Shallow Breath (17 page)
‘M
aya, are you okay?’
Pete watches Maya as she slumps over at the kitchen table, burying her head in her arms. Desi casts him a desperate glance, before she takes the chair opposite Maya.
‘I know it’s a bit of a shock.’ She reaches across and tentatively touches her daughter’s hand. ‘I’d always planned to tell you once you were old enough to understand, but I never expected her to come here. None of your father’s family has seemed interested in us up until now.’
‘She’s right,’ Pete adds. ‘I wrote to them myself. After the shock had subsided, they didn’t want to know.’
Maya looks up, and Pete sees how exhausted she is. He wishes they could rewind the clock ten years, reassure her there was nothing to worry about and tuck her up in bed. It had been so easy to take care of her when she was a little girl, while they could shelter her from everything they didn’t want her to know.
Maya briefly chews on a nail. ‘Does Kate know she’s my half-sister?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Well, that’s fantastic, because she’s been totally stand-offish towards me since she got here. Fucking charming. Whatever time she had with my dad, it was more than I had.’
‘Let’s see what she’s got to say tomorrow …’ Desi’s tone is consoling.
Maya holds a hand up to stop her. ‘Whatever. I don’t care. I’m going to sleep in the lounge, with Luke.’
Pete follows her out of the kitchen. ‘Maya, go to bed. I’ll stay with Luke. Get a few hours of proper rest – you look beat.’
Maya stops and sighs. ‘Okay. As long as you promise to come and get me if Luke wakes up.’
‘I promise.’ As she brushes past him, he adds, ‘Your mother isn’t your enemy, you know. She loves you very much.’
Maya gives no sign she’s heard. Just keeps walking towards her room.
Wearily, he returns to the kitchen. Desi remains at the table.
‘I don’t know how to talk to her any more,’ she says sadly.
‘This is hardly a normal night, Des. Let things settle down. I’m sure she’ll be okay.’
He hopes he sounds more reassuring than he feels.
They are quiet for a while, and then she asks, ‘What are you going to do about Berani?’
Pete closes his eyes and sees Berani holding the spiky outer shell of a durian, his pliable lips pressed against the inside, pulling out the soft, foul-smelling fruit. That had been the last time Pete had seen him. A few hours later he had walked the forty-minute uphill trek to get mobile reception, and had been given the message to call Maya. When he did, she had been near hysterical.
Berani had been doing well at that point. Pete had apologised
profusely to everyone involved in the project, both on the ground and at the zoo, but insisted he was needed at home. A week after his return, he’d heard that Berani was back in the release centre with a skin infection. All the news he’d gleaned from that point was concerning, as Berani got sicker and sicker, with one thing after another.
Pete was supposed to stay there for three months, a vital touchstone for the orang-utan as he adjusted to a new and dramatically different existence. But once Pete came back, he heard it all second hand, and every worrying update felt like a rebuke. He could sense his colleagues’ discomfort when they talked about the project with him. These were people dedicated to saving a species that on the current clock had less than ten years left. And he had let them down. Pete began to question his priorities. If he couldn’t give his all to the job, then it was time to resign and let someone else have a go.
‘There’s not much I can do any more,’ he tells Desi.
‘You could go to Sumatra – make sure he’s okay.’
‘I don’t work at the zoo now, Desi. I’m not connected to the project.’
Desi shakes her head, as though unable to believe it. ‘But surely they’d welcome your help. There can’t be many people with your skills and experience.’
Pete thinks about it for a while. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Make the calls – find out. It can’t hurt. Don’t get stuck through indecision, Pete. It will eat you up. You didn’t make a mistake – you made a tough call. If you had stayed, it could have been Maya who suffered. You can’t beat yourself up because you weren’t able to be everywhere at once.’
Pete gets up and kisses her forehead. ‘I’ll think about it. I’d better go and check on Luke. You get some sleep.’
‘I think I will,’ she says, and rises to follow him.
Pete settles himself in the armchair and studies Luke as he sleeps. The force of protectiveness he feels for Maya begins to rise in him. ‘Don’t you hurt her,’ he says quietly. It has been hard to tell in the circumstances whether they are friends or something more, but he had thought he could detect a longing in Maya – after all, it was an emotion he recognised far too easily.
It is a daunting task to be the responsible adult in the face of teenage passion. Half of him is horrified at what they’ve been up to, and keen to stop them. The other half wants to applaud them for doing what they can.
Luke is sound asleep, breathing steadily, and looks comfortable enough. Pete tries to keep his eyes from closing, but he can hear the distant, rolling waves outside, and the noise begins to hypnotise him. Slowly the rise and fall of his breathing aligns to the sound, and his mind drifts below the surface of his consciousness.
It seems like he’s only been dozing for a few minutes when someone starts shaking his shoulder.
He comes to with a jolt. Maya is standing there, regarding him anxiously.
‘Where’s Luke?’ she asks.
Pete looks across to the sofa to see it holds a pile of rumpled blankets.
Luke has gone.
O
nce Desi is back with her family in Lovelock Bay, she soon gets used to being partially invisible. While her mother and Jackson shower her with affection, Charlie is trying his best to pretend she doesn’t exist. The most she gets from him in the first few weeks home is a grunt at her initial hello. After that, he avoids her as much as possible.
It is no more than she expected, but it still hurts. And before long Hester’s attentions are beginning to grate on her, as her mother tries to make up for Charlie’s lack of affection a little too transparently. Only Jackson’s company is a true pleasure. His endless questions about sharks and dolphins and his repeated requests to see her few photographs not only allow her to relive the last eight months but also keep her distracted from the bigger question that flickers further into life each day.
Why hasn’t he called?
Since they parted, she has only spoken to Connor once, at the airport. He had promised to get in touch as soon as he was
in the States. She had expected to hear from him within days. But one week came and went. And then two. She spends her evenings sitting in the kitchen, near the phone, not daring to go out in case she misses him. She tries to concentrate on her mother’s ceaseless conversation as she cooks the dinner and washes up. She studies the dome of her father’s balding head through the doorway as it peeps from the top of the sofa like a timid sun, and the TV’s light casts a colourful, ever-changing pattern over the semi-dark room. Jackson flies around her now and again with cars and planes, but it is as though her chair is an island, and the air between them all is a foggy, unfamiliar ocean. She pretends not to notice when her mother casts concerned glances in her direction. Her life has been suspended, while theirs carries on.
With each day that passes, Monkey Mia becomes more and more surreal, as though she has only had a particularly long dream, and has woken up to find herself in her bedroom at home. But another part of her knows there is no going back. Out on the boat she had become an adult, and an equal. She cannot return to being a child in this house for long. She fingers the pearl necklace incessantly. It is a talisman, a reminder that she needn’t worry, that she won’t be here forever.
Every night, once the household has gone to bed and all is quiet, Desi pulls out Connor’s notebook. She isn’t meant to have this. When she had unpacked her bag, she had found it along with one of Connor’s tapes. They were both unfinished. They were the ones in use on the boat on the final day, and Desi had taken them ashore but forgotten to pack them with the rest. Before settling down to sleep, she flicks through the book, running her finger along Connor’s neat handwriting, remembering it all, praying he will be here again soon.
Why hasn’t he called?
Rebecca comes to visit with news that she is engaged to Theo, and they are planning to elope. Desi is still reeling from seeing Rick, and debates asking about Marie, but doesn’t want to diminish her friend’s joy. And Rebecca has another piece of news too: that Rajah, Mila and Echo were moved to Hillarys boat harbour, and have adjusted to their new pen well. The day is a welcome distraction, until Rebecca asks about Monkey Mia. For, although Desi is desperate to talk to her about Connor and the dolphins, everything that comes out of her mouth seems inadequate. She cannot convey what it was like to someone who wasn’t there. By the time her friend leaves, she is feeling lonelier than she has ever felt in her life.
Why hasn’t he called?
Three and a half weeks after she arrives home, Desi spends her twentieth birthday vomiting. By now she has realised it is something more than being heartsick. That night she lies awake, one hand on her necklace, the other resting above the secret pearl in her belly, debating what on earth to do.
The next day she tries to get in touch with Pete. He doesn’t pick up his phone, but she leaves a message on his answering machine. ‘How are you? Connor hasn’t called me. Have you heard anything?’
She waits two more days, until, on one of the first scorching, airless afternoons of late spring, her mother looks through the kitchen window as she washes up and says, ‘I wonder who that is.’
Desi races across, hope fizzing through her. But it quickly falls flat.
‘It’s my friend Pete,’ she says, pushing away her disappointment. She rushes to the door expectantly. Surely Pete will have heard something.
She watches him getting out of the car, and waves hello.
What is it that brings the first twitch of uncertainty? Could it be the way he squints solemnly at the house and pauses before closing the car door? Or is it his hesitant walk across to the verandah, avoiding her eyes?
If I do this
, she remembers Connor saying, as he kissed her and then moved away smiling,
we communicate with no words needed
.
Distress is written in every movement of Pete’s body. Each pause is a clear portent of disaster. By the time he climbs the steps, she has begun to back away.
He lifts his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Desi,’ he begins, his face wretched, his voice cracking. ‘I have some terrible news.’
As he tells her, a moan flies from her unbidden. She turns blindly away and stumbles, and Pete is there, catching her, letting her fall against him as they kneel on the floor and she sobs into his chest.
In the first strange moments after she quietens, she tries desperately to return life to order. Her mind flashes through her memories, seeking to recapture Connor’s voice and conjure all the reassuring words that she’s been clinging to. But in that instant they are gone, and all she can hear is endless, empty static.
A
s she walks down the path to the shack, Kate is reminded of her grandparents’ home in Half Moon Bay. The little house faces the water at almost exactly the same angle, witnessing the same sunset each night, just fifteen hours and half a world away. Now Nana Jacobs has died, she only has Poppa and Nana Taylor left. They are frail, and she wants to protect them, so they think she is in Australia on another working holiday. They have no idea what she’s really doing.
She suspects they would understand. But they would still try to stop her.
Desi opens the door as Kate approaches. She must have been watching.
‘Kate,’ she says. ‘Come in.’
In the living room the tables are covered with neutral-coloured cloths, the sofas and chairs hidden beneath cotton throws. The effect is more transitional than decorative, as though everything has been stowed away in preparation for repainting.
Kate glances around, uncertain whether she will see photos of her father anywhere, but there are no picture frames at all. Her grandparents’ house is still something of a shrine to Connor, all these years later. Right now, Kate feels very far from home.
Suddenly this mission seems crazy. This is the house of a stranger, not a woman who can help her. What has she been thinking?
But then she notices a painting on the wall, of a dolphin leaping at sunset. A statuette of three dolphins on a small table. A print on a cushion. Perhaps there is a chance that she is in the right place after all.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Desi is asking.
‘No, I’m fine.’
They sit down on chairs opposite one another, and before Kate can begin her prepared speech, Desi starts to talk.
‘This is a surprise, Kate, to find you here. A nice one, of course, but I thought your family had forgotten about us.’
‘It’s been … difficult,’ Kate says guardedly. ‘There’s a lot to explain.’
She takes a deep breath.
‘The first I knew that you and Maya existed was on my eighteenth birthday, when my grandparents gave me a box. They’d saved the letters my father had written during the year he was here. You’d enjoy reading them – some were very amusing, and he was obviously falling in love with you.’
Desi’s smile is sad. ‘He wasn’t the only one. I knew him for less than a year, but he changed my life forever.’
‘So you were there the whole time with him, studying the dolphins?’
‘Most of it, yes. My friend Pete was around, too, right from the start. He’s gone out with Maya, but you can talk to him when he gets back if you like.’
She thinks I’m here because I’m trying to find out more about my dad
, Kate realises.
Even though I know a lot more than she does
.
‘I was five years old when my father died,’ she explains. ‘And he’d been away for long stretches of my life. After he died, I told myself stories about him and my mother, to the point where it was hard to tell what was true and what I’d made up. As I got older, I began to wonder how much my imaginings fitted with the people they actually were. Like I said, until my grandparents gave me that box, I had no idea that you and Maya existed. But they had kept a photo you sent, of Maya as a baby, sitting on a wall. I’m sure they’d love to meet her.’
She stops, seeing Desi tense up.
‘Kate, they never responded to me. I gave up trying because I thought they weren’t interested.’
‘No, it wasn’t that at all,’ Kate says, trying not to sound defensive. ‘They thought you were better off keeping out of it.’
Desi frowns. ‘Keeping out of what?’
Kate takes another deep breath. ‘After my parents died, there were threats made against me …’
Now Desi appears totally confused. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, I don’t understand. Let me tell you what I know. When Connor went back to America, I never heard from him again. Three weeks after he left, Pete came to tell me he was dead – that he’d been stabbed during a mugging in the city. So your mother was there too? I’m so sorry.’
Kate finds that even now, so many years later, this extension of sympathy releases a brief squall of pain. But she brushes it quickly aside. ‘Desi, you heard the story that almost everybody was told … but that isn’t the truth.’
Breathe
, she tells herself.
Take it steady
. ‘Do you mind if I start from the beginning?’
Desi looks wary, but she says, ‘Of course. Go ahead.’
Kate sits forward in an effort to compose herself. ‘Okay, then. Well, Mom and Dad met when they were both studying at the same college in Santa Cruz. They were majoring in biology – Dad was specialising in marine biology, and Mom was interested in conservation biology and animal behaviour. And while Dad was crazy about dolphins, Mom was nuts about elephants. She had already spent a gap year in Africa, working in an elephant sanctuary, and she was desperate to go again. But then I came along … Looking back, Mom gave up a lot more than Dad did, though you would never know she minded. Once I was born, she carried on her studies with her parents’ support, and she planned that we’d both go to Africa when I was a bit older.
‘Meanwhile, she kept in touch with the sanctuary, and raised all the funds she could for them from the States. But when I was five, she got some shocking news – the place had been looted, and they’d lost a lot of money and equipment. They couldn’t keep it going. The fences were pulled down, and the animals were turned loose and left to fend for themselves.
‘Mom was horrified. She was friends with many of the local workers there, and she rang all the donors she could think of, and booked an emergency trip to see what she could do. She was meant to be gone for a couple of weeks, but when she phoned my grandparents they could tell by her voice that things were serious. They were having trouble getting the place up and running again, and quite a few of the elephants were still roaming free.
‘My grandparents were desperately worried about her, but they were terrified at the thought of going to Africa. So, as soon as my dad got home, they asked him if he would go instead, and convince my mom to come back. They paid his fare, and Dad was as uneasy as anyone. So off he went…’
Kate pauses for a moment. ‘That was the last we saw of either of them. Until I was eighteen I thought they had been mugged too. But it wasn’t true. The embassy got in touch with my grandparents a few days after Dad had left. Three bodies had been dumped on the steps to the sanctuary: my parents, and an African man called Chibesa. My mother had been trampled by an elephant. Dad had bullet wounds. They died together, in Africa.’
Desi’s hand flies to her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears. Kate has been holding herself together until this point, but seeing Desi’s emotion rattles her.
‘I’m so sorry to be raking all this up again for you,’ she says, as Desi sits frozen. ‘If it helps, it’s a real comfort for me to find someone else who loved him. My grandparents – they’ve found it difficult to talk about this for a long time. And it isn’t exactly dinner-date conversation.’
Desi’s astonishment is clear. ‘When I didn’t hear from him after he got home … part of me always thought he’d forgotten me … I had no idea …’
‘I don’t think he would have had much time to do anything except turn around. I remember him coming home. He was only there for a night. I’d been staying with my grandparents in San Francisco, and they brought me down to Half Moon Bay, and asked him to go and find my mother. Once he heard what had happened, he left straight away. It was an awkward experience for me – I always felt shy around him for the first few days when I hadn’t seen him for a long while. That night, he wanted to cuddle me, and I avoided him. I’ve always felt sad about that.’
‘But, Kate, I don’t understand why we were told he was mugged.’
‘Ah, well, that came next. Both my grandfathers went over to Zambia, despite Poppa Jacobs’ ill health. It was a bad move.
They were in deep grief, and completely out of their comfort zone. However, they were determined to know exactly what had happened. The head of the sanctuary, a man named Bullo, said that Mom was supposed to be staying at their headquarters, coordinating the search for the missing animals, but that she and Dad had been seen driving off the morning they died. Beyond that, they couldn’t get anyone to talk. They were suspicious of absolutely everyone, Poppa Taylor told me years later, but they had no idea whether people were staying silent out of ignorance or fear. Eventually they found Chibesa’s wife. She was more willing to open up – apparently her family were keen on retribution, and they were out searching for a man named Lemba. He was a local tour guide … but not your average tour guide.’ Kate can feel the anger rising in her as she recounts what she knows. ‘He took wealthy westerners into the bush on trophy hunts. They had certain quotas, but within that they could kill anything – lions, giraffes, elephants, leopards, you name it. You have to be rich to be able to shoot an elephant – I think the going rate right now is thirty thousand dollars – but money will buy you the right to do pretty much anything over there. And Chibesa’s wife had also heard that two Americans, a man and a boy, had left in a hurry on the night Chibesa didn’t come home.’
‘Americans?’
‘Yes. But that was as far as my grandfathers got. Because, soon – and I mean hours – after they found that out, Nana Jacobs, half a world away in San Francisco, got a note in the mail… a picture of me taken from my mother’s purse. On the reverse it said “Stop asking questions”. I’ve seen the photo – they kept it.
‘At that point, they realised that whoever they were fighting had far more resources than they did, so they gave up. Neither
of my grandfathers recovered. They always felt they should have stood up to being bullied and kept searching. But the reality was that their children were dead already, and knowing the truth wouldn’t change anything. So they concentrated on trying to live with it – for themselves, and for me. I’m sorry they didn’t get in touch with you – I think they regretted it after a while, but didn’t know how to approach you. At the time, they were wrapped up in their own grief, and couldn’t cope with any more.’
Desi sits up, in clear disbelief. ‘You mean no one has ever found out what happened?’
Kate shakes her head. ‘No. The sanctuary never recovered. Gradually, the people involved in it dispersed. The only consolation for the animals – if it could be called that – was that in the early nineties more conservation measures were being put in place. Elephant numbers in the area had dropped from thirty-five thousand in the early seventies to two and a half thousand in the late eighties, so the government knew it had to act. But no, my parents’ deaths will always remain a mystery to us.’
Desi is staring at her. ‘I’m completely shocked,’ she says eventually. ‘I have no idea what to say.’ She jumps up and goes over to the window, staring out across the water. ‘For a while, I thought I could feel your father’s presence with me, particularly after Maya was born. Things changed over time, but life has never been the same. All the promise of my youth seemed to die with Connor somehow.’ She turns around. ‘I’m so grateful for you coming all this way to tell me this, Kate. It must be difficult for you to talk about – your mother sounds as amazing as your father, and it’s a tragedy that you lost them at such a young age.’
Kate shifts in her seat. Because this is the moment she has been waiting for.
‘Thanks, Desi. It’s been good to finally meet you too. But I
have to be honest with you – it’s not the only reason I’m here.’ She rummages in her bag until she finds the thin, rectangular DVD box. ‘I came to show you this,’ she says, holding it out. ‘If you haven’t seen it already.’
Desi comes across, takes the box and studies it in silent surprise.
‘I’m part of a small group, but we have a big plan,’ Kate says to her. ‘However, circumstances have conspired against us, and now we’re in trouble. I’m hoping you might be the person to help.’