Air and Fire Read online

  AIR & FIRE

  RUPERT THOMSON

  ‘– Of the four elements that comprise the universe, God gave this country only two: air and fire.’

  – Francisco de Ulcoa, on his arrival in

  Lower California, 1539

  ‘– Among people like the Californian Indians, and in a land like theirs, not many significant events occur which deserve to be recorded and made known to posterity.’

  – Johann Jakob Baegert

  Contents

  April

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  May

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  June

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  July

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  April

  Chapter 1

  The sea had turned red overnight.

  Suzanne faced into the early morning breeze, her hands curling round the cool metal of the rail. She was standing on the narrow deck above the midship’s house, the funnel towering behind her, a crop of ashes drifting downwards through the air. It was shortly after dawn on the 17th of April. She had been on board ship for more than three months. Her hands tightened on the rail, and she looked down. An infinity of red water, shifting and tilting under a pale sky.

  There would be an explanation, of course. Some refraction of the light peculiar to the tropics. Or perhaps they were passing through the grounds of some great carnage: whales slaughtered for their fat, or seals for their skins. Though, strangely, it was men that she could see, an army of men laid out in rows, the blood draining from their wounds, spiralling upwards through the water, until at last each individual vein was empty. Then their skin would shine like snow and the ocean would glow above their heads, red as a basket of geraniums. She faced into the breeze once more, smoke from the steamer’s funnel unwinding across the sky. There would be an explanation. Someone would know.

  They were sailing due north now, into the Sea of Cortez, and the southern tip of California had appeared on the port bow, a long talon of volcanic rock pointing out across the water. It belonged to Mexico, though Mexico showed little interest in it; it was a land adrift, peopled by Indians and half-breeds – and now, she thought, by the French as well. She strained her eyes to take in every detail. The soil was the colour of an autumn leaf, somewhere between brown and gold. The ridges looked sharp to the touch. And scarcely a trace of vegetation to be seen. Brown land, red water. Paris had been left so far behind.

  Altering her grip on the rail, she thought back to a summer morning the year before, late summer, one of the last days of August. The windows of the drawing-room stood open and she could hear doves murmuring in the garden. She even knew which dress she had been wearing – a white satin gown striped with bands of black velvet. The dress had been a gift from Théo, her husband. He had chosen it on account of its short sleeves which were fashionable that year and which also, so he said, showed off the beauty of her arms.

  It must have been a Sunday since they were taking breakfast together at the octagonal table by the window. She could recall the exact moment, her hands closing round the handle of their silver coffee-pot. She could still feel the carved vines against the inside of her fingers as she leaned forwards to fill his cup, as she listened to herself pronounce the words that she had been planning:

  ‘I’d like to come with you, Théo.’

  The curtains shifted as a draught moved into the room. The air smelled of leaves as they begin to decay, that first hint of change.

  Théo contemplated her across the table. It was a look that she remembered from their first meeting in the parlour of her parents’ house in Dieppe. It seemed to pause on her face and then pass through; she might have been transparent, made of glass.

  Though her announcement had caught him unawares, she could see that he was in no doubt as to what she was referring to. She met his eyes, and her gaze did not waver. She wanted him to know that her request was in earnest.

  ‘And what do you propose to do about the house?’ he asked, his voice poised, almost light, his alarm exquisitely disguised.

  ‘I have spoken to Madame Marcelline.’ Madame Marcelline, their housekeeper, had been in their employ ever since they were married. ‘She would be happy to take care of things while we’re away.’

  This did nothing to quell Théo’s uneasiness; perhaps he even sensed a conspiracy. ‘It will occupy the best part of a year,’ he reminded her, ‘when you consider the voyages out and back.’

  ‘Which is a long time,’ she said, ‘to be separated from the man you love.’

  Smiling faintly, he let his eyes wander across the cool satin elegance of her dress and then out into the comfort of the room in which they sat.

  ‘It will be primitive,’ he warned her.

  ‘Dieppe,’ she said, ‘was primitive.’

  Less than a month later she was ordering six gowns, three of foulard, three of mousseline-de-soie, fabrics that would be ideal, her dressmaker said, for a lady living in what she called ‘the torrid zone’. Two months after that, she watched dust-sheets settle on the furniture, imitating the snow that had fallen in the night and now lay on the trees and rooftops that she could see through the window.

  She heard a whistling behind her, soft and low, almost the same pitch as the ship’s engines. The cabin-boy’s face rose into view, his eyes scanning the narrow deck.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody else about.’

  It had become a ritual, to meet him here at dawn, the ropes knocking and tapping against the mast, the cluster of white ventilators breathing their warm steam into the air. Sometimes they would talk; other times they would just lean against the rail and feel the soothing beat of the propellor and watch the water fold away from the side of the ship.

  ‘You couldn’t sleep, Madame?’

  ‘I didn’t want to sleep.’ She looked down into his face, his features gathered tightly, almost braced, his dark curls corkscrewing in the breeze. ‘Did you see the water?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. I saw something like it once before, but that was off Java.’ Only twelve years old, but he had sailed the circumference of the world three times. He seemed burdened by experience, wearied, aged by it. She often wished that she could give him back some portion of his childhood. ‘It could be weed, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘You see so many strange things.’

  So many strange things.

  Two nights ago she had been returning from a dinner in the Captain’s quarters with Théo when a member of the crew scuttled from the shadows, plucking at Théo’s sleeve with fingers that were callused, black with grease. ‘Monsieur,’ he whispered, ‘we’re entering a land where legends are born.’ And then, as Théo prised the sordid fingers loose, ‘You won’t believe your eyes.’

  Later, in the safety of their cabin, Théo dismissed the encounter. He had travelled by sea many times before, and he was familiar with the superstitious nature of sailors. They would sit on deck late into the night, he said, and hypnotise each other with tales of planets that dropped sizzling into the ocean and fish with the eyes and breasts of women.

  ‘It’s all nonsense, of course,’ he said. ‘And besides, did you not notice, the fellow smelt most unmistakably of liquor. Why, he was almost drowning in the stuff!’

  Suzanne did not dispute this and yet she had to admit, to herself, not to Théo, that the sailor’s words had thrilled her.

  Théo stood by the porthole, frowning.

  ‘Isn’t it more likely,’ he said, turning to her once again, ‘that we’re simply entering a place about which much remains unknown, a place where the imagination, especially, it would seem, the imagination of sailors, can take hold and run riot?’ He stood over her, his face lit with exhilaration at the clarity and precision of his reasoning.

  ‘It’s more likely,’ she said, ‘yes.’

  Though it occurred to her, as she smiled up at him, as he took her hand in his and touched it to his lips, that they were already in a place where the imagination, to use his phrase, had taken hold. That she was even there at all, sitting in the cabin of a ship that was bound for Mexico, was the purest act of the imagination. Hers, not his; he would never have been able to imagine it, had she not compelled him to.

  The cabin-boy jumped. When she
turned to look at him, he was standing with his head tipped at an angle, his toes gripping the deck.

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ he said.

  Not for the first time during the voyage, Suzanne realised her debt to the boy. The SS Korrigan was a tramp steamer. It was in the business of carrying cargo, and its crew was unused to passengers – unused, especially, to women. Monsieur Groque, the Captain, would address her during meals or on the bridge, but he had to labour to produce even a few civilities, and it was no surprise to her that he reverted to the most foul language the moment her back was turned. As a woman she was, at best, a source of discomfort and inhibition. At worst, she was invisible – no, worse than invisible: a jinx, an evil omen, a pariah. Only the cabin-boy would speak to her with any measure of normality, though he had sworn her to secrecy, fearing what the crew might do to him if they found out. She had kept her promise, and nobody knew of their assignations, not even Théo; still, the boy’s head swivelled at every creak.

  At last he satisfied himself that nobody was calling him. He seemed to uncoil, his muscles loosening against his bones. He was like a dead thing coming back to life.

  ‘When do we arrive?’ she asked. ‘Tomorrow, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Midday.’

  ‘So we can see each other one more time,’ she said, ‘and by then one of us will know. About the water, I mean.’

  He moved to the rail beside her, and his head dipped on his neck. ‘What will you do there,’ he asked, ‘in Santa Sofia?’

  ‘My husband’s building a church.’

  ‘Is he a priest?’

  She laughed. ‘No, he’s an engineer.’

  The cabin-boy ran his hand along the rail, following a sudden twist in the metal. It had buckled during their passage round Cape Horn. That same night a wave had snatched one of the lifeboats from its cradle. They had not seen the lifeboat again.

  ‘He builds things,’ she added. ‘Out of metal.’

  ‘Metal? Why metal?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because it lasts.’

  ‘Suzanne?’

  The voice had come from below.

  ‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘My husband.’

  But the cabin-boy was already slipping through the narrow gap between the ventilators.

  She crossed to the stair-head and peered down. Théo stood at the foot of the steps in a dressing-gown and leather slippers, his black hair still disarranged by sleep.

  ‘In heaven’s name, Suzanne. What are you doing up there?’

  It was at moments like this that she could feel the fifteen years that lay between them. She did not see the difference in age as an obstacle, however; she saw it only as a place where irony could happen, a gap that tenderness could close. She knew that she had disconcerted him – ladies of her station ought not to climb ladders – but she decided to make light of it.

  ‘Have you noticed the water, Théo?’

  He had not.

  ‘Take a look,’ she said.

  But Théo did not move towards the rail. He remained at the foot of the stairs; he seemed suddenly to be plunged in thought. ‘I think I’ll write a letter,’ he said.

  ‘A letter? Who to?’

  ‘Monsieur Eiffel.’ He looked up at her again and she saw that he was smiling. ‘I shall inform him that my wife has turned into a monkey.’

  Laughing, she began her precarious descent.

  She slept late on the morning of their arrival. By the time she woke, Théo had already dressed. He was wearing his black frock-coat and a pair of elegant pale-grey trousers, and he carried a malacca cane with a carved silver head. They would be landing in three hours, he reminded her.

  They took breakfast on the bridge, accompanied by the Captain, the Quartermaster and the Chief Engineer. The usual food was served: dry biscuits, fried eggs sliding on a bed of grease, coffee with no milk. Though it was the last meal of a long and perilous voyage, there was no sense of occasion. If they had been putting into Hong Kong or Shanghai, perhaps it would have been different – but Santa Sofía? Perhaps, after all, there was nothing to celebrate. They ate in silence; the ship steamed northwards, its metal plates vibrating gently.

  The Captain hunched over the table, as if his breakfast were a mirror and he were studying his reflection. Suzanne watched him fork a dripping yolk into his mouth, the web of muscle pulsing in the thin flesh of his temple. She had to speak, if only to distract herself from her disgust.

  ‘I wondered if you’d be good enough, Captain,’ she said, ‘to explain what has happened to the sea.’

  The Captain stopped chewing. His eyes lifted, pale, faintly mocking, empty of intelligence. ‘I beg your pardon, Madame.’

  ‘The sea’s red,’ she said. ‘I wondered why.’

  ‘Scared you, did it?’

  Suzanne looked away. There was so much that she did not know, and the Captain seemed to take pleasure in seeing her ignorance confirmed – not only confirmed, in fact, but reinforced. During the past three months she had often asked him if she might be shown the stokehold or the engine-room. He would grunt, invent excuses, prevaricate. The ship was a mystery to her, and he had set himself up as guardian of that mystery. It was entirely typical of his behaviour that, though it was she who had enquired about the sea, it was to Théo that he directed his reply.

  It transpired that the change in colour was caused by a myriad of tiny organisms floating just below the surface. As a natural phenomenon, it was customary for the time of year, though it led, he said, to ‘a great many tall tales’. There was once a tribe of Indians, for instance, who believed that it was a sign from the gods, instructing them to make a human sacrifice.

  ‘They thought the sea had turned to blood.’ The Captain grinned. ‘Savages,’ he said, and, picking up his fork, he pierced the skin on his second egg.

  Théo pursued the subject with the Captain, for he too was eager to acquire some knowledge of the region, but Suzanne found, in any case, that she could no longer listen. The inside of her head was slowly turning, as if she had been fastened to a wheel. Heat rose off her in a blast. She had to concentrate on the table, the stains and burns, the ridges in the grain of the wood.

  She had been married to Théo for more than five years and they still did not have any children. She had miscarried twice. Théo did not know. The first time it happened, she had not even realised that she was pregnant. She had been walking down the stairs when she felt something break inside her, run down her legs. She stood in the hallway and lifted her skirts. The blood had filled her shoes.

  She wrapped all her clothes in old copies of the newspaper and left the house. It was evening. The sky had filled with stunned light; the streets lay dark and still beneath. She set off towards Les Halles and did not stop until she found a brazier that contained a few glowing embers. It was a place where five roads met, but she saw no one. She dropped her bundle into the flames. Watched the paper catch, the clothes begin to blacken. Every now and then she stirred the fire with a stick from the gutter. She stayed until she was certain that nothing remained. It took a long time. Her shoes were glazed kid; they would not seem to burn. At last she returned to the house and took to her bed, saying that she was ill.

  Some days later, when Théo asked her about the dress – it was one that he had bought for her, from her favourite shop on Rue de la Paix – she told him that she had lost it. ‘Lost it?’ he said. ‘How could you lose a dress?’ But she had run out of words. All she could do was shrug and turn away.

  ‘Are you not feeling well, my dear?’

  This question coincided with her thoughts so neatly that, for one moment, she could not be certain where she was. Then, looking up, she remembered and had to invent an excuse.

  ‘It’s just the heat, Théo.’

  ‘This is nothing,’ the Captain said. ‘Wait till July.’

  ‘Do you need some air?’ Théo asked her.

  She summoned a smile for him. ‘I feel fine. How long until we arrive?’

  Théo studied her for a moment longer then he reached up with his napkin and dabbed his mouth. ‘An hour.’ He turned to the Captain for corroboration.

  ‘Aye,’ the Captain murmured. ‘Close enough.’

  ‘Then we ought to be able to see the town by now,’ she said and, leaving her chair, she launched herself towards the window that overlooked the bow.