Turtle Reef

by Jennifer Scoullar

  As Josh stroked the calf’s flawless skin, Zoe felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. ‘Come away,’ she said, turning her head. It seemed disrespectful somehow to be there, voyeuristic. ‘Let’s get back.’ They swam in silence back to the boat. Zoe made the call to Fisheries and Wildlife, gave the GPS coordinates, went through the motions. Then she drew anchor and headed south. She’d had enough for one day.

  ‘Take over, please, Josh. I feel sick.’ Wordlessly they swapped places. Zoe stared over the side, at the choppy grey water reflecting the sky. She closed her eyes, but couldn’t erase the sight of the mother and baby from her mind. She couldn’t shift the degraded seagrass meadows from her thoughts. The two things were linked; they had to be. What was happening out there in the bay?

  CHAPTER 16

  Quinn knocked on the door of the guesthouse. ‘Come in,’ sang Zoe. He took off his hat and pushed through the flywire door. Captain trotted down the hall to greet him.

  Quinn ruffled his handsome white ruff. ‘Nice to see you, mate. Whose dog are you again?’

  Zoe sat in the sunroom, cross-legged on the couch, poring over a laptop balanced on her knee. She looked up briefly when he came in. ‘Just a minute.’ Quinn stood by the door, fiddling with his hat, quietly observing Zoe while her fingers flew across the keyboard. Sleeveless check shirt, cut-off blue jeans and bare brown feet. Very different from the city girl dressed in black, that he’d picked up from the station six weeks ago.

  A lot skinnier, for one thing. Right from the start he’d admired her curves, but this new athletic look suited her too. Not just skinnier, but healthier and stronger, with definition in her arms, and muscle in her long, brown legs. How she folded them up like that was a mystery. Zoe’s once-pale skin was bronzed by the sun. The haircut that he’d found so severe in the beginning was growing out. Soft, copper-coloured curls framed her face now.

  ‘What are you doing that’s so fascinating?’ he asked.

  Zoe looked up, eyes like emeralds. ‘Researching seagrass dieback,’ she said with a final tap of the keys. ‘And I’m not getting anywhere.’ She closed the laptop and smiled up at him. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve got a favour to ask.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I’m rostered on for Turtle Watch. Bridget put me up to it. We were going together but . . .’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘You do know what Turtle Watch is, don’t you?’

  Zoe untangled her legs and stood up. ‘A nightly monitoring program designed to record the number of turtles nesting on a particular stretch of beach, mark the nests and keep females and eggs safe during laying.’ Zoe pulled a folder from a shelf. ‘I’m a volunteer too. See?’ She opened the folder, showed him the collection of scrawly, handwritten reports inside, with the Turtle Watch Logo in the top corner.

  ‘Well . . .’ Her clear green eyes made him momentarily forget what he was saying. ‘The thing is, Bridget can’t come tonight, and I was wondering . . .’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Zoe. ‘Watching sea turtles is one of my favourite things to do.’ The smile on her face showed this to be true.

  ‘That’s perfect then,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth it’s my first time. I don’t know what to do, what to look for. What if I missed something?’

  Zoe laughed. ‘A hundred-kilogram sea turtle dragging herself up the beach is hard to miss.’

  ‘Fair dinkum, they get that heavy?’

  ‘Some get even heavier.’ Zoe reached down to stroke Captain. ‘When do you want me?’

  ‘Tonight.’ Suddenly he was looking forward to the evening that had seemed like such a chore. ‘I want you tonight.’

  The first turtle turned up soon after they arrived at moonlit Kulibari Beach, a remote inlet north of town. Quinn saw it first, a movement in the shallows. The bobbing, beaked head of a turtle. ‘There.’ He directed the torch to a point along the beach where high tide met silver sand.

  ‘I see it.’ Zoe’s voice was an excited whisper. ‘Well spotted.’

  The turtle made several false starts before settling on a course and dragging her bulk from the water. Quinn moved in closer, careful not to shine the amber torchlight in the animal’s eyes. ‘She’s a whopper.’ Her curved, heart-shaped carapace alone measured more than a metre in length. All up, the sea turtle must have weighed close to one hundred and fifty kilos.

  ‘A loggerhead,’ said Zoe. ‘But you’ve seen them before, right? Living right on the coast like you do?’

  ‘Saw turtles back when I was a kid.’ Her emerald eyes pierced the gloom like searchlights. ‘But now I steer clear of the ocean. Can’t stand it.’ A catch in his breath. He hadn’t meant to say that; it had slipped out of its own accord. In fact, he was as surprised to hear it as Zoe was.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Fell overboard when I was ten, a fishing trip with Dad.’ He paused, but there was no going back now. ‘Frightened the shit out of me, it did. I almost drowned.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Fact is, I don’t even like being here on this beach.’ Mum had known, of course, about his fears after the accident, about the nightmares. But she was gone and nobody else in the world knew. He’d never told anyone, not even Bridget.

  His father had been a mad-keen fishermen, spending every spare minute out on the bay. If it became known that Quinn was scared of water, well . . . Dad’s shame would have known no bounds. This was Kiawa. People lived and breathed the sea from the day they were born. It was in their blood, their DNA. Even Bridget might find his fear hard to understand. But for some reason it hadn’t bothered him to tell Zoe. It actually felt pretty good. He loved how she took it in her stride, like it was no big deal.

  ‘At least you’ve got a reason,’ she said. ‘I’m scared of heights for absolutely no reason at all. One time I was playing this computer game, one with lots of cliffs and tall buildings. Even though it wasn’t real, I was always careful not to go near the edges. So one day I got thinking. Maybe I could cure my fear of heights by having my character jump off a cliff on purpose.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘Yep, and guess what? I fainted.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘True story,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘But what about that first day?’ he said. ‘You climbed up the lookout tower with me?’

  ‘I got on Cobber too, when I was scared of horses. Guess you make me feel safe.’

  ‘Scared of horses? You should have said.’

  She shrugged. ‘Come on, we’re being beaten in a race up the beach by a turtle. Keep your distance, though. She’ll spook easily until she starts laying.’

  The massive reptile faced a long, tortuous climb. Hauling with fore flippers and pushing with hind ones, she heaved herself up the sand. It was a magnificent, almost prehistoric sight. According to Bridget, sea turtles had been around since the death of the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago.

  ‘She’s gutsy, I’ll give her that,’ whispered Quinn.

  The loggerhead’s vast weight scored deep furrows as she followed a gentle zigzag towards a stand of casuarinas above the high tide line. Finally she paused and looked around. Maybe this was the spot? Great showers of sand flew out behind her as she started to dig. Her body had sunk quite a way into the beach when she changed her mind and methodically dug herself out of the hole she’d started.

  ‘Why did she stop?’

  ‘Maybe she hit a rock, or a root,’ said Zoe. ‘Maybe the sand was too dry, or too wet, or too hot, or too cold. The nest site has to be perfect. Loggerhead mothers are very particular.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Quinn. ‘That a turtle can figure all that stuff out.’ Zoe’s smiling eyes reflected the moon’s glow. She looked so lovely that he almost reached out to touch the curve of her cheek.

  ‘Look.’ Zoe laid a hand on his arm, her skin warm and distracting. ‘Mama’s trying again. No, come stand behind so you won’t disturb her.’ This time there was no equivocation. The turtle set to work, breathing hard as she dug a rough depre
ssion. ‘Look out,’ said Zoe. Pebbles and bits of broken coral came flying through the air. When the turtle finished the body pit, she excavated a smaller egg chamber at the base. This was a slow and delicate task. Using the curled edge of her flippers like webbed hands, she worked with marvellous precision for such a clumsy land creature. Barely a grain of sand was spilled as she scooped it up and out of the nest. At last she’d sculpted a perfect, pear-shaped bowl.

  ‘We can move in closer now,’ said Zoe. ‘They go into a kind of trance when they’re laying. It’ll take a while.’

  ‘Look,’ Quinn said. ‘She’s crying.’ It was true. Tears streamed down the turtle’s eyes, making little damp spots in the sand.

  ‘Only one in a thousand of her offspring will survive until adulthood,’ said Zoe. ‘The old story goes that a mother turtle cries one tear for each egg she lays, in a kind of premature mourning for the babies that are doomed to die. Of course scientists say it’s a way to secrete excess salt, or to keep her eyes moist, but I’ve always fancied the old story best.’

  ‘Even though you’re a scientist yourself?’

  ‘Yes, even so.’ Zoe turned to him, her expression both serious and sad. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

  What a strange girl she was. Quinn took a good look at the weeping mother turtle. So helpless out here on the land, so vulnerable. Risking her life to provide the best possible start for her babies. Instinct? Or something more? Quinn’s thoughts turned to Captain’s father, who died defending his litter of newborn puppies from a taipan.

  ‘Why is it,’ he asked, ‘that when human parents sacrifice themselves for their family, they’re labelled heroes, but when an animal does exactly the same thing, people dismiss it as instinct?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Zoe. ‘Maybe we don’t like admitting that animals have feelings too. Maybe we want a monopoly on courage and self-sacrifice.’

  The loggerhead settled down to lay, accompanied by deep sighs and the rhythmic rise and fall of her mottled carapace. Zoe pulled a book from her backpack, and took the opportunity to take measurements and record the number of the tag she bore on a front flipper. Then they sat down to wait.

  ‘I meant to ask,’ said Zoe, ‘why Bridget couldn’t come tonight. She’s not sick again, is she?’ He shook his head. ‘Did they find out what was wrong with her?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a mystery,’ said Quinn. ‘But she seems okay now. Bridget couldn’t come tonight because Leo needed her for something. She jumps whenever that man calls. It’s bloody annoying.’

  ‘She loves him,’ said Zoe. ‘She’s close to her father. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Love is one thing.’ He doodled idly in the sand. ‘Slavish devotion is another.’ The picture he was drawing turned into a sad face. ‘What about you? I hear you’re also a fan of our mayor.’

  ‘I like Leo,’ said Zoe. ‘He’s a lot of fun.’

  ‘And he gave you a Lexus . . .’ She laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. A sharp zing travelled through him.

  ‘All right, yes . . . lending me the Lexus didn’t hurt. But truly, I do like him. He invites me places, trips on the yacht, dinner in Bundaberg . . . If it wasn’t for Leo, I would have sat home every night researching seaweed or something. Kiawa is a beautiful place, but it can be a bit lonely.’

  ‘So that’s why you keep kidnapping my dog.’ How ironic. Plenty of nights he’d watched the bright windows of the little guesthouse, lonely himself, wanting to knock on the door. What had stopped him? Maybe he’d thought it an imposition. Maybe he was old-fashioned, and it hadn’t seemed right for an engaged man to go knocking on a beautiful young woman’s door at night. Maybe he’d been a little scared of her and her forthright tongue. Intrigued certainly, but still scared.

  ‘You’ve got to admit,’ said Zoe. ‘The locals are slow to warm to newbies. They haven’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat.’

  ‘What about me? Isn’t this a night out?’

  ‘It is. In fact, it’s my favourite kind of night out,’ she said. ‘But you only asked me because Bridget couldn’t come, so I don’t think it counts.’

  ‘And what about you?’ he asked, emboldened by her closeness in the dark. ‘No boyfriend waiting in the wings back in Sydney?’

  Zoe laughed. ‘The closest thing I’ve had to a boyfriend lately was a nutcase called Hugo. I met him at the gym on one of my failed attempts to get fit. He wasn’t bad looking, except that his eyes were too small for his face, a bit like a dugong’s.’

  ‘What was his problem?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘For one thing, he was a foodie. We spent six weeks eating our way through the Good Food Guide until I was the size of a house. Then one day I arrive home to find he’s somehow let himself into my flat and made a prawn and coconut curry. The place smelled like an Indian restaurant.’

  ‘How’d he get in?’

  ‘Sneaked the key from my bag and got it cut behind my back. “I wanted to surprise you,” he said. He surprised me all right.’ Quinn tensed with anger on her behalf. ‘And so began my marathon effort to break up with him.’ She giggled. ‘Pity. The curry was excellent.’

  ‘What, so this bloke wouldn’t take no for an answer?’

  Zoe laid a soft hand on Quinn’s arm and shushed him with a finger pressed against her lips. ‘We’d better stop talking. We’ll disturb mama.’

  It took more than half an hour for the loggerhead to lay over a hundred eggs. They gleamed like a pile of wet ping pong balls in the soft moonlight. She began to backfill the nest, making a shallow second hole in the process, using her hind flippers to press and smooth the sand.

  ‘See how she disguises the nest?’ said Zoe. ‘That second hole works as a decoy to fool predators.’ When the turtle was satisfied with her camouflage job, she lumbered back down the beach. They filled out the time sheet, took photos and recorded GPS coordinates. Then they dug four stakes into the sand, ran tape around them and labelled the nesting site.

  Quinn checked his watch – one o’clock in the morning. When he looked up, Zoe was watching him. ‘Is it time to go?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. You’re running this show.’

  ‘Let’s stay a bit longer,’ she said, ‘until the tide starts going out.’

  They strolled along the shore, chatting softly, eyes peeled. The pearly moon-glow lit up sea and sky alike. It was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

  ‘Have you given any more thought to letting Josh ride again?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. I said before, it’s not safe.’

  ‘So he just misses out?’ She shook her head. ‘You worry a hell of a lot about what’s safe in life, don’t you?’

  Her words felt like a kick in the guts. They weren’t said as a criticism, but as a heavy-hearted statement of fact. Was it true? Was he too caught up in keeping Josh safe? Was it only Josh she was talking about? He didn’t know how to answer her and they walked on in silence.

  Their next find was a gruesome one. Two dead turtles, close together, partly buried in the sand. Zoe examined the smelly corpses with an impressive lack of squeamishness. ‘These are green turtles, not loggerheads . . . and this one has a tag.’

  ‘They don’t look injured.’

  ‘A lot of green turtles have been washed up lately, same as these, with no obvious wounds.’

  ‘What killed them, do you reckon?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘Could be anything.’ She walked around the bodies again. ‘The same sort of thing happened last year up at Gladstone when they dredged through seagrass meadows to deepen the port. Dozens of turtles and dugongs starved.’

  ‘But Gladstone’s two hundred kilometres away,’ said Quinn. ‘And our bay’s never been dredged.’

  ‘No . . .’ Zoe rested her foot on one of the magnificent mottled shells. She seemed to be thinking hard. ‘If only they weren’t armour plated I could examine their stomachs.’ She took off her backpack, and fossi
cked around for a pair of disposable gloves. Then she extracted a small hatchet and with one sure sweep of her arm, hacked off the fore flipper of the tagged turtle.

  Quinn leaped back. ‘Jesus, you could have warned me.’

  Zoe fished a plastic bag from the pocket of her backpack. ‘Hold this open, will you?’ She dropped the severed flipper, complete with tag, into the bag and made a few notes. ‘Come on. Let’s keep going.’

  Soon they came across a set of tracks, a metre or more wide, like a tractor had headed up the beach. ‘Another loggerhead,’ said Zoe. They followed the tracks and found a large turtle engrossed in laying her eggs. ‘This one’s tagged too.’ She took some measurements and they settled down on the sand to wait.

  Zoe sat close to him, so close he could hear her quiet breathing. Her hair smelled of sandalwood. They switched off their torches as the moon sailed higher. Its shining face reflected off the ocean, dimming the blinking arch of stars overhead. The polished skin of Zoe’s bare shoulders shone too, tempting him to touch. He closed his eyes, moved away a fraction, but remained intensely aware of her physical presence beside him. He opened his eyes as her hand brushed his knee. Zoe was idly combing the beach with slim fingers, sifting through the sand. Quinn swallowed hard, wanting her to touch him again. He stole a glance at her face.

  ‘Look,’ she said. Just offshore, brilliant phosphorescent blazes shot through the water, accompanied by loud, percussive chuffing sounds. ‘Wild bottlenose dolphins, chasing schools of whitebait, then breaking the surface to breathe.’ Another shower of bioluminescent flashes, like glittering underwater comets. ‘I wish I was with them,’ she said. ‘I wish I could see what those dolphins see.’