in Muriel’s agenda, though, or if it was, she intended to hide with me. She came back with me.

  Not that I wanted her to.

  After rehab … Looking back, they got my body as good as it was going to get, but they didn’t fix my head. I’ve read about it now. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they call it. It seems a lot of us Vietnam vets have it. More likely if you were in action. More likely if you were wounded. More likely if you spent time as a prisoner. There you go. Three out of three, and I didn’t even know. All I knew was that by the time I reached hospital in the States my life felt over. I stared in the mirror and all I saw was the scars. I slept at night and woke to terror, over and over. I felt like I was living in sludge; dreary, grey muck that threatened everything I cared about.

  How could I let Muriel stay close to that?

  But she insisted. ‘I’m your wife so get over it,’ she retorted when I tried to argue. She has spunk, your grandmother. Bulldog determination.

  But it’d take more than spunk to get through sludge. All I wanted was to get away. Turtle Bay seemed the perfect place, but no matter what I said, she followed.

  There was nothing here for her.

  This land’s always been used as a dairy farm, sublet to tenants, and when we first arrived, coming direct from rehab, I kept the milker on. I couldn’t milk. I couldn’t do anything. My legs were still shaky and I had constant pain. Nothing was breaking through. My health improved but nothing could stop the self-loathing. Depression? Such a diagnosis wasn’t heard of then.

  ‘You’ll get over it in time,’ old Doc McLachlan told me. ‘Let Muriel help.’

  How could she help? I couldn’t bear her seeing me. Touching me.

  So where did that leave her? Bloody alone, that’s what.

  At the time I hardly realised what her life must have been like. I’ve pieced it together now. She did what she could for me but I wouldn’t let her near. I kept telling her to go home but she wouldn’t. So I ignored her.Yeah, I was a cruel bastard but all I wanted was for her to leave and get her life back.

  She was so lonely she started wandering out to watch the guy doing the milking. Before long she was milking with him.

  I never knew.

  I talked to Dougal, the guy I paid to milk our cows, years after she left. He said he’d liked it when she started helping, and apparently so did she. So there she was, my beautiful bride, my so glamorous, so perfect Muriel, sloshing round in the mud, ushering in Marilyn, Jacqui, Gloria—he said she named them all—milking them and then helping sluice down the dairy with the big hoses.

  Apparently she made friends with Dougal, and the men who drove the milk trucks.The guys gave her cheek, and she gave cheek in return. Her parents would have had a fit if they’d seen her, but it seemed she liked it so much that when Dougal’s bad knees made him admit to her the job was getting too much, she took over.

  And by then … I was so caught up in my own misery I didn’t notice.

  But it must have helped. I understand it now because when I started milking myself I found a kind of peace, working along the bails, putting cups on swollen teats, talking to the girls. But I didn’t know it then, and when I finally inspected my bank account, missed Dougal’s wages and realised she’d been milking on her own, there’d been a fight to end all fights.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I still remember it, word for word. Muriel, if I get things wrong cross out mistakes, but I reckon I’m right.

  He was talking to Muriel? Within the letter? I felt a whisper of unease, as if Muriel was looking over my shoulder.

  But she’d read this. She’d left it to me.

  It was my letter?

  How am I at remembering your words, Muriel? They seem etched into me. I can’t escape them.

  ‘The dairy’s no place for you,’ I told you, and I remember you throwing it back at me.

  ‘My place is with you, but you won’t let me be there.’

  ‘You belong back in New York.’

  ‘I belong here. I’m your wife.’

  ‘I don’t need a wife.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Get out of the dairy.’ I was hard and sure. Cruel? Yes, that too, but the thought of my beautiful Muriel milking … The thought of what I’d driven her to …

  He was back talking to me.

  My letter.

  The next day I took on the milking myself, driving the cows in before time and telling her to get out. Physically it was still too much for me, but I was angry beyond reason.

  ‘I can do it. Get away from me.You think I’m a cripple.’

  She’d looked at me like I’d hit her but I couldn’t care. The memory of what we had, of what we once were, was a weight I couldn’t escape from. In my sick mind I think I believed the only thing I could do to save her was to make her leave. Give her back her life.

  But still she wouldn’t go, and of course once I’d taken on the milking she had nothing to do again.

  She was supposed to pack and go home. She should have. Why the hell didn’t she?

  Once she even tried to defy me, coming into the dairy despite me.To my unutterable shame I turned the hose on her. Every day of my life I’ve thought of that moment. Of the look of disbelief. She was my wife, and my cruelty was little short of violence. Looking back it’s unbelievable, but to keep such a vibrant, lovely woman confined as my nursemaid … I couldn’t do it. I can’t ask you to understand but I loved her too much.

  I still do.

  And your grandmother’s a fighter. Other women would have walked out after such treatment but she simply moved on. ‘Try hosing someone you can wash away,’ she snapped. ‘I’m glue, Henry.’

  Until then she’d been playing at surfing, hauling her board down to the shallows and trying, over and over again. I could have helped her, but of course I didn’t. Now she hiked along to the north headland where the surf’s best and watched the young ones there, swooping in with the skills she wanted.

  The skills I had but couldn’t use. My bloody legs …

  So that became Muriel’s life. She surfed Turtle Beach every day. Over and over. And gradually the skills came.

  The months passed. I hardly talked to her but she didn’t seem to care. She lay in my bed but I wouldn’t touch her. She surfed and surfed.

  Gradually my legs grew stronger. I didn’t change my mind though. Jenny, I know you won’t understand but you can’t see me, and I hope you never do.The way I looked … To chain her to me for life … You wouldn’t do that to a dog. I knew I had to make her go.

  But then …

  Dusk’s a lovely time on our beach. I hope you see it someday. The mountains seem to bounce the sunset back to th
e ocean.The Turtle Bay surf’s long and low. Magic.

  Muriel started lighting fires every evening, with the mass of driftwood that’s always washing up onto our beach. She’d set a rug before the fire, she’d surf and then and sit and watch the flames while I finished milking.

  I wasn’t allowing myself to admit it but I watched her. Of course I did.With everything else, the burns, the scars, the pain and the depression, I was also deeply ashamed of what I was doing but how could I help it? Why was she staying?

  But after all those months … Watching her get better and better on the board.Watching her watch the turtles come ashore and lay their eggs, then see the turtle hatchlings make their way to the water … She tried to talk to me about that but I couldn’t listen.

  As the months wore on I watched her fire on the beach and it was like a siren’s song. A sense of home.

  I had to ignore it.

  She surfed on through the long months of our mock marriage, and all the time it seemed like she was waiting for me to crack.As I was waiting for her to do the same.With every wave she caught, the tension was building.

  I still wouldn’t touch her. When she touched me I flinched. She had to go home.

  Her parents arrived—they’d borrowed a yacht. They stayed for two weeks, trying to make her see reason.Trying to make her leave.They were as horrified at her staying as I was but still she wouldn’t go.

  And it got harder. Sometimes there was a glimmer through the depression, a sliver of what once was. In the nights we’d had as a married couple before the crash, those times had been magic. I hadn’t imagined it.We’d belonged together for always and she wouldn’t let it go.

  I know this sounds even more crazy, but over the years I’ve thought that maybe, in a way, her surfing was somehow a means of making love to me. She knew I was up there milking, where I could see her in the surf below. I was empty and she was … there.

  I just had to take that first step down the path to join her.

  ‘With this ring I thee wed. With my body I thee worship. Until death us do part.’

  She wrote it in big letters in lipstick on the mirror in the living room. Every time I rubbed it off she put it back again. I tossed the mirror but she ordered a new one.Twice.

  And then I cracked.

  One evening, as the sun set in a ball of fire over the mountains, as I released the last cow from the bails, I looked down and saw her by the fire on the beach and suddenly something seemed to cave in. Almost without thinking, I headed back to the house, put on shorts and a shirt, grabbed my board and went to join her.

  She was still sitting by the fire. She saw me coming. She didn’t move.

  I think … neither of us knew how to take it.

  I walked towards the fire but at the last minute I couldn’t. It was too much. She was too close.

  So I did the next best thing. I dragged my board into the water and willed her to follow.

  It was all I could do.To touch her—or even talk—might be enough to slam shut the glimmer of light breaking through my illness and I wasn’t risking it.

  So I surfed.

  She’d never seen me surf. I’d talked about it, though, when I was well, in our brief hiatus of happiness.We’d ordered her board, thinking we’d come here eventually for a belated honeymoon. It was waiting when we got here and of course mine was still here. Then, though … I’d been good but I wasn’t sure what I could still do. My legs screamed a protest as I walked on the soft sand.

  But when I hit the water … The moment I slid onto the board it was as if I was a part of it. I moved with the waves. It was as if my body was whole and the scars were nothing.

  I could still surf!

  And Muriel surfed with me.

  With love? I imagine yes, but that night there were no questions. No decisions. Only the moment.

  Only each other.

  Over and over we paddled out and rode back in again. We didn’t speak.We caught wave after wave as the dusk faded and the moon came up.

  That night was like a dream.The sun had sunk into echoes of gold. We were surfing side by side, and it was a kind of lovemaking all on its own. As the moon rose, the fire on the beach was a beacon. A lure?

  A home?

  Finally we had to stop. Wounded legs could only surf for so long. The moment I hesitated, she dragged her board from the shallows and waited—and we walked up the beach together.

  Still we didn’t speak. No sound. But the glimmer of light through the depression had become an open door. For the first time since the war, I saw my way forward.

  I dropped my board by the fire and lifted my hand to the fastening on the front of my soaked shirt—but Muriel was before me. I can remember her unfastening my buttons. She’d done it before because of my scarred hands but this time … it was so different. She was wearing a shirt, too, an oversized one of mine. Once my shirt was clear she pulled it off, leaving only the scant bathing suit I loved.

  I remember her hand catching mine. I remember the glorious, incredible sensation of fog lifting, of light.

  ‘I’m yours, Henry,’ she said into the warm night wind. ‘I love you now and I’ll love you forever.’

  I remember I groaned. I almost cried but I didn’t.This was too important. I touched her face, and it was as if our wedding vows had been spoken again, right then.

  ‘My love.’

  And right then the world righted itself back on its tilted axis and the appalling years fell away.

  I won’t tell you any more of that night. How can I? Muriel, if you’re reading this … Know that for me it was perfection.The blanket … The fire … I remember every minute. Every second. We loved.We slept and loved again.

  But now … Oh, God, Muriel, how can I tell her what happened next?

  But Jenny, you must know. Muriel deserves that you know.

  If I can remember the start of that night, that perfection, then I’m forced to remember what followed.

  What followed?

  I was hardly breathing. Did I want to know?

  Maybe Muriel’s right, I thought. Maybe I don’t have a right to know. Drifter snuggled closer against my legs. The letter seemed heavy in my hands.

  I’d come this far.

  I read on.

  We lay in each other’s arms until the fire died and the chill of the night finally reached us. Finally, sometime in the small hours, I found enough energy to decree we go home to bed. I even remember what I said. There was even room between us for laughter. Laughter? I couldn’t believe how I felt.

  ‘Enough,’ I told her. ‘There are times when civilisation looks good. I’m carrying you back to my bed, my woman.’

  She giggled, lying back in my arms and gazing up at me with passion. How could I carry her with my wounded leg? I don’t know but I was a different man to the one who’d walked down the beach only a few short hours ago. I cradled her against my chest and strode up the sand hills, injuries somehow forgotten.

  ‘I feel like you’re a caveman dragging me back to your lair,’ she told me, nestling into my arms and smiling up at me, and I can’t begin to tell you how that made me feel.

  ‘Quiet, woman,’ I growled. ‘One struggle and I’ll have you by the hair. I’ll drag you back and lock you up and feed you on bison bones and nothing else...’

  And that was when the world blasted in.

  ‘Put her down!’

  The cry startled us both. I stopped dead as a flashlight pierced the darkness.

  ‘It’s the crazy man,’ someone cried. ‘The monster. He’s got a girl.’

  ‘Put her down,’ someone else said, and the voice was a tremulous wobble. ‘Leave her alone.’

  It was kids. My eyes focused somehow against the glare of the flashlight. There were three boys, thirteen or fourteen years old, no more. One was carrying a brace of dead rabbits. Another was holding the flashlight and the other was holding a shotgun.

  The child with the gun was aiming it straight at me.

  Can you imagine how I
felt then? The gun. The war years. The impossibility of protecting Muriel.

  The gun was wavering all over the place but a shotgun at that distance could never miss.

  ‘Put the gun away.’ Somehow I put enough authority in my voice to make the kid falter. But the torch played over my scarred face, and I imagine—no, I know—the burns made my face grotesque.The kid’s grip firmed.

  ‘You monster. Put her down.’ The kid’s finger tightened on the trigger, the shotgun wobbled and I let Muriel slip to the ground. I tried to put her behind me but she wouldn’t be put.

  When was Muriel ever put anywhere?

  ‘He’s my husband,’ she told them, but the kids weren’t listening.They were terrified.

  They were terrified of me.

  ‘We’ll hold him,’ they told her. ‘You go and call the police.’

  ‘But he’s my husband,’ she said again, with all the authority she could muster, but while the gun pointed directly at my chest, one of the other boys came forward and grabbed her. He was only a kid but he grabbed her so hard he wrenched her away from me.

  We were naked and I was helpless.As helpless as I’d been for years. More, because I couldn’t defend her.

  ‘Get the cop,’ the kid with the gun said, and the child with the rabbits dropped his load and started to run.

  ‘Tell the cop it’s that monster who lives on the hill,’ the kid called after his mate. ‘Tell him he’s got a girl. Run. Fast.’

  No.

  I think I said it out loud.

  Oh, Muriel.

  Oh, Grandpa …

  It was cleared up. Of course it was.The island cop at the time was a pimply youth who was scarlet with mortification. He said he was really sorry but we probably shouldn’t blame the kids. After all, they didn’t expect to see naked people. It was only natural they’d reacted like they did because... well, I wasn’t exactly normal.

  And he explained that some of the older kids were using me as a threat. ‘Keep away from him, he’ll get you. If you don’t do as we say we’ll dump you at Turtle Beach.’ It seemed that my surliness to the world had turned me into the island’s bogey man.

  It took an hour or more to settle things, and by the time they had, something had settled in me as well. What had I been thinking? My world was closed. I can’t describe it better than that.