by Will Adams
– Don’t say that, Emilia!
Rebecca put a hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out. Her ache wouldn’t wait any longer; she needed to go home. She dressed and wrote a note for Therese, set off. Eden was just twenty minutes away along the track, but it was spooky and treacherous by night, so she went along the beach instead. The dunes glowed like snow. The sand here was sacred. The locals used it for divination and scattered it around their houses for protection against witchcraft. She kicked off her sandals, let her feet sink into the dry cold talc. Pale shore crabs sensed her approach and rose to flee, their moon-shadows instantly giving them away. Then they hunkered down and disappeared again, their colouring a perfect match for the sand. How could you keep out memories in a place like this? How could you remain detached? Her father had once sailed her and Emilia south to a beach with darker sand and correspondingly darker crabs. He’d released a bowl of these albinos, so luminous suddenly, so visible to predators, their deaths now assured. Rebecca had known intellectually about the survival of the fittest before then, but for the first time she’d understood it in her gut, had appreciated the full savagery and elegance of natural selection.
She drew closer to Eden. Now even the trees were familiar, the frown-lines of seaweed on the beach. Memories thronged, crushing as crowds. Adam hoisting her on to his shoulders, bellowing and charging into the surf. The tingle of sand on her palm as she’d patted the walls of castles, then the tide sapping the walls. Waging jellyfish wars with the local Malagasy boys. Scouring shallows and rock-pools for molluscs and shellfish. The way Adam had turned grey and old after Yvette’s death, as though an organ had failed. And, yes, that brutal first time she’d caught him staring at her with his face all twisted and sour, and she’d realised with heart-stopping clarity that her beloved father, the giant of her childhood, the Great Man Himself, hated her.
II
Davit found Claudia washing shirts in a large tub, squeezing them out before hanging them on a line stretched between two cabins, while a wizened Malagasy woman on the porch watched her closely, as if hoping to find fault.
‘Work, work, work,’ said Davit.
‘Work, work, work,’ agreed Claudia, wiping suds from her nose with the heel of her hand.
He nodded at the old woman, not wanting to cause trouble. ‘May I borrow Claudia, please?’ he asked. ‘Only I’ve a problem in my cabin.’ Claudia translated for him; the woman nodded sourly. They walked off together down a darkened path towards the beach.
‘What problem?’ she asked.
‘No problem,’ he assured her. ‘I just wanted to get you alone.’ She smiled with such guileless pleasure that he couldn’t help but smile too. ‘But I do have a question. A favour.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes?’
He told her about the pirogue with the Western Union sail, how he and Boris wanted to know where it had gone. She assured him she’d ask around later, for she still had a shift to do in one of the local bars. He looked at her in astonishment. ‘You’ve still got another shift to do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Work, work, work,’ he said sadly, because he was beginning to realise it was true.
‘Work, work, work,’ she agreed. Their gazes met for a moment; he touched her hand. She gestured back along the path to the high mound of clothes that still awaited her, then she nodded goodnight and went to wash them.
III
Eden. What else would you call the garden paradise of Adam and Yvette? Rebecca had always found her father’s sense of humour suspect. The reserve comprised some fifty hectares of spiny forest, including eight kilometres of coastline, but its heart was this natural clearing in the forest, accessible by a short drive from the coastal track. It was dark and empty and smaller than she remembered, but otherwise unchanged.
To her right was the lodge, a large and sturdy one-storey building of whitewashed stone that housed her father’s office, the clinic, the dining area and a few other rooms. Her father’s old Jeep was parked in front of the veranda, along with the track-bike he’d used to reach places even the Jeep couldn’t go. Ahead of her, chairs and tables surrounded the outside cooking area, while a clothesline doubled as a badminton net. And, to her left, the generator annexe and cabins raised on stilts to keep them dry during the occasional fierce rains. Adam had built pretty much all of it himself, with modest help from the local villagers (the world’s least reliable workforce: they’d drop tools in a heartbeat whenever the fish started running). Her father had loved such work, fitting stones together like jigsaw pieces, learning the different properties of the local woods, the hard cassave for houses and masts, the light farafatry for boats. His eyes would glitter as he’d demonstrate how to twist faraihosy bark into rope or tap babo for fresh water.
She went over to the lodge, but it had a new steel front door, perhaps in response to the recent coup. There were new steel shutters too, closed and bolted, denying her access. She’d just have to wait until morning, borrow keys from Therese. The cabins were unlocked, however. Her father’s was closed only on a latch. There was a white candle by his bed. She lit it, held it up. The place was filled with poignant reminders of him: silver hairs caught in a comb; a black-and-white family photograph of them all together; drawstring blue pyjamas beneath his pillow.
She went back out. The night had grown perceptibly cooler and the stars had all vanished. Bad weather was on its way. She was tempted to head back to Pierre’s, but she needed to see Emilia’s cabin first. Michel’s cradle was by her bed, brightly coloured mobiles of reef-fish dangling low above it. Her heart gave a twist as she recalled the morning, a year or so ago, when Emilia had phoned to let her know that she was pregnant. She’d tried to offer congratulations, but her words had come out strangely hollow. Afterwards, too dazed to work, she’d left the office and had walked for hours. In a bookshop, she’d picked out a paperback on motherhood, had made a wall of her back to hide it from the CCTV cameras, as though it were the most lurid pornography. It had been a rush just to cradle it in her palm: the sharp-edged springiness of its leaves, the creak of its spine, that intoxicating scent of newness. Every day for a week, she’d visited a different maternity store, running her hands over the displays, the silk and satin trickling like fine sand through her fingers. It had been madness. She’d been too well known. Shoppers had murmured with staff; rumours had begun to circulate. An ambitious morning TV presenter with glittering eyes had asked her flat out whether she had exciting news to share. Rebecca had had to tell her about Emilia. It was the first time she’d volunteered information about her family on television, and because her father had once been a TV presenter himself, her childhood had suddenly been in play.
‘What was he like, your father?’ the woman had asked.
Rebecca had simply frozen. How to answer such a question? Was she supposed to talk about the gentle, wise man he’d been before the leukaemia had taken her mother? Or the sporadic drunk he’d then become, the red-faced ranting machine who’d yelled at her and threatened her with his fists? Was that the man she was being asked about?
His abuse had lasted years. He’d felt wretched after each episode, had vowed never to lapse again. But he always had. And, anyway, it hadn’t been the yelling or the threats that had most upset her, it had been the knowledge of the hatred that underlay it, not least because she hadn’t the first idea what she’d done to deserve it, and he’d never said. And while part of her had been glad that Emilia had been spared his wrath during these outbursts, another part of her had bitterly resented the manifest unfairness of this, and so she’d begun in turn to pick on her younger sister, something for which she’d come to hate herself.
In the end, they’d colluded on the solution. Adam had pulled strings with his old Oxford colleagues to get Rebecca a place to read zoology. Distance had allowed her heart to heal, but the scarring still remained. For years afterwards, Rebecca had refused any direct contact whatsoever with her father. But Emilia had eventually brokered a wary truce, a first t
entative exchange of letters, emails, even the rare phone call. But whenever either Emilia or Adam suggested anything more, Rebecca would freeze up, the process would be set back months.
In the bottom of a chest of drawers, Rebecca found a home pregnancy kit and a packet of domperidone, a lactation stimulator. Rebecca smiled. Emilia had been planning for motherhood all her life. Where other girls had wanted breasts to titillate the boys, Emilia had only ever wanted them to gorge her babies. Where others had fantasised about their life partners, Emilia’s dream man had always been one who’d get her pregnant and then leave.
– Pierre! How could you choose Pierre?
– A woman needs to be held.
– But Pierre!
– A child needs a father.
– But Pierre!
– As if your choices are so much better.
Outside, she heard an engine. She went to the door, saw headlights through the rain that had started falling. Pierre back from Antananarivo, no doubt. But then the lights went out and a pickup truck lurched with unnerving stealth up the drive. She stepped back out of sight, blew out her candle. The pickup swung around; its engine stilled. Both doors opened and two men jumped down, faces concealed by baseball caps and scarves. They hurried through the rain to the lodge. To Rebecca’s shock, they unlocked the front door and vanished inside, making her wonder whether they’d taken keys from her father and Emilia, and had come here to plunder the place while they knew it would be deserted. She watched the pale fireflies of torchlight flutter around the edges of the shutters as they moved through the various rooms. It would be madness to go challenge them by herself, but there was no reason not to check out their pickup, make a note of their licence plate. Her T-shirt was a treacherous bright white, however, so she tiptoed quietly over to Emilia’s chest of drawers and began searching for something dark.
SIXTEEN
I
The charm of his moonlit walk had long since worn off for Knox. His feet were either plugging in the soft sand or stumbling as he negotiated rocky hummocks and tangles of mangrove. When he took off his shoes to wade across an inlet, something snakelike slithered from beneath his sole. He lifted his foot so abruptly that his dive-bag swung on his shoulders and he fell sideways into the water, yelling out a heartfelt curse.
The night grew cloudy, cold and dark. He took off his pack, pulled out his diving lamp. He reached another rocky outcrop, treacherous with spume. Lightning flickered ahead. A miniature whirlwind brought a hoop of dust and dead leaves towards him, whipping and twisting and bowing. It began to rain, light patters at first, but quickly growing strong. He looked for shelter, but there wasn’t any. He fought his way past more mangroves and then kept going, a hundred paces at a time, the rain growing heavier around him, the lightning drawing closer. He was on the verge of giving up when he finally saw a small white building ahead. Its door was locked and its awning offered precious little protection. He shone his lamp through the small window, revealing diving gear hanging up on the far wall and a compressor for filling scuba tanks. He surely had to be close to Eden now.
Hurrying on with renewed energy, he soon reached a sign directing him up a track to a clearing of wooden cabins and a large, low building. He hurried between parked vehicles to the shelter of the veranda, was surprised to see that the front door was ajar and that torchlight was flickering inside, as though there’d been a power-cut. He shouted out as he put down his bags, and two men appeared a moment later, wearing baseball caps and scarves around their mouths, obviously up to no good. They yelled out and charged at him, knocked him backwards off the veranda. Knox slapped instinctively at an ankle as it passed, and one of the men went sprawling. He leapt upon him but the second man came back and aimed a kick at Knox’s face, forcing him to defend himself, allowing his companion to squirm free. They ran for the pickup, locked themselves inside, started it up and sped away, spraying watery mud all over Knox as he gave chase. Then they turned south along the track and vanished.
He tramped back to the veranda. A woman in dark clothes came out of one of the cabins, plastic sheeting over her head. For a glad moment he thought it was Emilia, that she was safe after all; but then he realised it was her sister Rebecca instead, the one person Emilia had made him promise never to breathe a word of the Winterton project to. She came over to him, looking concerned. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Who were those guys? What the hell’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. I was in one of the cabins. They just showed up.’ She looked at the open door. ‘They had a key.’
‘Just as well,’ said Knox. ‘I’m drenched.’ He squelched his way inside, kicked off his shoes.
‘Matthew Richardson,’ she said from behind him.
He looked around, startled that she should know his name, only to see her crouched down by his bags, reading his tags. ‘Everyone calls me Daniel,’ he told her.
‘The Maritsa?’ she frowned, still reading. ‘Is that a ship or something?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know the name,’ she said. ‘Why would I know the name?’
Knox hesitated; but if she’d heard of it, a lie was almost certain to rebound. ‘It’s a salvage ship,’ he told her. ‘They’re doing a project up near Morombe.’
‘That’s right,’ said Rebecca ‘I read an article on it. Looking for some Chinese shipwreck, right?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘What were you doing up there?’
He hesitated again, reluctant to be drawn into all these lies. But he didn’t see what choice he had, other than to betray his vow to Emilia. ‘I’m a freelance journalist,’ he told her, borrowing a trick from Lucia. ‘I was up there to write an article on the salvage.’
‘And is that why you’re here too? To do an article on Eden?’
‘I’m always looking for strong stories,’ said Knox. ‘But mostly I’m here because I’ve got a few days off, and I’d heard great things about this place.’
She pulled a face. ‘I’m afraid we’re really not set up for visitors at the moment.’ Then she looked out at the continuing downpour, and relented. ‘But you can stay tonight, of course; and there are some nice guest cabins just along the beach from here.’
‘Thanks. That’s really kind.’ A pool of water was gathering around his feet, making him realise just how filthy and wet he was. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a shower I can use, is there?’ he asked.
She looked bleakly outside. ‘I think I’d need to turn on the generator.’
‘Then don’t worry about it,’ he told her. ‘The Good Lord provides.’ He took his wash-bag and towel from his bag, went out on to the veranda, closed the door behind him, then stripped naked and strode out into the deluge to wash.
II
Rebecca lit an oil lamp, turned it up bright and looked around. A red guestbook and a wire tray of leaflets stood upon the high counter. Spare keys hung from a rack behind the desk. A menagerie of snakes, chameleons, butterflies, tortoises, birds and lemurs stared back at her from framed photographs on the walls. The intruders had left damp footprints on the floor. She followed them to the door of her father’s study, looked inside. It was much as she remembered, save for the laptop upon his desk. The camp-bed was still in the far corner, for those occasions when Eden had been overrun by volunteers; and his shotgun was still in the glass cabinet behind the desk. She quickly checked his shelves of books and CDs, but there were no obvious gaps from which something might have been taken.
She went back through reception. The front door had blown ajar, revealing that the downpour outside had grown incredibly fierce, so that the ground was half covered in shallow lakes, and great serpents of dark water were slithering away on the slight camber of the site. Daniel had his back to her, rainwater running down his back before splitting like a delta at his buttocks. His shoulder was ploughed by the distinctive ridges of burn scars, with more upon his back, but there was little else wrong with him that she could se
e.
He squeezed a stubby caterpillar of toothpaste on to his brush, held it out into the rain, threw back his head to let water drum into his mouth. Lightning lit him up like Christmas, glinting off the silver chain around his neck, illuminating the tattoo of a star on his right biceps, reflecting in twin yellow points from the tapeta-rich eyes of night creatures around the clearing. Thunder cracked; raindrops hammered like furious dwarves at the earth, throwing up tiny coronets with each impact. Daniel didn’t even flinch. She suffered, then, something like premonition; a certainty that there was more to this man than met the eye, that somehow he’d have a part to play in her life.
The door blew closed again. She shook her head at herself, went through to the main room, a large, openplan mix of cafeteria, games room, lecture-hall, library and dormitory. She’d sleep in here herself tonight, put Daniel in her father’s office. The kitchens next, then the restrooms, storeroom and clinic. Nothing seemed out of place, though she’d been away too long to be sure. Daniel was in the lounge when she went back through, wearing an olive T-shirt and baggy blue shorts, holding an oil lamp of his own that made his skin glow. ‘This may sound crazy,’ he said. ‘But don’t I know you from somewhere?’
She gave him an appraising look. Men often tried to pretend they didn’t recognise her; it seemed to make them feel better about themselves for some reason. But if this one was lying, he was good. ‘You may have seen me on TV,’ she told him.
His eyes narrowed, then he snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘You’re Rebecca someone. Rebecca Kirkpatrick. You do wildlife programmes.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘Cool.’ He sat down on one of a pair of armchairs hunched around a low table. ‘So what are you doing out here? Are you on a shoot, or something?’