by Jeff Gulvin
Back in the wheelhouse she made coffee and put music on and studied the gauges some more. The radar and GPS were both switched off but she was determined to watch John-Cody if he entered any waypoints when they cleared the Hare’s Ears.
He didn’t. They had the daylight with them: the radar showed the massed cliffs of the west coast as green blobs on the screen and he knew this part of the world like the back of his hand. Libby stood against the starboard door with him across the bridge as the Korimako wallowed from side to side, bows punching into a wind that howled from the south-west.
‘Have you ever seen dolphins south of Dusky?’ Libby asked him.
He nodded.
‘Where?’
‘About twenty ks north of Port Ross.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘The Auckland Islands.’
‘What species?’
‘Bottlenose. I’ve seen them a few times in roughly the same place, north of the Sub-Antarctic fishery management area.’
‘How many?’
‘Fifty, sixty maybe.’
‘How many times have you seen them?’
‘Every time I go down.’
‘That’s a long way south.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘What about in Port Ross itself?’
‘Never.’
‘So you don’t think they could be resident down there?’
‘Do you?’
Libby shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The pod in Doubtful are way south of where bottlenose should be. They generally prefer tropical shallow water.’
John-Cody nodded. ‘Don’t you just love the way nature thumbs its nose at our ideas of what is and what’s not what it should be? Mahina used to love that.’ He caught himself thinking about her again, the times they had been on this boat together.
Libby sensed the sudden melancholy. ‘Talk about her if it helps,’ she told him. ‘I don’t mind.’
John-Cody sat down at the table then and studied the inside of his coffee cup.
He told Libby what had happened, how the cancer was everywhere in no time, tunnelling inside her body. He told her of his promise, how she wanted her ashes placed in the fuchsia tree for a year; then he sat for a moment with his hands clasped together. Libby watched him, one arm hugged to her waist.
‘I’ve never heard bellbirds in that fuchsia tree,’ she said.
He looked up at her. ‘Neither have I. Not since she died.’
Both of them were quiet for a moment then Libby said: ‘Do you believe in an afterlife?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Mahina did. She told me she was going to taste the breath of eternity.’ He touched his hair, rubbing the frayed ends between his fingers. ‘She used to spend hours brushing my hair. It was really long then.’ And he saw her again in his mind’s eye, naked by the fire after making love for hours: him cross-legged, the glow from the flames red and bronze and gold on his skin. He could feel the warmth of Mahina as she knelt behind him and took the brush to his hair. He closed his eyes and felt the lump lodge in his throat. He stood up suddenly. ‘Anyway she’s gone now.’ He looked down at Libby. ‘Have you ever been in love, Lib? I mean really truly in love: so much so you can’t get through the day without speaking to that person at least three or four times, telling them how much you love them, how they dominate your every waking thought. Have you ever had anyone feel like that about you?’
Libby shook her head. ‘No. I’m sad to say I haven’t.’
‘It’s all consuming. It takes you over completely. I met Mahina by my deer trap on Yuvali Beach when I was twenty-four years old. She came to my crib that night and we talked till dawn. I never spent a night away from her after that unless I was at sea. Then I called her on the ship-to-shore two or three times a day and I didn’t care who was listening.’ Again he touched his hair. ‘I cut this off when I scattered her ashes.’
He went out on deck and she watched him work his way astern, where he unzipped the flap on the glasshouse and smoked a cigarette. Libby stayed by the wheel, watching the dials, and thought about all that he had told her. She realized then, perhaps for the first time, the full extent of his loss.
They made Dusky Sound early that evening: the daylight was bright till almost nine o’clock and John-Cody guided the Korimako in at Breaksea and down the Acheron Passage. Only a couple of hours’ steaming and they would be in the Supper Cove estuary where Libby could unload her gear. She had masses of it, including a diesel-driven generator to run her hydra-phone lines and computers. She’d asked John-Cody what were the chances of somebody stealing or vandalizing the stuff when she was back in Manapouri. She could bring her laptop out with her, but not much else on a floatplane. He doubted anything would happen and told her that a couple of fishermen friends of his lived on an old barge that was permanently moored off Cooper Island; he’d ask them to keep an eye on things for her.
‘When you dive, make sure you put a flag up on your boat,’ he told her, and indicated the blue flag he had furled on the starboard sheet. ‘Anything blue will do. Run it up your aerial mast where it can be seen. No boat will pass within two hundred metres of you at more than five knots if you have the dive flag up. The other thing you must do is put a call out to any other boat you can raise and tell them what you’re doing. Give them the time and how long you’ll be down. They can call you up at a fixed time later and if you don’t answer they can raise the alarm.’
‘Not that it’ll do me any good if I’m stuck underwater.’
He made a face. ‘It’s a precaution, Libby. The sounds can be weird places to dive, especially on your own. Spooky even, sometimes.’
‘I can do spooky. What about sharks?’
He shrugged. ‘We get mako and white pointer out here. Keep away from the seals.’ He smiled then. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve dived here for twenty years and the only shark I ever saw was swimming away from me. You won’t have any bother.’
‘Anyway,’ Libby said, ‘I won’t be diving for a while. I’ve not clapped eyes on a single dolphin so far.’
‘You’ll see them all right.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘They live here.’ He grinned wickedly at her. ‘We just need a scientist to tell us that.’
They dropped anchor in Supper Cove, Libby watching the chain run out while John-Cody eased the boat astern. The Department of Conservation hut was off to port, still visible in the gathering gloom. Libby stood on deck, gazed across oil-coloured water and was suddenly filled with trepidation. The estuary was flat and silted, rimu and kahikatea on the shoreline, beech trees crowding the banked earth higher up. Already she could hear weka shrieking.
The Hilda Burn ran into the cove near the hut and John-Cody told Libby that was where the DoC workers had rigged up the pump so she would have plenty of fresh water. The Seaforth River fed the estuary from the mountains and if she had to she could follow it and walk to West Arm. There was another hut en route and there was always someone at the power station if she hit any kind of trouble. Libby looked at him and nodded. ‘You’re not going back tonight, though, are you?’
He shook his head. ‘No, we’re moored for the night now. I’ll help you set up your gear and check your boat in the morning, but then I have to leave. I’ve got to meet the next party of guests in Deep Cove.’
‘So you’re not going back to Manapouri?’
‘Not till the weekend, I’m not.’
‘Will you do me a favour when you get back?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will you keep an eye on Bree for me? This is going to be really hard on her and she’s had to put up with so much already.’
‘Love to.’ He smiled then and his eyes were grey and gentle. ‘And don’t worry, she’ll be just fine. If she really misses you badly I’ll fly her in on a floatplane.’
Libby cooked dinner and John-Cody brought an acoustic guitar from his cabin and picked at the strings. There was still a bottle of white wine in the fridge locker and Libby shifted the l
id and rummaged among the milk and butter tubs to get it. She poured them each a glass and sipped hers while she listened to him playing.
‘I don’t recognize those songs,’ she said when he laid aside the guitar.
‘They’re my own.’
‘You wrote those? You’re good.’
He made a face. ‘Not as good as I could have been, or should have been for that matter. I was playing the clubs on Bourbon Street when I was fifteen. Sometimes I used to skip school so I could busk in Jackson Square.’
‘New Orleans.’
He nodded.
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘I used to spend most of my time in the French Quarter, where the musicians hang out. That was before I got my draft notice.’
She frowned.
‘Vietnam, Libby: I’m that age, forty-eight almost. My buddies and me got our papers all at the same time.’ His eyes dimmed then and for a moment he was back on Bourbon Street.
The Stiff Cody Band had just finished their final set at Big Daddy’s bar and was gathered upstairs drinking beer.
John-Cody sat in the strange silence with percussion still ringing in his ears and stared at the piece of official paper they had all received that morning. It called him to take a physical examination so he could go and fight in South East Asia.
The French Quarter was muted, even for one o’clock in the morning. A major storm had blown in from the gulf and the mud-coloured waters of the Mississippi crashed against the underside of the west shore bridge. Decatur Street was empty, as were Chartres and Royal all the way up to Bourbon. The strippers downstairs had earned hardly any money and the band had finished early.
John-Cody read the letter for the tenth time, laid it down and shook a Lucky Strike from the crumpled pack in his pocket. His Fender lay across his knees and he looked at the polished frets and bit his lip.
‘I don’t even know where Vietnam is.’ Dewey, the drummer, stared through the half-darkness at him. John-Cody was listening to the flapping of a shutter across the street as the wind howled in the narrow spaces between the buildings.
‘You got a map?’
Dewey shook his head. ‘What if I get killed?’
‘You won’t get killed.’ Jimmy Tibbins sipped froth off a can of beer. ‘The army’ll train you, stupid.’
‘So what?’ Dewey gawped at him. ‘Marines still get killed. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the body bags on TV.’
‘Wars kill people, that’s what they do.’ John-Cody looked beyond his friends to where the drape lifted in the draught from the window. ‘My dad told me that’s how it was in Korea and how it was in World War II and all the other wars there’s ever been.
He said wars are good for nothing except killing lots of people. Thinning the population, he called it. Good for that and no more.’
‘We’ve only got to last one year,’ Tibbins said. ‘I could do that.’
‘Could you?’ John-Cody drew on his cigarette. ‘Maybe, maybe not: maybe the first time you’re dropped into the jungle some VC pops up and puts a bullet in your head.’
He stopped talking and Libby looked at him, from where she leaned on the surface in the galley. The wine bottle was still half full and she poured him some more and he picked up the guitar once again.
‘What was it like out there?’
John-Cody concentrated on his finger picking. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t go.’
They transferred all her equipment to the hut first thing in the morning then John-Cody loosed the Wave Dancer from its stern line and Libby watched him from the wheel. The anchor was up on the Korimako and she backed the launch away, rocking in the wake as he hit the revs and the ketch hove to starboard. He came out of the wheelhouse and waved as the boat steamed full ahead for the channel. Libby waved back, aware of a sense of loneliness creeping up on her, and then his voice came over the speaker on the radio.
‘Wave Dancer, this is the Korimako, do you copy, Lib?’
She picked up the handset. ‘Copy that loud and clear, John-Cody. Over.’
‘OK. You’re all set. Keep in regular contact with any boats in the sound. Let them know who and where you are.’
‘Will do. I’ll call the office when Bree gets home from school.’
‘OK. Avoid five thirty: that’s weather forecast time. And after seven it’s fisherman’s radio.’
‘Before five thirty then, or between six and seven.’
‘OK. Good luck, Libby. Yell out if you need anything. I’ll speak to the floatplane pilot, make sure he’s set to come and get you next week. Over and out.’
The radio went dead and Libby twisted the tuning button so she could listen to the static for a moment, then pressed the scanner and left it. The silence lifted around her, sitting there alone in the boat as the Korimako’s engines faded away, and she felt very small against the primeval bush that smothered the height of the mountains.
Gradually the wash died away and the launch sat steady in the estuary. Libby took a cigarette from her pocket, suddenly in need of something to calm the jangling in her nerves. Around her the bush was hazy with low cloud; it hung in wisps of damp mist curled as if from a fire above the soaking vegetation. She thought of Bree, left to her own devices in a new school, and her heart went out to her. She thought of Alex who had agreed to watch her and she hoped they would be all right, the two of them. She realized then that this was the first time she had ever taken a job that separated her from her daughter.
Work, Liberty, she told herself. We need the money, remember. That’s what you’re here for. She revved the engine and spun the wheel and headed for the shore and the department’s hut.
Inside she gathered her cameras and her portable hydra-phone with the long extension cable and loaded them into the boat. Then she changed into a drysuit and hefted a tank of compressed air down to the shore. She had obtained a mini compressor from the dive shop in Invercargill and, using the generator for power, she could fill her bottles at will. She had plenty of fuel and she placed fins, snorkel, mask and harness in the boat. She ate a handful of biscuits and brewed a thermos of coffee, then she steered the Wave Dancer out into the channel.
She chugged along at a few knots, gazing at mountains that climbed in green and brown with a hint of scarlet now and again. John-Cody had told her the land was shallower here, the fiords not so sharp or high as further north. But the cloud drifted low and cast the hills in shadow; the water was black and she had a tremendous sense of her aloneness, the insignificance of her existence in this vast wilderness that had evolved into the rocks and trees and falling vegetation she saw now. She was suddenly struck by a sense of awe and it occurred to her that she was seeing the place through John-Cody’s eyes.
Cruising west into the channel she watched the water for signs of dolphins blowing, but saw nothing. An hour passed; another, and then finally she heard a noise that thrilled her. She closed her eyes to listen. Powf, powf, powf — harshly expelled air, small explosions of sound one after the other, then two together, no symmetry to any of it. She opened her eyes and saw half a dozen fountains of condensation off to her right. The dolphins of Dusky Sound were making their way towards her.
Bree sat at her desk and felt the damp paper pellet hit her in the back of the neck. She stiffened but did not flinch, did not look round. Jessica sat behind her with Sally Tait, shirts open at the neck, green skirts hoisted above naked thighs. Bree kept her head bent to her textbook and concentrated. It had started the previous lesson, when Jessica had made sure that she and Sally sat directly behind her.
Yesterday had been all right. Bree had got through the day without thinking about her mother too much, but when she got off the bus she had gone straight to the office and called the Korimako on the ship-to-shore. She had walked Sierra on Fraser’s Beach and sat on the big white stone, trying to skim pebbles. Before they went home, Alex had taken Bree to her house to collect some night things and Bree had stood in front of the huge pane of glass which framed the lak
e and Cathedral Peaks like a picture. Later, Alex had made pasta and told her all about working with John-Cody and Mahina before Mahina died, and the battles they had had trying to maintain the wilderness in Fiordland.
This morning Bree got the bus and Hunter smiled at her and she sat down two seats in front of him and everything had been fine. That was until maths.
‘Hey, Pom. Hey, Pommie.’ It was no more than a whisper, but Bree heard Jessica’s voice from behind her.
‘She only answers to Cheesy.’ Sally this time, and then the two of them giggling.
Bree shuddered involuntarily. The tutor looked up from his desk and scanned the room through tortoiseshell glasses. The students were supposed to be silent, concentrating on writing the essay. Bree had her books arrayed in front of her and was checking the notes she had made for homework last night.
‘Hey, Cheesy, what flavour are you?’
The tutor looked up again. ‘Whoever is whispering can kindly refrain,’ he said. ‘These are supposed to be examination conditions.’
Moments later Bree felt another damp pellet, this time on her shoulder, and she shifted in her seat. Next to her Biscuit was buried in her book, tongue poking between thin lips as she concentrated.
Bree wanted to challenge Jessica, but she couldn’t. She looked out of the window and then across the classroom and straight into Hunter’s eyes. It was as if he’d looked up deliberately to seek her out and now he smiled and as he did she felt a sense of warmth in her veins. A third pellet hit her and this time she did not move.