The Quality of Silence (5 page)

Ruby was patting her arm; her suitcase had got caught in frozen slush at the edge of the pavement. Yasmin helped her to right it.

There was a better explanation. He’d gone on a filming trip, just like she’d told Captain Grayling. There were in fact all sorts of animals to film, the Alaskan winter wilderness teeming with them. She’d been wrong not to believe him. And then something had delayed him; a dog getting injured, or the sled breaking. It didn’t matter. The point was he was nowhere near Anaktue when it was on fire
.
And, just as importantly,
he’d have his emergency kit with him
. And the phone? As he’d set off with the huskies he’d dropped it and didn’t notice; silencing snow again, lost objects dropping into it and making no protest. If he was in a sled it must be difficult, leads to the dogs tangling maybe, lots to think about and distract you from a dropped phone. And then? He got back to the village after the fire, after the police had searched, last night perhaps, this morning even, to find it burned to the ground and deserted.

She had studied physics and astrophysics, not medicine, so she didn’t know how long he could survive.

She wasn’t going to allow Captain Grayling’s body count evidence, it was unproved, not verified. It was incorrect. It
must be
incorrect. And here was the base of illogic on which she built the rest of her cogent hypotheses – that he had to be alive because she loved him; an emotional truth so keenly felt and absolute, that it couldn’t be dented by rational argument.

Helping Ruby with her suitcase, they headed towards the airport building. She would get on a plane with Ruby to the north of Alaska and they would find him.

As they reached the terminal she saw that the light had dimmed dramatically since they’d first arrived, that spell of dazzling daylight over. She knew that there were carefully calibrated words for dusk and nightfall here. She and Matt had spoken about it on the phone when he first came to Alaska – a good call, one of very few good calls. This light was called ‘nautical twilight’, with the sun between six and twelve degrees below the horizon. Soon the sun would dip to twelve to eighteen degrees below the horizon, and it would be ‘astronomical twilight’. And then it would be simply black.

Chapter 3

@Words_No_Sounds

650 followers

NOISE: looks like flashing signs, neon-bright; feels like rubble falling; tastes like other people’s breathed out air.

It’s horrible here. There’s loads and loads of people with suitcases and trolleys. I’m writing Mum’s mobile and email address on little cards and keep getting jogged. On the back of the card there’s a taxi company but Mum says they’re only open in the summer. She says we’ll give our cards to anyone who might be able to help.

I was a bit worried about the police being slowcoaches but now I think it’s really good because it means Mum is going to get Dad, and so he’ll see how much she loves him. He might not know that because she’s hidden it under lots of crossness.

* * *

Yasmin asked the five people queuing at the Northern Airways counter if she could queue jump and they must have seen her desperation because they kindly stood aside. She faced the scowling woman at the counter.

‘Do you know how I get to Anaktue?’

‘There’s a line, ma’am’

‘But—’

‘You have to wait your turn, lady.’

Yasmin stepped away. The hostility of the woman would clearly only be appeased by queuing. She signed to Ruby, asking how she was getting on with the cards, and Ruby signed that she’d finished; a silent conversation that crossed the noisy hall. She’d given Ruby the task to make her feel useful, but also in the long-shot chance that someone would take a card who knew something about Matt and Anaktue.

She noticed a sign up for tour parties to the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights. For a few seconds she was interested before remembering that Anaktue was hundreds of miles further north and, in any case, it didn’t operate during the midwinter months.

To: [email protected]

Subject: We’re coming!!

From: [email protected]

Hi Dad, Mum is coming to find you and I’m coming too. We’re at the airport and Mum’s going to get us plane tickets. Mum really really wants to see you. I can’t wait to see you too.

Love you megatonnes

Puggle

I know Dad’s laptop is broken but his satellite terminal works so he’ll just need to borrow someone else’s laptop. If Dad’s OK then some of his friends in the village must be too and they’ll have taken a laptop. Inupiat people aren’t stuck in the past like some people think. They hunt caribou and make aputiat but they have snowmobiles and laptops too; it’s not an either/or thing. And someone’s bound to have taken their laptop when they got out of the fire. I would. After Bosley who’s our dog and Tripod our cat, my laptop would be the next thing I’d take. So Dad’ll be able to check his emails.

Dad and I think that when I go to secondary school I’ll be too grown up to be called Puggle, as it’s a baby name. But he agrees that I can’t become a grown-up Puggle and be called Platypus; so we’re still working out what he’ll call me.

When I emailed Dad I saw I’d got emails from people at school, but when I’m actually AT school most of them don’t talk to me. It’s not coolio AT ALL to talk to ‘the-deaf-girl’, which they say like it’s one word, like that’s my name.

Tanya, head of the girl gang, is the most nasty – ‘Oh look, here comes the-deaf-girl wanting a goss’ – I can read her lips really clearly and she’s started wearing pinky lip balm and that’s what I look at while the girl gang laugh. And then I say, ‘Why would I want to goss with you? You have the personality of a toaster! And anyway gossiping is horrible.’

They go on laughing because they don’t understand sign and think it’s funny I’m doing-weird-things-with-her-hands. But Jimmy understands signs and he laughed because ‘personality of a toaster’ was funny.

* * *

(NASTY: feels like barbed-wire; looks like a rabbit with its leg in a trap; tastes like whispering glittery lip balm.)

When I email or Facebook, people who can’t sign understand me straight away and get my jokes. Also they tell me jokes and I get them straight away too, which is important for a joke. (Not people like Tanya, but people who email or Facebook me.) And people tell me private things too. Max, who’s been in my class since Reception, is upset we’ve only got two and a half terms left in Wycliff Primary. He’s really worried about secondary school; like me. But at school we don’t ever talk to each other. It’s like there’s two worlds, the typed one, (like emails and Facebook and Twitter and blogging) and then the ‘real’ one. So there are two me’s. And I’d like the real world to be the typed one because that’s where I can properly be me.

Dad got me my laptop. Mum hates it and right away called it thatbloodylaptop. She always glares at it, like the laptop could glare back at her and she could win the glaring competition.

Mum thinks if I could mouth-talk everything will be better. She tells me that almost every time we walk home from school. Instead of arguing, I hold her hand. But sometimes I do argue with my voice – my hand-voice so I can’t hold her hand any more – and I say, ‘No it won’t,’ or ‘You don’t understand!’ Because

for one) I’ll never sound like they do.

for two) that’ll be the other thing about me; I’ll be the-deaf-girl-with-the-stupid-voice; and it’s bad enough being the-deaf-girl without being the anything-else-girl too.

I’d rather be the-showy-off-brat-girl, the-nerdy-know-it-all-girl, any of those sorts of things, because those sorts of things you can try and change, if you want to. Or not. Up to you.

Being deaf isn’t something I can change. Mum doesn’t understand this but I don’t know if I even want to. It’s my Ruby-world; a quiet world that I look at and touch and sometimes taste but don’t hear. Dad says quietness is beautiful. So maybe my world is lovelier than other people’s. And maybe making sounds I can’t hear in my quiet world would spoil everything.

Max is really worried about changing schools; has an upset tummy about it and everything. I’m worried too, but my tummy’s been OK.

Yasmin reached the front of the queue and the hostile woman.

‘I need to get to Anaktue.’

‘I don’t know where that is, ma’am.’

‘About five hundred miles north of here.’

‘We don’t cover it.’

‘The nearest town then? Deadhorse, I think?’

She’d remembered it was the place Matt flew to when he came to Anaktue, that he’d get a taxi plane from there.

‘I told you, lady, we don’t cover that region.’

‘Can you tell me how to get there? Please?’

‘I do Northern Airways check-in; I’m not a travel agent.’

A man came up to Yasmin. About forty, he was dressed in overalls, a peak cap with ‘Am-Fuels’ on it; a 9/11 pin.

‘You’ll need Arctic Airways,’ he said. ‘But their last flight for the day left ten minutes ago.’

She felt rising panic and he must have noticed because he looked at her with kindness.

‘I might be able to get you on a flight to Deadhorse,’ he said. ‘From Deadhorse, you can get a taxi plane to most places in the north.’ He paused a moment. ‘Is Anaktue the place that’s been on the news?’

‘I imagine so.’

She didn’t volunteer anything more and he didn’t press her.

‘Can you wait a little bit while I see my daughter onto her flight?’ he said.

Behind him was a young woman, eighteen or nineteen, looking excited, eyes darting around, a smile reappearing every few moments, a rucksack on her back.

Mum’s handing out the little cards I’ve written, asking people if they know anything about Anaktue and she gets really funny looks. Some rude people just put theirs in the bin right in front of us. I’m writing some more now, on the back of a different taxi place. I’m a bit worried that people will phone or email Mum thinking she’s the taxi.

I’m still thinking a bit about the nasty girl gang at school and gossiping.

Dad told me about this film where a preacher tells people why gossiping is so terrible. He says that when you say a bit of gossip, you’re emptying a feather pillow out of a high window into the wind, and if you want to take the gossip back you’d have to find every single feather and you could never ever do that. But it would be good if that was true of Mum’s cards and they go all over the place, and someone will know something that will help us find Dad really soon.

Fifteen minutes later, Yasmin saw the man in the peaked cap threading his way through shoals of people towards them. She thought he looked nervous.

‘Jack Williams,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Sorry to take a while but I wanted to see my daughter through the departure gate. She hasn’t been away from home before. Not for more than a week anyway.’

Yasmin liked him for being anxious.

‘Freedman Barton Fuels are flyin’ a load of us worker bees to the wells south of Prudhoe, via Deadhorse,’ Jack continued. ‘It’s a charter. I know the pilot and gave him a call. If you want to hitch a ride it’s fine with him. ’Course it probably ain’t legal, but he’s not goin’ to tell anyone. There’s a couple of spare seats.’

‘Thank you,’ Yasmin said.

He smiled at Ruby. ‘I wish all daughters could stay put at your age. Not get all grown up and want to go off travellin’.’

Yasmin wasn’t sure how much of that Ruby had understood, but Jack spoke clearly and didn’t put his hand to his mouth so she’d have got most of it.

‘Come on, I’ll show you the way. Those your cases?’

I don’t like this man. Don’t trust him for a second. He’s all smiley-smarmy. He’s got our cases and his sleeve has wrinkled up and you can see an Omega watch. Dad has one like it, quite like it, that Grandpa left him. He says it’s much too precious to wear everyday so why’s this man wearing it on just any old day? Now he’s seen me staring.

Yasmin had seen Ruby looking at the watch, more like glowering at it. No wonder Jack noticed.

‘I used to buy presents for my wife,’ he said. ‘When you work at the wells, it’s ugly and dirty and you want somethin’ nice at the end of it. I’d get her pretty things. Right before our twentieth anniversary, she took a heap of her jewellery back to the store. Swapped it with this. Gave it to me.’

And his wife died, Yasmin thought, so he always wore her watch. She felt compassion for him in a way that before today she wouldn’t have imagined.

They followed Jack as he led them along a corridor and into a small departure lounge. There were fifteen to twenty men, most wearing F.B.F. caps and overalls, a few with Am-Fuels caps. Yasmin took hold of Ruby’s hand. She feared the day men like these would no longer see Ruby as a child. To her relief, the men didn’t notice their arrival, focused instead on a slight man wearing a suit, his back was towards them, his blond hair shining in the artificial lights. Yasmin could sense their hostility towards the suited blond man, almost feel its abrasiveness against her skin.