Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Pole looked him in the eye. ‘I’ve been instructed to offer you $120,000 Australian for the Korimako wharf.’

  ‘That’s generous, Ned. DoC must’ve turned you down for a new build.’

  ‘$120,000 for the wharf and $650,000 for the Korimako: that’s way more than she’s worth.’

  John-Cody took a long draught of his beer and weighed the glass in his hand.

  ‘Why don’t you call it an even $800,000?’ he said.

  Pole squinted at him. ‘If that’s what it takes.’

  John-Cody laughed then. ‘It’s not what it takes. Not eight hundred: not a million or two million. The wharf’s not for sale, Ned, neither is the boat. They never will be.’

  Pole rocked back on the stool and felt in his pocket for a cigar. ‘Gib, the people backing me won’t take no for an answer. You understand what I mean?’

  ‘Is that some sort of threat?’

  ‘Take it how you want, mate. But believe me, I’m doing you a favour here.’ Pole got up off the stool. ‘You may not want to believe it, but I am. Take the money, Gib. Take the offer while it’s there.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Pole stood for a moment and looked down at him. ‘Some things aren’t always what they seem, mate. Situations can change very quickly.’

  Tom Blanch came in then. Pole touched his hat and turned away.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Tom sat down on the stool he had vacated. ‘You two jokers not patched up your differences yet?’

  ‘Ned was telling me how things aren’t always what they seem.’ John-Cody put out his cigarette. ‘He offered me eight hundred thousand for the Kori and her wharf.’

  Tom cocked a shaggy eyebrow. ‘That’s good money, Gib.’

  ‘Australian, not New Zealand.’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So take it, why don’t you?’

  John-Cody smiled wryly. ‘What do you want to drink, Tom?’

  ‘Well, seeing as how you can afford to turn down such big bucks I’ll take a shot of whisky and a big jug of Speights.’

  When John-Cody came back with the drinks Jane Pole was watching him from her seat by the window. Something about the expression in her eyes unnerved him. Tom knocked the whisky back and splashed beer into glasses. Reaching down, he picked up a plastic shopping bag and laid it on the table. ‘Got a little something for you, Gibby. Be a treat for that wee girl you got staying up at the house.’

  John-Cody walked home and saw Bree putting seeds and fruit out for the birds in the front garden. Sierra was lying on the grass, her head cocked to one side watching Bree with the same faithfulness she had displayed since her arrival from England. An animal’s reaction to a human being always interested John-Cody: they were no mugs and Sierra responded to Bree in a way she had not done with anyone else, except himself in the early days. Sierra must have smelled him because she got up, barked and trotted out to the road. John-Cody ruffled her ears and looked up to see Bree smiling at him. He could hear Alex in the house and he poked his head round the door and saw her nosing about in the fridge.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Alex. Take the night off if you want. I’m home for a couple of days, I can look after Bree.’

  ‘Can you?’ Alex looked doubtfully at him. ‘What are you going to eat?’

  ‘You leave that to me.’ John-Cody held up the plastic shopping bag that Tom had given him.

  The house was still hard to enter, even with the two newcomers making it very much their home. On the occasions when he looked after Bree, John-Cody managed to sit by the fire in the evenings with Sierra at his feet until Bree went to sleep: then he would slip next door and Sierra would climb onto her bed and guard her throughout the night. He had not set foot in the bedroom since Mahina died.

  ‘Are you going to cook, John-Cody?’ Bree asked him.

  ‘I am.’ He selected an uncut loaf of bread and a knife. ‘Get me the butter from the fridge and some steak sauce if there is any.’

  Bree squinted at him. ‘Are we having steak?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Just steak and bread and butter: not just any steak, mind you. Tonight it’s special, feral venison, cut thin and cooked on a manuka fire.’

  He led the way into the garden and paused to listen to birdsong. ‘Can you tell me what bird that is?’

  ‘It’s a male tui.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He listened again. ‘And that?’

  ‘Fantail.’

  John-Cody glanced towards the trees by the bedroom window. ‘We used to have a pair of bellbirds nesting in that fuchsia.’

  ‘I know.’ Bree looked up at him then, her head slightly to one side. ‘They were Mahina’s favourites, weren’t they?’

  John-Cody nodded. ‘You know what though, I haven’t heard one in that tree since she died.’

  Bree frowned. ‘Oh, they’re there all right. The male takes apple from my hand.’

  John-Cody wrinkled his brow.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘They’re there. You just haven’t heard them.’

  They passed through the gap in the hedge and John-Cody scanned the fallen trunks on the patch of land that bordered the road. ‘They wanted to clear these trees so they could build,’ he said. ‘I bought the land after Mahina died. One day I’ll replant it.’

  Bree sat down on a tree stump and John-Cody took out his tobacco and papers.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘how do you like school?’

  Bree didn’t answer him right away. She was picking at a patch of dried earth with a stick. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘They call me Cheesy Breezy though, or just Cheesy.’

  John-Cody frowned. ‘Who does?’

  ‘Oh, some of the girls.’

  ‘Are they bullying you?’

  Bree shrugged. ‘It’s after the cheese. You know, Brie, the French cheese. It’s stupid, not even spelt the same.’

  ‘I think Bree’s a lovely name.’

  ‘It’s typical of my mum.’ Bree bit her lip. ‘She does things on the spur of the moment and doesn’t always think about what might happen afterwards.’

  John-Cody rested his elbows on his knees. ‘That’s a grown-up thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? I suppose I am quite grown up. I’ve had a different life to most people.’

  ‘Have you?’ He looked at her then. ‘You know, I really don’t know much about you, Bree.’

  ‘Don’t you? There’s loads to tell. The things I’ve done in twelve years some people would never do in their whole lifetime.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ John-Cody snapped open his lighter.

  Bree shrugged again. ‘I’ve lived all over the place. I’ve been to school in lots of different countries, learned French and Spanish almost as well as I learned English. I’ve had my mum teaching me at home in Argentina. We lived on the coast at a place called Punta Norte and watched killer whales taking seals from the beach.’

  ‘That must have been something.’

  ‘It got boring after a while. Once you’ve seen it a few times you just feel sorry for the seals.’

  John-Cody laughed then. ‘I bet you do at that.’ He drew on his cigarette and picked out a patch of fallen manuka. ‘We’ll use that wood over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The sticks need to be fallen but still living so there’s some moisture left in them. That way you get the real manuka smell when the meat’s cooking.’

  ‘Where did you get the meat? Did you shoot the deer?’

  ‘No. Tom got it for me.’

  John-Cody clipped the end of his cigarette and they set about gathering enough sticks for the fire. He asked her to run back to the house and get the hand axe for him so he could cut some bigger branches for when the fire got going. Bree skipped off and he watched her cross the lawn and smiled to himself, wondering what it would have been like to have children of his own. One of the first things Mahina had told him was that she couldn’t have any beca
use of a problem with her fallopian tubes.

  They readied the fire, John-Cody taking a bunch of the thinnest sticks and laying them across one another in alternate racks till they were about five layers deep. He put his lighter to them, fanned the infant flames, sat back and watched them burn.

  Bree stared wide-eyed. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘It’s brilliant. I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I’m sure you could with a little practice. I’ve had twenty-five years, remember.’

  She nodded. ‘Still, it’s very clever. You’re clever at stuff like that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He looked at her then. ‘I’ve never heard you talk about your dad, Bree. Where does he live?’

  She flushed a deep red and he immediately regretted his question. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosy.’

  Bree made a face. ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind.’ She stood up then and laid another set of sticks on the fire. ‘Is this right?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  She crouched down, hitching her skirt higher over her knee and resting an arm on her thigh. ‘That’s another thing about my mother: she couldn’t even tell me my own father’s name. She didn’t know it, so I don’t know who he is!’

  John-Cody was quiet after that. Bree sat on the tree stump, knees together, while he buried manuka spines in the soil and stood them over the fire with steaks impaled on the ends. He sipped from a bottle of beer and Bree drank fruit juice and both of them watched the spirals of smoke lift as they breathed the sweet scent of freshly burning manuka.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Bree said eventually. ‘The smell.’

  John-Cody nodded. ‘So you never knew him at all then — your dad?’

  She shook her head, puckering her lips as if a bad taste clung to the inside of her mouth. ‘I think my mum went to a party and got drunk. Somehow she got pregnant. She was in a rush to get to Mexico to watch whales and she didn’t even realize she was expecting me for the first three months.’

  ‘She told you all this?’ John-Cody lifted his eyebrows.

  Bree nodded.

  ‘That’s honest at least.’

  ‘Oh, Mum’s always honest.’

  John-Cody turned the steaks and Bree sat quietly beside him. Sierra was watching the meat drip juice onto the flames, where it hissed and sizzled in the embers. Bree sipped her drink and leaned forward to sniff at the drifting smoke. ‘The food smells wonderful,’ she said.

  ‘It does, doesn’t it? Old Tom taught me how to make a manuka fire, years ago when we trapped together in the bush.’

  ‘You don’t do that any more?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve not trapped or shot anything for years.’ He told her then how Mahina had talked of the forest and the fruit of Papatuanuku the mother earth and how precious everything was. That every living being, be it plant or animal or person, was vital to the way the world lived in balance with itself and if that balance shifted then the long-term effects would be disastrous. He told her about Mahina’s mother and her mother’s parents and grandparents who traced their line back to the first Waitaha Polynesians who settled in the Te Anau basin: how they differed from the other Maori in that they were a people of peace, whose aim was peace in the world. He told her how the Waitaha had left other parts of Aotearoa because of war.

  ‘Did they have white skins?’ Bree asked him when he broke off. ‘I read that they might have had white skins.’

  ‘I don’t know. Some Waitaha elders tell their history as leaving Hawaiki and travelling with a white-skinned, red-haired race for a time: they intermarried, so some of them would have been paler. It’s maybe why the Waitaha-blooded people sometimes have red in their hair.’

  ‘I suppose different tribes have different legends,’ Bree said.

  ‘I guess they do, yes.’

  She looked at him then. ‘Do you think you could ever love anyone else like you loved Mahina?’

  John-Cody was quiet. He picked the steaks off the twigs and laid them on the bread he had cut in readiness. ‘That’s a hard question. I don’t know is the real answer. Right now I don’t think so, but I don’t really know.’

  Bree thought for a moment. ‘It’s good that you loved her so much. But maybe you need to let her go a little now.’

  John-Cody looked at her clear blue eyes gazing back at him. He heard Mahina’s voice in his head. Free me, John-Cody Gibbs, then forget all about me because I won’t remember you. I’ll be gone for ever, tasting the breath of eternity.

  He sat by the lounge fire, listening to Bree getting ready for bed. Sierra lay at his feet and he had a book open on his lap. He was only flicking through it, not really looking at the pages. Darkness had fallen and with it the rain he had sensed in the atmosphere earlier. It rattled the corrugated iron of the roof now, and he knew it was set for the night. Bree came through in her nightdress and went to clean her teeth. He heard the water running and the sound of her spitting then she came to say goodnight.

  ‘Are you going to read?’ he asked her.

  ‘No.’ She shivered and knelt down in front of the open fire. ‘I’m glad we cooked those steaks before the rain came.’

  ‘The fire would have been a bit wet otherwise.’

  They laughed and Bree picked up a log and settled it among the flames.

  ‘Don’t worry about what they call you at school, Bree,’ he said gently. ‘People can be very cruel.’

  ‘It’s because I’m new.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘It’s happened before. It’s just never lasted this long, that’s all.’ She stood up and yawned. ‘Thanks for cooking for me.’

  John-Cody took her small hand in his. ‘Thanks for eating it with me.’

  She placed her other hand over the back of his and smiled. ‘I hope I didn’t upset you with what I said about Mahina.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. We’re honest, you and I.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Take it easy, Breezy.’

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Five high, Captain Bligh.’

  John-Cody sat in the darkness as the fire drifted lower in the grate, then he yawned and stretched and stood up. The rain still hammered on the roof and from time to time Sierra would lift her head and sniff at the air. John-Cody ruffled her ears and looked out of the window into the gloom. He made a face and sat down again, leaning back so the recliner extended and he was able to lie almost flat. He stayed like that for a moment then got up and walked to the door of Libby’s bedroom. His throat dried and he could feel his hands shaking. The door swung open and closed on itself behind him as he went in. He stood in the half-light that broke through the bare window and for a long moment he stared at the bed he had shared with Mahina. The bed she had lain in when she heard the morepork calling her name, the bed from where he had lifted her, where he had laid her again while he phoned Jonah and Kobi.

  In the cupboard he found a spare blanket and went back to the fire. The embers were dying and he stoked them and threw on some more chunks of wood. He sat back in the chair again and wrapped himself in the blanket. Sierra was already on Bree’s bed, having pushed open the door. Twisting round in the chair, John-Cody could see Bree’s face, eyes closed and peaceful in the shadows that danced from the fire.

  ELEVEN

  LIBBY SAT IN HER BOAT BY THE PASSAGE ISLANDS AS THE RAIN fell in curtains of grey, blending the surface of the fiord to white. She was watching her computer screen and finding it more and more difficult to separate ambient noise from that of the echolocating dolphins. She had been tracking the pod all morning, picking them up at Wet Jacket Arm. Old Nick was there, swimming round the others, moving up and down the ranks: Libby had watched him on the underwater camera and was feeling more and more convinced that he was the patriarch of the pod. She had noticed one older female though, who also seemed to have a special place in the pod, and she had called her Spray because she had dark spots like freckles running from her snout to her blowhole.

 
The rain rattled off the hood of her drysuit and formed puddles at her feet. Around her, Dusky was windswept and soaked and hanging with tendrils of cloud that dulled the mountains into slabs of drab vegetation. The boat shifted restlessly and she looked towards the sea, watching for darker water where the wind was up or the current was moving round. Then she heard it in the distance, a high-revving engine, and she realized another boat was coming up the sound from behind her. Her engine was switched off, the dolphins still well within range, but now she could see the ambient noise changing on the computer screen and it altered again as the boat got closer and closer.

  All at once Libby was excited: now she had control conditions, feeding dolphins in range and a high-speed propeller in the water. She watched the screen for activity, seeing how the approach of the boat made it more and more fuzzy, until she swivelled in her seat and felt the wake against the gunwales. She looked at the screen again, unable to distinguish the dolphin clicks from the interference. She could isolate the section later, take it to pieces and come up with a theory about the effects of the activity.

  The approaching boat slowed; it was a launch not unlike her own but much more powerful, with four men on board and fishing rods stacked against the canvas roof. As it came closer the bow dipped and the driver spun it in a circle then accelerated once more. He came straight for Libby’s boat then slowed right down again and chugged alongside. Libby saw Ned Pole smiling at her: three other men in wet gear were with him, none of whom she recognized. Then she saw the deer carcass, bloodied and soaked by the rain, laid out in the stern.

  ‘Libby. How you going?’ Pole touched the brim of his hat.

  ‘Turn your engine off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turn your engine off.’

  Pole twisted the key in the dash and the engine shuddered, vibrated and then died away into stillness. Libby sat where she was and stared at her computer while the ambient noise subsided. She was looking for echolocation clicks but couldn’t find any.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Pole was standing up in the bows.

  Libby looked up at him. ‘You are. Congratulations, Ned. You succeeded in chasing away the dolphins.’