There was a cough behind them.
‘Can I talk to you about something?’ said Con.
The explorer bent over the oil tank. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘What’s on your mind?’
Con glanced at Fred. ‘Alone.’
The explorer didn’t look round from the engine, but he jerked his head at Fred.
Fred glared at Con, but turned to go. He was halfway across the city square when he heard her speak. She tried to whisper, but her voice was sharp and carried on the night air.
‘I’m not leaving.’
Fred turned in astonishment. The explorer was still methodically checking the engine. Fred stepped behind one of the trees that lined the central stone boulevard.
‘I’m staying with you,’ Con said. ‘I’ve made up my mind. Max needs to get to the hospital, but I don’t.’
‘I’m afraid you’re not,’ said the explorer. He adjusted a bolt in the engine.
‘I wouldn’t be any trouble. I’ve been saving my food, and I can eat spiders. I’ve got lots of dried meat, in my pockets.’
‘I know, I can smell it. And your face gave you away hours ago. There’s a hint, and then there’s an alarm going off on the ground floor of the Bank of England. Your face is a siren. I’m sorry, child. But you will be getting on that plane.’
‘I can’t! I just can’t.’
‘I know,’ said the explorer. His voice was very gentle. ‘But you have to.’
‘I’m better here. At home, sometimes, I wish people were dead.’
The explorer nodded, silent. He waited.
‘You don’t understand!’ said Con. ‘I wish it really hard. Sometimes I’m almost sick I want it so much.’
The explorer nodded again. ‘That’s something that the human heart does, Con. It bites. Don’t let it panic you. It will pass, that specific kind of wishing.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Between the ages of ten and sixteen I spent much of my time wishing half my class and most of my school masters dead, and all of them remained indubitably, frustratingly alive. Nothing bad happened to any of them. Though one of them, I believe, did move to Belgium. But that was as far as it went.’
‘But I need to stay here!’ Con’s face was pink. ‘It all makes more sense here.’
‘I understand. Although, of the four of you, I rather thought you were the least keen on this place?’
‘You’re allowed to change your mind!’ She was turning steadily redder: red at the ears, at the neck, and rising to her forehead. ‘I love it. I’ve never loved anything like this! At home it’s just – it’s all sit still and don’t touch. Everything has a cover, so I don’t get it dirty. Some of the covers have covers! People want me to be ways I can’t be.’
‘Yes. I know what that feels like,’ said the explorer.
‘But if I want to scream here, I can. If I want to eat with my fingers, or climb a tree, nobody stops me. I can sleep when I want to, and I can run if I want to.’ She looked particularly defiant at the last words, as if confessing a sin.
He seemed to swallow a smile. ‘You don’t have to go to the rainforest to do those things. They’re more to do with you than with the jungle. Pay attention to the world the same way you did out here. It will change the way you feel. Attention and love are so closely allied as to be almost indistinguishable.’
‘Please,’ Con whispered.
He sighed. ‘You need to go home because I don’t want people coming looking for you and finding you here. I cannot have people finding this place.’
He squatted down to look Con in the eye. ‘But know this. This is the first, and not the last, of your adventures. It’s not going to be easy for you. You will have to be honest: resist the urge to arrange your fears and angers at their most becoming angles. You’re not one who was born to ride lightly over the world. Do you know what a lion heart is?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. She was blinking hard.
‘People think it means brave – and it does – but it also means a heart with claws. That’s you. Con the Lion Heart.’
Fred stepped into their line of vision. He coughed loudly. Con whipped round and glared, a black glare of embarrassment.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were an eavesdropper.’ She began to stalk away.
Fred ran after her. He wasn’t sure if what he was about to do was a sensible idea. It might, he thought, get him elbowed in the face.
‘Con,’ Fred said, ‘where do you go during the holidays?’
‘I live with my aunt. You know that,’ she said aggressively. Then, after a long pause, ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Fred said, ‘it’s just, we’ve got a spare room. And my father’s always telling me to bring more friends home.’
‘Friends?’ said Con. A flush began to rise up her neck to her ears and cheeks.
‘Obviously,’ said Fred. ‘Friends.’
Lila woke Fred just before sunrise. The light was blue-grey, and her face was gaunt. She looked closer to eighty years old than twelve.
‘You have to make sure he gets there, Fred,’ she said. She took hold of his arm and dug her nails into it, to make sure he was listening. ‘You don’t have a choice.’
Fred could feel the heat radiating from her skin; the heat of hope, and desperation, and love. ‘I know that,’ he said.
He barely had time to splash water on his face before the explorer was calling them.
‘Quick, all of you!’ He stood in the middle of the stone city in a patch of sun, the light shining on the scales of his signet ring. ‘It’s time.’
They gathered around the aeroplane, just as they had in the airfield. It felt, Fred thought, like years ago. They were all four of them less neat now; their clothes were burnt, mud-covered, fish-flavoured, torn. Their faces and hands were covered in mosquito bites and scratches. They were slightly thinner, slightly rangier, slightly tougher.
Lila’s hands were shaking as she took Baca and draped him over the explorer’s neck. ‘He makes a much better scarf than monkeys do.’ Her eyes glittered, but she did not let a tear fall. ‘Will you look after him?’
‘What?’ said the explorer, startled. ‘Of course not.’
‘But, please! He’s not old enough to be alone yet – he needs –’
‘He doesn’t need me. He needs you. He’s yours. You rescued him, you fed him. You need him.’
‘But, my parents –’
‘Your parents will understand. They will see these are not ordinary circumstances.’ He placed Baca just below her shoulder, as if affixing a medal. ‘You belong to each other.’
The explorer lifted Max and laid him in the back seat. ‘Comfortable?’
Max’s eyes were closed and his breathing was very shallow. His fingers had begun to swell.
‘Not long now, little cataclysm.’ He touched Max’s head, and turned to Lila. ‘He is a very loud enigma. But I am glad to have met him. Very glad.’
‘He loved you,’ said Lila. ‘Loves you,’ she corrected herself, blanching.
The explorer swallowed, then nodded. He cupped his hands for her foot, and she climbed into the plane, cradling Max in her lap.
‘Listen.’ He looked down at Max’s flushed cheek. ‘When you get home, tell them how large the world is, and how green. And tell them that the beauty of the world makes demands on you. They will need reminding. If you believe the world is small and tawdry, it is easier to be so yourself. But the world is so tall and so beautiful a place.
‘And all of you – do not forget that, lost out here, you were brave even in your sleep. Do not forget to take risks. Standing ovations await your bravery.’
Con swallowed. ‘But I’m afraid,’ she whispered.
The explorer nodded, scarred and dusty and matter-of-fact. ‘You are right to be afraid. Be brave anyway.’
He held out a hand to Con, and she took it like a queen and climbed into the plane. She squeezed in next to Lila on the back seat. Together they arranged M
ax across their laps.
The explorer looked at Fred for a long moment. Then he jerked his head towards the front seat. Fred swung up into the plane.
‘Lila, hold Max steady: I’m about to shut the door.’ He slammed shut the yellow tin door of the plane and fixed the catch. ‘And one more thing! Remember – if you learn nothing else, remember to check daily for maggots. I once had an entire colony in the crook of my elbow.’
‘In your elbow?’ Fred’s brain spun a full circle.
‘Exactly so. It was a terrible blow to my vanity.’ He turned to go.
Fred’s eyes stretched wide. ‘Wait!’ he called. ‘I think I know who you –’
But the explorer was already stalking back into the jungle. Fred stared after him.
Max gave a grunt of pain and Lila bent over him. ‘We need to go,’ she said.
Fred nodded. He shook himself, and set his feet against the pedals. He took a last look at the explorer.
‘Ready?’ he called to the back seat.
‘Ready,’ said Con. Her jaw was locked so tightly he could hear her teeth creaking, but she managed to smile.
‘Ready,’ said Lila. She gathered Max closer to her and sheltered his head in her arms.
Fred glanced over his shoulder. Max lay still, breathing shallow breaths. Con and Lila were holding hands, and their knuckles were white.
Fred pressed the ignition button. The engine woke, sputtered, gave a roar like an animal.
He pulled back on the throttle and steered the nose of the aeroplane straight towards fear and towards home.
The field they landed in was a large one, used for grazing cattle. It was long and as green as the Amazon. They bumped painfully, rose, and thumped down again. The cows bellowed in terror and scattered. The front wheels shook; the back wheel bucked. There was a moment where it felt as if they would flip wing over tip, but the plane shuddered, roared, and stilled.
The cows never fully recovered.
For the rest of his life, Fred would feel gratitude when he smelt freshly mown grass.
The rest of it was a blur: Fred and Con burnt the plane by dropping a lighted branch into the engine, Lila standing well back with Max in her arms. They sat in the grass, watching the yellow wings turn red, and waited. Before long the fire attracted a crowd. There were hordes of people shouting in languages Fred didn’t know, with Lila attempting to interpret.
Then a journey by horse to a family with a motor launch; doctors; the boat ride; Manaus. A hospital for Max. Telegrams, telephone calls. A man and a woman tiptoeing into a hospital room and gathering Max and Lila so tightly in their arms they gasped for breath.
And then a huge ocean liner with a gold-walled dining room and steak and ice cream and a piano that Lila played, hesitantly, beautifully, seated between her two parents with Baca around her neck, while Con and Max leapt in circles around the mirrored ballroom, scandalising the other passengers.
Fred sat with his knees tucked up on one of the silk-backed chairs and watched them. He tried to speak sternly to his body, but whenever he thought of his father his fingertips and knees began to quiver with nerves and hope. ‘Don’t,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t. It’s an office day. He has to work. He’ll send the housekeeper.’
Each day the air grew cooler every hour; the smell of the sea changed from green to blue. And then, before he had time to set his thoughts into straight lines, to brush the green of the Amazon from his heart, the ship was heading towards the dock.
A row of people stood by the waterside, their fists tight, their eyes vivid with tension and longing. Fred raked them for a familiar face.
The crew lowered the gangplank, and Lila and Max let out a cry. Their grandmother stood at the barrier, her arms stretching out towards the ship. The two of them hurtled down the gangplank and were swept up in her embrace. Their parents followed, laughing. The old woman had the same wicked tilt to her eyebrows as Max.
‘Con!’ called a voice. Con turned, and her face flashed suddenly alight. Fred turned in time to see her great-aunt, standing upright and gaunt and shaking with emotion as she watched her great-niece descend the gangplank. Fred saw Con’s aunt reach out and take hold of her wrist. She held it in both hands, as if to make sure Con was real.
Fred followed at a distance. Nobody called his name.
He stood still in the bustle of the customs shed, looking out towards the ship. He tried to still the roar of disappointment in his chest.
And then suddenly, Fred saw his father, his suit crumpled beyond recognition, his coat-tails flying, running towards him, pushing aside sailors and women in elaborate hats, flying faster than any aeroplane.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said. He pulled him so close Fred felt his ribs creak next to his heart. ‘I could not have borne it. I could not.’
Fred buried his face, hard, in his father’s coat. He thought of the man, alone again, striding out through the jungle. He could almost hear his voice. Every human on this earth is an explorer.
Sometimes exploring is a word for walking out into the unknown. Sometimes, it’s a word for coming home.
Fred pushed open the door to the Ritz and strode towards the tea room as fast as he could go without running. He ignored the excited whispers from a crowd of boys following him across the foyer.
Max jumped up when he saw Fred coming and knocked over the sugar bowl. He was tall, now – as tall as Fred – and his face no longer had its baby roundness, but his eyebrows still pointed upwards at the ends.
‘You came! We thought you might still be on expedition!’ He embraced Fred, crushing him hard around the arms.
‘Fred!’ Lila had grown beautiful – so beautiful that Fred always hesitated each time they met, feeling oddly embarrassed, until she grinned at him. Her wonky tooth, slightly wonkier now, was still there. She gave him a bear hug. ‘How was your trip? You’ve been in all the papers. “A new kind of explorer”, they say.’
Before he could answer, a voice came from behind them. ‘You all look so smart,’ it said. ‘You should have told me – I would have worn my ruffles.’
‘Con!’ said Max.
At first glance, Con looked very like she had done that first morning at the airfield, still with a jutting jaw, still at right angles to herself. But the blonde curls were gone, as was the expression of distrust. She wore her hair in a bob, high-waisted trousers and a felt hat that looked just a little like a pith helmet.
The hat had in fact been a Christmas present from Fred the year before. Fred’s father still called the upstairs spare bedroom ‘Con’s room’.
A waitress approached with an armful of menus.
‘Thank you,’ said Con, ‘but we decided what to have a long time ago.’
‘Could we have one of every cake on the menu?’ asked Fred.
‘And four hot chocolates,’ said Max. He grinned. ‘In honour of the grub pancakes.’
As soon as the waitress had gone, Lila reached under the table. ‘I brought someone to celebrate with us. He’s very, very old. The waitress might not like it, though – can you make a barrier from your coats?’ She lifted a bundle of grey fur from the wicker basket by her side. Very, very slowly, it opened its eyes.
‘Baca!’ said Fred.
‘He’s grown so enormous!’ said Con.
‘He’s a very respectable old man these days,’ said Lila. ‘But he used to be such a terror.’
‘A very slow-motion terror,’ said Max.
‘He kept trying to eat the covers of my biology textbooks.’
They passed Baca from hand to hand. His fur was less fluffy and he moved creakily, but his eyes were shining black and his nose was still inquisitive. He raised one slow arm and scooped a lump of brown sugar towards him.
Then Fred held out his hand, palm up. It was very faint now, the mark, but you could still see it. ‘Still a secret?’
Lila held out her hand. ‘Still a secret.’
Max spread his hand on the tablecloth. ‘Of course.’
‘Always,’ said Con.
Fred looked down at their four upturned palms; his own was still covered in burns and blisters from his last expedition, Lila’s speckled with animal scratches, Con’s stained with ink.
Max broke the silence. ‘Do you think he’s still there?
‘I don’t know,’ said Fred. ‘But I’ll find out soon. I’m going back to the Amazon, as soon as the rains are over. I’m going to try to find it again.’
‘But not to take anyone else to see it?’ said Con.
‘No!’ said Fred. ‘Of course not. Just to say we survived. Just to say we kept exploring.’
A NOTE ON EXPLORERS
Although the explorer and the city in this book are fictional, both have roots in real life. Percy Fawcett, the man for whom our explorer goes looking, is real. Fawcett was an artillery officer with an astonishingly tough constitution and enough moustache for three men. He spent much of his life in search of what he called the City of Z, a city he imagined as richly sophisticated and peppered with gold.
In 1925, shortly after crossing the Upper Xingu, a south-eastern tributary river of the Amazon, he and his two companions disappeared. He was never heard from again.
Dozens of explorers like my fictional one went looking for him. Some came back empty-handed; others never returned at all.
Also real, alas, are the explorer’s stories of indigenous people and their settlements being decimated by contact with Europeans, either through violence or through diseases to which they had no immunity. In 1500, before European invasion, the number of indigenous people in Brazil was in the high millions; now there are only 300,000. And the rainforest itself is under grave threat. In the last fifty years or so, 600,000 square kilometres of the rainforest have been destroyed. It urgently needs protecting.
The Amazon is the most astonishing place I have ever seen. I thought, before I went, that I knew what beauty was: I did not. If you want to know more about what you can do to help protect it, a good place to begin is greenpeace.org.uk/amazon.
But what is also true is that the world’s rainforests are rich with history and secrets. In 2016, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy discovered what looked to be a lost Maya city, using satellite imagery and maps of the stars. A study of the imagery seemed to reveal a pyramid and dozens of buildings. It’s very early stages, but some archaeologists believe there are Maya sites still to be discovered all over the region – that they may number in the high hundreds.
The Explorer Page 19
