A Bone From a Dry Sea (15 page)

He didn’t consciously plan this. He was a sociable person, so it was natural to him to pay attention to the other senior males, to visit all the families and so on. Nothing he did was out of the ordinary. Only the result wasn’t ordinary. The nature of leadership had changed. It now depended less upon dominance and more upon
consent
. The tribe had helped in the change by their refusal to accept Greb as leader, and Presh’s injury forced him to adapt to his limitations, and to control the tribe with the help of the seniors, male and female, and to see that stomachs were seldom empty. This was why Li was important to him. If times had been hard and food scarce, then the tribe would have let him go and accepted whoever had challenged and outfaced him. But with the living easy they were happy with things as they were.

Sometimes the dolphins stayed away from one full moon to the next, and the tribe would return to shore-harvesting, but even then, because they’d had fish to eat last time they passed by, the mussel beds would hold succulent big mussels and the rocks and pools and crannies would be rich in crabs and octopi and other prey that had bred there undisturbed. Then perhaps three times in a journey the dolphins would herd shoals to them. Both sides were learning. A single dolphin would come swimming near the shark-watch, filling the sea with its song, and answers would be heard, far off and faint. The shark-watch would cry their new call,
Dolphin
, and the single dolphin would leave and Presh would collect everyone to the best hunting-place on that stretch of shore, to wait for the driven shoal.

There was, for instance, a beach with a sand spit running out into the sea and the sea floor almost level beside it, drying right out at low water but excellent when the tide was half-full. The best swimmers would go out to help herd the shoal into the trap, others with Presh in command would wait on the sand spit while everyone else lined up opposite it, standing close together in the
water
. The dolphins would herd the shoal in, the people on the spit would plunge in and close the trap, and then the line would carefully tighten, body against body, forcing the fish into a packed and threshing mass in the shallows where those no longer needed in the shorter line could wade, grabbing and flinging the helpless fish up on to the beach. Sometimes the line broke under the pressure. Sometimes the fish were small enough for many of them to slip through. But when the hunt went well they could catch all they and the dolphins needed in a single drive.

Days, times, seasons passed. The rains came for their usual few blissful days, heard first as thunder out to sea, then seen as banked clouds on the horizon and at the same time sensed in tension and waiting, the sky losing its blue and the air sticky, heavy to breathe, as if it were half-way to water. Finally the downpour smothering sea and land. A few days of that, leaving the sky sparkling, while the cliffs clothed themselves in green and the dunes behind the shrimping beach became a brief astonishment of flowers before the world settled back to heat and drought.

As the year went by, Li felt the changes in her body begin which would make her ready to mate. Having watched slightly older friends go through the change she was aware what was going to happen. It would be soon after the next rains, when all the land was clean, shining, new-made in the wetness, like a baby when first lifted from the mothering sea.

But those rains came early and different, without wait or tension or warning thunder. Instead the smoking mountain rumbled, and then there
was
a night when the cliffs where they roosted seemed to quiver and rocks tumbled into the sea. At the caves the water had a strange taste. The dolphins didn’t come.

Two nights after they’d left the caves, without warning, thunder crashed overhead. A huge wind lashed the coast. Lightning blazed from horizon to horizon with barely a blink of dark before the next dazzling shaft. Even that glare was veiled as the rain slammed down, loud as the pealing thunder. The world drowned. They breathed water as much as air. Dawn came, and they saw the sea churning against the cliff below in a broad, slow swell, ugly but swimmable. To them it seemed much more friendly than the racketing air. They made their way down and found that once below the surface they could forage easily enough, though the water itself felt strangely chill.

By mid-day, though they couldn’t see the sun, the waves were beginning to rise and the rain and thunder were no less. These cliffs were dangerous in such a sea, tricky to leave or land on, or to forage along. They would have to go elsewhere. South lay more cliffs, some of them safer in a storm, but only ledges to roost on as exposed as these. That was why, when Presh went round the families making signals to leave, they were ready to follow him back north to the water-caves.

They came there without more trouble than could be expected from such seas, and though it was still light, crowded into the caves and huddled together shuddering from the unfamiliar rain-chilled air. That night the cave trembled and rocks fell from the roof and they woke and rushed in panic out into the open, but the rain was still belting down, so when
the
trembling had been still for a while they went back in and slept until dawn.

They woke to the rising sun, a clear sky and no wind, the only sounds the call of birds and the slow churn of waves against the bar. The water at the back of the caves was now too foul to drink, but rain-fed streams and waterfalls were running down the cliffs outside. As the sun rose the air stayed cool and fresh. But despite the calm and beauty of the day there was a fretfulness in the tribe. They hadn’t yet forgotten their fear – fear not of something they knew as a familiar danger, like sharks or wave-lash on rocks, but of things that were strange, different, wrong. These rains, so soon, so short. This quaking earth. This stinking water in the caves. Wrong.

They looked to Presh for leadership and Presh looked to Li for help and she had none to give. So they spread out and began to forage for food, as usual without much reward on this scant shore, but Presh stayed by the bay. More than once he climbed out and scrambled up the rocks to a vantage point from which he could gaze seaward, sniffing the wind and staring out for signs of some fresh danger. From there he could also see the central mountain, no longer gently smoking but sending up a black tumultuous cloud which rose high in the sky before it was blown away southward.

He had climbed there again, taking Li with him this time, still trying to make up his mind whether it was now safe to lead the tribe south, when suddenly he shouted and pointed north along the shoreline.

Li looked. The tribe had all stayed fairly close, waiting for Presh’s signal. Well beyond them she
saw
a number of black flecks in the water. She knew them at once. Not dolphins, not birds, but the heads of people swimming towards her. Strangers.

NOW: WEDNESDAY MORNING

VINNY WOKE BEFORE
dawn, when it was just light enough for her to see Dad’s shadowy movements as he tried to dress without disturbing her.

‘I’ll come and help,’ she said.

‘Not much for you to do yet.’

‘I can wheel the barrow if you don’t fill it full. I’d much rather work before it gets too hot.’

‘If you really want to.’

While they were climbing the hill, the stars went out as if someone had turned off a switch. Only a few minutes later the sun’s rim clipped the horizon. Dad hacked soil out and Vinny wheeled the half-full barrow down the slope (no problem) and lugged it back empty (hard work). It was already getting hot before Dad decided they’d done enough. They went down the hill and breakfasted in the slant shadow of the big awning. For a while Dad said nothing so Vinny was silent too.

‘I’ve been thinking about what May Anna told you,’ he said.

‘So’ve I.’

‘What was your conclusion?’

‘I’m not going to choose between Mum and you. Not if I can help it. Mum tried to make me and I fought her off. That was OK. But I
can’t
fight you – it wouldn’t work. We’ve got to agree.’

‘Right. I’m going to make one condition, though. You are not to mention your sea-ape theory again to anyone in this camp.’

‘Oh . . . All right.’

‘It’s not because I think it’s nonsense, though at the moment I do. Some day, if you still want me to, and if I’ve time, I’ll read up enough about it to give you a considered opinion, but not now. It’s not in itself that important, but the atmosphere on this expedition is already quite trying enough for me without Joe or Fred or anyone having the extra leverage of being able to needle me about it. I’m afraid I’m not at all good at that sort of thing. I don’t want to have to cope with it now. Understand?’

‘Yes, of course . . . only . . .’

He looked warningly at her.

‘It’s all right. I’m not going to talk to anyone about it. I promise. If anyone asks me I’ll say I think it’s nonsense too.’

‘You don’t have to go that far.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Only . . . you know those toe-bones? I suppose Joe’s taken them back to the camp.’

‘He won’t let them out of his sight.’

‘If you find another one will you look at it and try and see if it might have been, you know, webbed? You needn’t say anything to anyone. Just look.’

He thought about it and nodded.

‘That’s fair,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I think it’s highly unlikely, even if that were the case . . . and you’d probably need laboratory equipment . . . All right, I will try to look as objectively as I can.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Not at all. Your mother in your position would have expected me to take on the lot of them in your cause.’

‘I’m not Mum.’

‘I am aware of that. But yesterday, for instance, when you were arguing with Watson about your theory and all I could hear was your voice, I had to keep reminding myself of the difference. And at times you look quite extraordinarily like her when I first knew her.’

‘I’ve seen the photographs at Gran’s. Did you love her then?’

For a moment she thought she’d put her foot in it again, but he smiled without apparent effort.

‘Since you arrived I’ve been reminding myself that we had two or three very good years before things went wrong.’

‘What did you call her?’

‘Debbie.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘She had something I felt I needed. More than just liveliness. A real excitement with life, a delight in its promises and possibilities, a readiness to plunge in, to take emotional risks. Conviction.’

‘What did you give her?’

‘Not enough. I think she felt she needed a stable centre, reliability, level-headedness, a stone to strike her sparks off. I am a doubter, I see at least two sides of every question, I am emotionally cautious, organized, orderly. I felt myself becoming a silence for her to fill with words, an emptiness for her to pour her life into. I think. It’s difficult to place things such as feelings, and changes of feelings, into their exact
time
. I’ve been tending to say to myself (and to other people, to be honest) that we should never have married. We were too different. There was no bridge between us. But that’s not true. You’ve made me remember that there was a perfectly good bridge for a while. We let it fall down and then we couldn’t find a way of rebuilding it, but it was there.’

‘Was it me made things change?’

‘Of course you made things change. There were two people now in your mother’s – Debbie’s – life for a start, but you didn’t bust the bridge, if that’s what you mean. We did that. I think even before you were born, while she was still pregnant . . . I should never have let her call you that ridiculous name.’

‘I’m used to it. It’s me now. Did you have a row about it?’

‘I’m bad at rows. I don’t remember exactly. I expect I said, “Well, if that’s what you want,” and left it to her.’

‘I can’t imagine being called anything else now. Of course I hated it when some kids found out I was really Lavinia and started calling me “Lav”. I’m no good at being needled either.’

‘Watch out for Fred, then. He’s got a tongue like an asp.’

‘I guessed.’

He grunted approvingly and they fell back into companionable silence, Vinny feeling that the damage she’d done yesterday had been repaired – more than repaired. Like a broken bone that’s mended well, the link would be stronger than before. Dad had put his mug down when the immense and empty silence around them was broken by the gear-change of the truck nosing
down
to cross the dry river-bed. Dad stretched and sighed.

‘End of idyll,’ he said. ‘Let’s let Joe find us at work. I think it’s going to be hot.’

‘It can’t be hotter than yesterday.’

‘I’m afraid it can.’

Vinny and Dad had just reached the trench when the truck stopped below. Vinny watched the party climb out, the Hamiskas, Michael, Dr Wessler, Nikki and three or four others she’d scarcely met so far.

‘He hasn’t brought Watson,’ she said.

‘That’s something,’ said Dad. ‘Well, let’s let him find us hard at it.’

In fact he’d scarcely loosened his first trowelful from the fossil-layer when Dr Hamiska came striding up the hill, shouting good mornings, and peered in under the awning.

‘Great work, Sam. You’ve shifted a lot. Found anything?’

‘Hardly started on that. We were doing the heavy stuff before it got too hot. Vinny’s been carting the soil away. We’ve been at it since sunrise. I see you haven’t brought Watson.’

‘Your every wish catered for, Sam.’

There was something in the tone of the remark, or perhaps the laugh that followed it, that made Dad look questioningly at him.

‘It was his idea, Sam,’ said Dr Hamiska. ‘We were talking about Vinny’s shell last night and I said it would be useful to have an accurate identification. Dating, you know. Something to tell the Craig people. “Some kind of Myaceae” sounds a bit feeble. Watson offered to drive back to his department and get the references.’

‘They won’t have that sort of thing here.’

‘He’s got access to the university computer. He can call up a data-bank. It would take me or anyone else a week to get permission.’