Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Jonah.’

  John-Cody lay in his bunk, aware of the murmur of conversation coming from the bridge. The illuminated hands of his watch told him that Jonah was on watch now but Libby hadn’t yet come down to her cabin. He lay on his back, his eyes on the pattern thrown by the curtain on the ceiling. The diesel sound was so familiar he normally never heard it and the rushing of the sea was ingrained in his veins. Yet tonight he heard it all, the slow hum, the rumble of water on steel. It resonated through his head as if just to remind him, to plague his memory and chew at his emotions. He was going to the place of desolation and solitude, where the dawn chorus resounded with the myriad voices that Fiordland once had echoed. He was going where southern right whales courted one another, where they mated and gave birth. He was going where Hooker sea lions commanded the beach and the albatross the sky. He was going where a history of man and the sea grew up like nowhere else, where one had battled the other and often perished trying.

  He should be contented. All was familiar, yet he didn’t feel contented; he felt alone and lost and confusion stalked his mind like a restless unwelcome guest. He tried so hard to think of Mahina: since this new situation reared its head he had done nothing but focus on Mahina. She was his past, his link to everything they would take from him. But she was dim now, dimmer than she had ever been, and that feeling disturbed him more than any other.

  He lay there trying to think about her, trying to recall lost moments of love, the passion between them, but Libby crowded his mind. He had sensed her earlier, lying so warm and close in the berth just a pace away. He thought of her then like he had before, in the homestay when he imagined her naked under the shower. He thought of her when he’d sneaked a glance as she dried off in front of the heater or came out of the aft shower with a towel covering her breasts. Shoulder, arm, thigh, glimpses of nakedness that set something moving in him he thought he would never feel again. In twenty-five years he had never once thought of being with another woman. They had been so complete, he and Mahina, so utterly drawn to each other that the thought of another woman’s body, another woman’s scent, was anathema. But now, even with all this hanging over his head, he found himself drawn to Libby physically: he wanted to sit near her, stand near her, watch her, bathe in her aroma when she occupied his air space. He was conscious of the movement of her mouth when she spoke, the animated gestures with hand and arm as she articulated one thought or another. He watched the line of her nose, the smooth beauty in her cheeks, the way her neck arced into clavicle. During the summer he had found himself appreciating the strength in her limbs, the line of muscle in hamstring and calf. He listened when she spoke, recognizing the same authority with which Mahina had spoken.

  Shivers had run the length of his spine when he listened to her talking of Supper Cove at night and the whisper of the Tuheru in the darkness. Never in his life had he heard them or imagined he had, but Mahina spoke of them all the time and here was matter-of-fact Liberty Bass replicating what she said without knowing she had said it. He thought of the way she had moved barefoot in the bush that time on Sealers Beach, the way the dolphins accepted her almost as one of their own. The parallels were scary: he had no idea whether they were real or whether he was just seeing them because he wanted to. Did he want Mahina back in the form of another? Was that what this was about? Did it matter? How could it matter? But if it didn’t matter then why was he going through this pain, allowing these thoughts to course in his head like a river that had burst its banks?

  He heard her coming down the steps and he wondered for a second if she would pause and gaze at him as she had done before. Her back had been to the light and he had not been able to see her eyes and felt sure she could not see his: she wouldn’t stare so openly without speaking if she could. There had been a silent beauty in that moment. He thought about what Alex had said to him about Libby, how it was a girl thing to recognize when he had been oblivious. He had watched her more carefully after that and had seen nothing to change his initial opinion until she stood and gazed at him tonight.

  She came down the steps now and glanced in his direction, but this time she didn’t pause and he could hear Jonah moving about on the bridge. Libby went next door and he sat up to listen as she undressed, but the engine thundered in his ears and he heard nothing else. But he counted the seconds, imagining the time it took to wriggle out of jeans, socks and T-shirt and slip into the comfort of that bunk. He lay back against the pillow, throat suddenly dry and amazed at himself.

  EIGHTEEN

  JOHN-CODY TOOK OVER the watch at six and Tom went back to his bunk. At seven Libby stirred and, wrapping herself in her dressing gown, she climbed the aft steps and found him sitting at the table drinking coffee. The boat dipped and rose against the horizon and the swell kept the sideways motion even, but the sea was not rough and Libby had found her sea legs.

  ‘Morning,’ she said.

  ‘Morning. The coffee’s still hot if you want some.’

  She poured herself a cup and reached down into the cold store for some milk.

  John-Cody had a bilge pump switch in bits on the table before him. Libby held the coffee mug to her breast and stood by the starboard door.

  ‘You like it there, don’t you?’ John-Cody said to her.

  She looked round. ‘It seems like a good place to stand and I get to keep my balance.’

  He came and stood next to her. ‘You didn’t need to get up. Tom and Jonah won’t be about for a while yet.’

  ‘I was awake.’ Libby flicked the hair back from her face. ‘How far away are we now?’

  ‘Fourteen, fifteen hours or so.’

  ‘Will the weather hold?’

  He leaned on the dashboard and peered at the horizon. The light was growing and the sky remained clear. ‘It should do. But you never know down here. The closer we get to Port Ross the worse it will be. The currents have a habit of running opposite to the wind, which makes for interesting seas. Storms can blow up really quickly.’ He smiled again. ‘But we’ll be fine once we’re actually in Port Ross.’

  ‘Do you think the whales will be there?’

  ‘They’ll certainly be on their way. We might bump into one or two as we go south.’

  ‘And dolphins?’

  He made a face. ‘You never can tell with the dolphins. I’ll let you know when we reach the area where I generally see them.’

  He poured more coffee, crossed to the business side of the bridge and glanced at the autopilot, then moved it a few degrees to port with the changes in the current. Libby watched him, noting the catlike balance in his movements. He was at home in his domain; this was his turf and he was more comfortable here than anywhere else. She imagined him being calm in the foulest, most treacherous weather. She realized then just how safe she felt. There was a sense of security that was not just about his being skipper of this boat. It was strange to contemplate: she had not thought much about security in the past; it was not something she had felt she needed, having lived pretty much hand-to-mouth for as long as she could remember.

  An hour later the radio crackled and she heard Bree’s voice through the speakers.

  ‘Korimako, Korimako, Korimako. This is the Kori-base. Do you copy, Captain?’

  Libby glanced at John-Cody. He was smiling but his eyes were tight at the corners. He went down to the chart table and picked up the transmitter. ‘Reading you loud and clear, Bree. How are you?’

  ‘Good, thanks.’

  ‘You sound like a Kiwi, love.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘You’ve obviously been hanging out with Hunter too long.’

  ‘I could never do that. What time is it there?’

  ‘Same as it is with you. Are you waiting for the bus?’

  ‘Yes. Where are you?’

  ‘Fourteen hours north of the Auckland Islands.’

  ‘Wow. You’ll be there tonight then?’

  John-Cody looked at his watch. ‘Yep, we should drop the old flounder bomb at about
nine o’clock.’

  ‘You mean the anchor, the old Bruce.’

  He laughed again and he said he missed her. ‘I’ll get your mum. Stand by.’

  He handed the transmitter to Libby and went back to the bridge. The jib was luffing badly so he clambered into his wet gear and slid open the port door. The deck was slippery, washed by the sea with each belly roll in the troughs. John-Cody bent to the winch and checked the tension in the sheet. The wind howled in his ears, the chill chewing his flesh and the engine vibrating through the deck at his feet. He loosened the sheet a fraction: the wind kicked out the luff and the sail billowed full. He glanced at the sky and thought about running up the mizzen, but he would need Jonah for that. It could wait. He stood up and crabbed his way across the rolling deck to the chain locker where the claw was rattling. He stowed it behind the winch wheel and made it fast.

  Then he stood up and the wind was in his hair and the spray licked his face as the boat plunged into another trough. Waves broke over his boots and washed the length of the deck. He stood for a long moment staring ahead and feeling suddenly very alive: he could taste the salt in the air. He could smell the special scent of the sea, more than just salt — the richness of it, the depth, the moisture and the cold, indescribable in any exact terms. A cry to the port bow made him look up, both hands gripping the pulpit rail, and he saw a black-browed mollymawk bank into the wind like an aircraft turning sharply. The bird descended low to the waves, dipping in and out of the troughs, then lifted close to the bows and soared over John-Cody’s head. He stood and watched and marvelled at its perfect dynamic flight and its ability to use the differing wind speeds to carry it. The bird could stay in the air for five thousand kilometres and still gain enough weight to feed a chick.

  He faced the horizon again. Their course was due south till land was in sight, then a fraction east — they would need to skirt the squalls that raged along the North East Cape. That was ages away yet though, another full day’s sailing.

  A whale blew off the starboard bow and he looked round to see if Libby was watching; he saw her standing in the doorway, holding on to the rail. He turned again as the whale blew a second time: two separate streams of air expelled fifteen feet above the waves in a distinctive V shape. The whale rolled in the water, the waves breaking over its back in blue and green and whitened foam like surf thrashing rocks on a beach.

  Libby joined him, pulling her jacket around her, picking her way across the middle of the deck. The boat bucked and rolled and John-Cody held out a hand for her, clasped her fingers and drew her to him as she stepped over the chain locker.

  ‘A southern right,’ she yelled. ‘V-shaped blow.’

  He nodded. All baleen whales had two blowholes as opposed to the single one of the dolphins. But the right whales and their cousin the bowhead were slow-moving and the twin blow came up as distinctive streams, whereas the rorquals, blue, fin and sei, tended to blow in a single coalesced stream. The V-shaped blow was how you identified a southern right from a distance. Together Libby and John-Cody watched as the whale dived, then a few minutes later surfaced again, blowing harder this time. Libby thought about the power in those great breaths. The whale replaced 90 per cent of the air in its lungs during respiration; humans used only 13 per cent. She turned to John-Cody and tugged her hair back where it was whipping about her face.

  ‘You know, every time I see a whale I always think the same thing,’ she said. ‘I can’t help remembering they once lived on land.’

  John-Cody made a face. ‘Maybe when we’ve messed things up completely we’ll evolve the same way.’

  He stayed on deck when she went back inside. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands round his petrol lighter against the wind. He remembered the last time he had seen a southern right whale in the open ocean, when he and Mahina came south with a film crew who were making a documentary about the town of Hardwicke at Erebus Cove. The town that never was, Hardwicke had been a whaling settlement designed to hunt the very creatures that now returned to spawn in safety one hundred and fifty years later. For four hours they had watched a pair of southern rights courting just north of Port Ross. Later when the crew was filming in Davis Bay the two of them had wandered beyond the boat shed and the World War II depot, where the lookouts were posted, to the cemetery. There they had stood in the rushing of the wind to remember all those who had died trying in vain to tame the islands.

  He pinched out his cigarette and put the butt in his pocket, then he turned to go back inside and saw Mahina at the port door leeward of the wind. He stood for a moment, the shock standing out on his face. Then he realized it wasn’t Mahina but Libby.

  Inside with the door closed the wind was quieter and the constant hum of the engines took over. It was almost eight o’clock now and John-Cody could hear Jonah below decks. Libby had gone to take a shower and he glimpsed her as she stepped out of her cabin with a towel wrapped around her. For a moment just now he had been unnerved, mistaking her for Mahina like that. And all at once a terrible thought struck him. What if he hadn’t let Mahina go? She had stayed to watch over him for a year, so much longer than she should have, but after that he had to let her go: that was their agreement. What if he’d broken that agreement? What if he still held her — a prisoner between two worlds, unable to enter either?

  That thought was still with him as he sat at the chart table checking by radio for other vessels in the area, when Libby came out of the shower. He could raise no-one locally, but Bluff Harbour told him the Moeraki was heading south in the next twenty-four hours. Libby clipped the door back and he turned and saw her, wrapped in the bath towel, hair wet and her skin crimson from the heat of the water. Her shins were smooth and her tiny feet arched like a ballet dancer’s. She rubbed moisture off her nose and sniffed the smell of cooking in the air.

  ‘Jonah’s making breakfast,’ John-Cody said. ‘How does bacon and eggs sound?’

  ‘Wonderful. I could eat a horse.’ She went into her cabin and he turned back to the charts. She sat on the edge of her bunk, one foot against the wall to keep her balance, and rubbed at her hair with the towel.

  ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for Bree,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘That’s OK.’ John-Cody swivelled round on the stool and caught sight of the underside of her thigh where her foot was raised to the wall.

  ‘She loves being with you.’

  ‘She prefers Hunter.’

  ‘That’s different, John-Cody. You know what I mean.’ Libby blew out her cheeks. ‘I still feel so bad about those letters. God knows how long she’s been writing.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad.’ John-Cody stood up. ‘I told you before, Lib. We make our choices, stand by them and do the best we can. You love Bree. That’s obvious to anyone. You’ve done the best you could for her. Besides, maybe writing the letters like that was actually good for her: maybe it helped her deal with stuff. It’s upsetting for you, I can see, but I don’t think it does any harm.’

  ‘You really think that?’ Libby looked troubled, disturbed, and the disturbance was in her soul, echoing perhaps his own. ‘There’s lots of stuff I’d like to have done differently.’ She sat back so the towel fell a little lower, exposing the swollen tops of her breasts.

  ‘We can all say that. We do what we do, Lib. We just do what we do.’

  He lifted the top of the chart table and cursed lightly under his breath. Libby got up and came over.

  ‘What is it?’ She leaned next to him, keeping the towel in place with her free hand.

  John-Cody was holding a rubber-encased compass with the needle spinning wildly. He shook his head. ‘I meant to replace this. I even laid it out the last time I was on board.’ He sucked breath. ‘That’s what comes of walking round with your head stuck up your ass.’

  Libby wanted to ask him what he meant, ask him about his mood, this new and terrible silence that had come over him. But he tossed the useless compass aside and climbed the steps to the bridge.

  The dolph
ins were not where John-Cody had hoped they would be. He, Tom and Libby all scanned different parts of the horizon but couldn’t spot them. The waves were too high to see them blow, and they were relying on sighting the animals themselves. But they didn’t and Libby was filled with a sense of disappointment, which was odd considering her background and her knowledge that there was nothing as unpredictable as a marine mammal. She was quiet for a while and went below to consider what implications this new situation had, if any, for her research.

  An hour later John-Cody called her back to the bridge and pointed through the for’ard windows. Libby stood and stared and the excitement bubbled again in her breast. The day was dying slowly and black clouds pressed the horizon, jagged at the edges and heavy with threatened rain: but the rays of sun still burned, cascading in ribbons of frayed light. Three huge rocks thrust skyward from the ocean and beyond them she saw the broken height of a coastline.

  ‘That’s the northern coast of the Auckland Islands,’ John-Cody said. ‘Welcome to the Sub-Antarctic.’

  The darkness gathered now and Libby felt the swell shifting again under their feet. John-Cody was watchful, moving between GPS and radar like a leopard pacing a cage. The clouds unleashed their rain, which fell at an angle of forty-five degrees, buffeted and blistered by the wind, rattling over the Korimako like firecrackers. Jonah battened down the hatches in the galley and he and Tom brought in the jib, their wet-weather gear running with water when they came back inside. Libby took both sets down to the engine room and hung them up on the line. Behind her the massive Gardner engine thundered on relentlessly. She could smell diesel and oil and salt mixed in a cocktail that made her feel suddenly nauseous.

  Back on the bridge John-Cody was steering east of the north coast, where fur seals bred at Three Cave Bay and shags nested south of the North East Cape. Libby opened the starboard door a fraction and could hear the booming of the waves as they rolled in breakers twenty feet high to crash against the crags and send columns of water racing vertically up the cliff face. The sea boiled white and grey and yellow as black ridges of rock sharp as serrated knives broke open the waves. John-Cody moved behind her, almost touching her; she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck.