Chapter 17
Tilly had spent the rest of the day liaising with the bank, discussing various legal things she had no clue about with a solicitor who, back in the day, had been her dad’s, and she'd spent a good three hours on the front deck in her oldest trackie bottoms cleaning God knows what off the front windows.
It had felt as if half the world's seagull poo, dirt, sea salt and any manner of things she couldn't really identify had somehow encrusted themselves onto the exterior windows and balcony doors of the Boat Shed.
Armed with only a bucket, a scrubbing brush from the Dark Ages and well aware that she needed to invest in a jet-wash-type thing, Tilly had been determined that she would be able to see out of the windows when she went back in.
After holding her arms up and scrubbing for what had felt like an eternity, she'd eventually decided to call it a day.
With no sign of the impending storm she’d heard so much about, Tilly had decided to embrace her new coastal existence and go for a walk to see what was what.
After making herself a cup of tea and an egg and cress sandwich, she'd locked up the shed, slipped on her wellies in case she wanted to walk down by the shore and left the shed with arms that felt like lead but a feeling as if she was making some progress.
At least she wasn't stuck on a tropical island covered in a very fine misting of sweat with a hibiscus clip in her hair, pushing a trolley, there was that.
A good twenty minutes into her walk, she strolled past a line of beautiful old white houses, one with flags flapping around on the top and stopping at the gate, she looked on in envy at what she ascertained was the house owned by Lucie, the woman who had dropped off the basket.
The Coastguard's House packed a punch for sure.
Lucie had completely underplayed the absolute glory of the place she called home.
Tall, white, magnificent and in a prime Darling spot.
Tilly shook her head in wonder. Talk about lovely.
If only. Tilly's ex-husband and years of traipsing around after a wannabe musician had put paid to any such house or accompanying lifestyle for our Tils. She could but live in hope.
Nodding, Tilly was absolutely adamant that she remain positive about where she’d ended up.
She’d told herself that she would give it a few months and then she’d see what was what, and worst case, she’d pull out of the legal shed-buying process at the last minute.
To all intents and purposes, she was a lot better off than being stuck in a Budget Inn.
She had a roof over her head, she’d survived her initiation into all things Darling Island without mishap, and something in her bones told her that she'd done the right thing.
The air was far from warm and tropical, and there was not a heat haze or bure on stilts in sight, but she was loving being back home.
The homesickness had finally slung its hook.
Stopping on a bench with the view of The Pride of Darling ferry and the tide going out, she watched the water level drop slowly, a weed line emerging, and little mud flats here and there starting to appear in the water in front of her.
Since she'd arrived, she’d already noticed the movements of the tides and how they seemed to change things all around her on Darling.
The way they pulled back in the morning and came in again by afternoon, the rhythm slowly pulling back and forth against everything and altering the light, the colours and the smells.
As she opened her sandwich and sipped on her tea, some of the words she'd read in the hotel room about Darling flicked through her mind.
She could see precisely why it was a haven for nature lovers, attracting walkers and people looking to get away from it all.
There was all sorts of sea life right in front of her eyes, lovely coastal flowers and fauna, a headland, a lighthouse, lanes going up and away and presumably a lot more to Darling Island than the bit she could see from the Boat Shed window.
It was all genuinely lovely and hard to knock.
Walking for about another forty minutes or so with no particular plan other than going in a general long loop back in the direction of the Boat Shed, Tilly vacuumed up Darling and all it had to offer.
Up a pretty lane lined with cottages, right along a track where a sign pointed to the coastal path, and then along the coastal path itself where the view opened up, and she could see the full stretch of the south coast estuary and the mainland in the distance.
Every now and then, The Pride of Darling making its slow crossing far below.
Strolling along, Tilly couldn’t believe that every person smiled, acknowledged, nodded and said hello.
All Tilly kept thinking as she passed people in hiking boots, dog walkers with sticks and people with wind in their hair and ruddy cheeks was that she was a long way from stroppy five-star tourists, margaritas in hand, barking out their needs.
As the path weaved in and out along the headland, the view got better.
Ambling down off the coastal path thinking about what she might have for dinner and wondering if and when the storm would hit, Tilly veered off onto a track that met a rough road, which she'd worked out would take her back to the general area of what she now called home.
With the tide fully out as she ambled down the road, she could see oyster beds and rows of trestles standing up out of the mud, oyster cages by the dozen visible, and the whole area, roped off at the perimeter along the edge of a sort of sunken concrete path on what looked like posts driven into the ground.
From where she was standing, she could see signs on posts but couldn’t quite work out what they said and long old timber trestle tables loaded with fishing baskets.
The shingle underneath appeared to be changing colour with the low tide; pale sand-colour near the path to a darker, wetter-looking stretch further out.
A bit in a world of her own, as Tilly got closer, she thought about what her dad might say about her landing on Darling Island.
The irony of the whole thing was that the expedition with Lennixx had promised adventure, but it was here now, back in England, that life felt more adventurous.
Her travelling had certainly opened her eyes to the world, but not what she'd been expecting in any shape or form.
She'd hoped to see exotic climes, beautiful scenery, other cultures, amazing architecture, different ways of life, and she had to some extent.
What had actually eventuated was wide open eyes to the trample of globalisation, over-fed, rich people and not a whole lot of actual old-school culture in sight.
Thinking about what in the world she was going to actually do in the boat shed to make money, she strolled down a fairly steep slipway, taking in lovely big lungfuls of the fresh smell in the air.
Deciding to have a bit of a closer look at the oyster beds to her left, she stepped over a small chain rope stretched between little pillars in the mud flats and plopped her right wellie down.
As quick as a flash, her foot up to just below the ankle of the boot sank.
Oh. Attempting to lift it, the mud made a small sucking squelchy sound. Not good.
Unsure what to do, Tilly hoisted her left foot over the chain rope and stupidly did exactly the same thing with that foot too.
Now, with both feet up to her ankles in thick sandy mud, she stayed still and looked down.
Whatever the coastal name was for what she was standing in looked nothing like it had from the slipway.
She'd assumed it was a fairly solid, sandy mudflat-type stuff. On closer inspection and up to her eyes in it, it was nothing of the sort. Gulping, Tilly swore as a penny dropped. She was currently in quite a precarious situation, ankle deep in estuary mud of the kind that had been sitting there for approximately eight hundred years. Clearly, the mud did not like being walked on and wasn’t too keen on her either.
Turning around, Tilly grimaced and winced as she saw a sign she'd just totally walked past obliviously nigh-on thirty seconds before.
It was not a small sign or, in any sense of the word, an easy sign to miss.
Mounted on a solid post, white with dark blue lettering, the same colours as the ferry, the same colours as half of Darling Island, it read, in letters large enough to be read from the slipway without difficulty:
CARRINGTON OYSTER COMPANY PRIVATE OYSTER BEDS.
No access beyond this point.
Trespassing may disturb the stock and damage the beds.
Unsafe ground — tidal mud flats. Do not proceed beyond the chain.
Obviously, reading it from the wrong side of the chain, Tilly swore.
Tugging and trying to pull her left foot up, the mud again made a squelching sound; her foot came up two inches and then went back down to the ankle.
Trying with her right foot, she had the same result.
Swearing over and over again, Tilly wasn't sure what to do.
She was stuck with both feet, ankle-deep, in the middle of mudflat oyster beds, having stepped over a rope with a sign on it that she had not read.
She was indeed trespassing by the looks of it, and not only that, she was a tiny bit scared about how she was going to get out of her predicament.
Looking around, wondering how she’d quite literally become stuck in the mud, she had no idea what to do.
Getting her phone out, for the briefest, most ludicrous second, she thought about calling the police or fire brigade.
Trying again to move, she attempted a sort of rocking motion, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
The mud, however, was having none of it and held on for dear life.
Trying to pull the left foot straight up with everything she had, her foot came up, boot and all, and for one glorious second, she thought she was free.
Then her centre of gravity changed, she toppled forward, and both hands briefly plonked into the mud for a second until somehow, like some kind of Weeble by momentum, she was upright again.
Now standing with her left foot free and her right leg buried to the knee in the mud and her arms out to the sides for balance, hands black with mud, she tried to not overbalance and let out an elongated swear word.
'What the actual? What are you doing?' The voice was not warm or helpful, but more incredulous.
Tilly turned her head to see the man who owned the dog whom she’d learnt, when eavesdropping in Darlings, was called Otto, standing at the edge of the slipway.
In green wellies, a wax jacket and with his hands in his pockets, Stanley was beside him with his head tilted to one side.
Lowering her arms, Tilly made a face. She'd just let out a long swear word beginning with "F" for all the world to hear. 'All good. I'm fine.'
'Sure you are.'
Tilly pointed with one of her muddy fingers. 'I was just on my way to look at the trestles.'
'From inside the rope?'
'Well, yes, obviously.'
Otto pointed to just past Tilly's head. 'There's a sign. Can you not read?'
'Yes, I can read, thank you very much. I didn't see it.'
'That much is obvious. It's right there on the post, approximately six feet away from you.'
'I didn't read it.'
'Do you want a hand?'
'No. Thank you. As I said, I'm absolutely fine.' Trying the rocking motion again, Tilly wanted the mud to actually swallow her up and deliver her back in Fiji.
'You’re sure?'
'Quite sure.'
Pulling her right foot straight up with all her might, thank the good person above, it came free.
Taking one careful step towards the rope, her foot sank and stuck.
Tilly stood very still as it appeared that the whole scenario was going to repeat itself.
Pulling again, she yanked so hard that this time she overtoppled, wobbled precariously and landed face down in the mud.
Otto was over the rope and onto the mud flat without sinking even slightly.
In two seconds, he'd pulled her up and carried her under the post. It had to be said that Tilly couldn't have given a stuff about the mud, the wellies, the fact that she could have died or anything.
None of it mattered because something very odd had occurred, oh yes, indeed.
She was being showered by fireworks going off above her, drowning her with sparkles, fizz and glitter.
Oh my, and the smell, what even was it? The eyes, eyelashes, hard, strong arms. And again, please.
Depositing her on the slipway, Tilly looked down at herself, absolutely covered in mud.
Holding onto the post with the sign on it with as much dignity as she could muster, she put her mud-covered foot back in the boot that Otto had collected and straightened up.
Tilly was fairly sure fireworks weren’t shooting up into the sky for him.
Otto was looking at her with a combination of fury and contempt on his face.
Tilly stared and didn’t know what to say or do.
It appeared that she’d lost the ability to speak or move any part of her body apart from her eyelashes.
Those were working overtime. Normally in life, she was fairly compos mentis in most situations that were thrown at her, this time, nope, not even close.
Mostly, she had the ability to converse like an adult and behave in a polite and overall personable manner in whatever situation she found herself in.
This situation proved to be different. Whatever was happening, she was loving it.