Muriel looked at him and their eyes met. “I think you are too,” she answered.
For a moment Andrew was tongue-tied but then he swallowed and stammered, “I.. I.. I’d like to be your friend.”
For a few seconds her eyes searched his face. Then she nodded and smiled. “I’d like that too,” she answered.
Andrew could not believe his ears. His heart seemed to leap and sing. Without realizing what he was doing he reached out and gently took her hand. She squeezed his and let him keep hold as they resumed walking. Her hand felt warm but slightly gritty from the dry salt and sun oil. Andrew licked his salty lips and sighed softly with relief and happiness. He did not push his luck by trying anything more and was happy just to walk along holding her hand and talking.
They seemed to have a hundred things to tell each other and before they really wanted to be they were around on the sheltered side of the island again. Almost at once Andrew was tested again. As they rounded the gentle curve of the shoreline he saw three people frolicking in the shallow water just off the beach. He took no particular notice until he and Muriel were only about fifty paces away. Only then did he realize that the three were naked. All three came walking up out of the water, laughing and talking quickly in some foreign language.
Seeing the three nudes: two women and a man, immediately sent Andrew into a turmoil of embarrassment and anxiety. One of the women was very buxom. Her large breasts swung and wobbled as she walked and the sight was enough to send Andrew’s mouth dry. The man was fit and had an all-over tan and his penis was long and uncircumcised.
‘Oh dear! I don’t want Muriel to see this,’ Andrew thought, not wishing her to be affronted. He was also embarrassed at seeing the naked man’s penis waggling as he walked. But what to do? To turn around and walk away would make the incident even more obvious. He decided to act ‘cool’ and to ignore them. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Muriel, trying to judge her reactions. By then the three tourists had walked up the beach in front of them and had picked up towels and begun to dry themselves. They glanced at Muriel and Andrew but then ignored them, apparently unconcerned at being seen nude.
Burning with embarrassment Andrew kept his eyes averted as he and Muriel walked past. Once they were out of earshot he said, “Sorry about that.”
Muriel shrugged. “Just some tourists,” she replied. “Swedish or Danish I think.”
“I didn’t want you to be offended,” Andrew explained.
“I’m not, so stop worrying,” Muriel replied.
That put Andrew into an even bigger turmoil: if Muriel didn’t mind that sort of thing would she ever do it with him? Surging fantasies of lust began to battle with his values about decency and how to behave. It left him all mixed up and despising himself for having such weak and lustful thoughts. Memories of nudity on Endeavour Island added to his discomfort, causing him to become very aroused and battling to control it.
There were more little tests like this to come. First they walked past two more nudes, a man and a woman. They were lying face down on towels so, apart from their bare backsides and the bulge of the woman’s breasts, there wasn’t much to see. Andrew just pretended not to be interested.
Next they passed several sunbathing female tourists who were topless. Some of these lay on their back and one girl was sitting up oiling her skin with sun lotion. She glanced at Andrew and just kept on with rubbing the oil on her left arm. His desire shot up and he could not help noting, and admiring, her nicely tanned, pointy breasts as they trembled to her movements.
To Andrew’s surprise Muriel said, “She’s got a nice body.”
His response was to grunt and pretend he had not looked. However his mind was a riot of speculation. Would Muriel do something like that? ‘Do I want her to?’ he wondered. To his own disgust he knew he did.
By then the pier had come back into view. The beach from here on was thick with tourists but they were all dressed. Seeing a boat bobbing close to the end of the pier got Andrew's heart rate going again. ‘Time for the final test,’ he thought, his anxiety level shooting up and driving all thoughts of sex from his mind.
CHAPTER 7
FINAL TEST?
This time the group swam right out to the edge of the reef. That was a real test for Andrew. As the dark blue water got closer he became more and more scared. When they finally reached the edge of the deep water he was almost on the edge of panic and was having to struggle with himself to hide it from the others. He grabbed the float and clung to it with his legs curled up underneath and panted for breath.
Seeing a floatplane come in to land a few hundred metres away did little to help. That brought to the front of his consciousness vivid flashbacks of the plane crash he had survived the previous year. It had been a day trip to Green Island and a day just like this. The plane had come down in the sea and flipped over. Somehow Andrew had got out, helped by Graham Kirk. They had then pulled the unconscious pilot from the sinking wreck and then saved their crippled friend Ken. Ken had been in a wheelchair. For the next 15 hours they had struggled to stay alive, being borne northwards by the current. The fact that an obvious current was even now tugging at Andrew did nothing to ease his fears because the current was flowing away from Green Island and the fringing reef and out into the deeper water.
‘Poor Graham,’ Andrew mused. It had been just after he had learned that his eyes were no good and it had taken a lot of persuading by him and Ken to stop him just giving up and letting himself drown. The memories of drifting in big waves many kilometres from land in very deep water had caused almost paralysing fear in Andrew. Only the need to keep the injured pilot afloat had kept him from giving way to sheer terror. The night had been worse; hour after hour of draining fear. To be rescued by the navy patrol boat next morning had been the most wonderful relief.
‘If this current takes me away I will have to suffer all that again,’ Andrew thought, looking fearfully down current and across the waves of the deep water. The arrival of a small inflatable boat with an outboard motor driven by PO Walker was some comfort, but not much.
Then it was time for the final test. Almost hyperventilating with fear Andrew made himself descend with the others. As he went under he focused on the anchor rope running down from the float. But fear made him keep looking around. He saw that the reef ended in a number of isolated clumps with white sand between. Then the sand sloped steeply downwards into deeper water, the dreaded murky blue that shaded off into a dark wall in which all his fears were hiding.
It was a relief to settle on the sandy bottom with a ring of coral outcrops around. There were gaps several metres wide between the outcrops but they gave some illusion of protection. Andrew now focused on easing his pressure and in attaining negative buoyancy so that he remained kneeling on the sand without effort. A check of his depth gauge told him that Sub Lt Sheldon had spoken correctly- 18 metres. That surprised Andrew as it had not seemed to be any particular effort to sink that deep. He looked up and thought it did not appear to be noticeably further to the surface. Both the float and safety boat were clearly visible.
Carmen settled beside him on his left and then Muriel on his right. Shona and Blake made their way down and then the two instructors. Once all were ready the testing began. The first test was pure fun. They had to make themselves hover. By getting their buoyancy just right they could float gently up and down just by breathing in and out. Andrew found it easy and enjoyed the sensation of hovering. ‘Levitating’ he called it. It just felt good to do.
It even pushed the fear of the mask removal test out of Andrew’s mind for a while. The navigation by compass test also helped. This was easy for Andrew and he found he could even spend some of his thoughts on admiring the brilliantly coloured fish as he finned across the reef with Sub Lt Sheldon beside him. Only the awareness of that dark blue gloominess off to one side affected him. Turning onto the back-bearing and returning the 50 metres