A Sister’s Gift (3 page)

‘Hey!’ Emoto’s expressionless face appears out of the darkness, his guide at his side. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

Nice.

‘What am I doing here?’ I glance at the empty collecting pots attached to his backpack – he’s obviously just arrived. ‘We’ve been here all morning, Emoto – this is our patch.’

‘Not likely. I heard this was a prime spot for collection. I’d have been here ahead of you if Eve hadn’t waylaid me before I got out of camp this morning.’ He grins amicably at me. ‘She wants to talk to you too, Scarlett.’

‘Me?’

‘ASAP. But at least you get a ride in the posh boat back downriver. Your admirer is there. He told me to let you know he’d be waiting for you.’

‘Guillermo?’ I look up sharply.

‘Friends in high places, eh?’

I ignore that. ‘What does Eve want to talk to me about?’

He shrugs noncommittally, though I think he knows exactly what she wants me for.

‘Say, is
that
what I think it is?’ He shines his torchlight on a mossy tree trunk and the brilliant bright red flowers of Cattleya Alliance are visible, even in the forest haze, all the way up the stem. Damn him, I was hoping to come across that species myself. Now he’s bagged it.

‘And this?’ He swivels the light beam around and, hey presto,
there’s another treasure right in front of us – a pale green and yellow specimen of
Encyclia patens
, its petals splayed out like spiders’ legs on a fallen tree trunk. ‘It’s a real Aladdin’s cave up here, isn’t it?’

And he’s just spotted the dead monkey too. ‘Had a bit of a mishap here, Scarlett? I thought I heard something falling…’Emoto’s torch is flickering over the monkey’s corpse now, taking in the smashed collecting pots, the broken branches, everything…

‘Yep. We’re going back to base camp empty-handed, I’m afraid.’

‘Not
quite
empty-handed.’ He can’t stop the grin that springs to his face as he catches sight of José’s offering. That half-curled monkey hand at my foot looks so human. I swallow down the bile that rises to my throat as Emoto picks it up and hands it to me. Shit, it’s disgusting. And it’s dripping blood all over me. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be a lucky charm that’ll always bring me back to the tribe if I should leave. I’m not going to leave. I’ve made this my home now and it’s where I intend to stay for a long time to come.

The steady phut-phut of the engine breaks its rhythm a little and Guillermo twists his head round slightly and gives me a wry grin as José nudges him to let him take over the wheel. He comes to join me under the shady part of the boat.

‘You OK?’ He leans in and touches my arm gently.

‘I’m OK.’ My sleeve is soaked, and I’m having difficulty pulling it up to examine my arm where it’s started itching. Gui gives me a hand, rolling the material up purposefully to reveal a thin angry line where a bug has chomped its way across my forearm. He winces sympathetically.

‘You’ll get that seen to?’

‘José already gave me some Andiroba oil for it. Everything we need is all here, all around us.’

‘Sounds like something the Yanomami would say.’ He smiles at me and I smile back. He’s got nice eyes. Gentle and kind.

‘You didn’t have to come all this way out to fetch me, you know. José and I came up in the PlanetLove canoe, we could have got back to camp in it.’

‘I know you could.’ He leans back a little now, arms folded across his knees. ‘Maybe I wanted to, though.’

‘And waste two days punting up the Amazon when you could have been attending important meetings?’ I tease gently. In his stylishly-cut crisp white shirt and cool chinos he does look more dressed for the board than the boat. ‘Why are you here, really?’

‘Maybe I find you pretty.’ He watches me through half-closed lids. ‘Maybe I wanted the chance to spend two days cooped up on this boat with you.’

‘Ha ha.’ I push back my hair which hasn’t been washed since last Tuesday, and open out my dirty hands. ‘Sorry to disappoint you then, because right now I don’t look too tasty, do I?’

‘Even like this – covered in mud – you look lovely enough to convince me you’re the woman I could happily spend the rest of my life with…’

My eyes open wide at the unexpectedness of his comment. I laugh out loud. We’ve known each other for about a year and a half but only on and off. He’s kidding. He’s got to be. I give him a sideways look, searching for any signs that he might be pulling my leg but he’s keeping a pretty straight face. I gulp. Shit. Did he just…ask me to marry him? He did. Just wait till I text Lucy Lundy later on and tell her this big-shot South American dude has asked me to marry him. Hilarious. I’m far too young to be thinking about getting hitched. Flattering, though.

‘The mud,’ I begin unsurely, ‘is because I ended up falling onto the forest floor this morning.’ He doesn’t seem to find anything unusual in my response, so I continue: ‘We lost all the seeds we just spent this entire trip collecting, I nearly got killed by a falling monkey and…and all my clothes have been completely and utterly soaking wet for the last three days. And I
hate
being wet.’

‘Yet you love your job,’ he reminds me. ‘And you’re very good at it. I heard you’re even up for an award, is that right?’

I blush. ‘You heard that?’

‘A little bird told me,’ he smiles. ‘I heard Eve put forward the thesis you submitted for your original job application. She thinks you stand a good chance. Is the award worth much?’

‘I really, really want it!’ I lean forward, suddenly excited at the thought. ‘Even though I can’t imagine I’ll get it. Emoto’s done some brilliant work, it’ll probably go to him. And no, it’s not
worth anything monetarily. It’s just a peer-recognition thing…’ As he pulls a face, I add: ‘…which is
important.’

‘They should give you a big trophy.’ His dark eyes are dancing, playing with me. ‘A great big trophy,’ he spreads his arms wide, ‘for you to put in pride of place on your mantelpiece.’

‘I don’t have a mantelpiece that big.’

‘No, but I do,’ he puts in significantly.

‘I think you really need to get to know a woman better before you go round proposing marriage to her,’ I put in cagily. ‘I mightn’t be all that you think I am, Gui.’

‘The fact that you don’t jump at my offer tells me a certain amount.’

I lift my eyebrows questioningly.

‘It tells me you aren’t over-concerned with riches, for one thing.’

‘I’ve not been adverse to a little bling in my time…but no,’ I laugh, ‘money wouldn’t tempt me.’

‘What would?’ he leans a little closer. So close, in fact, I have to catch my breath.

‘The man I marry,’ I tell him at last, ‘will need to have proved to me that he knows me and loves me just as I am. That he’ll be prepared to stick with me through thick and thin. It won’t matter two figs to me how much money he’s got.’

‘Well said. I take it
you
will be prepared to prove likewise to him?’

‘Naturally. But right now –’ before we get too carried away with all this talk of marriage and before he gets a chance to see how confused he’s making me feel – ‘I’ve still got to make my mark in this field. I want my work to be recognised and used to some good purpose at the end of the day,’ I run on. ‘Getting an award – well, it makes it more likely people will sit up and take what I do seriously.’

‘That’s one route,’ he says thoughtfully.

‘You’ve got a better one?’ I give him an arch look.

‘Having friends in positions of power and influence. That can be the easiest route to getting your work noticed, don’t you agree?’

I shrug. ‘All I know is my mum slaved most of her adult life out here, doing exactly what I’m doing, collecting and categorising seeds, logging their tribal medicinal purposes…and in the end, it was all for nothing, because she died before she got any of her work published or put to any purposeful use. I don’t intend to end up like that.’

‘You won’t,’ he promises, and then laughs as I almost fall into his lap as José veers to avoid a line of harassed-looking water birds that are steaming straight towards us.

‘I hope not. I really want what I do to make a difference, Gui.’ I pull back from him a little as the boat straightens again. ‘I hope I get the chance. We just came across Emoto up in the cloud forest and I’d swear he thinks Eve’s going to tell me I’m to go back home.’

‘I heard PlanetLove were cutting back. I could pull some strings for you, if you like.’ Guillermo looks at me candidly. ‘You know my dad owns Chiquitin-Almeira. And Chiquitin-Almeira pretty much funds PlanetLove…’

‘I…I don’t want you to do that, Gui.’

‘You don’t want me to do that for you?’ He picks up my hands and I’m suddenly very aware that my nails are broken and dirty, my T-shirt is stained with monkey blood and I haven’t had a proper wash for days. I must look a sight. I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t think that, though. ‘I remember when you first came out here. There were over five hundred people present at the conference meeting that day and you were the only one in the whole place I felt drawn to talk to, the only one I wanted to spend time with. I still feel that way.’

I turn away from him, confused. There’s only one other person in the world who has this kind of effect on me and I haven’t seen him for eighteen months…

‘You made me feel special,’ I admit. I look at him shyly. ‘You still do.’

‘But here?’ He touches his hand to his heart. ‘Do you feel anything here?’

‘Oh, Gui, I haven’t the time to fall in love.’ I shrug off his question like I always do. We hang out together on my days off. I love being around him because he’s always so sweet and so gallant in an old-fashioned kind of way. He takes me to nice places, all the exclusive nightspots in Manaus, expensive restaurants and so forth. Sometimes we go dancing. Guillermo dances better than any man I’ve ever been with. I’ve thought I could fall in love with him just for that – if I were up for falling in love right now, that is.

‘No time?’ He looks at me curiously. ‘Or is it something else?’

‘I have important work I need to do here, that’s all.’ I wrap my arms around my knees and watch the bright flicker and fade of the long white liana stems, the ‘Tarzan ropes’, that hang from every single tree as we skim past the bank. I don’t want to go back to the UK right now. That would be the worst thing possible. ‘It’s taken me the best part of a year to gain the tribe’s trust. And to get to grips with their language. Do you know, Eve said they’ve never had another worker learn the dialect as fast as I have?’ I look at him proudly. ‘The Yanomami are opening up and telling me secrets about forest plant lore that they’ve never told anyone before. There is so much that I’m learning from them right now. And if I don’t write it down for them, then who will? It’ll be lost forever.’

‘And you?’ Guillermo smiles softly. ‘When will you tell me your secret, Scarlett?’

‘I don’t have one.’ I open my eyes wide in denial.

‘Ah, but you do,’ he says assuredly. ‘I have wondered what it is all this time. What was it that propelled you all this way from your faraway land to mine, two summers ago? Will you tell me what it is you ran away from? Or should that be –
who
you ran away from?’

‘Gui, I’m devoted to my job. You know that. I love it here. I adore these people. What makes you think I was running away from anything – or anyone?’ I laugh lowly. ‘What, you think I’m not being totally honest?’

‘I know you are totally honest.’ He leans forward and touches the side of my face gently and I realise that I’ve just stuck my tongue in my cheek. ‘You have to be honest, don’t you,
querida?
Because you aren’t in the slightest bit good at telling lies.’

I blink, rereading for the third time the postcard that’s just come in from Scarlett. My God, she’s coming home. And it’s…what, the fifteenth today, which means she must already be en route from the rainforest. It’ll take her a good few days even to get to the nearest city, let alone an airport. She doesn’t give any details about what flight she’ll be arriving on or even what day. The girl doesn’t change, I smile to myself. ‘Expect me when you see me,’ that’s her motto; she’s just like Mum in that respect.

I take my mug and the postcard and go sit at the table where I’ve been writing the last of my Christmas cards. Except I can’t concentrate any more. I’ve got butterflies just like I used to get when I was a kid, every time I knew our mum was due back home. Scarlett was too young when Mum died to really be aware of her. In fact, I muse now, given that she scarcely knew her at all, it’s incredible how similar in character to Helen Hudson she’s turned out to be.

I stand up again, sidling over to the wide bay-window seat. The view from here, of the sprawling apple tree slap-bang in the middle of the front lawn with the little path doing a detour around it down to the gate hasn’t changed much. My God, sitting here like this with the thrill of anticipation in my stomach about Scarlett’s homecoming brings back so many memories…

The last time my mother came home for Christmas, she’d promised to arrive on the twenty-fourth ‘with a wonderful surprise’. I remember I sat here all day, waiting. Sat still so long that my bum ached, my legs got pins and needles, my eyes grew tired and sore with the effort. She would keep her promise, I was sure of it. I wasn’t having any of Flo’s ‘don’t get your hopes up, girl’ because it was far too late for that. We’d seen a lot less of Mum than usual that year. Her work kept her abroad, we all accepted that, but Christmas was a time to be home, wasn’t it? A time to be with family. And Flo had let out a few hints that maybe – just maybe – this time Mum intended to come home for good.

I can recall every second of that day as vividly if it were scrolling away in front of me now. I remember Flo getting a call about four o’clock that afternoon saying there’d been a ‘little delay’ but Mum would be there within the hour. Why were the minutes ticking by so slowly? And what on earth was she bringing with her for my ‘wonderful surprise’? It was already dark by then. I couldn’t see a thing outside the window any more and I remember I went and put an old kerosene lamp down by the gate to light the way for when she came in.