Bright Air - Barry Maitland [63]
Even my nylon rope looked worn out. I put the stuff down with a flutter of anxiety. I was different in other ways now, out of shape and out of practice, hands soft from office work. I couldn’t see myself scaling the cliffs below Mount Gower any more. Not without Luce. But this was for Luce, Anna insisted; one last climb for Luce.
My phone rang. I returned abruptly to the present, recognising Damien’s voice.
‘Josh, hi. How’s it going?’
‘Good, thanks. You? Lauren okay?’
‘Fighting fit. You been to see my friend yet?’
The merchant banker. I’d forgotten about it. ‘Um, no, not yet, Damien. Been a bit tied up. Maybe when I get back.’
‘Back?’
‘Yes. Anna and I are going away for a short trip. To Lord Howe.’
‘What?’ I heard his breathing, heavy against the mouthpiece. ‘What exactly do you hope to achieve there?’
‘I don’t know. Talk to some of the locals. Listen, that last week on the island, the week of the accident, you mentioned that you were pretty much out of it in the days after the party, not feeling well.’
‘Yes?’
‘So you didn’t go climbing on the Friday, the day following the party?’
‘I … I can’t remember now. Is that what I said? Why are you interested?’
‘Just trying to place everybody at the scene.’
‘Jesus, Josh, listen to yourself. Who do you think you are, Ed McBain? Where are you going to stay?’
‘We booked on the internet. It’s one of the Kelsos’ cottages.’
‘Well … I really don’t see the point, but if it helps you get over this, good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
He rang off. I hadn’t mentioned our big discovery. The thought of him knowing—of anyone knowing—that Luce had been pregnant when she died just made me feel sick.
I didn’t tell Mary either, but I did have to discuss our trip with her. She thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t let her see the climbing gear I’d packed. That evening I roamed around the hotel, apprehensively checking the locks and light bulbs, as if I might not be coming back.
15
Luce had told me something about Lord Howe Island. It was the remains of an ancient volcano, the only island in the Pacific that the Polynesians missed as they hopped across the ocean. When HMS Supply came upon it in 1788, it was one of the last places left on earth on which no human foot had ever trod, a true Eden burgeoning with unique species. The sailors managed to eat a good few of them to extinction as well as introduce some feral predators, and the arrival of the black rat, Rattus rattus, from a grounded ship later didn’t help, but still, a great deal of its natural state had survived and was now being nurtured and restored.
For my benefit, hoping to tickle my interest, Luce spoke of the island’s economic history too; of how the early settlers survived by selling fresh meat and vegetables to passing American whaling ships; of how they were almost wiped out by the collapse of the whaling industry in the 1870s, and were saved by the discovery of the kentia palm, uniquely adapted to a cooler climate and so ideally suited to the Victorian drawing rooms of the northern hemisphere; of how the black rat took a fancy to kentia seeds as well as everything else, and had to be hunted on a bounty system, a rat’s tail being worth one penny in 1920, rising to sixpence by 1928.
She tried hard, but I was determined not to be interested. I was going to London. What could I possibly want with a place whose whole history could be told in a couple of paragraphs? Now, belatedly, I was on my way.
We met up at Central and took the train together out to the airport. I thought Anna looked younger, with her backpack and holiday gear, and there was a blush of colour in her cheeks. I still had that hollow apprehensive feeling in my stomach you get before a journey or a climb, and we talked with a forced cheerfulness. Neither of us referred to Pru Passlow’s revelation.
An hour out from Sydney, as I watched the shadows of puffy clouds glide across the rippled surface of the ocean far below the little plane, I told her I bet I could guess what she was thinking.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Islands,’ I said.