by Barbara Vine
We walked across grass, through a little grove of spruces, out the other side on to more grass. The verges along the fiords had abounded in flowers, the chocolate lily, the botanist from Florida had told us, the aquilegia, the dwarf dogwood. Bushes were in fruit with the salmonberry, dream raspberries, twice the size they should be and the colour of a tangerine. But there was none of that here, nothing but short coarse grass, mosses and tiny ferns. The place was quite barren, the soil no more than a skin over the rock. Nothing had ever been seen there but the ancient traces of Backbite, and here they were, this was what they were, this was what we had come for.
A plain of light grey rock, smooth yet faintly striated, with a look of running water petrified, the appearance of rock upon which the passage of ice has acted, as I was beginning to learn. It was as if the ice had stroked it, as a great hand might stroke and caress hair, but I knew the action must have been more severe, violent, savage, fiercely erosive. Down the centre of this smooth, sloping rock platform, Dacnospondyl had passed towards the sea, leaving behind five fossilized prints. They were plainly prints, no doubt about them, beautifully preserved footmarks, pads and claws outlined, bone pressure apparent, proof of the reptile’s existence, legends made alive.
Ivo began to recount how they came to be there, what disasters, ecological and to Backbite fatal, had brought into being this record. Eric Krupka took notes, though I suppose he could easily have got the facts out of any encyclopedia. Elianne started complaining that the prints were too deep for her to make a rubbing.
‘Take a photograph instead,’ Ivo said.
‘It’s not the same.’
‘You could draw them on your rice paper. You could make a drawing and frame that.’
‘Oh, wow!’ she said, as if he had made a suggestion of startling originality.
‘Is there any chance,’ asked the feminist’s boyfriend, ‘of old Backbite here having survived? I mean, like that Loch Ness Monster you have up in Scotland?’
‘None at all,’ said Ivo. ‘There are positively no extant lizards of this type.’
‘OK, but a hippo looks a hell of a lot like a kind of dinosaur, so how about that?’
Ivo only laughed. ‘Right, you’ve an hour to wander round in and take photographs. And if you do see her, mind you get a shot of Dacnospondyl. You’ll make history.’ He often became facetious when he was unhappy. His irony, his funniness, deserted him. His eyes were turned on me and they were full of pain. Not just pain, though, pain and determination, an intention of seeing it through, perhaps getting even, keeping me to himself at whatever cost.
As I’ve said, I hadn’t brought a camera with me. I’m a rotten photographer, anyway. It suddenly seemed terrible to me that I had about fifty minutes to kill before we could get back in those Zodiacs. I was wasting time here, time that ought to be spent in finding a way to thwart Ivo and keep him from travelling with me to Seattle. I walked away from the others. They were all still occupied in photographing the footprints; in the case of Dr Ruffle, making a film of everyone looking at the footprints and preserving their stares for posterity on his Camcorder.
Their voices were soon lost. There must be something about Chechin Island, some phenomenon of the acoustics, that deadens sound or absorbs it into the silence. As if it were a living thing, the deep quiet swallowed sound and rested. It rested and seemed to be waiting, the silence and the stillness lying there on the wide grey waters, no other land in sight. Winds rise and fall away there as fast as the clouds drop and lift. For the time being, the wind also rested and lay still.
I walked over the smooth rock, through the grass, through the groves of spruce and hemlock, to the other side of the island, the side from which the Favonia was not visible. There was no water on Chechin, fresh water that is, not a pool, not a spring. I don’t know why I noticed this because it’s not like me, perhaps my unconscious mind perceived it.
Mostly, at the edge of the sea, we’d seen marine life, shrimps and small crabs, clams and limpets. Nothing of that kind lived along the shores of Chechin. I peered through the water on to bare round stones, free even of seaweed. The sand was pale and glittering, the kind they call silver sand, and it was undisturbed by currents, it lay like a smooth floor under water as clear as that from a tap run into a glass. For a long way out I could see the sea floor, the water was so transparent.
And then, unaccountably, I was afraid to look at the sea any longer. I, who had lived by the sea for most of my life, was afraid of its extent, its mystery and its potential for death. It occurred to me then, for the first time, though many times since I’ve thought of this, that this huge element is a lethal weapon. All that is necessary is to give yourself to it, or be given, and it will do the rest.
So I turned my back on the sea and walked inland, across sheets of scree, over slippery moss of a green so bright that it hurt the eyes. I came up under the stony stem of the Chimney of Chechin and laid myself against it, holding it in my arms, my face against its cold rough granite. And up there it was as if the sky was pulling back from the earth, all the mass of grey and white cloud drawn up very high, so that a vast space of fresh icy air hung between me and it. I felt the stirrings of a breeze, the touch of it on my skin, and I saw the hemlock branches sway a little. An eagle flew, and so silent was the island that the sound of its wings was thunder.
If I’d stayed there I’d have been overtaken by the Donizettis and the Ruffles, whose voices I heard as they approached. The chattering sounds broke the silence like some violent act in a peaceful place. I climbed down the rocky platform and into the densest growth of shrubs on the island. After that I simply walked aimlessly, feeling the cold almost to the point of shivering, walking because I was too cold to stand still, sometimes clutching hold of a branch, sometimes touching a smooth, shiny tree trunk. And all the time I was thinking of Isabel, of reaching her unsupervised, unattended by a vengeful man, I was thinking of Isabel and I was thinking of money.
It was with a shock that I came upon Ivo. He too was alone. The cold never much affected him, he who loved ‘draughts’ and open doors and wide open spaces. He was sitting on a boulder, looking down, an aquilegia between his fingers. It must have been the only one on the island. I don’t mean he had picked it, he was the last man to do that, but he was holding its stem and looking at the flower, its stamens and its rabbit-mouth shape, so rapt that I think I could have passed by and he not seen or heard me.
‘Ivo,’ I said.
He lifted his head. ‘At a loose end?’
I knew that tone. He often used it, implying that I was such a slave to bright lights, drink and entertainment as to be impatient with the natural world after about five minutes.
‘I want to talk to you,’ I said, though I hadn’t thought I wanted to a moment before, I hadn’t seen what purpose talking to him would serve.
‘About what? Please don’t say “us” in that coy way you favour, putting your head on one side like Princess Diana. I don’t think I could bear it.’
I was used to taunts of that kind. You can get used to any verbal abuse. Coquettish behaviour was always being attributed to me when he was angry, though I don’t think I’m ever coy or effeminate. Ivo used to say, sneering at me, that if he wanted femininity he’d go after women.
He took his hand from the orange flower and got to his feet. ‘What is it then?’
‘I want you to let me go,’ I said. ‘Go back with the ship to Juneau and leave me to go on alone.’
‘And then?’
‘There won’t be any “then”. Not for us. It’s over, Ivo. I have to make you see that it’s over whether you let me go or come on with me. Coming with me would only be a postponement. It’s over anyway. What difference does it make to you whether it’s over tomorrow or over in three weeks’ time? Inside my head it’s over, it’s been over for months. If you know I don’t want to be with you, why do you want to be with me?’
‘I’ll tell you. Because I don’t believe you know what you want. You’re
a frivolous lightweight, you’re not a serious person, you live for the moment. At the moment, because you and she had a jolly time together, you think you want this woman. But you don’t know her, and, God knows, she doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know that after a few months of her you’d be off chasing boys or even coming to me.’
‘That’s an absolute lie,’ I said.
He took no notice. ‘Do you think she’d want you if she knew what you were really like?’
The cold air touched me like a knife point. ‘Ivo, you wouldn’t tell her?’
‘About “us”, as you put it. Of course. Why not? How do you know she doesn’t know already?’
‘How could she?’
He took a step back. He was standing with his back to a giant spruce and he laid his hands on its trunk. ‘What did you intend to use for money on this trip to visit your lady love? Taking it, for instance, that you made it alone?’
‘Tell me how she could know?’ I said. I was trembling. He saw and it made his lip curl up. ‘Tell me what you meant?’
‘It’s not a usual name. There can’t be many Isabel Winwoods in America, still fewer in Seattle. Don’t you think I could have found where she lived quite easily?’
‘You’re making it up,’ I said. ‘You can’t have written to her.’
He shrugged. ‘Very well. I can’t have. Telling her is still to come then, is it? You haven’t answered my question about money. Did you think I was going to give you enough money to get you to Seattle and live on when you were there, pat you on the head, say, “Bless you, my child. Be happy with your sweetheart”? Did you?’
It was stupid, it was childish, I shouldn’t have answered him, but I did and made things worse, made things terrible. ‘You said you’d pay for me before we started. That was the condition. You wanted me to come and you said you’d pay.’
He stepped away from the tree and came closer to me. Suddenly he got hold of me by the front of my jacket and pulled me towards him. ‘Go on.’
‘Let me go, Ivo. What d’you mean, go on? That’s all, I’m only stating the facts. You don’t think I wanted to come on this cruise, do you? I knew I’d loathe it and I have. I’ve hated every bloody minute. I’ve never been so bored and miserable in my life. I came because you wanted me to and I couldn’t have come if you hadn’t paid.’
He didn’t let me go. He held me there in an iron grip so that I forgot about being younger and stronger. I shuddered. It made me lose caution. ‘I may as well tell you, I’d have gone home that first day in Juneau, I’d have gone home if the airline had let me use my ticket. I tried to go,’ I said, ‘and what stopped me was meeting Isabel.’
Letting go of my jacket, he struck me in the face with both hands, a hard slap on each side of my face. I staggered back with a cry. I put one hand up to my face. He smiled.
‘If you want money,’ he said, ‘I suggest you sell yourself in Vancouver. I can give you an address where they arrange these things. You’re a bit long in the tooth for what they want, but after dark and if you keep the rates low …’
I hit him as I hard as I could with my fist to his jaw. It was the first and only time I’ve ever done that, hit someone. The noise bone on bone made was quite loud, a crack. The blow hurt my knuckles. He didn’t cry out or even grunt. He looked surprised, utterly astonished, as he buckled up and fell, his head making another crack against the tree trunk. Ivo hardly ever showed surprise. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen an expression on his face so near amazement.
At first I was aghast at what I’d done. I hadn’t meant to do that. There flashed through my mind film scenes in which men hit each other over and over, on and on, and keep coming back for more. Perhaps it was only like that on film. My own face still stung and throbbed where he’d slapped me.
I didn’t touch him. I stood there for a moment, perhaps thirty seconds, looking at him. He was unconscious, lying on his back. A trickle of blood ran down through his black hair from where he’d hit his head on the tree. I said, ‘Ivo,’ but it was as if I hadn’t spoken, he made no sign.
I turned and ran. As I came down towards the beach I saw a Zodiac pulling away. It was then, for the first time, that I was aware of how the wind had got up and how rough the sea was, not dangerously rough, but choppy, a mass of little energetic waves. The Donizettis and Betsy were putting on their life-jackets but none of the others was anywhere to be seen. I walked down to where they were and where the second Zodiac was, drawn up on the beach, laden with life-jackets.
Was I thinking? Was I planning? Or was it all reflex and reaction, self-preservation? I don’t know. I only know that I wasn’t reasoning. It came to me as a natural act to take the life-jacket numbered 76 and, with it in my hand, climb up the greensward to look for the Krupkas and Fergus. In the lee of the Chimney of Chechin, where no one could see me, I put the life-jacket on under my waterproof and re-zipped it. I went back to the Zodiac. Fergus had come. Eric and Margie Krupka came, running, breathless, they hadn’t meant to be late, but it was all so fascinating, so overwhelming …
‘Where’s Ivo?’ Fergus asked, wading in, pulling the Zodiac off the beach.
‘He must have gone in the other boat,’ said Mrs Donizetti.
My voice sounded hoarse and thin but no one noticed. ‘He went in the other boat,’ I said.
‘OK. Now are we all here?’
Fergus gave his arm to Mrs Donizetti to lean on as she stepped over the heavy rubber flange that ringed the Zodiac. He gave his arm to Elianne. Eric Krupka, scorning aid, stumbled and nearly fell into the sea. Even on the edge of the shore, the Zodiac rocked and bobbed on the excited water, the waves lapping and sucking and making slapping noises. I expected Ivo to appear at any moment, at every moment. My own life-jacket strapped round me, turning me into a fat man, I was the last to enter the Zodiac. I needed Fergus’s arm, for I was shaking like someone with a high fever. He asked me if I was cold but I shook my head. I said nothing.
The sky was like no sky I’d ever seen, a huge sweep of grey cloud across which black cloud streaked as if a comb had been drawn through it. I kept my eyes fixed on the place I’d come from, where I’d left him, or, rather, on the approach to that place, for the sandy ground, the mosses and the grass were hidden, only the top of the tall spruce was visible above an undergrowth of hemlock. In there he was, he still was. I said those words to myself and I shook, but I didn’t think. Fergus pushed the Zodiac out and jumped in, the engine spluttering, then roaring into life.
They go fast, those Zodiacs, when they have to. We described a great curve across the water, then headed for the Favonia. It was very rough. Margie Krupka said she was frightened. She held on tight to her husband’s hand and with the other to the guide rope. We were all supposed to hold that guide rope but I couldn’t, not with my shaking hands. Elianne Donizetti began singing some boating song she’d learnt at school.
Chechin receded from us fast. All the mist was gone but the rain started before we reached the ship and the straight icy shafts of it hid the island behind a curtain of steely rods. I stared back at it. I stared at what I could see, a long grey thing, without features but for the pillar sticking out of its middle, the Chimney of Chechin, a spire, a broken column, a pointing finger. It was just a shape now, an ugly and sinister shape, the colour of the paler cloud, afloat on a rising sea. The rain streamed down my face and slid in rivulets over the waterproof clothes. I looked at the island and resolved not to look back any more, not to look at the sea again.
We went aboard the Favonia. No one saw me take off one life-jacket, then another, and hang them both up. Everyone was too busy talking about the heavy sea, the storm that was coming. I turned disc 22 over to black and then I turned disc 76.
A great bolt of lightning split the sky into two halves, a tree of electric shocks. The thunder clap was immediate and the rain began in earnest then. Serious rain, Connie Dorral called it, meeting me on the stairs as I went down. She was one of those people who are excited by a storm, her eye
s glittering, her breathing short. I could tell she wanted a companion to share her excitement, to watch the lightning and the heaving sea with her, but that companion wasn’t going to be me. I ran from her, down the stairs. The rain beat against the windows so hard that you couldn’t see out of them. I didn’t want to see out, I was sticking to my resolve not to look at the sea again, ahead of us, behind us, around us, not to look. I was thinking again.
The Favonia’s anchor went up with a long shuddering clanking roar. It was as if the thunder were rumbling under the sea as well as above it. The whole ship juddered as the anchor was sucked into its bowels. In my cabin I sat on my bunk and shook and thought, he won’t come, he can’t come now.
15
If there had ever been a night in my life when I needed to get drunk it was that night. But I didn’t. That night was the beginning of my drinking a lot less and of becoming just like anyone else who likes a drink sometimes. Not a drunk, not an alcoholic, not an endangerer of the only liver I’ve got.
I don’t know why this was. It was as if I knew nothing would help, nothing would change things. Oblivion, which is the usual goal, wasn’t even a wise thing to aim at. On a crude level, I had to keep my wits about me. This gives the impression, of course, that I was just a brute thinking of his own skin, of covering his tracks, of saving himself, and at that point I was. One part of me was, and the other part was simply disbelieving. I hadn’t done that, I couldn’t have, I’d wake up soon.
At first, in that first hour after we got back, I was sure they would realize and go back for him. He’d be missed at lunch. Someone would ask me and I’d have to say I didn’t know. It was the only thing I could say. The ship was rolling and I understood that this was a storm, we were in a storm at sea. It was raging round Chechin Island and it was here with us, as we made our twenty knots or whatever it was. I’d had no lunch, I hadn’t been able to contemplate it, I’d stayed in my cabin, curled up foetally on the bunk while the little ship bounced and sank and bounced on the rough sea. The last thing I expected was that I’d sleep, but I did, I fell into a heavy sleep, and when I woke up it was nearly four.