The Thrill of Falling: Stories

Orbis Terrarium

NORTH SHORE HOSPITAL, AUCKLAND, APRIL 1982 —

Why did old Mrs Travers wake so early nowadays? She would like to have slept for another three hours at least. But no, every morning at almost precisely the same time, at half past four, she was wide awake. For — nowadays, again — she woke always in the same way, with a slight start, a small shock, lifting her head from the pillow with a quick glance as if she fancied someone had called her, or as if she were trying to remember for certain whether this was the same wallpaper, the same window she had seen last night before Warner switched off the light.

Mrs Travers frowned. It was still so dark outside. If it weren’t for the night light beside her bed, and the crack of light from the door, ajar to the fluorescent glare of corridor outside, she could almost believe that she was alone in the living, breathing dark, indeed, the only person alive in the entire world. Did the thought scare her? No; at ninety-two, it was such a presumption to be afraid of anything. One was too tired to be scared, if the truth be known, and had no energy to waste on such a silly, vain and superfluous emotion. At this age one just wanted to go.

However, there was going to be a slight delay. ‘He won’t be long,’ Staff Nurse Warner had shouted in her ear. ‘Your son Elliot is on his way from England to New Zealand now.’

Elliot was the youngest of Mrs Travers’ four children and the only boy. The others were Molly, Kate and Joan, who, over all the years, had dutifully taken turns to go to Mummy’s pensioner flat every week and pester her about how was she feeling and was there anything she needed from the supermarket.

Why did everybody shout all the time? Mrs Travers could hear perfectly well. When she was a very young girl of thirteen, her beloved father Cyprian had told Mama, ‘The thing about our Essie is that her hearing is so acute. You must have been a bat in an earlier life, eh Essie my girl?’

And, of course, she was never alone. Her sight might be going but she could hear every footfall of the nurses as they walked past her room, every piece of gossip they shared as they came on night shift, every sigh of irritation when Mr Winchester in the next room called out, ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ (he called out all the time, the insufferable man), and every silly giggle when they went off in the mornings and back to their boyfriends or whoever they lived with.

All except Warner, of course. She never had a boyfriend. Or any sort of friend, man or woman. Warner was dedicated to her job.

It was her middle daughter, Kate, who had found Mrs Travers, two weeks ago, where she had collapsed in her kitchen while making herself a cup of tea. She’d had a stroke. Kate called an ambulance and Mrs Travers was whisked off to the hospital. At first the medical team had thought, once they’d brought her around, that she was making good recovery. But then she took a turn for the worse. Her kidneys stopped functioning.

‘Your mother has acute renal failure,’ Dr Paterson told Mrs Travers’ daughters. ‘If she was younger we might have considered the possibility of a kidney transplant, but, given her advanced age and the long waiting list for donors, well, we …’ His voice tailed off.

‘You mean there’s no hope Mummy will get better?’ Joan asked him, her eyes moistening.

The doctor was evasive. ‘What we’re talking about is end-stage renal disease. But we would keep her on dialysis until you’re comfortable and ready and have had the opportunity to say goodbye.’

Molly exchanged glances with her sisters. ‘And there’s no chance of any recovery?’

‘It’s just a matter of your choosing a time to farewell her,’ Dr Paterson continued. ‘Do you have other family who would like to see her and say goodbye?’

‘Our brother, Elliot,’ Kate told him. ‘He lives in London. He would certainly want to come to see Mummy before she … before we … before … after all, he was her favourite.’

‘Perhaps you should telephone him and tell him to come as soon as he can.’

When the doctor had gone Mrs Travers’ daughters looked at each other. ‘After all, Mummy’s had a very good life,’ Kate said.

And so they were all waiting for Elliot. Perhaps, for once in his life, he would be prompt. And then, thank goodness, finally, they would let her die.

Children? Ha! Molly was sixty, Kate was fifty-eight, Joan fifty-six, and Elliot was the ‘baby’ at forty-eight. And where on earth had Kate got the idea that Elliot was the favourite? Why would they all think that? Elliot had been mean and nasty as a boy and he’d become mean and nasty as an adult, a stockbroker whose only interest was making money.

And what was all this sentimentality about keeping her alive so that all the family could gather to say goodbye? The children had all taken after their father, Harry, and his maudlin Irish ways. None of them showed a whit of Mrs Travers’ disciplined no-nonsense personality. Now her father, Cyprian, with his precise scientific approach, wouldn’t have been pleased. He’d have said, ‘Waiting for Elliot? Does an old elephant wait for the herd to shake its trunk before it dies? Or a sperm whale wait for a sentimental rub from the other whales before it makes its final sounding? Does a dying albatross wait for some last salute before its eyes glaze over? No! They die when they die. It’s only humans who prolong life — and it’s all vanity, you hear? Scientists would not think of intervening! Charles Darwin would not have approved.’

Mrs Travers remembered going with her father to a public meeting, and the furore that erupted when he got into a fiery argument with a local bishop about Darwin’s theory of evolution. ‘The Church’s teachings from Genesis,’ Father shouted, ‘that every species has been created whole and has come through the ages unchanged, can no longer be sustained.’ Mrs Travers had just adored watching him in full, passionate, flight. ‘Read Mr Darwin! He will give you your answer: evolution by natural selection. The strongest survive, the weak die. Species respond to their environment by evolving to fill any niche available to them. And let us hope that mankind, too, will evolve from strength to strength.’

‘They die when they die.’ Suddenly, Mrs Travers heard a sound, coming from beyond the window frame, far, far beyond. It was a low, deep sigh, haunting, otherworldly, sibilant, somewhere between a deep hiss and moan. Not a sound to be scared of; rather, one you waited for with breathless anticipation.

Someone was calling her.

When Molly, Kate and Joan arrived later that day, Warner was only too ready to tell them about the ‘incident’.

‘Your mother was a little unsettled during the morning. She pulled out her catheter. It was probably an accident.’

‘But she was so good when we left her last night,’ Kate answered. Good was when Mrs Travers was drugged and unconscious; bad was when the drugs wore off and Mummy indulged herself in inchoate sighs and screams and incoherent ramblings.

‘You mustn’t worry about it,’ Warner lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s what happens. But she’s all right now. We’ve given her something.’

Relieved, they settled down with their knitting, magazines and boiled lollies to keep watch.

Half past four again. Why half past four?

Mrs Travers sighed to herself. The drugs du jour had worn off; ah, clarity for a while! And with it came the urge to be up and about.

Not that there was much chance of that. Even as she shifted slightly she felt a tightening at her abdomen. That’s where the catheter was for the contraption that stood beside the bed, winking at her and giving her the glad eye. She was hooked up to the silly thing — her own personal artificial kidney — continuously pumping into her a special solution to cleanse away all the waste fluids, drain them out and replace with fresh solution. Otherwise the toxins built up in her blood. And the children didn’t want them to do that. Not quite yet.

Yesterday had been a good day, lucidly speaking. She’d drifted in and out of consciousness, always aware of Molly, Kate and Joan sitting around her bed talking, knitting, reading magazines and, sometimes, sleeping themselves. She realised she startled them when she occasionally ‘woke up’; they would hurriedly ring for Warner to settle her down again. Every hour on the hour other medical staff would come into the room, check her pulse and the dialysis machine, and then make a note on the clipboard at the end of the bed: ‘Still Alive’, presumably, or words to that effect.

Dr Paterson popped in regularly to check on her. ‘Have you heard from your brother?’ he asked Molly.

‘There’s been a delay. He couldn’t get out of an urgent board meeting. He won’t be arriving for another two days.’

Money before Mummy. Sounded just like Elliot. Really, he was a disappointment. As for Molly, Kate and Joan, they were dutiful daughters, but why, oh why, had they never possessed a life of the mind? ‘Expanding our knowledge’, Father would have scolded them, ‘and using it to advance humankind is what justifies our retaining our niche as a species.’

Actually, at some time in the afternoon, while Mrs Travers’ daughters were having a light lunch in her room — they’d brought some nougat to have with their tea — she was prompted by the memory of her father to tell them about him and, in particular, the great moment of her adolescent life when she joined him in the Galapagos Islands.

‘Father was the leading herpetologist at the Schwimmer Aquarium,’ she began. ‘Mother, my sister Gloria and I were accustomed to his being away often, and we were thrilled when he was appointed to lead a scientific expedition to study one of the most intriguing of all reptiles: the giant tortoise, Geochelone elephantopus. Our pleasure turned to dismay when we discovered he’d be away for a year. I was thirteen then, Gloria eleven.

‘“But the Artemisia will be coming back here in three months with specimens,” Father said, “and I’ve arranged for you —” he was referring to my mother “— to come out to me for a month after that. You’d have to make arrangements for Essie and Gloria to stay with relatives, but please, Merle, do say you’ll come.”

‘The trouble was that, as the time drew near, Mother became reluctant. She talked to Father by ship-to-shore telephone in the Galapagos. “I really can’t make it, dear,” she shouted. “Gloria is sickly again and you know Essie, she doesn’t make it any better. She keeps harassing her sister. I really do believe the best option would be for Essie to come to you and I should stay home and look after Gloria.”

‘I couldn’t believe my luck. I skipped around the house, delighted that I was going. To make absolutely sure that Gloria stayed sickly — she had a bad heart — I kept on harassing her, especially at night when she’d weep because she wanted to go to sleep. I only stopped pinching and poking Gloria the night before I went on board the ship and knew, with absolute certainty, that nobody could stop me. Wasn’t I a naughty girl?’

At that moment, the effort of telling the story became too much for Mrs Travers. Instead she lay back among the pillows and let herself drift back to when the visit had begun.

The Artemisia approached the Galapagos Archipelago over a pearly sea. Morning mist led to sweeping showers of light rain. It was windy and cold, the clouds hanging low over black porous volcanic rock and jagged cliff formations. Along the shoreline fragmented boulders, lava flows, spatter cones, pit craters, columns of gas-driven steam, blowholes, fissures and uplifted blocks cracked against each other. Every height was crowned with the crater of a shield volcano.

‘And the birds were everywhere,’ Mrs Travers remembered. ‘I’d never seen so many before, crowding the blue vault of the sky — frigate birds, swallow-tailed gulls, albatrosses, brown pelicans, red-billed tropic birds — tribes upon limitless tribes of them. And all so beautiful, so free, that I wanted to fly with them.’

She lifted her hands, trying to follow the flights of the seabirds. Alarmed, Joan asked Molly, ‘Look at Mummy. What is she doing? What is she seeing? Do you think she’ll last long enough for Elliot to say goodbye to her?’

Waiting for her at an impressive campsite right at the collapsed caldera of an island volcano was Father.

‘Essie! Essie, my girl!’ he waved.

It was the Eden you found at world’s end.

‘Poor Cyprian,’ Mrs Travers murmured. ‘You would have preferred Mother, wouldn’t you?’

All the same, Father pretended to be happy to see her and she soon got to know his team of three assistants and four Ecuadorian seamen. The seamen gave her a name: they called her Mi Hija, ‘the child’.

It was the mating season for the seabirds, and Father straight away took her to an albatross colony at the top of a sheer sea cliff; albatrosses were balancing on the wind, coming in or leaving to feed on the fish shoals that boiled below. ‘They mate for life,’ Father told her, ‘and see how their courtship is elaborately choreographed.’ Indeed, the albatross birds courted for ages, repetitively going over the same patterned ritual. Their long bills circled each other, they made loud, castanet-like clicking sounds and high-pitched vocalisations, their necks arched, and they performed very funny sideways rocking movements — and then they would start again. She could have watched the courting birds for ever.

Father also took her to spy on a colony of blue-footed boobies. It was a different kind of wooing to the albatrosses: the male showed off his nest-building skills to attract a mate. The silly thing was that they didn’t use the sticks and twigs to build a nest; instead, they incubated their eggs on the bare ground. Both parents took turns brooding and sitting on the eggs out in the heat of the sun. Two chicks were hatched, two days apart.

‘Father showed me Mr Darwin’s natural selection in operation,’ Mrs Travers recalled. ‘The mother hatched two chicks: the second was the “just in case” egg. Once the older chick was hatched, its function was to get stronger, establish domination, and then cruelly peck the younger chick, prevent it from obtaining any food and push it further and further from the nest. The booby parents did not intervene.’

‘And neither do we,’ Father said.

But was this what Mrs Travers had done to her sister, Gloria — pushed her out of the nest — and if Mother had not saved her, would Father?

The thought bothered Mrs Travers, so she plunged quickly back into her shifting, swirling memories.

Her first swim was unforgettable. The sea was so chill, fed by the cold Peru current sweeping north from the Antarctic. It was green and so clear you could see to the end of forever.

At first she was too scared (aha, at least she wasn’t afraid to admit it) to go into deep water. She preferred to stay close by the rocks where she came across a herd of sea turtles, munching away on sunlit seaweed.

‘Don’t be timid like Gloria,’ Father teased.

That made her venture deeper. And there, the true magic opened up to her. She was as astonished at the fish life as she had been at the bird life. The sea was just a liquid sky, and tribes and tribes of fish were in dominion — angelfish, Creole fish, grunts, Moorish idols, blue parrotfish, concentric puffer fish, yellow-tailed surgeonfish, yellow-bellied trigger fish and wahoo scintillated in huge, teeming shoals.

With a gasp she saw a whole group of seals swimming swiftly towards her. She blew bubbles of fear but all they wanted to do was gambol and play, sliding their skins along her body and flirting with her.

Then, suddenly, all around her, the sea was speared by diving seabirds, particularly the blue-footed piqueros. Diving like bullets steeply into the water, their long tails like rudders, they hit the surface with tremendous force. One of them on the way back to the surface with a fish in its beak looked at her, cocking a curious eye: What are you doing here?

Far below her, schools of manta rays and sharks slipped through the dark sea like disturbing dreams.

And so Mrs Travers floated in and out of consciousness in her sea of memories. Before she realised it, night was upon her, and her daughters went home.

She lifted her head and looked out the window. Why, she felt quite light-headed.

What on earth had happened to the view? It wasn’t the usual one at all: the sprinkle of city lights, and the familiar volcanic cone of Rangitoto. Rather, she saw a darker, altogether wilder landscape, greying with the morning. A road ran right through the middle of it. Something was moving on the horizon, coming towards her. How very strange! And was that the sound of the sea?

‘We found your mother trying to get out of her bed this morning, the naughty girl,’ Warner told her daughters. ‘Debbie was on duty and, when the alarm sounded, she instantly went to investigate. Mrs Travers was already halfway out of bed. Of course Debbie scolded her, but your mother said, “I want to go now. I want to get dressed and go.” It was quite a struggle to get her back into bed and to quieten her down.’

Molly, Kate and Joan looked at each other. ‘We noticed Mother doing some rather odd things yesterday. She was looking into the air as if there were people around her. She was talking to them — or, at least, her lips were moving.’

‘And do you remember?’ Kate asked Molly. ‘She started to grope at the air and point and follow things that were flying around the room.’

‘She’s hallucinating,’ the nurse explained. ‘It’s what happens. I’ll tell Dr Paterson. He may increase her medication.’

‘No, please don’t do that, no,’ Mrs Travers tried to say. ‘I’ll be a good girl now.’

Warner peered into her eyes. ‘We wouldn’t want you to do any damage to yourself now, lovey, would we? Not before your son gets here, eh?’

Half past four in the morning, on the dot, and Mrs Travers was awake again.

For a moment she panicked. Warner had indeed advised Dr Paterson of her behaviour, and what her silly daughters had said. As he increased her sedation she had tried to struggle and to plead with him, ‘No, I don’t want extra painkillers’, but he didn’t hear her.

Had the medication eradicated the memories that had opened up to her about … about …?

Mrs Travers moaned into the pillow. It was the same wallpaper and same window, and Auckland was outside as she knew it was supposed to be. But she didn’t want it to be Auckland. She wanted it to be that other place. Where was it? What was its name again?

She sobbed with frustration. She thrashed around in her bed, and suddenly she ripped out the tube feeding the sedating fluids into her left arm. Another lunge, and the tower holding her drip twirled away from her in a crazy dance, taking the tube with it. Oh, she didn’t even care when Debbie came running in, not at all, because in the interim she remembered —

‘You are there, aren’t you?’ she called through the window.

Thrillingly, she heard the sound again, the low, deep sigh, haunting, otherworldly, sibilant, low, somewhere between a deep hiss and moan.

And it was closer. Whoever was calling her was almost outside the window.

Father couldn’t supervise her all the time. ‘Time for you to leave the nest,’ he jested. Even so, he assigned one of the young Ecuadorian crew to look after her. His name was Felipe and he showed her sea lions lying on the gritty sand and among the rocks. The animals were so close at hand and surprisingly unconcerned by humans.

‘They won’t hurt you,’ Felipe told her. ‘You can go right up to them with a club and, bang, you have them before they even know.’

Not far from the sea lions were the lizards of the Galapagos: the marine iguanas. Mrs Travers found them hilarious. They kept on sneezing, excreting salt through special nasal glands. Their heads were encrusted with white salt crowns. They huddled in huge colonies on the rocks to keep each other warm. They were nothing to be frightened of, but they might have been were they larger. How amusing to realise that they only ate seaweed!

Then, near the end of Mrs Travers’ month-long visit, the campsite was shifted to another island. Cyprian told her they would be there for the next four days and, after that, the Artemisia would be fully laden, and she would return with it to Mother and Gloria.

Two days later Father had to lead an expedition inland, and he left her at the campsite. ‘You have some sandwiches, there’s lots to see, I’ll be back in the late afternoon, okay, Essie my girl?’

‘Can’t I come with you?’

‘No, it’s better that you don’t. I’ll be working, and you’d be in the way.’ He had an evasive tone in his voice; he was hiding something from her. ‘Don’t forget to take your sunhat. Felipe is taking you somewhere … he has a surprise for you.’

A surprise?

Felipe took her on a half-day walk. They arrived below the rim of a tall volcano. She saw a wide flat canyon studded with candelabra cactuses.

‘Look,’ Felipe said.

Far in the distance she saw clouds of dust being unsettled. Then, from out of the clouds, came giant tortoises, five feet tall, lumbering slowly towards her.

‘Did you know that some are over two hundred years old?’ Felipe asked. ‘There were once fourteen different tribes of them over all the islands; oh, millions.’ Felipe was prone to exaggeration. ‘Now, not so many.’

‘Where are they going?’

‘They’re on their way to bathe in dew ponds that form as a result of the mist,’ Felipe said. ‘We should sit down cross-legged in their path and see what they do!’

Mrs Travers wasn’t too sure of doing that but she wasn’t about to be bested by a boy, and a native boy at that. ‘All right.’

‘You are lucky,’ said Felipe suddenly. ‘I know this herd. They are the oldest on the island. And look, El Rey is among them.’

‘El Rey?’

‘The King,’ Felipe said in a hushed voice.

Mrs Travers strained to see. Perspiration from the hot sun had dripped into her eyes, making them sting. She took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat away. Ah, that was better. As they approached, the giant tortoises grew larger and larger. Their faces had a timeless quality, age-worn, and their shells were smooth saddleback carapaces.

But which one was El Rey? They all looked the same to her.

Then they stopped. Just like that. Two hundred yards away. Then, swirling the dust like a cyclone, they began to move apart to form a pathway. And as soon as Mrs Travers saw him moving through their midst, she knew why he was called The King.

He was at least seven feet tall. He must have been six feet across the curvature of his shell. His face was incredibly wizened, his eyes huge and black. When he reached the front of the herd he opened the gash of his mouth and gave a loud, guttural roar.

He came nearer and nearer, a being that blotted out the rest of the world.

‘He’ll trample me!’ Mrs Travers cried to Felipe.

Then an extraordinary thing occurred. El Rey saw her, gave a deep sigh and then, thud, down came his shell, slamming tight around him and sealing him to the ground. The other giant tortoises in the front rank did the same.

Mrs Travers couldn’t help thinking with glee, ‘And I’m only a girl.’ Eyes wide with amazement, she stood up, wiped her dress and looked at Felipe.

He nodded. ‘That’s what they do! Isn’t it funny?’ He began to run within the herd, yelling and flapping his hands, and one by one others sighed, and down they went. They looked like huge cowpats.

‘But if you approach them from behind,’ Felipe said, ‘we can have a lot of fun. I show you.’

He sneaked up to a giant tortoise and jumped onto its back. And it didn’t even know! ‘They may seem mild-mannered now,’ Felipe said, ‘but you want to see them during the mating season. They roar and bellow and when the males fight …’ He motioned to her to pick one of the giant tortoises and ride it.

With great deliberation, she walked back through the herd.

‘No, not El Rey,’ Felipe shouted.

It was too late. Eyes bright and shining, Mrs Travers hopped on The King’s back. She laughed in triumph as he rose and walked on, blissfully unaware that he had a passenger. Or was he? The sun had made his carapace hot and the skin under her thighs was burning. His saddle wasn’t comfortable at all. Nevertheless, Mrs Travers stayed on him for as long as she could, riding El Rey through the sunlight.

Felipe had become bored. ‘Let’s go back to the shore,’ he said as he dismounted. ‘There is still much I can show you.’

She sidled off El Rey’s saddle and was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. For some reason, she did a little curtsey. Then she peered into El Rey’s left eye and said, ‘Thank you.’

And El Rey answered her, You are not the first and I expect you will not be the last to ride on me.

Mrs Travers stepped back with shock and fell into the dust. ‘What did you say?’

El Rey stopped and looked at her. Humans come, humans go. There have been many two-footed ones like yourself, child, but taller than you, who have walked among us.

‘Like my father,’ Mrs Travers answered proudly. ‘He’s a scientist. He’s come to collect herpetological specimens.’

El Rey’s eyes were dark, shining. I met a scientist once. He was a young Englishman. He also rode on me and, afterwards, like you, child, he thanked me. You are similar to him with your politeness and your manners.

‘His surname wasn’t Darwin, was it?’ Mrs Travers asked breathlessly.

Darwin? Why, yes! He was so polite that I granted him the gift that only tortoises like myself can offer. We can look back into the past. We can also look at the present and into the future. It is the gift of foresight, and I told him to choose a question and I would answer it. He sat where you are sitting now and he pondered for a long time before asking it. And when he did, the question was — El Rey suddenly withdrew his head and, thump, down came his shell. But his voice echoed from beneath the carapace — so simple but so terrible, so sacred, that I sobbed at the enormity of it. He should never have asked it. The dust swirled and drifted around Mrs Travers. After a long while, El Rey’s shell lifted, and his head appeared and began to weave back and forth.

‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

I told him that I would visit him at the moment of his death. And then I would show him the answer. El Rey began to move to one side, as if intending to get past her.

Mrs Travers walked swiftly after him and hopped onto his shell again. Felipe was by now only a speck far away, waving to her. She waved back and he shrugged his shoulders and continued down to the beach.

I did not think I would lose you so easily, child, El Rey sighed. All you humans have such an insatiable curiosity. It is a hunger in you, but it will be your downfall and you have already taken many of us down with it. It will not be long before the rest of us follow.

Mrs Travers wasn’t about to be put off by a silly old tortoise, even if he was a giant — and a king. ‘The rest of us?’

We who live in Orbis Terrarium, El Rey explained, the Inhabited World, all the birds of the air, the plants and flowers and creatures of the land, and the inhabitants of the sea, sharing our world with you, the greatest predator the universe has ever known.

‘Predator?’ Mrs Travers pondered the word, lifting it, weighing it, looking under it as if it were a stone and something was hiding beneath it.

Did you know, El Rey continued, that hundreds of us have been taken over the centuries, by whalers, pirates and other sailors, for our delicate flesh and our oil? The sailors would come in gangs, some up to eight men, to lift us one by one into their ships, five hundred at a time. Because we could survive without water or food for many months we were an inexhaustible supply of fresh meat. And then we were also devastated by the dogs, cats, pigs and goats man brought to our islands, ravaging the vegetation on which we depend. The black rat pounced gladly on our hatchlings. Since then there have been poachers … and others … it’s the old, old story, my child.

‘But then Mr Darwin came,’ Mrs Travers said proudly. ‘On the Beagle. He saved you all, surely.’

Yes, the young Englishman came, El Rey acknowledged, and then he went. And after him came other scientists. They took hundreds more of us for their museums and zoos. One scientist is no better or worse than the rest.

‘My father is not like that,’ she said. Abruptly, she jumped off El Rey. ‘You should apologise,’ she ordered. ‘Didn’t you hear me? Say you’re sorry!’

But El Rey was silent.

In a temper, Mrs Travers kicked him. Hard. She bunched up her fists, pulled her sunhat tightly over her head and began to walk away. ‘In that case, goodbye.’

She was halfway along the canyon, heading towards the beach, when she stopped. A venal, greedy look, one tinged with the sense of revenge, came into her eyes. Turning, she stormed her way back to the herd. As she swept by, the giant tortoises thudded and fell, making obeisance to her. When she reached the front of the herd she turned and waited for El Rey to approach.

‘Stop,’ she commanded.

El Rey looked at her. Why did you not keep on walking, child? Why?

Mrs Travers looked hard at him. ‘I have a question,’ she said. The sun stopped, for just a moment, and the whole of the universe breathed in.

No, child, El Rey answered.

Mrs Travers stamped her foot. ‘I’m entitled to it,’ she said crossly. ‘If you could give Darwin the gift I should have the same right. And I’m not a child.’

El Rey pondered. Ah well, he began arrogantly, I suppose it will not hurt to tell you what Father Christmas will leave you under the Christmas tree. You may ask your question.

But when Mrs Travers whispered her question into his ear, El Rey was horrified. He gave a roar of such intensity and pain that all who lived in Orbis Terrarium heard it. The sun ceased its passage across the sky. The world stopped still. Then El Rey blinked. I underestimated you, child. It is the same question that Darwin asked me, the most sacred question of all. No inhabitant of Orbis Terrarium, no bird or animal or sea creature, would ever ask it. Only a human would ever dare to ask the unaskable.

‘I demand my answer.’ Mrs Travers compressed her lips.

El Rey nodded. I suppose I will have to promise you what I promised him. And my promise is this: when you are dying, I will come and give you the answer.

‘But I’m dying now!’ Mrs Travers shouted petulantly from her bed. ‘You promised.’

And the voice came sighing from beyond the window. Won’t you release me from it?

‘No,’ Mrs Travers answered grumpily.

Then she gave a small gasp and put her wrinkled and veined hands to her face. ‘But I can’t remember the question now.’

Oh, but I do, El Rey sighed. I remember everything. My cross is to never forget.

IV

At long last, Elliot finally arrived.

He had his little cry with his sisters and dutifully sat by the bedside and looked into Mrs Travers’ eyes. He could never hide anything from her. She saw into his soul, and it wasn’t love she saw there but horror. Was this old woman really his mother? Is this what death looked like? The silly boy was scared. But then he’d always been scared of his own shadow.

‘We will let Mummy go now,’ he said.

With a nod, he consented to the dialysis machine being turned off. How long would it take? Molly insisted that a priest come to administer the last rites.

Such sentimental children.

Half past four, half past four.

There was a fluttering sound and, suddenly, a host of doves and finches settled on the windowsill — and then proceeded to come through and perch on Mrs Travers’ bed.

Are you coming with us now? they chirped.

‘All right,’ she said.

What had Father taught her about the finches? Oh yes, they were another example of Darwin’s theory of adaptive radiation, evolving into thirteen species.

Mrs Travers felt very strange, very strange indeed. She looked around the hospital room and saw that her daughters were there. And who was the male stranger with them? Why, it looked like Father!

The toxins were flooding freely through her body, poisoning her to death. One by one her organs were shutting down. But she was pumped so full of drugs to alleviate the pain that she was passing in and out of consciousness. She felt very queer.

Mrs Travers looked at her children one by one without any sense of emotion: Molly, Kate, Joan and Elliot. She wished they would go home, put up their feet and watch a bit of telly, and leave her to get on with it.

Oh, and now she did feel quite queasy, and her body was starting to itch all over. She was having hot and cold flushes. She felt sluggish, extraordinarily tired, and she was aware of her heart going thunkety-thunk and the blood banging around her body like old pipes beginning to freeze when winter comes around.

Time was running out. She’d better get going, and follow the finches. Come along then, they called to her.

She sat up. At least, she thought she sat up, but nobody in the room seemed to take any notice of her. And when she pushed down the covers and got out of bed, why, they didn’t seem to care. Warner didn’t even call her ‘lovey’ and scold her.

Then somebody did bar her way. It was Father.

And she wanted to scream at him, just scream and scream.

He hadn’t told her what he was doing in the Galapagos Islands. She only discovered it for herself when she was on the way back home on the Artemisia. She liked exploring, and found the passageway leading to the hold.

It was filled with Father’s herpetological and other specimens, all nicely tagged and tabulated: birds, fishes, plants. And stacked to the very top of the hold, upside down, hundreds of giant tortoises. Most had been killed; some were still alive, kicking and moving their arms and legs, slowly.

Right at the top was El Rey.

Don’t fret, child, El Rey sighed. It had to happen one day. And don’t blame your father. He is no better or worse than all the rest.

Mrs Travers did scream then. Oh, she had been wanting to scream for years at her father because he was supposed to be better, he really was.

‘You told me you didn’t believe in intervention,’ she accused him.

‘I was collecting herpetological specimens.’

‘No, you were just as bad, just as culpable as the buccaneers, whalers and sailors before you.’

‘I took only specimens from Isabela where the tortoise herds were secure.’

In a fury, she hit him. Humanity had indeed evolved to fill every available niche, even when that niche was already filled by others; humanity, the greatest predator.

She wanted to hit him again, but …

Mrs Travers found it so difficult to breathe, and gave a huge inward gasp. She floated, yes, floated over the sill of the window and out of the room, away from them all, away.

The sky widened and whitened and, far away, she could see the sea. Running, she made her way down among the rocks where scarlet-grey lizards were sunning themselves. Then some of the lizards did an extraordinary thing: they leapt into the water, making humorous plopping noises, and when she peered into the water, Mrs Travers could see them feeding on underwater seaweed. The seaweed looked so delicious that she couldn’t help herself.

Nightdress and all, she dived into the sea and joined the feeding lizards. Shoals of scintillating fish surrounded her. But they weren’t fish at all but rather seabirds coming back to their colony. Mrs Travers walked among them and knelt beside a dead booby chick.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Gloria, I’m so sorry.’

She wanted to weep, but something lovely, it must have been a tropicbird, lifted her up and carried her to an island — and below the rim of a volcano was a pass studded with candelabra cactuses.

Hello, a voice said. El Rey had arrived. He had kept his promise. Around him, a herd of giant tortoises was waiting. Strangely, there was a windowsill and, on the other side of it, she could see her grieving children beside a bed in which lay an old woman.

Time to go, El Rey said.

She nodded, lifted up the hem of her nightdress and slid onto the carapace. Smiling, Mrs Travers turned to the children on the other side of the window: ‘Goodbye.’ Then she gasped, ‘But I can’t remember the question.’

Oh I do, El Rey sighed. Lean down and I’ll whisper it in your ear.

Mrs Travers heard El Rey’s voice and nodded when he told her the question. ‘Yes, I remember it now,’ she answered.

Come along then, child, El Rey said, and as I did with Mr Darwin, I will show you the answer. He gave a guttural roar and, at his command, the herd made way for him as he moved forward. A dark dust cloud rose, radiant, glistening.

There was a moment in the Galapagos, Mrs Travers remembered, just before the sun went down, and the waves were darkening, when the horizon went smoky grey as if many fires were being lit along it. The smoke billowed through oranges and reds, which became pastel shades of cerise, vermilion and blushes of pink within a vault of celestial blue. The reds lasted for a long time. It was the sea that darkened quickly, advancing to the rim of red and, above, one by one, the stars began to appear.

As El Rey turned to face the darkness, Mrs Travers felt a cool wind chilling her.

‘Will it hurt?’ she asked.

It is only life that hurts, El Rey answered.

‘But will it hurt!’ Mrs Travers asked again sharply.

Just a little bit.