Visitor, p.3
Visitor, page 3
Back on the promenade, a solitary man gazes out to the sea through a filter of green leaves. Susan sees him and feels unspoken kinship, stranger to stranger.
Walking slowly along the shore she passes an ice cream stall. She stops to buy a double mango and cream in a cone, then walks on, licking the ice cream as it melts over her fingers.
A big gaudy poster in a tour shop window catches her attention. ‘Green Island Underwater Coral Viewing’. There are also posters for ‘Jet Cat Outer Reef Tours’, ‘Michaelmas Cay by Sail’, and ‘Steam Trains to the Rainforest’. She picks up a handful of brochures and sits on a shady bench to read them while she finishes the last delicious drops of her ice cream. The amount of information feels overwhelming when she’s barely worked out what time zone she’s in. It’ll be easier to go into the shop and ask for help.
As she goes inside the delicious coolness of the air conditioning strikes her. Nobody else is waiting, so she walks over to the counter. “Hi. I’m only here to two days. I’d like to see the best of the reef along with the mountains and rainforest. What would you suggest?”
“Okay, well I’d suggest an outer reef boat tour for day one, and train trip to Kuranda to see the mountains and rainforest on day two. There’s a market up there where you can see aboriginal dancing and art and buy lunch,” the helpful guide answers.
It seems like a good plan, so she nods.
“Do you have a preference for the boat company; there are several?” he says.
“Wherever the coral is best. Which do you recommend?”
I’d personally go with Quicksilver. The boats are new and fast, and they go right to the far edge of the outer reef where the water’s clearest.”
“That sounds good. And if I wanted to head off to Magnetic Island after my train trip what would be the best way?”
“I’ll fix you up with a bus ticket and a motel room in Townsville if you like. You can fit it in after you leave Kuranda and then go out to Magnetic Island on the ferry early the next day. How about that?”
She agrees and pulls out her credit card. While she waits for the payment to process she thinks of how she first heard about Magnetic Island when reading about Captain Cook’s discovery voyage. Then, earlier this year, a girlfriend mentioned this same quiet island where she’d enjoyed a steamy romance with a German man staying at the same backpacker hostel, situated right on the beach. Perhaps a place to start her own love life again, or at least relieve that ache of desire to be touched, an intimacy she’s missed over the last few months thanks to that cheating bastard Edward.
As she leaves the tourist shop she’s vaguely aware of a tall man, wearing an eagle motif cap and sunglasses, brushing past her. Abstracted by imagining her planned trips she looks away as he passes.
A chicken salad and glass of wine are lunch at a local café. They leave her feeling warm and sleepy. She makes her way back to her hotel and falls onto the bed in her cool shaded room.
Susan wakes as dusk is falling; she blames jetlag for her three hours of afternoon sleep. She feels mussy and her mouth is dry. She finds a mineral water in the bar fridge and goes onto the balcony to sip it in the dusk. Her plans to go out that night seem suddenly less attractive. She needs to be early away to the reef. Plus, the bed feels so good.
The bathroom has a Jacuzzi style bath in front of a large mirror; she assesses it then runs the tap. As it fills with steaming water, she takes a bottle of sparkling wine from the fridge and fills up a champagne glass. She tosses off her light dress and knickers and stands, half looking at herself in the mirror.
She remembers sharing champagne in a bath with Edward last year, him telling her, “I love your oval face and small nose. And I love your perfect pointed little chin.”
She pushes her thoughts of him away and tries to see her body through the eyes of someone else, wondering how a new lover would see her.
She’s of average height and, as a teenager, she’d wished to be taller, but she likes her body now. She sees smallish well-shaped breasts, round hips and slender legs. Most striking are her pale blue eyes, a Nordic feature that match her fair skin but don’t quite gel with her abundant Mediterranean looking hair. Her eyes are the colour of a milky blue tropical sea—this morning’s sea. Some poetic friends say the colour is an English summer sky bathed in bright sunshine. Men love her eyes. Perhaps a Spanish sailor, wrecked with the Armada, found his way into the family Anglo-Saxon gene pool. She never thinks herself riveting, but she is sometimes aware of other’s admiring glances. Today she feels good about what she sees in the mirror.
Susan is never short of men trying it on—men interested only in a physical encounter. If she’s honest, her relationship with Edward had a shallow edge. She craves something deeper. Still, for now, a man to give her pleasure will suffice. Deeper things can come in their own time.
Waiting for the bath she’s suddenly hungry. She rings room service and orders salt and pepper squid—the house specialty. On being told of a half hour wait, she collects a glossy magazine from the countertop to flick through and plunges into the bath. Water up to her neck, Susan lies dreaming as she glances at pictures of rainforest, fish, exotic animals and Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bubbles of wine slowly fizz on the tip of her tongue.
When the bell rings for room service, she quickly dries and dons a bathrobe, then opens the door and the food is brought in. By the end of dinner, she’s struggling to stay awake. Cursed jetlag. Leaving the plates, she casts her robe aside and falls, naked, onto the bed and into a deep and dreamless sleep.
She wakes, cold, at 3.00 am and snuggles under the covers with a novel until faint light on the horizon tells her a new day has come. She stands on her balcony watching the sky go through its colours, deep purple with pink edges, then reds and oranges, and finally brilliant gold as the sun bursts over the horizon, somewhere far out over the Pacific Ocean. It offers the promise of excitement in the coming brand new day.
She has a quick shower then finds her bikini, the pale blue skimpy one Edward bought her on a trip to Greece. He loved it because he said she looked “So-o sexy” and it matched the colour of her eyes—it too is the almost cornflower blue of a tropical sea. The bikini is the one thing from him she still has. At least something worthwhile came from that relationship.
Susan admires herself in the mirror. She has to admit, even if she feels vain for thinking it, she does look really good in this bikini; it works for her. She likes the idea of being eye-catching for handsome blokes on the reef tour. It’s a delicious thought, and she feels a thrill of anticipation at the direction her imagination is taking her.
But time is passing, and she’s keen to start her day. She puts on a T-shirt and shorts and heads to the breakfast café in the hotel lobby. Boat departure is half past eight, so she eats well, but with purpose, resisting the temptation to dawdle over the newspapers. Just before eight she heads out, carrying her underwater camera and a backpack of tourist accessories.
On the wharf she joins a hundred other passengers milling around. Someone checks her ticket and asks whether she wants to participate in snorkelling or scuba diving. She got her diving qualifications in the Mediterranean with Edward, and diving has been a great love since, that separate underwater world, completely removed from all else.
She says yes to both diving and snorkelling and her name goes on the list for the second dive.
She takes her bag below, finds a place to leave it, and returns to the deck. The crew make final preparations, then the line is cast off. They reverse away from the wharf and turn to face the sea. There are several other boats dotting the harbour; some look like fishing boats, and others have the sleek and shiny hulls of the pleasure cruisers. An orange harbour master’s boat sits off to one side. In front of the boat on both sides rise the low rock walls of the harbour sides.
A few hundred yards ahead is another large catamaran, cousin to their boat. As she watches it powers up, white wash surging behind as it reaches the harbour entrance. It rises from the water, its silver body pushing out like a leviathan of the deep that bursts free. Soon it is skipping across the waves and curving steadily right towards a new destination.
Now they motor slowly across the glassy water of the sheltered inlet. Susan stands at the rail on the top deck looking out to sea, one of a dozen people standing side by side. The view out to sea is of endless rolling ocean with a few islands dotted here and there. Looking back to the town she sees mountains rise steeply behind covered in dark green foliage, with odd patches of bare rock and glimpses of glistening waterfalls.
The sun is warm on her skin but not yet hot. She turns to look back at the same time as the woman beside her. Their eyes meet in a smile, “Your first time on the reef?”
“Yes, first time in Australia, just arrived. You?”
“I come up here every year from Melbourne. It’s freezing down there now in the middle of winter. The weather here is perfect. It’s my yearly escape to paradise. I think getting out on the reef is the best part.”
They’re about to talk more when the captain comes over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. Soon we’ll leave the harbour and head to the outer reef, where we’ll tie up at a pontoon. It has an underwater viewing area, which gives a great view the fish and coral. You’ll also have the opportunity to snorkel and dive nearby.
“It’s a trip of an hour and a half and may get a bit rough with the swell, so please hold the rail or sit down. Once there you’ll have over five hours of free time to swim, dive and enjoy the reef. A buffet lunch will be served. We depart at 3.30 pm, and we’ll be back to port by five this evening.”
A second announcement follows. “Those diving please come to the back deck to be fitted.”
Everyone is fitted with masks and flippers. Diver’s qualifications are checked, and the dive master gives an outline of the coming dive. They’re instructed to assemble on the back deck at 11.00 am for an 11.30 am dive. She returns to the top deck, wanting to enjoy the view and the sea air.
Once outside port, the engines power up to a throaty roar. The Jet Cat cuts at a sharp angle across the wave tops of the half-metre swell as they maintain their line heading straight out of the harbour. From the angle of the rising sun she infers they’re heading north east. Wind and salt spray whip her face. It’s exhilarating, good to be alive.
The crew announce that tea, coffee and biscuits are available below, along with reef videos to show what they may see in the water. After five more minutes in the fresh air Susan heads below deck to educate herself on the new fish of this place, half a world away from where she’s dived before. She’s so absorbed by the images of fish and coral she barely notices the trip or the other guests. All too soon the motors slow as they arrive on the outer reef and nose into their pontoon.
Susan has an hour free before her dive, so she grabs snorkel equipment and is almost first in the water. The tide is low, and she feels protected in the shallow water around the fringing reefs. Keeping the boat in sight, she works her way around, trying to identify and keep a count of the myriad different fish she sees. She’s blown away by colour, loves the different corals and the homes they form for fish. The highlight is a large stingray, more than a metre across; it slowly flaps on its way above the sandy sea floor, stirring up sand eddies in its wake. She looks up and sees the divers from the first dive returning. Her hour must be almost gone. She swims back and boards.
There are two instructors and ten divers in her group, which is broken into pairs, buddies for the dive, who will stay together and watch out for each other. Her buddy is a lanky man, probably in his early thirties, lean and fit without the body builder look.
“Hoho,” he mumbles, as he fiddles with his snorkel fitting. “I’m Mark.” He holds out his hand and she grasps it. His hand is strong and callused from manual work.
“Susan,” she replies. She likes his smile, friendly and composed, not trying for over-the-top charm excess, a person who keeps his own counsel. She thinks his accent is Aussie—not quite definite; perhaps he’s lived or worked elsewhere.
“Have you done this before?” he asks.
“Yes, got my ticket in the Med a couple years ago. Love it. And you?”
“Long time ago. I’m rusty. Looks like you’ll be bringing me up to date.”
They go off the boat deck into the water, a second apart, and swim side by side, following the lead instructor a few metres ahead. They swim slowly, slowing their breathing to an even pace as they relax. Mark waves to her.
She signals back: all good.
The instructor points to his left, down into a big hole in the reef where a huge cod guards his patch. Small brightly coloured fish swim around its massive head, staying just out of reach. Susan smiles at the cheekiness of the little fish. Mark seems to be grinning too. They swim on. She notices a disguised power in his long body; he diverts slightly then rockets back towards her with powerful kicks.
The hour passes too quickly. It seems only minutes before they’re back at the boat. But wow, so much to see in this place: turtles, huge reef fish lazily working around the deeper holes, a group of white tipped reef sharks scouting the reef’s edge, and so, so many brilliantly coloured fish and corals. She loses count of all their types but loves them all.
She can’t help watching Mark as he pulls his wetsuit top down, revealing lean hard muscles. A scar, several inches long, runs high down his back, over his shoulder. Other smaller scars pepper his skin in various places. She turns away before he looks around, puts her own gear in the tub.
When she looks up, he’s standing alongside her. “Don’t know about you, but I’m starved. Are you travelling with others, or do you want to join me for lunch?”
“No, just me. Yes, let’s have lunch.”
They go to the buffet bench and pile their plates high with prawns, ham, salad and bread rolls. They find a table with two seats facing. For the first few minutes they’re both too hungry to talk, as they cram their mouths.
Mark stops eating just as she takes a huge bite. He smiles, and the smile crinkles around the edges of his eyes. Captured in that moment he is striking.
“Looks like you needed that; you must have been even hungrier than me.”
Her mouth is too full to reply. She points to her mouth. They both laugh.
Soon they’re talking together, the way complete strangers do, exchanging details about lives, trips, plans, work. Mark has just returned from abroad and is planning to head across the top of Australia, maybe to get work in the Kimberley on a mine.
It appears he’s a jack of all trades: stockman, miner, bush mechanic, mostly in the outback, but he knows big cities like Sydney and Melbourne too. He’s also spent time in the Middle East, Africa and America, with a couple trips to Europe and England. Now his accent makes sense.
He seems warm and personable, but there’s a hard edge to him, something she can’t fathom—not quite dangerous, but at the far edge of unpredictable wildness. She tells him briefly about her breakup with Edward, saying, “I caught him cheating on me. I decided I didn’t want to be with someone I didn’t trust, plus we had little in common. So, I moved out of the flat we shared and decided it was time to get on with my own life. This trip is part of me getting on with my own life, learning to do things on my own. What about you?”
“Well, there have been a few girlfriends along the way, but most didn’t last long. I am a bit footloose. I like the freedom to travel when the moment seizes me. A couple times it got serious, but things went wrong and it never worked out. I’ve got used to looking after myself. Perhaps one day the right one will come along and I’ll find myself settling down. Meanwhile there’s so much to see and do.”
“And what did the serious relationships get right?” She laughs. “I can’t believe I asked you that. Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”
“It’s not really looks. Well, a little bit. But I think it’s sparkle, taking joy in life, living in the moment, being willing to try new things. I’m like that. If there’s something I haven’t done before and it looks exciting, I’ll have go. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes badly, but it’s good to try. Life is for the living; it’s sweeter at the edge.”
“Not looking for the safe and predictable, finding someone you can trust?”
“Yes of course, but I don’t want my brain to turn into mush. Safe’s an illusion. It can vanish in a puff. Best not to assume it will last, but to learn to get back up when you fall flat. There’s always another day, another horizon.
“And what about you? Is safe what you want?”
She thinks for a moment, feeling there’s more to the question than the words. “I need to be able to trust. Nothing like seeing your boyfriend in bed with another to teach the value of trust. But I want more, shared adventures, doing new things. Safe on its own isn’t enough.”
Something about Mark draws her in like a magnet. Perhaps it’s his understated way, his willingness to go anywhere and do anything, not tied to rules. He isn’t classically handsome, but he radiates a raw vitality that’s appealing. She senses a resilient tough independence, as if Mark’s a man who takes hard knocks and bounces up with an undiminished life force. And she likes the way he tells stories with an edge of sardonic humour, hidden behind a slightly weather-beaten face and self-deprecating grin.
When they finish eating, Susan gets into a conversation with another woman sitting by herself at the table next to them. Her name’s Maggie, and she’s English too. They’re soon swapping stories of London and enjoying their shared English humour.
Mark takes his empty plate away. She expects he’ll return and join her conversation with Maggie. Instead he drifts off, heading outside; he seems to have lost interest in being part of this conversation. There is something solitary and a bit asocial in the way he leaves without words and moves away.
