‘And what use –?’ I changed my mind about using the word ‘muscle’. ‘What use is a man on the other side of the world?’ I had to leave it at that, but remember feeling encouraged rather than discouraged because of the frowning, thinking way she looked at me when we parted.

‘Why me?’ she asked as the truck arrived.

I answered truthfully. ‘I don’t know.’

The next time I arrived in O‘ahu I went to the hotel and asked for her. There were only two hours before I would be required on board. It was early morning. The woman I spoke to said that domestics had a break in half an hour and that she would give Ela the message.

I thought Ela was relieved rather than surprised to see me.

‘I want you to know,’ I said, ‘that I’m not married and don’t have any children.’ She took my arm and we went across the road to a breakfast place where we ordered coffee. ‘I could change my home port from Wellington to Honolulu.’ I’d had so much time to moontalk as I walked the boards, it was now all coming out in one go. ‘We’d have to get married,’ I said, ‘for me to be able to change my home port.’ That wasn’t well said but she seemed to take it how it was meant.

‘I’d like to get married one day,’ she said, but looked despondent.

‘To me?’ My asking this reminded me of Chappy when I had put Oriwia’s proposal to him.

Ela didn’t answer. She stirred, looking down at her coffee.

‘And after a while, say six months, I’d try for coastal runs with time off every fortnight.’

Still she said nothing. Her expression remained serious, and I was beginning to feel discouraged.

‘Or, I could take you home with me, you and the boys.’ She shook her head at this suggestion, but there it was. I’d laid it all out. There was no more for me to say. I watched her, drank my coffee.

‘They want me to marry you,’ she said in a low voice that had me leaning forward. My coffee went flying.

‘The family? You asked them?’

‘I asked them nothing. They told me. They’ve been telling me ever since last time.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said nothing.’

The waiter was there with a cloth cleaning up the spill. Ela smiled at me. ‘We’ll take it slow,’ she said. ‘Like taking a long, slow walk up the mountains of Hawai‘i.’ My Ela said things like that.