An Unsuitable Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘N-nothing,’ she said unsteadily, but with herculean effort managed to sigh lightly then. ‘I guess it’s been an unsettling day,’ she said musingly. ‘I’ve sort of had to rethink some of my convictions; I put myself in a position which left me feeling really silly. I…well, that’s about it in a nutshell.’

  ‘Then perhaps I ought to finish this,’ he murmured with nothing more than one fleeting but unfairly acute glance into her eyes. ‘Tell you what, take a break from being taught for tonight and why don’t you plot a course for tomorrow instead? I thought we might go to Border Island but we’ll need the wind and the tide right.’

  ‘Oh!’ Despite herself Sidonie brightened. ‘I’d love to. What’s at Border?’ She released the spoon and he released her hand and she moved round the island bench smoothly, she hoped.

  ‘Wonderful coral and a great view from the saddle of the island. Then I thought we might make our way down to Whitehaven Beach for a night, do Gulnare Inlet, which should really appeal to your exploring instincts—it’s been likened to travelling up the Limpopo—perhaps Cid Harbour, and then Hamilton. I think…’ he paused, ‘…that’s a fairly comprehensive tour of the Whitsundays.’

  Before she stopped to think Sidonie said, ‘But what about Butterfly Bay and Blue Pearl Bay? And Haslewood Island, and Macona—’

  ‘We could find ourselves in any of those, Sid, depending on the wind, apart from Blue Pearl and Butterfly, but doing the lot could see-us running out of time,’ he replied tranquilly.

  ‘Oh!’ She thought for a moment and discovered a thread of anxiety running through her mind that she couldn’t at first identify. Then it came to her—was this a subtle way of telling her the trip had to end? Was it even a subtle way of warning her it might end sooner than planned? Why? Because he knows, she thought, what I’m going through? Please, God, no…

  But she swallowed and knew in her bones she was right—and practised a kind of deliberate deceit that came so naturally it secretly astounded her. But the plain fact was that she couldn’t bear to contemplate the day it would end even if it meant hiding better all she felt for him, so she said with a grin, ‘You’re the skipper! Whatever you say goes,’ and turned away, to the chart table.

  She didn’t see the way he studied her back with a faint frown in his eyes for a moment before he turned back to the white sauce.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE view, as Mike had predicted, was wonderful from Border Island. To the west lay the bulk of Hook and Whitsunday Islands, to the south, Haslewood, and to the east Deloraine Island shimmering in the sunlight yet looking mysterious and aloof, and,beyond, the great expanse of the Coral Sea to the horizon. There were, Sidonie knew from all she’d read now, great coral reefs between her and the horizon like a huge barrier to the might of the Pacific, which was how they’d got their collective name, the Great Barrier Reef, and she longed to sail out to them but Mike didn’t mention it and she, following her new policy, didn’t suggest it.

  She thought about her ‘new policy’ as she sat on top of the saddle on Border Island and fanned herself with her hat. Non-interventionist? Non-aligned,——no, that wasn’t the right term either but non-something. Well, to be as unrevealing as she could. To simply be a friendly, competent. crewperson. Not, she reflected, that she’d had much chance to implement this policy as yet——one morning. But as they’d sailed towards Border, across a deep inky blue sea with a white froth below the bow and in their wake, she’d been just that. And in the exhilaration of a fifteen-knot breeze it hadn’t been hard; the way Morning Mist had sliced through the water had thrilled them both.

  No, she reflected, the hard times are still to come. Perhaps if I can keep busy…

  ‘Ready to go back, Miss Livingstone? If we leave it any longer we’ll have to carry the dinghy over the coral.’

  She jumped up. ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’

  ‘The tide, up here, waits for no man. As it is we’ll have to slog through some mud.’

  But Sidonie actually found that fascinating too. She kept stopping to inspect shells; she delighted in the clams that closed their fleshy, brilliantly hued lips——emerald and black-striped, vermilion, purple——and spurted a stream of water upwards if they really felt threatened, and she shuddered at some of the less delicate coral that when exposed above the water was fleshy and slimy and altogether repellent.

  But her faith was restored once in the dinghy when they did a tour of the reef surrounding Border and had a marvellous view of the better coral.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Mike remarked when she told him this. ‘Such enthusiasm deserves to be rewarded.’

  ‘All the same it’s good to have a good shudder now and then!’

  ‘I noticed,’ he said ruefully, his eyes resting on her glowing face.

  Sidonie grimaced. ‘I suppose you’ve seen it so many times it doesn’t affect you greatly now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he reflected wryly. ‘I just don’t think I’ve ever seen it with anyone who has appreciated it all quite as much as you do.’

  It was like a treasure, a gold nugget to hug to herself, even this wry approval——But, remember, she warned herself immediately, don’t make too much of it. So she said, ‘Would you like me to service the outboard this afternoon?’ She patted the cowling of the motor. ‘It and the dinghy are about the only things I’ve noticed about Morning Mist that aren’t new.’

  He looked at her. ‘There’s not a great deal of the afternoon left.’

  ‘If that’s a way of saying you wouldn’t trust me to do it——’

  ‘It’s not, but——’

  ‘You never know, I might be able to coax a half-knot more out of it. How long since it was last serviced?’

  He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to love this, Sid; I have no idea. I…there was a new one ordered but it didn’t arrive on time so I had to make do with this one, which was second-hand.’

  ‘There you are, you see. I just knew it was crying out for some attention,’ she said triumphantly.

  ‘OK, OK!’ He brought the dinghy up to the stern of the boat. Go ahead.’

  She did just that.

  She changed into her cut-off overalls and laid, a canvas sheet on the aft deck upon which Mike placed the motor. She assembled her tools and said seriously, ‘Please feel free to do anything you like; this will keep me busy for an hour or two.’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ he replied gravely.

  She bit her lip. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’

  ‘Sound like what?’

  ‘As if I was trying to get rid of you.’

  ‘That never crossed my mind,’ he marvelled.

  ‘I’d be glad if I thought I could believe you but——’

  ‘And I can’t help wondering why you’re trying to get rid of me, Sid.’

  She cast him a look of exasperation. ‘Well, I thought you might like not to have me talking the hind leg off a donkey at you. Actually. As well as me earning my keep.’

  He rose from his squatting position and ruffled her hair in a supremely avuncular gesture. ‘I’m going.’ But he was laughing at her, she knew, and she just prayed that it wasn’t because he’d seen through her machinations. Which wasn’t a very nice thing to do, she, thought rebelliously, then sighed, and commanded herself simply to concentrate on the task at hand.

  So she took the outboard motor apart and checked for any loose or damaged parts. Then she lubricated the gear housing and checked the oil level, serviced the spark plug, cleaned the fuel filters and removed a bit of gunk from the fuel cap air vent. Finally she checked the anode and decided it had a bit of life in it yet. Then she reassembled it all and by the time she was finished there was barely enough light to see by and she stood up and stretched and yawned.

  ‘All done?’ Mike said behind her. He’d left her strictly alone until now and all she’d heard of him was when he’d made a sea-phone call.

  ‘Mmm. It’s not in bad condition although you’ll need a new anode sh
ortly and there are a couple of nicks and rust patches on the propeller that should be attended to, but nothing desperate.’ She wiped her hand across her forehead and left a streak of grease there. ‘I guarantee it will run just that bit sweeter now, though.’

  ‘I’m sure it will. Why don’t you have a shower?’ He regarded her quizzically.

  ‘All right, I’ll just clear up here——’

  ‘I’ll do that; you’ve earnt your keep well and truly today, First Mate Hill.’

  She flushed with pleasure and hoped he didn’t notice in the growing twilight. ‘Thanks,’ she said simply and turned away.

  And that was how she kept things for the next couple of days——simple, she thought. I could just as well be a boy first mate——excepting I don’t suppose he’d teach a boy to cook…

  But she had to acknowledge that the weather was a help for those days—breezy but hot and bright—and they did all the things he’d mentioned. They spent a night off Whitehaven Beach, a three-mile expanse of pure white silica sand from a bygone geological age and quite different from most of the Whitsunday beaches that were not that white or fine and degenerated into mudflats when the tide went out, and they walked the full length of it. They sailed round to Cid Harbour, her namesake, she said, since it was pronounced ‘Sid’, and had a wonderful ramble through the bush to Dugong Beach fringed with casuarinas that made soft music as the breeze sighed through them. And it was all going so well until Gulnare…

  They spent a night in Gulnare Inlet and the next morning ‘travelled up it by dinghy right to its head. It was a huge, shallow inlet; at first Sidonie said that with its thickly wooded peaks it reminded her of Switzerland without the snow. But of course at eye-level the ever-present mangrove trees dispelled that image, and she decided they were really eerie although clever sort of trees that grew quite happily in salt water.

  ‘It is like going up the Limpopo!’ was her final decision as the dinghy hummed along and they explored the narrowing waterway near its head. .

  Mike grinned at her. ‘It’s not, actually.’

  Her interest quickened. ‘You’ve been there? To Africa?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve seen it. There are crocodiles in it.’

  She shivered. ‘There could be crocodiles here!’

  ‘I’ve never heard of any——there are huge mud crabs, however——’

  ‘What were you doing in Africa, Mike?’ She looked at him with genuine interest and curiosity in her eyes. ‘I would love to go there.’

  He shrugged. ‘A bit of flying.’

  Her eyes widened and she nearly fell off her perch on the side of the dinghy in her excitement. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That you were a pilot as well.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You know so much about navigation, celestial and otherwise, and weather patterns et cetera, it just crossed my mind——and the way you watched a plane one day too. I would love to learn to fly,’ she said seriously.

  He laughed. ‘Perhaps you should concentrate on swimming and cooking first.’

  ‘She felt instantly demolished and said in a stiff little voice, ‘Did someone say that to you when you wanted to learn to fly?’

  He grimaced. ‘No. But——’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t say it to me.’

  He eyed her averted profile and kept his face straight. ‘My apologies, I shouldn’t have. I could say instead that you’d probably take to flying like a duck to water, but as we haven’t commenced your swimming lessons yet I’ll have to think of another analogy, won’t I?’

  Sidonie forgot her dignified stance and flashed him a suddenly blazing look. ‘Of all the appallingly pedestrian attempts at male chauvinism I’ve heard, that has to be the worst!’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he drawled. ‘I’m demolished.’

  ‘No, you’re not! You’re secretly still laughing at me if I know you, Mr Brennan——don’t think I can’t tell by your eyes!’

  ‘Then I’ll have to veil my emotions from my eyes, Sid———’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she said bitterly, ‘on my account.’

  He was silent for a moment as she gazed stonily ahead, then he said, ‘What are we really fighting about, Sid?’

  ‘I’m fighting about being treated like a stupid girl.’

  ‘Then I do apologise; perhaps I was a bit thoughtless in the things I said. You’re the least stupid girl I know in lots of ways.’

  Sidonie thought for a bit. ‘Thank you,’ she said at last.

  His lips twitched. ‘It seems to be very important to you not to be lumped in with the rest of the female population.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s a help to be good at some things, when you’re so obviously not much good at others.’

  ‘Such as?’

  She bit her lip. ‘Well, I guess you know better than most what those are——uh——but I have no intention of getting maudlin on the subject, especially as you’ve apologised.’

  He appeared to contemplate this for a while then he said lightly, ‘Could you tell me how to get back into your good graces? I have the feeling a mere apology hasn’t done it.’

  Don’t shut me out…She didn’t say it but it was the thought that rose to the surface of her mind immediately and as she examined it she realised that that was probably what had upset her as much as anything else—or was she wrong in imagining that the way he’d teased her had had another side to it? Had been in fact a bid to head her off from trespassing into his flying days? But why wouldn’t he want to talk about that? I must have imagined it—and that’s a serious blow to your policy, Sidonie, she warned herself…

  ‘Sid?’

  ‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘I don’t know—I mean you don’t, of course. Have to do anything.’ She tried to inject some perkiness into her voice. ‘You’re the boss.’ But instead of perky all she sounded was desolate.

  ‘Sid,’ he said with no emotion at all as he steered the dinghy round a mangrove tree reaching its green tulip clusters across the water, ‘don’t fall in love with me.’

  She gasped and nearly fell off the dinghy again and found herself saying hotly as she scrambled back into position, ‘I don’t know you mean! Why should I do that?’

  ‘Well, as to why not, I’d be a lousy candidate‘ from your point of view,’ he replied.

  She took a jerky breath. ‘All right.’

  He lifted an ironic eyebrow at her.“Just——all right?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ she said with some agitation, ‘but you’re actually quite safe from me, Mike——why does that ring a bell?’ she asked more of herself and probably out of sheer nerves.

  ‘Because it’s exactly what I said to you one memorable day.’

  ‘So you did——oh, hell,’ she said hollowly, swallowed, and took a deep breath. ‘Could we just pretend this conversation never arose?’

  ‘We could,’ he said drily, ‘but——’

  ‘Mike, I don’t have to be told things over and over. Please at least grant me that much…of my self-respect,’ she said evenly and looked at him steadily for a moment.

  ‘So it was a problem?’ he said slowly and totally disregarding her plea.

  Sidonie gritted her teeth and sent up a short little prayer for some divine intervention. What to say? ‘I,’ she began, ‘toyed with the idea, yes——’

  ‘Despite what you said earlier?’

  ‘There’s an old saying about pride coming before a fall,’ she said, thinking carefully. ‘It’s a very pride-denting experience to be…admonished not to fall in love with someone, as you would know if you’d ever experienced it, so what I said first was said out of pride—do I have to go on?’ she added in suddenly goaded tones. ‘This is also very embarrassing and why on earth you had to choose this marvellous inlet that I was enjoying so much to…totally—talk about being demolished!—I can’t imagine. So yes,’ she said baldly, ‘it was a problem. It’s not any more.’ And she turned away resolutely.
r />   He said quietly, ‘I’m. sorry, Sid.’

  She refused to turn. back but said gruffly, ‘So am I. I guess this wrecks things, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Nothing will ever wreck some aspects of it. But I think it would be best if I dropped you off at Hamilton tomorrow. You can get back to the mainland easily from there; I’ll buy you a ticket.’

  ‘OK.’ She licked a salty tear off her lip and dug into the depths of her being for some moral strength.

  ‘I wonder if I could get a job on Hamilton?’ She turned back at last, her face earnest beneath her floppy white hat.

  ‘I think…’ he said slowly, then appeared to change his mind. ‘You could always try.’

  ‘Mmm…Or perhaps someone else needs crew—no.’ She grimaced. ‘When they find out I’m so hopeless in the kitchen—no—oh! I think we’re at the head. Shall we get off and explore?’

  They did but only briefly. Then they drove, nearly all the way in silence, back to Morning Mist.

  And after getting aboard she stood in the middle of the main cabin for a long moment and looked around. Then she grimaced and gave herself a little shake and once again dug into the depths of her soul as she heard him come down the ladder behind her.

  ‘We haven’t checked the motor for a few days. We should, you know,’ she said seriously.

  ‘All right.’ He looked at her penetratingly. ‘We’ll do it this afternoon.’

  ‘You know—’ Sidonie squatted on her heels and wiped her hands on a rag ‘—your eutectic refrigeration system puzzles me a bit. I really feel there should be an automatic cut-off switch when it gets to, say, minus twenty degrees. One could quite easily forget to do it manually in certain conditions—if you had to motor for hours, for example—and then you could freeze or burst the pipes.’

  ‘It’s a thought,’ Mike agreed. ‘Tricky things, eutectics.’

  ‘Yes…But otherwise I don’t think you have a thing to worry about.’ She gave the Gardiner a fond farewell pat and clambered out of the engine-well.