Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Upstairs in his office he ran a grizzled palm over his rifle collection and squinted at some of his deer-head trophies; he looked at his King James Bible and the photograph of Eli, which he always kept side by side. Maybe tomorrow he would ride Barrio.

  Libby phoned the office the following morning and ten minutes later John-Cody arrived in the pick-up truck they had seen parked in the drive. Sierra was in the back and she jumped down as soon as she saw Bree sitting by the roadside waiting. Bree made a tremendous fuss of her and John-Cody lowered the tailgate of the truck then went to help Libby with the luggage. The morning was clear and crisp and bees hovered over the heads of purple flowers; spring in Southland with the sun high above the stillness of the lake. The Cathedrals were climbing silver spires and the only cloud, puffed cumulus, clustered far in the west. Libby thought John-Cody looked drawn and tired as he lifted their bags into the back of the truck: his face was lined, a little red about the eyes as if sleep had evaded him most of the night.

  He parked under the carport and Bree asked him about the phone box. He told her that it used to stand at the corner of Home and View Street and when they sited the new one down by the shop he brought it home for posterity. At the door he laid their cases down and fished the keys from his pocket. Libby noticed his hands were trembling slightly as he fitted the key in the lock.

  The house smelled of Mahina: it hit him as he set foot over the threshold. He should have come here alone first, rather than just phoning the cleaner to make sure everything was ready. The stillness in the room was the same stillness he had experienced a year ago when the morepork called and Mahina joined her ancestors. The wooden walls seemed dark and cold and the whole place had a hollow feel about it. All the furniture was there, together with the pictures, except for those of him and Mahina which he had asked Lynda to put in a sealed cardboard box and leave in his guitar shed. The bookshelves still stood against the far side of the kitchen counter, which split the living room in two. The door to the bathroom beyond the kitchen was open and he could smell bleach and soap. It was empty and yet in the same moment it was as if Mahina still dwelt here.

  Libby moved behind him and took in the contours of the room properly for the first time. It had a wonderful atmosphere, and she knew they could live here: there was a cosy cabin feel that Bree would love, a warmth and a sense of peace. The fireplace was stacked with fresh wood, the mantelpiece covered with shells and trinkets and bits of stone; the pictures that dominated it were of the sea and creatures of the sea. She could smell the essence of the house, the happiness that had lived here.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’ John-Cody looked at Bree. ‘There’s a single bed in this room.’

  He pushed open the door immediately to the right and Bree gazed on a sun-filled room with a wide bed and a red duvet covering it, bookshelves and cupboards and a massive photograph of a Californian otter dominating the bedhead. John-Cody closed his fingers over the tangi-wai stone in his pocket.

  ‘Look, I’ll leave you guys to it,’ he said. ‘If you need to go to Te Anau feel free to take the Ute. She’s a bit ropy but she works. There should be fruit juice and coffee, milk and stuff in the fridge.’ He smiled at Libby. ‘I’ll be down at the office if you need me.’

  He left them then and walked stiffly across the road, tension in his back and shoulders. That had been harder than he’d thought. Logic had told him to let them have his half of the house, as he doubted he would ever set foot inside it again. But standing there in the doorway with memories of that final night flooding back and the scent of her everywhere: suddenly the presence of strangers had been an invasion. Perhaps he should have just put them next door after all.

  No, Mahina would not have liked that. She would have approved of his action: a young girl like Bree needed far more than just a bunk bed against a wall for a bedroom. He walked down to the office. All at once the sky was clouding above the mountains, rainy weather rolling in from the Tasman.

  Alex was on the phone and John-Cody plugged the kettle in for coffee and waved through the window to Jean Grady as she walked up the road. Two fishermen drove by in the direction of Pearl Harbour and he stood on the porch smoking a cigarette and watching the white-headed waves scuff the surface of the lake. Alex had put food out and the birds were gathered on the porch and between the flax and cabbage trees in the self-styled wetlands.

  He thought about the charter Alex had organized for the following week. Eight guests. Could he do it? It had been a long time. Perhaps he could. Alex was right: Mahina would never forgive him if he just quit now. He thought about the mood of the guests after each trip was over, the camaraderie that was engendered after four or five days on a small boat. He thought about how some people changed after they had been up the Camelot River or listened to the sound of silence in Hall’s Arm, with either sun or rain beating down from above. He thought of Commander Peak, where he could put the Korimako within a few feet of a thousand-foot waterfall, which pounded the fiord so hard the spray littered the deck.

  Alex moved next to him. ‘Two people have cancelled for next week.’

  John-Cody was almost relieved. ‘So that’s just six. Hardly worth doing.’

  Alex laughed, folded her arms and looked at him with a glint in her eye. ‘Boss, if you’re not going to run any more tours we might as well pack up and go home. What would you do then? Go back to fishing? Tom drives the Z boats now. You wouldn’t have a partner. We’ve got half a million dollars’ worth of boat in Deep Cove. You might as well sell it to Ned Pole and his backers.’

  ‘No,’ John-Cody snapped at her. ‘No way: not the boat or the wharf. I’m not selling him anything.’ He blew on his coffee. ‘And I’m not going to roll over and lie down over Dusky Sound either.’

  ‘Fine. Then we run the charters or let the Korimako rust.’ Alex flared her nostrils at him. ‘You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself, Boss. You had over twenty wonderful years with the best woman I’ve ever known. She was beautiful, intelligent and passionate. She loved you more than any man deserves to be loved. She’s gone now, but you had the best time with her. Treasure it. Don’t tarnish it now that it’s over.’ She pushed herself upright. ‘Most people don’t get to taste that kind of emotion for a single day, never mind twenty years.’

  John-Cody smarted, colour prickling his cheeks. He watched her back as she went through to the inner office and then heard her begin to tap at the computer keyboard. He followed her and looked at the itinerary: seven days in Dusky Sound and Preservation Inlet. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What do I need from Te Anau?’

  Bree unpacked her clothes, setting them neatly in her drawers with Sierra at her feet. She was enjoying this much more than she’d thought she would and much more than she was telling her mother. The cabin was like something from Little House on the Prairie and Sierra trotted at her heels like a young puppy. The lake, the beach and that white-barked tree were wonderful, and she couldn’t wait to get her stuff unpacked so she could explore the garden. Her mother had the back bedroom, which had two swing doors like a saloon in a western movie. The window was massive and looked out on a pink-barked fuchsia tree that peeled perpetually. John-Cody had told her it did that to keep the moss from killing it.

  Her mother was still unpacking and Bree called through that she had finished and was going outside. It was still warm but the sky was clouding over and it looked as though it was going to rain again. She didn’t mind so much now they were no longer travelling. She made her way round the front of the house, where John-Cody had a little table set between two fixed wooden chairs just out of the rainfall area under the eaves. Next door jutted out a little bit further and the eaves were hung with wind chimes and bird tables. The front garden was a mass of shrubs and plants and all kinds of trees. She made her way under the carport to the back garden. A woodpile covered with pale blue tarpaulin was set on a raised section of grass to the left and Bree noticed the axe sticking up out of the chopping bloc
k. There was no such thing as central heating down here, only the open fire. She wondered what that would be like in the winter.

  John-Cody had told them it didn’t snow much, but it could get bitterly cold. The back garden dropped away from the house, studded with trees and little hedges and flax plants. She made out a pond and a greenhouse and at least two sheds. There was a bench table and chairs like you might see at a picnic area in a park and she trailed her index finger over the wood. Sierra walked alongside her, tongue lolling and dribbling gobs of saliva. Something caught her attention, a rabbit perhaps, and she darted off into a copse of trees which separated the garden from the main road. Bree wandered between tree and shrub and listened to the birdsong above her head, strange calls that she didn’t recognize and some that she did: she had seen thrushes and blackbirds and sparrows here, along with the silvereye and tui. The pigeons were huge and green-breasted and much more attractive than those in England or France.

  Sierra barked. Bree looked round and saw John-Cody coming down the little slope to the pond. ‘What you doing, Breezy? Exploring?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a huge garden and so different everywhere. It must have taken ages to get it this way.’

  ‘Twenty-two years, near as makes no difference.’ He smiled. ‘Sweet as, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s brilliant.’

  ‘Have you seen the hut?’

  Bree shook her head, then followed him between two giant ferns and past the compost heap. He led her beyond another woodpile and the caravan, broken down and battered now, standing against the fence to next door. He pointed to a green hut with sliding glass doors, a concrete porch and a corrugated plastic roof. ‘Have a look.’

  Bree opened the sliding door and saw a room with a bed and a desk and its own bathroom. Pictures of dolphins bedecked the walls and there were little ornaments on the table; two smaller windows dominated the far wall.

  ‘More bed and breakfast room?’ she asked, looking back.

  ‘Yes. But I don’t rent it any more.’ He swept back his hair. ‘You can come and go as you please. Make it your den if you like.’

  ‘Are you sure? Oh wow. Wait till I tell Mum.’

  ‘Tell Mum what?’ Libby appeared between the ferns and stood there in shorts and T-shirt, a woollen cardigan round her shoulders.

  ‘Look, Mum.’ Bree showed her the hut. ‘John-Cody said I could use it as my den. It’s got a shower and toilet and everything.’

  Libby took a closer look and then she glanced at John-Cody, who was sitting on a tree stump rolling a cigarette. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Her eyes told him there was more in that thanks than he realized, but he didn’t know why. He wondered what sort of problems Libby had encountered in coming here. She seemed far too qualified for the work that DoC and the university were offering: normally people who were working for their doctorates did this sort of thing, not those who had them already.

  He licked the paper down on his cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. All at once a thought struck him. ‘When do you need to get Bree into school?’ he asked.

  Bree looked at her mother and her face fell. Clouds again on her horizon when they had been banished by the magic of the garden.

  ‘As soon as I can, I guess,’ Libby said. ‘She’s missed a lot already.’

  ‘Not that much, Mum.’ Bree looked at John-Cody then. ‘We came out during half-term so I haven’t missed that much.’

  ‘Why d’you ask?’ Libby said.

  ‘Well, I was just thinking: the bulk of your research is going to be in Dusky Sound. I’ve got a seven-day trip to Dusky and Preservation Inlet this weekend. We had two guests drop out this morning. Why don’t you and Bree take their places?’ He smiled at Bree. ‘Give you a bit of a holiday before starting a new school.’ He looked back at Libby again. ‘And it would let you see the lie of the land from my boat. Dusky’s a big place, Libby: three hundred and sixty islands.’

  ‘That sounds fantastic, but what about the cost?’ Libby sat down on the wooden-backed chair on the porch. She took her last Camel from a packet and snapped open her lighter.

  ‘It won’t cost you much. Alex has already bought all the food. There’s just a ninety-dollar charge to cross the lake two ways. I use the Southland Tours boats: it’s easier than running a small one of my own.’ He lifted his hands. ‘That’s it, though. You could give me a hand now if you like: come down to Te Anau and pick up the stores with me. I could do with the help and I can show you around at the same time.’

  They drove into Te Anau, the three of them hunched together on the big bench seat of the pick-up or Ute as John-Cody called it. He drove with one hand on the wheel, a Native American bracelet of bead and bone at his wrist. Sierra rode in the back, standing with her head above the cab, barking at the few cars they passed.

  The drive was north, twenty kilometres with farmland on the right and scrub and the Wairau River on their left. They could not see it from the road, but John-Cody promised to take them down on the way back. Libby rode with her arm out the passenger window and Bree in between the two of them. John-Cody could smell Libby’s scent across the breadth of the cab and it occurred to him that no woman had been in here since Mahina. She used to ride pressed as close to him as she could get without interfering with the driving. He smiled at the memory: pain in his breast but suddenly it was fondness rather than mourning. It had been like that this past year: sometimes the pain was so bad all he wanted to do was kill himself and at other times something would prick his consciousness with a fondness that made him laugh out loud.

  They came to the Supply Bay turn and he slowed, thought for a moment then swung left onto the dirt track. Libby frowned at him.

  ‘Supply Bay,’ he told her. ‘It’s where the barge will ship your boat across the lake. I might as well show you where it’s at while we’re passing.’

  What boat? Libby thought. I haven’t got a boat yet. She thought of Nehemiah Pole and his offer of some kind of launch for her research. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. The first thing to do was to get Bree settled and into school.

  Libby had not dared to hope that things would go this well. Since their chat at Singapore airport Bree had been easier, as if she accepted that the move was not actually selfishness on her mother’s part, but a matter of survival. School could be awkward though: less so for Bree than for other children perhaps because she was used to changes, but nonetheless nerve-racking for both of them. Bree had to deal with new classmates, the fact that she was English and that her mother would be in Dusky Sound for long periods at a time. Libby had to find someone suitable to look after her and deal with the sense of loss she always experienced when the two of them were parted. It was another bridge she would cross when she got to it. Notwithstanding her worries about Bree, she was excited about the work, and right now John-Cody’s offer of a boat trip was just what the doctor ordered. Bree had been really up for it and it would give them quality time together before reality set in.

  Libby glanced sideways at John-Cody as they bumped and lurched over the gravelled track that wound down to the lake. He was watching the road and his face looked old yet handsome in a grizzled sort of way. His hair did nothing to enhance the overall image, mind you, and she wondered why it had been cut so badly. He seemed to take care with the rest of him. Apart from the ragged edges, his hair was grey and wavy and thick and his features were tanned like oiled leather, lined in deep furrows about the eyes and mouth. His nose was strong and his chin square and dimpled. He must have felt her glance because he looked at her suddenly, not smiling. She looked away, feeling the burning sensation in her own cheeks, amazed at herself for staring so openly.

  John-Cody worked the wheel through his hands and stopped the truck on a concrete wharf with two flat barges moored against it. The wind had picked up now and the clouds were low and purple, smothering the Hunter Mountains to the south. They could see the village across the lake and John-Cody pointed to the barges.


  ‘When we get you a launch sorted out we’ll load it on my trailer. The electricity company will take it across the lake and we’ll drive over the hill to Deep Cove, then if you like I can give you a tow to Dusky in the Korimako.’

  ‘That would be brilliant, thank you.’

  ‘That other man said he’d be able to rent Mum a boat,’ Bree said.

  ‘What other man?’ John-Cody looked down at her.

  ‘Nehemiah Pole.’

  ‘You met him, did you?’

  Libby nodded. ‘In the restaurant just before you arrived.’

  ‘He’s got some good boats.’ John-Cody was gazing through the windscreen, scattered now with raindrops.

  ‘He told us to ask you about your boat,’ Bree said suddenly.

  ‘Bree.’ Libby clicked her tongue.

  John-Cody looked round. ‘It’s OK. What about my boat?’

  ‘I don’t remember exactly,’ Bree said. ‘Something about reefing.’

  ‘Roller reefing,’ Libby said. ‘The jib or something.’

  John-Cody started the engine. The waves were suddenly fuller in his mind, white against the black of the rocks as they steered west of the Hare’s Ears, and Eli was out on deck. ‘Roller reefing means the sail is self-furling.’

  Libby was watching him, leaning against the window which was closed now against rain that drifted off the lake. She felt awkward all at once. John-Cody’s eyes bunched at the corners as if too much sun was in them.

  ‘Ned’s referring to an accident at sea.’ He put the truck in gear. ‘A jib hank got caught in the forestay. One of my crew went overboard while trying to straighten it out.’ He gunned the truck up the hill. ‘His name was Elijah Pole: Nehemiah’s son.’