Will Adams - The Eden Legacy

He sat forward a little. It was a sailor’s first instinct, when they’d run their ship aground, to try to refloat it. Was that what had happened to the Chinese? He closed his eyes, the better to picture that leviathan on a shortcut from the Cape crunching its keel upon this reef. He could only imagine the chaos and terror. Giving orders on a ship that big was hard at the best of times, but infinitely harder in the aftermath of a reef-strike, particularly if it had happened-as they mostly had-at night or during a storm. But deckhands knew the drill even in the absence of command: toss overboard anything and everything you can to lighten the ship and make it easier to refloat. The most obvious things to jettison would have been its anchors and cannons, the very things they’d found at Cheung’s site. And if a cargo hold had been torn open, it would explain the pottery and other artefacts too.

Chinese ships had been fitted with watertight bulkheads to survive moderate hull damage. But even once they’d refloated themselves, they’d still have been stuck outside the reef, badly damaged and shipping water fast, shrouded in darkness or buffeted by a storm, facing a desperate race to find a pass before they sank.

A pass just like the one right here.

Rebecca went across to greet Therese. Michel smiled up at her as she took him in her arms, and his smile did strange things to her heart. They walked together through to the clinic, laid the infants down in matching wooden cots. ‘I don’t suppose you have medical records for Adam and Emilia?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ said Therese. ‘What for?’

‘The police found some blood on the boat. They want to see if it belongs to Adam or Emilia.’

Therese gave her a dismayed look, but she flipped through a drawer of handwritten cards without a word, jotted down the information for Rebecca. ‘Okay,’ she said, gesturing at the examination table. ‘Now show me what your boyfriend do.’

Rebecca entrusted herself to Therese’s care without a qualm. Many Malagasy struggled with Western medicine, for it was widely believed that much sickness was caused by gris-gris; malevolent, voodoo-like spells and curses that could only be cured by countervailing magic. But Therese had grasped the principles from the first, and had only grown more knowledgeable, intuitive and energetic with the years. ‘You do this on coral?’ she murmured, as she saw the extent of Rebecca’s injuries. ‘You away too long if you forget coral is dangerous.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why you away so long? Why you cruel to your papa and sister like this? You like to hurt your fambly and frens maybe?’

‘I never had time to come back.’

Therese snorted. ‘You hab time now, all right. Too late now. You break your papa’s heart, you know. First Mama, then you. Eb’ryone he lub go away.’ She removed the dressings on Rebecca’s palms, examined the multicoloured mess beneath. But she nodded in approval. ‘Your boyfriend’s a good nurse,’ she said. ‘Where he learn to nurse like this?’

‘He has some quite bad burns,’ replied Rebecca. ‘Maybe he learned from doing his own dressings.’

‘Burns?’ frowned Therese, taken aback. ‘Where?’

‘On his shoulders and back. Why?’

‘No reason. No reason.’

Rebecca wasn’t convinced, but she let it go, watched Therese clean her wounds, apply more antiseptic cream and iodine, dress her with fresh bandages. ‘I come back tomorrow, yes?’ she said, when she was done.

‘Not tomorrow,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll be away. The day after.’

Therese pulled a scolding face, but evidently knew Rebecca too well to argue. They picked up the infants again, and Rebecca walked her out, entrusting Michel once more to her care before returning to her father’s desk and his letter to Yvette. Enough melancholy. Time for my round-up of gossip. Pierre is our most regular guest, of course, still as bemused by life and by his own nature as ever. He sits there with one eyebrow cocked as things happen around him. He ordered colour leaflets from a print shop in Tulear and now refuses to pay, if you please, because two of the pictures are slightly fuzzy! I know I should disapprove of him more, but he’s a child and entertaining company and it’s difficult to hold him responsible for the messes he creates. Therese asks me to remember her to you. She has had her child now, too, of course, christened Xandra Yvette after you. I pray every night that this one lives. She is wonderful, Therese, completely selfless. She looks after Michel whenever Emilia and I take out the boat. And she still won’t take payment for it, or her work at the clinic, though Pierre comes around afterwards and asks for it on her behalf. I head into Tulear more than pleases me. I would stay at Eden always if I could. I am like that tree-frog who cannot stand the croaking of its own species. Our friend Mustafa Habib inevitably finds me within minutes. His intelligence system is second to none. He even dragged me and Emilia to lunch at his wretched palazzo, then spent all day pestering me to let him invest in Eden, so that Ahdaf might work for such a worthy venture! I keep telling him that he is talking to the wrong person, but I don’t think he believes me.

The letter ran on for three more pages, chronicling the activities of people she didn’t know or barely remembered. When Rebecca had finished, she read others in the folder, one for each anniversary of Yvette’s death. Fifteen years on, Adam’s adoration of his late wife was extraordinary and moving. As a specialist in behaviour, it was almost an accepted truth for Rebecca that love was merely an adaptation designed to bind together a male and female long enough for them to procreate and rear. As her father’s daughter, however, it was difficult to sustain such belief. There’s a species of anglerfish in which males physically embed themselves in the females, becoming entirely dependent upon them for nutrition, survival and procreation. Adam had sometimes seemed like that to her, so completely had he subsumed himself and his former career into his marriage.

As young girls, Rebecca and Emilia had pestered their parents endlessly for the story of how they met and fell in love. Adam had been a typical bachelor professor, scoffing at the idea of marriage; but then he’d come filming in Madagascar, and had found himself in need of a translator for his south-western leg. Yvette had been recommended; she’d taught languages in Tulear’s international school. The moment Adam had set eyes on her, he’d known. He’d found talking to her so difficult, she’d thought him mentally afflicted (she’d taken his producer aside to ask why an organisation as respected and wealthy as the BBC would employ an idiot as their presenter). He hadn’t been able to sleep or eat. He’d driven his crew crazy with his mistakes. Within four days he’d asked her to marry him. She’d had a fit of the giggles, had pointed out justly that he was a funny-looking man (they’d all laughed uproariously every time he’d come to this bit; it had become their catchphrase whenever some unfortunate had turned up at the camp) and anyway she’d never leave Madagascar. Adam had returned lovesick to England, where he’d waited to get over her, as all his knowledge of the world had assured him that he would. But time had passed and his condition had only worsened. Everything had drained of meaning. Success and fame had become irrelevant. He’d fallen seriously ill. In the end, he’d given in. He’d resigned his chair, chucked in his TV career, and flown back out.

They’d married one month later.

The seas outside the Eden reefs were blessed with extraordinary variety. On his second descent, Knox passed through fields of sea-grasses to reach a spectacular coral garden, a gaudy city of fish where vast shoals of wrasse, angels and butterflies billowed like iridescent sheets as he passed between them.