He flushed a bit more, but stripped off his shirt (nice body, no bulging muscles, but trim enough), and climbed down into the pool, taking care not to splash me (+1 maturity points).
“How did you sleep, Luke?”
“Ok,” he said, with a slight grimace. “Tim talks a lot about things that I know nothing about. Instagram stuff. Taiwanese social media. Bubble tea. Music. What he learnt in biomed this term. I did learn that one subject that really, really bores him is economics.”
Luke was doing an economics major.
“So not a romantic night?”
He smiled. “I don’t really swing that way, and I don’t think he does either. Honestly, he’s a lovely guy, very bright, very enthusiastic about life. It’s just a bit much and a bit off topic for me.”
We kept chatting for a bit, and then were interrupted by Lucy coming across the back lawn, also with a towel. She had put her top back on, but otherwise had obviously just woken up. She smiled when she saw us.
“Nadia’s in the shower and the other two are still asleep, so I thought I’d come and join you. I’m not interrupting, am I? Nice tits, Ciara.”
“No nicer than yours, Lucy,” I said with a smirk, and she laughed, obviously realising that she’d given me an eyeful earlier. Luke looked a bit confused, but kept his mouth shut.
Lucy casually stripped her shirt back off and hopped in with us, much to the delight of an increasingly lucky Luke.
“Ahhhh,” Lucy said. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do this. I don’t feel I can ever be really relaxed when my parents and little brother are around.”
“Your secret is safe,” said Luke solemnly. “Although we should probably think about the security cameras that they have. I don’t think they can see the pool area though.”
“Good point. If we have to do some selective accidental unplugging, we will.”
After a bit, Nadia joined us, fully dressed. She grinned.
“Morning all. Good to see you looking so relaxed.”
“Join us?” asked Luke hopefully.
She laughed. “My tits can’t compare to these two, Luke, and I think we need to keep some sense of mystery anyway.” She turned to me. “Ciara, do you reckon we could head off to the market soon? The shower’s free.”
“I’ll bring the others there for brunch when they’re all up”, said Lucy, and I climbed out, wrapped myself in the towel, and headed upstairs. I didn’t fail to notice the quiet wolf whistle from Lucy behind me as I came out of the pool. I’m sure I was giving them an eyeful, as my thin, wet knickers wouldn’t have been hiding much. Again, Luke wisely decided to stay silent.
Nadia and I walked down to the market, which was in a surprising bustle of activity on a Sunday morning. It was a mixture of bric-a-brac, food stores, and market produce. We spent a blissed-out hour with the market stall holders, who had an amazing cultural heritage mix. One lady told me that she was Filipina, Timorese, Chinese, and Larrakia (the local indigenous group) all in one. “And that’s just on her mother’s side!” cackled the lady next to her. “Her Dad was a Scot!”
We scored a wonderful mixture of green vegetables, herbs and spices, and I got them to identify many of the plants that had puzzled me from the house garden. After a stop to get a few kilograms of stewing beef from the butcher, we met the others at the food stall area, where they had bought some banana pancakes and mango lassis for us all, made of course with local fruit. The heat was still on, but Darwin was feeling better and better.
We wandered back to the house, and Nadia and I got to work on the Beef Rendang. After a couple of happy hours of smashing ingredients, we had an enormous beef curry simmering quietly away on the stove. It would be enough for at least three meals, paired with rice and greens. Beef Rendang is a dry curry with incredibly complex flavours. The slower it cooks, the better, and it keeps very well afterwards for days.
By this stage it was early afternoon, and the house was filling with the divine fragrance of the curry. The others had kept on with the cleaning up and preparing for the next day while we had been cooking, and we all settled down for a bit of a doze.
I woke up after a while to hear the sound of splashing and laughing, and wandered down, in proper bikini bottoms this time and a long-sleeved rashie against the sun. The others were all in the pool. Lucy was in a gorgeous tropical-themed one-piece that fit her figure perfectly, Nadia in a skimpier green bikini, and the guys all in board shorts, with Adam in particular sporting an impressive chest and abs. Adam and Tim had been completely ignorant of what went on with the relaxed dress code this morning, and Luke clearly hadn’t filled them in. More fool them: the early guy catches the early birds.
“Is this life in Darwin, Lucy?” asked Adam. “Markets and mango lassi in the morning, swimming in the afternoon? Doesn’t seem too bad.”
Lucy laughed. “Well, people have to work during the week, of course, and it’s not all fun:- Darwin is a very isolated place. And if you’re sick, apparently the saying is ‘When in pain, catch a plane’ to get somewhere with a decent hospital system and the right specialists. Also… not that I know much about it, because my folks only moved up here recently, but there are massive social and health issues with a lot of the population, which is one-third indigenous. You’ll see a lot of ‘long grassers’ around the streets, who are often people kicked out of bush communities and living rough… a lot of demoralisation, a lot of unresolved issues, heavy drinking and violence. My Mum works in that field and she told me that I needed to ‘humbly understand my privilege and not prescribe quick fixes.'”
“Fair enough”, said Adam, thoughtfully. I was beginning to understand that he was a bit more than the country lunk that he looked like (mind you, at least he looked like a hunky lunk). I knew that as an athletic country boy, Adam was a keen Australian Football player, who are not always renowned for their brains, but he was also studying to be an environmental scientist, so he was probably used to the annoyance of being typecast.
After a while, Nadia got out and recruited Tim and Luke for the rest of the dinner preparations, while the other three of us chatted. Lucy was keen for Adam and me to be her back-up drivers for the Landcruiser for the next few days, since we both had a fair bit of driving experience in our farming backgrounds. We talked through the logistics of the upcoming trip, the road hazards, the high speed limit (130 km/h or 80 mph in some sections, but it used to be an open limit and some people still drove like that). We got out and checked over the car together: Landcruisers are as tough as buggery, but they still need to be looked after. Everything was all good.
Pretty soon, Tim was sent downstairs to bring us up for dinner. We gathered around a big wooden table on the back veranda, which looked out over the pool and garden. The table had been set with hibiscus flowers, ceramic dishes, and big bowls of rice, greens, and the curry in middle, with extra yoghurt on the side and a green chilli sambal in case we weren’t getting enough heat from the curry.