Dolphin Song Read online

  To keep her mind off what was to come, she told Tendai about some of her adventures on the island. When she thanked him for his advice about keeping the survival kit with her at all times, and told him that the pouch helped to save seven lives, he looked proud enough to burst.

  An hour and a half later they passed under Sawubona’s black arch, and Tendai guided the jeep down the long sandy road to the main house. A white van was parked in the driveway. Martine climbed nervously out of the jeep. She could hear her grandmother’s voice in the hallway. “Quickly,” she was saying to someone. “We haven’t got much time.”

  The door was shoved open and two men in overalls appeared. They were carrying Martine’s bed. They nodded to Tendai and Martine, loaded the wooden frame and mattress onto the back of the van and drove away.

  Martine’s knees nearly gave way. Was she going to be sent back to England after all?

  Gwyn Thomas came out onto the front step. She was pale and seemed to have lost weight. “Martine!” she cried, rushing over to embrace her. “Welcome home. I didn’t hear you arrive. Look at you! I was expecting a scruffy castaway, but you look so brown and healthy. Grace will definitely want to feed you up, though! Come inside. I know you must be exhausted, but I have a surprise for you.”

  Martine had not known what sort of reception to expect, but the warmth of her grandmother’s hug took her aback. Maybe there was some innocent explanation. Then again, why would Gwyn Thomas be sending her bed away? Where was she expected to sleep? Where was she expected to stay?

  Martine wriggled out of her grandmother’s arms and regarded her with extreme suspicion. “I already know what the surprise is,” she said. “Or at least I can guess.”

  Her grandmother looked sharply at Tendai. “Did you say something?” she accused.

  “I said nothing, Mrs. Thomas,” the game warden protested. “Nothing at all.”

  When the roar of Tendai’s jeep faded, Gwyn Thomas turned and went inside. Martine followed her with dread in her heart. The thought of leaving this lovely serene house, with its welcoming fireplace and wooden beams and oil paintings of cheetahs and elephants, was agony. Warrior and Shelby, the cats, were snuggled in a worn leather armchair. Her grandmother was halfway up the stairs to Martine’s room, her shoes clumping on the wooden stairs.

  Martine climbed slowly after her. She walked into her room and stopped short. It had been transformed! The walls had been freshly whitewashed, and there was a new bed by the window, spread with a blue duvet decorated with African batik images of a white giraffe. Above the bookcase were three large silver-framed photographs: one of Martine and her parents laughing on a beach in Cornwall, one of Jemmy by the water hole, and one of a pod of dolphins playing in the waves.

  “I was going to redecorate your room as your Christmas present,” her grandmother said, “but when you went missing I nearly went out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep I was in such a state. Grace persuaded me to do this to pass the time. One of Grace’s nieces is a fine-arts student at the University of Cape Town and she handmade the batik giraffe for the duvet cover.”

  Martine’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you. It’s wonderful. I’m so sorry. I thought that you were sending me away.”

  “I know what you thought,” her grandmother said. “And I don’t blame you. I can be a stubborn old woman at times. I cursed myself for letting you go away without resolving our quarrel, and of course once you were on the ship I couldn’t contact you. My husband had a very wise saying, ‘Never go to sleep on an argument.’ Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that. I was just so afraid that you’d steal out at night once too often and that something would happen to you and I’d lose you like I lost your mum. But I’m sorry for hurting you. Please forgive me.”

  She opened her arms and Martine flew into them and they held each other like they’d never let go.

  “I’m sorry too,” Martine told her. “I’m sorry for disobeying you and I’m really, really sorry for saying what I said. I didn’t mean it.”

  They stepped apart. “Have I told you how much I love you?” Gwyn Thomas said.

  “No,” Martine responded shyly.

  “Well, I do. You mean more to me than anything else in the world.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “It’s okay,” said her grandmother, suddenly embarrassed. “I know without you having to say it.”

  “But I want to,” Martine told her. “I learned on the island that it’s important to say things when you have the chance. I love you too, and I’m very, very happy to be home with you.”

  Her grandmother’s reserve got the better of her then, and she ruffled Martine’s hair and muttered something about getting dinner started. Martine pretended that she was organizing herself to take a shower. She was desperate to see the white giraffe, but she didn’t want to burst the bubble.

  Her grandmother lingered at the door. “Hadn’t you better get your boots and jeans on if you’re going to go for a ride?” she asked, smiling.

  “But you told me I was banned from riding him.”

  “You’d better hurry up in case I change my mind. I meant what I said—absolutely no sneaking out at night. But I can’t stop you riding the white giraffe. The two of you are inseparable. Jemmy is your soul mate. You need each other.”

  32

  For Martine, who had on numerous occasions over the past two weeks thought she’d never see the white giraffe again, the moment when she caught sight of him waiting for her at the water hole was something that she’d always treasure.

  It was hard to tell who was more excited. Jemmy cantered over to her as exuberantly as a pony, lowered his silver head, nuzzled her, and made his musical fluttering sound, while Martine spent ages just stroking his silky coat, telling him off for not eating properly, and trying to explain about the storm and the dolphins and how she’d thought about him every minute on the island. Then she climbed onto his sloping, silky back and became a part of him again.

  As soon as she was out of sight of the house, she urged him into a flat-out gallop across the golden savannah. Ordinarily, she was careful not to go too fast in daylight in case her grandmother caught sight of her and decided giraffe-riding was a recipe for broken bones, but this afternoon she was on a mission. Not even a snarling lioness, woken from her slumber in the winter sunshine, could detain her.

  When she reached the trees near the barren clearing, she halted Jemmy, and spent several minutes scanning the area for prying eyes. Visiting the Secret Valley was another thing she’d resolved never to do in the daytime, but that too couldn’t be helped. Once through the thorny wall that guarded the crevice, she slid down the white giraffe’s neck as if she were shooting down a waterslide, turned on her flashlight, and positively ran down the tunnel, only slowing to tiptoe through the bats’ home in the antechamber.

  Grace was in the Memory Room, as Martine had known she would be. She was sitting on the flat rock that served as a sort of bench, wearing Zulu traditional dress and drinking from a flask of rooibos tea. When Martine ran in, she gave a shout of joy and enveloped her in a big hug. “You’re arl bones,” Grace said when they finally parted. “What ya been eatin’ on that island? Bet ya wished ya had summa Grace’s good food.”

  Martine giggled. “Oh, Grace,” she said, still a little breathless after having the air almost crushed from her lungs, “I missed more than just your food. When I ended up alone on the island because of some stupid things I said and did, and I felt like everyone in the world was disappointed in me, I wished that you were there to give me a hug and tell me something wise to make everything all right.”

  Grace’s eyes were suspiciously shiny. She patted the rock beside her and poured Martine a cup of rooibos. They sat there sipping the hot red tea in the light of two flashlights, surrounded by glowing copper scenes of centuries-old Bushmen life.

  After a while Martine said, “You knew I would be back, didn’t
you?”

  Grace beamed, revealing bright pink gums. “Sure did, chile. I done tole your grandmamma everythin’ would be all right, but she don’t ever believe me when I say the bones don’t lie. I tole her that the dolphins would see no harm would come to ya.”

  “But how did you know?” Martine probed. “How could you know about the dolphins? I mean, if I’d understood what you meant about the boat fence, we would never have ended up in the sea.”

  But the sangoma just cackled and changed the subject. “That boy Claudius, he came to see me yesterday.”

  Martine stared at her in disbelief. “Claudius?! Why? What did he want?”

  She couldn’t for the life of her imagine how Claudius, of all people, had managed to track Grace down. But it seems he had. Not only that, but he’d impressed her by giving her a magnificent bouquet of flowers to thank her for providing Martine with the plant that saved his life.

  “I tole him, that ugly thing! Who knew it would come to any good? It’s been followin’ me around like a bad smell for years. Every time I dig it out of my garden, it grow back again. Many times I wanted to t’row it in the trash but I’s afeared that Granny was goin’ to come back and haunt me. Then I thought, I’ll jest give it to Martine to take on har journey. Maybe she can lose it in the sea.”

  “Are you serious?” Martine wasn’t quite sure if this was Grace’s idea of a joke. “You really didn’t know that one of the kids on the trip would get stung and need its sap to survive?”

  “Chile,” Grace said warmly, “this is your destiny. You have your gift. I weren’t the one on the island.”

  Martine smothered a sigh. She knew her questions would never really be answered. And as frustrating as that was, she would have to let it go.

  “What did you think of Claudius?” she asked, unable to suppress a grin at the thought of Claudius, doubtless scrubbed up and in his best clothes, sitting among the chickens that pecked around Grace’s living room.

  “He’s a good boy,” Grace told her. “He done chosen the wrong path before but he learn from that, and now maybe if he remember that money cain’t always buy what matters in this life, he’ll grow into a fine young man.”

  Martine stood up and went over to examine the two ocean paintings. It felt peculiar to look at them after their predictions had come true. And they were remarkably accurate. Even the sharks were not just painted as random sharks but had the yellow and white markings that identified them as whale sharks.

  “You know, Grace,” she said, “the San people, or the forefathers, or whoever it was who created these pictures, they saw nearly everything that was to come. They even knew the number of beached dolphins, twenty-one, and the species of shark and that there were at least a hundred dolphins in rings surrounding us. They just got one thing wrong. There were two of us on Death Island—my friend Ben and me. There should be two swimmers in this picture and there’s only one.”

  “Are ya sure, chile?” Grace said. “Look closely.”

  Martine did and she still saw only one swimmer. Then she noticed that there was a flake of shimmering rock, almost like mica, clinging to the center of the painting. She peeled it away. Beneath it was the second swimmer.

  Martine’s blood ran cold. As much as she loved the cave, the knowledge that someone, centuries ago, could have predicted her future in such detail, gave her chills. Before Martine got to know Ben, when she was still isolated at school, Grace had told her that she would find the friend she sought in the last place she looked. And so it had proven. So maybe Ben himself was part of everything. Maybe everything was linked, even their friendship.

  “That’s spooky,” Martine said. “Do you think that the second swimmer was there all the time or do you think . . . I know it sounds weird, but do you think it could have just appeared recently, by some kind of Bushmen magic?”

  Grace gave her a strange smile. “I tole you before, chile, everythin’ is already written, but only time and experience will give you the eyes to see it.”

  33

  To celebrate their safe return, Gwyn Thomas suggested to Ben’s mum and dad that the five of them have lunch the following Sunday at the beach kitchen in Uiserfontein, the place where Martine had healed the dolphin. It was usually shut all winter, but there had been a run of unseasonably mild weather and Gwyn Thomas had seen an advertisement announcing it would be open for the next two weekends.

  Martine had been introduced to Ben’s parents at the airport, and she’d found his Zulu father almost as quiet as his son was, although he exuded an unmistakable authority. In appearance, though, they were nothing alike. Where Ben was small and wiry, Dumisani was well over six feet, with a dignified bearing, his muscles so broad and defined they might have been sculpted. Ben’s Indian mother, Sinita, by contrast, was tiny, talkative, and delicately beautiful, with long, glossy black hair that smelled of coconut. It was she who Ben resembled most closely. But his inner strength, thought Martine, his inner strength came from Dumisani.

  The Khumalos picked Martine and Gwyn Thomas up from Sawubona in an old station wagon, stopping briefly to meet Tendai, Jemmy, and Grace. Jemmy still refused to allow anyone but Martine to touch him, but he hovered near enough for them to appreciate his lustrous white coat and great height.

  “He looks like a creature of legend,” Dumisani remarked. “A wonder horse.”

  For once Grace said little, although she was very interested to meet Ben. When she came to the car to say good-bye, she cuddled him as if she’d always known him, and Martine was pleased to see that he didn’t act embarrassed, like most boys his age would have done. Instead he looked Grace in the eye and there was a respectful familiarity in the way he spoke, as if he too felt a kinship with her.

  Two hours later, they pulled into the parking lot at Uiserfontein. It was a fine, fresh afternoon. Heathery plants in rich purples and maroons, their colors startling against the creamy sand, crowded up to the dunes, and sea birds wheeled above the waves. They walked along a path of crushed shells to the restaurant and Martine found, to her delight, that it really was a beach kitchen. Rustic tables were set on a wooden deck on the sand’s edge, just beyond the reach of the waves, and even the ovens were open to the elements. The aroma of baking bread greeted them. The sunshine took the edge off the winter chill, and the sky was so blue it seemed infinite.

  Soon they were tucking into one of the best meals Martine had ever eaten. There was a delicious seafood bisque to start, accompanied by hot, doughy bread baked in clay ovens. After an interval, big bowls of Greek salad, coleslaw, and watermelon appeared, followed by the main attraction—snoek, a smoked game fish. Martine had so many plates of it she was sure that she’d have to be transported back to the car in a wheelbarrow!

  While they ate, Sinita reminisced about her early life as a dancer in Rajasthan and told them about Pushkar, a festival held once a year, where people came from all over India to trade silks, crafts, and jewelry, and to race camels and magnificent Arab horses from the Punjab. It was a world away from the experiences Martine had had so far, and it made her realize how much more of the planet there was to see. “You will travel to the ends of the earth and have a whole lotta adventures before you’re done,” Grace had once told her. Martine liked the sound of that, but she wasn’t so sure about the “many, many challenges” that Grace had mentioned would also be coming her way. She’d had enough challenges in the past six months to last a lifetime.

  After the main course, Gwyn Thomas suggested that they go for a walk in an effort to make room for dessert— koeksisters, twists of deep-fried batter, drenched in syrup. Martine was too full and too sleepily contented to talk, so she dawdled along the fringes of the surf while the others went ahead. When she reached the spot where she’d healed the dolphin, she stopped and stared out to sea. She was thrilled to be home at Sawubona with Jemmy, but that didn’t mean that she missed the dolphins any less. Everything about them was graceful and smart and a celebration of each precious moment of life. Dolphins made it easy
to feel happy.

  “Funny thing about dolphins,” the kite surfer had said. “Ever notice that you can’t help smiling when you’re around them?” And she had.

  At that exact moment a dolphin jumped in the bay. Martine wondered if it was Sun Dancer. It was incredibly unlikely, but then, so many fantastical things had happened to her recently, nothing would have surprised her. But although she fixed her eyes on the patch of ocean where she thought she’d seen the dolphin, it didn’t reappear, and after a while Martine came to the conclusion that it was probably wishful thinking on her part.

  She was about to walk on when she noticed something drawn on the sand. It was a leopard. Every detail of it was lovingly re-created, right down to its claws and whiskers, and it was full-size, drawn to scale. At least, she thought it was. It seemed an extra-large leopard. Its teeth were bared in a snarl, its muscles coiled, as if it was poised to attack.

  It was so realistic that Martine took a step back. She checked behind her, wondering where the artist was. She hadn’t seen anyone on the shoreline. The tide was coming in and the image was too crisp and sharp to have been there more than a few minutes. But, apart from Ben, his parents, and Gwyn Thomas, and a couple of fishermen unloading their catch in the distance, the beach was empty.

  “Grandmother! Ben! Come and have a look at this,” she called.

  Ben sprinted over, and his parents and Gwyn Thomas followed more slowly. “What is it?” he asked when he reached her. “What have you seen?”

  Martine went to show him and halted in disbelief. In the few seconds that her back had been turned, a wave had rushed in and washed the pale sand smooth. Flecks of glistening foam marked its path. Not a trace of the leopard remained.

  A shiver went through Martine and, at the back of her mind, a warning bell tolled.

  “What is it?” Ben asked again.

  “It’s nothing,” Martine said. “I made a mistake. It must have been a trick of the light.”