Abadabra - 2

The voyage by small ship took six full days and nights and on the seventh morning, like a biblical creation, the island abruptly appeared. Lourens and Jamie Sinclair were sitting in the stern sipping tea when they heard the shouts from one of the crew.
It had not been a good trip for Lourens but it could have been a lot worse if not for the small pills Sinclair had finally wheedled him into swallowing on the second day. He had waved her away before that, too intent on his own misery to listen.
He had been seasick from the moment the ship had pressed its stubby bow into the first ocean swell, rising and falling and rolling as squat ships do. The endless dry retching had drained all the anger from him, made him weak and feeble. The loud argument with Hinkle in the restaurant about technical convicts seemed to belong to other people, and the animosity he felt towards Jamie Sinclair for being young and beautiful and - worst of all - a woman had been mostly swept away in a cloud of unhappy delirium.
He slowly climbed the metal steps to the small bridge. Sinclair was there already and had borrowed the captain’s binoculars.
“It’s beautiful,” she said excitedly.
Lourens could see a smudge of the horizon, a thin encrustation. He knew the island was a coral atoll, the highest point no more than seven or eight metres above sea level; still his imagination had prepared him for something more substantial.
“Have a look,” she said, pressing the captain’s binoculars to his chest. She was like a child with something to show off, a strange and wonderful discovery.
He did look, struggling to keep the glasses steady as the ship rose and fell beneath his feet. Abadabra swam in and out of focus, a glimpse of this and that, unsubstantial, meaningless shapes. Within moments he was feeling nauseous again. He gave the glasses back to her and lurched towards the door to find fresh air.
The captain exchanged glances with Sinclair; he shrugged and smiled.
The ship dropped anchor two hundred metres from the shore on the south east coast of the atoll. It took two hours for the supplies to be ferried ashore. Lourens went with the first load, clutching his suitcase and the rifle in its canvass case. He was the first off the rubber boat, the first to walk up the beach of broken shells. They crunched and squeaked beneath his boots. He couldn’t decide whether the strange sounds were a welcome or a protest.
A small house stood a dozen metres back from the shore, a prefabricated structure of dull ordinariness with an array of solar panels on the roof and a fat green rainwater tank standing on short stilts to one side. Lourens made his way there to dump his suitcase and the rifle. The door was bolted but unlocked. Storm shutters were firmly closed against each window and it was dark inside, but the open door gave enough light for Lourens to take in the contents of the room in a single sweep. The furnishings were utilitarian, exactly the choices to be expected from a far-away scientific committee. Exploring the rest of the house Lourens found three bedrooms, a toilet, a shower and a tiny kitchen.
He returned to the beach to help with the unloading. Sinclair came over with the last load, clutching a clipboard, accompanied by the captain.
“Have you made the beds?” she asked cheerfully.
Lourens grinned, although the joke irritated him.
The captain walked over to the water tank to inspect the gauge, nodding in approval when he saw that the tank was full. He told them that the ship would move round to the north west side of the island to unload supplies for the construction crew, and after that they would probably be on their own for a little under four months.
“If you’ve forgotten your toothbrush, now’s the time to speak up,” he said.
He clambered into the rubber boat and Lourens and Sinclair stood and watched as the boat sped back to the waiting ship, leaving them standing side by side, stranded and alone. It was an awkward moment, long seconds imbued with a peculiar tension that held them both immobile and speechless.
“I think I’ll go for a swim,” Sinclair said eventually, breaking the spell, and she did.
Lourens went to unpack his suitcase and when he’d done that, which didn’t take long, he went for a walk to get his bearings. He counted four giant tortoises in the first ten minutes, confirming what he already suspected: his census of animal, insect and avian inhabitants of the tiny island would probably be complete in less than a fortnight. Nothing would run away and hide, unlike the rhinos and leopards of the Africanj bush; nothing would snarl or snap because he posed no threat. All the things with teeth and an attitude were in the lagoon and the encircling sea, and that was Jamie Sinclair’s domain.
“We’re relying on you to recommend whether the island needs a permanent ranger station,” Hinkle had said and Lourens took some comfort in recalling his words, seeing in that at least some loftier purpose.
When he arrived back at the house Sinclair was unpacking boxes in the kitchen. She was still in a bikini and still wet from the sea. Lourens imagined coming home to his own house to find a model from Sports Illustrated reaching for a high shelf to put away a tin of tomatoes. And yet this was his house, at least for the next four months.
It felt ludicrous enough to be a dream. To prove to himself that it wasn’t he called his wife on the satellite phone.
Mary was driving Hansie and Leon home from school and the conversation was instantly full of distractions as the two small boys fought noisily on the back seat for the right to speak to their father.
“I made the team,” Leon screamed, only to have his triumph swallowed by a scolding from his mother.
As time went on, first days and then a week, the two castaways settled into a routine and moulded themselves into roles to suit the circumstances. He behaved in effect like her father, much older than his actual years in the way he spoke, and she responded like a daughter, playful but respectful. As professional colleagues they could shed the roles when dealing with a matter of technical or practical importance but they always returned to them, especially during the intimacy of meals and in the evening.
Lourens worked his way steadily through a series of blocks he’d drawn on a map of the island, taking photographs and plant and insect samples and counting everything that walked or crawled. Each day took him a little closer to the north east, five miles as a crow might fly had there been one in the island skies. On the eighth day, carrying his rifle for the first time, he reached the construction camp. It was deserted.
“Nobody at all?” Jamie asked when he got back to the house late that afternoon.
“Not a soul.”
“Do you think they went back with the ship? I’m surprised nobody told us.”
Lourens shrugged because he didn’t know. It was a relief and a disappointment, the removal of a vague threat and yet confirmation of their total isolation.
Not content to leave it a mystery, Jamie called Hinkle on the satellite phone.
“I haven’t a clue but I’ll find out,” he said, his tone suggesting he didn’t think it mattered. He immediately changed the subject: “Have you checked your email today? Do you know about the storm warning?”
She told him she hadn’t.
“It looks like a nasty one, you better be careful, hunker down.”
Hinkle’s email gave her a web address and she logged on to that and saw the storm as a camera high above in orbit around the earth had seen it, a spiral mass of cloud blotting out a vast swathe of the ocean. The image moved on the computer screen in an ominous series of mechanical jerks, a robot’s view of a living thing.
She went into the twilight outside to tell Lourens. He was sitting at the barbeque, fork in hand, grilling a fish on a driftwood fire, squeezing lemon on its flesh.
“There’s a storm headed our way, a real monster,” she said.
He nodded and told her that he’d guessed as much, that he’d seen the signs. The birds had gone, the one’s that could fly at any rate, and the tortoises were making slow progress towards the north east of the island. He had passed a score of them on his way back, he said, all plodding in the opposite direction.
“We’re probably on the most exposed side,” he said.
“Do you think we should join them?” she asked.
She made it sound like a joke but he sensed her nervousness and he didn’t smile.
“I think we should have supper first,” he said, lifting the fish from the grill.
As he spoke, the storm, though still beyond the black horizon, announced its’ coming with a single blast of wind, an invisible whip that cracked against the house. It ignited the embers and showered them both in sparks. The door of the house behind them slammed shut with a loud bang.