章 1526: MAROONED
The storm seemed to come up out of nowhere. The weather forecast had been for a warm temperature and a calm sea. The forecast had been wrong about the calm sea.
Mother and I had taken the small boat on a one day fishing trip and had gone out some considerable distance. We had been fishing for about a couple of hours when the black clouds began to pile up on the horizon. I started the engine and headed back to land and then the wind came in ahead of the clouds. The sea came up and soon we were being tossed about as if we were a piece of driftwood.
The boat was only a fishing runabout and the engine was not all that powerful and I had a struggle to maintain a heading. I was cursing that we hadn't used dad's bigger professional fishing boat.
Then it got so bad I had to try some tricky manoeuvres to stop us being swamped or even turned over. I'd filled the petrol tank before we left but what with the wind, waves, the distance out we'd gone and my manoeuvres, the petrol gave out and the engine spluttered to a stop.
We were caught helpless in the storm and just drifting, if you can call being flung all over the place drifting. We had a couple of paddles on board but we could forget those. Any attempt to paddle in that sea would have been like a kid trying to lift a ten ton boulder.
Mother had been bailing like fury and so all that was left for me to do was join her. How we didn't sink I'll never know and all the time I pictured us being flung into the sea with only our life jackets to keep us afloat.
We were out of sight of the mainland and I'd just resorted to prayer when through the now teaming rain I saw we were approaching some land. I knew it had to be one of the coastal islands but I gave us little chance of actually being carried there.
For all my pessimism we did drift closer and closer to the island, and as the storm began to abate we were able to use the paddles to get us ashore. As we drew close I could see that we were heading for a small cove but it was guarded by two arms of jagged rocks and the mood I was in I didn't see how we could avoid them.
It was mother, more stoical than me, who yelled out, "Paddle you silly bugger...paddle or we'll be wrecked."
We both paddled like fury and thank God we got into the cove, running aground about ten metres from the sandy beach. I got out and tried to drag the boat a bit further towards the shore, then mother threw out the anchor and together we waded ashore and flopped down on the beach.
We said nothing for a while, and then I complained, "I've no idea where we are."
Mother said, "Bundoogle Island."
That she knew didn't altogether surprise me because mother was part aboriginal and until she married my father – a non-aboriginal – she had lived with her people. They were a coastal group and they knew a fair bit about the islands that were dotted along this part of the coast.
I asked how she was so certain it was Bundoogle.
She grinned at me showing her sparkling white teeth appearing even more sparkly against her skin that always looked as if she had a deep suntan.
"This is the cove we came into when I was a kid," she said, "it's about the only place you can get onto the island; it's all rocks and cliffs everywhere else."
So for the moment we were safe but I knew we were in a real fix. Our house was fairly isolated; dad, who was a professional fisherman had gone down south, something to do with the contract with the mob that bought his fish; on top of that he intended to spend a couple of weeks catching up with grandma and grandpa and some other relatives.
Mum and I would have gone with him, but grandpa was one of the old chauvinistic sort and there'd been a hell of a row when dad said he was going to marry a half-cast woman. The bitterness had lasted so mum wasn't welcome at my grandparents place. In fact they had never met mum. I've always felt that it was their loss because mum is a great person and in looks she seemed to have got the best of both worlds. No wonder dad was attracted to her.
I might add that I had never seen my grandparents either since I wasn't welcome, being the offspring of a "mixed marriage." But dad felt he had to keep in touch whenever he went south, and I suppose that's to his credit.
So, our immediate problem was, our house being remote, dad away down south, we might not be missed for days or even weeks, so who would come looking for us, and when?
"We're marooned, aren't we?" I said, stating the obvious.
"Yes, said mother," seemingly unruffled.
"What the hell are we going to do, well starve or die of thirst?"
"First thing we do is get the fishing gear and other stuff out of the boat," mum said placidly, "there are some sandwiches and a bottle of water as well."
She rose and started to wade out to the boat. I followed her, and while I retrieved the fishing gear mum dug out the sandwiches and water.
We took it back to the beach and as I dumped the gear on the sand I pointed to the food and water and said, "That'll last about half a day; what do we do after that, die?"
Mum looked at me for a few moments then said, "I knew I should have taken you to spend some time with my people; if I had you wouldn't be so helpless. There's always food and water if you know how and where to look for it. That's the trouble with you whities, you look but don't see."
That's what she called me when I was annoying her or being helpless, "Whitie." Not that I was really white because I had inherited some of mum's skin colour, only not so deep and rich looking as hers.
Just stepping aside from our predicament for the moment, years ago bloody psychologists and anthropologists had come from the cities down south and started to test the aboriginal people.
The IQ tests were a real hoot because the people they tested didn't know what the questions meant so they ended up being graded as morons.
When you consider that the aboriginal people had survived in the environment for thousands of years I often wonder how, if the aboriginal people had tested the testers by letting them loose to survive in the same environment, how well they would have stacked up? My guess is that they would have been rated as morons, and probably dead morons.
So, one piece of leverage we had was that mum knew how to survive in all sorts of conditions. She knew what was safe to eat and what would send you to heaven or hell in seconds. If there was water to be found she'd find it; I sometimes thought she could actually smell water before you ever saw it.
Mum spoke up saying, "There are plants and some fruits on the island we can eat; that's what we did when I came here as a kid. There's water as well, it drips out of a rock crevice and after that storm it should be doing more than drip in a couple of days. There used to be some goat running wild as well..."
"Goat's?" I queried.
"Yes, a lot of the islands have got goats on them. Some of the white fellas brought them here with some crazy idea that they could breed up a herd, God knows what for, but they soon gave up and abandoned the place, too isolated. Some of them went mad.
"The goats or the people?"
"Since we may be here for a while I hope I'm not going to have to put up with too many of your smart remarks," she said. Then going on she said, "There's fish and crabs we can catch, and plenty of shell fish on and around the rocks; we won't starve.
"How are we going to cook them, we've got nothing to light a fire with, do we rub two stick together?"
She raised her eyebrows to heaven, sighed, and said, "That would be how you'd do it, wouldn't it. Yes, you rub two sticks together, but not the way you think. Did you bring the filleting knives from the boat?"
"No," I said, feeling a bit sulky.
"Then go and get them now. It isn't likely the boat will drag its anchor in this cove, even if there is a storm, but you never know, so go and get anything that might be useful.
"Bloody Roberta Crusoe," I muttered as I went back to the boat, my macho self-image in tatters.
I got the three filleting knives, some pieces of rope and chord, plus a couple of warm jumpers that were usually kept stowed up in the bow. Our wet weather gear we had already put on when the storm blew up; in fact we were still wearing it.
I carted the stuff back to the beach and saw mother had removed her wet weather gear; I took mine off as well. That left the pair of us clad only in shorts and skivvies, and knowing how cold it could get on the mainland, even after a hot day, I gave thanks for the jumpers, because it was likely to get a bloody sight colder out here on the island.
I stood around not knowing what to do next and feeling helpless. "Well come on," said mum, "the sandwiches and water will do us for today, so the first thing we do is find some shelter."
"Going to build a house are we?" I asked.
Mum didn't reply but began to carry our limited goods further up the beach. I followed suit and we put the stuff well above the high tide mark.
"Now we look," mum said.
The beach was backed by a slight rise and then came the scrub, but beyond the cove and on either side of it the cliffs began. I had no idea what to look for, but mum seemed to know so I simply followed her.
I thought she would head into the island but instead she made for one of the cliffs. It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for. It was about two or three metres up the cliff but wasn't exactly a cave, but more like someone had taken a giant spoon and scooped out the rocks a few times.
"Yes," said mum, "we used this the time I came here as a kid. It's out of the prevailing wind and we can look out to sea from it. You never know, they might come looking for us sometime, or a fisherman may happen to pass.
"Sometime!" I exploded, "Hell mum, how long do you think sometime will be?"
She shrugged and said laconically, "No idea, but they might not even know we're missing until your dad gets back from down south, and even then it may take them days or weeks to look at every island."
"They'll use a helicopter, won't they?" I asked dejectedly.
"They may, but we have to be prepared to wait for as long as it takes, so, while I bring our stuff up here from the beach, you can get up to the top of the cliff, find plenty of dry and wet wood, and build a bonfire. If we see a helicopter or a boat out to sea, we light the fire.
"Why dry and wet wood, I think we'll only need dry wood."
"Sweetheart," mum said in a patient but despairing tone of voice, as if she was putting hyphens between the words. "You build the bonfire with dry wood, and lay the sappy wood alongside it. If we see something we light the dry wood; when it's well alight we put the sappy wood on; that way we make a lot of smoke, and that is more easily seen than just a fire, except at night, but at night we won't see anything will we?"
"I haven't got an axe."
"Then you'll have to use what we have got, a knife. Now just go and bloody well do it."
I went to the gap between the cliffs behind the beach, went inland a little then followed a slope that led to the top of the cliff. There would be no trouble with the dry wood because even though the trees were stunted there were heaps of branches that had fallen off, no doubt over many decades.
I hauled dead branches to the top of the cliff and built up the bonfire. I started to cut some of the thinner living branches from adjacent trees, but then noticed a low tree or shrub with extremely broad and long green leaves. This looked easier to cut through, and so it proved to be. I put about a dozen of these leaves or fronds beside the bonfire and then made my way back down to the beach.
Mother had moved all our gear up to the cave so I went up there. When I arrived there she said, "Now you can go and get some more wood for a fire. You can build it just down there on the beach."
She was looking a bit perplexed and she muttered, "I need a block of wood, but where do I get one here?"
"In the boat," I said triumphantly, glad to be ahead of her for once. "There's the block we use to prop open the fish box lid when we're not using it." The idea was to let the air circulate in the box to keep the smell down. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Make fire."
"I didn't bother to ask."
"And bring a really dry stick about ten or twelve millimetres thick and some very dry bits of bark back with you."
Again I didn't bother to ask. I went to the boat and brought back the block of wood, then set out to get the firewood. I brought the wood back together with the dry stick and bark. Mother had started to scoop out a sort of little hollow in the block with the point of a knife; she took the stick and said, get more dry bark and some dry grass.
Off I went again. When I got back mother had made a point on the end of the stick and a thing that looked a bit like a bow as if was going to be a bow and arrow. She wound the cord of the bow round the pointed stick, and then she put some of the dry grass and broken up pieces of bark into the little hollow she'd made in the block. I watched for a couple of minutes and then said, "You'll never make fire like that."
She said nothing but began to saw the bow rapidly back and forth, and then sure enough, there was a spark and a tendril of smoke. Mother started to blow on the dry grass that caught alight, and then she put on small pieces of bark. She had made fire.
The burning materials were transferred to the main fire that had more but larger pieces of bark under it, and after more blowing the whole damned thing was alight.
"She looked up at me triumphantly and said, "That's how you get fire by rubbing two sticks together"
"You mean rubbing a stick and block together."
"Well if I hadn't known how we'd be eating raw fish. Now this fire must never go out, so go and get more wood, heaps of it, I don't want to have to start all over again. And see to it that there's always a lot of wood handy."
There's one thing you haven't thought of," I crowed.
"Oh, what's that?"
"The bonfire on top of the cliff; are you going to do that twirling thing every time we need to light it, because if you do whatever it is will be gone by the time its alight."
She put on her patient look again. "We light a torch and you or I run up there with it and light the bonfire – oh never mind, just go and get some more wood... then we can eat the sandwiches."
I went back into the scrub and started to cart armfuls of dry wood back. I thought, "If we're here long enough I'll end up walking to the other side of the island for dry wood."
Mum sat on the beach doing something with lots of twigs and some sort of creeper. By the time I'd finished she was waving the result of her labours at me. "A torch," she said truculently.
It was my turn to say nothing.
We ate most of the sandwiches, but left enough for the morning, as mother pointed out, we'll need something to eat before we start seriously looking for food.
"What about water?" I asked.
"Ah, yes, now that's a bit of a problem. If I remember correctly we've got a bit of a walk to get to the crevice and we've only got this bottle to carry water in."
"What about a bucket," I asked.
"We haven't got a...yes we have...Frank, I told you to bring everything that might be useful from the boat, did you bring the bucket? No, of course you didn't."
I crept off back to the boat with mother's eyes drilling into the back of my head.
Not only did I return with the bucket, but I also brought a large cotton sheet that we used to cover things up in the boat when we weren't using it, just to keep the sun off.
We'd just about used the day up and I was feeling very tired. Mother was yawning as well so after she'd banked up the fire we climbed up to the cave.
It was already getting cool so we put on our jumpers, and in the hope of getting some warmth from it, we lay side by side with the cotton sheet over us. The ground was bloody hard, but being so tired I soon fell asleep.
I must have slept like the proverbial log because when I woke up mother was at the fire that she must have revived.
I went down to her and we ate the last of the sandwiches and drank the remaining water from the bottle. I only hoped mum was right about there being water on the island.
When we had finished I said, "We'd better go and find that water."
"Not yet we won't," said mother. "We're not animals, we wash first."
I certainly must admit that after our previous days work we'd got pretty grubby and I smelt sweaty, but I felt it necessary to point out that until we got the water we couldn't wash.
"The sea, darling...the sea...we go for a swim. We won't be able to use precious fresh water for washing." With that she began to take off her clothes.
I was shocked; I had never seen mum without clothes on, so I turned my back.
"Don't be so silly, Frank," mother said, "you don't think we're going to be able to exist here without seeing each other naked, do you? So get your things off and get into the sea."
She finished stripping and then walked down to the sea. I stood staring after her in amazement; it was like watching some water nymph, her slim figure and golden skin, high firm buttocks, and as she turned to beckon me to join her, the small firm breasts.
Certainly a mother naked, especially my mother, is a very different prospect from a mother fully dressed, even if fully dressed means only shorts and a skivvy. It was in a sense not mother I was looking at, but a woman I found it hard to recognise as mother.
Looking at her, nature took its course, and I started to get an erection. I hastily stripped, trying to get into the water before I was completely hard, but I wasn't very successful.
Mother was doing her share of looking and I realised she hadn't seen me naked since I was a kid. By the time I got to the water my penis was standing up like a lighthouse, and I saw a quirky sort of smile come over mother's face, and while I struggled not to look at her, she was quite blatant about her staring at me. I got chest high in the water as quickly as I could.
After we'd swum and splashed around a bit we went back to the beach and our clothes. Mother seemed in no hurry to dress and she continued to look at me in a speculative sort of way. I got into my shorts as soon as I could, but I don't think they hid very much.
Mother said, pointing "Off those rocks over there, we had good fishing that time I came here, you go and try and I'll go inland a see what I can pick up in the way of fruits and vegetables and I'll get the water.
Mother was still naked as we went back to the cave and even when we got there she still didn't dress. She picked up the bucket and taking her skivvy she headed out of the cove. I got some fishing tackle together, and after digging around on the beach for some sand worms I went to the rocky ledge she had pointed out.
She was right about the fishing being good. I started to haul in fish almost as soon as the line hit the water. I'd never known anything like it before and was tempted to keep on fishing, but then realised how ridiculous that was. We had no refrigerator or ice box to keep surplus fish in, and presumably they'd still be there for the catching next day, so I stopped at four fish.
I went back to the beach and filleted them there. Mother still hadn't returned so I took the fish up to the cave and then went looking over some rocks that looked as if they were covered by the water at high tide. I was hunting for any shell fish that might be edible, and found some clusters of mussels. I got a few of these and returned once more to the cave.
Mother was back and still naked. She had brought a bucket of water and had used her skivvy to carry some vegetable matter and some round berries. I'd seen this stuff on the mainland but never thought of it as being edible."Hey mum," I said, "how do you know that stuff won't poison us?"
She grinned at me and said, "If you belong to my people you soon learn where and what the good tucker is. Pity we don't eat more of this at home, it'd save a lot of money and be better for us. When we get back – if we ever do – I might start using some of it."
"What do you mean, 'If we ever do'?" I yelped. "You don't think they'll leave us here to die, do you?"
"No, I don't think they'll leave us here to die, but suppose they search and can't find us? They might conclude that the boat went down in the storm and we drowned, then they'll give up."
"Aw, come on mum," I protested, "we're not all that far from the mainland – not more than thirty kilometres, we could paddle the boat that far if we had to."
"Yes, perhaps we could, but suppose a rough sea came up, and then we probably would drown."
I gloomily decided not to pursue the debate and changing tack I said, "Don't you think you should put some clothes in, you'll get sunburnt like that." With a skin like her's sunburn was unlikely and what I really wanted was for her to cover up a bit so I'd stop getting horny.
Mum laughed and said, "Finding it a bit hard seeing your mother naked? You might as well get used to it because we're not on the mainland now with all its false modesty. I like the feel of the sun and air on my body; you might try it yourself."
I wasn't going to risk removing my last defence against exposure of my manhood so I changed tack again and asked, "How do we cook the fish, we've got nothing to boil or fry them in?"
"Thank God I'm with you Frank or I'd have to be mourning a son who starved to death surrounded by food. That's what happened to some of those nineteenth century explorers who died in the inland. When their supplies ran out they didn't know there were things they could eat all around them. I suppose I should have taught you better."
Mum set about roasting the fish over the fire while I sat watching her. She was squatting beside the fire with her legs slightly apart and I could see her pubic hair, curly and bronze coloured like that on her head, and also revealed was the long, firm cleft of her sex organ.
I suppose of you're used to seeing people naked you don't take too much notice, but I wasn't used to seeing mum or anyone else nude, and my shorts were fighting a losing battle when it came to concealing my erection.
Mum seemed to have gone wild, or as the white people used to say in the old days, "Gone native." Always a very straight speaking person and simple in her wants, I was nevertheless amazed at how quickly she had shed the restraints of life on the mainland, especially in the presence of her son.
She must have been able to see the effect she was having on me, yet apart from that odd smile on her face when I had first entered the water naked earlier, she showed no further signs of interest, and certainly no embarrassment.
It was as if she was completely free. As she had said, if I'd been there alone I would have been at the mercy of the environment, but mother seemed to dominate it – no, perhaps not dominate – she was part of it, at home with it. She looked and behaved younger and I could see very clearly why dad had fallen for her.
I tried the water and it tasted better than our tank water at home, and certainly much better than the water I had tasted when we had gone to one of the cities down south. The fish, when it was ready, didn't appeal to me all that much, it was just burnt fish, and the berries were a bit tasteless.
The leafy looking stuff mum had collected we chewed on uncooked and that was okay, but the roots were a bit of a struggle to masticate and get down. Still, if you've got nothing else to eat it was food, or so mother said.
She took a look at the mussels I had collected and said something about roasting them later.
Then it was firewood collecting time, a task as I would soon discover, that never seemed to stop. Once that bloody fire went out mother would have to do her twirling thing again, so she made sure I kept the fuel up to date. To help out with this mother went back into the island and came back with some peaty looking stuff she'd carved out with a knife. At night this was put over the fire and it kept the fire damped down so it was ready to be stirred up in the morning.
The day had grown hot and still and after collecting fuel I was all sweaty. Mum had been cooking over the fire so we were both ready for another dip. I stripped off my shorts and made a dash for the water, mum pounding along behind me, her slender legs going like flails.
We swam about for a bit, and then mum seemed to go mad. She leapt on me and winding her legs round me she said, "We might as well get the inevitable over, because if we're here for some time either you'll rape me or I'll rape you."
With that she let herself slide down my body and the next moment my penis was enveloped in something soft and warm. I didn't need to be told what it was; I was penetrating mum's vagina.
Her face was very close to mine and she kissed me softly and said, "That's what you needed, wasn't it?"
Since I'd been suffering an erectile penis for most of the day I could truthfully groan, "Oh my God, yes."
Her legs were wound round me, and with the water buoying her up and my hands under her buttocks, I began to lift her up and down on me. It didn't take long; I been so worked up for so long my testicles had no problem letting go of their heavy burden. I discharged into her like a howling animal, and although I don't think mum had an orgasm, I could hear her making soft little squealing sounds.
When I'd finished mum still clung to me, her big soft lips engulfing mine as she kept kissing me. When I could I asked, "You didn't come, did you?"
"No sweetheart, that one was for you to make you feel better and get you used to having sex with your mother. We're free here, we can live as we want to live, do what we want to do, with no one to know or interfere. If and when we're rescued they might guess, but they'll never know."
"But I might make you..."
"Pregnant? Yes, you might. It makes it all the more exciting, doesn't it?"
She laughed and went on, "I wonder how you'd cope if I did get pregnant and we were never rescued and you had to help deliver the baby?"
"But I couldn't..."
She laughed again and said, "Don't worry, women among my people know how to cope, and we keep the men right out of the way."
She pulled away from me and made for the beach. I followed her, trying to digest this new aspect to our relationship. "That one was for you," mum had said. Clearly that meant there was more to come.
One thing was for certain, that brief encounter in the water had given me a taste for more of her and I think she knew it. I'd heard that there are women with who, if you have sex with them; leave you wanting to have more and more with them. My other sexual experiences had never left me feeling like that, but those few moments with mum had certainly had that effect on me.
As I have said, she seemed to be in her natural environment; she could meet it on equal terms. I was in that environment with her but the terms were no longer equal. I realised that she had power over me, the power of a woman who could give or withhold, and if she chose to withhold my situation would be worse than it had been before we had copulated.
Already I was recovering from my ejaculation and knew I would soon be ready to come again. I wondered if I dared to approach mother, but as it happened, there was no need.
She walked up the beach towards a place where some rocks gave some shade from the sun and lay down. As I approached she extended her arms to me and said, "Now make love with me properly."
Needing no second invitation I came beside her and her arms wound round my neck. "Kiss me," she said. Our mouths met and her tongue thrust into mine, exploring and penetrating as she seemed to be trying to get down my throat.
I reached for one of her small, round breasts and began to stroke it, moving from its base up to its golden nipple. I gently pinched the nipple and mother said, "That lovely, darling, do it again."
I repeated my action several times, then did the same with her other breast, as I started to suck the nipple of the breast I had just relinquished. She had the smell and taste of the sea on her, fresh and clean, and this spurred me on.
I wondered if I dared risk it...whether she would accept it. I took the chance, and moving so as to position myself kneeling between her legs, I put my hands under her buttocks and raised her sex organ as I bent to kiss it.
She made no objection, only emitting a contented sigh. I started to lick her inner lips, and then pushed my tongue into the canal beyond them.
She tasted sweet and smelt of aromatic wood smoke.
Her sighs became soft little cries and as I began to suck her clitoris these cries increased. She began to tremble and clasped my head to her. For a moment she went rigid; she gave a scream, and then loosened up again as she jerked her sex organ over my face in a frenzy of weeping shrieks.
The noises she made startled seabirds roosting among the rocks and they rose squalling and squawking. I struggled to remain in contact with her as she jerked and jolted to the rhythm of her orgasmic shock waves.
I felt her pass the climax, but she continued to writhe her sex organ against my mouth for a long time as her tremors diminished.
When she finally released my head I moved away from her she looked up and me and smiled. "You do that beautifully, darling," she said softly, "Now come into me." She gave a weak giggle and went on, "See if you can make me pregnant."
I don't think I was much concerned whether I made her pregnant or not I was so worked up by what I had just done to her. As I slipped into her warm moist depths she started to kiss me, the giggling again she said, "Mmm, I do taste and smell nice, don't I; I'll have to find out of you taste and smell as nice later."
I had my full length in her when she gripped me with her vaginal muscle. This dragged a howl from me. I'd never experienced anything like this before, it was so powerful. I thought she would suck me right inside her, making me a part of her, and after all, I'd been part of her long ago.
She seemed to instinctively know my needs and worked rhythmically with my thrusts into her. Each time I penetrated she made soft sounds like, "Ha...ha...ha..." Then she went rigid again and screamed out, "Come now...now...," and then began the howling cries as I unloaded into her.
I seemed to be lost out in space for a while, but was intensely aware of my sperm pumping out of me and into her depths.
As I returned to the world around me I looked down at her. Her eyes were liquid shining brown and her skin seemed to glow. She was so alive, so vital; she was unlike other sex partners I'd had who usually suffered from post-coital feebleness. Sexual intercourse seemed to energise rather than debilitate mother.
There was no doubt about it, she had me hooked, I was in her world and as the days passed I loved it. I stopped wearing clothes while the weather was warm, only putting them on when the temperature dropped at night. Even then, if the temperature remained reasonable mother and I would go to sleep cuddled up together, but if you think it was a sexual free for all you'd be wrong.
Survival came before sex, and so it was a daily round of food and fuel gathering, and keeping watch from the cliff top for any signs of rescue.
We no longer tried to count the minutes or the hours, our only clue to the passing of time was the movement of the sun and the rumbling in our bellies. Nevertheless mother and I had no inhibitions about approaching each other for sex, nor the manner in with in which we engaged in sex.
I knew the time must have passed when father would have returned from his trip down south and if it hadn't been started before, the hunt for us would be on in earnest. I had become so embedded in our environment and most especially my sex life with mother that I began to dread our being found. Daily I would do my stint on the cliff top as lookout, and I wondered if, when I did sight something, whether I would choose to let it pass.
Only once was the bonfire lit, and that was when I thought I heard the sound of a light plane. I yelled from the cliff top to mother down on the beach "The torch." She lit the bundle of twigs and came running up to the cliff top like a gazelle. We lit the bonfire and when it was burning fiercely we threw on the wet stuff. A cloud of white smoke arose like a pillar into the sky, but by then the plane, if there had been one, had gone.
Unlike Robinson Crusoe we had made no marks to record the passing of the days, mainly I suppose, because we anticipated being found fairly quickly. When we finally realised that we were not going to be rescued as soon as we had thought, we no longer cared about the passing days.
We were kept busy each day and when we relaxed it was often to enjoy sex with each other. This seemed to take place quite naturally, usually beginning with simple touching and explorations of each others' bodies, with little of the frenetic anxiety that seemed to be present when I had copulated with girls on the mainland.
It might start with me touching mother's breasts or sucking a nipple; or mother might start to masturbate me and then end up giving me oral sex. How we did it didn't seem to matter because we knew next time it might be different. We could just enjoy each other and not complain because one or the other of us didn't orgasm every time.
The life we led seemed to increase our sexual desire, our libidos energised. I often thought that if Robinson Crusoe had a woman such as mother with him on his island he might never have wanted to leave it.
The relationship of mother and son also changed. Whilst I was still aware that she was my birth mother, now she was more a lover to me. I knew what we were doing was incest, but on the island it didn't seem to matter.
I'd heard people talk about "Island paradises." I certainly wouldn't say our island was paradise because it was a constant round of food and fuel gathering, plus keeping a lookout. But I noticed in myself and I thought in mother, certain casualness about keeping lookout. It was as if we didn't want to be found.
It was therefore a surprise and a disappointment, when one day mother said, "We have to get back to the mainland."
"Why...how?"
"In the boat."
"But you know we've got no fuel and we can't paddle all that way."
"We won't need fuel, I can rig a sail. When the winds right we'll make it."
It seemed certain that any attempts to find us would have been given up by then, but I repeated, "Why do you want to get back to the mainland, we're okay here?" Mother just replied, "We must."
After that she went very quiet and hardly spoke at all.
I was sent into the scrub to find a couple of long sturdy branches. Mother set too with them, the sheet and the rope and cord I'd originally brought for the boat. It was a pretty improvised set up, but in the end there it was, a sail. Then we waited.
One morning mother said, "The winds right today," and that was that. She put some dried fish and the water bottle on board and we paddled out of the cove and round to the mainland side of the island. Then mother let go the sail and I simply use a paddle to steer.
Much sooner than I expected the mainland came in sight, and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn't want to go back, largely because I knew my relationship with mother would revert back to what it had once been.
It took us hours to reach the coast, and when we did it was nearly dark and we'd landed a considerable distance from our house. For all her bush know-how mother decided we wouldn't go any further that night, so together we hauled the boat up as close to the beach as possible and dug the anchor in.
That night we clung close together, copulating several time as a sort of farewell to all that. In the morning, our shorts and skivvies now restored, we walked the distance to the house.
When we got to the house no one was there, but mum said, "My God I could do with a cup of tea." I think that was one of the things she missed most on the island, tea.
She prowled round the house that showed all the signs that dad still lived there, and eventually we heard the thump of the diesel motor. The motor stopped and we knew dad was tying up at the boy. Then came the putter of the auxiliary boat's outboard and we knew dad was on his way to the beach.
Mum and I looked at each other, and without a word we made our way down the track to the beach. Dad was just hauling the little aluminium dinghy onto the beach as we got there.
He didn't see us at first but when he did he went white and looked as if he was going to faint. "Bloody hell," he muttered, "bloody hell," you're not dead; Christ we gave up long ago, "Oh my God."
Mum went to him and put her arms round him and kissed him. He hung on to her wailing, "Six months, it's been six bloody months...where the hell have you been?"
There were long explanations and tears. It seemed that once dad had got back from down south and found the boat missing, and some of the locals told him about the storm, it was anticipated right from the start that we'd drowned. A search was made, but they were looking for bodies, and made no attempt the search the islands, never thinking we would be out that far. Oddly although they had not landed on the islands they had circled them looking for any signs on life, including Bundoogle. Mum went very silent and I've often wondered since if she...no, I'd better not put down my suspicion.
That night I had the agony of hearing dad fucking the life out of mum. Next day he took me along the coast in the auxiliary to where we'd left the runabout. All the way he kept asking me how we'd survived and how we'd got on being alone and isolated. He never said anything directly, but I've often wondered just how suspicious he was.
We refuelled the runabout, and after a bit of a battle got it started, and I took it back.
Once the shock and news of our return had subsided life got back to normal, with me going out fishing with dad. It was some time after our return that it became clear to me why mum had insisted we leave the island; she showed all the signs of being pregnant.
Again nothing was ever said, even when little Julie was born more than a month premature, but showed all the signs of not being premature. Perhaps dad knew what had happened between mum and me; after all, it was hardly surprising, a man and a woman marooned for six months.
And that's another thing; at the last mum had rigged the boat so we could get back, so why hadn't she done that in the first place?
I thought our sexual relationship was over, but it didn't prove to be the case. Mother and I had no sexual contact for the whole time of her pregnancy and for a log time after she'd given birth, but dad still made his trips down south to see his parents and tie up odd bits of business, but always with stern admonitions not to go out in the runabout while he's gone.
One day during one of those absences mum said to me, "Let's take the runabout and go to Bundoogle, we can stay for a few days."
We went taking Julie with us plus plenty of jerry cans full of petrol. We went native again and despite my avid copulating with mother she's never got pregnant again. We always make a point of going to the island whenever we can, but unfortunately we're never marooned.
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