Читать книгу: «The Backpacking Housewife»

To my family … with love. xx

Chapter 1
Tortola, British Virgin Islands

This morning, in bright sunshine and on calm waters, we’re heading back to Road Town, Tortola, the capital of the British Virgin Islands: the starting point of our round the world adventure eight months ago and today our final port of call. I gaze out from my viewpoint on the forward deck at the shimmering vista ahead of me and at what must certainly be one of the most beautiful sights in the world; a chain of tropical islands laid out like an emerald necklace.

I know I should be feeling elated, excited, or even triumphant about our return, but I’m feeling rather overwhelmed about it instead. That’s because I woke up this morning to realise that its’s exactly one year ago today that I grabbed my passport and got on a plane at Gatwick, leaving my whole life and my old life, behind me. A whole year.

And today, it feels quite literally and figuratively, like my life has come full circle.

So, while everyone else is busy and getting ready to disembark and celebrate our homecoming, I can’t help but to look back, rather than forward. I can’t help but to wonder what happens next for this backpacking housewife.

If this is the end of my journey? Or just another new beginning?

I’m torn in two by my conscience and my heart.

I have a big decision to make and it’s not going to be an easy one.

Do I continue to travel the world with Ethan? Or do I head back home to the UK?

I know that Ethan wants me to be with him. I know he loves me. And I love him.

But how do you tell someone who is something of a real-life Indiana Jones and who thrives on a life filled with endless adventure that you’ve started to think it might not be the life for you after all? That a life spent in perpetual sunshine while saving the planet has become too difficult for you? That the weeks and months and the thousands of miles of distance between you and those you’ve left behind is all too much?

I have two grown up kids and an aged mother who I haven’t seen in a very long time.

My heart aches as I realise it’s almost the end of November and Christmas is coming.

I missed Christmas with my family last year. I spent last Christmas on a tiny island in the middle of the South China Sea. If you looked it up on a map, you’d see it really is as far away from anywhere else as you can possibly get. I imagine, as far as my family were concerned, I might as well have been on the moon. On Christmas Day, I remember sitting crying on the beach, under a scorching sun, thinking of the place I used to call home and imagining them all opening presents without me, which brought on another kind of guilt. The kind that tells you how spoiled and ungrateful you are for not appreciating what you have and where you are now.

I’ve missed a whole year of birthdays and anniversaries and other special family days too.

When I last checked in with my family, via a wi-fi signal in a port of call just several days ago, I discovered that my eldest son, Josh, and his girlfriend, Zoey, had just got engaged. That was unexpected. I mean, he didn’t even have a girlfriend on the scene when I’d left.

He sent me a lovely photo of the two of them taken at their engagement party.

A party that I missed.

I’d called the happy couple as soon as I could to offer my heartfelt congratulations. But then our conversation had quickly resorted back to the question of when I might be coming home.

And that was awkward, as I really didn’t have an answer.

When I speak with my younger son, Lucas, he often sounds surly and uncommunicative and he makes our long-distance conversations hard work. I ask him about his day and what he’s been doing over the weekend and how his work is going and he’s dismissive. Call it mother’s intuition, but I worry if there is something going on that perhaps he’s not telling me?

I also worry if I even have any mother’s intuition left these days.

I could of course be worrying for nothing. But getting any information from Lucas about his life is impossible when he immediately switches the topic of conversation from him back to me. And I’m told once again, how most people’s middle-aged mothers (and I’m only forty-eight for goodness sakes) take daytrips to The Lake District and join Book Clubs, rather than go backpacking around the world and then join the crew of an ocean-going ship.

I listen and I agree. I know both my sons are missing me and they also worry about me.

I worry about them too. I worry about missing them. I constantly stress over whether I’ve done a good enough job as a mother to leave them to it now that they are both in their twenties?

What if they do need me? Even though they are grown up successful young men.

And, because I’m not there, who do they turn to if they need advice or emotional support?

Their father? What kind of example is he when he’s proved to be an untrustworthy liar?

And how do they really feel about their parents being divorced now?

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t exactly been able to talk to them about their anxieties or concerns in any depth over the past twelve months? Not since that time just before Christmas last year, when they both flew out to Kuala Lumpur to see if I’d lost my mind as well as my homing beacon. In speaking face to face, I’d been able to reassure them. Whereas now, I find it frustrating how feelings are a difficult subject to tackle by text message.

Somehow, words seem to get scrambled and become devoid of sensitivity.

That they don’t reflect what’s really in the heart.

Not to mention autocorrect issues and textspeak which often make matters so much worse.

Only this week did Josh question my overt use of: WTF.

I thought it meant: Well That’s Fantastic.

And so, of course, I’ve been using it rather a lot.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been tossing and turning more than this ship.

I’ve been losing sleep, while trying to work out how I can continue to live a nomadic lifestyle with Ethan, while also maintaining a tangible and meaningful connection with my family. But having it all seems impossible.

I don’t feel Ethan is the kind of man to step back from the helm and retire.

And I simply can’t be in two places or on both sides of the world at one time.

I’ve had to confide in him over feeling permanently at sea these days. Although, I was using that as a metaphor for our nomadic lifestyle, rather than our ocean-going situation. He’d listened to me and he’d said he understood. He said that he understands all my angst and guilt.

But, I’m not sure that he does fully understand, because he has no family of his own.

I tried to explain about my mum to him. ‘She’s not getting any younger.’ I said.

Which, in hindsight, didn’t best explain how I really feel about her needs, her age, her fragility, and not being there for her.

Ethan had simply replied. ‘Well, Lori, my darling. None of us are getting any younger.’

And, of course, he’s quite right. Yet another reason for us all to grab life and really live it.

Ethan’s parents died a long time ago and, from what I can gather, he was still in his teens at the time. I don’t know exactly what or how it happened. But they do seem to have passed away at around the same time as each other. I wonder if they were in some kind of accident.

Only, he doesn’t talk about them very much. Maybe it’s too painful for him?

It’s also entirely understandable that he is perhaps unable to truly empathise with me and all my worries over my two sons or an aging parent. Although, with his roots in Scotland, I find it hard to accept there isn’t at least someone somewhere in the world who is related to him.

An uncle twice removed or even perhaps a distant cousin?

When we had briefly talked about it once, I’d suggested doing a bit of genealogy research to check for anyone who might be a relative, or even a black sheep in his clan. But then I’d noticed a vein in his temple starting to visibly pulsate and how quickly he changed the subject.

A shout disrupts my thoughts and I turn around to see Ethan on deck.

‘Lori! I have news. I have great news!’

A smile spreads across my face. I watch him in amusement as he struts his stuff, wiggling his hips and dancing through the early morning sunbeams and across the main deck towards me, wearing an unbuttoned shirt and baggy khaki shorts, while waving his satellite phone in the air. I laugh. I do love his boundless energy and passion.

Ethan has the heart of a lion, but he extrudes all the enthusiasm of a child.

I mean, just yesterday, as we sailed past the island of St Martin, he was positively whooping about a pilot whale and her calf swimming off our bow. Last week, he sounded the muster alarm when he spotted a record number of dolphins following in our wake. And, last month, when our research vessel Freedom of the Ocean rallied on a conservational issue off the coast of Costa Rica to stop illegal shark finning, he stood out on deck beating his chest like Tarzan.

But I have perhaps not seen him quite as exuberant as he is today.

Several of the crew whoop loudly in response, as I wait to hear what crazy escapade he might have conjured up for us next. Life with Ethan is always an adventure and to my certain knowledge every one of those adventures has been the result of a phone call.

‘My darling, I believe I’ve found us a piece of dry land that we can finally call home.’

I catch my breath and my heart skips a beat. His words wash over me through the warm and salty air between us. Did I hear him correctly? Did Ethan Goldman, nomadic eco-warrior and king of the seven seas, just say dry land and home in the very same sentence?

Had he really been listening to my worldly woes?

To my worries about my family and how much I miss them?

Had he really understood and been putting together a plan for when we got back here?

‘Really? Oh Ethan, that’s fantastic! Where is it?’ I gasp.

‘Here. In the BVI’s. Although I’ll have to head over to Grand Cayman to sign the lease.’

‘Here, in the British Virgin Islands? A lease? Are we renting a house?’

My brain clicked into overdrive. Is this plan of his both the answer and the compromise?

The resolution to the conflict in my double life?

A base for us to work from and for us to call home?

Only moments earlier, I’d been imagining a heartbreaking and distressing scenario, where I was sobbing into Ethan’s pineapple patterned shirt and saying goodbye to him this afternoon.

I had imagined that the very next phone call he took would be the catalyst to him taking off on some new and fabulous adventure and that he’d have to go saving something somewhere in the world without me. But now, instead, I’m suddenly and happily conjuring up in my imagination a traditional clapperboard Caribbean style house, surrounded by palm trees, either here on Tortola or Virgin Gorda. I’m imagining myself holding out my arms in welcome to my family as they arrive to spend Christmas with us this year. And, next year, planning with them a visit over the summer holidays and lots of other special family times too. I imagined my mum sitting on a comfortable chair under our shaded porch, looking out at a beautiful tropical garden, rather than sitting in an old armchair in front of the fire and looking outside at her small winter ravaged patio. I imagined Ethan teaching Josh and Lucas to scuba dive in the warm sea and them all having an amazing time together.

That’s my dream – a big happy family – all spending quality time together.

And, when my mum and my two boys step off a plane into my new world – and they see for themselves what kind of life I’m living and what kind of man I’m living with now – then they can be happy for me at last. Then they wouldn’t worry about me so much. Or continue to question my state of mind. And demand, in every long-distance conversation, that it’s time I came home. What a perfect way that would be for me to introduce them to Ethan too.

Part of my angst and guilt is because I haven’t yet told them I have a new man in my life.

I’ve only explained about going off with a new friend to do some conservation work.

I certainly hadn’t told them how I’d met a gorgeous man in Thailand, fallen head over heels in love with him, and that we were now travelling all over the world together.

I don’t feel it’s the kind of news that’s best shared in an email or a message.

Although, I’m sure, if they ever did manage to get over the shock of me having a new man friend, then they would be impressed that he’s a renowned environmentalist and the founder and CEO of The Goldman Global Foundation. And, when my mum eventually picked herself up off the floor at the thought of me having another man in my life, she might be thrilled to hear that Sir Ethan had been knighted for his services to global ecology and endangered animal conservation.

Right now, I’m excited. I find Ethan’s idea of a renting somewhere entirely acceptable.

Although, it is certainly a little unusual – simply because as a rule Ethan doesn’t rent – Ethan buys. Probably because he can afford to buy anything he wants. Like this ship, for example.

While many fifty-year old men might choose to buy a classic motorbike or a flashy car, this middle-aged philanthropist prefers to spend his small change on a state-of-the-art fully equipped ocean liner, with the world’s most advanced gadgetry and marine research facilities on board. But renting a house will be far quicker than buying one.

We might even be able to move in today!

‘It’s not a house,’ Ethan tells me with great gusto. ‘It’s an island no one has lived on in a hundred years!’

And, suddenly, I can feel my elated heart sinking ever so slowly down into my deck shoes.

The image of an idyllic Caribbean colonial style house with my mum on the porch immediately crumbles away to be replaced by something far less decant and far more decayed looking. I sigh and take a deep breath. I do love that he cares so passionately about preserving ecosystems and saving the endangered creatures of the world. But after eight months spent mostly at sea, and while working on the most pressing conservational issues in the world today - that of plastic pollution in our seas and the study of global warming on our oceans – what I really meant when I’d tentatively hinted to him that we might settle down and find a home together, was somewhere with an actual address.

I’d thought we might live in a place that can be found without satellite imaging or having to use longitude and latitude coordinates. Somewhere civilised with a population and civil amenities and a transportation system that includes an international airport and not just a precarious landing strip. Somewhere with shops. A supermarket where I can buy milk that doesn’t necessarily have to come from a coconut. A house with a proper kitchen rather than a galley with a floating stove. A bathroom with a tub instead of a tiny shower and with a proper toilet rather than one in a tiny claustrophobic cubicle like the kind you find on an airplane.

Was I expecting too much? I guess so. This was Ethan Indiana Jones after all.

Because now I fear he has another adventurous project in mind rather than an actual home.

On an island that no one has lived on in a hundred years no less!

But was that even possible these days in the BVIs?

Jeff, one of our marine biologists, laughed. ‘You’ve gotta admit it, Lori. This is so Ethan!’

So Ethan had become a popular adage with all the scientists onboard for when anyone had a crazy idea. Never crazy to Ethan, of course, who was still enthusiastically strutting his stuff on deck. I roll my eyes as I consider yet another desert island where we can live like castaways.

I know how cynical and ungrateful that sounds, but I’m kind of fed up with shifting sand.

I’m missing solid ground. I’m missing being in one place for a while.

But more than all of that I’m really missing my family.

Chapter 2

At Road Town, Tortola, The Freedom of the Ocean is now safely docked in the harbour and no one has wasted any time getting onto dry land. Ethan has wasted no time either in securing a small boat to take us – just the two of us – on what he describes as a romantic voyage of discovery. So, I’m now standing on a wooden jetty in a very busy part of the marina, with my cell phone firmly clamped to my ear, while I’m trying to reach my family back home.

Ethan is chatting to a very distinguished looking man who is wearing a linen suit and a panama hat. I’m casting my eyes over some incredibly impressive yachts and catamarans in what is known as the boating capital of the Caribbean, and as I can already feel my long wavy hair becoming even crazier in this ridiculous humidity, I’m regretting not bringing along a hat myself. I’m already perspiring profusely in my white cotton shirt and shorts that I’m wearing over my swimsuit. The tops of my flip-flopped feet are being scorched by the hot morning sunshine.

I watch the two men gesticulate over a very sleek looking motor boat. It’s expensive looking with white padded seats and two powerful outboard engines and I can’t help but to wonder why, when I have a full signal on my phone for the first time in absolutely ages, is no one answering my calls? I then realise 10am here is 2pm in London. My boys will be at work and my mum will no doubt still be at her afternoon pensioner’s bingo session.

Then I see Ethan and the distinguished looking man shaking hands and there is a set of keys being handed over. Suddenly he is waving at me with great enthusiasm. ‘Okay, Lori. Let’s go!’

I dash over to untie the mooring rope from the cleat and jump into the boat that Ethan has procured. We set off into the sparkling sunshine and soon made good progress through the stretch of water between the islands that is known as the Sir Frances Drake Channel. As we leave the harbour and the bay, I can clearly see the verdant shapes of the larger islands across the straights from us. In the far distance there is Norman Island, said to be the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island, and Peter Island, with its broad curve of white sand beaches and exclusive high-class hotel resort.

I do know a little about the Virgin Islands from my own days as a travel agent. Many moons ago, while I was also a housewife and mother bringing up two little boys, my ex-husband and I had our own very successful travel business. Only, in those days, I used to plan other people’s adventurous itineraries and could have only dreamed of the life I have now.

The Virgin Islands are split into American and British territories. The largest of the British owned islands is Tortola. The second largest is Anegada - also called Drowned Island - as it’s flat and low lying and often flooded by high tides. Although, I know next to nothing about the smaller islands except that there are lots of them – over fifty – and that’s just in the British Virgin Islands or BVIs as everyone calls them for short.

I point a finger across the straights towards a small islet. ‘I know those are Salt and Cooper and Ginger Island, but do you know what that little round one with no trees on it is called?’

‘Aye. That’s Dead Chest Island.’ Ethan answered. ‘There’s nothing growing on it because there’s no freshwater. It’s where Blackbeard the pirate once abandoned fifteen of his crewmen with one keg of rum and a pistol with one shot between them. I suppose he’d assumed they’d all get drunk and then fight over the pistol to commit suicide.’

‘Couldn’t they have just all swam over to Peter Island instead?’ I asked, thinking it didn’t look too far away.

‘It looks close enough but there are dangerous currents between the islands. The story is that they did all try to swim for it but only one of them made it. That’s why there’s a Dead Man’s Bay on Peter Island.’ He remarked.

I stared over at Dead Chest Island and tried to imagine the horror of being stuck in a place where nowhere actually looked too far away and yet everywhere was impossible to reach.

Ethan then boldly opened the engines and began to heartily sing at the top of his voice.

‘Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’

I sat back and enjoyed the warm wind blowing through my hair and took in the dramatic shape of Virgin Gorda, the third largest island in the BVIs off our starboard or right side, looking like a giant woman reclining in the shimmering Caribbean heat.

We are heading towards the outer islands now. I know that some are still uninhabited, but others are now the exclusive hideaways of the rich and famous; rock stars, movie moguls and rich entrepreneurs. I decide to look out for Tom Cruise because I’m sure someone mentioned that he’d recently bought one of these outlying atolls.

Ethan saw me peering ahead with eagerness.

‘We’re heading northwest towards The Dogs,’ he informed me.

‘What kind of dogs are they?’ I asked cautiously, wondering if we’d needed rabies jabs.

Ethan laughed. ‘There are no dogs. It’s a group of islands named so because sailors once thought the barking they could hear came from dogs on the islands.’

‘And, if it wasn’t dogs, what was it?’

‘Caribbean Monk Seals,’ he clarified. ‘Sadly, they’re now extinct.’

He looked gloomy for a little while as he considered this awful loss.

We soon approached a group of five small rocky islets that made up The Dog Islands.

They looked wild and rugged against the calm deep blue of the surrounding sea.

‘Now we’re truly in virgin territory!’ Ethan proclaimed.

He sounded excited as he stood proudly at the helm, inhaling deeply, as if the air around here was purer too. ‘Many years ago, the sailors who came here thought this was the very end of the world, and they imagined the horizon line that you see now was the drop off point. All these islands around here are privately owned. But some are also protected wildlife sanctuaries for creatures that can be found nowhere else in the world. See that island up ahead?’

I peer through my sunshades at the shape of an irregular mound in the distance.

‘That’s Mosquito Island. It’s where I first learned to scuba dive. My instructor, Booty Bill, was known as the last pirate in the Caribbean. He was a real character. There’s so many rumours about him finding shipwrecks and treasure around here. No one ever really knew fact from fiction. When I first came here, at eighteen years old, Booty was like a father to me.’

Ethan sighed happily as he remembered those times.

‘He sounds like an amazing man. Is he still here? I’d love to meet him.’

‘No. He retired to Florida. But now, of course, Richard owns the island.’

‘Are you talking about Richard Branson?’ I gasped.

‘Aye, in 2007, he swiped Mosquito from under my nose for just twenty million.’

Ethan shook his head as if 2007 was just yesterday and twenty million was small change.

‘But I thought Richard Branson owned Necker Island?’

‘Aye, he does. He bought Necker way back in ’79. Although, interestingly, on one very old map of the BVIs it’s shown as ‘Knicker Island’. As you might imagine, Richard, with his sense of humour, thought that was downright hilarious!’

I laughed. ‘Yes, I expect you’d have to be British to appreciate that joke.’

I’m guessing he and Richard Branson have an interesting alliance.

‘So, is that why you know this area so well? Because you lived here as a young man?’

‘Aye. I spent a whole summer down here before I started university. I love these islands. I know these waters like I know the back of my own hand. It’s long been an ambition of mine to buy a boat and an island here and make my home in the BVIs. A dream, actually’

‘But I thought Scotland was your home?’ I said in some surprise.

‘Nah. Not really. I’ve gone soft in my old age. Scotland’s too damn cold. I’d rather follow in the footsteps of my fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stephenson, and live in warmer climes.’

And, I suddenly realised, that although I do know certain things about this man – his recent history, his passion for conservation, his determination to save the planet, and how much I love him – there is still so much that I don’t know about him. His childhood in Scotland. His earlier life. How he single-handedly built up the Goldman Global Foundation. And this dream of his.

I suspect Ethan is as deep as these waters all around us and as equally intriguing.

‘And, this island we’re going to see today,’ I said. ‘Do you think this might be your dream?’

He turned from the helm to grin at me. He had such a handsome face in any regard, but when he smiled, Ethan looked movie star handsome and my heart did a little flip.

‘Lori, my love, believe me when I tell you this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, this island’s not for sale or I’d be snapping it up. It’s held in an ancient trust. One hundred years ago, it was leased to someone who died with a hold over on the lease agreement, so the island was left to inheritors for the remainder of the lease despite them having no plans nor interest in the island. My guess is they forgot all about it until the lease finally expired this year. I got my lawyers straight onto securing it for the next hundred years.’

‘And that’s why no one has lived on it in all that time?’

‘Aye. It’s a rare find. The last private island with an untouched eco-system in the Virgin Islands. That’s just like finding a virgin in a brothel!’ He chuckled at his own joke.

‘So, what you’re actually talking about is another research facility!’ I remarked a little sourly. I couldn’t help it. I loved his enthusiasm. But how could an abandoned island possibly be our permeant home? How could we possibly thrive, never mind survive, out here on a small rock? I imagined the two of us sitting on a deserted island beach together, sun scorched and dehydrated, with nothing more than one bottle of rum between us – like those poor abandoned pirates – and fighting over one gun with one bullet in it with which to end our awful misery.

As we made our approach, to what I could easily understand being thought the very edge of the old world, Ethan’s untouched virgin island rose dreamily from the sea and it was breath-taking to behold. At first glimpse, I see white crested waves crashing into rocky inlets and small sandy coves. But then I spotted a small heart-shaped cove with a tiny curved beach and with swaying palm trees and a labyrinth of boulders forming natural pools and seawater-flooded grottoes. I hear the call of seabirds, egrets, herons, pelicans, frigates, and drag my eyes upward over sheer rugged cliffs to see undulating hills covered in misty jungle, as Ethan steered us straight into the heart-shaped cove, where the shallow waters were teeming with colourful fish.

He puts down the anchor onto a sandy bed. ‘The boat will be safe here. This is the only safe way to approach the island because the lagoon on the other side is protected by a coral reef.’

Then carefully he pulls out an old battered map from a folder he’s brought along, and we stand together on the gently swaying deck to study it carefully. It’s deeply creased and faded with age. It looks exactly like a treasure map with its star shaped compass drawing and little illustrations showing landmarks. In excitement, I spot an outcrop marked ‘Treasure Point’ at the most northerly aspect.