I don't know how they found her, or identified her. No one's told me that yet, so I have all these different visuals going through my head - new ones, imaginary ones, to go with all the memories. It's like all the blood, all my muscles and bones have been sucked right out of my body and there's nothing in there any more, except a great whirling mass of memories that go round and round, jostling for position in my head. Looking out the window as the plane descends, I have to blink and concentrate to get my head round what I'm seeing. I mean, I think I visited this Island once years ago when I was younger, I'm sure I did. It was one of the really nice ones, all palm trees, white beaches, a warm sea with loads of fish and the locals put on a good show with some dancing and flowers and there was roast pig and fish and all that sort of thing, cocktails at sunset. In spite of everything, that was what I was expecting to see, the bright aquamarine ocean, acres of white sand, palm fringed beaches, hotels and swimming pools.
But even from here I can see that it's just a mess. There's bits of stuff – debris - everywhere, the yachts in the harbour are all lying on their sides, or bashed into each other, there's bits of boat on the beaches too, cars, sofas, bricks, road signs, palm trees all splintered and broken and there's - my God I thought that was someone sun bathing on the beach, but it's a body, a real body, a corpse - and I think that's another one, the flesh swelling, splitting in the heat. Thank God the plane's getting too low to see now, at least they've gotten round to clearing up the airstrip. First thing they had to do I guess. But, oh Lordie, I hope that's not how they found her, with her clothes all ripped off, her head at a funny angle – is that how they found her? My little girl?
And now the memories are surging again, raining in on my chest so I can't think of anything else. There are some that gleam with warmth – like the one where we're sitting on the couch at our ranch in Texas and I've got the grandkids on both sides of me, Kelly snuggled right up beside my knee. MaryLou was there, taking photos and I remember Kelly taking my hand, hers so small and soft, her big blue eyes looking up at me, blonde hair in two pigtails either side of her head, like a little doll. “Will you tell us a story Pops?” and I was lost. I can't remember what I told them, I'd never really gone in for that sort of thing before – I didn't have much time when my own kids were little, but looking at her blue eyes gazing up at me, the trust and hope in them, I was a complete sucker – and I ended up making up some garbage story, something half remembered from a story I'd heard when I was a kid and she kept those eyes on me the whole time, shining with excitement.
I always had a soft spot for her after that. She was my favourite of all the grand-kids which is what makes this so unfair. There's the two ginger ones, Alex's sons, and then there's Billie's girls from her first husband – she's been landed two other kids that came with her new husband and I have to admit I can't tell the difference between them most of the time. They're all a bit chubby, a bit plain and boring to be honest, not like Kelly. Kelly had a bit of spirit in her you know – okay sometimes it wasn't, what do they say now? - oh yes, it wasn't channelled in the right direction, but she was just a kid – a good kid. She'd have grown out of it if she'd had the chance. I should know – we used to have her up to stay sometimes in Connecticut and she'd chatter away about any and everything, she'd make me go in the garden and she'd show me all the flowers – she knew all the names of the plants and trees by the time she was ten! I'd take her into the office with me, show her around and everyone loved her, they'd bring her treats - doughnuts or little toys, stuff like that, flowers, if they knew her well.
See, those memories, they're the good ones. The warm ones, that make me smile, even now, sitting here in this plane while Jim taxis us to a standstill. She'd hold my hand and ask me questions about the work and she was so little and serious, it was just so damn cute. Of course there was that one time, when she was a little older, that wasn't so good. Nobody had warned me – someone got fired afterwards, good and proper I can tell you, but there wasn't anything I could do about it at the time. We turned up at the office down town, me with her little hand in mine as usual, and there was a big crowd of protestors all waving banners and placards and chanting some stupid stuff and at first I was really proud, cause she wasn't scared or anything. She just raised that little chin and looked around, drinking it all in and then when we got inside she asked all these questions about it. That was our first argument, but it was just that she was young and had a soft heart and she loved nature. She couldn't understand why I didn't give in to the protestors and stop the mine going ahead right there and then, she even cried, sitting there in my office, all red nosed about the poor little animals and the poor little trees being destroyed. Janey told me off afterwards, said that of course someone that age didn't understand the finer points of economy, that I should have left it, but you see I thought that she needed to know that the world was a tough place, that it didn't do to go moaning and sniffling every time a squirrel got hurt. Maybe Janey was right though, because it was never really the same after that.
“Mr Hawthorne? Did you want to disembark?”
My personal assistant's not that much older than Kelly – I'd even thought that one day Kelly might do the job herself. I'd thought that it might gee me up a little, give me back some of the enthusiasm that I seem to have lost over the years – you know, I'd had some sort of stupid fantasy that having her blue, adoring eyes watching me, might give me back my sense of purpose. That was before that last argument of course.
“Okay Maria.” I haul myself up out of the chair - it's like I've become an old man in the last few days – and they open the plane doors and in wafts this smell which just makes me reel back. In spite of the fact that I saw it all from above, my subconscious must still have been expecting the place to smell the same as before – air-plane fuel, the ocean, that sort of spicy, flowery-fruity smell you get in these places. But this – over the salt smell of the ocean, there's a stench of dank water and heat and gasoline with a thick smell of rotting vegetation beneath it all. Rotting meat. I stand there, swaying on my feet, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to go out there, to get out of the plane. Janey warned me, they all warned me, they said it wasn't good, there wasn't any reason to go, there wouldn't be anywhere to stay. But I wanted to see it for myself, I told them, though now I can't really remember why? Why did I want to see it?
I force my feet over to stand in the doorway at the top of the steps, look round, heat blasting me in the face. There's quite a few machines on the small patch of tarmac they call the airfield – hospital planes, helicopters, a few Aid aircraft, people unloading supplies, and right over there, underneath the wing of another plane I can see a line of body bags. Kelly's not there, they've already shipped her out, I know that - but did she lie there? Was her beautiful, golden body lying there on the concrete, stuffed into one of those garbage bags?
Asking her Mum how she was doing at University, I remember being surprised when MaryLou wouldn't look at me, just nodded and smiled. “She's doing very well, Dad.”
“What's she studying?”
“Oh, just something to do with environmental sciences or something.”
“Oh God, she's not turning into one of those loony climate crusaders, is she?”
A little frown, a half smile, still a refusal to meet my eyes. “Who knows Dad? Who knows?”
They make me put on thick rubber boots and take me out into the town, though we need to be careful where we go. There's still roads where the water is up to knee height, thick with red mud and dead fish, swilling around the broken headlights of cars, into houses and shops, there's rubbish - cans and plastic bags, all floating everywhere.
This sort of place, there's usually jangly music playing from somewhere, hooting horns, people calling out to each other, but there's a sort of ominous silence now. I mean, it's not quiet exactly – there's the sound of the ocean, waves still breaking on the beach, a trickling of running water, the grinding of heavy machinery where I guess they're clearing stuff; a woman's voice, sobbing, over and over, “Mama in heaven, Mama in heaven....”
A little boy stands outside the shell of a house, roof caved in, one wall ripped off, though it's on a rise so there's no water inside. There's a television, all smashed on top of a sofa and there's glass everywhere, shards of glass right next to the boy's bare feet. He's about seven or eight and all he's got on is a T shirt and he's looking at me with his jaw hanging loose, his eyes round and knowing, brown as hers were blue and I want to tell him to watch out, there's glass there, but I can't seem to find the breath and what's the point anyway. There's glass everywhere, broken metal, splintered wood.
There's an Aid centre ahead of us, there's loads of people just lying around, some on beds, I guess they're injured, and there's a man who's making this awful moaning sound, a woman sitting, rocking backwards and forwards, muttering, people just sobbing and weeping. There are lines of people queuing up, they're giving them water in bottles, matches, a package with clothes and stuff like that I guess. Some of the people in the queue talk, some of them just stand, staring into space, others turn and stare as we approach. Are they hoping we've come to sort things out for them? Is that what these people think?
The aid workers are so busy they don't even look up. I want to ask them if they knew Kelly, but of course they'll have arrived after the typhoon, they won't know her. None of them will know my girl, the girl who stood at my dining table just a few weeks ago, back straight as a die, hair falling down her back in a sheet of gold, the stupid globe tattoo on her shoulder, her little chin held high, lips wobbling.
I'd been teasing her – I thought she'd take the joke, because it really had seemed a bit rich, her sitting at the table while we all tucked into the Thanksgiving turkey, after I'd found out she'd been one of the nuisance protesters at the fracking site.
“I'm glad to see you're not eating this wicked turkey,” I'd said. “I'm real proud of you, cause that will surely stop this awful climate change, won't it?”
Everyone else round the table laughed and I made some comment about all these God damned people who thought they could save the world by living on rabbit food and not putting their heating on.
I'd thought she'd just blush, give a little laugh, that'd be the end of it, but she got to her feet and she was all shaking and her voice had gone all high. “What you just don't get Grandfather” - and she'd always called me Pops before that, you know, “What you just don't get is that you're right. People like me, the little people, the greenies,” here she'd done quote marks with her fingers, all spiky with rage, “can give up turkey as much as they like but no, it's not going to make any fricking difference until people like you – people who spend their lives raping the earth, pouring chemicals into the atmosphere, with no regard for anybody or anything but their own wallets – it's not going to make any difference till people like you stop what they're doing. It's people like you who are directly responsible for the melting of the ice caps, people like you who have the power to do something to stop all this and all you do is sit on your ass and count your money!”
I still remember the silence that filled the room like the top of a wave hanging, mid-air before it falls. And then she'd rushed out of the room and that was the last time I ever saw her.
This is where she'd come, as soon as she'd got a flight over. She walked these streets, swam in the ocean, went into these shops, in her last few days - she came here with her work, to help build flood defences because they knew this was going to happen, sooner or later. I doubt it would have been much comfort to her to know that of course they were right, except that it happened sooner, even sooner than they thought. And it'll happen again, here maybe and in other places, and I know this because it's been happening already, for the last few years, I've seen the pictures on the news, on social media, I knew it was happening.
One of the aid workers is crying, standing with her back to the queue, another is rubbing her arm. “Come on, we've got to keep on, there's not time for this.”
“I know, I know, it's just – it's just that – all these people. Where will they all go? Where will they work? Who's going to help them when this has all run out?”
And pow - there's one of those memories that's a punch to the stomach, because that's nearly exactly what I'd said to Kelly in one of our arguments. “Honey,” I'd said, “have you any idea how many people I employ? What do you think's going to happen to all of them if I were to stop mining? Where would they go huh? Have you thought about that?”
And she'd held up her chin and shaken her head. “I don't know Pops, but there's going to be loads more people out of work and homeless when you've finally melted all the glaciers and we're all under water.”
Now I turn to Maria, who is standing by, breathing through her mouth, her make-up sweating into her white shirt. “I've had enough. I want to go home. I need to close down the business.”
“What?”
I shake my head at her. “Don't you worry right now, but I need to get home.”
Somehow, I have found some energy and I stride past the queue of people, whose eyes turn and follow us, I must get back to the airfield, get Jim to fly me home, I can't stop because for the first time in years I feel like there's a reason for what I'm doing, I don't even pause as an old man leers at me, sends a ball of spit flying at me feet.
I know I can't help this man right now, I have no idea what will happen to him. But maybe I can do something for the planet that Kelly loved so much.
I just hope I'm not too late.
