by Giles Foden
He was a good man. Apart from when he’d drunk too much, which was only very occasionally, he was sweet and kind, a slight frown sufficing for his anger. Recalling talking about him with Nick back on the beach in Dar, she wondered if that was what had drawn them together. He had, in a way, something similar.
She began to undress, feeling strange, divorced from herself, excited still but a little solemn also, happy, yet oddly forlorn. Nevertheless, it was nice to go to sleep with the noise of the ocean in her ears.
*
In the morning, she met da Souza at breakfast, after which Nick took her down to the beach, to show her his dinghy and a mangrove stream and some places where turtle eggs had been. After that she once again hitched up her skirt over the back of his motorbike.
They drove to somewhere called Jozani Forest, which was shadowy and slightly frightening. Monkeys rattled the trees; the blooms of the flowers, purple and deep blue, oozed with mysterious secretions. On one tree at the edge of the forest, four or five large birds, a little like peacocks, were perched side by side; their long, spangled tails gave the impression of a light curtain or veil where they hung down from the branch, with the sun shining through and indistinct green hills beyond.
For lunch they rode across to another little hotel on the west of the island, run by two gay Germans. It was a lovely place, at last delivering what she had hoped for. Something exalted happened to the acoustics on the beach, which ran at least ten miles either side of the hotel. The reef surf seemed to place its distant roar behind you as well as – out there, where you could see its proud-standing, always-moving line of white – in front.
‘Surround sound,’ said Nick, and suddenly she felt pleased that she was with him rather than with Ray.
She took off her sandals so that she could feel the sand between her toes and ran down to where an outrigger canoe was washing to and fro in the surf, tugging at its coconut-fibre mooring.
‘I wouldn’t want to go to sea in one of these,’ she said, when Nick caught up with her.
‘They’re pretty stable actually. But don’t worry, I’ll take you out in my boat tomorrow. You can spend your last day on my island.’
‘Your island?’
‘Not really,’ he laughed. ‘Just somewhere I go to work. Well, to chill out really. It’s called Lyly. Spelt L-Y, L-Y.’
‘How far is it?’
‘You worried?’
‘It’s not a very big boat.’
‘We could go in the British guy’s yacht, if he’d take us. You more comfortable with that idea?’
‘A yacht? Sure.’
‘We’ll go and ask him tomorrow.’
They walked, mainly in silence, up the beach for a while – to where some women, squatting down, were harvesting seaweed into deep baskets. They watched for a while before turning round and heading back.
After eating lobster salad at the German place, they returned to the Macpherson, by which time it was almost evening. Kicking out the stand, Nick parked the motorbike under a tamarind. The sun was coming down through the big tree’s branches, throwing leopard-skin shadows on the sand round the larger patch cast by the leaning motorbike.
Nick said, ‘Do you want to go for a walk in the gardens? They’ve got all the species. The local plants, I mean.’
‘OK,’ she responded, evenly, and they walked over to the garden under the deep red sun.
Soon they were moving along the paths between the trees and shrubs and flowers. Between philippine violets and wild custard apples and, so the label said, though it was hard to read in the fading light, hop-headed barleria. She felt drowsy as she walked beside him, which was probably, she reasoned idly, all the oxygen from riding on the back of the motorbike. But it could have been the smells of the plants which were making her feel so sleepy and warm – the tropical blue sage, or the cinnamon, or the star jasmine…
Or may it have been, as their hands brushed, that the air was simply thick with possibility, heavy with prepared likelihood that he would turn and, bolder now, kiss her beside the flower of love or the rub-rub berry?
But he didn’t. He kissed her beside the false globe amaranth. All those other names that might have been germane – on the one side the hare’s foot fern, the fire bush, the convolvulus, the purple grenadilla and the java plum; on the other, the flowering banana, the ashok mast tree, the snake plant and the silver quill – all those other names were beside the point. They’d lifted clear of earth, it seemed, for a brief passage were beyond the Macpherson gardens and the deep red sun suffusing them, beyond, even, their own mouths as they met.
This wasn’t supposed to happen, she thought, as he kissed her. How on God’s sweet earth, she sweated, had she let it? How had she been brought into the arms of a man she hardly knew, on an island on the edge of the world? She realised she could hear water in the glade someplace, the sound of a stream in an upland part of the garden, rolling down towards them over twisted roots. They kissed some more. The sun’s rim dipped.
It was almost dark by the time – brows and armpits prickling in the intense heat, lips and earlobes full of bee-stung lovers’ blood – they made their way back to the hotel building. She was rationalising now, thinking that it hadn’t been so sudden since there’d been so much anticipation. The emails were just part of a deeper seam of inchoate, half-willed plans which had been laid down long before. It had begun weeks ago, at the embassy, the moment their eyes had met. Watching over them, back then, the security camera on the chancery wall could not have picked it up – but something had happened, a change had taken place, the needle had swung round in the compass of the heart.
17
They arrived at Leggatt’s in a heavy storm. Once again, Miranda sat behind Nick on the motorbike. But this time it was unpleasant. Grit from the wet dirt road spattered her bare legs. Her clothes were soaked through. As they turned off the main road, the clove farm appeared before them, with its long barns and tin-roofed cottage. It was an eerie place in the bad weather. Once Nick switched off the engine, the sound of what, she was sure, was piano music came distinctly through the noise of the rain. The sky was almost black with cloud as they dismounted.
‘Can you hear music?’ she called, as they splashed towards a small porch housing a glass-paned front door.
‘Strange, I never had him down as a piano player.’
Nick banged on the door. There was no reply. ‘Probably can’t hear us.’
‘This is a bit spooky,’ she said, smiling at him, tendrils of wet hair round her face.
He knocked again, then tried the handle. The door opened and they entered a hallway, droplets of water falling from them onto the wooden floor. The music was louder now, coming from behind the curtain of cowrie shells that separated the hall from the living room. They went through. The cowries made a ticking noise.
Leggatt sat with his back to them, hands fanning to and fro over the keys, nap of dirty blond hair framed by the black wood of the upright. The room, Miranda saw, was hung with rough-carved African masks and other strange items. In one corner, hanging from the ceiling like a gigantic mobile, was something made of twisted fibres and strung on a wooden frame. It was, she thought, a little like an old-fashioned box kite, but without any fabric. On the other side of the room stood a coconut-leaf screen, partially hiding the dining table.
‘Do you think he can hear us?’ she whispered.
‘I certainly can hear you.’
The music stopped suddenly and the old man spun round on his revolving stool. He crossed the parquet floor. Miranda stared at the ancient, rheumy-eyed figure. He was wearing a fawn safari suit. Discoloured, wizened skin and white hairs showed through the opening of the shirt.
‘Hello, Nick,’ he said, smiling. ‘Bach…’ He admired Miranda. ‘This is a nice surprise.’
‘A friend of mine,’ Nick explained. ‘Miranda Powers.’
‘Leggatt. Ralph,’ the old man said, sternly. ‘Raphael, strictly speaking.’
There was an interva
l of a few seconds during which no one spoke, the three of them standing in a circle as if waiting for something to happen.
Anxious to break the impasse, the reason for which was inexplicable, Miranda exclaimed, ‘Wow, you’ve got some great stuff here!’
She pointed at the array of sticks and fibres hanging from the ceiling. ‘What is that?’
‘That, my dear,’ said Leggatt proudly, ‘is a soul trap.’
‘You can catch fish? With that? Wouldn’t they swim through the holes?’
Leggatt gave her a peculiar look, then chuckled. ‘Oh no. The other kind of soul. I picked it up in the Congo. There’s a tribe there, way out in the back country, which believes insects steal the souls of men. It’s like this. A chap has done something bad, polluted himself in some way. He goes to consult the witch doctor, who hangs that thing in a tree and waits for hours, staring till he’s boss-eyed, to see whether an insect flies through it. The idea is that this business will trap the soul as the insect flies through. I had myself done. Then bought the contraption off the féticheur once he had given me a clean bill of spiritual health. So, there you have it… now what can an ageing gentleman like me do for you two?’
Nick smiled gauchely. He seemed, to Miranda, to be a little nervous of Leggatt. ‘I was wondering… if there was any chance you might take us out in the Winston. I thought – I mean if you don’t mind – we might go out to Lyly, maybe have a picnic? I want to teach Miranda how to dive.’
‘In this weather? You must be joking.’
The old man walked back across the room and, sitting at the piano stool, began to play again. It was something in a very different style, almost vaudeville. Nick looked at Miranda and grinned. The two of them went over and stood behind him. The skin wrinkled over his knuckles as his fingers slid across the keys.
Nick raised his voice above the gliding music. ‘I meant tomorrow.’
‘Right-ho!’ shouted the Englishman. ‘Eleven.’
Understanding that they were dismissed, Nick and Miranda left the music-filled room, lifting aside the cowrie curtain. They stood in the hall, looking at the glass-paned door, the outside of which was running with water where the wind pounded rain into the porch. Through the storm-darkened air, they could make out the shape of the bike. On top of it all, overlaid on the streaming black light of the pane and the vague, slightly menacing shape of the Norton, they could see their own reflections too. They stood as if frozen, peering gloomily into the glass, anticipating a second soaking.
‘I hope it isn’t like this tomorrow.’
Miranda shook her head. ‘It won’t be. Rain before seven, fine before eleven.’
‘That’s seven in the morning,’ Nick said, ‘not seven in the evening.’
‘Oh,’ Miranda replied, feeling foolish, realising she’d misunderstood the proverb as long as she’d known it.
18
She sat in the gentle surf, pulling on a fin. In front of her lay the Winston Churchill, at anchor just off Lyly, beyond the reef. Nearer, half up on the beach, was the dinghy in which they had landed. It was surrounded by the lagoon’s horseshoe beach, and was rocking slightly in a pool of blue-green water. The approach had looked like a kind of mirage – especially the white-tipped pinnacle of the lighthouse rising out of the dense green forest. She had almost finished a roll of camera film before setting foot on the island.
Nick had laid out the equipment on deck during the voyage: tank, regulator, fins, mask, something that looked like a life-vest. He had then explained the purpose of each individual item to her. Now was the moment to put the theory into practice. Above her, his thigh close to her face, he was fitting a snorkel to the side strap of her mask. Further away, she could see Leggatt sitting in a canvas chair on the deck of the Churchill. He was smoking his pipe and watching them. Behind him, as if standing to attention, was the young Zanzibari, Sayeed. He was rather shy and silent, but Miranda had drawn him out of himself on the way, answering his halting questions about America. And she had learned about his village, which was called Potoa.
‘Up you get,’ commanded Nick.
Like an explorer offering his domain, he cast a hand over the water, the surface of which was ruffling gently in the breeze. It looked idyllic, she thought, but also slightly sinister, as if some great beast were stirring beneath, waiting for its moment to rise.
She stood, unsteady in the surf, as he tightened the straps. Having finished fitting the life-vest thing, which he called a buoyancy jacket and was like a kind of bladder, he began attaching the breathing apparatus.
‘I feel like a turtle!’ she exclaimed, as he lifted the heavy tank onto her back. ‘Why do I need the snorkel if I’ve got this?’
She waved the air tube.
‘Just safety really. Some people don’t bother, and keep their regulator in their mouth right until they break the surface. But if you’re in trouble, then the snorkel is near when you need it. OK, you ready?’
She nodded, and was about to say something when he handed her the regulator to place in her mouth. It was slightly too big, pressing against her teeth. She drew in a breath. The air tasted metallic. She felt a rising panic and fancied she could feel her heart beating faster. But there also came, in that moment, a sense of wonder as the air roared in her ears. They waded a little further out and she put her face below the surface.
Blinking behind the glass screen, her eyes adjusted to the underwater light. The sand was yellow-grey. Nick joined her in the water, which was pleasantly warm. They swam out a little, to where the ocean bed began to fall away. She was beginning to get out of her depth – felt herself rolling slightly in the current. He showed her how to release air from the convoluted hose of her buoyancy jacket, and suddenly she was sinking. The surface of the water closed over her head. It made her feel uneasy. Nick, as if perceiving this, reached out and took her hand. He motioned her to add more air to the jacket, until she achieved neutral buoyancy.
At first there wasn’t much to see: just the shelving expanse of sand, dotted with black rocks. Still hand in hand, they finned out further at a steady pace, to where the reef began. The cylinder shifted a little on her back, and it was difficult to keep upright. Gradually, however, she began to enjoy it, though it was comforting to have Nick beside her.
Her eyes were now fully adjusted. Up ahead, she could see the crevices of the reef where brightly hued fish were darting in and out. Elsewhere there were clumps of kelp and other strangely fronded weeds. In one place, an area of clear sand, some twenty or thirty sponges were attached to the ocean floor, swaying slowly from side to side. More confident now, and enjoying the power her fins gave her, she kicked vigorously then felt a squeeze from Nick’s hand. She couldn’t tell if it was meant to be restraining or encouraging.
On one side the reef dropped sharply away into sheer blue water. Close up to the wall, which was full of natural archways, she was amazed to see how much life there could be in one place. It was as if the fish were swimming up to be counted. Nick told her the names later, pointing them out on his T-shirt: catfish, sunfish, clownfish, cuttlefish with their flat internal shells – as if they were riding their own surfboards. The most astonishing thing, endearingly small, was a sea horse. She stared at the living little curl: an evanescent ‘S’ drifting slowly through the water, a weirdly vertical shape in that predominantly horizontal world.
Further below, in miniature caves or crawling across the ocean floor, they found lobsters and crabs. Miranda could see that the crustaceans’ cryptic tangle of antenna, tendril, and large limbs fascinated Nick. To her they spoke of millennia gone by, of the ancient secrets of living things. She hovered in the water, maintaining buoyancy with her breathing as Nick had shown her.
She didn’t drift, didn’t change position. But around her, the water changed. Suddenly she was in a swarm of krill, tiny and genital pink. And then they were gone, and she could see the reef again. The depth made the rubber flanges of her mask squeeze her temples.
She saw a shadow p
ass over the seabed and, turning on her side, looked up. It was the dinghy of the Churchill. Leggatt must have sent Sayeed to fetch it, to bring him to shore. Or maybe he was fishing. He’d said he was going to. Miranda, rocking in the amniotic sac of the ocean, started worrying about the hooks.
She realised that Nick was beckoning her. She swam on a little, catching up with him. Below her she could see a splendid kind of sea flower. An anemone or something … It was difficult to say what was vegetable and what was animal.
But not always: later in the dive Nick pointed out a pair of turtles swimming. It was one of the most wonderful sights she’d ever seen, even though they were only small green ones, not the leatherbacks he had mentioned. Their very ungainliness, the way they held their heads up like myopic old people, their crazy-paving shell, the odd movement of their flippers – these things were also the source of their grace. When they came to the surface, Nick told her even these small green turtles could live for up to 150 years.
They emerged from the water to find Leggatt, who had caught a wrasse while they were down below, spreading slices of bread with margarine from a tin of Stork. They sat with him in the shade of some palm trees eating fish-steak sandwiches cooked on an open fire, and drinking bottled beer. Stretched out in the sun, Miranda felt relaxed and happy: the embassy, with all its weight of mighty administrative power, felt an age away.
She heard Leggatt’s low voice. ‘Dolphin.’
Her eye followed his pointing finger. Nick, who had been stoking the fire with a piece of wood, looked up too. About twenty feet out could be seen a dorsal fin topping a thickset, grey-blue shape, part of which was visible in the clear water. It was about seven foot in length and moving through the water at speed.