High Island Blues

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I suppose Julia’s working is she?’ Rob persisted mischievously, ‘now Sally’s off your hands?’

  ‘Not paid work,’ Oliver admitted. ‘Voluntary things. The Red Cross… WI. She’s a magistrate. And music takes up a lot of her time. She sings in rather a good choir.’

  And costs me a fortune, he thought with resignation, with her car and her dresses and her position in the village to keep up.

  ‘I’m surprised she found time to come with you on this trip,’ Rob said. Oliver looked at him steadily, recognizing the sarcasm, failing to rise to the bait.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he replied. ‘ She deserves a break, you know.’

  The margaritas were served in glasses like goldfish bowls. After a month of abstinence in the Middle East and a long flight, Rob felt the alcohol kick into his system. It was like being a student again, pissed for the first time. He felt suddenly emotional. He wanted to tell Oliver he was a stupid bastard. It wasn’t too late to leave Julia. He’d given her twenty years of his life and he could walk out at any time. Rob would stand by him. But he said nothing and they sat for a moment in silence.

  ‘Do you guys see much of each other?’ Mick asked at last. He had a peculiar hybrid accent, West Country English crossed with Texan twang, still hesitant. ‘ I mean, perhaps it’s strange to have a reunion at all if you two spend every weekend birding together. I mean, I hope you’re not here just because of me …’ His voice tailed off. Perhaps he realized that it sounded as if he were soliciting some declaration of friendship. He’d never been able to take that for granted.

  ‘No,’ Rob said. ‘We don’t meet. I live in Bristol now. That’s where the travel agent I work for is based. And I’m abroad a lot, leading trips.’

  He looked at Oliver, challenging him to give another explanation for their failure to keep in touch, but they were called through the tannoy system to eat: ‘Brownscombe. Table for Brownscombe.’

  They pushed past the crowd on the porch towards a waiter who led them into the building. Inside it was noisy and even hotter. Fans whirred on the ceiling but had little effect, except to add to the background sound. A teenage girl was celebrating her birthday. As they took their seats all the waiters and kitchen staff paraded to her table, banging pots and pans, singing and whooping.

  Outside it started to rain. There was a crack of lightning. The lamps flickered then a white light shone briefly on the manic procession dancing back to the kitchen. The three men sat at a small table next to a window now streaming with rain water. They ordered fajitas because that was what Mick recommended, and while they waited they pulled tortilla chips covered in melted cheese from a pile and covered them in salsa. Rob asked for a Corona beer. Then there was a silence as they stared at each other again, saw each other for the first time as middle-aged men.

  ‘And business is doing well for you, Mick?’ Oliver asked politely. He might have been at one of Julia’s charity cocktail parties. ‘ I must say you seem to have settled down out here. Environmental consultancy, is that it? That seems to be taking off in the UK, too. We’re representing a firm involved in a wind farm in Northumberland. They’ve been hired to do the environmental impact assessment. Quite a lucrative contract actually.’

  ‘We have some business in the UK,’ Mick said. ‘But Laurie looks after that. She’s the driving force in the relationship.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I’m just her gofer.’

  ‘Laurie should be here.’ Rob spoke so sharply that they all looked up at him. ‘She was there, at Oaklands, when we discussed it, wasn’t she? It might even have been her idea. “A reunion in twenty years time,” we said. “ High Island in the spring with the migrants going through.”’

  Mick looked uncomfortable. ‘I guess when we discussed it we never thought one of us would end up marrying her,’ he said. ‘ Not really. She’ll be at High Island tomorrow.’

  I never imagined Mick would end up marrying Laurie, Rob thought. Mick, short and squat, dark as a tinker, and about as articulate. He pictured her the first time they’d seen her, walking down the straight road from Winnie, rice fields all around her. She was wearing a sleeveless vest, ripped jeans and scuffed boots. A stained leather cowboy hat hung by a thong round her neck and binoculars were slung over her shoulders like a cartridge case. She stuck out her thumb for a lift and the atmosphere in the clapped-out hire car changed. Each of them wanted her. This was what they’d hoped would happen all along. A real American adventure.

  The fajitas came, with refried beans, more salsa and tortillas. They ate hungrily. Airline meals, Rob said, were always crap. He should know. He was an expert. He hadn’t eaten anything decent since London the day before. He never ate on planes. They all relaxed. They talked about university, the paranoid Polish landlady in their first year digs.

  ‘She could smell a girl in your room through two closed doors,’ Oliver said.

  ‘And it was always fish fingers for breakfast on Fridays,’ Mick and Rob said together.

  They laughed. It was a safe subject. They said they should have done this years ago.

  When the meal was finished Rob and Oliver phoned for a cab to take them to their hotel. Oliver and Julia were spending the night at the Galleria Marriott too. Mick phoned for Laurie to collect him. She was in the office, he said. Working late. It was only round the corner. He didn’t explain why he didn’t have a car, or offer the others a lift.

  Laurie’s car arrived before the cab but it was still raining and she didn’t get out. They had a tantalizing glimpse of her through the steamed-up window, a profile against the street light, a brief wave. Then she drove off very fast.

  Laurie drove home in silence and Mick wondered if he had done something to upset her. He found it hard, these days, to judge her mood. It was still raining and already the flash flood-water was collecting in the playing fields by the side of the road.

  The evening’s reminiscences had triggered his memory of another rainy night. It was more than twenty years ago and he was driving down a Devon lane overgrown with campion and bramble and dripping cow parsley. The summer after university had been wet and business in the holiday trade had been bad. His father had taken the lack of bookings as a personal insult. He had blamed the charter operators with their cheap flights to the sun, the weather forecasters who prophesied gloom and his son for planning to run away to America.

  In Wilf Brownscombe’s eyes university had been bad enough, though he had taken some pride in seeing Mick’s graduation picture in the North Devon Journal Herald. And why zoology, which was no use to man nor beast? Certainly not to an overworked businessman running a holiday complex. He’d been pleased when all that was over and Mick had come home to take some of the work off him. Then the boy had the nerve to say that he wanted three months off the following year to go bird watching in America. What sort of interest was that for a grown man anyway?

  ‘It’s before the season really starts Dad,’ Mick had said. Wilf had thought it was pathetic really. Sometimes he wished his son would lose his temper, shout, behave like a real man. ‘Easter’s late next year.’

  ‘Still busy though, isn’t it? Still work to be done. Still your mother and me that’ll have to do it all,’ said his father.

  So that summer and autumn, Mick had worked from dawn until the early hours of the following morning. He drove through the rain between the sites accumulated by his father: the new hotel which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Torremolinos, the Marisco Tavern in the village by the sea, the caravan park on the headland. Supervising his father’s empire, proving that he wasn’t a waster, earning his three months leave without pay, his holiday with the only friends he’d made at university. He’d even given up birding that autumn. There’d been a red-eyed vireo in the churchyard at Lee. It had stayed for a week, even made the local paper. He’d not bothered going to see it.

  He’d been on the plane though, with Rob and Oliver. He’d escaped in the end.

  In the cab they hardly spoke. Oliver made a polite enquiry about Rob’s tr
ip to the Middle East. Rob answered shortly then sat back in silence, not sulking exactly but not prepared to make small talk either. He was too tired. What he’d really like was to go on to the hotel bar, have a bit of a session with Oliver, cut through all that politeness and reserve. In the air-conditioned iciness of the hotel lobby he was about to suggest it, but two members of his tour group had been waiting for him. They accosted him immediately. Oliver gave him an amused wave and sauntered off.

  They were a couple, in their early sixties. They looked rather dowdy and out of place. Tiredness and anxiety had made the woman shrill and complaining.

  ‘Where have you been then?’ she demanded. She grabbed hold of Rob’s arm, as if she were afraid he would run away and leave them again to the mercy of strangers. Suddenly embarrassed she let it go.

  ‘I explained at the airport. I’d arranged to meet some friends for dinner.’ He gave her his professional smile, though looking beyond her he watched Oliver disappear into a lift.

  ‘Well really. I don’t think that’s on, do you Russ? Personally accompanied by expert staff, that’s what the brochure says. I didn’t fancy America anyway though Russ was keen when he got his early retirement. You see all those things on television. Riots and murders. I don’t know how any of them sleep in their beds at night …’

  She stopped abruptly. She had lost the point of her complaint. Her eyes were red and she looked exhausted. This would be a big trip for them. Perhaps they had never flown before. She’d probably not slept much in the week before leaving home.

  ‘Russ is the birdwatcher,’ she said. ‘I’m only here for the trip.’

  ‘We’ll have to make sure you enjoy it then,’ Rob said gently. ‘What’s the problem?’

  The problem was the shower tap in their bathroom. They couldn’t get it to work.

  ‘You could have asked the hotel staff,’ Rob said.

  ‘I know, but I didn’t like to. I’d have felt such a fool.’ She was quite sheepish now, saw that she’d blown the thing out of all proportion, was prepared to laugh at herself.

  He went with them to their room and showed them how to turn on the shower, watched their amazement at the power of the water jet.

  ‘It’s how the American’s like it,’ he said.

  ‘Is it?’ she said. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘I’ll see you at breakfast then,’ he said.

  ‘You will be at breakfast?’ Her anxiety returned.

  ‘Of course. Then the bus will take us to High Island.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘ that I lost my temper.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he replied, smiling again. Some people thought West Country Wildlife Tours only kept him on because he could charm the old ladies.

  ‘It’s just that it means a lot to us, this trip. We’ve been waiting a long time for it,’ she finished.

  Chapter Three

  Mick and Laurie Brownscombe lived very much like their neighbours. They had a large house set away from a wide road. There was a pool in the back garden and a garage with automatic doors and room enough for an Explorer and a little Toyota. None of this was considered excessive. Laurie might once have dropped out of school and made her living in ways she wouldn’t want her kids to know about but now she was a regular mom in a regular neighbourhood. On the surface at least.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Mick said. He waited for Laurie to lock the house and set the alarm.

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘What about the kids?’

  ‘I’ve told you. The kids’ll be fine. It’s all arranged.’

  She waited for him to get into the driver’s seat of the Explorer. Two women in shorts, wearing towelling sweat-bands, walked down the street, arms swinging. Mick was distracted for a moment. It still seemed strange that in Texas walking was a form of exercise, not a means of getting where you wanted to go. For that you used the car. Reluctantly he returned his attention to Laurie.

  ‘It seems kind of tacky,’ he said. ‘ They’re my friends.’

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You got to hustle.’ It was a joke between them, a catch-phrase, but he didn’t laugh.

  ‘Not my friends,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ she said, losing patience with him. ‘I’ll do the hustling. OK?’

  He shrugged. He knew there was no point in arguing.

  ‘Things aren’t easy right now,’ she said, ‘and you wouldn’t want to lose all this, would you?’ The sweep of her head took in the house, the car, the yard.

  ‘I guess not,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to be popular.’

  She grinned. ‘You think you’re popular now? You ended up with the girl didn’t you? They’re both as jealous as hell.’

  ‘You like that don’t you?’

  She laughed again. ‘ Sure I like it. You watch. I’ll have them eating out of my hand.’

  He looked at her helplessly but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. He drove down the I10 past the glittering skyscrapers of Houston and through the flat land towards the coast.

  Rob Earl stood at the front of the bus and spoke to the party. He used a microphone because he knew from experience that at least half of his audience would be hard of hearing. It was that sort of group. He’d led trips to High Island before, usually as part of a Texas package for keen birders, taking in the Big Bend and Laguna Atascosa at the same time. This was a new venture, a gentle introduction to the Upper Texas Coast based for ten days at High Island. There would be no long bus trips and no early starts unless the punters wanted to get up to make the most of the migration on the reserves.

  The tour didn’t come cheap because the accommodation was good, and Mary Ann could charge just about what she liked in the spring. Birders came from all over the world to the peninsula, and there weren’t that many places to stay. The Gulfway Motel was booked from one year to the next. Besides, Oaklands was something special.

  The party was much as he had expected considering the nature of the tour. There were a lot of retired people. Most came from the West Country where the independent travel agent for whom he worked was based. He recognized a few familiar faces, people who had travelled with him before. There were plenty of experienced birders, but few fanatics. He relaxed. This would be easy. They wouldn’t be hard to please.

  ‘High Island isn’t an island at all, of course. It’s a small town, close to the coast, raised slightly above the surrounding wetland. I believe it’s all of thirty-nine feet above sea level. Hardly a mountain, of course, but distinctive enough to be attractive to birds.’

  There was an appreciative, slightly superior chuckle from his audience.

  ‘There are four main birdwatching areas on the Upper Texas Coast: Anahuac, a National Wildlife Refuge which has more than twenty-seven thousand acres of marsh, the Bolivar Flats, an area of saltmarsh and beach, and two Houston Audubon Society Sanctuaries in High Island itself – the famous Boy Scout and Smith Oaks woods. We’ll spend time at each depending on the weather. What we need are strong, turbulent head winds to meet the migrants as they fly north from the Yucatan peninsula. That should result in what we call a fall and the Americans call a fall out. If that happens it’ll be the most spectacular birding experience of your lives: thousands of tired migrants seeking shelter in the woodlands on the reserves. From a personal point of view I’ll be watching the weather forecasts very carefully. I first visited High Island twenty years ago and I’ve never experienced the ideal conditions for a classic fall. Then on Sunday there’s the Easter Bird Race or Birdathon which will benefit a number of environmental organizations. Oaklands has been asked to put up a team. I’ll be around for volunteers later in the week.’

  He sensed that the passengers’ interest was wandering. They were tired and they wanted to see birds, not talk about them. He sat down. The group dozed.

  The couple who had accosted Rob in the hotel the night before waved at him shyly to catch his attention. He walked up the swaying bus to sit besi
de them. After a night’s sleep they were apologetic and wanted to chat. They needed to be reassured that he bore no hard feelings for the outburst of the night before. Their name was May. Russell had worked for the South West Electricity Board since he had left school and he had taken early retirement with quite a decent redundancy pay-out soon after the company was privatized.

  ‘We couldn’t have afforded it otherwise,’ he said. ‘Not a trip like this.’

  He seemed dazed by his own good fortune. He’d watched all the slide shows of other chaps’ travels. Never thought he’d actually see those American warblers for himself.

  Connie had been a cook in a small private school. She retired with Russell so they could spend more time together. ‘The boys bought me ever such a nice bunch of flowers when I left,’ she said. ‘But there was nothing from the school. Not even a thank you.’

  This was what it was like at the beginning of a trip. Everyone wanted to tell Rob something about themselves. Each traveller wanted to be special, not just another anonymous tourist. Usually these confidences irritated him – he was paid to show them birds not listen to their life stories – but today he was feeling mellow, even sentimental. He asked the Mays if they had children. That was where these conversations usually led. To proud descriptions of offspring, their work and qualifications, to photographs of adored grandchildren. But Russell and Connie only looked at each other and he sensed a tragedy, a terrible gap in their lives. No, they said. No children.

  ‘We’ve got friends in Houston,’ Russell said as if that were some compensation. ‘Old neighbours who moved out to work with British Gas. We thought we might hire a car, spend some time with them. Connie would like that. It would kill two birds with one stone you might say. A few ticks for me and some gossip for Con. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t put you out?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Rob was expansive. ‘It’s very relaxed where we’re staying. Just treat it like home.’