Eden Legacy (12 page)

They walked down the dunes to a blazing fire, three of Pierre’s women and nine of his children eating and laughing together. Therese heaped a plate high with boiled white rice and fish stew for her. It was hot, spicy, delicious and filling. Tiredness quickly overwhelmed her; she fought a yawn.

‘Bed for you,’ said Therese, noticing. ‘I show you now.’ She carried the two infants with her. Michel began to squirm and bawl, setting Xandra off. Therese peeled back her shirt, gave them a nipple each. ‘I miss Emilia so much,’ she said sadly. ‘We hab our babies together. We share ebryt’ing.
Ebryt’ing
.’

The way she said it, it was like she was trying to communicate something. ‘Everything?’ asked Rebecca.

‘Ebryt’ing,’ confirmed Therese. ‘It much easier when you hab good friend.’ Rebecca watched fascinated as the infants suckled; she couldn’t tear her eyes away. ‘You be good mother,’ said Therese suddenly. ‘Why you not hab children yet?’

‘My life isn’t right,’ said Rebecca, who’d forgotten how direct Malagasy women could be. ‘Maybe one day.’

‘One day!’ snorted Therese. ‘Yes’day one day. Today one day. You get busy, girl, or one day soon be gone.’

Boris took a table in the hotel’s large but completely empty restaurant, ordered a beer then spread out his map of the coast, wondering where Knox was headed in his pirogue.

‘What news from home?’ asked Davit, coming to join him.

‘I saw Knox earlier.’

‘You
what?
Where?’

Boris nodded seawards, to avoid explanations. ‘He sailed off with some fishermen,’ he said. ‘They headed south.’

‘And you’re sure it was him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you talk to him?’

Boris laughed. Truly, Davit was an idiot. ‘He blames us for the death of his girlfriend. How do you think he’ll react when he sees us?’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh.’ He lit a cigarette, blew smoke at Davit’s face, though just enough to the side that he wouldn’t be sure it was an insult. ‘We need to get him on his own before we can explain what we’re doing.’

‘Makes sense,’ agreed Davit.

‘Glad you think so. Trouble is, we don’t know where he’s gone.’

‘I could ask Claudia. I’ll bet she knows the guys he went off with. Or maybe she could ask around for us.’

‘Discreetly, though,’ said Boris. ‘We don’t want Knox hearing about it.’

‘She’ll need something to go on,’ said Davit. ‘What did the fishermen look like?’

Boris thought back. ‘Their sail had a great big Western Union logo on it,’ he said.

‘Great,’ said Davit, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll go ask her now.’

Thierry and Alphonse shared a cigarette while Lucia asked them pointed questions about getting to Tulear in
time for her flight. It depended on the wind, they told her; but it certainly wouldn’t help her cause if she stopped off at Eden on the way. She turned apologetically to Knox, told him that she’d need to press on. The three of them called it a night shortly afterwards, but Knox wasn’t yet tired. He sat on the sand and stared out over the sea, listening to its rhythms. Once, he caught a glimpse of something pale, though he couldn’t be sure whether it was mist, a sail or just imagination. But it made him think again of the man in the black shirt, the possibility that the Nergadzes had finally discovered his new identity.

While lying in hospital, recovering from burns and the grief of losing Gaille, one of the ways he’d kept himself going had been with daydreams of revenge upon the Nergadzes. Knowing that time had a habit of diminishing grief and thus the need for vendetta, he’d made a vow not to let that happen. Since taking his job at MGS Salvage, he’d worked to honour that vow, learning everything he could about Ilya and Sandro and their summers on the Black Sea, devising the plan for a survey along that stretch of coast, clearing it with Frank and Miles and raising the funds himself, tapping up MGS’s contact list and others with an interest in the Black Sea’s secrets—which had been easier than he’d expected, for the place exerted a powerful pull on the imaginations of underwater archaeologists. Once you reached around two
hundred metres beneath the surface, the water was so bereft of oxygen that almost nothing could survive in it, not even worms or bacteria, meaning that—almost uniquely in the world—there was every chance of finding ancient wrecks in perfect condition.

The closer the expedition had drawn, however, the more he’d recognised the essential contradiction of his private mission. He’d loved Gaille for her gentleness and compassion; she would have wanted him to mourn her and then move on, not waste his life on vengeance. But when anger was all you had left of someone you loved, it was hard to let it go.

A gibbous moon had risen low behind him, its light bright enough to stretch shadows on the pale sand. He frowned at it, as though it was trying to tell him something. He gave a little laugh when he realised what. With the moon up, he surely had enough light to walk by. He opened the flap of the tent, woke Thierry to tell him his intent. He paid him and his brother off and said goodbye to Lucia, then he hoisted his dive-bag to his shoulders, picked up his overnight case, and set off south along the beach.

Rebecca was too tired to do anything but undress and collapse into bed. She dozed off, only to be woken by a shutter banging on the breeze and the sound of singing. Most likely Therese and the others just playing the radio, but it got to her all the same. Whenever someone beloved died along this coast, the Malagasy would dance and drink until dawn, sometimes for nights on end. She couldn’t help but think that these songs were for Adam and Emilia.

As a child, not understanding death, Rebecca had been enchanted by the distant music of these wakes, not least because they left the fishermen too exhausted to go out
the following day, and so her father, an ardent carnivore, would use it as an excuse to butcher some meat. He’d always insisted you had to be prepared to kill what you ate, however, so Rebecca had long feared that her turn would come. That hadn’t made it easy when the time finally arrived. The chickens were her friends; she’d personified them and given them names. He’d folded his arms implacably, however, so she’d chased them halfheartedly around the clearing. One chicken hadn’t fled as fast as the others. She’d held it upside down until it had gone to sleep, then laid its neck upon the chopping block, picked up the axe. That was when it started to wake.

People talk about free will. If it exists at all, it’s in such moments, when you choose your path. Rebecca had suffered nightmares for weeks afterwards; the moment of impact; the chicken running, its head held on by a flap of skin, blood spurting in gouts. Yet she’d been glad she’d gone through with it. The courage to inflict pain was invaluable in this world. Emilia had lacked that toughness. She’d turned vegetarian rather than kill, except for fish, of course. Fish were easy. You just threw them on to the beach where they thrashed around helplessly until—

—Eleven years. How could you have stayed away eleven years?

—I’m here now.

—It’s too late. You know it’s too late.

—Don’t say that, Emilia!

Rebecca put a hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out. Her ache wouldn’t wait any longer; she needed to go home. She dressed and wrote a note for Therese, set off. Eden was just twenty minutes away along the track, but it was spooky and treacherous by night, so she went along the beach instead. The dunes glowed like snow. The sand here was sacred. The locals used it for divination and scattered it around their houses for protection against witchcraft. She kicked off her sandals, let her feet sink into the dry cold talc. Pale shore crabs sensed her approach and rose to flee, their moon-shadows instantly giving them away. Then they hunkered down and disappeared again, their colouring a perfect match for the sand. How could you keep out memories in a place like this? How could you remain detached? Her father had once sailed her and Emilia south to a beach with darker sand and correspondingly darker crabs. He’d released a bowl of these albinos, so luminous suddenly, so visible to predators, their deaths now assured. Rebecca had known intellectually about the survival of the fittest before then, but for the first time she’d understood it in her gut, had appreciated the full savagery and elegance of natural selection.

She drew closer to Eden. Now even the trees were familiar, the frown-lines of seaweed on the beach.
Memories thronged, crushing as crowds. Adam hoisting her on to his shoulders, bellowing and charging into the surf. The tingle of sand on her palm as she’d patted the walls of castles, then the tide sapping the walls. Waging jellyfish wars with the local Malagasy boys. Scouring shallows and rock-pools for molluscs and shellfish. The way Adam had turned grey and old after Yvette’s death, as though an organ had failed. And, yes, that brutal first time she’d caught him staring at her with his face all twisted and sour, and she’d realised with heart-stopping clarity that her beloved father, the giant of her childhood, the Great Man Himself,
hated
her.

Davit found Claudia washing shirts in a large tub, squeezing them out before hanging them on a line stretched between two cabins, while a wizened Malagasy woman on the porch watched her closely, as if hoping to find fault.

‘Work, work, work,’ said Davit.

‘Work, work, work,’ agreed Claudia, wiping suds from her nose with the heel of her hand.

He nodded at the old woman, not wanting to cause trouble. ‘May I borrow Claudia, please?’ he asked. ‘Only I’ve a problem in my cabin.’ Claudia translated for him;
the woman nodded sourly. They walked off together down a darkened path towards the beach.

‘What problem?’ she asked.

‘No problem,’ he assured her. ‘I just wanted to get you alone.’ She smiled with such guileless pleasure that he couldn’t help but smile too. ‘But I do have a question. A favour.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes?’

He told her about the pirogue with the Western Union sail, how he and Boris wanted to know where it had gone. She assured him she’d ask around later, for she still had a shift to do in one of the local bars. He looked at her in astonishment. ‘You’ve still got another shift to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Work, work, work,’ he said sadly, because he was beginning to realise it was true.

‘Work, work, work,’ she agreed. Their gazes met for a moment; he touched her hand. She gestured back along the path to the high mound of clothes that still awaited her, then she nodded goodnight and went to wash them.

Eden. What else would you call the garden paradise of Adam and Yvette? Rebecca had always found her father’s
sense of humour suspect. The reserve comprised some fifty hectares of spiny forest, including eight kilometres of coastline, but its heart was this natural clearing in the forest, accessible by a short drive from the coastal track. It was dark and empty and smaller than she remembered, but otherwise unchanged.

To her right was the lodge, a large and sturdy one-storey building of whitewashed stone that housed her father’s office, the clinic, the dining area and a few other rooms. Her father’s old Jeep was parked in front of the veranda, along with the track-bike he’d used to reach places even the Jeep couldn’t go. Ahead of her, chairs and tables surrounded the outside cooking area, while a clothesline doubled as a badminton net. And, to her left, the generator annexe and cabins raised on stilts to keep them dry during the occasional fierce rains. Adam had built pretty much all of it himself, with modest help from the local villagers (the world’s least reliable workforce: they’d drop tools in a heartbeat whenever the fish started running). Her father had loved such work, fitting stones together like jigsaw pieces, learning the different properties of the local woods, the hard
cassave
for houses and masts, the light
farafatry
for boats. His eyes would glitter as he’d demonstrate how to twist
faraihosy
bark into rope or tap
babo
for fresh water.

She went over to the lodge, but it had a new steel front door, perhaps in response to the recent coup. There
were new steel shutters too, closed and bolted, denying her access. She’d just have to wait until morning, borrow keys from Therese. The cabins were unlocked, however. Her father’s was closed only on a latch. There was a white candle by his bed. She lit it, held it up. The place was filled with poignant reminders of him: silver hairs caught in a comb; a black-and-white family photograph of them all together; drawstring blue pyjamas beneath his pillow.

She went back out. The night had grown perceptibly cooler and the stars had all vanished. Bad weather was on its way. She was tempted to head back to Pierre’s, but she needed to see Emilia’s cabin first. Michel’s cradle was by her bed, brightly coloured mobiles of reef-fish dangling low above it. Her heart gave a twist as she recalled the morning, a year or so ago, when Emilia had phoned to let her know that she was pregnant. She’d tried to offer congratulations, but her words had come out strangely hollow. Afterwards, too dazed to work, she’d left the office and had walked for hours. In a bookshop, she’d picked out a paperback on motherhood, had made a wall of her back to hide it from the CCTV cameras, as though it were the most lurid pornography. It had been a rush just to cradle it in her palm: the sharp-edged springiness of its leaves, the creak of its spine, that intoxicating scent of newness. Every day for a week, she’d visited a different maternity store, running
her hands over the displays, the silk and satin trickling like fine sand through her fingers. It had been madness. She’d been too well known. Shoppers had murmured with staff; rumours had begun to circulate. An ambitious morning TV presenter with glittering eyes had asked her flat out whether she had exciting news to share. Rebecca had had to tell her about Emilia. It was the first time she’d volunteered information about her family on television, and because her father had once been a TV presenter himself, her childhood had suddenly been in play.