Stormchild (24 page)

“Oh, God,” I murmured, and it was a prayer of thanks as well as a plea for help, for sunlight was dazzling us where it reflected from a windowpane. For suddenly, in one of the last wildernesses of earth, we had found the straight lines of human habitation. There was smoke above a roof. There was a rank smell that was the stench of people.

Stormchild
had brought us to Genesis.

I had always imagined the von Rellsteb settlement would be graced by a grand Victorian farmhouse with carved eaves, turrets, and wide verandas. Common sense had told me that no house built to withstand the Patagonian weather could possibly have an exterior as fussily detailed as my imagined Victorian mansion, but nevertheless the fancy had persisted so that when I did at last see the building I felt an immediate disappointment, for it looked like nothing more than a range of overlarge and decaying farm sheds.

The ugly house and its ragged extensions stood in the shelter of a semicircle of low steep hills and above a lawn that sloped down to the bay’s shingle beach. The house, which faced eastward toward the water, was made of a limestone so pale that it looked like concrete. It was an immensely long and disproportionately low house of only two stories, but with sixteen windows on each of those two floors. The house might not have looked as grand as my Victorian fancy had embroidered it, but the first von Rellsteb had certainly built large. Had he imagined a slew of grandchildren pounding down his long, echoing corridors? The building, except for its size, was otherwise unremarkable, unless one took exception to the bright red corrugated iron roof through which a dozen stone chimneys protruded. Two of those chimneys showed wisps of smoke, betraying humanity’s presence.

The house had two single-storied wings, one to the north and the other to the south. Those two extensions each added sixty feet to the long facade of the house before they turned at right angles toward the protective western hills, presumably making a huge three-sided yard at the rear of the house. The two wings were built in the same pale stone as the house and roofed with the same ugly sheet metal. The only structure that in any way matched my original expectations was a cast-iron gazebo, incongruously like a park bandstand, that stood in front of the house to offer anyone sitting in its shelter a long view down the Desolate Straits. The gazebo was an inappropriate touch, like a clown’s red nose stuck on the waxy face of a corpse, and its existence added to the sense of unreality that assailed me as we motored farther into the bay. All around the settlement were vegetable gardens, which, even in this day’s cheerful sunlight, looked forlorn and unproductive, while on the steep ridge that lay a half mile behind the buildings was a tall, slender radio mast that was strongly guyed against the island’s fierce winds.

“What a godforsaken place,” David said in horror.

I was thinking of Nicole living in this godforsaken place, and so said nothing. The settlement seemed deserted, the only sign that anyone lived in this awful place was the smoke from the stone chimneys. Nor was there any sign of the catamaran
Erebus,
renamed
Genesis,
though on the southern side of the bay, moored alongside an ancient stone quay, there was an equally ancient looking fishing vessel that was painted a lurid lime-green and had a high bluff bow, a low gunwale amidships, and a stubby wheelhouse astern, from which a tall dark chimney stuck skyward. For an ensign the fishing boat had a pale green scrap of cloth like that I remembered from the day when Nicole had sailed away. The trawler’s name, like the renamed
Erebus,
was
Genesis
and had been painted in black untidy letters on her bows. The only other boats I could see were a slew of sea kayaks drawn up on the beach.

I throttled back
Stormchild’s
motor as the depth sounder betrayed the bay’s steeply shelving bottom.

“We could berth alongside the fishing boat,” David suggested.

I shook my head. “I’ll anchor and row ashore. You’ll stay here?”

“Gladly.” David shuddered at the decrepit, uninviting appearance of the settlement. Now that we were closing on the land I could see a row of odd concrete tanks embedded in the sloping lawn in front of the house. David had also noticed the ugly containers and was examining them through his binoculars. “Fish tanks?” he ventured the guess, then gave me the glasses as he went forward to stand beside the main anchor.

I waved to him when the depth sounder showed we were in thirty feet of water. The chain rattled and crashed its way through the fairlead as I killed the engine, then there was a wonderful silence as the chain at last stopped running and as
Stormchild’s
small forward motion dug in the anchor flukes. She tugged once, then gentled as we swung round so that our stern faced the apparently deserted settlement. We were just fifty yards from shore, while the house was another hundred yards beyond the small beach.

“As a garden of earthly delights,” David said, “it lacks a certain lighthearted elegance, wouldn’t you say?”

“It lacks people, too.” I unlashed the dinghy that had been stored on the after coach roof, then splashed the small boat over
Stormchild
’s stern. I did not bother with the dinghy’s outboard motor, but instead just lowered myself overboard with a pair of oars and rowlocks. I also took a handheld VHF radio which David would monitor on
Stormchild’s
larger set. He asked if I wanted to take the second rifle with me as well, but I shook my head. “I don’t want to antagonize anyone, if anyone’s there at all.”

“White man come in peace, eh?” David said with a jocularity designed to hide his nervousness, yet there was a hint of truth in his jest, for we both felt like explorers touching a previously unknown shore in an effort to make contact with some elusive and mysterious tribe.

“Wish me luck,” I said, then pushed away from
Stormchild’s
side. It was odd to look back at my boat. She had become my carapace, my security, and it was almost unsettling to be rowing away from her sea-battered hull. The woodwork of her cabin roofs looked faded, and her paint was grimed with salt, yet there was still something very lovely about the big yacht as she sat in that unnaturally placid bay with its long view of the Desolate Straits.

A flurry of flightless steamer ducks fled from my dinghy as I neared the shingle beach. My heart was thumping and there was a nervous sourness in my belly. I had thought that my long solo journeys around the world had cured me of helpless fear, yet now I felt a kind of craven panic because I really was rowing into the unknown. I felt a temptation to return to
Stormchild
and let Genesis come to us, but instead I tugged hard on the oars until the dinghy’s bows grated at last on the beach. I stepped out and dragged the small boat safely above the tide line. The beach was edged by a seven foot high bluff of stony earth, up which someone had once built a flight of sturdy wooden steps.

I climbed the weathered stairs with a growing sense of unreality. I had sailed ten thousand miles to what? To nothing? To a blast of gunfire? To Nicole? To tears of reconciliation? Or perhaps, if my daughter and I both behaved with true British reticence, to an awkward embrace and an embarrassed conversation.

I reached the top of the wooden steps and started across the springy, short-grassed turf, where I was at once assailed by a stench of manure so overpowering that I almost retched. At first I thought the smell might be coming from the concrete tanks, which I now assumed were sewage settlement chambers, but when I reached the odd tanks I saw that one half were empty while the other half held malodorous and curdled mixtures of oil and water. The smell, distinctly that of sewage, did not emanate from the tanks but from the fields on either side of the house, and I realized that the Genesis community must recycle their own sewage by spreading it as topdressing on the settlement’s vegetable plots.

I walked toward the house’s central doorway which was framed by a flimsy-looking wickerwork porch, a domestic touch as odd as the strangely festive gazebo. It felt weird to be ashore. The land seemed to be rocking like a boat. I was nervous, yet still no one challenged me, indeed no human sound disturbed the day’s peace. A gull screamed, startling me. Then, just as I reached the conclusion that the settlement must be deserted, the double front doors of the house burst open and two bearded men, both wearing identical green garments, emerged into the sunlight.

For a moment we stared at each other. I suddenly felt happy. I was going to see Nicole! And in my happiness I felt an absurd urge to offer the two men a deep bow. “Hello!” I called out instead.

“Go away,” one of the two men replied. Both men looked to be in their thirties and had springy, bushy beards. The one who had spoken sported a black beard, while his companion had a brown beard streaked with gray. Neither man appeared to be armed, which was reassuring.

My happiness ebbed as swiftly as it had bubbled up. I started walking toward the two men and an unseen hand immediately slammed the doors of the house shut. I heard bolts slide into place.

“Go away!” The man with the black beard said again.

“Listen,” I said in a very friendly tone, “I’ve just sailed ten thousand miles to see my daughter, and I’m not going away just because you’re feeling unsociable. My name’s Tim Blackburn. How are you?” I held out my hand. “I’m looking for Nicole Blackburn. Is she here?”

They ignored my outstretched hand. Instead they stood with arms akimbo, daring me to push past them.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me?” I suggested politely. “My name is Tim Blackburn and I’ve come here to see my daughter Nicole.”

“Go away,” the man with the black beard said again.

I went to walk round them and the second man raised a hand to push me back.

“Touch me,” I told him, “and I’ll break your fucking skull.”

My sudden hostility made the man skitter out of my path like a frightened rabbit. I walked past him to the odd porch, where I tried to open the front doors that proved to be very firmly bolted. I turned back to the bearded men. “Is Nicole Blackburn here?” Neither man answered, so I peered through the window nearest the door. The glass panes were very grimy, but I could just see into a room that was almost empty except for a bare trestle table on which hurricane lamps stood unlit. The stone window ledge was thick with dead flies. More ominously I noted that the window had stout iron bars set into the stone ledge.

“Tim? This is
Stormchild,
over.” The handheld radio suddenly squawked in my oilskin’s pocket.

“David? This is Tim, over.”

“Tim. I’ve just seen one green-dressed fellow run to the hills behind the house. He seemed to be carrying a weapon.” David’s voice sounded ominous, as though the violence he feared had already started. “Do you hear me, over?”

“I hear you,” I told him, “and I’ll go gently.”

“Remember our agreement! We’re withdrawing if there’s trouble!”

“Perhaps the fellow has just gone duck hunting,” I said, then put the radio back in my pocket and smiled at the two bearded men who had edged close to eavesdrop on my conversation. “Where’s Nicole?” I asked them.

“Go away!”

Ignoring the monotonous order, I trudged through the muddy soil toward the northern wing of the house. I noticed that all the ground floor windows were protected with the stout iron bars, and the thought occurred to me that this would not be an easy building to break into.

I turned to follow the northern wing where it bent back toward the encircling hills. The single-storied extension was windowless, though here and there, and looking menacingly like loopholes, apertures had been crudely hacked through the limestone blocks. I peered through one such aperture, but could see nothing but darkness inside. My two bearded companions followed a dozen paces behind me, but no longer tried to stop me from exploring the settlement. I walked past rows of carrots, some small bean plants, potatoes, and a wilting patch of red beets. The gardens stretched to the very edge of the escarpment, which formed the near slope of the semicircle of hills toward which David had seen the gunman run.

I walked to the rear of the buildings and saw that the long house and its two wings did indeed form three sides of an open courtyard. I took out the radio and pressed my transmission button. “David? There’s a courtyard behind the house. I’m going to have a shufti. I can’t see your gunman, so I assume he’s holed up on the ridge line. No one will talk to me and the house is locked, so I don’t know whether Nicole is here or not. We’ll probably lose radio contact when I’m in the courtyard, but if I’m not on the air within fifteen minutes then you’d better break out the guns and all of you should come and look for me. Out.” I thought it would do no harm if my unfriendly guardians got the impression that
Stormchild
was crammed with armed men ready to turn their dung-ridden paradise into a killing ground.

I moved into the bare, dank courtyard. Nothing grew in that depressing space, not even a blade of grass. There was a child’s sandpit in one corner, which held some very old and faded plastic toy buckets and spades. Near the damp sandpit were a rusting iron swing, a wooden rocking horse, a doll without its head, and a heap of broken, rusting lobster traps. A cat hissed at me from the roof of one of the two low wings of the house.

From within the yard the two wings of the house looked like rows of stables, each with a Dutch door. In one of the stable compartments were two huge vats and a stench so vile that the homemade manure smelled sweet by comparison. There were bundles of otter pelts hanging on hooks above the vats, and I assumed that this was the settlement’s tannery. But a tannery? Why would environmentalists be skinning sea otters?

“You must go away.” The man with the black beard was clearly becoming ever more uncomfortable with my brazen snooping.

“Where’s Nicole?” I asked him cheerfully and, as before, received no reply. “Is Caspar here?” I asked instead, but with the same result.

I walked to the back door of the house, which, not surprisingly, was locked as firmly as the front entrance. I peered through a barred window to see a kitchen equipped with an ancient wood-fired stove. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling beams. I walked on to the next window and saw racks of guns that looked like assault rifles. Some of the spaces in the wooden racks were ominously empty.