The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  “Why?”

  It’s Eric’s turn to look confused. He turns back to me, his forehead screwed up. “Why?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  He doesn’t reply for a moment, but the frown stays on his face. “Just because. That’s why. They’ll come back from their little walk, and they’ll be hand in hand, and no-one will know what was said, apart from them, but Lily will stop her ridiculously obvious flirting with you, and James will stop moping about like an angry teenager, and all will be well again, in the golden couple. At least for now.”

  I don’t reply, then he sighs, and – unexpectedly – smiles.

  “Let me tell you something about the lovely Lily and the juicy James. They started dating when they were both fourteen, and they’ve known each other long before that. Plus their families approve of each other.” He gives me a sickly smile. “He gets the Bellafonte seal of approval, in a way that you never will Billy. You never could.”

  “You like her too, don’t you?” I say, feeling my face flush hot. I expect him to look shocked that I’ve worked it out. But instead he looks sad. He closes his eyes for a while, then opens them and shakes his head.

  “No Billy. I don’t.”

  “Yes you do, the way you’re talking about her, it’s obvious.”

  “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

  “What?”

  Eric reaches out a hand and with a shock I realize he means to touch my face, but he’s slow and gentle, and I feel him pull open my eyes. It’s totally weird, but I’m so surprised I don’t do anything.

  “Open them, Billy. Open your eyes. There’s so much that you don’t see.”

  I feel confused, frustrated. I’ve no idea what he’s on about.

  “I don’t understand.” He’s not looking at me now, he’s staring down the beach, where Lily and James are only just visible now, tiny figures in the distance now. Reluctantly he drags his gaze away.

  “Keep your voice down. I don’t want him hearing.” He glances over at where Oscar and Jennifer are still playing bat and ball.

  “Who?”

  “His vicious little sidekick, that’s who.” Eric beams at me, and I figure out he means Oscar, though I still don’t really know what we’re talking about. Even so I’m desperate to know more. There’s something fascinating about these people, all of them.

  “Oscar’s known James for even longer than Lily has. They go right the way back.”

  We’re both watching them now. Still playing tennis. Jennifer’s bikini bottom has got a bit caught on one side of her bum, so there’s a little section of whiter skin exposed. Then she reaches down and smooths it out.

  “To where?”

  “Pre-school I think. They’re closer than brothers.”

  “And you don’t like him?”

  Eric turns away from Jennifer’s backside.

  “Now why would you say that?”

  I’m confused again. I don’t know if I should turn back to him. But I don’t.

  Eric smiles. “Oscar and I get along fine. Just as long as I stay in my place, that is.”

  I realize I haven’t paid Oscar much attention so far, and for the first time I study him. He’s quite pale – he’s taken his shirt off to play – but at the same time he’s muscular, obviously strong. Yet as I’m watching, something else occurs to me. Something more important.

  “Did you say ‘Bellafonte’?”

  “Hmmm? What?”

  “Is that Lily’s family? Is that her surname?”

  Eric turns to me with a curious look.

  “Yes.”

  I start thinking. I don’t know how common that name is, but it doesn’t sound too common. I’ll be able to run a search now. I might not even need Blackhorse. But Eric seems to read my mind.

  “I’ll save you the trouble of Googling.” Eric gives me a cold smile. “The Bellafonte’s are one the East Coast’s biggest industrialist families. Lily’s grandfather built their fortune, making chemicals, but when he died the firm was split into two. Now one half is owned by Lily’s father, the other by her uncle. I guess he thought it would stop them arguing over the money.”

  I listen, not really understanding, and thinking that there’s absolutely no way I’m not going to Google for myself. But then something else occurs to me.

  “So why are you here?” I ask suddenly, and this time it’s him that doesn’t understand, so I explain. “If Lily is with James, and Oscar is with Jennifer. Where do you fit in?”

  Eric takes a long time to answer this, but when he does his voice is very serious. It’s like he’s given this a lot of thought.

  “Lily is astonishing in many ways, but she’s far from perfect.” He says, and when I frown at him – since this isn’t a real answer – he goes on.

  “She’s a collector. Of fascinating things, and fascinating people. That’s why I’m here. I amuse her. And that’s why James, and Oscar tolerate me, because I amuse her. But I’ll only be here for as long as that remains the case, and then I’ll be cast out.” He’s quiet for a moment. And then he continues. “But actually the real question, young Billy,” he gives me that cold smile again. “Is why you’re here?”

  But I don’t get a chance to answer that one, because Jennifer takes that moment to wander back, and lie down again on her towel, with Oscar beside her. For a few moments Eric and I fall into silence, until he starts asking me about my course, as if that’s what we’ve been talking about the whole time. About a half hour later James and Lily come back into view, and just like Eric said they’re holding hands, and when they get back they seem much more at ease with each other. And though Lily is perfectly kind and gracious to me, for the rest of the day, right up until James drops me off outside my house, it’s not quite the same.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bellafonte. Lily Bellafonte. I don’t google her as soon as I get home. I’m actually tired tonight. So instead I just roll her name around in my head while I clean my teeth and then go to bed. As I fall asleep I hear thumps and shouts from the kitchen, and the corridor outside my room. There’s a bit of a party going on in our house tonight.

  Then in the morning I sleep late, and when I do get up the internet isn’t working in the house, so I go off to my classes first, but as usual, they’re pretty basic, so instead of listening and pretending to take notes, I sit on my own and pull out my phone. And even with her surname, it’s not easy to find her. But eventually I do.

  Lillian Bellafonte, 18, daughter of Fonchem CEO Claude Bellafonte.

  That’s the caption beneath a photograph in the New York Times. It was taken at the Black Tie Gala of the Eastern Division Annual Business Awards of the American Chamber of Industrialists, whatever that is. It’s definitely her, smiling a little bit shyly at the camera, and dressed in a white ball gown. She looks amazing. I glance up and around the lecture theater. Without meaning to I catch the eye of the woman I spoke to the other day, Linda something, the mature student. I look away quickly. It’s odd too – Lily I mean – because I can’t find anything on Instagram, or Facebook, or twitter, or any social media of any kind. Everyone has social media these days. Well almost everyone. In fact the only person I can think of who doesn’t have it is me. I dig around a bit more, and I do find another couple of mentions of her, but no photographs, and nothing particularly interesting, so instead I focus on her dad, Claude Bellafonte, and though he’s not exactly live-streaming every day either, it doesn’t take me long to find out who he is on the Fonchem website. And then it hits me, what an idiot I am. Fonchem. I know that name. I look it up on Wikipedia to check, but right away I see I’m right. Here’s what it says:

  Fonchem Inc.

  Type: Private Industry Chemical Manufacturer

  Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts

  Number of locations: 66

  Key people: Claude A. Bellafonte (CEO)

  Products: Chemicals

  Revenue: ~ $1.8 billion (2019)

  Number of employees: 4,300 (2017)


  Website: www.fonchem.com

  Fonchem Inc. or Fonchem (previously Bellafonte Specialty Chemicals) is a publicly owned chemical company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It produces thermoset resins and related technologies and specialty products.

  Founded in 1865, it’s currently one of the larger chemical firms in the United States, although considerably smaller than the three largest firms. Until 2018 Fonchem ranked within the Fortune 1000 in terms of revenue, but has now slipped slightly. Fonchem has frequently been the subject of criticism related to the environment, human rights, finance, and other ethical considerations.

  Fonchem is organized into two divisions: the Epoxy, Phenolic and Coating Resins Division, and the Marine Products Division.

  Fonchem offers resins for a wide range of applications like Abrasives, Adhesives, Chemical Intermediates, Civil Engineering, Coatings, Composites, Crop Protection, Electrical/Electronics, Engineered Wood, Fertilizers and Pesticides, Fibers and Textiles, Foams, Friction Materials, Furniture, Molding Compounds, Oilfield, Oriented Strand Board, Particleboard and Fiberboard, Plywood and Laminated Veneer Lumber and Refractories.

  Corporate structure

  Although Fonchem is shareholder-owned, it is still controlled by the Bellafonte family, notably by Claude Bellafonte, son of Arthur Bellafonte. Fonchem was formed when the larger Bellafonte Specialty Chemicals (BSC) was split into two firms upon Arthur Bellafonte’s death in mid-2007. Roughly 50% of BSC formed Fonchem, while the other 50% became Eastfort Quality Chemicals (EQC), under the control of Arthur Bellafonte’s other son Jacques A. Bellafonte. Both brothers are notoriously private and known to shun publicity.

  See also: Formaldehyde

  Then there’s a link to a part of the page named ‘sites’ and I click it. I don’t need to now, because I definitely remember now. And I think I must be stupid to not have recognized it at once. But maybe I wasn’t too concerned about the name of the company. Frankly they all sound the same to me. But when I scan down the list of sites, there it is:

  Lornea Island: Fonchem maintains a small facility in the north of the island, and is currently applying to expand its footprint to allow increased production.

  Fonchem is the company that’s trying to destroy the seahorse breeding zone.

  I’m knocked sideways by this news. I really am, it’s like the whole lecture theater is spinning. It’s worse because the seats here are set really steep, so I feel I might actually fall down and to the front. I put my phone away, because I don’t want to find out any more now, but I can’t concentrate on what the lecturer is saying. All I can think about is the little bay up in the north of Lornea, where the seahorses live among the sea grasses, and how Lily’s dad wants to destroy it. But I suppose I better explain. I mean I have the campaign, back home, but it’s mostly directed towards local island people, so maybe you won’t have seen the posters. It all started – well I don’t know when it really started exactly, since the chemical company – this Fonchem – has had its compound up there for as long as I can remember. Not that that makes it alright. But anyway, I’d better start from the beginning that I know about.

  A couple of summers ago, Dad and I decided we would sail all the way around Lornea Island, in a small sailing dinghy that dad found abandoned by the side of the road. We sailed during the day, and then camped and caught fish and slept around a fire under the stars at night. It was really cool.

  We set off from Silverlea beach, in late summer, and went down towards the south first, to take advantage of the north winds when we set off. We carried everything we needed inside the boat, and I really got to know the island better, and found habitats I hadn’t known existed. But then, on the fifth or sixth day – I can’t remember which – we got almost to the northern most tip of the island, and that’s where we found the problem. We couldn’t get past the land owned by Fonchem. The issue was they didn’t just own the land where they have their compound, they owned the beach as well, and also the seabed that stretches out from the beach – for four miles out to sea. So they have this string of buoys running out protecting it, with notices everywhere saying that it’s a maritime exclusion area, and anyone going inside it will be arrested.

  You can’t easily do a four-mile detour out to sea and back in a tiny little sailing boat, so we were stuck.

  Only we weren’t really stuck, because my dad isn’t the type of person to give up easily. Or to listen to what signs on a buoy say. So he decided we would just sail straight through the exclusion area. But since it said there were armed security guards, and there was a pier with what looked like a gunboat tied up at it (it probably wasn’t an actual gunboat, but it looked like one of those things from war movies), we decided to wait until it got dark, and slip through then. That meant I had the whole of the afternoon to explore the little bay just south of the compound, and the tiny island that protects it. And that’s when I discovered the seahorse nursery.

  When I say discovered I don’t mean I discovered for science. Lots of people knew it was there, including me, it’s just I didn’t know exactly where. But I’d wanted to find it for ages, not just because seahorses are cool in general – but because of the endemic Lornea Island species I told you about – the Lornea Island sea-dragon. It’s important to understand they’re not actual sea-dragons. You only get those in Australia, technically Lornea Island sea-dragons are just a species of seahorse, but they have very wavy pectoral fins that look a bit like wings, and they swim more on their belly, like they’re flying, so that’s why the fishermen here called them dragons. Anyway, the point is, I figured the little bay tucked in by the Fonchem compound was their perfect habitat, so that afternoon I was really hoping I might spot one.

  So I swam out with my mask, and I floated in the water above the seagrasses. It was a hot afternoon, and the water was warm and the sun felt hot on my back. But I didn’t see anything, not for a long time, just the sandy bottom below me, and a kind of meadow of seagrass, that looked empty. But when my eyes acclimatized a bit better I started to see animals too – little flatfish, lots of mollusks and amphipods, and here and there a shoal of tiny silvery fish – too small for me to identify. But still I didn’t see any seahorses. And then I noticed a piece of weed that didn’t look quite right, and when I swam closer, I noticed it just very slightly dipped below another piece of weed – and there it was, a Lornea Island Sea-Dragon! It was only about three inches long, so it wasn’t the most scary dragon you could imagine, but it did look a bit like a dragon, with its long snout and wavy fins. I watched it for ages, but unfortunately my camera had run out of battery by then, so I didn’t manage to get any photographs or video.

  Anyway. We didn’t make a fire that night, because we didn’t want to be seen. But when it got dark we packed everything up into the dinghy and paddled a little way out to sea without any lights on. When we were maybe a quarter mile off the beach, still on the legal side of the buoys, we checked with binoculars if we could see anyone moving inside the compound or on the beach. It looked quiet, so we started paddling like hell across the exclusion zone. It’s only about a mile across, and we had the tide with us, but paddling a sailing dinghy is pretty slow, and you get tired, so when we were about halfway across we saw lights appear on the beach, and we knew they’d seen us. If there had been any wind, we could have put the sails up at that point (we didn’t use them before because the sails are white, and would have made us easier to see), it didn’t matter now, but then there wasn’t any wind anyway. We paddled faster, but a few minutes later we saw they’d launched the gunboat. It could go about fifty times faster than we could, so there was no doubt it was going to catch us. But Dad had a clever idea. As soon as he saw the boat launch, he switched on his floating flashlight, and threw it as far as he could behind us. It was the only light around – except for the red flashing lights from the buoys – and the gunboat went straight towards it, while we both carried on paddling as fast as we could. By the time they realized what we’d done, and picked us out prop
erly with their spotlight, we were almost at the buoys on the far side of the exclusion zone. We actually got out completely by the time they caught up with us.

  And the security guard wasn’t too bad really. He told us we shouldn’t have done it, and it was dangerous and everything, but he seemed to understand that we couldn’t have gone around by sea. In fact, he said that if we sailed around Lornea again, we should just let him know and he’d escort us through the cordoned-off zone. He was so friendly I even told him about the sea-dragons.

  My first lecture ends, and thoughtfully I gather up my papers – mostly full of doodles – and pack them into my backpack, then I walk out and to the next building along, where I have another class. I see Linda, that mature student, and I try to give her a sort of smile to say hello, but this time she’s talking to someone else, and she doesn’t see me.

  So I sit, on my own again, and keep thinking about what happened next.

  It was announced in the paper, I think that’s where I saw it first, or it might have been on TV, on the island’s own cable channel. Anyway, the point is, the chemical company in the north of Lornea Island, Fonchem, had announced it wanted to expand its manufacturing base, and build a much larger dock for exporting its products directly from the compound. It was spun like it was good news – because there would be more money and jobs for the island – but I knew right away that it wasn’t going to be good news for the sea-dragons. And I wasn’t the only one who was concerned. It developed into a kind of battle between Fonchem and various proper environmental groups. And the Lornea Island Council is going to decide it now. They’re going to give a final answer on whether the expansion is allowed or not. It’s why I’ve been asking Dad to keep putting up the posters.

  Except, I realize with a bit of a guilty feeling, I haven’t asked Dad to put them up for a while. But then I’ve been busy, I’m doing a college course as well, and… And well, I’m also running around with the beautiful daughter of the CEO of Fonchem.