The Backpacking Housewife

Treasure Point: so called by ye freebooters from the gold and silver supposed to be bury’d thereabouts after the Wreck of a Spanish Galleon.

‘Oh, it’s a real treasure map!’ I gasp. ‘But who are the freebooters?’

Ethan looked amused as he passed me a bottle of cold drinking water from the cooler.

‘I’m guessing any treasure buried here would have been lifted a long time ago by my mate, Booty Bill. Freebooters, hence booty, was a name for pirates in the old days.’

My eyes flitted across the rest of the map. I see the island is long and shaped like a figure eight, or a symbol of infinity, with two distinct volcanic ranges and a narrow middle area.

‘Oh, look, there’s a house here!’ I shake my finger in excitement at an illustration of a dwelling. I immediately imagine us living there overlooking the beach and the lagoon.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much. I doubt it’s still here. Not after all this time.’

Ethan tapped a finger at the top of the document where it said: Map of Waterfall Cay by Thomas Jeffreys, Surveyor and Geographer to The King. The Virgin Islands, 1775.

‘This island is called Waterfall Cay? How beautiful. But surely it will still have a waterfall?’

My imagination conjured up a romantic scene in which Ethan and I were swimming naked below a tropical waterfall with rainbow coloured mists all around us. Ethan, who might have been imagining the same thing, slung an arm around me and pulled me closer to kiss me slowly on the lips. As we touched, our skin was hot and damp through the light cotton of our shirts.

His lips tasted of sea spray but in a nice way. More mythical merman than dirty pirate.

When he spoke, his voice was low and sexy. ‘Shall we go exploring to find out?’

We left the boat in the little bay and we slipped into thigh-high warm clear waters with soft sand underfoot and waded ashore. Once ashore, we made our way east through the steamy interior and then began a climb through steep and rugged jungle terrain. We stepped carefully along what appeared to be remnants of an ancient trail of flat rocks that must have been laid down and trodden smooth by many feet so many years before us. Pirates, castaways, sailors, explorers, wanderlusters—who knew?

We leapt across narrow rushing streams that cut through our path and in all the places where the path had collapsed. Ethan, being a gentleman, held my hand and guided me as we traipsed along muddy banks and through the deep forest foliage.

We quickened our pace once we heard the thundering sound of a waterfall ahead.

Then we fought our way through a curtain of hanging vines, to emerge breathless and dirty and sweaty, and to find that we were standing inside an open-air grotto filled with cool misty air in which countless shiny reflective green butterflies fluttered in streams of filtered sunshine.

It was breath-takingly beautiful.

Inside this grotto, there was also a large round emerald green pool of water, surrounded by many other smaller round emerald pools, separated and interspersed at differing levels by giant granite boulders. Some of these giant boulders were shiny volcanic black. They were round and flat and smooth from centuries of rising and declining water levels washing over them. Others were white, limestone or marble, and also flat and smooth.

Ethan took my hand again as we leapt from one to another, like we were playing a game of giant checkers, to reach the deep main emerald pool beneath the tall and writhing and thundering white-water stream that fed it from high above.

In the smaller pools, the water was as still and smooth and reflective as a mirror. I peered down at my reflection. I’d like to say that what I saw was the face of a gypsy wanderer. Someone with the heart of an adventurer and the spirit of a mermaid. But what I actually saw was a middle-aged woman with a happy face, sparkling bright eyes, and long and messy and dirty wild hair. I decided I liked what I saw. This was Lori, the world explorer.

Not Lorraine, the ex-housewife from London.

Lori was a happier and more fun person than the anxious always unsure version of herself.

And then suddenly the mirror became a window into what lay beneath. Large translucent fish suddenly appeared as if by magic. They’d been completely invisible until the sharp rays of filtered sunlight revealed them. ‘Look—’ I called out to Ethan.

He was suddenly beside me and when our eyes met, my thoughts of love were clearly reflected in his eyes too. Our lips crashed together. Our breath quickened between our hasty kisses as we tugged and pulled at each other’s clothing. Not that there was much in the way of our bare skin. I dipped my fingers into the waistband of his shorts, flipping open the button fastening with one hand and boldly pulling down his zipper with the other and soon they were discarded, flicked away onto a nearby rock. In response, with a practiced dexterity, he lifted my vest top over my head and pulled down my shorts in one swift move. My bikini soon went the same way. Then we were together as one, turning and twirling, in the cool emerald pool.

At one with nature and with each other in what appeared to be a paradise.

Happily, after making love, we lay back in the wonderfully cool rippling water, listening to the rhythmic background of the cascading falls and gazing up at the small patch of blue sky that could be seen high above the walls of tall verdant vines that reflected in the pools of water.

It looked unreal. It was like being wrapped up in swirling northern lights. Like in a dream.

‘This place is magical. This island is incredible. Look at all these butterflies!’ I gasped.

I lifted a hand out of the water, sending tiny droplets of rainbow glazed water into the air.

I splayed my fingers wide apart under the wings of a hovering and shimmering and glimmering green butterfly. To my astonishment it settled itself down onto the tip of my thumb.

‘Oh look. It’s tame. I’ve never seen anything quite like this!’

‘Many years ago, this island was a butterfly sanctuary.’ Ethan told me, as he also lay back relaxing in the water. ‘One of my heroes, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was a 19^th Century Scottish biologist and explorer and a direct descendent of William Wallace, discovered a unique species of giant butterfly right here on this little island.’

‘Do you mean William Wallace of Braveheart fame?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Alfred reported that the butterflies here were as large as dinner plates. At that time, the Victorians were keen collectors of tropical butterflies and so The Green Morpho butterfly of Waterfall Cay soon became highly sought after and so incredibly valuable that it was prized above all others. Eventually, Wallace came back to this island to find that his special discovery, one of the largest butterflies in the known world, had been almost wiped out. That’s when he established the sanctuary. To try and protect and save them. But, over the years, the island continued to attract butterfly poachers and so The Green Morpho is now sadly extinct.’

‘And that’s what led to its extinction? People collecting them?’

I couldn’t take my eyes of this tiny butterfly as it settled onto my hand, undulating slowly, showing off how it could magically change its wings from green to gold in an instant.

‘And these little fellows, although very pretty, aren’t so rare.’ Ethan told me knowledgably.

‘But maybe this island could be a protected sanctuary for butterflies again?’ I suggested.

‘Perhaps. Only, to apply for the protected status from the government, we’d need to find an indigenous species here or at the very least an endangered one.’

‘Indigenous? That means a native species?’

‘That’s right. Like the Green Morpho.’ Ethan leaned forward to kiss my bare shoulder.

As if offended at not being deemed special enough, the little butterfly fluttered away.

‘There’s only one problem. ‘I adore butterflies, but I really can’t abide caterpillars.’

Ethan laughed in surprise. ‘Why ever not? I mean, it’s not like they can hurt you.’

‘Because I think I had a traumatic experience involving caterpillars when I was a little girl,’ I confessed. If I closed my eyes, I could recall a misty memory of myself as a child, standing at a big leafy shrub in the garden. ‘I was picking caterpillars off a plant and collecting them into a plastic bucket. I have no idea why.’

Back then, like today, there’s hot sunshine on the top of my head and the earthy scent of damp soil and vegetation all around me. I remember the simple childish pleasure I felt at collecting dozens – if not hundreds – of tiny new creepy crawly friends.

‘I suppose it was some kind of a childhood game.’ I continued. ‘Except, I’m still not entirely sure if it was something that really happened to me, or if it was just a horrible nightmare. When I heard my mother calling me, I left my bucket of caterpillars on a workbench inside our garden shed for safekeeping.’ I paused and shuddered at the thought of retelling it.

‘So how is that traumatic?’ Ethan scoffed, not seeing anything offensive in my story at all.

‘Because, when I returned to the shed to play with my caterpillar friends, I remember the wooden door slamming behind me and finding my bucket almost empty, except for just a few green caterpillars and some leaves. I can remember looking around to see only one or two caterpillars crawling along the bucket rim and wondering where they’d all gone?’

‘That doesn’t sound anywhere near as bad as the time I found my ant farm unexpectedly empty.’ Ethan interrupted me to say. ‘Except it wasn’t kept in a shed. It was in my bedroom!’

He laughed at the memory. I ignored him to continue with my own story of icky trauma.

‘I then suddenly realised that there were hundreds of caterpillars covering the walls and the glass windows. They were also crawling on the wooden beams and ceiling. When they started to drop onto me, I began to scream. They didn’t look cute to me anymore. They didn’t look like tiny friendly toys that wriggled. They looked like tiny bloated chomping hairy monsters and I screamed and screamed. I remember feeling the pitter patter of them falling onto my head and getting caught up in my hair and sticking to my dress and my bare arms. I remember trying to flee. Only to find the door handle and my escape route covered in caterpillars. I was trapped. They all looked like tiny wriggly scary snakes. Yuck!’

I shuddered again and pulled a face to show my revulsion to both snakes and caterpillars.

Ethan laughed and discreetly pinched my bottom ‘Oh, look, there’s a snake in the water!’

But I wasn’t falling for it and so we had a splash fight until we were suddenly aware of the time and how the whole morning had somehow escaped us. We reluctantly left the waterfall grotto and made our way back through the rainforest towards our boat, where Ethan said that included in our charter was a cooler with fresh drinking water and a packed picnic lunch of sandwiches and fruit. He was always so thoughtful and thorough about everything.

Although, being Ethan, of course, he would call it being prepared.

Once back on board, after our packed lunch, to get our bearings, we cast our eyes over the ancient map once again. I traced my finger along the line that formed this side of the island.

‘Okay, so this is the bay where we’re at anchor just now. And here is headland and the lagoon and the long stretch of beach that’s protected by this coral reef.’

‘Yes. That’s right. And that’s where I want to build our house.’ Ethan declared.

I dragged my eyes up from the map to look at his handsome face and wondered how I’d ever thought to doubt him over these past few weeks. He had been listening and sympathising with all my concerns. He had understood me when I’d tried to explain how I loved my life with him but couldn’t help but to feel anxiety over being separated from my family. He’d said then that he’d find us somewhere for us to call home and he’d been true to his word. All this, despite my reservations that Ethan Goldman could no more settle down somewhere, than a butterfly could choose to land on my hand. Happily, I’d been proved wrong on both counts.

‘I want to build us a big beautiful traditional style Caribbean house. Using only natural materials and with features that will provide us with a zero-carbon footprint.’ His eyes sparkled as he told me his plans. ‘We’ll use solar panels to generate our own electricity. We’ll dig a well and tap into the fresh water source here for our drinking water. We’ll finally have somewhere to call home. A perfect place to take time out and a base to return to between our travels. Where we can invite your family over to spend their holidays and where we can both grow old together. How does that sound to you, Lori?’

‘I think it sounds perfect,’ I told him with tears of happiness blurring my vision.

We gathered up our things to find the beach where he wanted to build our house.

Then Ethan opened the cooler again, to haul out a bottle of chilled champagne.

He waved it at me momentarily before stuffing it into his small backpack.

‘When we find exactly the spot to build our house, Lori, then we’ll open this to celebrate!’

I laughed and clapped my hands in excitement and approval at this wonderful idea.

We waded from the boat and back onto the little sandy beach in the heart-shaped bay from where we made our way into the steamy jungle once more. This time, we ventured in a westerly direction, into what looked like a beautiful and exotic tropical garden with giant vegetation and flowers everywhere and with butterflies and hummingbirds and other colourful birds in the trees. We stepped carefully over twisted roots and through feather-like grasses and wound our way through wild sugar cane and tall bamboo and trees with long hanging tendrils. We craned our necks to look up at the tallest of palm trees, laden with coconuts, and with their fronds waving back and to in the warm humid breeze. I saw bananas growing in great clumps, hanging down on storks, weighted down by the hefty purple cones of the banana flower.

There were breadfruits the size of footballs. Mangos and starfruits ripe and tantalisingly ready to eat. The tropical flowers that I recognised looked like those grown in heated botanical gardens back home. Others looked so vibrantly colourful and oversized and waxy that they looked completely unreal. With every step, I started to realise this island had an awful lot going for it. Ethan kept stopping along the route to take photos on his phone of the flora and fauna.

‘This island might look like a total escape from the outside world but as far as locations go it’s in the middle of the tropical suburbs,’ he told me. ‘It has protected waters. Consistent trade winds. Line of sight neighbours and it’s just a short boat ride from Tortola and its regional airport and the international airports on St. Thomas, Antigua, and San Juan.’

I started to get it. I began to understand.

Excitement fizzed up inside me like the effervescent bubbles in our soon to be popped champagne bottle. I could now see how this island was a middle ground for us between remote and accessible, public and private, and a perfect place for us to call home. It ticked all the boxes. It really was that perfect compromise that I’d been looking for and longing to find.

Suddenly, we reached a place where lush vegetation stopped and beach began, and we stepped out of the shaded surrounding jungle with its cool dampness underfoot into hot sunshine and hot powder fine white sand. I laughed and pointed out a discarded beer bottle in the sand. ‘I’m starting to doubt your claim no one has been on this island for a hundred years!’

‘Maybe there’s a message in it?’ Ethan suggested, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

I checked, just be sure, but only found a small hermit crab. Then an iguana crossed our path – a big one – looking like a fearsome prehistoric creature and I jumped back in surprise. Ethan reassuringly grabbed my hand, and then we both ran with our bare feet burning across the hot sand towards the water’s edge, where he pulled me into the clear and shallow waters of the calm blue lagoon and into his arms once more.

He kissed me long and hard until I was breathless and dizzy with desire for him. His big hands gently held my face then moved down my neck and my body and then holding me closely, he said to me in what was almost a whisper. ‘Lori, my darling, I know I’ve been acting a bit crazy lately. But, to be honest, I’ve been ridiculously nervous about coming out here with you today.’

‘Nervous? No way. The Ethan I know doesn’t do nervous!’ I protested, laughing.

I’ve seen Ethan keep his cool in the scariest of situations. Like the time he’d managed to keep his sensibilities about him when, in the middle of a vast ocean, everyone else was freaking out at the ships generator failing on us while we were engulfed in three hundred and sixty degrees of thick soupy sea fog, and all the noise and vibrations we’d all become used to had become an eerie and deafening silence. He’d proved unshakable.

‘Well, okay. Then I’ve been ridiculously excited,’ he relinquished with a grin.

‘Well, now I understand. This place is beautiful. And, like you said, it’s a rare find.’

He gazed deeply into my eyes, making my heart melt and butterflies flutter in my stomach.

‘It’s not just the island that’s got me excited. It’s because I knew that today it would be just you and me here. I knew it would be the perfect place. The perfect moment.’

And then he did something totally unexpected.

He got down on one knee, reached into a pocket in his shorts, and produced an exquisite solitaire diamond ring. ‘My darling, Lori, will you marry me?’

And, I fell down in front of him onto my own knees, in absolute astonishment.

My legs were shaking. My whole body quivering. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t swallow. I was dizzy. My heart was suddenly pounding so hard in my chest and so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t think properly. My mind and my thoughts, so clear just a mere moment ago, were now as fractured and streaming as the sunlight being refracted by the beautiful diamond being presented to me. What do I do? What do I say? What do I think?

The man I love is asking me to marry him.

This island, our new home, is an absolute paradise.

It’s perfect and he’s perfect.

So why do the obvious words escape me?

What’s not to love about him and this idyllic proposal?

Why am I hesitating and not immediately saying yes?

A searing silence hung in the air between us.

It was like the whole world and time itself had all stopped still.

There was not a breath of wind nor a ripple of movement in the lagoon.

And, instead of thinking with my heart, and saying yes because I love him, my head is once again filled with confusion. All I can think about is how my family who are back home will react? What will they say if I tell them I’m getting married again?

Then my own reservations surfaced too to present their side of the argument.

I’d been married before. So had Ethan. So why do it over again?

Tears welled up in my eyes. I tried desperately to blink them away.

Ethan’s handsome face was becoming oddly distorted.

I fought my panic and conflicting emotions and prepared to explain myself to him.

Perhaps I needed a little more time? Time to think.

Surely there was no urgency or reason for us to rush into anything?

Wasn’t us just being together and loving each other enough?

But when my vision cleared, I could see that his expression had indeed changed from romantically anxious to something that resembled downright furious. His eyes, just a moment ago were soft and loving and kind, were now wide and blazing and murderous.

Had I offended him so badly, with my hesitation, my reluctance?

And then I realised that he wasn’t looking at me at all.

He was looking right past me and over my left shoulder.

So, I turned to follow his distracted gaze and my mouth dropped open in astonishment.

At the far end of the beach, at the headland, where there where some giant boulders, there was also a giant construction crane. There was also a man-made jetty type structure jutting out into the sea with its concrete piles buried into the coral reef.

What the Hell was happening here!?

What about the pristine virgin eco-system? What about the untouched reef?

And what had happened to Ethan’s lawyers securing the hundred-year lease?

Suddenly, Ethan was no longer down on one knee. He was on his feet and running along the beach. I ran after him. My heart racing. My breath dry and rasping in the salt laden air. Sweat pumped and rolled from every pore on my body in the heat and humidity and under the ferocity of the midday sun. When I caught up with him, for a moment we stood side by side, panting in disbelief, at the offending machinery and chaos of construction that had already destroyed a whole section of coral reef. ‘I just don’t understand. It’s supposed to be ours!’ Ethan hissed.

Then, in a glimmering shimmering mirage, I saw a group of people.

Before I could even say a word, Ethan had spotted them too, and he was already scrambling in their direction. Again, I followed him in hot pursuit and saw that there were in fact four people standing in a huddle, perusing a document that looked like it might be a building plan.

There were three men and a woman. Two of the men, wearing hi-vis vests and construction helmets, were obviously the labour workforce here because they appeared to be listening to instructions from the other man. The one doing the talking was tall and well built, deeply tanned, silver haired, and smartly dressed in tailored shorts and a white linen short-sleeved shirt. This man had the air about him of someone incredibly important and affluent.

The woman standing beside him was willowy slim. She was wearing a pale-yellow sundress and large brimmed white straw hat. Beneath the hat, I could see she had a small heart-shaped face and that she had long bright red hair that she wore in a heavy braid over one shoulder. All four wore sunglasses, but still managed to look surprised to see us as we approached them.

I stopped a short distance from them and wrung my hands anxiously. This was awful.

I’d never seen Ethan so angry. Not even that time when we’d come across a gang of rogue fishermen using sticks of dynamite to fish on a coral reef in the Sulu Sea.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ He exploded, as soon as he’d got close enough.

The woman whipped off her sunglasses to reveal wide steely grey eyes. She fixed her gaze on Ethan, with what appeared to be familiarity. Then she suddenly started to laugh through her shimmering red lip-gloss. Her laughter sounding like the playful tinkle of sleigh bells. I couldn’t decide if she was brave or incredibly foolish to mock Ethan in such a way. The last time someone had dared to laugh in his face, he’d performed a citizen’s arrest and locked the offender in the hold, until he could be handed over to the authorities at our next port of call.

‘Well, what a surprise. If it isn’t the famous Ethan Goldman!’

Had she recognised him because he was quite famous?

Or did she actually know him?

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn’t another ex-wife!

‘I could ask you the very same question, brother!’ Snapped the smartly dressed man.

Brother? Was that a term of endearment or was this man Ethan’s actual brother?!

I narrowed my eyes and recognised the line of this man’s hair, the broadness of his brow, the strength of his jawline, the shape of his eyebrows, the contour of his profile and the clincher that was his aquiline nose. This man was Ethan but perhaps in ten years’ time.

Otherwise they were clones. Time twins. Doppelgangers.

What did this mean exactly?

Did it mean that this man – whom I trust implicitly with my life and whom I love with all my heart and who has caused me so much angst over whether or not to return to my own family and who had just proposed to me with a diamond ring on a perfect beach on bended knee – has blatantly lied to me all this time about his so-called lack of family?