The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 55

The ferry port at Mokpo. Grim, single-storey buildings surrounded by empty car parks. Distant yellow cranes loading and unloading the freight ships. Tourists heavy with bags going to Dadohaehaesang national park, to its mountains and its beaches, its spa resorts bathed in the light of the setting sun.

I call the number that Byron14 has given me and tell her to come to the ferry port.

Her voice, when she answers, is refined, English, soft, and reminds me of Gauguin. I am brisk — too brisk — and something northern comes out in my voice. I sound frightened, didn’t realise that was what I am.

Byron14 is easy to spot, as she waits in the terminal. She and I both stand out, but I wait on the other side of the car park with a pair of binoculars, watch the windows, call her mobile phone and say, “Now let’s have the real Byron14, please.”

The woman who answers is tall, blonde, her hair wrapped up high in a bun, smart suit, two-inch heels. She explains, “I am Byron.”

“No you’re not,” I reply. “Byron was always going to send someone in her place, it was inevitable. I’d like to speak to the real Byron, please.”

“I am Byron…” the woman tries again, then stops, listening to a sound I cannot hear, then smiles at nothing much, shakes her head, hangs up, walks away.

A moment later, my phone rings, and a different voice, inflected with a hint of something older, warmer, real, says, “Would you be the young lady watching the ferry port from the car park?”

I lower the binoculars, nod at nothing much, looking around but not seeing her. “Would you be Byron14?”

“That I would.”

“I’m boarding the 14.03; would you care to join me?”

“I don’t care much for these antics, whatwherewhy. We had an understanding, and this sniffs of abuse.”

“The 14.03,” I repeat. “I’ll text it to you, just in case you forget.”

I hang up. Rudeness doesn’t bother me.

The boat is a catamaran. The skies are grey, the seas are rough enough that sometimes a wave breaks against the bottom of the hull, knocking us up. Every time it happens, the women scream and the men, perhaps in an effort to appear unrattled, convert their screams to great “whaaay” noises, and laugh nervously at each other as the ship settles again. The youngest women make a show of dabbing ineffectually at their sweaty brows. Femininity is fashionable; femininity is frail and prone to giggles. I watch it all, and conclude that femininity can jump into the ocean and drown.

A man approaches me three times — having forgotten that he has approached me before — and asks me my name, where I’m from, where I’m going. The first time I tell him I’m French, I’m a marine biologist, come to study the fauna in Dadohaehaesang, and he says, “Ah” and “Ooh,” and sits down next to me and is very boring. I go to the back of the boat, let him forget that I existed, and return to my seat when he is gone. The second time he approaches I tell him I’m meeting my husband on the island, but that doesn’t seem to deter him, so on his third pass, I speak French, and inform him I don’t understand a word he’s saying and finally he leaves me alone, and the journey isn’t long enough for him to make a fourth pass.

Byron sits at the very back, spine pressed into her seat, a good place to be, observing all, unobserved. She stands out as much as me, but she is old, and my skin is dark, and she has mastered the art of being worthy of little attention.

I stare at her unashamedly as I walk again to the back of the ferry, and she meets my eye, and recognises me for what I am, but before the moment can linger, I walk on, and she forgets, and I repeat this pattern five or six times, and each time she looks at me for the very first time, and each time I stare rudely, and walk away, until I am confident that her face is embedded in my mind.

She is old; far older than I expected, but strength rolls from her. Her face is all small, straight lines. Little ears flat back against a square skull; a little chin that barely disrupts the box of her jaw. Thin grey lips, pressed to a straight line. Little blue eyes beneath flat, grey brows. Straight silver hair cut to a pudding-bowl across her forehead. Little straight nose to the curve of her top lip. Philtrum, the indent between lips and the base of the nose — in Jewish mythology the angel of conception, Lailah, touched her finger to that curve, and at her touch, the infant forgets all it knows. The curve of the lips, cupid’s bow, vermillion border, labium superius oris, labium inferior oris, does Byron14 smile?

I look at her, and think that sometimes she does, and when she does it must be a beautiful thing to behold. Then I picture her frowning, and that too is easy, and the image is terrifying. Walls fall beneath her glower, minds turn to mush at her gaze; in modern re-imaginings of ancient myths, were there not shinobi who could kill men with their famously un-lyrical piercing-eye technique? Did I read that somewhere, or was it on the TV?

She looks, sees me, recognises me, forgets; even Byron14, even she.

Islands passing by. Hongdo, Heuksando, Baekdo. The fourth island the catamaran stopped at was named for the volcanic mountain at its heart, black rock blurred by the weight of birds nestling in its crags, and was called Yan-ri. Here, at auspicious times, young couples came to be married, the mountain above and the sea below, flowers in bridal hair, proud fathers posing next to silk-clad sons, champagne glasses and ceremonial drums. This time was not auspicious; only four of us got off the ferry, and Byron, seeing me and starting with surprise — surprise to see me, surprise that she had not seen me before — was one. Of the other two, one was a waitress, who rushed away immediately towards a timber and steel hotel upon the hill, her night-bag over her back. The other was a fisherman, his wife waiting to meet him at the end of the slippery, green-washed pier, her arms folded and a woollen hat pulled down across her ears, who exclaimed as he arrived that he wouldn’t believe what had happened, and then lost interest in her words as she held him tight.

There were three cars on the island, a man chewing gum informed me in hesitant English. He knew this, for he was the owner of one of them, and the only taxi on the island to boot, and he knew all the places that people could go, and some of the places that people didn’t, and he knew both hotels and which was the nicer, and the way to the restaurant by the shore.

I thanked him for his kindness but declined the lift, and looking back, saw Byron, waxy green coat, thick brown trousers, slip her arm into the strap of a grey, stained rucksack and meet my gaze. I nodded back at her, and started the twisting climb up the hill.

Byron followed.

Two hotels: one was little more than a room behind a woman’s kitchen, a bedspread rolled across the floor, no curtains but a promise of soup in the morning. I was tempted, but the presence of Byron would have made such accommodation complicated.

Higher up the hill. Cloud on the top of the mountain, hugging the spines of the evergreens. A predatory bird circling overhead, eyeing up smaller birds nestling in the slate roofs below. The rumble of an engine, a great ship out to sea, sound carried on the wind. A woman in a bright skirt that hugged her knees almost too tight to let her walk nodded at me as I walked by. An old man in a grey waterproof jacket, seeing Byron, exclaimed in a mixture of Korean and Japanese that it was outrageous, shocking, marvellous, incredible that a woman of her age should be travelling alone, and called down to me to help this revered older lady, but Byron shook her head and replied — in gently accented Japanese — that she was well, thank you, and would continue climbing.

I saw no shops as I climbed, no sign of industry, apart from a blue tarpaulin on which fish had been laid out to dry.

The hotel at the top of the hill was mostly dark, save for a few lamps burning on the porch. A wooden balcony to one side was built out over a steep drop to afford the best views of the sea. A sign in five languages informed the visitor that the hotel accepted credit cards, but not cheques. Wi-Fi was available for an extra charge in the lobby. The front door was locked, but I rang the bell and a woman with a pinched face, eyes wide, lids rolled too far back to reveal the whites of her eyes, pinching at forehead and cheeks, answered within a minute.

Byron stood behind me, silent, waiting, and I wondered if she felt the same tug of sympathy I did for the woman who opened the gate. Plastic surgery gone wrong, features twisted into something strange, a smile on lips that perhaps hurt to smile. Number of cosmetic surgery procedures performed in South Korea in 2009: 365,000. Number of procedures performed in Brazil 2013: 2,141,257. In the USA: 3,996,631. Most common surgical procedures globally: breast augmentation and liposuction. Most common surgical procedure in Korea: double eyelid surgery. An operation to make eyelids look less “Asian”.

Could you be perfect, I wondered, without being white?

£9.99 for 125ml of “royal skin whitening cream”. Apply liberally. Gently lightens and tones.

“We give you best room, Ms Smithi,” the woman behind the counter said, bobbing in excitement at the sight of a customer in this autumnal time. And then yet more, more, how her delight soared when Byron walked through her door.

“This your friend?”

I turned to look at Byron, and she for the very first time came up to me, stood not a metre away and replied in a flat, southern English accent, just like Gauguin, “We’ve only just met, but I think we’re going to be friends.”

“Yes,” I replied, and my breath was fast, my heart so fast, I felt the beat of the blood in the side of my throat. “Good friends.”

They gave her the room next to mine. Our balconies adjoined. I stood, watching the sea break against volcanic rock, listening to the call of seabirds as they tracked a boat heavy with fish across the waters. The wind, first cool, grew cold, and I let it settle through my skin, slowing my heart, my blood, my breath, until at last Byron came out of her room, and stood on the balcony next to mine, divided by a low fence of woven twigs and a couple of potted plants.

At last she said, “I didn’t see you come into the hotel.”

Already, our encounter forgotten.

“Or on the ferry,” she added.

She fears me; an interesting and not unwelcome development. Byron14 prides herself, perhaps, on her powers of observation, and yet here I am, appearing as if by magic, and that is astonishing, and she is afraid.

I cannot stay in this hotel long; if we are the only guests, the owners are going to be perpetually surprised when they see that I have a key.

“Cup of coffee?” I suggest. “Something to eat?”

“I was thinking I might go for a walk around the mountain. Having come this far.”

In no rush: an assertion of her power. She knows I’m not going anywhere.

“That sounds nice. I’ll see you when you get back.”

She does not go for a walk around the mountain. If she could remember telling me her intentions, she probably would have acted on them. I go running along the beach. The shore is shingle, that turns into sand beneath a shield of hanging trees. I find that I am tired after only a few minutes, and return up the hill to the hotel.

I write a time, a place — the hotel restaurant, hastily cleaned for its unexpected guests — and slip it under her bedroom door.

Shower.

Change.

Plan, backup plan, backup for the backup. Stick too rigidly to a plan, and you may drown in it, but fail to plan ahead, and you will drown for certain.

I wondered where Luca Evard was, and if he thought about me at all.