Isvik Read online

  I shook my head, my attention half on the road. There were quite a few people about, women as well as men, nearly all Indians, some of them on mules. Donkeys, too, and because it was hot, with only the faintest breeze, many of the men had their wide-brimmed hats pushed to the backs of their heads, held there by the leather thongs that were really chin straps. Occasionally a garishly painted truck passed us, raising a cloud of dust, and away to the west, hanging over us and clearly visible now that the clouds had lifted, the coastal range of the cordilleras towered pale and trembling in the heat. I think what attracted me most about the country round was its Englishness, meadows deep in grass and wild flowers, and willows wherever there was water.

  It wasn’t truly English, of course. It had a different feel to it, a different look, a different smell. And there was Iris Sunderby’s recumbent body sprawled in the back. Nevertheless, the countryside reminded me of East Anglia, the willows in particular making me realise how far I was from home.

  At Cajabamba we joined a slightly better road, and soon afterwards we turned west and headed up into the mountains through Huamachuco, climbing all the way. I don’t know how high the pass was, but even with the sun casting long, black shadows, there was none of the fearsomeness of the journey we had made only that morning. No storm mist shrouding the slopes, no rain, no lightning stabbing, no thunder rumbling, the clouds all swept away as though by magic, the sky blue, the mountains looking quite serene now, almost kindly in the late afternoon light.

  Inevitably the road worsened as we neared the pass, the surface rutted by trucks and still awash with water spilling down steep gullies. An abandoned truck, its snout rammed into the steep bank of a cut, caused me a moment’s panic. Ward was asleep. I was climbing in low gear, my eyes searching the vehicle and the bank behind it for any sign of movement.

  ‘It’s all right.’ He must have sensed my hesitation, his ears alert for any change in the note of the engine. ‘Ah didn’t tell him which route we were takin’. That truck has been there at least three days.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Use yer eyes. The road’s dry under the chassis.’

  He was asleep again before I had edged the Toyota round it. Shortly after that we came over the top of the pass and started down towards the coast. The sun was setting and there were moments when I, too, felt like ‘stout Cortés’ and thought I could see the Pacific. Perhaps here, from the vantage point of the Andes, I would see the green flash as the upper rim of the sun slid below the ocean horizon to leave a prismatic glimpse of the spectrum’s final colour.

  Twice I ran perilously close to the edge, my eyes dazzled and eyelids drooping. I was beginning to feel sleepy and I began to sing, softly, to myself. I was singing ‘All things bright and beautiful …’ I don’t know why. I just felt that way. And then a voice from the back said, ‘Where the hell am I?’

  ‘We’re taking you down to the Pacific for a bathe,’ I told her.

  ‘Like hell you are! Where’s Ángel?’ She was leaning forward.

  I was on a tricky bend, the road falling away sharply and badly in need of a grader. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could smell her, feel her breath on the back of my neck.

  ‘Stop the car!’ Her voice was shrill. ‘I said stop the car. Turn round and take me back.’ And then, when I said nothing and kept on driving, she said, ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll jump out.’

  I braked a little harder then and turned to look at her. Her face was still very pale, the skin shining with sweat, but the eyes were almost normal now, the pupils no longer dilated. I could see them quite clearly, the blue formed of all sorts of colours, like sapphires picked out in the sun’s last rays.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ She started to wrestle with the nearside door, but Ward had locked it and in the end she gave up, lying back again and muttering something about remembering now.

  ‘Our little skipper more herself, is she?’ The way he said it I knew he meant to goad her. She flared up on the instant, turning on him and almost yelling, ‘You bought a boat, that doesn’t mean you bought me. Now tell our pest control officer here to turn round and drive back to the hacienda.’

  ‘Why?’ Ward’s face was suddenly contorted with anger. ‘Why the hell dae ye want to go back there? Are ye in love with him? He fills ye up with coke, uses ye like a whore … And he’s yer own blood.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Her face was flushed and angry. ‘He’s not my brother.’

  ‘All right, yer half-brother then.’ And he added, turning the knife in the wound, ‘Christ almighty! Ye’re a Catholic and you have an incestuous relationship …’

  ‘I do not. I do not.’ She banged her fists on the back of his seat.

  ‘Okay, but what are ye goin’ to say to the priest next time you go to confession, eh? How are you going to explain that ye’re playing around …’

  ‘He is not my brother,’ she repeated. ‘And I do not commit incest.’ And then she went over to the attack again. ‘Can’t you understand, you great big stupid asqueroso, was close to getting it out of him, the information I need to prove my husband is not imagining things. And I would have got it, if you hadn’t come blundering in.’

  ‘Balls! Ye’d never have got it out of him in a million years. Ye’re besotted with the bastard. That’s the real reason ye’re holed up here in the mountains …’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop your play-acting.’ And she added, maliciously, ‘All right. He’s a beautiful hunk of male virility, something you’ll never be, and I enjoy playing around with him, as you so delicately put it.’

  That was when I scraped the fender on a protruding lump of rock. It’s not often you find yourself an enforced eavesdropper on two people screwing each other up with murder in their hearts. And when he said, ‘Ye start playin’ around with the bugger on board Isvik …’ I slammed on the brakes, stopping with a jerk that almost threw her on the floor.

  ‘Shut up!’ I shouted. ‘Both of you. The road’s difficult enough without you yelling at each other, and I’m tired.’

  An abrupt silence followed my outburst. I think they had both been so wrapped up in themselves they had quite forgotten my existence.

  ‘We’re all tired,’ Ward said at length.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not driving.’

  ‘Want me to take over?’

  ‘How far to the coast?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘I’ll drive till the sun sets,’ I said. ‘I want to see it drop into the Pacific.’ I let the clutch in, jerking the vehicle into motion again, my driving suddenly vicious. I think I was scared again. I had every right to be if there was going to be this sort of hostility between the two of them all the way down into the ice. And Gómez? There was Gómez, a catalyst for disaster.

  My mind went back to the scene in that bedroom and the sliding doors to the paved patio. I seemed to remember statuary and flowers – hibiscus or something flaming red, roses maybe, in great urns – and there were doubtless other bedrooms leading off it with similar softly sliding glass doors. I should have questioned her then. Still mazed with whatever the drug was she had taken, I might have got the truth out of her. Was he her brother, or wasn’t he? She said not. She’d been very positive about that, not just here in the car, but she had said it to me in the bedroom while I was packing her things and she was still in a mentally uninhibited state. And if he wasn’t her brother, what were his real origins? And was she in love with him? Well, not in love perhaps, but besotted. I remembered the charm of the man, that almost blatant virility. And Ward had said it was all fixed, he would join us on Isvik and navigate us to within sledging distance of the trapped vessel.

  And then, suddenly, there was the Pacific, and the sun, a great crimson ball, like the tuning indicator on a giant music centre, dipping its lower rim on to the hazed line of the horizon. I stopped right there, where I had an uninterrupted view, and watched the rim of it flatten out, spreading fire along the ocean’s edge.

  It
didn’t take long. It just sank slowly and steadily below the ocean’s horizon, and suddenly it was gone. No green flash, nothing, and the sky above fading from blue through green to the beginning of Stygian darkness. Suddenly a star showed.

  ‘Venus or Mercury? Venus, Ah think,’ Ward said, and I realised he, too, had been watching the spectacle in absolute silence. ‘That was the star that brought Cook into the Pacific – the transit of Venus. Tae centuries ago.’ He was silent then and I had the feeling he was thinking of all that Cook had done, first in Endeavour, then in Resolution and Discovery, ships not much longer than Isvik. And he had taken them down into the Southern Ocean, not as far as we were going, but far enough to be in amongst the ice, circumnavigating the whole land mass of Antarctica in waters no man had ever sailed before.

  ‘Ah’ll take over now,’ Ward said.

  III

  RENDEZVOUS AT USHUAIA

  ONE

  ‘So what did she say about him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Ye were in that room alone with her. She must have said somethin’.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Jesus Christ, man! Didn’t ye ask her?’ He was leaning forward across the table, staring at me with a sort of frustrated belligerence. ‘Weren’t ye curious?’

  ‘I was packing her things.’

  ‘Ah know ye were. But ye were there all the time Ah was talkin’ to Gómez. Must have been quarter of an hour at least. Surely to God …’ He stretched out his left hand and gripped my arm. ‘Come on, ye had the opportunity, and after that extraordinary scene in the garden ye must have been bubblin’ over with curiosity.’

  ‘She was drugged,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Ah know that.’ His voice had risen, his impatience spilling into anger so that other guests were beginning to watch us. ‘Now just go back in yer mind to that room, tell me everythin’ she said, or even how she looked in answer to your questions, that would help.’

  ‘I didn’t ask any questions,’ I said. ‘Not the sort of questions you want answered. I asked where her suitcase was and she said, under the bed, where else? Oh, and before that, before she collapsed on to the bed, she called him a bastard. She said that several times, walking round the room.’ I didn’t tell him how she had caught hold of my hair again when I was reaching under the bed. I could still hear her voice, the way she had said, ‘You don’t approve, do you?’ As though my approval mattered to her.

  There was no room service and we were breakfasting in the hotel dining-room at a table looking out on to a square adorned by several yuccas and some dusty oleanders. Iris hadn’t surfaced yet. She had told Ward she didn’t want any breakfast.

  ‘Anythin’ else?’

  I hesitated, but in the end I told him: ‘She said something about how else could she get the location out of him?’

  ‘The location of the ship, d’ye mean?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Tradin’ her body fur the information?’ His grip on my arm had tightened, his voice, dropped to a whisper, suddenly quite menacing. ‘That’s what ye’re implyin’, isn’t it? Or was it …?’

  I shook my head, unwilling to answer him.

  ‘And did he give her what she wanted?’

  His persistence annoyed me. ‘Sex or information?’ I asked. ‘Which do you mean?’ The way I put it was intentional and I think if we hadn’t been sitting in full view of some dozen of the hotel’s guests he would have hit me.

  ‘The location,’ he almost snarled.

  ‘No. She was suddenly flat out.’

  He stared at me a moment, as though he suspected I might be hiding something from him. Then he let go of my arm. ‘Och well, Ah’ll have to get it out of her myself.’ He sat back, evidently considering how to go about it, then finished his coffee and got slowly, almost reluctantly, to his feet. ‘Aye, Ah’d best have a wee talk with her myself.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘On the road at nine-fifteen, okay?’

  He was just turning to leave the room when the door opened and Iris appeared. It was almost as though there were some telepathic understanding between them. Later I was to find this sort of coincidence recurring. They were after all, both of them, Sagittarians.

  As she came over to our table I was amazed at the change in her. The olive colouring of her skin was back in full bloom, and though she was wearing little or no make-up, her lips, or rather her mouth, which, with her nose, was the most notable part of her features, was bright red. Her cheeks, which had been so white the previous evening, now had colour, and instead of sagging with exhaustion she radiated the extraordinary vitality that had so attracted me at our first meeting on the Cutty Sark. ‘Isn’t it about time we hit the road?’ She was addressing Ward, not me, and she glanced pointedly at her watch.

  ‘Ah was just comin’ to call ye,’ he answered gruffly.

  She ignored that and asked him whether he’d booked her a seat with us on the flight south from Lima.

  ‘Ah was plannin’ to drive down through Arequipa to the Chilean border.’ His manner was slightly defensive. ‘There are quite a few archaeological sites Ah’d like to have a look at while Ah’m here.’

  ‘There’s also a boat waiting for us down at Punta Arenas. We may find something wrong with her, items we need for overwintering in the ice. She’s a long way from any source of supply and if there’s something that has to be specially made, or is too bulky to fly out – a new engine, for instance …’ They stared at each other for a moment, not exactly hostile, more two people measuring each other up. ‘We can discuss that while we drive, no? Have you settled the cuenta?’ Her tone was imperious, deliberately provocative.

  I saw Ward hesitate, then he smiled and nodded. ‘Aye, we can talk about it – while we’re lookin’ round the mud ruins of Chanchán.’ He, too, was being provocative, quite deliberately making it a clash of wills, but still smiling as he told me to get the bags into the Toyota. ‘And don’t let that briefcase out of yer sight.’ He nodded to the case, which was under the table, and strode out.

  The route we had taken through the cordillera from Cajamarca had brought us virtually into the outskirts of Trujillo and we had put up at a hotel in the centre of the city, all three of us more or less out on our feet. Now, in the brightness of a cloudless morning, the air clear after a night of rain and surprisingly dry, we started out thoroughly refreshed. Certainly I felt, for the first time, that sense of anticipation, of excitement almost, at the prospect ahead of me – a journey down the whole coast of South America, and then on to the very southernmost rim of the world. Even the digression up to Cajamarca now seemed in retrospect more like an adventure than something to send shivers down the spine.

  But though my spirits were high, the shadow of that man, who liked to be called the Angel of Death, travelled with me, the memory of his good looks, his well-oiled virility, above all Iris Sunderby’s apparent infatuation, constantly there in my mind.

  Ward took the wheel as we left the hotel, but instead of heading south, he turned north, and when Iris Sunderby remonstrated with him, all he said was, ‘Chanchán. Ah’m bloody well goin’ to have a look at Chanchán.’ Adding, by way of explanation, that it was the old Chimú capital. ‘Pre-Inca and almost as powerful.’

  Like Iris, I was impatient now to get on with the journey south and see the vessel that was to be our home, but when I saw Chanchán … It was incredible, so incredible, so lost in time that it did something to me – changed my perspective, my outlook, something strange that even now I barely understand.

  To begin with it was vast, a huge mud city fallen into ruin, desolate, remote as the moon, and gloomy as hell, for a mist had rolled in, completely obscuring the sun. It was only a short distance off the Pan-Americana, all grey mud dust, the outer walls towering so thick, so solid, that, after the better part of a millennium, they were still standing eight or nine metres high, only the ramparts showing the erosion of time. It was virtually desert country, the irrigation channels blocked with debris, nothing that co
uld be called a tree to be seen anywhere. Once inside those walls, it really was another world, more than fifteen square kilometres of streets bordered by the crumbling walls of houses, public buildings, cemeteries and reservoirs, some with bits and pieces of bone lying exposed where long-dead looters and grave-robbers had been at work. Looking back towards the Pan-Americana, the huge mud complex appeared ringed with peaked and desiccated mountains. Westward its bulwark was the Pacific. I could hear it, a steady, grumbling sound, like an earthquake.

  I walked right through that fantastic ruin. It was the largest I had ever seen, split up into walled units, ten of them Ward had said, and when I reached the western limit of it I was face to face with the heaving bulk of the ocean. A big swell was rolling in, building waves like mountains in the mist and breaking with a thunderous and persistent roar.

  There was a slight onshore breeze. I stood there with the salt spray and the mist damp on my face, and the vastness of it, and the antiquity of the desolate remains behind me, made all my life to date seem insignificant and of no account. I can’t explain it, but it was as though I were transported outside of myself, on the verge of grasping the significance of being. In the atmosphere of the place there was something almost biblical, and yet this was a pagan world I had stepped into. How could it be so full of meaning? Was it the monstrous, heaving power of the waters confronting me, or was it my conscious awareness of the dead of a great city?

  I don’t know what it was, but I felt almost disembodied, ten feet tall and near to God. The impact was so great that the effect of it was to remain with me in the months ahead and give me strength when I most needed it.

  I must have stood there for at least ten minutes, quite still as though transfixed. Finally I turned and started back, not conscious of anything, my mind still locked in on the impression the place had made so that I only vaguely heard a voice calling me. She was sitting in a gap in the outer wall, and as I approached her, she said, ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’ She smiled. ‘What were you staring at?’