Ethan Scofield returns to the place of his birth to bury his father. Hidden in one of the upstairs rooms of the old man’s house he finds a strange manuscript, a collection of stories that seems to cover the whole of his father’s turbulent life.
As his own life starts to unravel, Ethan works his way through the manuscript, trying to find answers to the mysteries that have plagued him since he was a child. What happened to his little brother? Why was his mother taken from him? And why, in the end, when there was no one else left, did his own father push him away?
Swinging from the coral cays of the Caribbean to the dangerous deserts of Yemen and the wild rivers of Africa, Turbulent Wake is a bewitching, powerful and deeply moving story of love and loss … of the indelible damage we do to those closest to us and, ultimately, of the power of redemption in a time of change.
Turbulent Wake by Paul E Hardisty was published in paperback by Orenda Books on 16 May 2019.
As part of the Blog Tour, I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you today on Random Things
Chub Cay
The
plane banked low over the water. The boy could see the white arc of the beach
and the green of the palms and, further out, the many different colours and
patterns of the sea. It was his first time in a small plane and he clutched the
arm of his seat hard, his face pressed up against the window. The plane righted
and he could hear the sound of the engines change, see the flap along the back
edge of the wing starting to come down and feel the hole in his stomach as the
plane started to lose altitude. They were coming in to land.
The
boy looked through to the cockpit and watched the pilots. He liked the way they
reached up to the overhead panel to work the switches, the way they flew the
plane with small movements of the wheel and the throttle levers. He liked the
light-green headphones they wore, the way they spoke calmly into their headset
microphones as they guided the plane down. Outside, the island was gone and
there was only the deep-blue colour of the sea and the puffy white clouds in
the distance and the line where the sky met the sea. Soon they were low enough
that he could make out individual waves on the surface of the sea, the little
white crests where they curled over and the dark furrows between them. And then
the sky-coloured shallow water appeared beneath them, and it was so clear the
boy could see down through to the sandy bottom and the darker patches scattered
there, the brown of rocks or perhaps the corals that he had read about and
looked at pictures of, but never seen. And then quickly the shallows were gone
and there was a white beach and a flash of green and then the rocky grey of the
centre of the island rushing up towards them.
The
plane landed with a thump and rolled to a stop. 
The
boy looked over at his mother. Her hair was up in a colourful scarf, her eyes
hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses. She was wearing a short dress
made of some light material that left her arms and her legs bare. He thought
she looked cold. But he could tell that she was happy and excited. They had
arrived. They were in what she called one of their ‘times of feast’. To him,
these times meant presents at Christmas and on birthdays, parties, holidays in
warm places. But he knew they meant other things to his mother.
The
chief pilot, the one with four yellow stripes on his epaulettes, unclipped his
seat belt, got out of his seat and walked back into the cabin. He wore a white
short-sleeved shirt with a pair of wings sewn above the left pocket and
green-tinted sunglasses. He looked very young for a pilot, the boy thought,
much younger than the ones he’d seen flying the jets that took off and landed
at the big airports.
‘Welcome
to Chub Cay,’ said the young pilot. He pronounced it key, like the thing
you put in a lock. He had fair hair and the hair on his forearms looked almost
white against his tanned skin. ‘We’ll be back here in a month to take you out,’
he said, smiling at the boy’s mother. ‘Have a great Christmas.’
‘Say
thank you to the captain, boys,’ his mother said. She was smiling at the young
pilot, and the pilot was looking back at her through his sunglasses.
The
boy and his brother chimed up with overlapping thank you sirs, and the
young pilot reached out and tousled their hair, all the while looking at their
mother.
‘Where
is your dad, young fella?’ said the pilot to the younger boy, who was only nine
and a half.
‘He
has important business to do,’ the boy said, before his brother could answer.
‘I’m
sure he does,’ said the pilot.
‘His company owns this island,’ said the boy.
‘Well, that’s what I’ve
heard,’ said the pilot. ‘And that’s why we’re
taking
very good care of you and your pretty mama here.’ The young pilot smiled and
reached out to tousle the boy’s hair as he had done with his brother’s, but the
boy pulled away. He didn’t like this young pilot anymore.
‘My
father will be here for Christmas,’ said the boy.
‘Then
I’ll see you all then. I’ll be flying him in.’ The young pilot started towards
the back of the plane, then threw open the rear door and let down the stairs.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please disembark by the rear stairs,’ he
said with a bow.
The
boy’s mother laughed and stood and smoothed her dress. She was tall for a lady
and had to stoop to avoid hitting her head on the cabin roof. ‘Come on, boys,’
she said. ‘You heard the nice captain.’
The
boy unbuckled his seat belt and followed his mother and brother down the
stairs. The pilot started to unload their suitcases and line them up on the
crushed coral. A strange-looking car was waiting at the edge of the runway. It
was open and low to the ground and had very small wheels. A man in a big white
hat was in the driver’s seat. He waved to them and the car started out towards
them.
‘That’ll
be the colonel,’ said the young pilot as he unloaded the last of the bags.
‘Better watch out for that one,’ he said, smiling and wiping his forehead with
the back of his hand. ‘If you know what I mean.’
‘Thanks
for the warning,’ said the boy’s mother. She was smiling as she said it.
‘You
bet,’ said the young pilot, handing her a card. ‘Well if you need us, just
call. No job too small, no ask too tall.’
The
boy’s mother laughed, and taking the young pilot’s hand in hers, she leaned her
head towards his and said something that the boy could not make out. The young
pilot looked back at her for a moment with his mouth slightly open, and then he
smiled at her, clambered back into the plane and pulled the door closed. The
boy decided that he did not want to be a pilot, after all.
The
strange car pulled to a stop and the man in the white hat – the one the young
pilot had called the colonel – jumped out. He was a big man, with square
shoulders and thick legs. ‘Mrs Clifton,’ he said, taking her hand in his big
bear’s paw. ‘I’m Colonel Rafferty. Everyone calls me Raff. Welcome. Welcome to
the island. We’re so glad you could make it.’ He kissed the boy’s mother on the
cheek and, as he did it, he put his big hand on the small of her back.
‘Boys,’
she said, pushing herself away from the colonel with one hand and holding her
scarf in place against the breeze with the other, ‘say hello to the colonel. He
works for your father’s company. He runs the island. Isn’t that right,
Colonel?’
‘I
certainly do,’ he said.
The
boys shook hands with the man. They all got into the car and drove to the far
end of the runway. The colonel stopped the car and they sat with the sea breeze
flowing over them, the smell of the sea strong now, as they watched the
twin-engine plane taxi to the far end of the gravel strip and turn to face
them. Then the engines roared and the plane started down the runway. As it
gained speed, the boy saw the front wheel come off the ground and the rudder on
the tail moving. Then one wing dipped slightly towards where the wind was
coming from and it was up and crabbing sideways as it climbed. When the plane
flashed over them with a roar the boy heard his mother let out a little ‘oh’ as
her headscarf flew away.
Canadian by birth, Paul has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist.
He has rough-necked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, and rehabilitated village water wells in the wilds of Africa.
He survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana'a in 1993 and was one of the last westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war.
The Abrupt Physics of Dying, his first novel, received great critical acclaim, and was short-listed for the CWA Creasy New Blood Dagger award.
Twitter @Hardisty_Paul
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