1. THE DOT ARRIVES

Hope started as a dot on the horizon.

The way the light shimmered and sparkled, it was hard to tell where the blue sky ended and the blue sea started. 

The two men shielded their eyes with their hands, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. Was the dot coming to the island from the sky or the water?

When Smudge thought he had worked it out, he started jumping up and down like an excited kid. “I told you they’d send a helicopter for us!”

“Will you calm down, sonny!” The little man with the flowing white beard grabbed his top hat to stop it from toppling. It wasn’t particularly windy. The leaves of the coconut palms high above their heads only gently rustled. But Smudge was creating his own turbulence.

Smudge stopped bouncing and fixed his eyes on the fuzzy horizon again. “Can you blame me for getting excited?”

He had been stranded on this forgotten island for at least two months. He’d never forget the day the Navy helicopter had lifted off the island, leaving him alone with nothing but corpses, the cow and rats — lots of rats. 

His commanding officer had promised they’d be back for him as soon as possible. 

But hours went by, then a day, then two days, then three, which was when he decided he had to bury the two bullet-riddled men himself.

He had decided the next day to start recording time by carving daily notches into the trunk of a coconut palm — which is what he had been doing the day the old man had appeared, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him in a high-pitched tremulous screech what the heck he thought he was doing vandalising one of his trees.

That had scared the wits out of Leading Seaman Fred ‘Smudge’ Smith because he had helped to bury the old bloke some days earlier.

“How can you not be excited?” Smudge’s red T- shirt gently flapped as he gazed out over the water. “We’re about to be rescued.” 

“I’ve told you a dozen times, sonny, I don’t want to be rescued. I hope there’s room on that chopper for the cow, then you can all rack off.” The old man scrunched up his eyes. “Only I don’t think it’s even a helicopter.”

“You don’t?” Smudge shaded his eyes with his hand again. “You know, I think you’re right. It looks like a frigate.” He started bouncing again.

“Will you quit it! You can do all the jumping up and down you like when you leave my island.”

Smudge embraced the old man like he was a Tango partner. He even dipped him, and sent the top hat tumbling to the ground.

The old man recovered his balance and pushed Smudge away. “Will you cut it out!” He picked up his hat and put it back on, reinstating his status as the tallest person on the island.

“I can’t believe they’ve sent a frigate,” Smudge said. “A frigging frigate!“

The old man waggled a finger at him. “I’ve warned you before about swearing!” He swung around and squinted back out to sea. “That’s the smallest-looking frigate I’ve ever seen, sonny!”

Smudge cupped his eyes again. “A patrol boat then?” 

“I thought you’d know your boats.”

“Well, what do you think it is?”

“Looks like a dot to me.”

“That’s what all ships look like when they are far away.”

“Perhaps! But this dot isn’t getting much bigger.”

He was wrong. The dot did get bigger, and it started taking shape.

After half an hour, they could even make out a single sail. Half an hour later, that turned out to be a white sail with a red stripe.

The old man cackled. “The Navy has gone all high tech!”

An hour later, the windsurfer reached the shallows.

A large bloke in a wetsuit, with his boots hanging around his neck from knotted laces, untied an overnight bag from the bottom of the mast before letting the sail splash into the water. He stepped off the board and waded backwards ashore.

Mad Bill cackled again. “Looks like they’ve sent a Navy diver to rescue you.”

Smudge threw his head into his hands and moaned. 

2. THEY FORGOT TO LICK ME

The man sat on a rock at the edge of the beach and removed his flippers. He turned around, and peeled his wetsuit down to his waist, revealing a wobble of middle-age gut. He stood up, and turned to study his new surroundings.

When he saw the men standing on the bank above him to the left, he jumped. 

He charged up the bank waving a finger at Smudge. “Who gave you permission to grow a beard?” he spluttered in a plum British accent.

Smudge shook his head. “Really, sir? Really? Stay right here, Lieutenant-Commander Domeney said. We’ll be right back, she said. Do you know how many days I’ve had to go without razor blades?”

“Stop making excuses, Leading Seaman. I’m surprised to even find you here alive.”

The old man coughed into his hand. “Are you going to tell me who this rooster is, sonny?”

Smudge pointed from chest to chest, and realised there was now a new height hierarchy on the island. He was 5 foot 10, but had to look up to a top hat that made the 5 foot 2 old man look 6 foot 2. Major B.S. was 6 foot 4 even without a hat.

“Mad Bill meet Captain Jeremy Billycock-Smythe, Captain meet Mad Bill.”

Captain B.S.’s eyes popped. “You’re William Clarin? But that’s impossible!”

Mad Bill’s voice crackled. “Billycock-Smythe? Where have I heard that name before?”

Captain B.S. kept staring. “You’re definitely dead.”

Mad Bill cackled. “Never underestimate a magician, sonny. Didn’t they teach you about the art of illusion in the Navy? What your people actually buried was a coffin full of coconuts.”

Captain B.S. gasped. “But your body was covered with blood!”

“Tomato sauce.”

“Tomato sauce?”

“They would have known that if they had bothered to lick me.”

“Gross! Lick a dead body?”

“But I wasn’t dead. Licking me should have been standard procedure.”

Smudge pointed to the windsurfer, which was lapping at the shore with its mast and boom dragging the white-and-red sail behind it in the water. “You’ve come to rescue us on that?”

Captain B.S. looked even more puzzled. “Rescue you? Jesus wept, Leading Seaman! Of course I’m not here to rescue you. Why would I rescue a dead man? I erased you from my mind the day I attended your memorial service.”

3. DEAD MAN COOKING

Smudge had drawn strength that his pay packet was building every day he was marooned on this island. He’d have a big nest-egg waiting for him when he was finally rescued. It would be a good time to end his career in the Navy, and use the money to put a deposit down on a house and make a start in a civvy-land kitchen.

His eyes widened when he realised what Captain B.S. had just said. “What do you mean you attended my memorial service, sir? Who ordered that?”

Captain B.S. took his trousers, shirt and a pair of socks out of his Gladstone bag, and began changing. “As your commanding officer, it was my duty to forbid the helicopter from coming back, which made you a dead man waiting to happen.”

Smudge spluttered. “What evidence did you have?”

Captain B.S. sat down on the ground, removed the boots from around his neck, unknotted them, turned them upside down and shook them.

“Can’t be too careful in a country where the wildlife is always trying to kill you,” he explained. “The enlisted men think it’s a great laugh putting redback spiders in my boots.”

“What made you think I was dead?” Smudge repeated.

“Well, it was only a matter of time, Leading Seaman. Who knows the dangerous things the British Army was doing on this island during World War 2? There’s also the matter of the quarantine colony that was here after the war. We don’t even know what type of infection they were dealing with.” Captain B.S. held up a hand. “Give me a hoist, will you?”

Smudge obliged. The captain was heavy and now he was looking up at him.

“All we know is some of the poor blighters died,” Captain B.S. continued. “When I debriefed Lieutenant-Commander Domeney and Lieutenant Rogerson about the trip to this island, they reported they had seen the tombstones.”

The graveyard was near to where the three Navy personnel descended into one of the tunnels that led to the cellar beneath the house. Their aim had been to sneak up on Mad Bill, who was inside the house trading gunfire with a real estate man and someone from a dairy company, who had landed a helicopter with a cow aboard.

But the tunnel collapsed. 

They outran the rockfall but by the time they got up the basement stairs, Mad Bill was dead (Smudge now knew in a pool of tomato sauce) and so were the uninvited visitors.

They buried Mad Bill (or what he now knew was a box of coconuts) as per the old man’s will.

The plan was to fly the other dead men back to the mainland.

But the priority was to get the three live men they found on the island to safety first, and space was limited on the chopper.

Lieutenant-Commander Domeney told Smudge he’d have to wait behind with the two corpses and the cow but they’d return for him as soon as possible.

Smudge didn’t mind. Every minute away from his new commanding officer was a bonus.

He had joined the Navy when he was 17, almost 10 years ago. He was so desperate to get off the family farm before he inherited a lifetime of debt and 15-hour working days, he would have run away to the circus if the Big Top had ever visited his town. But the Navy recruiters came knocking on the farmhouse door first, and that was that.

Everyone had always called him Smithy. But who knew the Navy had predetermined nicknames? It you were a Brown, you got Bomber, White became Chalky, Williams became Bungy. And all Smiths, Smythes or Smithers became Smudge. It could have been worse. He could have been Dolly Gray or Debbie Reynolds.

The high point of his career had been an eight-month deployment on a frigate that went to the Persian Gulf. His main role was as a cook but he had to fill other roles too, including joining armed patrol crews to inspect passing vessels.

When he returned to Australia, he considered taking a change of direction. He was courted by the sub-mariner stream, but their desire for better food was outweighed by his intense claustrophobia. The Navy never revealed just how deep its submarines could go. But that was academic to Smudge. The thought of preparing food in a tiny galley underneath even a bathtub of water was enough to bring him out in a cold sweat.

In the end, he transferred to one of the helicopter squadrons, which had the good sense to eat most of their meals on land.

He did get out of the kitchen from time to time, even going on helicopter missions.

But the time was coming to get out.

It moved closer the day Captain Billycock-Smythe arrived. The uppity moron had claimed he was on exchange from the British Navy, which didn’t make sense because no one had actually left the Australian base. Despite this, some shuffling was done among the hierarchy — which is how Captain B.S. came to head up his squadron.

No wonder the Poms had been happy to exchange him for nothing. His main contribution at the base was setting up the fishing club. He loved getting out among the marlin and swordfish.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get to go out fishing as often as many members of his command would have liked. 

Smudge grabbed the chance to get away from him for a while the day he was asked to fly to the island to help check it out. 

It was meant to be routine. They were looking for an 81-year-old man named William Clarin, who had been elected in absentia as a member of the Australia Senate, which now needed a casting vote to break a deadlock.

How were they to know they’d get tangled up in a gunfight?

How was he to know, too, Captain B.S. would forbid anyone from ever returning to the island to retrieve him?

“Now you’re here, sir, does that mean the ban on visiting this island has been lifted?” Smudge said.

Captain B.S. brushed the creases out of his clothes. “Jesus wept, I hope not. I was banking on this being the last place on earth they’d look for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis, Leading Seaman.” Captain B.S. looked towards the double-storey house. “I’m famished after what was a very stressful trip. I knew if I was just a smidgeon out with my calculations and missed this island, the next landfall would probably be Chile, by which time I’d be very malnourished indeed.” He looked down at Mad Bill. “Is it too early in the day to sample that 80-year-old sherry I’ve heard so much about?”

IN SEARCH OF THE MESS

Captain B.S. didn’t wait for an answer. He started marching towards the house, carrying his Gladstone bag. The brick building had been built by the British Army in World War 2 but it now had a tatty Australian flag fluttering above it on a tall flagpole on the side lawn.

That flag pre-dated Smudge’s arrival on the island, so who knows where Mad Bill had got it from? 

Mad Bill locked eyes with Smudge. “Where d’ya think that Pommy upstart is going?”

“He’s looking for the officers’ mess.” Smudge sighed. “C’mon, we’d better follow him before he takes possession of the whole house.”

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