(Second Place - The Best of Times Short Story Competition 2024)
On page 25 of the Times Atlas, Chughanutha Island is a tiny green oyster beneath crossed lines. The 125 longitude is fine. It’s the 0 latitude that’s distressing. This puts Chughanutha Island on a part of the globe for creatures lacking sweat glands. A second problem is its size. The cartographer had only the energy to label a solitary dot, Port-a-Poti. Together these facts meant Chughanutha Island didn’t look like a place the owner of Bill Ternan’s Prestige Re-homed Cars should spend his hard-earned readies. Not that it mattered for Mrs Ternan had other ideas.
Ominously on another page 25, this time in the SMH Travel Guide, Cynthia Ternan was drawn to an advertisement lurking at the bottom left-hand corner promising a heavily discounted tropical paradise holiday at, you guessed it, Chughanutha Island. Never missing the opportunity to be tricked by dishonest advertising, in two weeks’ time the Ternan family would be off to Port-a-Poti for ten days of glass furnace beaches, sunburn, odd fruit, and possibly malaria. Surely a week and a half would be tolerable. I gazed at my dozing bulldogs on the sofa and wondered whether I could use them as an excuse to stay home.
Chughanutha’s lone airstrip has its head in the jungle and toes on a beach. While that sounds delightful in a children’s book about talking monkeys, it means the bitumen is as long as the Eastern Creek Dragway and nothing sporting a jet engine can use it. I wasn’t looking forward to the return flight to Sam Ratulangi international wedged into a piddling Dash-7. The island being a near vertical volcanic cone left nowhere flat unless the sleepy locals found the will to build a runway into the ocean. Until then, the Hotel Rafflesia appeared to have the monopoly on airports.
As we rolled our suitcases across the tarmac the evening breeze bore aromas of frangipani and overripe mangos, complicated by kerosene and Rafflesia flower, with a creamy, lingering finish of Barry’s Pub toilets. Silent thanks were given to ten seasons of broken noses, as my mind boggled at the fragrant kaleidoscope the others were experiencing. At least it was a brief walk to our temporary stay.
The hotel felt homely, which was a good start. I don’t like places that tell you what to wear or make you watch your Ps and Qs. If there was decent local beer and high amp air-conditioning, everything would be okay.
The following day, reclining on a banana chair with my former rugby player globe of a stomach exposed to the sky, I flicked through a local brochure from the hotel reception. Three A4 sheets of inkjet printer quality aimlessly stapled and listing mainly eateries. A meagre handful of sporting activities were on offer, only at the hotel, with their availability predetermined by the seasonal ebb and flow of the treacherous sea life that filled the surrounding coral atoll. Only five weeks a year could you swim anywhere but the chlorinated pool, the ocean being home to a staggering collection of things swimming, crawling, sliding, or patiently waiting in crevices to bite, poison, or harpoon anything that passed. As that recreational window closed months ago, which explained the current price discount, Cynthia offered the kids a trip in a glass-bottom boat in place of snorkelling the perilous reef. Meanwhile, a pool quarter the size of the Newport Olympic was keeping them busy. I’d been in four times this morning, with no improvement in comfort. The water was as hot as the air, and the air as wet as the water.
‘I’m taking the kids to the markets this afternoon,’ Cynthia declared from beneath her straw hat.
‘Bugger me,’ I said, as I reached the end of the brochure. The listings of satay houses had been replaced by a shortened history of the island’s discovery and subsequent failed string of colonisation attempts. ‘Did you know every damn country has had a crack at this place over the centuries? First the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the English. Even the yanks put a base here in the Second World War.’
‘No, Bill. I didn’t know that.’
‘The Indonesians aren’t even sure whether or not it’s theirs.’ The sunscreen on my hands was soaking through the paper. ‘Markets don’t sound like my kind of thing, Cyn.’
‘Of course not, dear. You needn’t come along.’
I seized the opportunity. ‘Manfred at the front desk mentioned a temple over the hill in the next village he thought I’d enjoy. I might go absorb some of that Buddhist Enliftment.’
‘Enlightenment, dear. And his name is Madhani. It means butter maker in Indian. You really should get that hearing aid, William.’
‘Butter maker?’
‘You should get going if you plan to be back before the rain comes. Madhani said it’s like clockwork at 3pm every day.’
Recognising a veiled directive, as only a husband can, I set off for the cultural centre of that godforsaken kiln of an island.
Rather than a grinning fat man, the Smiling Monk Temple bore the image of a topless woman with too many arms frozen in some sort of dance. I’d read as a boy, while searching dad’s encyclopaedia for pictures of girls I could get away with looking at because they were classed as art, that people in the tropics mixed gratuitous nudity with religion. Perhaps fourth century Buddhist shrines were run by women these days? Getting around with no kit on made perfect sense in this climate. This pleasant image neared confirmation when I was greeted by an attractive young woman at the door dressed in a translucent sarong.
‘Selamat Datang. Bonjour. Howdy Chief!’ said the woman, covering all bases.
‘Selamat Datang,’ I replied, falling into the lingo. ‘Is this the Smiling Monk Temple?’
The woman bowed and gestured for me to enter. ‘You come inside. Good massage.’
‘Massage?’ I squinted at the building again. There was a distinct business air to the place, rather than religious. What the hell, I’d travelled this far, and as my father would say—remember lad, your body is a temple, make sure you treat it occasionally. Maybe they did some Enliftment massage that helped you see nirvana? Failing that, anything to help cope with the energy-sapping climate.
Dressed in a towel and with stomach tensed to the point of straining, an older but equally attractive woman led me to a room lined with split bamboo casually wired to corrugated iron. My Welcome Lady, as she called herself, instructed me to climb aboard a rickety wooden table. Tummy down, I eased into what I thought was the right position and wondered if I was overdue a back wax.
What followed was sublime. There’d been nothing quite like it before and certainly hasn’t been since. The combination of sauna humidity and oiled hands running along my spine was nearing a transcendental experience until her fingers ventured too far up the inside of my legs and the relaxing changed to a local tensing. Never a safe sensation without Mrs Ternan present. Welcome Lady seemed not to have noticed and persisted in fifteen minutes of silence until deciding to speak.
‘Roll over!’
I lifted my face from the soaking pillow. ‘I beg your pardon?’
My intimate friend made tumbling motions with her hands like I was a half-wit. ‘You roll over now.’
‘Um…I’m fine like this,’ I said, as I slid my hands beneath me to shelter the now fully grown problem.
‘If you no roll, we done!’
Figuring the bases were covered, I made a series of complicated movements accompanied by mild grunting. Finally, on my back with my paws still in place, I shut my eyes and thought of the Newport car yard.
There was a long pause. ‘You want hard rub, or soft?’ she asked.
‘Ugh … both?’ I was unsure of the difference.
Without warning, my hands were pulled aside and replaced by a powerful grip on my gear lever.
‘Good God!’
Welcome Lady beamed down at me. ‘Smiling Monk Temple, make happy end.’
‘Let go of my end!’ I blurted, as the pressure increased through the fabric.
‘Relax! I make you a smiling monk.’
As I pulled away, my leg slipped off the table, twisting me around and removing my towel. My exhaust now pointed directly at her face.
‘Oh! You want the Celestial Awakening?’ she cried with a surge of holy dialect. ‘That will cost you more.’
To my horror she climbed onto the table and slid her fingers in her mouth. It was at that moment the table collapsed, and together we fell as one. Her full weight landed square on my back, forcing my gear lever against the floor and hard in reverse.
With a yell of pain, I rolled free, grabbed my clothes from the room next door, and staggered for the exit. Hopping on a foot as I tried to concurrently dress and move forward, I collapsed against the side of a waiting taxi stationed outside the Smiling Monk Temple. Through red betel nut teeth, the amused driver watched me wrestle with my pants until I dropped into the front seat.
‘Hotel Rafflesia!’
Narrowing missing a squatting chicken, the driver took off with a peel of laughter. He elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Mary, good bang bang. Ha Chief!’
It wasn’t until I returned to the safety of the hotel that I learnt the proprietor of the Smiling Monk Temple had watched the taxi disappear while holding a battered, and significantly lighter, wallet at the end of her outstretched arm. So ended my first day in paradise.
Day two brought with it humidity capable of steaming dumplings. The previous night had been a tiresome affair involving a stream of apologies for visiting what Cynthia kept calling a House of Ill Repute. The shock return of my wallet cooled our mood and gave me a new admiration for the local’s honesty. If I’d dropped it back on Barrenjoey Road, its life expectancy would have been measured in quarks.
Apparently, after buying every remaining combination of stringed shells and painted coral they needed to fill the bathrooms at home, the kids had found me a birthday present at the markets.
‘But it’s still eight months away,’ I puzzled. ‘And besides, I’ve grown used to these.’
Cynthia smiled at my stomach ‘No dear, you’ve grown out of them. These will be a lovely reminder of our holiday.’
Boy7 held out an enormous pair of technicolour shorts.
‘A local woman does tie-dye, Dad. Tracey and I had trouble choosing. After how yesterday faired for you, we picked one that looks like there’s a giant firework coming out your—’
‘Go put them on,’ ordered Cynthia. ‘The glass-bottom boat leaves in ten minutes.’
Thanks to a childhood at Salt Pan Cove, I’m armed with an excellent knowledge of boats. The cruiser moored at the hotel jetty bore a hull from the fifties, a gunwale from the seventies, and a hardtop built last week from non-marine plywood. Giving the vessel a total of 120 years’ service. Once the smoke finally cleared from sparking the engine, I reset that number to a neat double century.
As we boarded, Cynthia announced, ‘Bill, the bottom’s solid! Madhani promised a glass-bottomed boat to see the reef.’ She turned to the captain who had made fishing rods appear from thin air.
‘Bang bang fishing? Hi Chief!’ smiled yesterday’s taxi driver.
‘Glass-bottom could be another day,’ I quickly offered. ‘The kids like to fish, Cyn. Let’s give it crack.’
Five minutes is all it took from jetty to reef, which was probably the limit of the ship’s engine rather than the location of a prime fishing spot. A bucket of stinking prawns was supplied along with a rod for everyone. The captain seemed content to leave us alone and put a wooden paddle through the wheel so he could rest his head against the shaft and have a dose. Before Boy7’s line hit the bottom, he had a nibble. Sadly, the hook came back empty.
‘Well, there’s fish about,’ I said, as another sour prawn squished onto the hook.
Cynthia tentatively lowered her line into the water. ‘I wonder if there are any sharks around?’
Boy7 lost another prawn. I was wondering whether the disintegrating bait was falling off rather than being eaten, when Girl9 swung her rod in my face.
‘Hey Dad, look at what I caught!’
Dangling in mid-air was the ugliest fish I’d ever seen. A filthy blend of rocks and rotting weed with a mouth half the size of its body. It looked highly irritated to be out of the water.
‘Well done, sweetheart! The ugly ones always taste best,’ I said with conviction. ‘Smart fish hide the fact they’re tasty.’
‘I guess so.’ She seemed unimpressed by the creature.
‘I thought coral fish were meant to be beautiful,’ said mum. ‘The brochures overflow with every colour of the rainbow.’
My dad always told me the trick to parenting is to remain positive. I eyed the lumpy brown melon inches from my face. ‘This sod’s doing a ripper job disguising itself as a stone. It must be delicious.’
‘It looks like granny,’ said Boy7.
‘Which one?’ I snorted. Cynthia gave me a withering look. Behind us, the captain had become suddenly animated.
‘Ikan down!’ he cried as he went for his paddle. ‘Fish bad, bang bang Chief!’
The captain snatched the rod from Girl9’s hand. Holding it at arms-length and using the paddle to fend us off, he made his way cautiously to the side of the boat. As one, the Ternan family followed with Darwinian curiosity. Near the edge, he gently made to push the fish off the hook with his makeshift grapple. He was behaving as though he wished it to be twice as long.
‘This stonefish, Chief! Many, many bad,’ said the sweating captain.
‘Oh really? I stepped closer for a better view.
‘Aren’t they really poisonous?’ said Girl9, showing fresh interest in her catch.
‘See those spines along its back?’ I said with enthusiasm. ‘They’ll give you a sting like you wish you were dead.’
‘Whoa…that’s so cool!’ said Boy7.
As the paddle approached, perhaps sensing imminent death because of its high intelligence, the stonefish thrashed itself free of the hook. Five sets of eyes followed the spinning fall until it ended its journey spines down on my sandaled foot. In an instant, as my loving family scrambled to the far reaches of the boat, I became enlightened to all sixty kilometres of nerves throughout my body.
SMH Travel Guide be damned. Ten days is an eternity stuck on a sweating island at latitude 0.
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