Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [189]
The luggers returned to sea and Olivia began decorating and setting up their home while also planning their wedding. ‘Just a simple ceremony, I mean at our age and after all this time … ’ she began, but couldn’t hide from Mabel her bubbling joy.
‘What nonsense! You’re in the prime of life. The town will expect a big event, Olivia. John is a popular man with all races and they love you too.’
‘We’ll see. I’ll talk it over with John when he gets back.’
Olivia walked along the track at the edge of the bay. With the luggers outside on a last run over the beds, the town dozed in the salty air heavily humid with the threat of the first rain of the wet season.
She paused to watch an old Malay fisherman unload silvery barramundi, thread them along an oar and, hoisting it to one shoulder, lift a bucket of cockle oysters and set off for town. His faded batik sarong was knotted firmly around his sinewy frame, his black topi set at a jaunty angle, his sandals scuffing the orange dust. Memories of fish dinners Minnie had prepared from Alf’s catches came back to Olivia. Or times Alf had caught a couple of big mangrove crabs which Minnie declared ‘were sweeter even than dugong’.
A puff of the last of the south-east trade winds skipped across the bay, lifting a lock of her hair, and she could smell the sea, the mangroves, the mudflats, tar from a repaired boat and mock orange blossom in the front yard of a small wooden shuttered house. And it came to Olivia that this was indeed home. Broome was in her blood.
Every morning here held promise … promise of excitement, adventure, achievement, a feeling that in this remote spot on the north-west coast of the continent almost anything could happen, that it was unlike anywhere else on earth. One was part of a rough, roistering community of many races, ordinary folk doing their ordinary jobs on shore, adventurers, wild and funny misfits, and that great mixed band of men who lived for the sea and its treasures which were sought by the rich and the famous in the great cities of the world who couldn’t possibly imagine places like Broome. The realisation that this odd little town and the great emptiness around it had become so much part of her inner self excited Olivia. She recognised how artificial her life in the city had been, that her apparent satisfaction with work at the refuge and life with Gilbert before his stroke was indeed superficial. This was where she really belonged, in the outback where life was still quite raw, the land untamed, the sea magnificently challenging. It was where she had first discarded the emotional baggage she brought from England and discovered within herself new emotions, new aspirations, new abilities beyond her imagination. In Broome she had been reborn, and here she belonged.
She confided these feelings to Tyndall, who understood perfectly. He shared her love of the place, but had to acknowledge in turn that it was his finding of her love in Broome, rather than more physical aspects of his life here, that made his attachment to the place so strong. ‘It’s like we belong to this place because we belong to each other,’ he whispered to her one evening. ‘I always felt that if I left here I would never get you back. Do you understand, or am I talking nonsense?’
She laughed a little. ‘Nonsense? Of course not, darling. It’s beautiful sense. Although I’m quite sure there are a lot of people who think we’re crazy staying here, that we’re missing out so much on what the world has to offer.’ She snuggled up close to him. ‘I’m quite happy to let the rest of the world go by so long as you’re around.’ They were treasuring every moment together, for too well they both knew how joy could be snatched away.
Olivia had asked Yusef to find a small poinciana tree and when she had decided on the right spot in the garden, he dug the hole and Olivia spread the soil around its roots and patted it firmly in place. She stood back and shut her eyes and could see it in the years ahead, rising