Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘I’m trying to give it up, mate.’ Tom watched him light the cigar, saw the hunted look in his eyes. ‘How’s business?’

  Pole exhaled stiffly. ‘Business would be a bloody sight better if Gib would withdraw his submission.’

  ‘On Dusky Sound?’ Blanch smiled. ‘He’s not going to do that, Ned.’

  Pole looked back at him. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Tom, I need that activity permit. I mean I really need it. There’s so much riding on this deal…’

  ‘You know what,’ Tom said, ‘when you first put that idea forward I never thought you’d get this far. You had the whole bloody town against you.’

  ‘I did to start with, mate.’ Pole flicked ash with his third finger and looked at the end of his cigar. ‘But people saw sense in the end. This venture’s going to bring in a lot of jobs, Tom. People round here need jobs.’

  Blanch made a face. ‘I hear you, mate, but I hear Gib too. I don’t agree with all he says or does but he’s my oldest friend.’

  Pole half-smiled at him. ‘It’s a pity he didn’t stick to the crayfish boats with you.’

  ‘I reckon.’ Blanch lifted his eyebrows. ‘He met Mahina though, didn’t he?’

  Pole nodded, eyes sharp, suddenly looking through him. ‘Bewitching, wasn’t she?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Tom started his engine. ‘I’ve got to get along, mate.’

  Pole touched the brim of his hat, crushed his cigar under his heel and swung back into the saddle.

  Libby and Bree walked down to the boat for the lake crossing, and Libby stopped to buy wine in the dairy. Bree had been there already yesterday afternoon, posting the letter to her father in America. The woman who ran the shop had told Bree her name was Mrs Grady and Bree watched her stamp the envelope with a return address before slipping it into the bag for the postman to collect.

  Half an hour later they were steaming across the lake and Libby went on deck, where Jonah and John-Cody were sitting. She took the pack of cigarettes she had bought from her pocket and broke the filter off one. Jonah lit it for her, his eyes full of his smile.

  ‘You look pleased with yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going over the hill, Libby. My sister’s boat: it’s been a long time, and the way he’s been behaving’ — he jerked a thumb at John-Cody —‘I was beginning to think I’d never get back.’

  Libby sucked on the cigarette and the wind took the smoke and she watched the waves kick up in their wake. Mahina: a woman she’d heard mentioned many times in the two days they had been here; a personality she had not known, yet in a strange way could feel. She thought of these two men with their differing memories and affections; the comment from the principal yesterday morning; even Nehemiah Pole’s remarks in the pub. Mahina was everywhere and nowhere and she seemed to dominate this small town in a way Libby had never come across.

  She could not spend time thinking about that, however. Dusky Sound and her research beckoned and she was grateful to John-Cody for this opportunity of a guided tour. He was looking across the lake, back the way they had come: they could see the water tower and Alex’s window from here. He drew on his cigarette, clipped it and put the butt in his shirt pocket. As he turned, their gaze met and he came over and leaned on the rail.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’

  ‘Listen, there’s no couples on the boat so you go aft and take the cabin next to mine. It’s got a double bed and a door so you can get some privacy. The chart table is right outside and you might want to use it to work.’

  ‘That sounds good. Thank you. But what about a berth for Bree?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Bree. I’ll put her in the freezer bunk.’

  Libby lifted her eyebrows.

  ‘Trust me. She’ll love it.’

  It started to rain before they reached West Arm. The clouds that had hovered over the mountains all night began to bleed and a fine mist of drizzle peppered the surface of the lake. Libby felt the moisture on her face and her jacket was spattered with droplets. She went back inside and found Bree chatting away to a small man in his early thirties with a little stubble on his chin. His name was Carlos. His mother Anna sat with them and smiled as Libby poured herself some coffee. She told Libby that although she was Spanish she had married an Englishman and now lived in a house in a forest fifty miles from Brussels.

  Carlos’s first language was French, and it was noticeable in his accent. He was delighted to find a twelve-year-old in New Zealand who could chatter away to him in his native tongue. Libby sipped coffee and listened, picking up bits and pieces and marvelling at how fluent Bree was. John-Cody was up by the wheel, leaning with his back to the windscreen, one booted foot crossed over the other at the ankle. He was talking to the skipper, but his eyes caught Libby’s. He smiled and she could feel the warmth across the cabin space between them.

  At West Arm Jonah trotted up the gangplank and came back with a massive metal luggage trolley. He, John-Cody and Carlos shifted the bags and the boxes of stores onto it then Jonah hauled it back up the gangplank one-handed. They boarded the bus with the day-trippers and the driver pulled away from the wharf. Libby sat with Bree and listened to the commentary as they travelled the twenty-two kilometres across the Southern Alps. The rain was falling more heavily now and Bree stared wide-eyed as the driver explained that West Arm had some one hundred and fifty inches of rain every year as opposed to the fifty or so in Manapouri and Te Anau. Her eyes grew wider still when he informed them that over three hundred inches fell in Deep Cove.

  ‘That’s twenty-five feet.’ Bree gawped at her mother.

  John-Cody leaned over the back of the seat in front of them. ‘Above the waterline Fiordland’s a rainforest, Bree,’ he said. ‘Warm air comes east off the Tasman Sea. It hits the mountains and rises, then it meets with colder air higher up and it rains. It’s a constant cycle.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Convection. You must have done it in science.’

  Bree nodded.

  ‘It’s accentuated here because of the climate and the height of the mountains.’

  Bree was staring at him. ‘Do you teach people that on your boat?’

  John-Cody laughed. ‘I don’t teach them so much, Bree. I talk to them, tell them about Fiordland, then if they want to they can learn for themselves.’

  ‘How do you know it all?’

  He thought for a moment and then arched his brows. ‘Mahina taught me, I guess.’

  ‘She must have been very clever.’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘Have you got a picture of her?’

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘I have.’ Jonah shifted in his seat and fished a battered leather wallet from his pocket. He took out a small photograph, glanced at it briefly and passed it over the back of the seat. Bree took the photo and Libby looked on as she studied it: a very attractive Polynesian woman with dark skin and henna-tinted hair.

  ‘She’s beautiful.’

  Jonah nodded. ‘She was the best sister a man could ever have.’

  ‘Was she older or younger than you?’

  ‘Older. And much wiser.’ Jonah was speaking freely, fondly. John-Cody was silent once more, facing the front. Libby stared at the back of his head. ‘Mahina knew more about this place than anyone I’ve ever met,’ Jonah said with pride, ‘even people twice her age. She was the only person I’ve known who could hear the Tuheru.’

  ‘Tuheru?’ Libby asked.

  Jonah looked over the seat at her then. His eyes were large and deep brown, set back in his skull. ‘The dimly seen people,’ he said softly. ‘They live in the mountains and their voices travel in the mist. Most people can’t see them, very few can hear them, but they’re out there. People from long ago.’

  ‘Fairies,’ John-Cody said.

  ‘Aha!’ Jonah rolled his eyes. ‘So you say. They’re real all right. Mahina could see them.’

  The bus driver dropped them on the road above the wharf and Libby glimpsed the deck o
f a boat, white between the trees. John-Cody asked them to form a chain on the steps and hand the boxes and, bags down. It was raining harder now and a chill had crept into the air. Bree went on deck with John-Cody and Jonah, but the others were told to remain above until the gear was loaded and they had the engines and heater running.

  Jonah went below to start the auxiliary and light the diesel stove at the foot of the for’ard steps. Ten minutes later, the gear loaded and everyone aboard, he untied the boat from the wharf and they were in the channel with a gentle wash spreading out from the stern. John-Cody had stripped off his wet-weather gear and boots, which he left by the port door. He went through a safety check with the passengers then allotted them each a bunk. Libby dumped her bag on the floor of the double-berthed cabin at the stern, glancing briefly at the skipper’s cabin next to it. They were the same, only his had a curtain as a door to enable him to react quickly should circumstances demand it.

  The chart table was set just below the aft steps, which led up to the saloon, galley and bridge all in one large squared space. The boat was wood-panelled and carpeted, with a shower and toilet aft and another up for’ard. Bree had the freezer bunk, a double bed set above the twin freezers and the only one with a porthole at eye level. She was absolutely delighted and crawled on all fours to gaze at the mountains rising above the water.

  The sun was seeping through a blue space in the clouds as Libby joined John-Cody on deck: he was hosing it down to clear the grime that had collected from the boxes. ‘The sun’s coming out,’ Libby said.

  He grinned at her. ‘Sucker hole, that’s all. The rain’s set in for the day.’

  Libby walked to the bowsprit and leaned against the rail. She could smell the change in the atmosphere, a moist sweetness coming off the hardwood trees that completely covered the mountains. Everywhere she looked was green, with just a hint of red now and again where southern rata was flowering. Clouds clung in low wisps like smoke, some as low as eye level, and the tops of most of the mountains were totally obscured. The diesel rumbled under her feet, vibrating slightly through the steel deck, and yet she could still hear water falling. The rivers had been swollen as they came over the pass, very high against the stanchions of one or two of the bridges. Water was falling now, cascading down the sides of the mountains where the alpine rivers were boiling.

  As they left Deep Cove John-Cody came alongside her and she could smell him, his woollen sweater dampened by the drizzle. His bib-and-braces waterproofs reached to his chest and his sleeves were pushed up to reveal tanned forearms, the Indian bracelet dangling at his wrist. He pointed to the left. ‘Hall’s Arm,’ he said, ‘a beautifully peaceful place. See that water falling?’ She could not miss it: the whole of the cliff face at the entrance to the narrows was one massed curtain. ‘Commander Peak,’ he told her. ‘There’s no natural waterfall there. That’s all due to the rain.’

  The surface of the fiord was all at once white with rain, the drops falling so hard now that they bounced back and cast everything the colour of mist. Libby clasped her hands together. ‘I see I’m going to get wet over the next couple of years.’

  John-Cody laughed softly. ‘Oh yes, Lib. You’re going to get very wet.’

  Jonah called from the wheelhouse that coffee was ready and they went back inside. John-Cody took his cup and stowed it in a space behind the radar screen. A black woollen fisherman’s cap lay over the gimbal-mounted compass. The front windows were misted and Libby could see that, in addition to the glass, they were covered with perspex.

  ‘Why the reinforcement?’ she asked, cupping a coffee mug in her hands.

  ‘Sub-Antarctic weather.’ John-Cody pulled a face. ‘The waves down there can be serious. I’d hate to lose my front windows.’

  ‘How often do you go?’

  ‘Two or three times a year. DoC charter the boat to weigh sea lion pups.’

  ‘There are sea lions down there?’

  ‘On the Auckland Islands there are. Hooker sea lions, endemic to this part of the world.’ He sipped coffee. ‘We’ve got fur seals here in Doubtful and a bunch of them down at Dusky. You’ll see a lot of them if you’re going to identify the dolphin pod.’

  ‘There definitely is a resident pod?’

  ‘Definitely. I’ve been working these fiords for years now. They’re as resident as the ones we’ve got up here, it’s just that nobody has proved it technically.’

  ‘Until now.’ Libby paused for a moment, glancing up the channel as they passed Elizabeth Island on their starboard side. ‘What about noise pollution from boats?’

  ‘You mean as regards the dolphins?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Who knows? If you want my opinion, it’s damaging. I don’t know how damaging. At the moment there’re only a handful of tourist boats working up here. Twenty-two in the whole of Fiordland.’

  ‘All with marine mammal viewing permits?’

  He snorted. ‘Some of them haven’t even got permits to take people out on the water. Libby, don’t let DoC’s moratorium fool you. Most of the skippers keep to the rules, but there’s always some that don’t. There’s a few up here who just go their own way completely. Ned Pole’s got plans for Dusky Sound that could be absolutely devastating.’

  Libby rested against the back of the seat that was set round the table behind her. Jonah had the lid off the middle and Bree was helping him stow food in the dry store.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Libby looked at John-Cody in profile.

  ‘Pole’s the front man for an American hotel chain. They’ve put forward an application to place floating hotels, lodges they call them, in Dusky and Breaksea Sounds.’

  Libby looked sideways at him. ‘You mean permanent placements?’

  He nodded. ‘They want two in Dusky and one initially in Breaksea, followed by two more. They’ll berth five hundred people in each. Apparently the company’s bought some decommissioned cruise liners.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘Surely DoC will oppose it?’

  ‘They have so far, but it’s not within their jurisdiction.’

  ‘Fiordland’s a national park. How can it not be their jurisdiction?’

  John-Cody poured more coffee. ‘Fiordland is but the fiords themselves are not. They were in the national park,’ he explained, ‘but the park boundaries were redefined in 1978. The Tasman Sea had been the western boundary, but then it became the mean high-water mark. DoC’s jurisdiction ends where the water begins. That means the regional council is the only arbiter of what goes on in the water and it’s they who have to decide whether to grant permits or not.’

  ‘But you can oppose them, surely?’

  ‘Oh yes. And we do.’ He looked beyond her for a moment. ‘Pole has managed to get most of the original submitters on his side, but I’ve fought him all the way and I’ll go on fighting him. If hotels are allowed in the fiords it’ll just be the tip of the iceberg.’

  ‘What are submitters?’

  He explained to her that when somebody applied for a water activity permit various potentially interested parties were always notified. They ‘submitted’ written opposition or assent. ‘Mahina and I are always notified when something affects the fiords.’ He broke off then. ‘Or rather we were. It’s just me now.’

  He moved to the wheel, a sudden weariness about him as if the words themselves fatigued him. Libby watched as he stared through the windscreen. ‘You loved her very much, didn’t you?’

  He spoke without looking round. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did.’

  They steamed up the sound, Libby in the prow with Bree by her side. John-Cody was in the stern repairing one of the shackles that held the dinghy on the transom. Jonah was busy fixing lunch in the galley. They passed Ferguson Island and the entrance to Crooked Arm and all around them mountains clad in garments of green climbed as far as grey swirling cloud. They were approaching the Malaspina Reach now and the marine reserve known as the Gut. Beyond that was the Tasm
an Sea.

  Libby had set up her laptop on the chart table so she could begin to make some notes, disturbed by what John-Cody had told her. Floating hotels meant a lot more people and therefore boats and that could have a detrimental effect on any population of bottlenose dolphins. She had studied the chart for Dusky Sound as well as one that detailed the whole of the south-west coast, and she felt she was beginning to get her bearings.

  On deck again, Bree suddenly shouted and pointed. Libby looked where she gestured and saw plumes of condensation punching vertically into the air. ‘Go and tell John-Cody,’ she said. ‘The others will want to see.’

  Bree ran astern and moments later John-Cody stood next to Libby. ‘Dolphins on the port bow,’ she told him. He looked and saw a group of them, moving close to land in the deep-water troughs off Rogers Point: sleek grey backs arching with dorsal fins skyward then disappearing below the surface, arching again and disappearing.

  ‘They’re hunting,’ John-Cody said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think that’s as close as we’ll get.’

  ‘You don’t want to get closer?’

  ‘They look busy to me. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I’d say so, yes.’

  ‘Then let’s not disturb them. They know we’re here. They’ll come and see us if they want to.’ He moved back astern and told the other guests where they could find binoculars if they fancied a closer look. The weather was going, to break badly, a storm had been forecast for later in the day and he wanted to be out of the Tasman before it hit.

  At the Shelter Islands the wind rasped in the forestays and waves scudded into foam-coloured horses that chewed black rocks and lathered the kelp till it looked like soaped rags in the water. Libby gazed ahead and saw the swell beyond the Nee Islands and wondered if Bree would survive the journey without being sick. There was a definite roll under her feet now and she looked round to see her daughter lilting slightly as she made her way from the port quarter past the bridge to the lockers in front of the windows. Jonah had stowed vegetables in the one on the far left and Libby had seen the hose for a dive compressor protruding from another. She counted ten compressed air bottles in the rack and wondered how much dive gear John-Cody had on board. If she saw dolphins in Dusky Sound she wanted to get underwater.