A Sister’s Gift Read online

  Red Balloon

  Up, up and away flies the shining balloon. Over the Old Rochester Bridge it goes and the industrial estate by Strood Esplanade is left behind in a breath. A child at the top of Rochester Castle cries out, pointing upwards, but too late because the balloon is already on its way.

  For a moment, following the trajectory of the river, it sails over Command House. And then, where the water swirls in thick grey waves round the steep bend in the bank it bears north-northeast and up past the imposing main gates of Chatham Dockyard, past Chatham Pontoon. For a heartbeat, the sun glints off its metallic red surface giving a stiff salute to the proud naval history of the town. The flags on HMS Ocelot and HMS Cavalier shiver and flutter their own salute in return but the balloon isn’t hanging about. The higher up it goes, the smaller the lands spread out below are getting; cosy Frindsbury to the west, sprawling Gillingham to the northeast with the white dots of so many rooftops all in a cluster, opening out at the edges to the faded grassy greens of the farmers’ fields beyond. And then, gathering speed over the grey-green river, the red balloon passes the ordered rows of houses at Wainscott to the east, the stark grey spectre of Upnor Castle to the left, the glint of a thousand panes of glass on St Mary’s island to the right.

  How far can it go, how high can it go? The river widens out. The air gets colder as the land drops away and still the blue sky winks, beckoning it on further. The long white string twirls and flutters beneath it. The message sealed inside the envelope, addressed to Scarlett L. Hudson, is still intact.

  And it’s on its way.

  Scarlett

  Shit. What was that?

  Did José hear it? I just heard a low growl but I can’t see anything.

  I move my head backwards a fraction and my young guide’s still close enough for me to see the whites of his eyes in among the shady foliage high above me. He blows a shock of black, ruler-straight hair away from his face but he doesn’t move a muscle.

  Quietly, as still as he is, I breathe in long and slow through my nostrils. What is it? Will I pick up the acrid scent of a big cat nearby? Is that what he was trying to warn me about? I’ve been out here eighteen months and I’ve only been really close to one once before. They stay away from people for the most part. And they move so silently you never hear them. If you see them, it’s just for an instant, a dark shadow you could have imagined. Out here, the Yanomami say, you need to develop another way of knowing when danger’s near; you have to develop a sixth sense.

  Fuck. I glance down at my row of collecting pots. I can’t afford to lose these seeds now. I need to hand these samples in as part of my Klausmann Award submission. I wish I could just push the sticky hair away from my face. What should I do now – try and save the seeds, or should I be more worried about saving my own skin?

  To add to it, that tantalising itch that’s developing on my left arm…Ugh, that’s got to be some nasty bug that’s just crawled in under my sleeve. I should be used to it by now but I still hate ’em. They’ll eat you alive if they get half a chance…

  Mind you, I shiver – so might a jaguar if its belly was empty and it came across me and José up here in the cloud forest. I’m definitely not imagining it. There’s that low growling noise again, just like I heard before…

  I pull in a breath, fighting the urge to breathe harder and faster as my heart begins to race. José did warn that they sometimes hang out in the remote areas, that we’d have to be careful, but I wasn’t really worried. All the way up here I was on the lookout, kinda hoping if I’m honest that we’d see something special ’cos none of the other graduates have, even the more adventurous of the blokes. I wanted to be the first, make it a victory for the girls. I’d have enjoyed seeing the look on Emoto’s face.

  Now I’m not so sure.

  I blink as a fat drop of condensation plops down from the canopy and into my eyes. Visibility in here is pretty much zero, except for wherever you happen to be shining your torch at any given moment. And, man, now I can’t stop shivering.

  It’s the cold, I tell myself. We left the paved road behind hours ago, walking in the darkness of the misty forest for the best part of the day to get to this spot and – bizarrely – it’s freezing because the jungle in here above the hills of São Paulo is so incredibly thick that no sunlight can penetrate. Even though it’s got to be 45 degrees out. How weird is that? As silently as I can, I switch my torch off. It makes a quiet ‘click’ and then I’m in total darkness. Fool, I think immediately, the beast will probably smell its way to you if it wants you for dinner, it doesn’t need to see you…

  Where’s José gone now? I’m only twenty-four…too young to…

  I try and catch sight of him again as the breeze moves through the shimmering foliage higher up. The trees at this altitude are shorter and thicker-stemmed than the ones lower down and at last I catch sight of him again. He’s barely moved a muscle; he’s so still, he could be a mushroom growing out of the pale twisted bark.

  What is that stench? It is so black and bloody and rank you could just retch. It’s an animal smell obviously, but where is it coming from? I see José’s hand moving now. It’s reaching very slowly towards his belt where he keeps his arrows, the ones he keeps tipped with curare and venom from the tiny poisonous frogs. What can he see that I can’t?

  José looks down at me. His brown eyes seem to flash out a smile of reassurance. He isn’t afraid. He looks away again. I do not move and he lifts the tip of the blowpipe to his mouth and aims…

  Over a day’s hike from here the brown water of the Amazon trundles along, widening out a little way down. I think of the old canoe tethered to the battered vellozia tree by the bank. That canoe could take me home. Man, even though this is the adventure I was dreaming of, I’d love to take that ride home right now. I’d do anything to be back there.

  The needle-thin arrow is in position in the blowpipe now. I can see José, shifting his body, ever so gently repositioning himself to take the shot. He’s only going to get one chance to get this right, the thought flashes through my mind, he won’t get another shot. And he’s just twelve years old…

  The roar from the creature’s throat when it takes the hit turns my legs to water, reverberates in my stomach. It’s coming from directly above me. It is somewhere up there among the branches and I can hear it now, a mixture of anguish and fury so primal I just know that if I’m in its path when it comes down I’m going to get torn limb from limb. And now there’s the sound of branches breaking as it cracks every single bough on the way down, falling heavily. I see it for a split second only. It is a huge creature, black coloured, its bristly fur sticking up in tufts over its head and on its back – an old dominant male howler monkey. And a wounded one at that. I catch a glimpse of the blood spurting darkly from a fresh wound to its neck.

  Instinctively, I put my hands over my head as it crashes down right onto my seed pots and lies still, just a few feet away.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ I cover my face, waiting for the monkey to spring up and attack but it just stays where it is. José shins down the banyan tree, his eyes still wide but shining now. He shoves the beast with his foot. Surprisingly strong, he manages to roll it over. I switch my torch back on. I can just spy the tip of the deadly arrow sticking out of its neck.

  José gives out a whoop of triumph and I just let my backside slump down against the springy green forest floor in relief.

  My pots, I’m thinking. I’m still alive but that creature has smashed all my sample pots to smithereens. All the seeds and spores will have been trampled and sucked into the boggy humus beneath the trees. I should be grateful, I know. A moment ago I was worried about not making it out of here intact but, hell, I worked so hard to get them.

  Emoto’s the better ethnobotanist, I can’t deny it, but ever since Eve took us aside at the beginning of the year and said she’d put us both forward for the Klausmann Award for Services to Plant Sciences, I’ve allowed myself to dream. I’ve never won anything in my life befo
re. To achieve an award would be so exciting. Especially this award. It’d be a recognition of everything that’s come to mean so much to me. The Amazon is my life now. To get recognition of that fact would be so wonderful…

  Now José is trampling all over everything, too. He’s bending over the old male, his knife out of his belt, hacking away, sawing intently and after a while he stands up straight and comes over and plants his prize carefully at my feet. I look down at the half-curled bloodied monkey hand.

  ‘I’m not going to pick that up, José,’ I croak, and he laughs at me, the delighted giggle of a triumphant child.

  ‘You take it,’ he insists in his own language. ‘Monkey paw mean you will always come back home to us, yes?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, José.’

  He grunts in reply, and I watch him scamper back to the prize, his short brown limbs clambering all over it to get better purchase. For a good few minutes, sitting among the succulent dark-green bromeliads, I can’t bring myself to even move.

  ‘Hey!’ Emoto’s expressionless face appears out of the darkness, his guide at his side. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Nice.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ I glance at the empty collecting pots attached to his backpack – he’s obviously just arrived. ‘We’ve been here all morning, Emoto – this is our patch.’

  ‘Not likely. I heard this was a prime spot for collection. I’d have been here ahead of you if Eve hadn’t waylaid me before I got out of camp this morning.’ He grins amicably at me. ‘She wants to talk to you too, Scarlett.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘ASAP. But at least you get a ride in the posh boat back downriver. Your admirer is there. He told me to let you know he’d be waiting for you.’

  ‘Guillermo?’ I look up sharply.

  ‘Friends in high places, eh?’

  I ignore that. ‘What does Eve want to talk to me about?’

  He shrugs noncommittally, though I think he knows exactly what she wants me for.

  ‘Say, is that what I think it is?’ He shines his torchlight on a mossy tree trunk and the brilliant bright red flowers of Cattleya Alliance are visible, even in the forest haze, all the way up the stem. Damn him, I was hoping to come across that species myself. Now he’s bagged it.

  ‘And this?’ He swivels the light beam around and, hey presto, there’s another treasure right in front of us – a pale green and yellow specimen of Encyclia patens, its petals splayed out like spiders’ legs on a fallen tree trunk. ‘It’s a real Aladdin’s cave up here, isn’t it?’

  And he’s just spotted the dead monkey too. ‘Had a bit of a mishap here, Scarlett? I thought I heard something falling…’Emoto’s torch is flickering over the monkey’s corpse now, taking in the smashed collecting pots, the broken branches, everything…

  ‘Yep. We’re going back to base camp empty-handed, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Not quite empty-handed.’ He can’t stop the grin that springs to his face as he catches sight of José’s offering. That half-curled monkey hand at my foot looks so human. I swallow down the bile that rises to my throat as Emoto picks it up and hands it to me. Shit, it’s disgusting. And it’s dripping blood all over me. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be a lucky charm that’ll always bring me back to the tribe if I should leave. I’m not going to leave. I’ve made this my home now and it’s where I intend to stay for a long time to come.

  Scarlett

  The steady phut-phut of the engine breaks its rhythm a little and Guillermo twists his head round slightly and gives me a wry grin as José nudges him to let him take over the wheel. He comes to join me under the shady part of the boat.

  ‘You OK?’ He leans in and touches my arm gently.

  ‘I’m OK.’ My sleeve is soaked, and I’m having difficulty pulling it up to examine my arm where it’s started itching. Gui gives me a hand, rolling the material up purposefully to reveal a thin angry line where a bug has chomped its way across my forearm. He winces sympathetically.

  ‘You’ll get that seen to?’

  ‘José already gave me some Andiroba oil for it. Everything we need is all here, all around us.’

  ‘Sounds like something the Yanomami would say.’ He smiles at me and I smile back. He’s got nice eyes. Gentle and kind.

  ‘You didn’t have to come all this way out to fetch me, you know. José and I came up in the PlanetLove canoe, we could have got back to camp in it.’

  ‘I know you could.’ He leans back a little now, arms folded across his knees. ‘Maybe I wanted to, though.’

  ‘And waste two days punting up the Amazon when you could have been attending important meetings?’ I tease gently. In his stylishly-cut crisp white shirt and cool chinos he does look more dressed for the board than the boat. ‘Why are you here, really?’

  ‘Maybe I find you pretty.’ He watches me through half-closed lids. ‘Maybe I wanted the chance to spend two days cooped up on this boat with you.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ I push back my hair which hasn’t been washed since last Tuesday, and open out my dirty hands. ‘Sorry to disappoint you then, because right now I don’t look too tasty, do I?’

  ‘Even like this – covered in mud – you look lovely enough to convince me you’re the woman I could happily spend the rest of my life with…’

  My eyes open wide at the unexpectedness of his comment. I laugh out loud. We’ve known each other for about a year and a half but only on and off. He’s kidding. He’s got to be. I give him a sideways look, searching for any signs that he might be pulling my leg but he’s keeping a pretty straight face. I gulp. Shit. Did he just…ask me to marry him? He did. Just wait till I text Lucy Lundy later on and tell her this big-shot South American dude has asked me to marry him. Hilarious. I’m far too young to be thinking about getting hitched. Flattering, though.

  ‘The mud,’ I begin unsurely, ‘is because I ended up falling onto the forest floor this morning.’ He doesn’t seem to find anything unusual in my response, so I continue: ‘We lost all the seeds we just spent this entire trip collecting, I nearly got killed by a falling monkey and…and all my clothes have been completely and utterly soaking wet for the last three days. And I hate being wet.’

  ‘Yet you love your job,’ he reminds me. ‘And you’re very good at it. I heard you’re even up for an award, is that right?’

  I blush. ‘You heard that?’

  ‘A little bird told me,’ he smiles. ‘I heard Eve put forward the thesis you submitted for your original job application. She thinks you stand a good chance. Is the award worth much?’

  ‘I really, really want it!’ I lean forward, suddenly excited at the thought. ‘Even though I can’t imagine I’ll get it. Emoto’s done some brilliant work, it’ll probably go to him. And no, it’s not worth anything monetarily. It’s just a peer-recognition thing…’ As he pulls a face, I add: ‘…which is important.’

  ‘They should give you a big trophy.’ His dark eyes are dancing, playing with me. ‘A great big trophy,’ he spreads his arms wide, ‘for you to put in pride of place on your mantelpiece.’

  ‘I don’t have a mantelpiece that big.’

  ‘No, but I do,’ he puts in significantly.

  ‘I think you really need to get to know a woman better before you go round proposing marriage to her,’ I put in cagily. ‘I mightn’t be all that you think I am, Gui.’

  ‘The fact that you don’t jump at my offer tells me a certain amount.’

  I lift my eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘It tells me you aren’t over-concerned with riches, for one thing.’

  ‘I’ve not been adverse to a little bling in my time…but no,’ I laugh, ‘money wouldn’t tempt me.’

  ‘What would?’ he leans a little closer. So close, in fact, I have to catch my breath.

  ‘The man I marry,’ I tell him at last, ‘will need to have proved to me that he knows me and loves me just as I am. That he’ll be prepared to stick with me through thick and thin. It won’t matter two figs to me
how much money he’s got.’

  ‘Well said. I take it you will be prepared to prove likewise to him?’

  ‘Naturally. But right now –’ before we get too carried away with all this talk of marriage and before he gets a chance to see how confused he’s making me feel – ‘I’ve still got to make my mark in this field. I want my work to be recognised and used to some good purpose at the end of the day,’ I run on. ‘Getting an award – well, it makes it more likely people will sit up and take what I do seriously.’

  ‘That’s one route,’ he says thoughtfully.

  ‘You’ve got a better one?’ I give him an arch look.

  ‘Having friends in positions of power and influence. That can be the easiest route to getting your work noticed, don’t you agree?’

  I shrug. ‘All I know is my mum slaved most of her adult life out here, doing exactly what I’m doing, collecting and categorising seeds, logging their tribal medicinal purposes…and in the end, it was all for nothing, because she died before she got any of her work published or put to any purposeful use. I don’t intend to end up like that.’

  ‘You won’t,’ he promises, and then laughs as I almost fall into his lap as José veers to avoid a line of harassed-looking water birds that are steaming straight towards us.

  ‘I hope not. I really want what I do to make a difference, Gui.’ I pull back from him a little as the boat straightens again. ‘I hope I get the chance. We just came across Emoto up in the cloud forest and I’d swear he thinks Eve’s going to tell me I’m to go back home.’

  ‘I heard PlanetLove were cutting back. I could pull some strings for you, if you like.’ Guillermo looks at me candidly. ‘You know my dad owns Chiquitin-Almeira. And Chiquitin-Almeira pretty much funds PlanetLove…’

  ‘I…I don’t want you to do that, Gui.’

  ‘You don’t want me to do that for you?’ He picks up my hands and I’m suddenly very aware that my nails are broken and dirty, my T-shirt is stained with monkey blood and I haven’t had a proper wash for days. I must look a sight. I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t think that, though. ‘I remember when you first came out here. There were over five hundred people present at the conference meeting that day and you were the only one in the whole place I felt drawn to talk to, the only one I wanted to spend time with. I still feel that way.’