Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Alex looked puzzled. ‘OK.’

  He turned to go.

  ‘You mean now?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a Z boat crossing in ten minutes. I’ll catch myself a ride.’

  ‘What about stores?’

  ‘There’s stuff in the freezer still. I’ll manage.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  John-Cody looked at her then, saw her and didn’t see her. ‘I don’t know. You can get me on the radio.’ He turned on his heel and walked towards Pearl Harbour, his shoulders stiff and square as if the weight of the sky was on him.

  He walked uncertainly as if every step was his last. He passed the shop and Jean Grady called out a greeting, but he barely heard her and walked on, head down, aware of each crack in the pavement. He could smell the inlet as he turned the corner, slack green water beyond the tree line. The Z boat was at the jetty and Tom was performing his engine checks.

  ‘You got room for me, partner?’

  Tom looked up at him. ‘Always, mate. You know that.’

  John-Cody climbed on deck and lit a cigarette. Tom watched him through the glass and arched one eyebrow. He had seen that face a few times over the past year, but perhaps the darkness between his brows had not been so acute as it was right then.

  John-Cody stayed on deck all the way across the lake, the wind and spots of rain driving in his hair. He wore only jeans and an overshirt and the wind had teeth as they passed South Arm but he did not notice, just sat rolling one cigarette after the other, his mind a mass of unanswered questions.

  At West Arm he had to wait for a lift and half thought about walking the twenty-two kilometres, before Tom found him a driver. He rode in the passenger seat, saying nothing, thinking nothing, and barely muttered his thanks when he was dropped off at his wharf. The truck turned back for the tunnel and for a moment John-Cody stood above the trees with sandflies buzzing about his face. The rain had not started falling yet, but the clouds were bruised in purple and hung against the mountains, which seemed to murmur in the sudden discomfort of stillness. John-Cody stood and stared at the opaque surface of Deep Cove and for the first time the sound looked dark and malevolent.

  He didn’t know what to do. He realized it then: for the first time in his life he just didn’t know what to do. He needed to talk to Mahina; more than anything he needed to do that. But he couldn’t: she was dead, gone, lost to him, in the spirit world, the great Marae of her ancestors.

  The Korimako felt alien as he stepped on deck and slid open the wheelhouse door. This vessel had been a part of him, another limb almost, for over seven years, and yet she felt alien. She was lost, just as the wharf was lost and the cove and perhaps the whole of Fiordland as he and Mahina had known it. That last garden of Tane, overrun with tourists, the sound of silence battered by the whine of speedboats: fishermen and hunters racing the length and breadth of her arms. He sat on the skipper’s stool in front of the radar screen and watched the rain race in myriad rivers on the perspex-covered windows.

  How long he sat there he did not know, but then the radio interrupted the tenuous thread of his thoughts. ‘Korimako, Korimako, Korimako: this is Kori-base. Are you there, boss?’

  For a moment he sat where he was. Alex came again, repeating the message, and then a third time before he got up and reached for the handset.

  ‘Yes, Alex.’

  ‘Oh, thank God, there was me thinking the Z boat sank or something. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘What the hell happened with Pole? He just drove by looking like he won the lotto.’

  ‘Maybe he did.’ John-Cody said it more to himself than to her. ‘Look, everything’s fine, Alex. I just need some time. Things have caught up with me. We’ve nothing booked in the short term, have we?’

  ‘Nope. Our horizon is suddenly empty.’

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ he muttered.

  Alex went to the house and found Libby working. It was almost time for Bree to come home and Libby was just beginning to think about what to make for tea. ‘Was John-Cody all right before he went out?’ Alex asked her.

  ‘He was fine. I haven’t seen him since, mind you. Why?’ Libby plugged the kettle in for tea.

  ‘He went over the hill.’

  ‘Deep Cove? He didn’t say he was going.’

  Alex shrugged. ‘I think it was a snap decision. He came by the office just after lunch and I tell you I’ve never seen him look so grey and you know what — suddenly so old.’ Alex sat down, her brow set in lines, chewing at her lower lip. ‘He looked really old, Lib. Even when Mahina died he didn’t look like he did today.’

  ‘Alex.’ Libby sat down in the chair beside her. ‘You’re frightening me.’

  Alex blew out her cheeks. ‘I’m frightening myself.’ She looked round then. ‘Something happened with Pole.’

  ‘Is John-Cody on the boat now?’

  ‘Yes. I spoke to him on the radio. He wants to be left alone.’

  ‘Maybe Pole got his permit already. Maybe the submission doesn’t matter.’

  Alex shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. This has to go to a hearing.’

  Bree crashed through the door with Hunter in tow and thoughts of John-Cody were forgotten. ‘Mum, can Hunter stay for tea?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Great, and can we take him home afterwards?’

  ‘Yes.’ Libby looked at Alex. ‘Where’s the Ute?’

  Alex held out the keys. She had driven it back from the office. Bree tossed her bag on the chair then led Hunter outside, hand in hand, with Sierra leaping for attention. Alex and Libby stared at the departing backs of the children and then they looked at each other.

  ‘Was that what I thought it was?’ Libby said. ‘They were holding hands, right?’

  ‘It looked that way to me.’

  Libby poured tea. ‘My daughter with a boyfriend.’ She set the teapot down with a jerk. ‘Does that make me old, Alex?’

  Libby dreamed about John-Cody and woke up in the middle of the night with his face against her mind. He was on the boat and watching the stars from the deck, his face half in shadow but great disturbance in his eyes. She sat up wide awake and questioned herself. Why should she dream that? She had never dreamed of him before. It must have been Alex coming round. She wondered again what might have happened with Pole.

  She could see the ghost-like branches of the giant fuchsia tree weaving in the wind through the window. The night was not dark, the garden bathed in filtered light from the moon. She rubbed her eyes, knowing she was too awake to go back to sleep right away. The alarm clock told her it was two thirty and she got out of bed, covered her nakedness with a robe then flicked on the wall light in the lounge. Bree’s door was closed. Libby made a cup of tea, conscious of the sound of Sierra snuffling, but aware that she wouldn’t leave Bree’s bed.

  Libby sat in the big reclining chair with her feet tucked under her bottom. The room felt like her room, like she belonged here, which for her was strange. Long ago she had realized that such womanly habits as home-making were not dominant needs for her; Bree was far better at keeping house than she was. Libby had always been pretty content to dump her gear somewhere near a sleeping bag and head out to sea in search of whales. That had all begun in childhood.

  When she was still a little girl in Portsmouth, her brother told her one day that a gypsy was in town with a fin whale on the back of a lorry. Libby couldn’t understand what he meant, feeling sure he’d said thin whale. How could a live animal which lived in water be transported around on the back of a lorry? The two of them spent their pocket money visiting the whale and Libby saw it was dead and stuffed and looked like plastic, all except its eye which peered back at her when she stared right into it. Ever since then, Libby had longed to see whales alive, swimming freely in the open sea. And if that meant living in some wild places, so be it.

  She thought about John-Cody again and realized she was thinking about him a lot these days. When she was i
n Dusky she missed him. Partly that was the loneliness of her research and partly it was just him. She would see his face in her mind’s eye; visualize his hands, strong hands, calloused at the base of the fingers from all the years at, sea. She imagined him on the Korimako, quietly in command with nothing ever fazing him.

  She got up and plucked a cigarette from the open pack on the mantelpiece and stepped outside. The moon was full above her head and the sky rang with starlight. She sat down at the little table and tried to recognize some of the constellations John-Cody had pointed out to her when they were in Crooked Arm. She couldn’t even pick out the Southern Cross though, which given the attention she had paid at the time should have been easy. Again she wondered what could have happened with Pole: John-Cody had been fine until that phone call, happily chopping wood, drinking coffee and then suddenly off over the hill.

  Ned Pole lay on his back in the aftermath of love. His wife lay next to him, the bedclothes thrown off and the moonlight bathing their naked bodies. He stared at the ceiling, feeling the sweat drying on him. Jane drew her knees to her chest in the foetal position then rolled on her side and knelt up. Her hair hung to his chest, tickling the skin. She ran her hand over the hard muscles of his stomach and down into his groin.

  ‘You should’ve got on to immigration.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Like I said, he needed an option. Everybody needs an option.’

  ‘You’re too soft.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I know.’ Jane climbed off the bed and walked to the window. Pole watched her, naked in the moonlight, and Mahina invaded his head. He rolled on his side facing away, wondering why he had told Gibbs what he had. Jane spoke from behind him. ‘We’re almost there, Ned. Now is not the time to go soft.’

  Pole ignored her, unable to shift Mahina’s face from his mind. It was as if she was there in the room, haunting him.

  ‘Ned?’

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  She snorted. ‘There was a time when I might have believed you.’ She paused then and Pole turned to face her again.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

  She looked back at him and her nipples puckered in the draught from the window. ‘I’m telling you I did what you should have. Gibbs had his chance a long time ago.’

  Pole stared at her through the darkness.

  ‘Don’t look at me that way. We’re better off with him completely out of the picture.’

  John-Cody spent a week on the Korimako, scrubbing the mini invasion of rust from the scuppers and the lid of the chain locker and the bottom of the wheelhouse doors. He cleaned the boat from top to bottom and didn’t really know why. It was always cleaned after a trip, the beds remade and the heads scrubbed as they steamed back to Deep Cove on the last afternoon. Yet he needed to clean her; she was a part of him, and his mind was so blank he had to fill it with something. He tried not to think about what Pole had said. Pole and Mahina together: he tried not to believe it. He tried to keep the other part of the past where it was, in the darkest corners of his psyche, where after twenty-five years he had thought it would remain for ever. How could Pole have found out?

  But he had a soldiering past, the Australian SAS: he must have retained good contacts, soldiers always did. Then there was his wife, the American lawyer, not to mention the massive business that backed them. That was all beside the point. Pole knew and there was nothing John-Cody could do about it. He stood on deck at Deep Cove, the mountain and the bush rising above the water in a primeval silence that still took his breath away. But he imagined hunters and fishermen piling down the steps to his boat, clambering all over the deck and dumping rods and rifles against the lockers. That or deportation. Was Pole serious? Of course he was. Perhaps he should get in touch with immigration himself before Pole did. But how could he do that? The outcome would be the same. Pole was right: there were people who would like to talk to him back in the United States. Perhaps he should just bide his time and see what happened. Maybe Pole didn’t know as much as he hinted at. Maybe he was guessing and using his best guesses to bluff; some men could be spooked just by a good bluff.

  Again he was back on that first highway out of New Orleans, guitar in its case, thumb hanging out for a ride. Texas and Arizona, New Mexico: his guitar playing earning his crust until the FBI caught up with him in McCall. He was too old to face all that again: there was too much water under the bridge. He looked across the cove where the land rose vertically and he heard weka calling their young; he trembled as the thought of swapping this for a prison cell tripped across his mind.

  He didn’t move the boat, just left her moored where she was, the only vessel in the fiords that didn’t take any fish. He thought about all the fights he and Mahina had been through to keep this place as it was: the ongoing battles with people who were operating illegally, racing up to dolphins and seals without a marine mammal viewing permit; the bigger battles with people like Pole and others who had been before him, and the biggest battle of all about the boundaries of the park and why they suddenly shifted in 1978.

  On the morning of the fifth day Libby called him on the radio. He was down in the engine room and didn’t hear her at first, but the whistle and crackle of static rain through the speakers had a knack of working its way into his consciousness even if he was deep in the bowels of the boat. Something made him come out and he heard Libby’s call sign. He climbed the for’ard steps and picked up the handset.

  ‘G’day, Libby. Where are you?’

  Libby heard his response and her heart lifted. A week had passed since she had spoken to him and she had taken the floatplane back to Dusky.

  ‘Oke Island. I followed the pod up Wet Jacket Arm.’

  ‘How’s it going down there?’

  ‘OK. I know I’ve said the opposite before, but the more time I spend with these guys the more I think the pod is matriarchal, not patriarchal after all.’

  ‘You figure Spray’s in charge then, not Old Nick?’

  ‘I think he thinks he’s in charge, but in reality she is.’

  ‘That sounds familiar.’

  Libby laughed. ‘There’s something else, John-Cody.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve identified four males that seem to be a bit detached from the pod, at least that’s what my initial findings tell me.’ She paused as a dolphin came right up to the boat and lifted his snout to whistle at her. ‘I think there’s cross-fertilization going on, a coalition.’

  ‘You think that’s why Quasimodo visits?’ John-Cody asked her.

  ‘No, Quasi’s something of an enigma. When he’s here he’s very much part of the fraternization. He doesn’t hang out with the four pals I mentioned just now.’

  John-Cody was silent for a moment. ‘It’ll take years to figure out whether or not you’re right, Libby.’

  ‘I know. And we don’t have years, do we?’

  John-Cody was silent. ‘Have you seen Ned Pole down there?’

  ‘Not this week: all’s been quiet this week.’ Libby looked at the clouds drifting above Herrick Creek. ‘What happened with Pole, John-Cody? You took off straight afterwards.’

  Again she felt the weight of his pause. ‘I didn’t so much take off,’ he said. ‘I had things to do over here, Lib. The Kori’s a full-time occupation, if you don’t keep on top of the rust it creeps up on you.’

  ‘Alex said you just stormed off.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I just came over the hill. When are you back in Manapouri?’

  ‘This afternoon. What about you?’

  ‘There’s no more charters planned. The weather’s getting colder.’

  He squinted at her then. ‘And that’s a compliment? It sounds more like an indictment of the rest of them.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Libby made an open-handed gesture. ‘I’m in no position to judge.’ Silence. She looked up at him. He had pinched his cigarette between forefinger and thumb and was watching it bu
rn down. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, because no-one could ever replace Mahina. Could they?’

  He looked in the fire, then lifted his eyes to her as if some form of explanation was required. ‘She was more than my lover, Libby. Mahina was my whole life. She taught me everything I know about this place, every last detail. She taught me to see things in a way I’d never done before. Made me realize there was more to life than just making a living, just getting what you can. We used to talk into the night, sometimes all night. We took her boat into the sounds and we’d walk in the bush together, barefoot mostly, naked sometimes like people from a time long past.’

  ‘Adam and Eve,’ Libby murmured, ‘in the last garden of Tane.’

  John-Cody stared at the flames licking round a log. ‘Can you sense that, when you’re down there in Dusky?’ He knelt beside her. ‘When you’re alone with the water and the forest and the clouds can you not feel that, Libby? That sense of things beyond us, things that are hidden and lost but out there just the same.’

  Libby laid her hand over his. ‘John-Cody, sometimes I think I can sense the Tuheru.’

  He stared at her for a long moment and all at once she shivered. ‘Supper Cove at night: just me and the hut creaking in the wind, rain on the roof and the mist gathered above the estuary. It hangs like a shroud down there; in the early morning the cloud is so low, so wispy you’d swear the forest was on fire.’ She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think I’m mad, but I’m sure I’ve heard the dimly seen people whisper.’

  He gazed across the fire at her. ‘You believe they’re there?’

  ‘Fairy people!’ Libby snorted. ‘Of course not: there’s no such thing.’ She paused for a moment and stared at the fire. ‘That doesn’t stop me hearing them though.’

  John-Cody put more wood on the fire, suddenly glad that Libby had come round and broken up his thoughts like she had. He considered the letter in his pocket and thought about telling her, but it was not her problem. He passed a hand through his hair, longer again now but with the ends broken still. Libby sat where she was, watching the movement in the fire, neither of them speaking. John-Cody clipped the end of his cigarette and laid the butt on the hearth. ‘Is Bree in bed?’ He could no longer hear music through the walls.