by Nina Allan
“They’re big motherfuckers, that’s all I know.” Lin laughs. “It’s not just the Hools that have a thing for them, anyway. I read an article about Atlantic whales once in a science journal. It said that according to the natural laws of biology they shouldn’t exist. In theory there’s no way an animal as large as an Atlantic whale can exist in our gravity without collapsing under its own weight, or suffocating. And yet there they are. So you could argue that what the orthodox Hools believe isn’t really any more ludicrous than the existence of the whales themselves. Leave a gap in the floorboards, that’s what I say.”
“What?”
She smiles. “My mum always used to say that every room in the house should have a gap between the floorboards, so that certainty, boredom and hubris could find their way out. The more of the world I see the more I tend to agree with her.”
“What’s hubris?” I ask.
“Calling out the gods. Being stupid enough to insist that miracles don’t exist just because you’ve never witnessed one.”
I like what she says. I can feel the truth in it.
“We never actually saw him die,” I say.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Were you scared?”
“Too right I was fucking scared. I’ve been scared before though. Fear is like any emotion. You don’t exactly get used to it, but at least you learn a little of what to expect.”
Shortly after this we go to bed together. It is hot and rather stuffy in the cabin. We take off our clothes and lie facing each other. I press my face, my lips, my tongue first to the flesh of her stomach and then to her cunt. It should feel strange to be doing this, but it does not. I close my eyes, and I find Lin is my lover, sister, comrade, everything. I slide my mouth over her face, from soft warmth to coruscated hardness and then back again. The different parts of her no longer surprise or repel me. They are simply parts of Lin, the way she is.
“Does your face still hurt?” I say afterwards.
“No,” Lin replies. “The burned parts are dead, just scar tissue. It feels like a lump of dry mud.”
We cover ourselves with the sheet and sleep for a while.
In three days Lin will disembark at Brock Island, and I will go on.
~*~
Brock Island is humped and dark, shrouded in mist. A dingy rain is falling. The Aurelia Claydon would normally remain berthed here for a week – a number of the ship’s crew have family on Brock – but this time for some reason it’s been decided there will be an hour’s stopover only for the unloading of cargo, then the ship will sail on to Bonita without further delay.
“There’ll be a longer stopover on the way back, though,” Lin tells me. “So keep that in mind.”
She doesn’t have a personal address yet, but she has given me the contact details of the mail company she will be working for. She has told me that if I change my mind about going to Kontessa I should come and find her. She has even given me some money, so I’ll have no problem returning to Brock, should I decide to do so.
Our paths are taking us in different directions and it is painful. There’s a part of me – a large part – that wants to disembark at Brock with Lin Hamada, to share her lodgings and her new life on this cold, stark island, so much more like the place I am used to than the place I am going.
I could do that, I feel, and be happy.
But I have to go on, or I’ll never find out.
Perhaps Caine and Sarah are waiting for me, who knows?
~*~
“You’ve been a godsend,” says Dodie Taborow. “I don’t think I’d have survived this trip without you.”
She kisses me once on each cheek and then we embrace. She has given me a pair of her earrings as a parting gift. She smells of well-cut clothes and expensive perfume.
“That’s nonsense,” I say to her. “You’re the real captain of this ship, and everyone knows it.” We smile, and hug again, this time more naturally. When finally she steps on to the gangway she doesn’t look back. I watch her as she crosses the rough, concrete paving of the quayside, treading smartly in her shiny brown leather boots and red woollen cape. She comes to a standstill suddenly, and for a moment I think she’s left something behind in her cabin, then I see there’s someone coming forward to greet her, a short, rather stocky man in a long overcoat and grey felt hat.
I realise this must be Duncan, her son. He’s older than I expected. She places both hands upon his shoulders and then they too are hugging fiercely.
I feel the weight of past years, slipping away from them and heading out across the choppy sea.
Once the disembarking passengers and their luggage are all ashore, the large hatchway that grants access to the lower cargo decks is unbolted and a sturdy iron gangway is fixed into place. A man emerges from one of the buildings on the harbour side and goes to stand at the foot of the gangway. He is carrying a clipboard and some kind of LED swipe counter.
Moments later and they begin to come out – two, five, twelve, two dozen of them, their felted ears laid flat to their heads, their skewbald and dappled coats grown dull and woolly from the lack of sunshine. Their ribs show in their sides, and they blink nervously in the unaccustomed daylight, but other than that they seem to be fine. They have survived their journey, at any rate. Their feet clatter on the metal walkway – rat-tat-tat – like a soldier’s tin drum. The man with the clipboard swipes each one across the neck with the LED as they file past.
Their emergence into the grey, damp light of Brock Island is like an image from a dream. They have crossed three time zones to be here. They are like a good omen.
Dodie was right. The ship was carrying horses after all.
~*~
In a little under a week we will dock at Bonita. The crew of the Aurelia Claydon will enjoy three days of shore leave before beginning the return journey to Brock, and from there to Faslane. For the remainder of its journey the ship follows the rugged line of the Thalian coast. After so long upon the open ocean, the sight of land is a constant novelty. We are still too far out to sea to spot landmarks or villages, but in spite of that I spend hours up on the passenger deck, unable to tear my eyes away from the grey-green smudge on the horizon that is the first sight of the country that will be my new home.
I don’t know what to make of it, of anything. My grasp of the Thalian language is improving, so much so that I feel confident enough to exchange greetings and simple pleasantries with the Carola sisters, whenever I see them on deck or in the saloon. They seem delighted by my efforts to learn their language, and often try to draw me into longer conversations, but although I can understand a fair amount of what they’re saying I don’t yet have the skills to talk to them as I would like to.
I feel embarrassed by my incompetence, but they don’t seem to mind. They seem such generous-hearted women, and kind.
I thought I would dread the end of the voyage but I’m looking forward to it. I have become so used to the conditions and routines of shipboard life that in some ways it’s difficult to remember the person I was before I came on board. I feel sorrow at the thought of saying goodbye to the Aurelia Claydon, but now that Dodie and Lin are gone everything is different in any case, there’s nothing to stay for. It’s like the heart has gone out of things, and I think all of us who remain feel the same. We try to carry on as normal but all we’re waiting for now is the moment when we will go our separate ways.
Nestor Felipe is teaching me to play chess. We sit on deck together on the rigid wooden chairs that are so much less popular than the canvas sunloungers, either side of a folding table that Nestor has commandeered from the saloon. He shows me the various moves, explaining the laws that govern each piece and the problems they encounter. I’m not paying as much attention as I should, and in the end the only way I can keep myself in the game is by catching the sense of what Nestor is thinking as he plans his next move.
I am sure he knows that I am cheating. Luckily for me he seems to find it more amusing than annoying.
&nb
sp; More than the game itself I am interested in Nestor’s chess set. The pieces are made of scrimshaw – carved from whalebone – and are very beautiful.
“Where did you get it?” I ask him.
“I was given it, as a present,” he says.
“A present from a woman or from a man?”
“A man. Does it matter?”
“Not at all. I’m curious, that’s all.”
We have fallen into a strange kind of intimacy, a jokey camaraderie that is not quite flirting but almost. It’s like a dance where two people keep coming together but never touch. I want to know about him. He wants to know about me. We both tell each other less than we would like to hear.
I feel safe with him, though. I know, as I knew from the moment I first laid eyes on him, that he is hiding something, but I now trust I’ll find out what this is in due course, that Nestor means me no harm, whatever his secret.
The final days of our voyage are hot, and languid, and full of hours that I know will never come again. I am beginning to count them down. In less than forty-eight of them we will be there. Someone will be waiting for me at the harbour side. They will come forward to meet me, perhaps take my arm. My small suitcase will be taken away somewhere, for safe keeping. The part of my life that I am living now will be over for good.
These things I can imagine, but not what comes afterwards.
Will I be allowed to have contact with people from outside the compound?
Will I be allowed to continue with my study of the Thalian language?
Will I even be allowed to ask these questions?
How much of myself do I rightfully own?
Before, when I was still at the Croft and getting nervous about the journey, I used to think that the worst thing that could happen would be to arrive on the quayside at Bonita and find no one there waiting for me – that great unknown city, sweltering in the heat, its streets filled with thieves and tricksters and me not having a clue where to go or who to turn to.
Now I secretly feel that if I had the choice, I would rather choose uncertainty than meekly follow the path I am expected to take.
~*~
On the last morning but one I am sitting in the saloon having breakfast with the Carola sisters. Ana Carola is asking me if I will come and visit them in their house in the city. She is writing down the address on a paper napkin.
I imagine tall white rooms with wooden shutters, a fan ticking overhead, the scent of bougainvillea and strong coffee.
Nestor Felipe is approaching our table. He exchanges greetings with the sisters in Thalian and then asks me if I’ll come with him to his cabin.
“I have a book I’d like to give you,” he says.
I sense he is lying, or rather that his story about the book is not the whole truth. What does he want, then? To attack me? The idea is unworthy, and I understand that this is the moment I have waited for. That if I go with him now, he will tell me everything. Why he’s here and what he knows, the whole story.
Now, with the truth so close, I feel doubts envelop me.
I know my life is about to change forever and the thought is frightening.
I think of Lin, asking me what I’m going to do, and I smile at Nestor Felipe and follow him out of the saloon and along the companionway.
~*~
He hands me a book.
It is wrapped in newspaper, a double page of the Brock Island Messenger.
“It’s nothing much,” Nestor says. “Just something I thought you might find interesting. You can open it later.” When I do, I discover that the parcel contains a novel by Saffron Valparaiso called The Sea is Long. It’s in Thalian, and this time there’s no Crimondn translation to help me understand it. A short paragraph on the back jacket tells me it’s Valparaiso’s first novel, written while she was still at college.
I perch on the edge of Nestor’s bunk while he busies himself with the paraphernalia for making coffee. In spite of the many hours we’ve spent together in recent days, now that I’m here in his cabin I am embarrassed to find I cannot think of anything to say to him.
The silence seems to spread itself out between us, becoming denser and more uncomfortable with every second.
“What was it like when you tried to talk with the whales?” Nestor says at last. He hands me coffee in a small glass cup. It is hot and very bitter.
“It was – not pleasant,” It’s still hard to think about, although my actual memories of what it was like are becoming blurred.
“Didn’t they understand you?”
“Yes, they understood perfectly. They just didn’t care.”
“About you?”
“About any of us. The world they live in – they world they perceive – is different from ours. We’re like scavengers to them, bottom-feeders. They find us repellent.” I take another sip of the horrible coffee. “So far as the whales are concerned we might as well not exist. Trying to talk with them was like watching myself drown.”
I do not tell him the rest of what I feel – that I failed, and that I am ashamed because of it. That I have come to doubt my idea of my own specialness. That I no longer know who I am, and what I am for.
“How did you know?” I ask him instead. “That I could talk with them, I mean?” The question is easy to ask now, and why not? It’s why he’s brought me here.
Nestor Felipe smiles a smile, deep in his beard. He has been waiting for my question. It is our fate.
“I know because I know you. I know everything about you, Maree.”
“Then you are a spy, after all?” My heart is thumping in my chest.
“No, not a spy, a detective. I was paid to find you. I’m someone who is good at finding things, that’s all.”
I rest my cup on the wooden floor, to the right of my feet. It’s still half full and I don’t want to kick it over by accident. What a mess that would make.
~*~
Imagine being told that the man you always thought of as your father was not your father after all, that your real father is in prison for rape and murder. Or that you aren’t even a proper person, but a clone of your brother. Or that the memories you carry are false, that you’ve actually been in a coma since you were ten.
What you have to decide, there and then, is how much you are going to allow this new knowledge to affect you. Are you the feelings you feel inside, or the facts you know?
Suppose someone tells you your parents are dead, and they turn out not to be?
“Who paid you?” I ask Nestor Felipe. I can feel his thoughts in my mind, the tension in his shoulders, the nervousness he feels because he is not certain he is doing the right thing, even now, in telling me the truth.
“I was paid by your father,” he says. “Or not by your father directly, but by the person he hired. Your father has been paying people to try and find you for fifteen years.”
Later he shows me a photograph. Two people stand before a house, a man and a woman. The house is built from breeze blocks, and has a metal roof. The woman is small and dark-haired, she’s wearing jeans. Nestor Felipe tells me her name is Christy, and that she’s my aunt.
The man is tall and skinny, and has a scowling expression. He’s wearing a loose black T-shirt with an oversized white handprint on the front.
His hair bushes out from his head, the same way mine does whenever I go too long without having it cut. It’s the same colour, too – the sun-dried, raucous yellow of summer gorse.
This man’s name is Derek Hoolman and he is my father.
~*~
My name was Luz Maree, but everyone called me Lumey. I was born in the town of Hastings, on the south-eastern coast of Crimond and not far from the resort town of Boster. The contamination of the Rovensay Marshes sent the town into decline, although the popularity of smartdog racing has since helped to revive its fortunes. My father works as a yard manager in the racing industry. He once owned and trained the four-time league champion smartdog Morpho-Limlasker. My mother’s name is Claudia. I have a younger broth
er named Jem who is now fifteen.
I was taken away from my family at the age of four.
“Your father was involved in criminal activity – drug running – and the people who were hired to snatch you used that to trap him. It was never about the drugs, though – it was about you.”
“But why?” The question bursts from me like a cry. “I don’t understand.” I have become used to guarding my emotions, to protecting myself, but this time I can’t. I feel like I’m falling. I want to reach out, to catch on to something, but nothing feels solid.
“Because you’re valuable,” says Nestor Felipe. “It’s as simple as that.”
~*~
Nestor tells me that I started out as just another missing person case, someone he’d been paid to find, no different from any one of the many other similar cases he’d tackled over the years. After a while though, that changed.
“I suppose I became intrigued,” he says. “Not just in where you’d disappeared to, but why. Most times the two things are linked, so if you really want to find someone you have to get interested, a little bit, anyway. But with you there were so many dead ends. It always felt as if there was some bigger reason behind it all. I couldn’t leave it alone.”
I ask him when exactly he learned of my whereabouts, why it’s taken him so long to make himself known to me.
“A while,” he says, then hesitates, and I sense that some of the facts of my story still make him uncomfortable. “It took a long time to track you down – the people who took you are experts in concealment. And then once we’d found you it was difficult to know how to proceed. We knew we couldn’t involve the police because there was still a chance your father might have ended up in prison. You could have been taken into state custody, anything. In the end we decided it would be better to wait until you were legally an adult, and so could make up your own mind. Anything more drastic seemed too risky.”
“Who found me?”
“One of our contacts. He’s a lecturer at the university in Inverness.”
“I went to Inverness once, Kay took us.” I am remembering the castle, the steel-blue loch the man in the gift shop joked was bottomless, the upswell of mountains behind. All my life I have loved those northern high-lands, the heather and the gorse, the freeze-blood winters and dewy summers, the scents of first snows and wild honey. Being in the high-lands is like glimpsing the country the orthodox Hools still call the Otherside.
