Chapter 10
Meredith pushed past him impatiently. The children were lying under a heap of fishing net at one end of a small rowing boat. There was deep water all around them but close ahead was a small rocky island. Other larger islands rose from the sea behind, grey and misty in the distance. A gentle swell slapped the boat with dark waves and white tips showed further out to sea.
“Can you row?” they each asked at the same time then burst out laughing. By taking one oar each they slowly made headway towards the island in a series of jerks and half circles.
“Try and keep it steady,” complained Cory.
“I am trying. The stupid oar keeps going too deep or else doesn’t go in at all,” said Meredith breathlessly as she pulled on the oar.
They rowed for another few minutes and then the boat crunched to a stop on the stony shore. Pulling the boat a little higher, they decided to explore the island. A cold wind was blowing and short tufts of grass grew on the rocky cliff. Fortunately it was a short easy climb to the top and the children stood there looking around.
“There’s nothing here except a few seagulls,” said Cory in disgust.
“That looks like a beach down that end, let’s go there.”
The children slid down a grassy bank to a small beach of grey sand at the other end of the small island. Meredith started collecting shells and Cory decided to build a sandcastle. Meredith promptly joined him and they were soon hard at work.
Finally they sat back and admired their creation. Meredith had decorated the towers with shells and driftwood and they both privately felt it was the best sandcastle they had ever made.
“Aren’t people going to be surprised when they find it here on a deserted island,” giggled Meredith happily.
“The tide will wash it away.”
“I never thought of that.”
“It’s coming up now. We’d better dig a moat.”
The children industriously dug into the sand with their hands and surrounded the castle with a deep moat.
Meredith sat back on her heels with a sigh of satisfaction. “Lovely,” she smiled.
“I’m starving,” said Cory “We’d better go back.”
“You’re always starving,” sniffed Meredith but she turned to go back up the bank after Cory. A few minutes later they were on the flat grassy top of the island.
“Race you to the boat,” called Cory and ran off.
“That’s not fair. I wasn’t ready. You got a head start,” shouted Meredith as she took off behind him. With her long legs, Meredith was a natural runner and she and Cory arrived at the cliff at the same time.
“Oh no,” yelled Cory. “Look at the boat. It’s all your fault.”
The boat wasn’t lying on the shingle where they had left it. Instead the tide had risen slowly and floated it away. It lay bobbing on the waves two hundred metres from the island.
“Why is it my fault?” asked Meredith indignantly.
“You should have tied it to an anchor or something. It’s your father’s boat, after all.”
“I’m surprised you remembered that. I thought you’d decided you were in charge because you are a boy. You always have to be the boss.”
“I do not.”
“You do so.”
“I do not.”
“You do so. What’s more,” screamed Meredith, “you think you can do anything you like and no-one will say anything awful to you. Mum was really angry when you went off with Joshua. If I’d done it I would have been grounded for a month.”
“It’s different for you. You’re her daughter. She couldn’t care less what I did. I don’t count. No-one wants me.”
“Oh, you can be so stupid sometimes,” said Meredith through gritted teeth. “It’s because Mum cares about you that she didn’t yell at you. She wants you to stay and she’s scared you don’t like her.”
“Of course I like her. How could anyone not like her?”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ sniffed Meredith and burst into tears. Cory felt very uncomfortable. He thought he had people figured out but it looked as if he could have been wrong. He threw stones into the water savagely for a few minutes then mumbled an apology.
“I’m sorry. I’ll try to be nicer to Maggie.”
Meredith sniffed harder and gratefully accepted Cory’s rather crumpled handkerchief.
“Why do you get so mad?” she asked when she was calmer.
Cory blushed.
“I get angry when I’m scared. It sort of keeps me from getting totally terrified if I start fighting. Also, I guess I figure that if I behave really badly, people send me away because of the way I behave. Not because of who I am, if you see what I mean.”
” Meredith digested this in silence for a few minutes.
“Are you always going to be like that?” she ventured at last.
“Nah, I think I’m sort of outgrowing it. I still feel frozen sometimes though and I can’t talk much. Not like you. You can talk any time.”
“Actually, I talk heaps when I’m nervous,” Meredith confessed. Cory looked at her in amazement.
“Were you nervous when I arrived? I would never have known.”
“I was scared you’d take one look at us and go away again,” giggled Meredith. “I thought life would be too boring for you at our place.”
“It’s certainly not boring,” exclaimed Cory. “I never know what’s going to happen next.” They stood and watched the dinghy, which was floating further away from them.
“I can’t swim that far. Can you?” Meredith asked Cory.
Cory shook his head. “No, and the water is freezing.”
“What are we doing to do?”
Cory was flattered that Meredith assumed that he was in charge but he had no idea of what to do next.
“I guess we’ll have to wait to be rescued. There are lots of islands over there so perhaps someone will go past soon.”
“We don’t even know where we are,” wailed Meredith. “What if we light a signal fire or something.”
“Do you have any matches?”
“No.”
“Well that won’t work. We’ll just have to wait.”
The children threw themselves down on the grass and waited rather crossly for a boat to come into sight. What felt like hours went by and they watched their rowboat drift gradually away into the distance. Cory tried to teach Meredith to skim stones across the water but eventually gave up in disgust.
“You throw like a girl.”
“Well I am a girl. How come boys can throw better than girls anyway?” She watched in envy as he threw a stone that bounced four times before sinking with a plop.
“We’re just superior,” Cory ducked as Meredith gave him a friendly punch. They threw a few more stones into the water than Meredith gave a sigh.
“I’m really no good at this.” She gave a sudden yell. “Over there. Look. A boat.”
The children jumped up and down, waving their arms and screaming, as a motor boat came putting over to the island. On board was a large man with grizzled hair and a weather-beaten face. He called out to the children in a jumble of foreign words. They looked at him blankly and he called out again angrily.
“I think he wants us to wade out to the boat,” said Cory as the man beckoned violently. “It’s too big to come in close to the shore.”
“Oh all right.”
Meredith gasped at the cold of the water as she and Cory waded into the sea. The man hauled them into the boat and Cory tried to explain with lots of arm movements that they had lost their dinghy.
The man grunted and turned the boat round, gunning the motor and taking off after the rowing boat. Fortunately it was only a few minutes later that they saw it. There were a few anxious moments as Cory and Meredith discovered the difficulties of climbing from one rocking boat to another in the middle of the ocean. They thanked the man, who they thought might be a fisherman, and climbed back under the pile of fishing nets.
“Just wait
a couple of minutes, otherwise he’ll think it’s a bit strange if we vanish,” suggested Meredith.
“He thinks we’re strange anyway,” said Cory definitely as he pushed the button.
“I have no idea where we were. I’ve never heard that language before.”
The children bickered amicably about whether it was Norwegian or Russian or even Greek, although Meredith insisted that it couldn’t have been Greek because Greece would be warmer than that.
Then she decided it might have been Scotland.
“We might have seen the Loch Ness Monster if we’d waited a bit longer.”
“There is no such thing as the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Well you didn’t believe in magic before you came here,” Meredith muttered. Cory had to admit that there was some truth in this.
“Anyway if it was Scotland we could have understood what the man said.”
“Not if he was speaking Gaelic.”
“For goodness sake,” said Cory in exasperation. “You have an answer for everything. Are you always right?”
“Yes,” said Meredith. “Well quite a bit,” she amended.
They went back to the crab apple tree and carried two buckets loads each in to Maggie as she arrived back. They explained their wet jeans by telling Maggie that the grass had still been very wet around the tree.
“Oh good, more peanut butter,” said Meredith “I’m starving.”
“Good heavens,” said Maggie in amusement. “Anyone would think you had spent the whole day out there picking those crab apples instead of half an hour.
“It felt like a whole day” said Cory and winked at Meredith as Maggie handed him a huge peanut butter sandwich.