Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘So you’re the scientist looking at Dusky Sound,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘How do you like it down there?’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Kobi nodded and Libby warmed to the old man immediately. He settled himself on the grass and John-Cody rolled him a cigarette, which he nipped between forefinger and thumb, letting smoke trail from his nostrils. John-Cody told Jonah about the trip at the weekend but he said he couldn’t make it. John-Cody then turned his attention to Kobi.

  ‘What about you, old fella? It’s years since you went on the boat.’

  ‘I’m too old.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Of course you’re not too old.’

  ‘I’m too old, Gib.’

  ‘Oh come on, Kobi.’ Libby took his hand and it was warm though the skin was weak and thin and broken with blue veins. ‘You’re not too old.’

  ‘I can’t get down the steps.’

  ‘We’ll help you.’

  He winked at her then. ‘Will you put me to bed as well?’

  Libby laughed. ‘Come on, come with us. It’s only for the weekend.’

  Kobi made a face then looked at John-Cody. ‘What d’you reckon, Gib? You really think I’m up to it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go climbing the spreaders but yes, of course you’re up to it.’

  ‘All right, I’ll come.’ He still held Libby’s hand. ‘On condition that you tell me all about what’s happening in Dusky. I haven’t been to Dusky Sound in years.’

  Bree was delighted when they picked her up from the Caldwell farm that night. John-Cody arranged to get Hunter from the bus and head over the hill with the Z boat crew on Friday afternoon; he knew Tom could arrange a truck to haul them over the Wilmot Pass.

  Bree was full of the farm and talked nineteen to the dozen, perched between them, as they trundled back to the lake with Sierra in the flatbed barking at every car they passed. John-Cody drove and listened, Libby interrupting her daughter every now and again to get a word from her about school. John-Cody glanced across the cab at Libby and as if for the first time he noticed her face, the deep black of her eyes, smooth high-boned cheeks and white flash of her smile. She was young and she was beautiful and for the second time since Mahina died he felt something stirring inside him.

  That night he lay in bed in the homestay and could hear the pair of them chattering through the walls: his bathroom door was open and the sound echoed between theirs and his: water falling, Libby in the shower, calling to Bree for shampoo. He listened to the water coursing into the drains and for half a second he imagined her naked. His breath caught in his throat and he sat upright in bed, the sharp taste of betrayal on his tongue: for a long time he stared at his reflection, darkened as it was in the mirror.

  They crossed the Lake of the Sorrowing Heart in brilliant sunshine the following afternoon: according to Tom, seated at the helm of the Z boat, the weather was set for the weekend. Even Deep Cove wouldn’t see any rain. Tom had been as good as his word and a driver was waiting for them. Hunter and Bree sat in the flat bed of the truck with the luggage, while Alex, Libby and John-Cody occupied the rear cab. Kobi sat up front and looked as happy as John-Cody remembered seeing him.

  On board the Korimako John-Cody took Hunter down to the engine room, went through the checks with him and told him it was his job to start the auxiliary in the morning. That meant no slouching in his bunk, which was across the gangway from Bree who got to the freezer berth before Alex. Kobi and Alex took for’ard berths, leaving Libby the double down aft next to the skipper. They untied and John-Cody hit the horn then let Bree back the Korimako out into Doubtful Sound.

  They still had two hours before dark, so John-Cody headed for Crooked Arm while Alex and Libby got busy making supper. John-Cody set the autopilot then went on deck with Hunter and Bree and pointed out every landmark between Deep Cove and the second arm of the sound.

  Kobi sat on the vegetable locker with his coat buttoned and watched Hunter climb the mast to the spreaders thirty feet above the deck. He stood in the crow’s nest like a lookout from the whaling days of Cuttle Cove back in the 1830s. Bree sat next to Kobi wearing her mother’s sunglasses.

  They ate dinner in the glasshouse with the plastic door rolled up and the sun beating on their heads as it slipped behind the heights from where the Lucky Burn cascaded. Bree and Hunter sat next to each other and giggled: Libby watched them and shook her head. John-Cody watched them all, watched the interaction between the two children, watched Libby and Alex and how well they got on. He listened to Kobi’s stories of the old days of the fiords and for the first time in a while he felt happy.

  Libby, Alex and the old man played cards at the saloon table while Hunter and Bree took showers. Bree came out with a towel wrapped round her and John-Cody swivelled on his plastic stool where he was poring over the chart table. Bree sidled next to him and leaned gleaming red elbows on his laminated charts. She picked up the blue radio booklet and asked him what EPIRBs were.

  ‘Emergency position-indicating radio beacons or something like that.’ John-Cody pointed astern. ‘They’re fixed to the transom next to the dinghy.’

  ‘How do they work?’

  ‘They start transmitting automatically if the boat sinks.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘They detach themselves and give any rescuer the boat’s last known position.’

  Bree looked horrified. ‘Have you ever used them?’

  He shook his head. ‘No boat I’ve been on has sunk.’

  ‘How long have you been a sailor?’

  ‘Oh, a long time. Since I was twenty.’

  ‘Always here in New Zealand?’

  ‘No, I started in a place called Bellingham in America, on a scallop dredger.’ For a second he could see the darkened interior of that bar. He heard the first mate grumbling about the winch man going AWOL, and remembered how he had bitten the bullet and offered the man his services.

  ‘Why didn’t you stay in America?’

  John-Cody looked through shadows of the past at her. ‘I didn’t like it very much.’

  ‘Would you ever go back?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Bree, I wouldn’t. New Zealand’s my home now.’

  ‘Bree.’ Libby’s head appeared at the top of the steps. ‘Bedtime. Let’s move it along a bit, shall we?’

  John-Cody looked up at her. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault.’

  Libby wagged an admonitory finger at her daughter. ‘No, it’s not. It’s hers. She’s the proverbial chatterbox, especially around bedtime.’

  They sat in the saloon and drank wine, listening to the whispered voices coming from the bunks below deck. Libby glanced at Alex and lifted an eyebrow. John-Cody rolled his glass between his hands and called out to Hunter. He told him not to forget what he had been told about the morning. ‘I’ll expect you on deck with the dawn, seaman. You got that?’

  Hunter didn’t reply, but the whispers subsided and Libby sighed with relief. ‘Peace at last,’ she said.

  John-Cody sat across the table from her with Alex and Kobi in the middle. Kobi looked at Libby. ‘So tell me about Dusky,’ he said. ‘Have you sorted out that dolphin pod yet?’

  Libby smiled at him. ‘No, Kobi, I haven’t. So far I’ve identified just under twenty animals: I think they might be a patriarchal pod, with Old Nick as the leader.’

  ‘You do?’ John-Cody raised one eyebrow.

  She nodded. ‘I can’t put my name to it yet, but so far that seems to be the case.’

  Kobi sat with his hands together on the table. ‘What about the hotels?’

  Libby pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know. I think they’ll get their permit before I can prove the pod is resident. They’ll certainly get it before I can reach any conclusions on how engine noise might affect their behaviour.’

  Kobi looked through her. ‘So they’ll build their hotels or whatever it is they’re planning.’

  ‘No.’ John-Cody placed a palm over Kobi’s knuckles
. ‘Not if I can help it. I’m going to fight them, Kobi. I am fighting them. It’ll go to a full hearing and I’ll get the best lawyers in the country if I have to.’

  Kobi looked into the distance beyond him. ‘Nehemiah Pole.’

  John-Cody nodded. ‘He’s the front man but American business is backing him.’

  ‘But he’s the man on the ground.’

  ‘Seems to be. I think they’re attracted by his reputation. Pole’s a big draw, Kobi. He has a serious past.’

  ‘He does at that,’ Kobi said. ‘I reckon he does at that.’

  He went to bed and the others played a few hands of cards, talking in low voices, and then Alex yawned and stretched and John-Cody got up to let her get past and she went backwards down the steps to her berth.

  Crooked Arm was silent, the heat lost from the day and a thin cool breeze bleeding through the netting clipped across the open doorway on the leeward side. John-Cody had rigged it up to keep the sandflies at bay. Libby sat back and yawned, then reached for the wine bottle and poured them another glass. John-Cody lifted his and inspected it and the silence grew between them. He could see a sky full of stars through the window and knew that tomorrow would be as good a day as today, Sunday too if they were lucky.

  He looked at Libby who was deep in thought, arms folded under her breasts, leaning back in the seat. Her face was small and brown; eyes very dark, black almost in this light. She felt his gaze and smiled. ‘I was miles away,’ she said.

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘The Baja.’

  ‘California — Sea of Cortez?’

  Libby nodded and leaned forward. Her breasts moved under her shirt and he could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  ‘I spent two years down there all in all. Bree was born there. Hell, she’s got a Mexican passport.’ She shook her head then. ‘Typical me that is, I couldn’t even take enough time off work to cross the border and have her in the United States. That would have been much more useful to her in later life.’ She wrinkled her mouth at the corners. ‘You know, sometimes I don’t think I’ve been much of a parent.’

  John-Cody lifted a hand. ‘I figure you do your best. I guess it’s tough all round. Parenting is tough, not that I’ve ever been a parent.’

  Libby glanced at him then. ‘Mahina didn’t want children?’

  ‘She couldn’t have them.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, Lib. We had a wonderful relationship, everything we could have dreamed of.’

  Libby could hear the quiet passion in his voice, see it in his eyes and she felt inexplicably jealous. She considered the sound of her name on his tongue and realized she loved the way he shortened it. He sat back with both hands cupped round the wine glass before him on the table.

  ‘I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself as far as Bree is concerned. She seems happy enough.’

  ‘Right now, maybe. Who wouldn’t be in a place like this?’ She smiled then. ‘She gets on very well with Hunter.’

  ‘She does.’

  Libby sipped wine. ‘Bree didn’t want to come out here when I told her.’

  ‘Children don’t like change.’

  ‘I really didn’t have a choice this time, but I suppose I have dragged her round the world a bit. She’s never been in one place for more than two years.’

  ‘Variety.’

  ‘Is that such a good thing at her age?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I guess most situations have advantages and disadvantages if you think about them.’

  She looked at him. ‘Did you want children?’

  ‘I never really thought about it. Mahina couldn’t have them, and I knew that from the beginning.’ He gestured. ‘I loved Mahina. That’s all there was to it.’

  ‘Did you marry her in a Maori ceremony?’

  ‘I didn’t marry her. We just lived together.’ That sounded trite. It was not trite: he remembered taking her boat to the beach at Yuvali Burn, with the Malaspina Reach running out to sea before them. A wild and windy dawn, and as it grew light they had stood together on that beach, lashed by the rain, and made a vow to love each other till death.

  ‘John-Cody?’

  He looked up at Libby’s enquiring face. ‘We made a vow to each other. That was good enough. I’ve never been one for regular religion anyway.’ He gestured to the open doorway. ‘That’s my church right there. Mahina’s too.’ He told her what they had done. ‘We didn’t need any witnesses. We figured Rangi and Papa knew what was what.’

  Libby nodded. ‘That’s beautifully romantic.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’re quite a romantic at heart, aren’t you?’

  John-Cody snorted. ‘For an old sea dog maybe.’

  ‘Do you know what Bree calls you?’

  ‘Captain Bligh.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, that’s your thing. No, she calls you the quiet man of the sea.’

  He laughed softly, deep in the back of his throat. ‘I think I like that.’

  They were still for a moment, a strong comfortable silence, then John-Cody stretched and said he was going outside for a smoke.

  Libby stood up. ‘I’ll join you.’

  They stood on the bows with barely a breath of wind coming up the sound. John-Cody had moored the Korimako in the sheltered bay where the Lucky Burn ran into the depths of the fiord. The sky was clustered with stars, millions of them, more than Libby had ever seen down here. She gazed up, her head back, neck long and straight, skin like smooth velvet in the half-darkness. ‘I don’t know any of those.’

  John-Cody pointed south-east. ‘There’s the Southern Cross right there. You see it with the top down to the left.’

  Libby followed his finger and stared, not seeing it at first and then she located it.

  ‘The two bright stars down on the right are the pointers. You can find south from the Southern Cross if you have to.’ He sat down on the dive locker and looked again. ‘Above it you’ve got the Antlia constellation and Vela is to the right of that. Then there’s — let’s see — Carina and Volans, then Dorado right there.’

  Libby sat down next to him. ‘Did you learn all that by sailing?’

  ‘Stellar navigation? No.’ He pressed tobacco in his palm. ‘Mahina taught me some, Tom Blanch too. Tom knows his stuff, or he did. He’s not been to sea in the real sense of the word for a long time now though.’

  ‘He just drives the Z boats.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s regular work and it gives him time to build that cat he’s working on.’

  ‘What’s he going to do when he finishes it?’

  ‘Sail round the world.’

  ‘Will you go with him?’

  John-Cody shook his head. ‘No. I’ve got work to do here.’

  ‘What you and Mahina started?’

  He nodded. ‘Try and protect what we have. This place is special. I want to keep it that way.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘People lose their hearts here, you know.’

  Libby gazed up at the stars once again. ‘I can see why,’ she murmured.

  In the morning Hunter was up early. John-Cody had been up for an hour, drinking coffee and talking to Kobi. The old man did not sleep well these days, rarely managing four hours before he was wide awake. Hunter looked across Crooked Arm, furrowed his brow and shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘What’s that?’ he said and pointed. John-Cody looked where he looked, right across to the green wall of the fiord where spouts of spray were rising gold in the morning sun.

  ‘Wave dancers,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dolphins. Now you can start the engines.’

  The dolphins were in a playful mood and rode the bow wave. Hunter and Bree pulled on wetsuits and John-Cody towed them behind the boat as they gripped the slats in the dive platform where the dolphins rose to greet them.

  Later in the day he suggested that Libby might like to dive the Gut, the only marine reserve in Fiordland. She had left
her drysuit at the Supper Cove hut and John-Cody rummaged in the dive locker for a suitable 7mm wetsuit. He checked the pressure on two bottles of air and sought his own harness and a spare one for Libby. She had her own snorkel, mask and fins, which she took everywhere with her. With the Korimako moored to the length of rope slung under the banks of Secretary Island, John-Cody went down aft to get changed. At the top of the steps he saw the door to Libby’s cabin was clipped back and she stood with her back to him wearing only her knickers and pulling a T-shirt over her head. For a moment he gazed at the shape of her shoulders, the way her back narrowed so finely to her waist, the knots of her spine punching the skin as she bent forward. Her feet were small and her legs long and shapely. He rattled down the steps and she looked round at him and smiled.

  ‘Need any help?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’ll let you know in a minute.’

  He ducked into his cabin, stripped to a T-shirt and his boxer shorts and then eased himself into the wetsuit. When he was done, Libby appeared beyond his curtain with her zipper needing fastening across the shoulders. Gently he lifted her hair out of the way and his fingertips brushed the cool flesh of her neck: he saw the tiniest black hairs at the nape and was aware of a weakness all at once in his limbs. Carefully he zipped her up and they went up on deck.

  The children watched as he helped Libby on with her tank and checked the weight of her belt to make sure she was carrying enough to descend properly. He worked his own tank over his shoulders, fastened the clips across his chest and pulled the hood over his head.

  ‘Hunter,’ he said. ‘There’s a timer on the dashboard. Go and fetch it for me, will you?’

  Hunter brought it back and John-Cody set it for forty minutes. He told Bree to run the dive flag up the shroud as soon as they were in the water. Then he clambered backwards down the ladder, squatted on the platform and fastened his fins. Libby was already in the water and cleaning her mask. ‘You OK?’ he asked her, and she tapped the top of her head with arced fingers before they descended together.

  The fresh-water layer was only seven feet: they passed through the oily film of yellow where it met salt and then the world opened beneath them. Starfish clung to the walls just below the mixed layer, waiting for the fresh-water level to become even shallower so they could attack the mussel beds. Hydra coral, black and red, clung to the exposed cliff walls where the saltwater currents washed in from the sea and they could feed on the passing plankton.