Fifteen

"Heave! If we don't bring that water barrel ashore, we'll have nothing to drink but beer! Think of the womenfolk!"

I heard Tony's unmistakeable laugh in response to this. Probably because he knew some of us ladies had no problems drinking beer. We were outnumbered by the men, so we were perfectly happy to let them haul our supplies to shore. They hadn't even permitted me to row the dinghy in the shallows – though Tony had appointed me his unofficial first mate on the Stella Maris for the voyage from Fremantle. Now we were on land, it seemed that Lucy's brother Dominic and his fellow naturalists had assumed command of the expedition.

"We'll be staying in the old guano miners' quarters," Dominic announced.

"Won't they need them?" I asked, looking around. A few sheds, some sort of rusted winch and an assortment of old crates didn't look like quarters for anyone.

He laughed is if it was the silliest question he'd ever heard. I clamped my jaw shut and pressed my hands to my sides to smother my anger. I'd come all this way in the hope of finding a miner I'd been searching for and it didn't look like anyone was home. Nor had they been for years, if the state of the place was anything to go by.

He seemed to sense the danger he was in and decided to stop laughing. He responded, "No mining at the moment. No one has the capital this place needs and the price of guano's too low to justify the outlay."

I was willing to accept this, so I followed them on a tour of our primitive camp. The firepit and crate seats seemed to be our dining room and the rusty, corrugated iron shed was our hotel. Dominic threw the door wide with a clang and spread his arms in welcome when he walked inside.

Of course, that's when chaos erupted. A storm of beaks, feathers and squawking hid Dominic from sight as the hundred or so birds which had taken up residence in the derelict hut shrieked at him as if he'd invaded the women's changing shed at South Beach.

I burst out laughing and stood aside for the mixed flock of seabirds to leave the shed. When they'd gone, I was the first woman to venture inside.

The birds had left behind a mess of feathers, what looked like a shipload of guano that coated the bunks, table, walls and floor, and a disgruntled community of large lizards, which were making their way laboriously into hiding places. I thought I even recognised a stove under a pile of bird droppings, with a pipe running out to the chimney I'd seen outside.

"Doesn't this look homely," a middle-aged naturalist boomed jovially. His nervous wife crept to his side, peering around as if terrified a bird might come back. "I'm sure you ladies will have it looking immaculate in no time!"

The men's authority over me had lasted a grand total of six minutes.

I gave him a look of deep disgust and stalked out without a word. The five other women – Lucy included – seemed to take no issue with the demeaning task of cleaning up bird effluent and they set to work. The men finished hauling our supplies up the beach and claimed the need to lounge around the unlit firepit with some beer. Tony and two of his cousins remained aboard the Stella Maris, securely anchored inside the reef.

Tempted to swim out the ship and stay there for the rest of the trip, rather than on shore with this depressing drudgery, but knowing it would look odd, I settled for a swim to some of the nearer reefs. I mentioned something to the reclining men about reconnoitring suitable fishing spots and stripped off my dress to reveal my bathing costume beneath.

Feeling their appreciative eyes, I tossed my head and walked into the water. A leisurely crawl in the northerly current soon carried me out of their sight and I dived beneath the surface, eager to see some of the warm-water species I'd missed.

I startled a sleepy hammerhead shark but with a few soothing sounds I persuaded him to remain where he was. He'd surely frighten the others if they saw a shark cruise into view that was longer than the dinghy. Especially if he came from the direction I'd swum in. My laughter bubbled up to the surface and I dived deeper. Most mobile sea creatures had moved away from the large predator, leaving only the stationary ones. And there were plenty of those – I'd never seen so many oysters in my life. The most common was a particularly pretty one with black lips and teeth around the edge of its shell. Some of these let off a slight keening sound that made me want to examine them more closely.

Repeating the same song I'd sung to the sleepy shark, I approached the oyster-encrusted reef. I stroked a keening creature and its shell parted beneath my fingers, showing me the nacreous irritant that caused it pain. Carefully, I removed the hard nodule and its complaining ceased. The chorus of keening from the others increased as if they knew I'd helped one of their number and they wanted to be next.

I rolled the silvery pearl between my fingers, knowing it was bigger and more perfect than any Merry owned. Who knew how many of the precious pearls lay hidden in these unhappy oysters?

I pulled off my bathing cap, shaking my hair free, and popped the first pearl inside. Then I reached for another complaining oyster.

Within fifteen minutes, the community had quietened and my cap was half-full of shimmery globules in almost every colour imaginable. Blue, white, silver, pink, purple, green...and even a couple in gold. The smallest were less than a quarter inch in diameter, while the largest were almost twice that. Remembering that humans couldn't hold their breath for this long, I surfaced, looking to the Stella Maris to make sure no one had noticed my slip. The naturalists, naturally, were still out of sight. No one seemed to be alarmed, so I sank to the seafloor again and tackled another noisy rock.

Bobbing to the surface at regular intervals in the pretence of taking a breath, I slowly filled my bathing cap with pearls. I estimated it was barely an hour since I'd left the party when I sauntered slowly back along the beach, clutching my cap closed in one fist. I heard the pearls click together with every step and hoped that I was the only one who would. I had no intention of sharing my find. These were for Merry.

The men had barely moved since I'd left, I found, while the women were still industriously working in and around the hut.

Annoyed, I marched up to the firepit. "I found a good fishing spot a couple hundred yards that way. Plenty of driftwood on the shore for the fire, too. You have to walk along the reef for a bit to reach the fishing spot, until you come to a blue hole where there's deep water. Some of the fish in there were as long as my arm!" I neglected to mention the sharks that were as big as a boat, for it would only frighten them. Hammerheads didn't like the taste of humans, so what they didn't know shouldn't hurt them.

It was the size comparison that motivated them to sit up and show interest, I believe. Twenty minutes saw them ambling off with their fishing tackle in tow. I smothered a laugh as I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder and headed for the hut.

The atmosphere had undergone a radical change. Far from the flurry of activity I'd seen earlier: every woman fell still as I entered. Two wives whispered to each other and I caught the words, "...lazy, Miss High-and-Mighty, thinks she's too good for us..." as both glared daggers at me.

Daggers? I set my bag on the bunk nearest the door and pulled out the hessian sack containing my filleting knives. I'd supplemented them with a machete, just in case we caught anything particularly large out here. Now I'd seen the sharks and the samsonfish, I was delighted I had. I unrolled the bundle on my bunk, lining the blades up as if to illustrate my unspoken point. I decided to hammer it home.

"I've sent the men off to catch dinner. Hopefully, they come back with some of the bigger fish at the spot I scouted, as well as some firewood. Do any of you have any experience cooking on an open fire? Fish, on an open fire?" Heads shook as I'd expected. "In that case, that makes me your head cook tonight. The stove here is all yours – if you want more than fish, that's your lookout. I don't know what's in the supplies the men left on the beach."

Four of them filed out, moving purposefully toward the supply crates. That left Lucy and I. I searched one-handed through my bag for somewhere to stash the pearls, still clutching my wet cap.

"How did you do that? They've been ordering each other around and squabbling over who did the most work since we got here. Not to mention which was the best bed to claim for their husband..." She giggled. I wondered if she knew what married couples did in bed together. Or I presumed they did, seeing as no one discussed sex at all. Even Merry had blushed when she first helped me read some of the more explicit instructions in the Kama Sutra.

I found the hatbox Lucy had insisted I bring as a specimen case for anything I might find. The pearls would fit in here, but they'd rattle around unless I secured them in something similar to my bathing cap. I had to make sure the girl didn't see them.

"It's about knowing who you are and the power you have, then conveying it through every ounce of your being," I said, translating my mother's often-repeated advice on command bearing and authority. I never thought I'd say it to someone else, let alone a human girl. "And you must meet their eyes, so they can see the sharks lurking in your soul."

She choked with laughter and ran out of the hut.

I quickly tipped the pearls into a couple of handkerchiefs and tied the bundles tightly, before placing them in the hatbox. By the time I headed home, I hoped to fill the box. I'd sell some to a jeweller and give the rest to Merry, in thanks for her kindness and hospitality. Then I would be free to seek William or some other man if he rejected me.

He won't, I told myself. The love in his eyes when I last saw him was unmistakeable, I knew. No. I hoped. Maria Speranza, indeed.