Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong

Thirty-something going on sixteen.

En masse it was quite a spectacle. Honor smiled and let him look. At peak season, these protected waters could support twenty thousand birds. Most used Pulu Keeling as a base, striking out to fish the rich waters of the Cocos Trench, then returning to nests and chicks and shelter. Even the giant frigatebirds, who generally ate and slept high above the planet on the currents of the trade winds, rested, recuperated and romanced here on the island. They were born here and instinct brought them back every two years to breed. It was, quite literally, their sanctuary.

‘And here I was thinking how quiet it is here …’

Honor looked at him strangely. ‘Quiet? No, listen.’

All around them echoed the sounds of contented birds. Occasionally, a particular voice rose in squabble or seduction but otherwise the noise blended into a low drone which underpinned the perpetual sounds of the waves crashing on the outer reef and then washing on and off the shell-covered shoreline of the island with high-pitched tinkling. She pointed off to the right where she could hear the high, creaky ack-ack sound of a buff-banded rail roosting contentedly. She saw the moment Rob heard it too, his tiny smile of recognition. Then she tuned her ears the other way, tipping her head slightly and he followed suit. She could hear a rhythmic, throaty chuckle off in the distance and she tapped her finger in the sand in time, to help him focus in on the distinctive call of a fairy tern. His eyes drifted shut.

‘In front, the pew-pew-pew sound. In perfect time with the waves …’ she whispered.

His head tipped like a satellite dish, listening now for the ocean in the distance. It stretched his jaw to a perfect stubbly angle and Honor had a sudden urge to touch it. Relaxed like it was, his handsome face was less designer angles and more … appealing. More human. He was enjoying this.

She ripped her eyes away.

‘A thousand different sounds are out there for the listening. It’s anything but quiet.’

Their faces were quite close now and he opened his eyes to look sideways into hers, naked speculation in his gaze. Honor caught her breath. I bet that gets results every time, too. Then, as though drawn by magnetism, his eyes strayed down to her scars and then shot back up again. She sighed.

It would be ever thus. She wasn’t angry or offended; a tiny bit disappointed, perhaps. She knew how the scars looked, what they meant and why she wore them—almost as a badge of honour. No man’s awkward stare was going to undo what they meant to her.

‘So, how far is the Emden memorial from here?’

She’d almost forgotten what had brought him to the island in the first place. ‘Uh … Over that way, I think a couple of hundred metres?’

He looked appalled. ‘Haven’t you seen it?’

She wasn’t much for manmade history, hadn’t paid the marker very much attention in four years. ‘Sure. It’s not far from the turtle nests.’

He craned upwards, towards the direction she’d indicated and his eyes glittered. ‘Show me?’

They were such simple words, but so eagerly uttered. His excitement was infectious. How long had it been since she got excited about anything? Four years? Longer? She nodded and started to crawl backwards, away from the birds. He copied, reverse commando crawling into the cover of trees. He definitely looked better doing it than she did.

Five minutes had them emerging on the beach on the far side of the tiny island. Honor turned left and wandered along a shoreline more pristine than the northern one—impossibly so—but the lagoon on this side was shallower, electric-blue and mesmerising.

Rob stared out to sea where the Emden must have once listed on the outer reef. Weathered timbers grew out of the sand up ahead and Honor touched him on the arm and nodded in their direction. He followed her gaze then, almost reverently, moved towards the memorial. She approached, more respectfully, catching some of his awe.

This is special to him.

There it stood in all its simplicity, two uprights and a cross timber engraved with the words SMS EMDEN. At its base, the green-tinged remains of some metal part of the vessel. To Honor it looked like sea rubbish, but she could see it meant something very different to Rob. He squatted and ran a feather-light hand over the corroded green surface, his fingers dancing over every contour as though it were Braille. She tore her eyes away, overwhelmed by a sudden image of those long graceful fingers learning the shapes of her own flesh.

Her pulse surged.

‘What happened here?’ She knew the basics but wanted to hear him tell it—desperately wanted to put things back on a surer footing— and nothing slowed her pulse quite as much as military history.

‘During the First World War, Australia’s HMAS Sydney responded to a distress call from Direction Island. The Cocos cluster was a strategic communications base because of its proximity between Indonesia and Australia. When the Sydney arrived, she encountered the German SMS Emden sitting offshore readying an attack.’

He moved around the memorial, checking out every angle. As though it were more than just a couple of whacked together timbers. A whole lot more. His blue eyes glowed vibrantly and Honor found herself focusing more on that than on the artefacts around them. His large hands got in on the act, waving in space, painting an imaginary scene, independent of the man telling the story. They became the punctuation for his hypnotic voice.

‘The Emden was a beast of a machine, even though she was a light cruiser. She’d scuttled hundreds of enemy vessels in her time. Then she just disappeared from known waters until she turned up here, right on Australia’s doorstep.’

The first flash of interest in the wreck she’d ignored for four years sparked through her. She had no ear for maritime history but found herself completely captivated by his low, engaging voice. Did he know what a magical storyteller he was?

‘It was a short, brutal battle and Emden’s captain ran his own ship hard onto the reef to avoid it being captured by the enemy.’

Honor got the distinct feeling he’d forgotten she was even there, was telling the story for himself. He stared out to the reef, where the massive battleship must have run aground a century before. As he did, she imagined a shimmer on the horizon where the giant grey behemoth would have rocked dangerously on the edge of the precious atoll.

Oh, the coral, a tiny voice despaired. ‘What happened to the crew?’

‘Most died in the fire-fight with the Sydney. Some in the grounding, some were captured by the Australians, but some.’ he turned and looked at the tropical paradise behind him ‘… some escaped capture and hid on the island, only to die of thirst because of the absence of fresh water. Their skeletons were found a year later, picked clean by the robber crabs.’

Well, that explained something. Honor nodded up the beach. ‘The Malay word for that bend up there means “bosun’s grave”.’

Rob turned and stared at the point where the shore disappeared around a bend. Ghosts of memory fairly flew around them.

Finally Honor broke the silence. ‘And the Emden?’

‘Just beyond the reef.’ He flicked his chin towards the flawless, rich blue ocean—so blue it seemed to become the sky somewhere off in the vast distance. ‘The Cocos people stripped her of anything they could use before she perished.’

‘She rusted away?’

‘She broke up and sank. She’s half reef herself now.’ He turned his eyes back to hers. ‘The coral got its revenge, ultimately.’

She smiled at his poeticism. ‘It always does.’

His eyes dropped to her smile briefly before turning back out to sea. Out to where she’d first seen him bobbing in his boat earlier today. Only a day? Why did it feel so much longer? They stood in silence and Honor let Rob have his thoughts. The sinking sun cast rich golden light over his tanned features, highlighting a straight nose and the symmetrical ridges of his cheekbones. She was suddenly inclined to draw out the experience, but the last place she wanted to be as the fiery sun set on the horizon was standing on a tropical island with this … sea-god. There were just some fates you didn’t tempt. The glib charmer he’d treated her to so far today might not currently be present, but he probably wasn’t far away. He was just lost at sea in the glassy expression of Robert Dalton’s blue eyes.

The thought bred a tiny chill and she curled her arms across her torso. A handful of the Emden crew may have been lucky enough to be plucked alive from the cruel waters of the Cocos Trench but the dark ocean was not always so merciful. Not everyone was given a second chance out there.

Not everyone who got one wanted it. As the men who scrabbled ashore from the Emden discovered.

‘We should get back.’ Honor’s stiff tone brought the more familiar glaze to his features as he turned back to her. She instantly missed the passion she’d briefly seen there but was incapable of chasing off the shadows that suddenly surrounded her.

He cast his eyes back out to the reef one last time and then followed her quietly back into the trees.

Rob tossed and turned in The Player’s comfortable cabin for hours. He told himself it was because he was nervous that his boat would sink out from under him and not because he kept reliving flashes of the curve of Honor’s cheek or the smell of her ocean-washed hair. Or the seductive length of her tanned thigh.

But, last time he checked, certain death didn’t harden his body so he had to assume it was the woman and not the threat of sinking to Davy Jones’s locker that was keeping him awake. Either way, the result was the same.

He was going ashore.

He sat up on the bunk and twisted sideways, well practised at not slamming his head on the low ceiling of The Player’s cabin. He’d spent many a night onboard at sea or in dock but he’d never brought anyone back to this cabin with him—real or otherwise. Honor, albeit in imaginary form, was the first woman to set foot inside this space.

Damn her! His haven felt vaguely violated.

Moonlight trailed a sparkling path over rolling ocean all the way to the horizon. Like the yellow brick road leading to Oz, except straight and sure. It occurred to him that, from the moon’s perspective, the golden pathway led straight to this island and to the golden woman inhabiting it. He turned towards shore and visualised her sleeping beneath her giant sunflower tent. Maybe he’d get to watch her sleep for a while. That wasn’t too creepy.

Was it?