Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
C ARTER COULD HAVE approached from the river, sat in the safety of the boat and tossed the teething ring in, but he’d never been going to do that.
And so he’d taken the long way, setting off at dawn and approaching the river from his grandfather’s property, retracing the steps he had taken with Arif as a child.
Although the incident had taken place further up river from where they’d used to turn around and head home.
A lot further.
Hot, humid, dense...
He hated the place, and every step was taking him closer to a place he didn’t feel he needed to be.
He reached the spot where Bashim had found him, but he knew that only from what he’d been told. There was nothing he could remember here.
Or maybe a little...
Hot...thirsty...his head throbbing...
He walked further in and he could hear the chirps and sounds of the jungle. Looking up, he knew he’d climbed a tree, his limbs aching, pulling his puny body up. Searching for the banyan tree...knowing he was lost.
He also saw the spot where he’d fallen.
He recalled the taste of blood, and remembered he’d known he had to stem it...
Some were his own memories, some were Bashir’s tales, but nothing helped.
Yet as he got closer his pace picked up.
He was following the line of the river, but well back from the mangroves.
And he’d been right, Carter decided, when he saw the silvery striped mangroves. Even if he’d done his best to avoid this spot, he knew it exactly. Yet there were no answers to be had here.
This place that had tormented him for a lifetime was not the stuff of nightmares.
Birds flashed like red jewels, and where the dense canopy of trees thinned there were glimpses of cloudy blue skies.
As Carter drank the last of the water he’d brought, he decided it had been a mistake to come.
Hunger gnawed. He picked up a mangosteen and stared at it, then tossed it away, deciding he would never be that hungry again.
Yet he bent to retrieve it, and as he held the rough waxy orb the desperation he’d felt as a child was revived...the fatigue and hunger as he’d bashed it on a stone, the purple wax seeping in, the usually sweet white parcels stained and rotten, bitter on his tongue.
Yet he’d eaten them.
No wonder he couldn’t stand them now.
He took one and peeled it open, saw the pretty white parcels like the ones he’d opened for Grace that beautiful morning. He thought of that cocktail, and how she’d simply put it down when he told her.
She’d brushed her teeth before she’d kissed him—and that memory felt like her smile.
He tasted the fruit and it was sweet...like peaches.
He tossed it away.
The heat and the low-hanging branches made it a fight at times to move even a few steps further. His shirt was torn, a heavy branch swung back, and he felt the tear of the flesh on his cheek. He reached for his water bottle, but of course it was long empty, and he knew he was on his own with the elements. But still he was not concerned. This had been his and Arif’s playground. The boys had often gone further than his grandfather would have permitted, and it had been a regular outing throughout the summer, with overnight treks a frequent adventure. Even a couple of nights at times.
They’d always stopped here, though.
Arif would put out his arm and halt them, telling Carter they should go no further.
‘But the river is just through there...’ Carter would protest, for it was just a couple of miles ahead, and he’d known someone there might give them a ride back, or take them to their home for a meal.
But Arif had always pointed to the still, shallow stretch of water, sometimes high from recent rain. ‘Mortal danger.’
Even at eight years old, Carter had known what that meant.
‘Idiot!’ he muttered, his lip curling on the word.
For how the hell had his father thought it safe to bring his family here? To watch as his wife carried his infant into infested waters?
He came to the edge of the mangroves, their silver branches like bony arms stretching skywards, beyond the river. They looked eerie, yet beautiful in the pale moonlight, and he scanned the water for the glint of eyes or any movement. But it was peaceful. And there was a rope over the river that hadn’t been there when he was a child, put there for the orangutans.
It had been dusk when his mother had said she wanted to take the perfect photo—to capture the setting sun and the little kingfisher perched over the water.
‘Sophie!’
He could hear his father warning her to stay back, telling her that the water in the mangroves was deep from a week of torrential rain.
It was comparatively dry now, but he looked at the water and knew the dangers that lurked beneath. He stood there numb, refusing to feel, but it was as if he was witnessing again the stealth of the beast approaching.
He’d attempted to shout—‘No!’ But the sound of the word hadn’t carried, and his mother had suddenly plunged lower in the water, as if she’d stepped off a ledge.
He felt again his relief when she’d seemed to right herself, rising up in the water again.
Then he’d heard one desperate shout from his father, seen the whipping water his father had rushed towards.
And now, as he had all those years ago, Carter stood horror-struck and silent, watching, waiting for his father to sort this out, to save his mother, for she and Hugo to emerge.
Apart from that single shout from his father there had been no screams, no noise, when surely there should have been?
The thrashing, beating water had gone still.
Carter had gone in.
He felt again that blind panic. Holding his breath...searching the water...shouting to his father who lay face-down, urging him to help find Hugo...
‘Papa!’ He’d urged him to wake up. ‘Hugo... Ulat...’
His hand had closed on something, and he’d frantically pulled—but it had just been roots and leaves, and he’d screamed to his father again. ‘Find him!’
Even then there had been the first stirrings of anger at his father, who lay motionless and incapable of helping find his son. Anger at his impetuous mother, who had stepped out of the boat without thought or care for the precious infant in her arms.
At some level he’d known his mother was dead, but he’d told himself the baby would have slipped out of the sling, that Ulat would rise, smiling like he did when they played in the pool. Surely? After all, there was no blood in the water...no sign that anything had occurred.
Then he’d looked to his father, still face-down, his arms spread, and it had been then that Carter had realised he stood in infested water.
His own sense of survival, the lessons from long days spent in the jungle with Arif, had kicked in.
Mortal danger.
He’d waded out, still searching the water with his hands, scanning the muddy edges for Hugo, calling out to him, unable to fathom that he was gone.
All of them were gone.
Gone.
He’d never cried, or screamed, and he didn’t now. He just sat there feeling again the winter, and the emptiness, the finality. And that was the part of the nightmare he never wanted to get to.
No, he hadn’t run for help. He’d wandered, dazed, knowing they were gone for ever.
And he’d loved them—his floaty mother, his hapless father, their passion and their slight craziness...
He thought of his father, his brief eye-roll before he’d called out to stop his wife. But it would have been like trying to halt the wind. Her passion, her longing for adventure, had been impossible to contain.
Carter’s anger was misdirected. It wasn’t at his family, nor even the animals who had simply been being true to their nature.
It was at himself.
He hadn’t stopped them, hadn’t called out, and he’d failed to protect his baby brother. Little Hugo, who had brought so much delight into the world, who in the chaos of a somewhat nomadic existence had, for Carter, been like a little beacon. Hugo’s routine had been a welcome dose of normality in a disorderly existence.
His heart thumped in his chest. And now there was nothing to show for his existence.
One thing.
Carter pulled the silver teething ring from his pocket and opened the pouch. His intention was to somehow return Hugo’s beloved teething ring, his comfort, to him. He saw the little teeth marks...and now he ran a finger over them and cried the tears he never had before.
It was the teething ring that had caused this. This place had been calling to him the night he’d been with Grace...
And now Carter knew why he was here.
Love had returned to his life even when he’d tried to deny it had ever existed.
A bird landed on a branch—a blaze of colour in the silver and grey—and, yes, all these years on he knew it was the kingfisher his mother had hoped to capture in her photo.
He looked down at the silver teething ring, at the scratched surface, and thought of Hugo’s bright smile, how trusting he’d been...
His milky breath and gurgles of laughter.
His contented smile.
Contentment...
He thought of Grace...how she was terrified of being forgotten by those she loved.
‘You’ll never be forgotten, Hugo,’ he said aloud.
He wouldn’t let a single memory fade for as long as his life allowed.
He could almost hear his brother’s bright smiling laughter and, pocketing the treasure, he knew now where he was headed...where he’d been trying to get all those years ago.
He had been going home.