Fife

2007

Fife emerged from the pounding waves and plodded up the steep slope of pale gold sand until she reached her towel and kit bag. There she flopped, dripping salty water onto her spreadeagled paperback novel. No matter, it was so damn hot the book would be dry in moments. The beach was busy – not as crowded as she’d been told it would be on Christmas Day, but busy enough for Fife to be glad she had her little pop up beach tent to retreat into. 

The first time Fife had ventured onto an Australian beach she’d only managed to stay put for half an hour; such was the intensity of the sun. But she’d noted the other folk with their nifty little tents and had immediately set off to find a camping store and buy one. Hers was yellow and blue with roll up windows side and back and sand pockets around the edge. It collapsed umbrella style and slotted into a sheath of blue nylon complete with shoulder strap. It was all so easy and light. Fife loved it.

Fife. A nickname of course. Her real name was Fiona MacDuff and Fiona she had been for the whole of her idyllic early childhood, living as she had in the wee town of Leven on the east coast of Scotland, and being able to run down to the beach of Largo Bay. However as soon as she hit double figures and was sent away to a posh girls’ school in Edinburgh, she’d been nicknamed Fife in mock-honour of her blood lines. Her branch of the MacDuff’s, you see, were closely related to the MacDuff Mormaers (Earls) of Fife and therefore also connected to the historically infamous Lady Gruoch – who became Lady Macbeth, that formidable woman immortalised by Shakespeare. It was quite something, Fife had to admit, to be directly linked to lives and times that could be traced as far back as the eleventh century.

She had, at any rate, the thick curls of dark red hair and the pale-to-the-point-of-translucence skin that seemed to go with being a MacDuff. Scot’s folk, she reflected as she tucked herself into the shade of her wee tent and reached for her book, were not really designed to bask in this fierce Antipodean sun.

A few chapters later Fife yawned and uncurled and stretched her limbs in all directions and then popped her head out of her lair for a wee keek at the other inhabitants of the beach. An hour had flitted by and now it was mid-morning and sure enough, the visible length of golden sand had filled up with human flesh all the way to the distant cafe. Fife re-adjusted her skimpy pink bikini, tied her hair up with a scrunchy, applied a fresh coating of factor 30 to her entire body and hot-footed it down into the ocean. Waaaa……cool!

Once she’d ducked and dived a few times and cooled her blood, Fife chose a shelf of sand where she could still feel the bottom with her feet and could swish and waft on the ins and outs of the waves. Looking up toward the shore she watched with idle curiosity as another two vehicles arrived into the car park. There were still plenty of spaces left, but the big white Landrover was driven over the kerb and up onto the grass to a shady spot under a gum tree. The little black mini scooted into a corner space right by an as yet vacant picnic table on the grassy edge of the beach. A lot of people spilled out of both vehicles and the contents of each immediately converged, talking and laughing. Aha, they knew each other.

Fife’s curiosity grew beyond the idle. There were teenagers among the throng – a lithe, smiling girl of about her own age and a couple of OK looking guys, although one had weirdly red hair. Actually….Fife scanned the group….there were five boys, the two cool dudes and three younger kids, all with various shades of red hair. They reminded Fife of those gonks* she and her pals used to collect as kids: little plastic gnome things with spiky hair in neon colours. These guys had gonk hair!

A Nordic blonde woman was gently shooing the kids, loaded up with towels, toward the beach. Two slightly paunchy blokes were unloading an inordinate amount of food, booze and cooking gear onto the picnic bench, with a good deal of laughter and joshing. True blokes: they were clearly looking forward to their role as chief cooks and bottle openers (that was one of Fife’s Dad’s recurrent jokes, Gawd he thought he was so droll every time he got the opportunity to come out with it).

Then a voice rose above the rest and she could have sworn….yes definitely Scottish. It was coming from the driver of the Landrover, an angular, dark-haired woman who seemed to be wrestling a large hairy dog out of the back door. The Nordic blonde called something back to her – in American. Ooh, interesting. Fife took a closer look at them all. They were in a really odd array of clothing and all seemed to be comparing outfits, which, to Fife’s eye, veered from 1920’s Flapper through 50’s Bohemian and 70’s ageing hippy right up to 21st century New York Hobo. How intriguing.

Fife briefly considered going over to introduce herself to these fellow ginger nuts (‘nuts’ quite possibly being the operative word, from the looks of them), but was bettered by her schoolgirl shyness and a sudden embarrassment about her scantily clad figure, so instead she ducked under water then allowed the next wave to whoosh her up the shore whence she could lope quickly into her den.

This was definitely the oddest Christmas day Fife had had in her eighteen years. For starters she’d never done Christmas in a hot climate. That was weird. And she’d never been away from her family. And she’d never been alone. Well, she hadn’t had to be alone today. The folk she was working for had asked her to share Christmas with them. But it didn’t feel right to intrude. They were a lovely couple with a new baby and all the in-laws were coming around for the occasion. Fife just felt a bit sore thumb-ish in their midst. So she’d muttered something about wanting the novelty of Christmas on the beach and they’d graciously lent her their Ute and packed her a picnic.

Tomorrow she’d be back at work exercising their string of polo ponies, Getting all twenty of them fit for the imminent polo season was hard graft, so a day off to flop around on the beach was just pure bliss, whatever the occasion. 

Fife had come to Australia for her gap year, which she was now half way through. The day she’d arrived in Melbourne – the fourth of July, and wow did it feel like Independence, to be away on her own after a lifetime of total immersion in all things Clan MacDuff – she’d immediately found work on a sheep station. From there she had been handed on, so to speak, from sheep station to cattle station to a Sydney racing stables, a mobile vet unit in Katherine, and to a bunch of cattle drovers in the Kimberley’s (hooee, they were a rough bunch). 

Being able to ride horses had turned out to be her passport to any job in the Outback. Thus had she made her way all around this vast country to this, her latest job. Once the polo season ended in April, she was going on a 28 day expedition across the Simpson Desert – with a caravan of camels. That was the result of meeting a cameleer in a pub in Darwin and it was a prospect she was relishing.

Come July she had a flight booked from Melbourne to Auckland where she was due to visit relatives down on South Island for a few weeks before making the long haul back to Scotland. By next Christmas, 2009, Fife pictured herself at home having survived her first term at uni. It’d be a great MacDuff rammy and she’d have so much to tell all her cousins, who were bound to come over for the day. 

Fife lay back in her tent in the heat of the day, and allowed herself to drift off to sleep with images of her family back home. Her wee brothers all tucked up in their beds, hot water bottles to cuddle and Father Christmas to dream of. Her Mum and Dad, most probably zonked and snoring by now, having crept around the creaky old house giggling like lunatics whilst delivering bulging stockings to the three boy’s bed-ends, and then they’d have put out carrots and whiskey for Santa and the Reindeers: no doubt having sampled the whiskey quite a lot first. Och. She missed being home.

©Julia Welstead