‘It sounds as if they keep you busy.’
‘They do, considering we’re only a small family group. I also travel to the outer islands when I’m needed, or they bring their casualties in to me. You must come and visit our camp,’ he suggested, his dark eyes twinkling.
Her uncertain gaze flew to Harry. ‘It’s kind of you, but I’m not sure I’ll be here long enough.’
‘Long enough to let that cut heal,’ the doctor insisted. ‘Any larger and it would have needed stitches.’
She touched the square of adhesive bandage he’d applied to her forehead. ‘I was lucky this time.’
The doctor wagged a forefinger at her. ‘Next time you might not be so lucky, so let Harry keep an eye on you in future, eh?’
The prospect would no doubt thrill Harry, she thought sourly. The last thing he wanted was more responsibility for her well-being. He’d made his position clear at the look-out, which was why she was in this fix now. ‘Harry’s done more than enough for me already,’ she said with heavy irony.
The doctor beamed at Harry. ‘Not before time.’
‘What did he mean by that?’ she asked Harry after he’d seen the doctor on his way back to his camp, cautioning him to take care in the storm.
‘Alf Nawi is a good Christian. He thinks everything should go two by two,’ Harry said. It was obviously not a philosophy he shared.
‘I gather you two are good friends,’ she said, more to get him off the subject of togetherness than anything else. It also served as a distraction for the ache in her head.
‘We were both scholarship kids at university. From first meeting Alf rode roughshod over every prejudice I’d ever had concerning Aboriginal people.’
‘I didn’t think you knew the meaning of the word,’ she observed with a wry smile.
His eyebrow arched. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I had my hang-ups like most other teenagers. Some of them I gave up voluntarily. Others had to be educated out of me.’
She couldn’t resist it. ‘All except one.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Which one is that?’
‘The streak of male chauvinism.’
Annoyance flared in his grey eyes. ‘Now wait a minute; I’m not prejudiced where women are concerned.’
Softly she closed the trap. ‘Yet you wanted to deny Kim the right to choose her own principles.’
‘I’d deny anyone that right if it keeps them alive.’
‘Then you would rob history of its greatest martyrs.’
With an explosive sound he turned on his heel and left the room. While she’d been talking to the doctor he had closed the louvred shutters against the storm, and she was left alone with their persistent rattling and the sighing of the wind in the rain forest.
She wasn’t sure if she’d won or lost that round, or even if she really meant what she’d said about people having the right to die for what they believed in. On the other hand, if Kim had been an innocent victim it would have been different. But she was a journalist like Harry. Knowing the risks, she had urged him to write his story anyway. He shouldn’t blame himself, yet he did.
Her thoughts chased around her tired brain like mice on a treadmill until the doctor’s pills began to work and she drifted into a deep sleep. The music of the storm became a distant lullaby.
When she awoke sunlight streamed in through the open shutters. A pitta bird sat on the windowsill, chirruping its ‘hello and wake up’ call. She smiled at it dreamily then realised she wasn’t alone in the room. Harry was slumped in a chair, his clothing rumpled and a dark smudge around his jawline suggesting he’d been there most of the night. His eyes jerked open as she sat up. ‘Hello, Harry,’ she murmured.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine. A bit headachey, but that’s all. I’m sure the doctor didn’t mean you to take his suggestion literally.’
‘I wanted to stay near by in case the house decided to become airborne.’
Her eyes widened. ‘How much worse did the storm get?’
‘If you don’t count the cyclonic winds and the monsoonal rain, not too bad, I guess. We’re still in one piece.’
She rested her head in both hands and groaned. ‘To think I slept through the whole thing.’
He was at her side in an instant. ‘Is your headache bad?’
The eyes she lifted to him were bright and clear. ‘No. I just can’t believe I didn’t hear anything.’
‘Alf’s potion probably put you out. He wanted you to get a good night’s rest.’
‘Which is the understatement of the year.’ She pushed the quilt aside and swung her legs over the edge, testing the extent of her recovery. When the room remained steady and the ache in her temples didn’t increase she felt safe to stand up. Only then she realised she was wearing her white satin nightshirt. When she’d collapsed she’d been wearing her bikini. ‘Did the doctor put me to bed?’ she asked as suspicion dawned.
He yawned and stretched, massaging the dark line along his jaw. ‘I wasn’t aware it took a medical degree.’
He was laughing at her! ‘It doesn’t, but it usually requires the person’s permission,’ she fumed.
‘Last night you were in no condition to give me permission to do anything—and I mean anything,’ he said with maddening accuracy. ‘So relax, will you?’
It was difficult.when she was acutely aware that he had seen all there was to see of her. She had to admit she was also just the tiniest bit piqued that he didn’t seem impressed by the experience. Perhaps, compared to some of the women he’d known, she was a disappointment. She pulled herself up short. After his warning she wasn’t interested in impressing him, was she?
‘Thank you for taking care of me,’ she said, resisting the urge to grab the quilt and swathe it around herself. She was the one bothered by her scant covering, not him.
He nodded. ‘It was the least I could do. I shouldn’t have let you go off by yourself in a storm.’
It was more than she could stand. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she yelled at him. ‘You aren’t responsible for everything that happens to me.’
Before he could respond she stormed into the bathroom and showered away her frustrations, taking care not to wet the bandage Dr Nawi had put on her head.
The storm, the flying branch and Harry coming to her rescue seemed like a lifetime ago. Had she dreamed it or had Harry really kissed her when he’d carried her into the house? Maybe it was her own wishful thinking, prompted by a hit on the head.
‘How soon can we go back to TI?’ she asked over a light breakfast of melon and toast.
The stubble was gone but shadows rimmed his eyes as he looked at her. ‘Missing Simon?’
She hadn’t given Simon Fox a thought for a whole day. It was Harry himself she needed to get away from. Knowing how she felt about him, when there was no future in it, was becoming more than she could tolerate. ‘I wouldn’t want to outstay my welcome,’ she said.
Over the rim of his coffee-cup he regarded her steadily. ‘You don’t have a choice. The storm pushed my boat up on to the beach with a hole in the side you could drive a car through.’
‘There must be other boats on the island.’
‘There’s one at Utingu, but I wouldn’t borrow it unless it was an emergency.’
‘But this is ’
‘Just because you can’t wait to get back to your precious Simon doesn’t make it an emergency,’ he growled, forestalling her. ‘My boat is fixable. It’ll only take a couple of days and some tools I loaned to Alf Nawi. Would you like to come with me to fetch them back? He did invite you to visit their camp.’
Her spirits sank lower. He was only inviting her because the doctor would expect her to accompany him, not because he wanted her along. ‘How far away is the camp?’ she asked, curious in spite of herself.
‘About an hour’s walk through the rain forest,’ he told her. ‘If you aren’t up to it I can postpone it for a few days.’
The sooner he retrieved his tools, the
sooner he could fix the boat and return her to TI. Her headache had almost gone. It was probably due to lack of food as much as anything. She hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning and the breakfast was making all the difference. ‘I’ll be fine if we take it slowly,’ she assured him.
When they set off she was horrified at the extent of the storm damage to the island. Uprooted trees lay strewn across the paths like discarded toys. Pools of rainwater steamed in the morning sun. They would be gone by afternoon, Harry told her. Where the path skirted the beach she saw great ribbons of seaweed pushed well above the usual high-water mark. Debris littered the sand like the aftermath of a gigantic under-sea picnic.
‘I hope Dr Nawi’s people are all right,’ she said when they stopped to rest.
‘That’s another reason why I want to get there. The storm blew my aerial down, so I couldn’t radio to find out how they coped.’
The gruffness in his voice betrayed his concern. ‘You really care about these people, don’t you?’
‘They’re my people, too. Alf and I became tribal brothers after we graduated.’ As she opened her mouth to speak he gave a warning shake of his head. ‘Don’t ask for details. Alf’s people are touchy about what men and women may know. In his father’s day women were killed for sticking their noses in where they didn’t belong.’
She gave a low whistle. ‘And I accused you of being a male chauvinist.’
His lop-sided grin did peculiar things to the pit of her stomach. ‘Let’s say I’m a people chauvinist. Does it help?’
‘Maybe.’ She was unwilling to admit it, but it helped a lot to know that he had such compassion for the traditional owners of the island. His closeness to Alf Nawi and his obvious respect for their customs earned her admiration. Added to his overpowering maleness, it made a formidable combination. She was thoughtful as they set off again.
A tree root caught at her ankle and she stumbled. A firm hand clamped around her elbow and steadied her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, thanks. Well, maybe a little shaky. How much further is Utingu?’
‘Just over this ridge. You can rest there while I round up my tools. If I know Rose they’ll insist on inviting us to lunch before we head back.’
‘Rose is Alf’s wife?’ He nodded and she went on, ‘They won’t expect me to eat witchetty grubs or raw goanna, will they?’
‘They may offer you some traditional food but they won’t be offended if you refuse. On the other hand, you might surprise yourself and like it. As a travel agent I thought you’d be more adventurous.’
‘I am adventurous,’ she assured him. ‘But I have this aversion to eating anything I’ve been introduced to first.’
His hearty laugh echoed around the rain forest. ‘Remind me not to catch any mudcrabs or crayfish for you while you’re here.’
He was teasing her, and the idea pleased her inordinately. ‘I love seafood, provided we haven’t met,’ she repeated. ‘If it makes me a hypocrite I can’t help it.’
His eyes darkened and his grip on her elbow tightened. ‘You could never be a hypocrite,’ he denied. There was something frighteningly attractive about the way he was looking at her.
She drew a strangled breath. Under the canopy of green his face loomed awfully close. Her lips parted in an instinctive gesture and she licked them.
‘Little Lisanko Nikitayevna,’ he murmured, drawing out the syllables as if they were words of love.
Her parched throat closed on the words. ‘Nobody calls me that any more.’
He ran a finger around her jawline. ‘They should. It’s a beautiful name.’
She could feel the soft wind of his breath on her upturned face. ‘You make it sound beautiful. Oh, Harry, why must we fight all the time?’
‘Maybe because it’s safer than the alternative.’ He released her and plunged off into the rain forest.
She ached to call him back, to finish what he’d started, to ravish her lips and plunder her body the way she wanted him to do, had thought he was about to do when he’d looked at her in that smouldering way.
But he was right. There was no point starting something they couldn’t finish. If it hadn’t been for the storm, she’d be on her way back to TI by now and they both knew it. It must be the aftermath of her accident which was making her so vulnerable today.
They emerged on to a chalk-white stretch of sand against which the Arafura Sea rolled endlessly. Far down the beach, a woman cast a net into the surf and pulled it back in a fluid gesture. The net was alive with tiny sardine-like fish. Harry told her that the dark drifts of what looked like seaweed floating offshore were massive schools of these fish.
‘So many of them?’
‘It’s a land of plenty, which is why visitors to the island need the permission of the traditional owners to come here.’
It was a measure of the respect the islanders held for Harry that they had sold him part of the island, she realised. ‘How do they feel about tourists coming here?’ she asked.
‘They agree, provided the group is small and the people respect local customs,’ he said. ‘Alf is wise enough to realise that his people need a source of income for the things the land won’t provide, such as medicine and a wider education.’
Her eyes shone as she pictured the scene. ‘The visitors can learn from Alf’s people, too. They could try their hands at traditional skills such as fishing and net-making, hear the dreamtime legends and learn about the cave paintings…’ Her voice slid away on a sigh. ‘It is what you had in mind, isn’t it?’
Amusement sparkled in his grey eyes. ‘It’s exactly what I had in mind, which is why I want you to organise the visits; no one else.’
She felt a guilty surge of understanding. Simon would want to build huts along the beach and run a fast catamaran service from TI to Drummer Island. The huts would appear to be primitive, of course, in keeping with his image of providing holidays off the beaten track, but they would be modern and comfortable inside. Simon knew his market well.
But there was also a segment which wanted to experience places like Drummer Island as they really were, even if it meant enduring slight discomfort. To them the island would be paradise exactly as it was.
How unspoiled it was. The beach, at least a mile of it, was a pure French grey with a rocky point at one end which gleamed whitely with shells. Where they’d emerged from the rain forest was the mangrove-fringed mouth of a stream which threaded the sand with silver.
Nestled among towering coconut palms was the village itself, or camp as Alf Nawi called it. The houses were built in traditional style of bamboo and palm fronds with beaten sand floors. Diesel generators supplied the villagers with power.
A fishing net strung between two trees provided a swing for the children. It was deserted now, and the sing-song voices coming from a hut told Lisa the children were at school. It was a charming mix of the new and the old.
Alf Nawi came out to meet them. Trailing shyly behind was a mahogany-skinned woman who bared uneven white teeth in a warm smile. ‘Hey, Harry! Good to see you, boss.’
He embraced her. ‘Good to see you, too, Rose.’ He took a step back and included Lisa in the circle. ‘This is Lisa Alexander.’
‘How your head today?’ Rose asked, touching a gentle finger to the bandage adorning Lisa’s forehead.
Lisa was charmed by her concern. ‘It’s fine, thanks to your husband’s care.’
Rose gave a dry laugh. ‘Him only doctor. Harry the one you need to take care of you here.’ She pressed an expressive hand against her heart.
A change of subject was urgently needed. ‘The village doesn’t seem to have suffered any storm damage,’ she observed. For some reason this set Rose off into gales of laughter. Lisa shot Harry a helpless look.
Into her ear he murmured, ‘Rose can’t understand why you’re being so coy about our relationship.’
‘We don’t have a relationship. That’s crazy,’ she whispered back.
He gave a lop-sided shrug. �
��They’re much more open about sexual matters than we are. As they see it, for two healthy adults not to have a relationship—now that’s crazy.’
She was about to dispute the point when he gripped her elbow hard. ‘When in Rome, Lisa.’
While her Western upbringing urged her to set the record straight part of her saw his point. What did it matter if Rose and Alf thought they were— or should be—a couple? She tried to relax in his grasp. ‘You’re right. As long as we know the truth.’ At least there was no uncertainty there.
A furrow appeared between his eyes as if she had angered him in some way. ‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘Now maybe you’ll stop defending your honour long enough to enjoy my friends’ hospitality.’
The nerve of him! She was only following Harry’s own rules. Apparently his friends didn’t know about his rule against getting involved.
She pushed her annoyance aside as Rose took her hand and began to show her around the village. It was home to about fifty people, most of them related. Soon Lisa had met Rose’s brother, Ernest Tamoy, his wife, Amy, and several younger relatives. They all welcomed her with the same gentle warmth, taking it for granted that she ‘belonged’ to Harry.
Several times she had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out that she didn’t belong to Harry because he didn’t want her to. According to Alf’s people, everyone had to belong to someone. All young girls were betrothed before they were out of childhood, although they didn’t live with their husbands until they were of marriageable age.
Gradually Lisa began to understand how foreign her single status appeared to them. No wonder they took it for granted that she and Harry were a pair. To them it was the natural and proper order of things. She saw now why Alf had said her arrival was not before time.
In the centre of the village chickens pecked at split coconut halves, and Rose threw them handfuls of grain in passing. They provided the villagers with almost their only source of fresh meat. Everything else came from the sea or the rain forest.
Island of Dreams Page 7
