‘I’ll be very busy for the next few days, Austin,’ said Bastian. ‘Helping people on the island. I won’t be able to help you find it.’
‘I gather there’s a map,’ said Austin. ‘Do you have it?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Bastian firmly. Which was the truth, Cass realised, currently.
‘I bet you don’t know half of what you have in your study,’ said Austin. ‘If we both looked, we’d find it.’
‘I did say I was busy,’ said Bastian, polite but firm.
‘But it’s important for you too,’ Austin insisted. ‘If it’s there, your father’s work is validated. My thesis supports the theory that the Kalinago people were never on Dominica at that time. I’m convinced they didn’t come until much later. We need to know one way or another. If there really is a petroglyph here, it will be proof that theywerehere.’
‘It’s not the right time,’ said Bastian.
‘Will you at least let me search for the map?’ Austin insisted.
‘The man said no,’ said Delphine firmly.
‘I’d rather hear it from him,’ said Austin.
Cass suddenly started coughing. When people had stopped banging her back and offering her water, the subject seemed to have been forgotten.
‘Are you all right?’ said Ranulph, concerned.
‘I’m fine. The hot sauce was hotter than I expected it to be.’
Nothing more was said about the map after that and Cass and Ranulph retired to their room.
‘It’s been a very long day,’ said Ranulph. ‘It seems a lifetime since we set off from Glasgow.’
‘Two lifetimes, and another planet, really,’ said Cass. ‘And in spite of the devastation, it’s still the beautiful island I remember from when I was twelve.’
‘And you can see why I wanted to come back. I’m so glad you understand. Not everyone does. Dominica is so different from other Caribbean islands, even when it hasn’t just had a hurricane tearing through it.’
‘I’ve loved working with everyone here,’ said Cass, partly because she wanted Ranulph to know what she’d done. ‘Driving Bastian’s pick-up with a full load of people, taking them as near to their homes as we could get, made me feel I was helping.’
‘Of course you were! And I’m impressed. The roads aren’t easy at the best of times.’
‘I did do an off-road driving course once and, of course, I learnt to drive in my father’s old car withmanual gears.’ She paused, feeling she’d spent enough time showing off. ‘What did you do?’
‘Mostly put sheets of “galvanise”, as they call it, on houses.’ Cass knew that ‘galvanise’ was what the locals called the corrugated iron that was used to roof almost every building in the countryside. ‘It was fun in a way, and also it turns out the hurricane wasn’t quite as bad as we feared. There are some areas that have hardly been touched. Others will take a long time to recover, of course, but no loss of life that I’ve heard of so far.’
‘That’s amazing! I won’t feel so guilty for being here.’
‘Guilty? Why do you feel guilty?’
Cass regarded Ranulph. ‘We’ve come because of the petroglyph. We’re no better than Austin.’
Ranulph didn’t answer immediately. ‘Should we take a look at the map? See if it’s survived the journey?’
Cass retrieved it from her daypack and slid it out of its protective covering. Ranulph shone the head torch on to it.
‘For a map, it’s really, really faint,’ he said. ‘Was it like this before?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Cass. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘I thought it was a bit clearer, I must say.’
‘It’ll look better in daylight of course, but maybe I should trace it, to get a clearer copy?’
