matriarchal. They knew how gender relationships should be. Female ring-tailed lemurs had first pick of food and space, they cuffed their men around with impunity.
Only after leaving Eden did Rebecca realise what a privileged childhood she’d had. Her contemporaries at Oxford University had drawn their knowledge of nature from books rather than from the world. Slightly to her consternation, they’d envied Rebecca her upbringing. Madagascar was the haj for biologists. Eighty-eight million years ago, the island had finally separated from the supercontinent of Gondwana, where it had lain sandwiched between Africa, India and Australia. Since then, its fauna and flora had evolved independently. And Madagascar’s diverse ecosystems of volcanic highlands, reefs, rain forest, spiny forest and savannah meant not only an extraordinary proportion of endemics, but astonishing variety.
She climbed a gentle hill. The thalidomide-limbed trunk of a baobab towered like an ancient Egyptian pylon at the entrance to an old, familiar glade. Rebecca’s mother had loved it up here, for the solitude and for the view it offered out over the lagoon. She’d come here all the time until she’d fallen too sick, and then she’d made Adam promise to bury her here. He’d kept his word. Her low stone tomb stood at the heart of the glade. Its white walls were roughly plastered; run your palm across it, it would scrape your skin. A flight of six steps led down to a sealed doorway. A faded colour photograph of Yvette as a young woman was embedded in the wall to the left of the doorway, protected by dulled glass. She’d been Merina, with dark, Polynesian looks and a dazzling smile which she’d somehow kept until the end, like the grin of the Cheshire cat. Beyond the door, stone slabs lay either side of a narrow aisle. On the left-hand slab lay her mortal remains, wrapped in rich red cloth. The right-hand slab was empty, waiting for Adam. He’d known even then he’d never remarry. He’d teased Yvette that at last he’d get to choose which side he slept; but he’d given her the left in death as in life, as she’d known he would. He’d deferred to her in everything that mattered. It had been his pleasure.
A brick oven against the left wall of the tomb was filled with puddled grey ash and the charred remnants of photographs and a cassette tape. Yvette had made Adam vow to keep her informed about her family, at least once each year, on the anniversary of her death. He’d record one of these cassettes to tell her what everyone had been up to, adding photographs of Eden, the boat, the reefs and the villagers, then he’d make a great pyre, dousing it with fuel and immolating it. Old friends visiting from England had teased Adam for this, because he’d once been scornful of religion. But he’d become a Catholic just to please her; and he’d taken it seriously too.
After Madagascar’s hospitals had given up on Yvette, she’d refused to let Adam fly her out to a European hospital. She was a Malagasy; this was her home. For the most part, she’d faced her death with courage. Adam, too. Rebecca had found their candour and good humour unbearable, worse even than their rare shouting matches. They’d read Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying to each other, laughing whenever they recognised aspects of their own behaviour, as though it were a book of jokes. Rebecca had been desperate for Yvette to fight her disease, if not to beat it then at least to hold the line. Her confused welter of adolescent emotion had manifested itself in sulks and tempers. She’d been angry at Adam for letting Yvette die, at their useless doctors, at the cancer cells overrunning Yvette’s body, at the birds that squawked so loudly to deny her rest, at the sun for its dry ferocity, the wind for its noise, the calm for denying her a cooling breeze. All of creation had seemed a conspiracy.
In her final months, Yvette had suffered occasional deep bouts of depression. In part agitated by Rebecca’s own foul moods, she’d berated herself as a terrible mother for having spent too much time with the local Malagasy children, not enough with her own. Rebecca’s efforts to reassure her had rung so hollow that they’d only made Yvette gloomier. Their time together had become desperately uncomfortable. Rebecca had started avoiding her altogether.
One day, Adam had sent her off for supplies. On her return, he’d been waiting for her at the lodge’s front door, a hushing finger to his lips. She’d feared terrible news. She’d feared the end. But Adam had led her into reception, out of earshot of Yvette’s cabin, and closed the door. He’d motioned her to a chair, then told her the brutal truth about leukaemia: that when it progressed this far, it almost always proved fatal. People facing death- and those who loved them-tended to pass through certain emotional states as they came to terms with this; that these were well known and natural, and included denial, isolation, anger, bargaining and depression. Rebecca could see for herself that Yvette had reached this latter stage. Depression often afflicted people who feared they’d wasted their lives. ‘Let’s face it,’ Adam had told Rebecca bluntly. ‘When you isolate yourself from the world, as we’ve done here, you make that choice for your own benefit, not for your children’s. I know Yvette hasn’t been as good a mother to you as she might have been, but while she’s feeling this dispirited, I need for you to pretend-’
This had been too much. ‘How dare you!’ she’d screamed, flailing at him. ‘How dare you! She’s the best mother ever! She’s done everything for us! Everything! You don’t deserve her! You never deserved her! She’s too good for you! You’re helping her to die!’ This last accusation had been like a splinter in her soul. Once it had come out, she hadn’t been able to speak any more, overwhelmed by sobs, trembling with emotion. Adam had taken her by the wrist and dragged her into his office. Yvette had been propped up by pillows in a camp-bed, her wheelchair parked alongside. There’d been a moment’s silence. Yvette had pulled an anguished face and stretched wide her arms. Rebecca’s heart had twisted. She’d run helplessly across the room and flung herself into her mother’s embrace.
Yvette’s health had improved after that. She’d become comfortable. Rebecca had even allowed herself hope. But it had been a mirage. In Kenya, recently, she’d watched an elderly antelope brought down by lions. Once its fight was lost, it had lifted its head and watched its own evisceration with the same acceptant, haunting silence as Yvette had displayed in those final weeks. Death shouldn’t be like this, Rebecca had thought. Death was the worst thing in the world and needed to be fought, even when hope was gone. But Yvette had already passed beyond reclaim. She’d become indifferent to the world. Too late, Rebecca realised that Adam had tricked her into their reconciliation so that Yvette could achieve peace with herself, and so die.
Flower-beds dug around the tomb had been planted with orchids. Yvette’s favourites, from her highland home. They needed copious and regular water to survive in this arid climate. Rebecca remembered ruefully her ostentatious grief during Yvette’s funeral, her tears and wailing, her rejection of comfort, company, food and drink. People will see my grief and know how deeply I’ve been hurt, she’d thought. They’ll compare me with my father and find him wanting. But here, in this lovingly tended tomb, was irrefutable proof that Adam had felt true, deep and lasting love; a memorial to her mother, a place she hadn’t visited in a decade.
Only one person had been found wanting, and it was her.
II
Knox woke with a start to discover that the sun was up and the day was growing warm. As he rose to wash and dress, he realised he still had his medical pendant on. Miles insisted on the damned thing whenever he was on an overseas job, but it was inscribed with the MGS logo and would blow his story about being a freelance journalist, so he took it off and packed it away, then brewed coffee on the gas cooker and wondered what to do.
A small stack of promotional leaflets for the nearby guest cabins lay on the reception counter. He took one outside to read while he drank his coffee: French and English text wrapped around touristic photographs: sunbathers glistening with oil on the white sand; angel fish in crystal-clear water; a bearded man Knox took to be the proprietor bouncing across the waves in an inflatable Zodiac; a sailboat silhouetted against a nectarine sunset. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, saw Rebecca arriving from the spiny forest, raised his cup in greeting. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.
‘Love some,’ she nodded.
He refilled his own mug while he was at it, took them both back out, sat down beside her on the veranda bench. She held her cup beneath her nose, breathed in deep, then looked sideways at him. ‘Doesn’t count as a proper holiday if you have to shave, huh?’
‘Something like that,’ he smiled. The sky was bright, mist rising from residual puddles. Grey-headed lovebirds frolicked and chased in the surrounding trees. A radiated tortoise crept slowly along the line of shade, making the most of the morning cool to feed. ‘Tame buggers, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘This is their sanctuary. No one hunts them here.’
‘People hunt them?’
‘Sure. For food. And for the pet trade.’
