Eden Legacy (13 page)

‘What was he like, your father?’ the woman had asked.

Rebecca had simply frozen. How to answer such a question? Was she supposed to talk about the gentle, wise man he’d been before the leukaemia had taken her mother? Or the sporadic drunk he’d then become, the red-faced ranting machine who’d yelled at her and threatened her with his fists? Was that the man she was being asked about?

His abuse had lasted years. He’d felt wretched after each episode, had vowed never to lapse again. But he always had. And, anyway, it hadn’t been the yelling or the threats that had most upset her, it had been the knowledge of the hatred that underlay it, not least because she hadn’t the first idea what she’d done to deserve it, and he’d never said. And while part of her had been glad that Emilia had been spared his wrath during these
outbursts, another part of her had bitterly resented the manifest unfairness of this, and so she’d begun in turn to pick on her younger sister, something for which she’d come to hate herself.

In the end, they’d colluded on the solution. Adam had pulled strings with his old Oxford colleagues to get Rebecca a place to read zoology. Distance had allowed her heart to heal, but the scarring still remained. For years afterwards, Rebecca had refused any direct contact whatsoever with her father. But Emilia had eventually brokered a wary truce, a first tentative exchange of letters, emails, even the rare phone call. But whenever either Emilia or Adam suggested anything more, Rebecca would freeze up, the process would be set back months.

In the bottom of a chest of drawers, Rebecca found a home pregnancy kit and a packet of domperidone, a lactation stimulator. Rebecca smiled. Emilia had been planning for motherhood all her life. Where other girls had wanted breasts to titillate the boys, Emilia had only ever wanted them to gorge her babies. Where others had fantasised about their life partners, Emilia’s dream man had always been one who’d get her pregnant and then leave.

—Pierre! How could you choose Pierre?

—A woman needs to be held.

—But Pierre!

—A child needs a father.

—But Pierre!

—As if your choices are so much better.

Outside, she heard an engine. She went to the door, saw headlights through the rain that had started falling. Pierre back from Antananarivo, no doubt. But then the lights went out and a pickup truck lurched with unnerving stealth up the drive. She stepped back out of sight, blew out her candle. The pickup swung around; its engine stilled. Both doors opened and two men jumped down, faces concealed by baseball caps and scarves. They hurried through the rain to the lodge. To Rebecca’s shock, they unlocked the front door and vanished inside, making her wonder whether they’d taken keys from her father and Emilia, and had come here to plunder the place while they knew it would be deserted. She watched the pale fireflies of torchlight flutter around the edges of the shutters as they moved through the various rooms. It would be madness to go challenge them by herself, but there was no reason not to check out their pickup, make a note of their licence plate. Her T-shirt was a treacherous bright white, however, so she tiptoed quietly over to Emilia’s chest of drawers and began searching for something dark.

The charm of his moonlit walk had long since worn off for Knox. His feet were either plugging in the soft sand or stumbling as he negotiated rocky hummocks and tangles of mangrove. When he took off his shoes to wade across an inlet, something snakelike slithered from beneath his sole. He lifted his foot so abruptly that his dive-bag swung on his shoulders and he fell sideways into the water, yelling out a heartfelt curse.

The night grew cloudy, cold and dark. He took off his pack, pulled out his diving lamp. He reached another rocky outcrop, treacherous with spume. Lightning flickered ahead. A miniature whirlwind brought a hoop of dust
and dead leaves towards him, whipping and twisting and bowing. It began to rain, light patters at first, but quickly growing strong. He looked for shelter, but there wasn’t any. He fought his way past more mangroves and then kept going, a hundred paces at a time, the rain growing heavier around him, the lightning drawing closer. He was on the verge of giving up when he finally saw a small white building ahead. Its door was locked and its awning offered precious little protection. He shone his lamp through the small window, revealing diving gear hanging up on the far wall and a compressor for filling scuba tanks. He surely had to be close to Eden now.

Hurrying on with renewed energy, he soon reached a sign directing him up a track to a clearing of wooden cabins and a large, low building. He hurried between parked vehicles to the shelter of the veranda, was surprised to see that the front door was ajar and that torchlight was flickering inside, as though there’d been a power-cut. He shouted out as he put down his bags, and two men appeared a moment later, wearing baseball caps and scarves around their mouths, obviously up to no good. They yelled out and charged at him, knocked him backwards off the veranda. Knox slapped instinctively at an ankle as it passed, and one of the men went sprawling. He leapt upon him but the second man came back and aimed a kick at Knox’s face, forcing him to defend himself, allowing his companion to squirm free. They ran for the pickup, locked themselves
inside, started it up and sped away, spraying watery mud all over Knox as he gave chase. Then they turned south along the track and vanished.

He tramped back to the veranda. A woman in dark clothes came out of one of the cabins, plastic sheeting over her head. For a glad moment he thought it was Emilia, that she was safe after all; but then he realised it was her sister Rebecca instead, the one person Emilia had made him promise never to breathe a word of the
Winterton
project to. She came over to him, looking concerned. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Who were those guys? What the hell’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. I was in one of the cabins. They just showed up.’ She looked at the open door. ‘They had a key.’

‘Just as well,’ said Knox. ‘I’m drenched.’ He squelched his way inside, kicked off his shoes.

‘Matthew Richardson,’ she said from behind him.

He looked around, startled that she should know his name, only to see her crouched down by his bags, reading his tags. ‘Everyone calls me Daniel,’ he told her.

‘The
Maritsa
?’ she frowned, still reading. ‘Is that a ship or something?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know the name,’ she said. ‘Why would I know the name?’

Knox hesitated; but if she’d heard of it, a lie was almost
certain to rebound. ‘It’s a salvage ship,’ he told her. ‘They’re doing a project up near Morombe.’

‘That’s right,’ said Rebecca ‘I read an article on it. Looking for some Chinese shipwreck, right?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘What were you doing up there?’

He hesitated again, reluctant to be drawn into all these lies. But he didn’t see what choice he had, other than to betray his vow to Emilia. ‘I’m a freelance journalist,’ he told her, borrowing a trick from Lucia. ‘I was up there to write an article on the salvage.’

‘And is that why you’re here too? To do an article on Eden?’

‘I’m always looking for strong stories,’ said Knox. ‘But mostly I’m here because I’ve got a few days off, and I’d heard great things about this place.’

She pulled a face. ‘I’m afraid we’re really not set up for visitors at the moment.’ Then she looked out at the continuing downpour, and relented. ‘But you can stay tonight, of course; and there are some nice guest cabins just along the beach from here.’

‘Thanks. That’s really kind.’ A pool of water was gathering around his feet, making him realise just how filthy and wet he was. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a shower I can use, is there?’ he asked.

She looked bleakly outside. ‘I think I’d need to turn on the generator.’

‘Then don’t worry about it,’ he told her. ‘The Good Lord provides.’ He took his wash-bag and towel from his bag, went out on to the veranda, closed the door behind him, then stripped naked and strode out into the deluge to wash.

Rebecca lit an oil lamp, turned it up bright and looked around. A red guestbook and a wire tray of leaflets stood upon the high counter. Spare keys hung from a rack behind the desk. A menagerie of snakes, chameleons, butterflies, tortoises, birds and lemurs stared back at her from framed photographs on the walls. The intruders had left damp footprints on the floor. She followed them to the door of her father’s study, looked inside. It was much as she remembered, save for the laptop upon his desk. The camp-bed was still in the far corner, for those occasions when Eden had been overrun by volunteers; and his shotgun was still in the glass cabinet behind the desk. She quickly checked his shelves of books and CDs, but there were no obvious gaps from which something might have been taken.

She went back through reception. The front door had blown ajar, revealing that the downpour outside had grown incredibly fierce, so that the ground was half covered in
shallow lakes, and great serpents of dark water were slithering away on the slight camber of the site. Daniel had his back to her, rainwater running down his back before splitting like a delta at his buttocks. His shoulder was ploughed by the distinctive ridges of burn scars, with more upon his back, but there was little else wrong with him that she could see.

He squeezed a stubby caterpillar of toothpaste on to his brush, held it out into the rain, threw back his head to let water drum into his mouth. Lightning lit him up like Christmas, glinting off the silver chain around his neck, illuminating the tattoo of a star on his right biceps, reflecting in twin yellow points from the tapeta-rich eyes of night creatures around the clearing. Thunder cracked; raindrops hammered like furious dwarves at the earth, throwing up tiny coronets with each impact. Daniel didn’t even flinch. She suffered, then, something like premonition; a certainty that there was more to this man than met the eye, that somehow he’d have a part to play in her life.

The door blew closed again. She shook her head at herself, went through to the main room, a large, openplan mix of cafeteria, games room, lecture-hall, library and dormitory. She’d sleep in here herself tonight, put Daniel in her father’s office. The kitchens next, then the restrooms, storeroom and clinic. Nothing seemed out of place, though she’d been away too long to be sure. Daniel
was in the lounge when she went back through, wearing an olive T-shirt and baggy blue shorts, holding an oil lamp of his own that made his skin glow. ‘This may sound crazy,’ he said. ‘But don’t I know you from somewhere?’

She gave him an appraising look. Men often tried to pretend they didn’t recognise her; it seemed to make them feel better about themselves for some reason. But if this one was lying, he was good. ‘You may have seen me on TV,’ she told him.

His eyes narrowed, then he snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘You’re Rebecca someone. Rebecca Kirkpatrick. You do wildlife programmes.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

‘Cool.’ He sat down on one of a pair of armchairs hunched around a low table. ‘So what are you doing out here? Are you on a shoot, or something?’

‘Not exactly, no,’ she said, sitting opposite. ‘This is where I was brought up. My father and my sister …’ She stopped short, surprised by a pang of emotion.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. Outside, the rain was easing. It would be daybreak in a few hours; she should get some sleep. Yet, more than anything, she felt the need to talk. ‘It’s my father and my sister,’ she told him. ‘They’ve gone missing.’

Though she’d been up late, Rebecca woke early and rose at once, brisk with purpose. Her luggage was at Pierre’s, she had no toiletries, so she swilled and spat out some drinking water, threw on yesterday’s clothes, then looked briefly in on her father’s office. Daniel was still sleeping. He’d thrown off his sheet during the night, was naked except for a pair of cheap green cotton boxers.
Cotton boxers: underwear of kings!
Morning sunlight glistened on the thin fuzz of his navel and chest valley. His arm had fallen off the bed and his knuckles were resting on the floor. She suffered an odd kind of embarrassment then, recalling how she’d poured her
heart out to him last night, sharing confidences about her childhood here that she’d never before told anyone—and him a journalist! She’d known even at the time that it was rash, yet once she’d started she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Besides, there was something about him that she’d trusted then and trusted still. And, for all that she’d told him he’d have to leave today, she found herself rather hoping that he’d stay.

It was cool out. She took a familiar track into the spiny forest, walking with her arms folded across her belly until exertion warmed her. The narrow path was badly waterlogged in places. Her shoes kept plugging and popping, her feet became drenched and cold. But she didn’t turn back. She’d put this off for over a decade already. It wouldn’t wait any longer.

Moisture made everything sparkle. Birds sang; grasshoppers fizzed from her advance. Termite mounds were rusted with rain. A huge web glittered like stretched silver thread above her head. Last night’s deluge had been an aberration. This region was parched most of the year. The peculiar gyre of the Indian Ocean and Madagascar’s mountainous spine kept her east coast saturated but her west coast dry. Plants had to gather enough water during the rare rains to last them through the droughts. The flowers and trees therefore armoured themselves with needles to protect this precious liquid. Spiders and chameleons too. Madagascar’s tenrec and the hedgehog
were a textbook example of convergent evol ution, little balls of spines. Like the hedgehog, the tenrec was a hibernator, fattening itself during rains, using torpor to survive the dry season. It was a common strategy on this coast. The mouse lemur, the world’s smallest primate, could plunge its body temperature to just seven degrees above freezing. As a child, Rebecca had had a knack for finding these tiny, wide-eyed prosimians in their snug tree-holes. When you cradled them in your palm, their whole bodies would pulse extravagantly with terror. They were wise to be afraid, for she’d found their bones in the droppings of raptors, snakes, owls and fossa, but they’d never had anything to fear from her. She’d always loved lemurs, not least because so many of the species were fiercely matriarchal. They knew how gender relationships should be. Female ring-tailed lemurs had first pick of food and space, they cuffed their men around with impunity.