She’s annoyed with him now. ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ she blurts out.
He stops stock still then and turns to her. ‘But I am talking to you.’
‘You know what I mean. You’ve said nothing about last night. I want to know what you’re thinking.’
‘Why?’ His voice is suddenly bitter. ‘Why is my opinion so important now, when it’s obvious you never thought so before?’
‘Of course I care what you think.’
‘Then why have you based our marriage on a pack of lies? How do you think it makes me feel that you never trusted me enough to tell me that you had a daughter?’
What happened to the man who held her in his arms last night, who had stroked her forehead and told her it wasn’t her fault?
‘I thought you might despise me.’
He has taken his glasses off and his eyes are blazing. ‘You know that’s not who I am,’ he says.
She wilts under his gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Henry. I was frightened.’
‘It’s not the fact that you left your daughter behind that bothers me,’ Henry continues. ‘I think I can understand why. It’s the fact that you never told me. Jesus! How can you think our relationship is real if you’re unable to tell me something as important as that?’
She’s unable to answer him. Beads of sweat mix with tears. She holds her sides and cries, ‘I was afraid of losing you!’
A stray child stares at her, then scampers off down the dusty road.
‘No, Greta,’ Henry says calmly, unmoved by her tears. ‘You know I would never have judged you. I think you were just afraid to acknowledge your daughter in our life. It’s a shame, a goddamned shame.’ He sighs and walks on. She stands on the road, shattered, sticky with chocolate and guilt.
He’s right.
She tries to smile at the children playing in the icy water as they launch the boats, but she feels weak and withdrawn. Nevertheless, the kids wave them off, and one little girl even gives her a small red bloom. Greta tucks it inside her jacket.
They travel up the east coast of Flores, staying close to the shore and out of the tide. She gazes at the plump sea stars clinging to the rocks and smells the fresh coolness of the air as they drift into a narrow passageway. Henry paddles alongside her in his familiar steady rhythm. She’s afraid to look over at him. The noise of the splash from their paddles sounds suddenly loud now that they’re out of the wind. They push silently forwards, emerging into open water. What they see is a stark reminder of the real world. Far away in the distance are the scars of clear cuts on the hills, a few broken stumps of trees remaining. Greta can sense Henry’s body stiffen. She knows this place means a lot to him.
The trees are Henry’s cause, maybe even his priority in life. When the anti-logging campaigns started he would go missing for weeks. He even got arrested over it. She had gone on a couple of protests, but most of the time she had stayed at home, feeling out of place among Henry’s environmentalist friends. Henry always said that they had won the battle but not the war.
The sight of all this destruction stirs him to speak. ‘Would you just look at that?’ He slams his paddle into the water. ‘You’d think it was all for nothing,’ he growls.
Greta wonders how long it took them to destroy this forest – three, four years? – something that had taken thousands of years to form and now can never be replaced.
As they gradually move away from the depressing view, they head towards one of their favourite spots – Shark Creek. Today, though, Greta finds it hard to enjoy the sight of the waterfall cascading over the rocks, shielded on either side by high mossy walls and falling into a small icy pool. Usually it thrills her and she can’t wait to immerse herself in its freezing froth.
They tie up the boats and Henry gets out the camera, taking pictures of the giant firs surrounding them. Greta fiddles with her laces; she’s not sure whether she wants to swim now.
‘You’re not going in?’ Henry asks, surprised.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I feel like it.’
‘But you look forward to this every year. You always say it’s the highlight of the trip.’
‘I can’t just switch off and forget what you said to me back at the store,’ she snaps.
‘What did you expect, Greta? How could you think that I would be okay with what you told me?’
‘But you said it wouldn’t change anything. You said that you loved who I was now, that you didn’t care about my past.’
Henry picks up a stick and rubs it between his hands. ‘I know I said that, but I never guessed that you would have hidden something so huge from me. It hurts me that you kept it from me.’
She huddles on a rock and the waterfall crashes behind her. ‘I know.’ She bows her head. ‘It was stupid.’ Then she looks up and stares into his sharp blue eyes. ‘But what do we do now?’
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. I can’t get my head around it. And then when I look at all this I think, does it really matter at all?’ His arms swing wide and take in their surroundings – the cascading water and stately trees.
‘Can you forgive me?’ she asks.
‘It’s not about that,’ he says. ‘I don’t have to forgive you for anything. It’s just that you’re not my Greta any more. You’re not my girl.’
‘But I am,’ she pleads.
‘Look, I don’t want to talk about this right now. We’ll talk when we get home tomorrow. I just feel really tired.’
He walks off into the forest and Greta grips her knees. Why is it so hard for him to see her point of view?
She thinks of the story behind Shark Creek. Pregnant basking sharks would come into the grotto to give birth. To her eyes, it seems incredible that these huge creatures would have been able to fit in here. But Greta likes the story and the idea of a safe place for mothers and their young. She’s always felt something here – a presence that’s comforting, yet at the same time removes her from her body. She curls up like a cat on the rock, closes her eyes and listens to the rush of the water. She imagines it running through her, cleansing her.
It’s dusk when Henry returns. He taps her on the shoulder.
‘Greta, come on, we’d better get going. We don’t want to get stuck in the dark.’
They paddle through the sunset. Greta watches the colours of the sky reflected in the water as she’s licked by the sun. Maybe Henry’s right, she thinks. All her troubles are insignificant compared to these natural transformations. It puts her in her place.
CHRISTINA
Christina stands on the beach and looks at the ridge, a road running along the glacier-topped mountains. There is a white band of mist between its base and the sea, which stretches between here and the opposing peninsula in America. She imagines taking that road – following a trail, seemingly at the top of the world, wandering off into oblivion.
She sighs and drifts along the deserted beach. The sky is sparkling, open and wide, casting bright shadows all about her. Cian is in his element, climbing all over the driftwood, collecting pebbles and seaweed. Huge piles of discarded bleached pillars mark her way. Some are smooth and polished, others scaled with soft honeycomb.
She sits down on the stony beach and shifts her weight on the smooth broad rocks. She shades her eyes with her hands and watches Cian dancing at the edge of the water, making a tower out of his seaweed. His face loses its distinction and now he is just a child, dancing in the light.
Christina picks some dried seaweed off a stone. Not long now. Today she’ll be in Tofino and tomorrow her mother, and this man, Henry, will be back. She feels a tight knot in her stomach when she thinks about it.
Is she brave enough to go on? But maybe this is the easier option, maybe it would take more courage to turn around and go back home?
She sees Luke’s truck park on the road above the beach and watches him get out. He sees her and waves; she raises her hand limply. He had already gone out when she and Cian had got up this morning. He had paid for the B&B and left a messag
e that he would meet her down on the beach in about an hour.
He comes swinging towards her now, carrying a small package in one hand, a smile on his face. How could he be so relaxed?
She feels her mouth go dry and looks down. Cian runs over to him and jumps up and down. She looks at Luke out of the corner of one eye. He seems pleased.
‘I have something for you,’ he says to Cian and hands him the package. Cian opens it. A small red and white kite falls out. It’s the Canadian flag.
‘Cool!’ He rips open the packaging.
‘What do you say, Cian?’ she says.
‘Thank you, thank you!’
‘Do you want to fly it?’
‘Oh, yes please.’
Luke turns to her. ‘How you doing?’
She can’t look at him. ‘Fine. Actually, I’m a little cold. I think I’ll go and sit in the truck until you guys are finished.’
‘Don’t you want to play with us?’ Cian asks.
‘No, you two carry on.’
‘Come on,’ Luke says, holding out his hand. ‘It’ll be fun.’
She hesitates and looks up; her cheeks are burning. He smiles at her. His eyes are open and inviting, there’s no hint of retribution. Cian runs away down the beach, unravelling the string.
‘Luke,’ she says, ‘about last night…I…’
‘It’s okay, Christina.’ There’s nothing patronising about his tone.
‘I was drunk,’ she says.
‘Alcohol makes you do things you wouldn’t do normally, for sure,’ he says.
‘Is that why you don’t drink?’
‘Yep. Teri and I, we drank heavily, and you know, it never suited me. It makes me very sick.’ He taps his head. ‘That’s no good for anybody.’
‘Sometimes I feel depressed for days on end, and it’s only when I drink that I feel a little bit better,’ she says quietly.
‘But you know that’s a false sensation. There’s no truth in that,’ he says, ‘because it’s the booze making you feel down. You think you’re sober, but the stuff’s still in you, dragging at you.’
‘But when I’m drinking it’s the only time I feel good, vital, as if I can face anything.’
‘You can feel like that without alcohol or drugs. And that sure is a whole lot better.’
‘Is that how you feel then?’
He laughs. ‘No, not all the time,’ he says, then runs off towards Cian, who’s waving the kite in front of him. She follows, starting off at a jog, then chasing them.
The sea crashes to her right and the white light bounces off the rocks on the other side of her. They race like chariots up and down the beach, catching each other, laughing and falling in a tumble. At one point Cian climbs on top of her as she lies on the beach. ‘This is the best fun ever,’ he declares, then he bends down and hugs her tight, smacking a wet kiss on her cheek.
LUKE
Luke leans back and watches Christina and Cian as they dip their toes in the icy Pacific. Cian screams and kicks a spray at his mother, who moves neatly out of his way. Everything Cian says and does reminds him of Sam, of only last summer when they were hanging out on a beach in Oregon. That was their last summer holiday as a family. That was all Sam knew about family, yet there was a whole other side to it he knew nothing about.
Luke had been sent to the white man’s school, like his son, and at that point the link to his past was severed. He had been unaware of it at the time, just a vague sadness that he never got to see his grandfather any more. But he wanted to fit in and he had been popular at school, among his white friends and the white teachers. Yet he always knew there was a difference between them, something he could never shake off.
For a start, he was an orphan. None of his friends were without a father and a mother. His sister Gail was good to him, though strict, but as the years passed by she wholeheartedly adopted the customs of her white husband, Jeff. He wouldn’t allow them to talk about the old stories of the island, and it became harder and harder to remember them. They never went home and his grandfather came to visit them only once. It was a tense occasion and ended with words between the old man and his sister so that he never saw him again, not until he grew up.
If Luke saw a Nuu-chah-nulth image of a whale or a thunderbird there would be a sense of recognition, and his friends at school would ask him about being First Nation (as they called it), questioning him on the legends so that he began to feel ashamed that he couldn’t remember them properly. As a teenager he tried to hide his face under baseball caps. He was painfully aware that none of the white girls would date him, so he hid his embarrassment with alcohol. If anyone needed booze, it was Luke who could sort it out. He was always the joker at the party and usually ended up in a ditch, being picked up by Jeff in a rage.
On the surface Luke was accepted by all the other kids, but deep down there were age-old divisions. Couples like Gail and Jeff were rare.
Gail had warned him, whispering late at night, sitting on the end of his bed. Luke, just don’t marry a white woman, it’s too damn hard. She shook her head and stared at their mother’s quilt, so worn and old now the whales were peeling off it. Thank God we never had kids, she said.
But she didn’t sound like she was grateful. It was what split her and Jeff up in the end. Long after Luke had grown up and gone to live in Seattle, he had heard from his other brother, Pete, that Jeff had got a young girl from Tofino pregnant. She must have been half his age. Gail had finally gone home to the reservation, branded by the knowledge that she had always been to blame.
Luke returned to the island when he was sixteen. He was full of dreams of getting back with his real family and of learning the old ways from his grandfather, of finally living the life his father and mother had. When he got off Jimmy Star’s boat he was shocked to see all the new houses and the motorboats down at the harbour, the cars and the trucks. Now the reservation didn’t seem so different from Tofino at all.
He meant to go and see his grandfather first, but he felt so uneasy that he went and sat on the beach most of the day, getting drunk. He had two bottles of liquor in his bag, which he had brought with him.
He felt like a stranger in his own village. He felt completely dislocated.
When it got too cold on the beach, he had stumbled up to the cemetery and had desperately tried to find his parents’ graves, but all he saw were lots of little wooden posts, no names, and he cried with frustration and fury at himself for not knowing where they were.
It was too late. He swayed back down the track, past his grandfather’s house. He was too ashamed to speak to him now, and instead made his way to the harbour. The sun was beginning to set as Luke spoke to Jimmy Star, asked him to take him back to the mainland. He said nothing. He didn’t tell him he was drunk or nothing, didn’t try to tell him what to do, just nodded his head and said he’d be off in a while.
His grandfather found him just before he got on the boat. Luke hardly recognised him, he was so old and frail. He took his hand lightly, the way Indians do, stroked his fingers and sighed.
So you’re going, Luke? he said.
Yeah.
And will you come back to us one day?
I will, but I have to go now. He couldn’t say anything. He was unable to explain how it was, but he felt that his grandfather knew anyhow. He watched him board the boat without emotion. He raised his hand once and let him go.
At the time, Luke believed he would never go back. He was going to take on the skin of the white man, follow their laws and play at living their way.
Teri had never wanted to meet his family. She had married an Indian, yet she didn’t like Indians. She said that they were dirty and messy, ruining the look of the place where her parents lived, not to be trusted. She said that Indians were drunks. He had let her say all these things about his people; he had forsaken them.
He feels the pulse of the earth beneath his hands, the impact of the ocean against the land. He’s melded to the landscape, and as he inhales he takes wit
h him the scent of the sea, the taste of salt in his mouth, the blue plains of the sky. He realises that this is what the last week has given him – a sense of connectedness with his environment, which he had lost driving buses, living in Seattle.
And with this realisation comes a sense of stillness and peace because he knows now he no longer has to make a decision. His task is to bring Christina and Cian back, and if that takes him to his village, then so it will be.
Christina comes bounding over, breathless, and squats down beside him. She no longer seems tense. He’s glad. He doesn’t want her to run away from him too.
GRETA
She had agreed to go to the hospital because she was in so much pain and she thought it would help. Even Angeline had thought it was a good idea. But when they actually arrived she changed her mind. She remembered the sight of the huge grey prison. It sent a shiver down her spine and she knew she didn’t want to go in. She had asked Tomás to turn the car and go back home. But he wouldn’t.
When he parked he tried to get her out of the car and she started to cry and told him she didn’t want to go in. So he had said, ‘Just see what it’s like inside. It’ll probably be better than you think. Please, Greta.’ He had pleaded with her and told her she was so sick. Didn’t she want to get better for Christina?
Eventually she had got out of the car and let him lead her in.
But the fear was worse when she walked through the door, and she started to pull away from Tomás and cried out, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’
But he held her by the wrist. He was squeezing the blood out of her and she had never seen him so rough. Now he didn’t look or speak to her, but began shouting out to the people in the place. She heard the words ring out across the tiled hall, ‘Can I have some help here!’
She tried to tell them that she was all right, but they wouldn’t listen to her properly and her words got all jumbled up and she was crying and laughing at the same time because it was all so stupid. And she tried to keep her feet on the ground, keep her feet on the ground, keep her feet on the ground…
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