Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Libby stared at him, mouth dry all at once. She didn’t blink and his words seemed to resonate in her head. I want you to marry me. Not will you marry me? I want you to. There was a difference.

  For a long time they sat in silence. Pierre’s face was redder than usual, as if he was suddenly self-conscious. She looked beyond him then, watching the sea. The cliffs at Dover were clear and topped with green against the horizon. She heard the surf lapping at stone then drawing back with a sound like a suction cup. She saw Pierre’s face, featureless at the blurred edge of her vision.

  ‘Libby.’

  She looked back at him, then at her cigarette burning into nothing in the ashtray. The smoke suddenly irritated her. Bree was always telling her to quit. Bree, that’s what Pierre meant. Bree needed a father, or at least Pierre thought she did. Libby wasn’t sure whether she did or not: the two of them did not actually talk about it very much. Ever since Libby’s mother told Bree how she had been conceived and what had happened afterwards the subject had been somewhat taboo between them. Libby had never quite forgiven her mother for that. It was something between herself and Bree: a subject to be broached when she, Libby, felt the time was right, not to be muscled in on by an overzealous and disappointed grandmother.

  ‘It would work, Libby. The three of us and my two girls.’

  ‘Pierre,’ Libby said gently, ‘you’re not even divorced yet.’

  ‘I will be. It’s only a matter of months. The papers are all in.’

  ‘And you think it’s a good thing to be talking about a second marriage when you’re not even out of the first one?’

  ‘Libby, that’s over. It’s history. I love you now. We could be so good together.’

  Libby held up her hand then: this was too much, too much and too soon. ‘Please, Pierre. Just let me think.’ She stood up. ‘Let’s walk, shall we.’

  Pierre flung a bundle of notes on the table and emptied his glass. Libby was already walking along the cliff path away from the restaurant, the sun on her shoulders weak now but still warm on the skin. No wind came off the sea.

  The drone of the engines broke in on her thoughts and Libby opened her eyes: she saw that Bree was awake, headphones plugged into her ears, gazing out of the window where the clouds formed a thick white carpet under the sky. Libby knew she had been right to turn Pierre down. She would have done it regardless of her mounting debts and the job offer in New Zealand: she had told Bree about his proposal before she finally said no. Bree had been nonplussed, but then that was Bree these days. It was so difficult to know what she was thinking. She internalized so much, kept her own counsel: a real heart-to-heart between mother and daughter was such a rarity it seemed normal for things to be this way. Maybe it was: they had always been close but never demonstratively so. Libby was honest and open about everything, far too open according to her parents who even now tried to convince her that an English boarding school education would be the best thing for Bree. Her father offered to pay. It was as if they wanted to rectify the mistakes they had made with Libby through their granddaughter. Libby thought about that then. She was the youngest of six children and the only one not married and settled in some conventional middle-class role. Perhaps her parents wanted things settled for themselves before they passed on?

  Bree took her headphones off and looked at her mother. ‘Can I get past please? I want to go to the toilet.’

  Libby smiled and moved into the aisle. Bree avoided her eye, one hand on the back of the seat in front of her as she slid out. She stuck her headphones in her ears and joined the queue for the toilet. Libby sat down again with a sigh: she’ll come round, she told herself. Give it a few months and she’ll be just fine.

  She knew Bree blamed her mother’s ambition for the move: but that wasn’t the reason and it wasn’t Pierre either. Bree had no idea just how tight money had been while they were living in France. The job in New Zealand had been nothing short of a godsend.

  Flicking through the New Scientist, Libby had come across an advertisement for a two-year posting. It was not working with whales but it intrigued her because there was an obvious connection with what she had been doing in the English Channel. The University of Otago, together with the Department of Conservation, had established a research programme in Fiordland, in the south-west of New Zealand’s South Island. They believed that the most southerly pod of bottlenose dolphins in the world was resident in Doubtful Sound, but for a number of years fishermen and tour operators had sighted bottlenose in Dusky Sound, which was further south still. The two bodies wanted a scientist to identify whether there actually was a pod as far south as Dusky. They also wanted to begin assessing the level of environmental damage that might be inflicted on dolphins by the provision of marine mammal viewing permits for tour companies. A significant part of the research would be noise-related as the fiords would provide a unique environment for study. As far as Libby was concerned she was the person best qualified to do that research, so she applied for the job. Very quickly she heard that she had been selected for interview at a hotel in London.

  The interview had coincided with a conference given by the World Wide Fund for Nature which she had wanted to attend anyway. The venue was a Docklands hotel, which she thought was a little grand, but WWF were trying to raise their profile and this conference was fundamental to the future of the Southern Ocean blue whale. Research scientists from around the globe were gathering, as well as environmental journalists and students. Libby recognized a number of people, some of whom she had worked with before and some she had come across on the Internet and at various other conferences. She had discovered long ago that the academic world demanded a certain amount of visibility if you wanted to be considered for worthwhile jobs: talent and reputation were not enough on their own.

  She had dressed well. Normally jeans and a sweatshirt sufficed, but that day her face was made up, accentuating the height of her cheekbones and the blackness of her eyes. She wore the only suit she owned, a navy blue two-piece with the skirt above the knee. Her legs were bare and waxed and her feet crammed into a pair of court shoes she had not worn in years. Her black hair was scraped back in a French plait and she knew she looked good. Bree had been adamant that she must look good for the conference. What Bree had not known, however, was that her efforts were for the interview and not the conference, and if those efforts were wasted they would both be on the street.

  Her interviewer was Dr Stephen Watson, and he was there primarily to give a lecture on the numbers and distribution of blue whales in the Southern Ocean. Libby watched the composure and ease with which he delivered his address, using a computer-prompted slide show and bringing some new data to the attention of the assembly. Smallish, with sandy hair and a moustache, his blue eyes behind steel-framed glasses, he interspersed the serious passages of his address with the odd joke here and there. Libby had known of him for some time although they had never actually met, and he was one of the few so-called whale experts she respected.

  He was due to see her after lunch and she wondered how many others in the gathering he would interview. She suspected that there would not be that many because the salary offered was not brilliant and most people wanted far more security than a two-year contract. She wondered why the department had not just plumped for a Ph.D. student and she asked Watson as much when he sat down at her table during the lunch break.

  ‘The interview’s this afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but the conversation is now.’ Libby looked him in the eyes and he smiled.

  ‘We’ve not been formally introduced,’ he said. ‘Steve Watson.’

  ‘Liberty Bass.’ She shook his hand. ‘So why not the student route? It’s normal in these circumstances.’

  Watson nodded. ‘If it was just down to the Department of Conservation, it would be.’ He picked up his fork. ‘The identification — establishing whether or not there is a pod in Dusky Sound — is pretty straightforward, although a similar study lasted three years and not the t
wo they’re planning here.’

  ‘Carsten Schneider in Doubtful Sound,’ Libby said.

  ‘You’ve done your homework.’

  ‘Of course. It’s allegedly the most southerly pod in the world. Their breeding habits must be fairly radical.’

  ‘They are.’ Watson hunched forward in the chair. ‘As I said, the ID bit’s not the problem. DoC wanted a Ph.D. or masters student, but I managed to persuade them that if they really wanted to look at the tourist implications then an acoustics expert was needed.’

  ‘You obviously didn’t tell them how much acoustics experts usually cost.’

  He laughed. ‘You still applied.’

  ‘I did, yes.’ Libby looked evenly at him then. ‘But I doubt you’ll get many people with my qualifications coming forward.’

  ‘So do I.’ He put down his fork. ‘Marine mammal viewing is big business in New Zealand, Liberty. We depend on tourism of all kinds: it’s a massive part of our economy. So far we’ve only conducted a few studies on the effects of tourist activity. You probably know about the sperm whales off Kaikoura.’

  ‘I’ve read about them, yes. What sort of results have you had?’

  ‘We don’t really know yet.’ Watson looked at her. ‘But this dolphin watch you’re involved in intrigued me.’

  Libby fisted her hands beneath her chin. ‘We go out once a month and monitor the changes in activity between Portsmouth and Bilbao. There are over thirteen different species of whale in those waters. Amazing when you consider whaling pretty much started in the Bay of Biscay.’

  Watson sat back then and nodded to the waiter for water. ‘What’s happened with the dolphin pod and the Channel Island ferry?’

  ‘It’s still early days, but I think the impact could be serious. The pod has been gone for almost a year. It could be frequency interruption, we don’t know yet. It could be that they’re all male and looking for mates. We’ve never been able to sex them.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘It’s like everything we study, Steve. It’s ongoing research.’

  Watson nodded. ‘There are big plans for Fiordland. It’s still a wilderness area but more and more people want that wilderness experience. Milford Sound is swamped on a daily basis. More people than ever are going into Doubtful Sound. The next obvious one is Dusky. We need to know what the environmental impact is going to be before all the decisions are made on a purely economic basis.’ He made a face. ‘There’s a lot of pressure from above. Like I said, the country depends on tourism but we need to manage it properly.’

  Libby looked at him again then, resting her chin in her palm. ‘Steve, there’s nobody in the world better qualified to look at cetacean communication than me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So do I get the job?’

  Watson sat back and laughed. ‘Everything they said about you is true.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The global academic establishment.’

  ‘None of it good, I trust.’

  ‘That depends on how you look at it.’ Watson leaned on his elbows. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the job’s been yours ever since I received your application. I just don’t understand why you want it.’

  Bree sat down on the toilet seat at the back of the plane and took paper and pen from her bag. Resting the pad on her lap she began to write.

  Dear Dad,

  It’s been ages since I wrote, I know. Well, a couple of months, but that seems like ages. There was nothing to say for a while, but there is now. Can you believe I’m writing this in the loo on a plane to New Zealand: we’re stopping in Singapore, but we’re going to New Zealand. I can’t believe it, Dad. I was so happy in France. School was working out OK and I made some friends finally. I first thought they liked me because I was English and a bit of a novelty but now I think they really did like me, which was cool. You know what my schools have been like with Mum dragging me all round the world. Often nobody wanted to hang around with me because they thought I wasn’t staying long or they just didn’t like me, I don’t know. Anyway that doesn’t matter now because she’s done it to me again. Does she love me? She never thinks about me. I’m so unhappy I could cry. I have cried. I cried when she told me. I cried at the airport in England when we said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa. Mum didn’t know because I washed my face afterwards. I was so happy in France, Dad, and now she’s done it to me again. I’d only just made friends and now I’ve been made to leave again. No wonder no-one likes me, I’m never there long enough. I just breeze in and breeze out whenever Mum gets a new job. And it’s not even a good job. I heard her talking to Pierre: that’s the guy I told you about, the one she wouldn’t marry. He said the job was rubbish, only two years with nothing at the end of it. At least we had a cool house in France. Mum says we’re staying in a homestay in New Zealand. I don’t even know what a homestay is.

  What am I going to do, Dad? I wish you were here, you’d sort it out. I’m trying to be cool but it’s hard, Dad. How am I going to make new friends again? What if I hate them? What if they hate me? I’ll die if they call me a Pom.

  God I wish you were here now, this is really awful. There’s another thing Mum is going to study dolphins in a place called Dusky Sound. I’ve looked on a map and you can’t get there unless you take a boat or fly or something. There are no roads and we’re supposed to be living in a place called Manapouri, which is miles away. Is Mum going to leave me there on my own or will she dump me on someone while she’s off swimming with dolphins?

  I’m so fed up I could die. What shall I do, Dad? I don’t know what to do.

  Love you always, Bree

  TWO

  JOHN-CODY WOKE UP on the couch in his office and wondered where he was. Bad dreams clung like bats to the inside of his head and he lay there for a few moments just concentrating on his breathing and looking at the map of Fiordland above him. Mahina had made it: she had bought all the largest-scale sections and pieced them together to form one huge canvas, which she then pinned to the ceiling. When people came in to ask about boat tours she encouraged them to lie on the floor and study the area that way.

  John-Cody rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes: outside he could hear the breeze and the patter of rain on the corrugated iron roof. He realized this was the first night in a year he had not slept on the boat. The pain was fierce, worse than ever, and there was so much to be done: a year to the day and Mahina’s wishes must be honoured. He stepped outside the sliding door and stood for a moment on the wooden porch looking out across the little wetland they had planted together: the Lake of the Sorrowing Heart lay quiet save for thin tufts of water scuffed by the wind. The Keplers stood tall and shadowed against the sky running west to the Tasman Sea. Before them, flatter against the horizon, lay the silence of the Cathedral Peaks. John-Cody closed his eyes and saw Fraser’s Beach and the dead eucalyptus tree and Mahina’s favourite thinking stone that was half submerged in water the last time he’d been down there. It had rained a lot this spring and according to the forecasts it would rain some more before it was done. The breeze licked at his hair, long and silver and hanging below his shoulder blades. They had cut his hair when they put him in jail all those years ago and he had let no-one near it since, save Mahina who used to spend hours brushing it for him.

  The pain crushed his chest as if someone had kicked him: for a full year he had woken to this broken emptiness and today it was as bad as it had ever been. He bit his lip, steeled himself and with shaking hands took tobacco and papers from the back pocket of his jeans. He had half-promised her he’d quit, save his lungs and heart, but he had failed. Carefully he rolled a cigarette now and sat down on the porch to smoke it.

  The first tui of the morning called from the tree line across the road, where the dirt track ran to the beach. Mahina had put little bird tables all along the porch, and on the little bridge they had built she’d placed strategic nails for apples which bellbirds licked clean. The giant fuchsia tree outside their bedroom window had been the birds’ favourite
haunt first thing in the morning.

  He got to his feet, looked at his watch and pursed his lips. Twenty minutes till Tom fired up the Z boat and took the diggers over to where they were tunnelling at West Arm. He needed to be on that boat, but first he had to go to the house. Flicking away the stub of his cigarette, he walked up Waiau Street with the lake on his left. His footfall seemed slow, weary. Yesterday he had been on the boat at Deep Cove, dreading today; not sure what he would feel, how he would deal with it and terrified of what would come after. For a year all he could think about was diving the Gut and not coming up again, but he could not do that. He had made a promise and today that promise would be fulfilled: perhaps it was the thought of what was possible afterwards that terrified him.

  One year ago to the very day, the fire was burning low and he dozed in the reclining chair. He slept little in those days, always watchful, always aware of what was going on, as if he was at sea where the slightest movement, sound or smell would prick him into consciousness. If something altered he was awake and attentive, right there by the bed. Yet she asked for nothing save the morphine that had been prescribed and to be able to lie outside even in cold weather. She told him to go skipper the boat and let Alex handle things, but in the last days he cancelled every tour they had and lay by her side on the bed of bracken he’d made between the fuchsia and the mountain beech.

  She would look at the sky and see things he had never seen, point out the faces of the gods, tell him over and over the tale of Rangi and Papa and how their son Tane Mahuta pushed their coupling apart to form the world between them. How the rain was Rangi’s tears for the loss of his love, Papa the earth. Mahina would point out the cloud formations and remind him of the north-west arch, grey and white cloud blown up by a nor’wester so that it looked as though God had taken paint and palette to the sky during the night.