Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Again the crew laughed and John-Cody stared at the mate. ‘You sail in two hours and I make you a full crew.’

  The mate thinned his gaze, head slightly to one side. ‘I can’t promise you a full share.’

  John-Cody looked back at him. ‘We can talk about that,’ he said.

  ONE

  Twenty-five years later

  THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT POURED more wine and Libby stared at the video screen, reflecting on all that had happened: how quickly things had moved on once she received the offer from the Marine Studies Centre. Bree was asleep alongside her, the headphones from her Walkman dangling around her neck.

  The job Libby had left at the sea life centre in France had been only part time and they had been aware when they employed her just how little they were paying and how much her talents were underutilized. The dolphin watch team were also sorry to see her go, but she could still liaise with them from her new position in New Zealand.

  Libby glanced at Bree. They had spent almost a year in France and Bree had been just about settled: no wonder her silence was so complete when she was told about the new job. Libby regretted having to move her again so soon. The location in Vimereux, near Calais and two minutes from the sea, had been ideal for Bree and one of the few benefits she had seen in moving to France. Come the weekend she and her friends would be at the beach, using their house as a changing room and eatery. Her school was only fifteen minutes’ walk up the hill: it was perfect in so many ways. But what Bree didn’t know was that the rent was exorbitant, and what Libby earned from the sea life centre and the dolphin watch programme combined still wasn’t enough to keep them. She had taken the house because it was so perfect for Bree and she had slipped into the new life beautifully, notwithstanding the language barrier. But things had got difficult, the rent hadn’t been paid for three months and then letters from the landlord started falling through the box. Libby shuddered at the thought: Bree would never know just how close they had come to being homeless. It was why she had had to take the New Zealand job when it was offered.

  Gently she touched Bree’s hair. Bree twitched and moved her head and Libby sat back again, thinking about the dolphin watch group and their concerns over a pod of bottlenose that inhabited a stretch of water between Poole Harbour and Guernsey. A team of volunteers kept a visual check on their movements from the coast with telescopes, particularly after the introduction of a high-speed ferry service. Professor Tom Wilson headed up the programme, and he had contacted Libby when the dolphins suddenly disappeared. Wilson was an expert on cetaceans, the order of mammals that included whales, dolphins and porpoises. The dolphins had vanished after the ferry started running and Wilson was concerned that the noise from the boat had disturbed the acoustics of their territory. Libby specialized in dolphin and whale communication and he wanted her opinion.

  She was not sure about the acoustic damage. She had considered the possibility that the pod were all males and had formed a mating alliance with others in the Channel. If that was so, it might explain their sudden disappearance. But when they did not show up again she began to wonder.

  An old fisherman she knew from Boulogne told her he used to see them regularly, but now all he came across was a lone dolphin. Single dolphins always intrigued Libby. They were by nature social animals and generally part of a pod. Single dolphins were probably pod members who went off by themselves now and again or visited other pods, possibly to mate and keep the gene pools healthy. Sometimes, however, they were just loners, those who had left the normal social structure to find their own way. Why they might do that was open to conjecture: life for the lone dolphin was far more difficult. Hunting for food became a solitary occupation, which meant that the hunter no longer benefited from multiple sonic pulses to locate their prey by echo.

  Libby closed her eyes, aware of the flight attendant removing her dinner tray, and recalled again the moment she told the directors at the sea life centre that she was leaving for New Zealand. Diplomacy had never been her strong point and Pierre had been visibly shocked. Poor Pierre, she felt for him. He was a marine biologist, and it was largely down to him that Libby had got the job in the first place; the centre was exploring the possibility of building a dolphin enclosure and they had asked her to evaluate it for them.

  She had just returned from a year in Punta Norte, Argentina, where she had been studying orca, the killer whale. She needed something permanent but had already been contacted by Tom Wilson with regard to the dolphins in the Channel. She and Wilson had been at Cambridge together but had not seen each other since. Libby had worked for Greenpeace for three years before dragging Bree to Harvard while she studied for her Ph.D. She had written one of the best theses Wilson had ever read on cetacean communication.

  The dolphin watch programme could not pay her what she was worth, but with what she earned between that and the sea life centre she thought she would have just enough to make ends meet. As it turned out she didn’t, but by then they had moved to Vimereux, she had enrolled Bree in yet another school and it was too late.

  Poor Bree, six schools already and she was only twelve: six schools in six countries and three different languages. The trouble was the world of cetacean research was a precarious one and it meant going wherever the work was, which could be in some very far-flung places. Somehow Libby had managed to keep body and soul together without recourse to her parents.

  Pierre had been very distressed when she told him she was leaving. They had worked closely together and initially it was merely a working relationship. He was thirty-eight, in the throes of divorce but had his two daughters living with him, the elder of whom was the same age as Bree. It did Bree good to have some company her own age. The girls got on well. There was no catty behaviour or jealousy and Libby found that she was spending a lot of weekend time with Pierre and his children. Bree liked him and she seemed more composed when he was around. She had never had a male role model in her life, at least not a permanent one, and it showed when Pierre was with them. He was a big, affectionate Frenchman who was always hugging and kissing his daughters. He hugged Bree when they were together, and at first Libby had been unsure, but Bree seemed happy enough to be treated as one of the family.

  Libby had been single for over two years. Her work station at Punta Norte was remote to say the least and she had been tempted to take up her father’s offer of putting Bree into an English boarding school once and for all. But ever since Bree had been born her parents’ disapproval had plagued them.

  Bree was the product of a one-night stand at a Los Angeles party twelve years previously. It had been one of those gatherings when people brought other people whom nobody really knew, a classic Californian beach party with lots of tequila and beer and hashish, skinny dipping in the breakers and sex round the camp fire. Libby had got drunk on tequila and ended up sleeping with a man whose name she didn’t even know. She only vaguely recalled the incident in the morning, and was off to Mexico anyway. Two scientists had chartered a boat to study the grey whales that migrated from the Arctic every year to breed. Greys had the longest range of any ocean-going travellers in the world and Libby was interested in observing their navigational skills at close hand. She was in the research year of her first degree and in demand: she did not even know she was pregnant till she finally went to a doctor when she’d missed her third period. She had missed periods before and she had always meant to go on the pill to keep regular, but had never got round to it.

  None of this had been kept from her parents. Brutal honesty had been her policy ever since she realized her father’s job was to train dolphins to be used in warfare; maybe it was a case of the more she could hurt him the better. When Bree was born, the very last thing Libby wanted was some kind of grandparental indoctrination. Bree was her daughter, unplanned and unlooked for but her flesh and blood, and Libby loved her with a vengeance.

  The hardest place had been Punta Norte, where she had had to educate Bree herself as the nearest school was in a tiny villa
ge thirty miles away. By the time they got to France they’d only had each other for company for ages. Bree was delighted to get some friends of her own age regardless of the fact they were French, and Libby, lonely for some male influence, sort of hooked up with Pierre.

  Pierre had fancied her from the beginning. She could tell from the way he looked at her, the way he smiled, made bad jokes, stood close to her while they were working, the way he always seemed to turn up where she was. She didn’t mind. He was not unattractive, he was fun and outgoing and was always suggesting things to do. They started leaving the three girls at his house with his housekeeper/cleaner to keep an eye on them while they went out. Libby found herself watching movies in French, eating seafood in lots of different restaurants and enjoying the best social life she had experienced in years.

  They became lovers one Saturday night when she had already arranged to stay over with Bree. Up until then Libby had always slept in the spare room, while the three girls insisted on all sharing a room right at the top of the house. That night, however, Libby and Pierre had a lot to drink and ended up in bed together. Libby had been unsure about it in the morning, as shades of the past came back to haunt her. Pierre was great but she was not in love with him and she knew, even then, that if she was not very careful he could get really hurt. She had contemplated cooling it off but it was difficult after they had slept together. Then one night, completely out of the blue, Pierre asked her to marry him.

  They had been eating dinner, overlooking the coast at Cap Gris Nez. Pierre had picked the best table, outside on the veranda with the sun in the west so it was not in their eyes and the hillside green and chalky beneath them. Below was the rock-strewn beach where breakers in green and blue burbled between the stones: no cloud, the end to another perfectly beautiful day. Pierre sat opposite her and dipped crusty bread in juice from the mussels.

  ‘What’re you thinking?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, just that it’s been another gorgeous day. How many is that now, ten in a row? It’s lovely but not normal, Pierre.’

  Pierre sat back, his face reddened by the sun and not yet turning to brown. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and his arms were tanned and covered with blond hairs. Libby watched him watching her and was suddenly self-conscious. He had this habit of roving her face like a traveller, seeking new paths and avenues. It wasn’t intrusive so much as slightly unnerving, as if he thought he saw things that she had no idea were there.

  ‘Pierre, please don’t stare at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ He looked suddenly pained.

  ‘You know what I mean. The way you take over my face. I’ve told you about it before.’

  He laughed and sat back, arms across his chest. He was just beginning to spread, to get that belly which all men vowed they wouldn’t but which most eventually did. Libby could see a little square of flesh exposed by a stretched button at his navel.

  ‘I’m just admiring, Libby. You’re very beautiful.’ He sat forward again, a loose smile on his lips. ‘With your dark eyes and dark hair and your perfect skin…’ He reached over and stroked her forearm with his fingertips. ‘Not a mark, not a blemish, beautiful.’

  Libby pulled her arm away and placed her hands in her lap. ‘Stop it, Pierre. You’re embarrassing me.’

  Again he sat back. ‘English girls — they can never take a compliment.’

  ‘If it bothers you, go out with a French girl.’

  There was a tension in the air and she did not really know why: his words were innocent enough, words spoken when a man is involved with a woman. But she could sense his mood and given what she was already thinking her defences were suddenly up. She looked beyond him to the sea, flecked in bony waves of white now, mottled grey in places. Gulls cried and swooped for scraps dropped by walkers on the beach. She heard the crash of the surf and was reminded of the shingle beaches of Punta Norte where killer whales charged out of the water after the seals. The first time Bree witnessed the act she had screamed.

  ‘Libby.’ Pierre had her hand in his now and was looking earnestly across the table. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Libby squeezed his hand, ‘I’m sorry, I’m too snappy. Just ignore me.’

  He nodded to the waitress and indicated the wine bottle. She brought another and Pierre poured fresh glasses. ‘Do you like working at the centre?’ he asked her. ‘I mean, your skills are hardly used but there is scope, don’t you think?’

  ‘That depends on whether you get any dolphins.’ Libby looked him in the eye then. ‘And it depends on why you want them. I’ve never been keen on trained dolphins, Pierre. The thought of them jumping through hoops doesn’t exactly inspire me.’

  ‘Your father.’ Pierre sat back again, toying with the stem of his glass. Libby had told him about her father’s role with the British and US navies, strapping sticky explosives to dolphins’ backs so they could place them on the hulls of ‘enemy’ vessels.

  ‘Our dolphins won’t jump through any hoops, Libby.’

  She looked at her plate. ‘I know they won’t. I didn’t mean they would. The centre’s a great facility, Pierre, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not sure it’s the place for dolphins, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see. That’s partly why I wanted you with us in the first place. To figure out whether or not there would be any scientific benefit.’ He emptied his glass and poured himself another.

  Libby arched an eyebrow. ‘Shouldn’t you go easy on that? You’re driving, remember.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’ll worry if you crash the car. I’ll worry if my daughter’s an orphan. She only has a mother. I’d like to make sure she still has me at least.’

  ‘Libby.’ Pierre was frowning.

  Libby knew she was doing it again, being argumentative without really knowing why. Over the past couple of weeks Pierre had started to get a little more serious. She had sensed it; there had been small changes in his behaviour and the odd irregular sigh, often when they were in bed together. He seemed to look more longingly at her when she was in the shower or soaking in his bathtub. It unnerved her: she did not know what was coming but she sensed something that disturbed her. Her work at the centre was not very satisfying, her talents were wasted and she knew it was unlikely to be a permanent position. She had no money and she missed whales. The last thing she needed was any more complications.

  Working with dolphins was fine, but she would rather be studying the big baleen whales where communication research was still in its infancy. She had studied northern rights in Canada and southern rights off Tierra del Fuego. She had spent a year analysing hydra-phone data gathered from migrating blues in the St Lawrence Seaway, after the US government allowed her access to their underwater listening network set up to monitor Soviet submarine movements.

  That had been the one and only time she had called on her father for influence, got him to phone up some of his old NATO cronies in America. To be fair, he had come through. She had been allowed a computer link with the hydra-phones and had listened to the largest creatures who ever lived talking to one another at distances of sixty miles. It never ceased to amaze her: what did they say? Was it conversation or was it simply to help them navigate the ocean?

  She considered the elusive pod of dolphins Wilson was concerned about. Nothing had been picked up on the hydra-phones for nine months now. What had happened to them? Had the noise from the ferry interfered with their communication frequencies, driven them from their territory?

  ‘Libby.’ Pierre’s voice snapped her attention back to the table. ‘Where were you? Your mind’s all over the place.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re right, my mind is all over the place. But I’ve always got so many things to think about.’

  ‘Like Bree, you mean,’ he said. ‘You feel guilty about her, don’t you?’

  Libby stared at him, not replying right away. She did feel some guilt about Bree: the fact that she had never been able to tell her w
hat her father’s name was bothered her, but she wasn’t guilt-ridden like a lot of people thought she should be. She had been a teenage single mother, but had never contemplated an abortion and worked ceaselessly to feed, clothe and educate her daughter.

  By the time she knew she was pregnant she was in Mexico, which is where Bree had been born, and the two of them were back on the research vessel within a couple of weeks of the birth. Libby had had no choice, Bree had to be clothed and fed, and the project was her only way of making any money. There had been no time to retrace her steps, find out who was at the party, what the blond-haired guy’s name had been.

  Pierre looked across the table, seeming to guess her thoughts. ‘You can change things, you know.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘What, look up her dad after twelve years, delve back into the guest list of a beach party there was never a guest list to? I’m not proud of it, Pierre, but all I remember is he had blond hair.’

  ‘Like Bree.’

  ‘Yes, like Bree.’ Bree was twelve and gawky, a stick insect still, having grown up but not out, got her first smattering of spots and the tiniest buds of breasts which just about showed through her bikini. She had long blond hair, which she plaited in the same style as her mother, but that was the only resemblance. She was fairer-skinned and had blue eyes and a little turned-up nose. She was just as bright as her mother had been and certainly as pig-headed.

  ‘I didn’t mean change it like that.’ Pierre sipped wine.

  Libby felt in her bag for a pack of Camels. She found them semi-crushed and lit one from the candle burning between them on the table.

  ‘What did you mean then?’

  Pierre let the air escape from his cheeks, hollowing his mouth into a little tunnel as he did sometimes when he was considering what to say. Libby felt her heart suddenly pound so that it echoed in her chest like an alarm bell ringing.

  ‘Libby.’ He took her hands in his and looked her in the eyes again, with that earnest expression she had witnessed more and more of late. ‘I want you to marry me.’