The story was given a further twist when the correspondent of a British television news channel revisited all the statements about Leo’s ability to survive for six weeks on the Cape foreshore, and produced a new set of medical experts who disputed the earlier conclusions. No one, they said, could survive without assistance or supplies for such a length of time, even in the summer. The television report included an interview with Lewis Chadwick, in which the former trainee reporter claimed to have been on the edge of collapse after only a day scouring remote beaches for food and water. Chadwick said that survival would be impossible in such circumstances, and added that he would be suing his former employers for placing him in such jeopardy. His performance convinced Sandy that he had been right to choose an acting career.
The British reporter concluded with considerable fanfare that the entire disappearance had been staged by Mr Kemp in order to draw attention to his crusade about the culling of seals and the overfishing on the Stellwagen Bank. He had been secretly supplied with provisions by ‘friends’ – for legal reasons the programme was careful to exempt Margot from collusion in the conspiracy – and had been conveniently found alive and well when his publicity aims had been achieved.
Sandy put out a statement from the Kemp family denouncing the story as media fabrication and threatening legal action. In any case, the caravan of journalists camped out around the Cape had moved on. Leo Kemp’s inability to give any indication of what had happened to him – or his wilful refusal to do so, no one could work out which – and the family’s firm ‘No comment’ to all questions left them with little else to do but repeat themselves. Gradually, other stories drew them away.
TEN
The doctors had told Margot that Sam was the key with which to unlock Leo’s frozen mind. And so it proved. Two weeks after his return, Sam offered him some more coffee while they were sitting on the deck as usual after breakfast. She stroked the side of his face and, putting her face close to his, whispered: ‘Dad, I want to show you something.’
The painting of Leo and the seals had been placed above the mantelpiece in the sitting room, but he had shown no interest in it and Margot had decided not to point it out to him. He would surely notice it and remark upon it in his own good time. As for the godwit painting, that might raise the awkward subject of the funeral, so Margot had hidden it in a bedroom wardrobe.
Sam had other ideas. She fetched the portrait and set it against the wooden railing of the deck.
‘Look, Dad,’ she said, stepping away to allow him a clear view.
Leo frowned and peered at the painting. If he recognised his image in the half-smiling man standing on a rocky foreshore with a scatter of seals behind him, he did not show it.
‘Look, Dad. That’s you there, and the seals. You remember the seals? You studied them; you talked about them all the time…’
Sam startled her father by jumping across the deck and sinking to a kneeling position at his feet. She took his hands in hers.
‘In fact, Dad, you became a bit of a seal bore. Do you know that? In a nice way, of course. A nice seal bore. You remember, don’t you? The seals? I’ll bet you remember everything, really? You remember taking me to that pizza parlour when the little girl at the next table was sick all over the place? You remember taking me to the aquarium at Coldharbor and telling me about that talking seal? You do remember, Dad, I know you do.’
She was pleading with him now, looking into those sunken, unknowing eyes. He shifted his gaze back to the painting and began to look at it more closely. She laid a hand on his arm, and could almost feel his memory stirring. It was like watching a deep covering of snow slowly sliding off a roof in spring as a thaw weakened the grip of a long hard winter. And she was the sun, breaking through the frozen darkness of his mind.
‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Look at the painting and tell me you remember. I know you do.’
He got up and knelt down in front of the painting, frowning as he looked at his own likeness with that quirky half-smile and then at the finely detailed painting of the seals; even in the background their whiskers could be seen sparkling with water droplets. He stood up and stepped back, staring at the whole composition: a man, some seals and wind-ruffled water.
He made as if to speak, and then shook his head.
But Sam knew he had remembered. She knew it wouldn’t be long.
That afternoon the two of them went for a long walk down Surf Drive Beach to Falmouth’s inner harbour, and then circled back along Main Street past the fire station, Betsey’s Diner and the book store. At the village green they paused to rest on Julian’s bench, where Sam talked of the longing she felt for her lost brother.
They finished up in the Coffee Obsession on the corner of Route 28. Sam handed Leo the menu and watched as he studied it. He looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. Gunbrit Nielson, Jacob Sylvester and Rachael Ginsberg had just come in and were settling down two tables away.
Gunbrit saw them, and rose to her feet, looking slightly shocked at the sight of her old lecturer. She hesitated, but Sam motioned her over.
‘Dad, this is one of your students. You remember…’
‘Gunbrit Nielsen, Mr Kemp. It’s good to see you again. How are you?’
Leo stood up, looked at her, nodded his head and said slowly: ‘It’s good to see you again, Gunbrit. We must talk soon.’ He turned to Sam, smiled, and said, ‘Let’s go home, darling.’
That evening father and daughter sat and talked for hours. It was if a spell had been broken, Sam said later. Leo began by saying how sorry he was to have caused everyone such distress. Margot joined them, quietly taking a seat on the deck, anxious not to break into their conversation.
Leo knew where he had been and how he had survived. He had lost track of time, he said, although otherwise he felt fine and mentally fit. But he would not explain how he had survived, or why had he not simply walked across the dunes to safety, to his home and his family.
This was the question that Sam would return to again and again. Did he not realise what pain they had been through? How could he have done that to them?
The psychiatrists had told Sam and Margot that when Leo finally started talking they would feel angry with him, and that it was right to express that anger – up to a point. Once he understood their pain, they were told, he would begin to go back in his mind and unlock the secrets of where he went, what he did – and why.
Faced with Sam’s questioning and her occasional flashes of irritation at his refusal to clarify the details of what he had been through, Leo responded by putting his arms around her and holding her tightly in long, silent hugs.
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you’ve suffered,’ he said. ‘But I can’t explain it. I didn’t mean this to happen. I didn’t want it to happen. But when it did, it felt the most natural thing on earth. It felt like the right thing to do. Forgive me, but I can’t tell you any more.’
And that was how they left it. Leo refused to talk to anyone else, and he would say no more about his missing weeks.
A week after he had regained his speech and his memory, Leo received a hand-delivered letter from Tallulah Bonner. He was spending the morning, as he did every day, drinking coffee and reading the papers on the deck. He opened the letter, scanned it briefly and handed it to Margot.
‘Bonner. She’d like to see me. Congratulates me on my survival, and all that.’
Margot read the letter and sat down beside him. She put an arm around him, and felt him stiffen slightly.
‘Well, I think you should see her, shouldn’t you? There’s no harm in hearing what she has to say.’
‘She’ll probably offer me my job back.’
‘Really?’ The thought surprised and slightly alarmed Margot. ‘And would you take it?’
‘No. I’ve been dismissed. I’m going to stay dismissed.’
‘Not even for the students?’
‘Not even for them.’
‘They call every day, you know. Gunbrit seems
to be their spokeswoman.’
‘Gunbrit Nielsen. I met her in the café last week. I remember her.’
‘They remember you, too. You know they commissioned a painting for you?’
‘A painting?’
‘Yes, they gave it to me at the service. The service to celebrate your life.’
She watched as he registered the remark. He had accepted the fact that his funeral had taken place, and had signed the letters Margot had written to apologise for the distress the occasion might have caused to those who had attended. But he had never returned to the subject, and the doctors had advised her not to raise it again. Concentrate on his past life, they said. Now that he’s talking, help him build his memory back to the present by reawakening memories of his childhood and his early teaching days.
They told her to treat him like a patient who was slowly emerging from the anaesthetic after a major operation. His faculties were returning gradually after Sam had managed to jolt his memory into life, but his biggest challenge still lay ahead: to make sense of what had happened to him. He had to explain that to himself, and it might take years.
That was all very well, thought Margot, but the time had come to try to get Leo to understand what had happened to him. Sam had shown the way.
She brought the painting out to show him: a watercolour of a godwit on a foreshore, with a flock of other waders in the background.
‘This was from the students?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s done well. The plumage is just right. Who did it?’
‘They got Mrs Gulliver to do it, the same woman who did the other painting.’
He peered at the signature and said, ‘Good for Gloria.’
‘Gloria’? thought Margot. Mrs Gulliver was ‘Gloria’? And then she caught the expression on his face, the remembrance and reflection of sensuous pleasure.
And suddenly she knew: those late nights at the art classes. That’s why he had come back, tired and happy for a change, flecked with paint and smelling of wine. That’s why he had always gone straight to the shower – to wash off her lipstick traces, her smell, the scent of her bed, her sex. That’s why.
All the old anger returned as she looked at him, this damaged husband of hers, half man, half what: seal?, who even before he had thrown himself into the sea – oh, sure, that’s what he did – was betraying her with Gloria fucking Gulliver.
She walked inside without saying a word, fished a cigarette from her handbag and returned to the deck smoking. He hated her smoking anywhere near the house. Tough luck.
Stay calm, she told herself. After all, you can hardly complain, can you? Think about it.
Leo was watching her calmly, seemingly unaware of the turmoil he had caused by the use of Gloria’s first name.
‘So will you see her?’ said Margot, her voice hard and angry.
‘Who?’ Leo had lost track of the conversation, and was staring at the distant outline of Martha’s Vineyard.
‘Tallulah Bonner.’
‘Sure. Why not?’
Margot had refused to allow any photographers near her husband, and had not given out any family pictures. Apart from Sandy’s snapshot, the photographs the press had used of Leo were all issued by the Institute. They showed him at various stages of his career, the most recent having been taken a year ago with staff colleagues outside the aquarium. Sandy’s photograph of Leo’s bearded face with a vacant, haunted stare made a perfect before and after contrast with the images of the neat, well-dressed academic.
When Tallulah Bonner sat down across the dining table from Kemp, she was shocked by the change in him. He must have lost three stone or more, she thought.
‘How do you feel, Leo?’
‘Fine, but I’m having to work a few things out.’
‘Good. I’m here to help if I can, and I want you to know that your colleagues all send their best wishes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘When you’re better, we’d like you back, if you’ll come.’
‘Why, Mrs Bonner?’
‘Tallulah, please, Leo. Why? There’s a long story and a short story. The long story is management waffle about you being a great teacher who’s been through a hell of an experience, and we’d like to get you back doing what you do so well. Oh yes, and the Institute was too zealous about protecting its own image and reputation.’
‘And the short story?’
She looked down at the table and clasped her hands as if to say grace.
‘It was a stupid mistake. I made it, the Board agreed with it, and I’m sorry.’
There was a faint smile on Leo’s face. Margot stood up, went into the kitchen and put on the kettle.
Tallulah raised her head and looked at Leo.
‘Big places like Coldharbor need to be tested, questioned, held to account,’ she said. ‘That’s why we need people like you.’
‘You mean awkward bastards?’
‘If you like, Leo.’ She laughed and he smiled.
He thanked her for the offer, but pointed out that he had become something of a celebrity, at the centre of a big news story. A Coldharbor scientist gets fired from the job he loves, goes missing at sea, is presumed dead, comes back from the grave and gets his old job back. That was quite a story for Coldharbor, wasn’t it?
She knew what he was trying to say. Was this just another brand-burnishing stunt to build the Coldharbor profile? Bring the prodigal son back into the fold and reap the PR rewards?
‘It’s not the story we’re interested in. It’s you.’
‘I’m famous, you know. My story’s made headlines all around the world. Some people think I’m a conman – that seems to be the general view among the media. That would hardly help the Institute, would it? Or would it?’
Tallulah felt a flash of irritation. Kemp’s arrogance had obviously survived his ordeal.
‘I’m sure we would cope. These things die down. And one day you’ll write a book and it will all begin again. We’ll cope with that, too.’
‘I doubt it. About the book, I mean.’
Leo paused. He couldn’t but feel a sneaking liking for Tallulah. There was something of the ante-bellum Southern belle about that voice, the fading good looks, the determined jut of her jaw.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming back, although I thank you for the offer. But I’d like to see my students again. I put them though a lot.’
The Institute announced the next day that Leo Kemp had declined to resume his teaching position in order to spend time recovering with his family. The choice had been his, the statement was careful to make clear. However, the Institute was very pleased to announce that he would give a farewell lecture.
Tallulah Bonner and the Institute management went to great lengths to keep the date and time of the lecture a secret. There were to be no journalists at the event. Tallulah had personally told the students that the occasion must not be turned into the kind of media circus they had witnessed over the past few weeks. The important thing was for Leo to get well. The students dutifully agreed, but inevitably the story leaked out.
The day before the lecture, the Cape Herald carried the story under the headline ‘Will the Mystery Be Solved?’ with the sub-deck, ‘Kemp breaks silence in last lecture to class’.
The night before the lecture, every one of the thirty postgraduate students in Kemp’s class received emails and text messages offering cash incentives for an immediate account of what he said. The amount of cash was not spelt out but the reporters told the students they could meet them at various bars and cafés in Falmouth and Coldharbor.
They all declined.
The main lecture hall of the marine biology department at Coldharbor holds 180 people. There had been an argument about whether Leo should address only his class, or a wider community of his colleagues and other students. In the end, he was left to decide.
‘Sure, let them all come,’ he said to Tallulah Bonner. ‘What have I got to hide?’
She laughed, and then
he laughed, for the first time in a long time.
The tiered seats, which had mostly been empty the last time Leo took the podium, were now full. Margot and Sam sat in the front row, flanked by Tallulah Bonner and other members of the faculty. There was no problem getting the audience’s attention this time. Every eye was on him. He started with a joke, Sandy Rowan’s idea.
‘Great to see you all here. I should get swept away more often.’
There was nervous laughter.
‘Firstly, I want to thank my students for the painting of the godwit. It’s nice to know you listened to something I said in class.’
His students laughed.
‘Of course, I’m embarrassed by it, because it was given under false pretences. But I hope you’ll let me keep it.’
Gunbrit, who was sitting near the front, mouthed the words ‘of course’ at him and gave him a thumbs-up. He gave a small wave of thanks.
‘When I last spoke in this lecture theatre I began by saying that we humans are defined not by what we know, but by what we don’t know. I said that science has no final frontiers, and it never will have. Beyond the known world, which we understand because science can explain it to us, lies another world, a mysterious world, which science cannot explain.
‘Where I have been recently is in that strange place beyond science, beyond our immediate comprehension. I am not going to explain to you, or to anyone, what happened to me there. You will have read many stories and heard many theories. I am not going to comment on any of them. Those weeks have been described as a mystery. They are a mystery to me as well. I know exactly what happened, and what I did, and what I saw, but I cannot rationally explain those things. That does not mean that they did not happen or cannot be explained. They can and will be, as we move into the next age of knowledge.
‘I will just repeat – and forgive me, those of you who have heard this before – in your studies, wherever they may take you, as in your life, take nothing for granted. Be humbled by what you don’t know. Work hard to increase your knowledge. And remember Galileo. He took the sword of science to the obvious, the conventional, the accepted wisdom of his day. It was considered self-evident when he was a young man in sixteenth-century Tuscany that man was at the centre of the universe, and that the sun circled the earth. Galileo challenged that certainty, and in so doing he challenged a belief system that had underpinned human existence for centuries. He used science to overturn the wisdom of the day on astronomy, mathematics and engineering. He redefined man’s place in the universe.
On the Broken Shore Page 21