As much as I would love to be a good Samaritan at all times, I confess that yesterday, I was not. Was I mean or was I sensible? I don’t know.
To cut a long story short, I had declined my Coochiemudlo Island friends’ invitation to stay on for a roast dinner around six-thirty at The Kiosk; although tempted, I decided it would be better to leave in the mid-afternoon and drive home in the light.
But that was hours before. I had long since said my good-byes to my friends, and to some other would-be ferry passengers who had been waiting, like me, unaware that the ferry could not run at low tide. I found myself still there at five-thirty, not on the jetty, but alone on the beach to the right, and I was studying the water. Well, I was almost alone – there was a thin man in a pink shirt and white hat, and he had been sitting on the same big log under a tree higher up on the beach since before I had come along. The man had seemed absorbed in something on his lap and I barely took any notice of him. I had positioned myself close to the seashore that I might watch the tide intently.
“Is the tide still going out?” I wondered.
I fixed my eyes on a puddle in the shape of a map of Australia (how apt) and figured that if the tide was coming in it would soon deluge the puddle. As I watched the ebbing waves lap the large clumps of seaweed that held the many little elliptical pools, including my map of Australia, I regarded myself as a captive on the island and I suddenly felt homesick for another, much larger island which I now call home, on the other side of the world. It hit me that I was a lonely alien. My thoughts turned to Chris. He would have loved to be with me on that beach under the golden skies of the setting sun; with him, I would not have worried about the onset of nightfall and the fact that the ferry would not run again until the tide had turned and come in sufficiently for the water to reach the jetty steps – as it was, the bottom step hung in the air a foot above the water. With Chris I would not have felt so isolated by the loss of my mobile phone now that the battery had given up the ghost completely; even my camera had run out in the same manner and I felt somehow bereft and incommunicado.
At last a wave flooded Australia and turned it into Lake Ontario. Walking back up the beach towards The Kiosk (where I thought I might meet up with my friends after all) I nodded to the man in the pink shirt.
“You must be waiting for the ferry,” I observed with a look of resignation.
I was still walking, not really expecting a conversation with the loner, when he jumped up suddenly from his perch and I realised, to my great surprise, that he was a woman – at least, she had breasts… or she appeared to have breasts. She was as thin as a rake but she could not be described as petite – not at around six-feet tall. Her dark hair was short beneath her white hat and her skin was swarthy and free from make-up; her jaw and cheeks were angular – her nose was thin and hooked; her eye-sockets were deep and dark-rimmed, and her brown eyes darted as she spoke. She spoke in a deep voice without any resonance, like one of those voices that has died from a lifetime of shouting and smoking… but she liked me – I could tell. She moved closer and closer.
“Is someone picking you up on the other side,” she asked.
“No, I have a car,” I replied, taking a step backwards.
“I live down on the Gold Coast,” she continued, moving backwards with me, “I was staying with friends overnight but one night is enough!”
“Sorry,” I said, “but I’m not going anywhere near the Gold Coast.”
“Oh, of course not… I shall catch the train – the service is good – and I’ll catch a bus to Cleveland, where I can get the train…”
“I’m not going to Cleveland either, sorry,” I got in quickly and turned to make it clear that I was going to move on. “Well, I think I shall join my friends at The Kiosk for dinner.”
It was seven-thirty and we friends had finished dinner when Hayley, who was facing the sea, noticed the lights of the ferry as it pulled in beside the jetty. I hurriedly kissed the girls and ran to meet my only means of transport off the island. I was the last person in the queue apart from a teenager who hung back because she was speaking on her mobile phone; I gestured to her to go on because she was ahead of me in the queue.
“Oh, I was away with the fairies,” she said, stepping in line.
“Not away with the ferries?” I joked.
“No, I was definitely off with the fairies!” the girl said with determination and a lack of humour.
There were fewer people than I expected on the ferry and no sign of the tall woman in the pink shirt, or the ‘love-birds’ I had encountered during the first hour of my long wait for the ferry. Somehow, perhaps during the lively conversation over dinner, I had missed the arrival of the ferry for its first pick-up. It didn’t matter to me. Actually, I was glad because I had been dreading further conversations with the odd woman who had made me feel so uncomfortable.
In six minutes the ferry drew in to Victoria Point and I jumped off first… There under the lamp at the end of the jetty was the now familiar figure of a tall thin person in a pink shirt and white hat, and she didn’t look very happy; in fact she looked very angry with a reproachful expression (aimed at me) on her sharp face and with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I hope you had a nice dinner with your friends,” she said very pointedly (and meaning the opposite) like a jilted lover. “I missed the bus and now I have to go back to the island!”
“Oh, so sorry,” I answered, still walking.
“You just run along home,” she jibed.
I didn’t run at that point but I power-walked to the road end of the jetty; I broke into a run going up the poorly lit hill and jogged the similarly poorly lit half kilometre to the car. I did not look back to see if I was being followed (I was trying to play it cool). I plipped the car with the key, opened the door, fumbled with the key in the ignition and zoomed off. After a mile or so I pulled in to set my “Sat Nav” for home. It took me on a very dark, lonely, frightening and extremely circuitous route… but no, I said I would cut a long story short.
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