The descent, p.31
The Descent, page 31
The man seems unimpressed. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. How is this of interest to you?’
‘These are the parents of the boy. Bring him to us and we leave, no questions asked, and our meeting of Wednesday will procced as planned.’
A frown forms on his face, slowly as the calculus of the situation unfolds in his mind. I can see him thinking it through, his eyes darting towards Julie, to me and my AK, and then back to Freyja and her pistol.
‘And if I were to agree, what would be to my advantage?’ he says.
‘Well, two things.’ Freyja shifts her weight from one foot to the other. ‘First, you get to maintain your happy relationship with me, and second, you get to retain the use of your balls.’ She lowers her gun so it is pointed at his crotch.
He takes a step back, all that cool suddenly gone. ‘I don’t know the gentleman, I assure you. He came to me.’
‘You share an affiliation.’
‘A non-binding one, as you know.’
‘I’m not sure your employer shares that view.’
‘I was about to send them away.’
‘I am sure you were.’
By now my patience has run out. My boy is in that house somewhere and these two are carrying on like a pair of old enemies met on a neutral street. I step forward, raise the AK. ‘I want to see my son now or your balls won’t be all you’re missing.’
Devereux stumbles back. ‘In there,’ he stammers, pointing towards the back of the house. ‘The kitchen.’
I push past Freyja, march down the corridor and kick the door open.
Leo is sitting at the table spooning something into his mouth, Fema beside him. Treyvan is leaning on the kitchen counter next to them with a beer in one hand and my handgun in the other. Empty beer bottles are scattered across the counter. Milk drips from the corner of Leo’s mouth. Beyond, windows and a kitchen door leading outside.
I level the AK at Treyvon’s chest. ‘Put down the gun and move away from them.’
If he’s surprised, he shows no sign. He stands, takes a swig of beer and places the bottle on the counter. ‘Well, I reckon with your boy right behind me there’s no way you’re gonna shoot.’
Just then Julie appears in the doorway behind me, strapped into the vest, sweating, bandaged, holding Becky by the hand. ‘Leo,’ she cries.
‘Mum,’ Leo shouts.
‘Stay right there, Doc,’ says Treyvan, raising the pistol. ‘Or I’ll do what I should’ve done first go. Fema, you keep the boy right where he is so no one gets hurt accidental.’
Fema puts her arms around Leo and pulls him close. Leo’s bowl spills and falls to the floor with a clatter. Becky starts crying.
‘Just give me the boy and you can go on your way,’ I say. ‘I don’t care what you do after.’
‘Please,’ cries Julie. ‘Let him go. We’ll give you whatever you want.’
Treyvon smiles and steps slowly back so that he is now standing next to Fema. ‘I reckon I already got all you got to give.’
‘There’s more,’ says Julie. ‘I only showed you where we keep our ready-for-use. There’s a lot more.’
Treyvon’s eyes widen for a moment, a flicker, and then narrow again and then, so quickly we barely register the movement, he scoops up Leo in his free arm and presses the gun’s muzzle against his temple. ‘I don’t believe you, Doc. Anyway, this here can bring more than I need.’ He caresses my son’s head with the gun’s muzzle. ‘So healthy and pretty.’
Julie is shaking now, every sinew in her body taut and shivering.
‘Now we’re just going to back out of here,’ Treyvon continues. ‘If you all try to follow, I promise you it won’t turn out good. We’ll find your boy a good home and you can be happy knowing he’s alive. Come on, Fema.’
Fema stands next to him and they start stepping back towards the outside door, the muzzle of Treyvon’s pistol still pushed into the side of Leo’s head. Becky is screaming now, and Julie is trying to calm her, rocking her back and forth.
‘Daddy,’ says Leo, tears welling up in his big dark eyes.
Just then there is a flash of movement outside, and I see Freyja dart to the doorway. As she does, Treyvan wheels and crouches and fires. The kitchen window shatters and Becky lets out a high-pitched scream. In that moment I see Fema grab Treyvon’s pistol so that her body is between Leo and the gun. They struggle a moment entwined and Leo is flung free. I charge, hitting Treyvon with a full body tackle, carrying Fema back with us. As the table collapses under us, the gun goes off and Treyvon wheezes as I land full weight on his chest, the AK between us. As we grapple I try to find his gun arm, but he is strong and experienced and I am tangled in my own weapon. He spins out from under me, reaches across Fema’s motionless body. His gun must have been knocked free as we struggled. It is there on the floor, close. He lurches over Fema, stretching out his hand, reaching for the gun, a fingertip away. Just then Julie stamps her foot down hard on the gun and sweeps it away. Then she picks it up, and very calmly, as a surgeon might, she shoots Treyvon three times in the chest.
We find Freyja outside the kitchen, lying in the grass holding her side, blood pulsing up between her fingers, barely conscious. We carry her to the kitchen and lay her on the countertop, and Julie gives her morphine and cuts away her clothing and finds the place where the bullet entered and the exit wound, larger, just below her ribcage. Blood wells up and seeps from the holes. It seems impossible that so much blood can be brought forth from someone so small.
Leo and Becky huddle together in the corner, staring wide-eyed at the bodies of Treyvon and Fema leaking blood onto the tile, and I am thinking that I should move them to a place where they do not have to witness this carnage, but Julie shouts for me to boil water and look for towels and other means to staunch the flow of blood from Freyja’s spasming body, so I leave them.
By the time Julie has debrided and disinfected the wound, cauterised the torn vessels and sutured the holes, the sun is low in the sky. Julie takes one of the bags of plasma from the kit Hargreaves gave her and sets up a drip. ‘She’s stable,’ Julie says. ‘But she can’t stay here.’
I find Devereux in the front room. He is sitting in one of the armchairs with a cold drink, staring out of the window. There is a deep cut on his forehead, and when he sees me and the gun in my hand and the rifle slung over my shoulder and the blood covering my clothing he cries out and spills some of his drink.
‘I had nothing to do with this,’ he stammers, his voice trembling. ‘It is not my affair. I have never seen these people before in my life.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I know.’
His eyes widen and he reaches for the gash on his head, wincing as his fingers trace the damage. ‘She hit me.’
‘Do you have a car?’
‘What? Yes. Behind the house.’
‘I need it. Freyja’s been wounded.’
‘Who?’
‘Beatrice.’
‘That bitch. I should have killed her myself.’
‘Where are the keys?’
He points to a table just inside the front door and continues sipping his drink.
I open the drawer. Inside there are some papers and an old watch and a small pair of binoculars and a handgun. ‘No keys,’ I say.
‘Underneath.’
I reach under the table and grab the fob hanging from a hook.
‘Be careful with it,’ he says. ‘It’s the only one on the island.’
We carry Freyja to the car and lay her in the back. Julie sits next to her patient and the kids in the front with me. I’d driven a car only once before, in Albany when I was nineteen, and this one looked totally different, inside and out. I push what appears to be the start button and the instrument panel blinks to life. I move a lever set in the centre console to D, which I assume is drive, push the pedal and we are rolling.
It only takes a few minutes to reach Freyja’s house. When we arrive, an older man is there to meet us. He touches Freyja’s head and shows us to a ground-floor room where we lay Freyja on a bed.
I drive back, bury Treyvon and Fema in a small clearing behind Devereux’s house. Devereux helps me. Then we sluice the blood from his kitchen floor. It takes us a long time and we work in silence. By the time we are done it is dark and a waxing moon has risen. We stand looking across the dark lagoon to the sea beyond.
‘How is she?’
‘She’s lost a lot of blood, but my wife says she’ll live.’
He takes a breath and lets it escape between pursed lips. ‘Good.’ He sees my reaction and says: ‘We have an understanding. There are not many of us here, and we must all get along, whatever our apparent allegiances.’
I leave him there on the veranda and ride back to Ruutia.
Witnesses
The Hope
We arrive back at The Hope on September 13th, 2067, after a journey of 470 days that has taken us right around this troubled planet.
We tie Providence to her mooring, row to our little shingle beach, and climb the hill to Mum and Papa’s house, the first one we built on that lonely shore, two years after we abandoned Akua in the Pacific. It is midday and the sun shines on the bay and parrots swoop and screech in the trees, and the sound of it and the blue water stretching across to The Hope are as they have always been.
Mother’s vegetable garden lies untended, vines withered and brown, the faces of dead sunflowers pushed into dry, once-loved ground. I climb the wood-plank steps to the veranda where Papa liked to sit in the afternoons and look across the sound. Inside, the house is dark and still, and there are signs of mice and the leavings of lizards and other small creatures. I go back out to the veranda and wave to Julie. She is standing outside our house with the granite pillars behind and the ruins of our radio hut further up and beyond, the ridge where Papa and Mum and Lewis lie buried and further along the place where the bones of Mum’s baby lie, shallow and bleached and re-buried.
Julie waves back and I watch the kids run down the hill towards Lewis and Mandy’s home, built at the same time as ours, after the four of us returned from Albany newly married, each son to an orphan girl. I walk up the path towards our house, where Julie is waiting.
We hang on for a time, trying to re-establish our former lives. I work on this history, this complement to Papa’s story, harvest the fruit that is ready, clear leaves and dead insects from the collection basin where our spring continues to bubble, clear and cool, as it has since the day we arrived, and fish the sound for dhufish and emperor. Julie clears the vegetable plots of stalk and resuscitates the plants that can be saved, seeds the ground anew. We take turns with the kids’ lessons, walk evenings up to Chicken-Head Rock and look out across the sound to the far hills where Uncle Liberty’s mob have their summer camp. Occasionally we see a thread of far-off smoke or catch a whiff of burning jarrah, or at night a faint glint of firelight.
‘We should go,’ Julie says one evening.
‘We should.’
‘Well then, let’s do it. We can start tomorrow.’
I stand there looking across the water at the place I know the camp is.
‘What’s wrong, Kwe?’
I tell her it’s nothing.
‘It’s your mum, isn’t it?’
And though I deny it, I know she’s right. We travelled so far to end up back here. We found Akua and we rescued Becky. And now we have our whole lives to live. But still, questions remain.
A week later I hide the guns and the gold in the safe store under our house, lock up Providence, and the four of us start the long walk to Uncle Liberty’s summer camp. We set out early, before sunrise, when the air is still cool, and walk until lunchtime. Then we sleep under the shade of some windblown sheoak and continue on in the afternoon. Leo walks, uncomplaining. I carry little Becky on my shoulders most of the way, which I can tell she loves.
By dusk we are approaching the outskirts of the camp. We’ve just passed through a copse of ancient jarrah set in a protected valley behind the dunes, when we hear a familiar voice.
‘Been a while, Born on Wednesday.’
Uncle Liberty’s son steps out from behind the wind-shorn trunk of a greying tuart. He is naked except for a pair of faded shorts, in the manner of his father, and a big smile shines on his face.
‘Born on Sunday,’ I say. ‘Sure has.’
We shake hands and he kisses Julie on the cheek, ruffles the kids’ hair. ‘You got her back. Good on you, Kwe. Always knew you would. Ripper.’ He eyes the backpacks Julie and I are carrying. ‘Planning on staying a while?’
‘If you’ll have us.’
‘We’ll make do.’
‘We’ve missed you,’ says Julie.
‘Gone a long time,’ he says. ‘A lot’s happened.’
‘How is Uncle Liberty?’
‘Sorry business. He asked for you. Always loved you. I shouldn’t say it.’
I don’t realise then just how hard it will hit me later.
That night I sit by the fire with Kwesi, watching our wives talking in the kitchen with the other women. I tell him about Akua, about some of what we learned. A while later Aunty Jennifer sits next to me. She’s aged since I last saw her, and her hands seem very small and frail in mine.
‘I’m sorry about —’ I begin.
She pushes a bony finger to my lips. ‘Hush,’ she says. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘I had a twin sister,’ I say, pulling a rolled-up paper from the small metal cylinder Camille gave me that night on Bora Bora. ‘I want you to read it,’ I say.
Jenny unrolls the papers and reads. I know each word by heart, read it in my head with her. Akua was adopted by one of the original wives who was unable to bear her own children. Her childhood was a happy one and soon the memory of her previous life dimmed and then was lost altogether. She made friends, learned to read and write, and do work such as sewing and cooking, and she played games in the cool of the afternoons and swam in the warm water of the lagoon and ran along the beaches. Akua kept a pet tortoise and loved to look at the birds and the fish. She had a beguiling voice and would sing to the animals in songs of her own composition. By the time she reached puberty she had already been earmarked for childbearing. Akua was very beautiful with clear copper-coloured skin and big dark eyes. She was assigned to one of the senior administrators on the island. He was much older than her, but he treated her well and beat her only occasionally, and even then not harshly. She had her first child at sixteen, a little boy who died of fever before his first birthday. She had a baby girl three years later, who was named Calliope, and a boy two years after that, called Benjamin, both of whom were still living on the island. After her third child, another girl, Akua’s relationship with her master began to deteriorate. As with so many of the deaths on the island, little was known of the circumstances around hers. She was buried in the servants’ graveyard on the northern side of the island.
When she is finished reading, Jenny hands me back the scroll. There are tears in her eyes.
‘Did Mum ever tell you about her, about what happened?’
‘Your mother was the best friend I ever had, Kwe. Every time I needed her, she’d make the trek out here and stay as long as she had to. She was an amazing woman. What she went through.’
‘How much did she tell you?’
‘Everything.’
A cold shiver runs across the backs of my arms and through into my wrists and fingers. ‘All of it?’
‘Yes, Kweku. All of it.’
I sit a moment watching the flames burning up the hardwood. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before, when I asked you?’
‘She made me promise a long time ago never to tell anyone what happened. And then with Becky being taken and you deciding to go after her, I thought it was the last thing you needed, all of that terrible past dredged up. It seemed better just to let it lie.’
I stare into the fire. ‘You thought I wouldn’t come back.’
‘No, Kwe. No.’ She was crying. ‘But now your mum’s gone and my husband too. You deserve to know.’
February 2039
‘What’s taking so long, God damn it?’ The Boss paced the linoleum floor of the waiting room. Outside, on the apron, Bryce was getting the G900 ready to leave. I watched him walking through the drifting snow, collar up, checking the plane’s undercarriage and wings and engines. When he was done, he crossed the apron and opened the door. A cold gust filled the room.
‘Weather’s turned bad, Boss,’ he said. ‘But we’re fuelling up now. We should be airborne in forty-five minutes.’
‘Did you switch out the transponder?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the registration?’
Bryce pointed out of the window. ‘Did it yesterday.’
‘And the cargo?’
‘Already loaded.’
The Boss grunted, looked at his watch. ‘The bastards can have all of it. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘I’ll file for Denver,’ said Bryce. ‘That won’t arouse suspicion.’
‘Do it. And Stephenson.’
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘We won’t be coming back.’
‘That was the deal, Boss. Understood.’
‘Sure was.’
‘Once we get into the mountains, we’ll get low, disappear from the radar. If they’re watching, it’ll look like we went down. By the time they start looking, if they even bother, which I doubt they will, we’ll be long gone.’ Bryce threw me a look that said stay cool, zipped up his jacket and opened the door and walked out across the snow-streaked tarmac towards the plane.
The wife was bundled up in a handmade Inuit coat, holding a steaming cup of coffee between her hands. Outside, the snow was falling harder. Down in the valleys the rivers would be running wide and full. Through the flurry I saw the jet’s navigation lights come on and then the landing light pulse twice. The signal.
‘Let’s go,’ said the Boss.
Paolo and I zipped up our coats. The wife pushed up her hood.
‘Are you ready for this, everyone?’ the Boss said. ‘A new beginning.’
