Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

‘How late?’

‘Over three weeks.’

His hand closed roughly on my shoulder. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Don’t you mean what are we going to do?’ I closed my eyes. It was a question of will, and I would will it not to be so. ‘It could be anything. It happens. The system goes haywire and then adjusts.’

‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘Jeez, I hope so.’

The first of the two scheduled expeditions from base camp was by boat up to Zaztelal where the logging company had also set up an outpost and where sightings of the Yanomami had been reported.

Hypnotized by the yellow-green mirror over which we paddled, I sat in the back of the boat. Hal was in the prow, taking notes and photographs. After each shot, he recorded the position from the map references. He snapped me too or, rather, the hat that shaded my face.

Greedy with love, I feasted on every tiny detail about him. His hair, already bleaching in the sun, his excitement, the long legs braced against the movement of the boat. Just as greedily, I feasted my eyes on a humming-bird, whose plumage was of so iridescent a blue that it almost hurt to look at it, on the strange blooms that hung from the trees and the silent fish shapes in the water. The heat wrapped us in a second skin. Every so often our passage disturbed a pocket of methane gas trapped in the water and the stench filled our nostrils as we glided onwards.

At Zaztelal, the villagers came out to meet us. Over a communal meal they told us tales of the Yanomami, who had a reputation for aggression. They also told us of the logging company’s riches, which had showered over them, of the strange disease that killed many children, of their shock when the conquistadores moved on after they had plundered the forest.

Hal wrote, ‘Measles?’ in his notebook.

The following morning, we made a preliminary reconnaissance of the logging area, which was roughly ten miles in diameter. Here, severed tree trunks wept sap, the undergrowth had been pulverized, the soil polluted with oil and chemicals, and the sky was all too visible. The guide explained that the forest was renewing itself but not quickly. Normally, if Yanomami were around they would have been cultivating their crops of plantain and cassava. Also, monkey, deer and armadillo would have been in the forest.

We returned via an alternative route, which looped to the north and took us past the northern spur of an oxbow lake. Apparently, otters often chose them to build their dens in and I lingered, fascinated, while Hal loped over the rope bridge to the other side.

‘Come on,’ he said.

Half-way across, I stopped: I had never been good at heights. Drenched in sweat, I clung to the rope. ‘Come back, Hal,’ I called.

He walked towards me and the motion of the bridge made me retch. I gazed down at the water. Hot, sluggish, muddy… alien. If a fish from it flopped into my lap I would not recognize it. A mistake to think of fish – I was sick.

Hal waited until I had finished, then smoothed my hair back from my wet face. ‘Oh, Rose,’ was all he said, impatient to get going.

I took his hand, looked down – and screamed.

Gummed up by debris, forced into pools alongside the bank, the water slowed and eddied. Floating on the surface of one of those pools was a human hand with stiff, splayed fingers.

I pointed. Hal pulled me over the bridge then he and the guide edged down to the water. The guide took his stick and poked hard. There was a hiss, an explosion of bubbles and gas, and a body wallowed to the surface.

The face was decayed, half eaten and terrible.

Together they hooked a rope around one of the legs and tethered it to a root. ‘We’ll return to camp and get help,’ said Hal, and wrote down the location on the map. ‘Body here,’ he wrote. ‘Time: 14.15.’

The next day, we went back to the base camp, and Hal radioed the police in Quetzl.

It was not such a big mystery. Six weeks ago one of the logging firm’s European supervisors had gone missing. Apparently he had failed to pay the wages owed to a couple of native employees. They had taken revenge in the manner appropriate to them.

After that I had nightmares. I dreamt of the dead face, of hostile eyes, of being hunted in the strange, dangerous forest… and over and over again of Ianthe and me, watching the men tip-tupping our furniture out of Medlars Cottage.

I grew heavy-eyed and lethargic, and dreaded the nights when I tossed and turned in the hammock, listening to the rustle of insects in the palm roof.

During his convalescence, Sam and I struggled to complete the battle of Marathon (a thousand pieces), only to discover the last two were missing.

‘I can’t get better, Mum, until we find them.’ Sam sent me a pale smile.

I believed him and searched the house from top to bottom, for Ianthe swore the jigsaw had been complete when she brought it over.

I discovered the missing pieces, all right. If I had had my wits about me, it would have been the first place to look. The breastplate of the youth who was about to run from the battlefield and into myth was tucked under Sam’s pillow, along with a section of the olive tree that grew in the background.

With a tray poised on his knee, Sam sat up in bed and made a small ceremony of dropping those two final bits into place. ‘I wish you could stay at home,’ he said.

Chapter Nineteen

I shall will it not to be so.

So I said, so I believed, with the hard confidence and ignorance of twenty-one. But it was wasted, for I had come up against something stronger than will. I had been beaten by biology.

Deep in the rainforest, I took the plunge. Driven almost mad by hormones, fear and love, I cornered Hal after an evening meal eaten around the fire. ‘I am pregnant.’

He closed his eyes. ‘I knew it.’ He opened them. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Keep it. There’s no question. It’s our baby.’ I felt a whisper of excitement, of tenderness. ‘Our baby, Hal.’

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s not the plan. I don’t want children.’

It was dark and I could not see his face clearly. But I sensed that a stubborn, ruthless gleam would have sprung into the blue eyes while mine would be reflecting confusion and anger… yes, anger. ‘Well, we can’t ignore it. It’s not an overdraft or a headache.’

‘I didn’t ask for it.’

‘You’re being outrageous.’

‘Sure, I am. If being honest is outrageous.’

‘But it has happened.’ I reached out to touch him but he moved away. My hand dropped to my side.

‘Our plan was to work and travel.’

‘I know. I wanted to do that too, but plans change. They have to sometimes. We must make others.’

He peered through the dusk at me for a long time, and it was as if he was saying, After all this time, we have not understood one another at all. ‘But I don’t wish to change my plans, Rose.’

I could feel his rejection, almost taste it. Snippets from previous conversations rushed through my mind – a light-hearted allusion to ‘the glorious nomad mentality’ and his statement that ‘The best life, the only life, is unfettered’ – which had always persuaded me how intriguing Hal’s point of view was, how different he was.

The implications sank in. ‘Hal, I imagined you would be horrified, angry perhaps, but that in the end you would say, “It’s not what I wanted, but we’ll deal with it.’”

That hurt him and he hunkered down beside me. ‘Have I ever been dishonest with you? Have I promised you anything?’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t… I know I can’t. I’m not cut out… I need… No, I want to get on with the work I plan to do. Life is short, and I want to be free to concentrate on it. But I’m sorry, Rose, that this has happened.’