Page 10 of The Beach Holiday
‘Oh yeah, we have it all here. A proper activity centre. You’ll never get bored. Even if there weren’t activities, there is a lot of work to do. We’re in the middle of a new building project, plus the cleaning, the cooking, the hunting.’
‘Hunting?’ I questioned again, realising I probably sounded like a parrot. ‘You mean fishing?’
Mary smiled; I noticed that her teeth were crooked. ‘Sure.’ She grinned. ‘You like fishing?’
‘I only sold chocolate on the mainland. I guess I should have tried to pick up a better skill.’
‘You have all the skills you need here right now,’ Mary told me sternly. ‘And we can teach you anything else you need to know,’ she said softly. ‘Here we are.’
We stopped walking. We were outside a hut with stairs leading to the door. ‘Go on in and make yourself at home. Yours is the bed furthest away, but you’ll see. Clara is pretty neat to be fair.’ Mary looked back at where we had come from. ‘Dinner should be ready in an hour or so if you need to rest.’
Mary handed me my backpack. I almost buckled under the weight; I was so weary. I didn’t expect to sleep, but I wanted to.
‘Okay?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’ I heaved it onto my back just for the few steps into the hut.
Inside was dark and cool, with enough shelter from the trees to keep the sun off the huts for most of the day but to allow light in during the evening. This was the time of day the sleeping quarters needed to be cool. There were two beds, not very high off the ground on either side of the wall, and two side tables in between, but there was still sufficient space. There were two wicker baskets against the wall to my right; one was stuffed full of rolled-up clothes, and the other was empty. These were our wardrobes. There was one fan against the furthest wall, but it wasn’t on.
I heard noise from outside my hut, raised voices. I pulled the curtain aside and saw Avril a few feet away. A woman was up in her face, shouting and pointing her finger. She was tall, slim and blonde, and was wearing blue Nike shorts and a hot pink Nike vest. Avril stood firmly, not budging an inch, even though I was sure she could have swatted her away. She was listening to her but wasn’t fazed by her behaviour. I couldn’t figure out what was being said, but eventually the woman stopped shouting and started crying. Avril opened her arms, and the woman fell into them. But it seemed like an obligation to Avril, that she needed to do this. That this was part of her job here on Totini.
As the woman collapsed into her, Avril’s head turned towards me. I dropped the curtain and stepped back. It was obvious that there would be heightened emotions, even somewhere as perfect as Totini. With now over thirty people living here, it didn’t matter how harmonious the surroundings were, we were humans with complex minds. Perhaps she had received some bad news from back home. I then thought about my family and took my phone from my pocket. Still no signal. Kali hadalready told me not to expect any, yet I still hoped for a bar or two to somehow appear. Kali was right. We were as far off the grid as we could possibly be right now. I looked instead at the final message I’d had from my mum.
I do wish you were with Bruno; I would feel so much better about all of this.
I hadn’t replied to that one. Mum existed in a world where I had callously thrown away my relationship with a man who was kind, giving and financially stable. The latter was true. And it seemed it was perhaps the only reason she wanted to see me settle with Bruno. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell her the truth. I think it would have hurt her a lot more to know what Bruno really was, than the idea that a marriage was off the cards. I’d slipped away quickly to avoid the confrontation with my family. I thought my sister might understand, but it had all happened so fast, Bruno’s final act that brought me to Fiji. I didn’t have time to even try and explain it to her. It seemed like a lifetime ago. As I stood in the hut, I realised it would be easy to forget those closest to you when you were thousands of miles away. But somehow, Bruno’s words remained.
Disappointment.
I decided to leave my things as they were; as tired as I was, I wouldn’t rest. I was eager to meet people and not feel like the new campmate for too long.
I left the hut and headed back towards the smell of the fire. I absorbed some more of my surroundings from the outskirts, hopefully sinking into the trees where I didn’t stand out toomuch. The weather was different here on the island. The mainland was stifling and often unbearable, carrying the scent of car fumes and food trucks. Here, there was some relief with the sea breeze all around us, yet the heat still wrapped itself around me and held me in a clinch, hopefully until sunset when there would finally be some relief.
One hut was standing by itself, which I hadn’t noticed before. It was set even further back from the camp. It looked more prominent than the others. I wondered what it was used for. If it was another store. Hens walked freely around me, and a large rooster paraded around the campfire, confidence oozing from him as though he knew he wasn’t about to become someone’s dinner anytime soon and that he had the pick of all the hens. There were signs of activities, things that had been going on before I arrived: washing hanging from a line between two trees, a pile of coconuts waiting to be husked. I saw a large pot sitting next to the fire, and my stomach grumbled. I wondered what was in it. Then, just a few metres away, was a large machete leaning against the trunk of a tree.
‘That’s a big bastard,’ I whispered to myself.
I heard voices between the trees behind me, and a small group of women walked through and into the campfire. Two small children, about four and six years old trotted next to one of the women. More people emerged as a gong was rung for dinner. I imagined that after some time living in such a place, your body automatically knows when it is time to eat. Before long, the camp was buzzing, with a pre-dinner vibe; it looked like a small soiree, a gathering before some sort of event. Except the event was simply dinner. But already I likedthat about this place, that eating was significant enough that everyone came together to do it at once en masse.
I looked at the arrivals and began to count. I saw Avril amongst the group now, and I counted thirty-one, including me. I looked hard at every person gathering around the fireplace, and scrutinising each of their faces one by one until I was completely sure. But even then, I was confused and found it hard to comprehend that every single one was a woman.
Where were all the men?
8
THEN
‘We like to think of ourselves as a very elite group,’ Mary said to me as the group of women gathered around the fire. The smell of the dinner was a few feet away from me, and I was ravenous after many hours of travel.
‘Was it a conscious choice or did it just happen?’ I asked Mary.
Mary sucked in a long, slow breath. ‘That’s a very good question. One I believe that Avril has a better answer for. But it has been a long day for you already, and we are hungry. We must eat. Please sit.’ Mary pointed to a seat fashioned out of a selection of colourful cushions at the very pointy edge of what I now realised was a triangle-shaped seating arrangement, the flat base at the bottom of the camp, the tip pointing towards the huts and the trees and forests beyond. The seat at the top was where I was expected to sit.
‘It looks like a place for someone important,’ I said.
‘A new campmate is the most important guest of all.’ Mary signalled to the seat again. It remained empty as the other spaces filled up with eager diners. Already her demeanour towards me was more welcoming than Kali’s.
A woman in a purple hair turban placed a steaming stew into wooden bowls. She looked a lot older than the other women, I could tell from the way her skin had lined from age, but she still had an air of youth about her. She smiled at me from afar and motioned for me to sit in the most delicate way anyone had ever done so before; it was mesmerising. I felt a sensation that I was at home, that this was my mother and that I was going to be looked after.
