Will Adams - The Eden Legacy

Rebecca raised her head and stared at the far wall. Adam was right about his programmes. They’d been academic, patrician, stilted, hideously dated. And yet, when she’d watched them, she’d been aware of an elusive quality missing from her own work, and which she’d envied deeply; something like integrity, or even love. Watching him, listening to him, she’d been reminded that the study of animals in their environment was a demanding discipline in which new knowledge was gained only by years of patient fieldwork that rarely produced headline results. Her father had put in those years of graft and grind. The BBC had commissioned his radio broadcasts and then his television series not for his looks or screen presence but because he’d been one of Britain’s leading biologists. Thankfully for her own career, TV had since realised it didn’t need substance. But Rebecca herself had been quite capable of telling the difference. Of course Emilia and I dare not say anything to her. She is so close to snipping even the slender threads of communication we have that we cannot risk giving her an excuse. One day she will be ready, and she will let us know. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But there are times I fear she will never forgive me. Why should she? My anger with her was unforgivable, and I will never forgive myself. True remorse doesn’t seek forgiveness anyway. It seeks expiation. You made me vow to you, when you told me your secret, that I would never reveal it to Rebecca. But you believed then that I was a good man, capable of self-control. I cannot imagine that you would have wanted it to tear our family apart like this. I cannot imagine that. I want to tell her, Yvette. I want to explain myself to her, to have her at least understand. I need her forgiveness. Please, my darling; you must find some way to let me off my vow, or she’ll be paying for it all her life. The sins of the father, indeed.

It was too much for Rebecca. She stood and hobbled to the front door. Outside, a warbler was singing its heart out. It took her back vividly to a childhood afternoon, pestering her father with that hackneyed yet fundamental question: nature or nurture? She’d asked such questions less from curiosity than because it had given Adam such intense pleasure to answer them, and making him happy had still been her greatest joy.

Typically, Adam had answered her question with an experiment. Never tell when you can show. Together with Emilia, they’d purpose-built a huge aviary in the forest, then they’d pillaged eggs from some nearby Thamnormis warbler’s nests, had hand-reared three male chicks. The local adult warblers sang tew-tew-tew-tee-tew-tee-tew-tew-tee-tee. Rebecca had known their song well; you couldn’t escape it during the mating season. If their captive warblers sang this, it would show that song was innate. If they remained silent or sang something different, then the song was learned. It had taken many months for her question to be answered, when their captive warblers had finally broken into song, a truncated tew-tew-tew-tee-tew-tee.

Behaviour was nature and nurture fused.

Outside her window the warbler continued to sing, as though it simply had too much life to contain within its breast. It seemed cruel in retrospect to cage such vibrant and exultant birds for an answer Adam could have told her in a minute. It hadn’t seemed so at the time. The world had grown absurdly sentimental. You couldn’t tread on a cockroach these days without some hippy yelling in your face. And you’d never be permitted to experiment with humans, of course. Yet life sometimes threw up serendipitous examples: identical twins separated at birth; fostered and adopted children, the offspring of illicit affairs. You could learn a great deal about nature and nurture through cuckold children, who were far more common than many people thought. Genetic sampling showed that perhaps as many as one in ten children born within seemingly stable relationships were in fact the products of infidelity. One in ten! Sometimes, when meeting large family groups, she’d wonder which of them might just get a shock from a DNA test. It was not a subject to broach lightly, however. Parentage was so fundamental a component of identity that when it was brought even tentatively into question, people often reacted with anger and extraordinary denial, refusing so much as to consider the possibility that they were the product of an affair, however compelling the evidence.

It never failed to amuse Rebecca, the obtuseness of some people.

Her musings were interrupted by the bawl of an aggrieved infant. She looked towards the path just as Therese arrived carrying Xandra and Michel, honouring her promise to change Rebecca’s bandages.

‘Watch what the hell you’re doing,’ yelled Boris, as water splashed yet again over their bow and on to his hip and lap.

‘Sorry,’ said Davit.

‘What use is sorry? Stop doing it.’

‘I can’t help it,’ shrugged the big man. ‘Not if you want us to make any decent progress.’

Boris glared at him; but Davit refused to back down. It was having the girl dozing in the crook of his arm, no doubt; wanting to impress her. Boris’s irritation with her was increasing all the time; but, unfortunately, so was his desire. She was wearing a knee-length white dress with nothing but knickers underneath, and every time water splashed over her, the fabric would go a little translucent. He remembered the way she’d spurned his offer, generous though it had been, and his irritation increased another notch. She needed taking in hand, that was the truth of it. She needed to be taught who was boss.

He flapped out his map, checked their position against the low islets that lay like upturned oyster-shells upon the water. Their progress was hopelessly slow. At this rate, they’d never get to Eden by nightfall, or anywhere close. And if they weren’t going to make it there tonight, then they’d have to stop even earlier so that they could make camp before it got too dark. He put away his map again, let his eyes drift back to Claudia. The hemline of her dress had ridden up a little, showing off her thighs. He licked his lower lip.

Their bow plunged into another wave, splashing more water into his lap. He glared furiously at Davit. The big man was looking innocent as an angel, holding up a hand in apology, but Boris knew better.

He was going to enjoy taking Claudia from him. By Christ, he was.

Knox sailed out to a cluster of symbols marked at between thirty and forty metres on Adam’s chart, then dropped anchor, checked his equipment and suited up. Diving solo on a re-breather was a bad habit to get into, but he’d be fine as long as he stuck to his disciplines, kept checking his equipment and took breaks. He tipped himself backward over the edge, exploded into the sea. The water was cold but visibility was excellent, though it grew darker as he descended. The sea-floor here was rich with brain and stag-horn corals, but there was no way to tell which in particular Adam had been interested in, or why he’d marked his map as he had. He swam in a widening spiral around the Yvette before deciding he’d seen enough and beginning his ascent.

The sun was high and warm. He unzipped his wetsuit, the better to enjoy it, opened a bottle of drinking water and sat on deck watching the waves breaking gently yet relentlessly upon the reefs, just as they’d done day after day for centuries now; for millennia.

The Winterton had spent three days upon these reefs before it had broken up. Three days. What a bizarre time that must have been for crew and passengers alike, praying for a berth on one of the few lifeboats that had plied back and forth to the shore, or with the native fishermen who’d come out to help, as their ship slowly fell apart beneath them. They’d tried to save it, of course; their immediate response to collision, indeed, had been to throw everything overboard to lighten it and so float it off the reef.