by Tim Winton
To pass time one morning he counted from memory the pubs in Angelus, naming their proprietors and their premier drinkers. Then he counted those neighbours whose sons had grown strong and stupid and moved away to the city where no one would recognise them in the street. He was glad he had had no sons because he knew he would hate his own reflections and the young sound of his own voice in them. Ah, at least Queenie’s fifty per cent mystery, he mused; it’s the unknown half in her that’s the hopeful part. Coupar had never wondered who her father might have been. It suited him not to know: knowing would inevitably be a disappointment. Sons. He shrugged. He had never got used to having a son-in-law, let alone a son of his own; he saw too much already in other people’s sons. That’s why, isn’t it? he told himself. Because he’s like you were – rootless, falling into place somewhere, blundering from shadow to shadow, shying at expectations, disappointing yourself, stumbling onto someone good, extinguishing the good in them, the calm, the freshness, the . . . restless good in them. And under that searching, earnest surface – nothing.
Carefully he had counted the days since he had become an official sojourner on his own land – eleven days. As the tide of heat shook across the earth in the sunset he held in his hands the pages he had torn from the journal of Nathaniel Coupar, and rolling them into a funnel he held the end to his eye and scanned the paddocks and the rim of sea, catching tufts of veldt-grass and loping kangaroos in the circle of vision.
He recalled the time when he first read his grandfather’s journals, the long nights after he had given up fighting Benjamin Pustling, when Maureen waited for him in their bed tired from calling until she slept without him. He still remembered the excitement of being in another time, somewhere away from his own disappointment, where every now and then, in those frightening few moments, he had the sensation of writing the journal entries as he read them, of reading them with recognition as though he himself had written them a hundred years before. And he remembered the pursuit of loose ends, the atmosphere of mystery and the sense of dissatisfaction throughout. For a great time afterward, even after he had bought back his father’s land in ’39, he had a sense of unworthiness, disappointment in his reluctance to come to easy agreement with his grandfather’s conclusions. If I was a greater man, he had thought then, these conclusions wouldn’t bother me, I’m sure: the greatness, the noble, reasonable part of me would respond. But only in his worst fevers of desperation and anger, when grief and rage blinded him to everything – his wife, his God, himself – could Coupar ever accept: then the journals rested easy with him. Then there was no God, no Grace, no purpose – only betrayal and deception. Justice was an illusion. He had no need of them. He would have to be his own judge and saviour, and tell God to go to Hell.
‘All those years of ancestor worship,’ he muttered. ‘Never even thought he might be wrong.’
Light had gone altogether. Coupar hugged himself in his chair, listening to the sounds of the night.
‘He was a stupid bastard. And my father followed. But not me. Not always. Oh, God. Come back, someone.’
He looked across and away to the hill and saw a full moon creeping upon its back.
VI
It was dark, four o’clock in the morning, Tuesday, 21 June 1978, and the Paris IV slips her moorings at the town jetty in the cold silence that is broken only by the faint sounds of wind and roosters. Aboard the whalechaser as it leaves Angelus harbour, lights burning, newsmen stand beside their bundled equipment staring nervously out into the darkness beyond their rim of light as the chaser passes out of the narrow gap between the heads. Swell thrusting under them, they joke, smoke and wonder.
Middle Beach, a white crescent like a reflected segment of moon in the darkness, is blotted with scurrying black figures. An outboard motor cuts the silence and then another comes to life and the two Zodiacs, invisible except for their wakes, bunt their way out into deeper water, motors running rough and cold.
Outside Angelus harbour in the belly of the Sound the three craft sight each other, the chaser idling low in the water, the inflatables mewling at top throttle, and before long the Zodiacs have reached the Paris IV and are turning circles about her as she gathers speed and slices up a bow-wave leaving the small craft to plough her wake in chase.
It is only five minutes before one Zodiac drops behind with engine trouble, the crew waving the other on. The other inflatable catches up to the lights of the chaser, riding the phosphorus chop. The chaser and its remora pass the lighthouse on Coldsea Island and in time both vessels leave the sheltering arms of the Sound altogether and strike out into the rearing Southern Ocean.
At dawn the Paris IV and the Zodiac plunge on into the rising swell. Aboard the chaser newsmen erect tripods and load cameras and take light readings, shuffling about the deck to avoid the grumpy seamen who scuttle past. They avoid, too, the landless horizon to the north-west whence they have come. The chaser’s crew are ill-at-ease with the men the company has invited aboard; they step around them warily, taking solace only in the unmistakable hints of seasickness visible already.
In the tossing Zodiac Fleurier and Brent brace themselves against the loll and jolt of the swells, their ears plugged with the whine of the outboard. Brent holds his camera to his chest, waiting for the light to improve.
Two boats pitch on towards the continental shelf, only specks. An hour later they pass a long white launch trundling between swells a thousand yards off. They cross a wide path of whale-oil trailing for miles from her stern. Ted Baer, deeply preoccupied, does not wave.
Angelus wakes and the townspeople go about their business. At breakfast they are greeted by the headlines: DOLPHINS STEAL SHOW AT WHALE RUCKUS and they are reassured. Early in the morning a film of high cloud smothers the unexpected sun and the grey day wears on.
Shortly before noon, her decks cluttered with seasick reporters, the Paris IV eases off power and heaves to. Cameras swivel drunkenly as the Zodiac, unsuspecting, overshoots and skids around, jacking up white water in a circle about them. After a few moments the Zodiac cuts to an idle and Fleurier steers in beneath the chaser’s port side. Brent points his camera back at the gallery of lenses. The chaser’s skipper brings a loudhailer to the rail and declares himself lost. The chaser’s crew laughs, making threatening gestures behind the press cameras.
‘What are you going to do now?’ the skipper calls, winking at his first mate.
Fleurier in the Zodiac squints up at him. ‘Us? We’ll lead you home.’ He puts the motor in gear and opens the throttle, veering off.
The men on the chaser guffaw; the Zodiac, unaware of the chaser’s subtle changes of course over the past two hours, is heading towards Antarctica. Paris IV steams out in three long circles, leaving the Zodiac outside her boiling circumference; and because he is well and truly lost Fleurier waits, riding the turbulence. Within five minutes Paris IV heads south. Brent and Fleurier glance at one another, surprised and a little proud of their guesswork. But ten minutes later with a blast from her horn the chaser turns seventy-five degrees about and makes northwest for Angelus.
All the afternoon the cameras shoot. The swell chases the two craft until just before dark when they pass Coldsea Island inside the Sound and separate, the chaser entering the harbour and mooring at the town jetty and the Zodiac skittering in behind the point to beach in the cold surf of Middle Beach.
At their evening meals the people of Angelus hear of the seven whales taken by Paris II and Paris III elsewhere.
VII
Voices were raised in one wing of rooms at the Ocean View Hotel. Surf beat upon the beach across the road and rain fell in intermittent rushes. Queenie listened as Fleurier, pale, spoke with a tired anger.
‘They led us on a wild goose chase. The other killer boats were working all the time. The IV was just a decoy and a news stunt for the whalers. They made us look like fools and they got it all on film.’
Marks scowled, angry about the failure of his outboard and the fumes that had made him sick
. He and his crew mate had returned to Angelus before dawn and a handful of cameras had flashed in their frustrated, nauseated faces as they waded in. ‘Hey, come on, Brent,’ he said, ‘you’re supposed to be making this a media event. It’s a circus, their circus.’
A dozen of them sat around a tiny coffee table, fidgeting, drinking, blaming.
‘Allright, allright,’ Brent said, looking sick and feeling worse. ‘Even when they have all the coverage they’ve still put the place on the map – and we’re the ones on film. Yesterday’s dolphins and rainbow got onto national television last night. People didn’t even know this goddam place existed. Now they know about us. They’re doing our work for us.’
‘Lucky for us. What if they weren’t?’
‘Hey, now —’
‘That deputy President, Prime Minister or whatever – he was a dud. A farce.’
‘How did I know?’ Brent shrugged. ‘He’s very popular with the local eco-groups. They have him at festivals and things. Angelus doesn’t seem to have heard of him.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Marks looked broodingly at Brent. ‘You get any photos out there today?’
‘Hey, man, are you trying to tell me what my brief is? You stick to the whales.’
‘Well, we haven’t done much for any of those poor buggers,’ Queenie said. ‘Bloody film and TV and newspapers. Images! How many whales have we saved, eh? None.’
All faces turned. There was an awesome silence for several moments.
‘Bullshit.’
Queenie turned to face Brent who fidgeted with his cameras, eyes downcast. ‘What?’
‘I said bullshit. Georges and me held off the IV for a whole whaling day.’
‘Because they wanted it that way.’
‘But we were instrumental in them not killing.’
Oh God, thought Queenie, what am I doing here? ‘So,’ she said, ‘we didn’t actively save any but we didn’t let them kill any more than seven.’
‘We put one boat out of the chase. That’s something. That’s news. I’ve released it like that. We’re amassing our own partisans in the press and TV, don’t worry. The visuals are the most important. Saturation. Awareness. We prevented the kill total from being twelve or fourteen. That’s effectiveness.’
‘You talk another language, mate,’ Queenie said.
Brent looked her up and down without replying. He raised his Leica to his eye and focused on her. The flash made them all flinch and for several seconds Queenie saw only white.
Queenie slept poorly that night, disturbed by dreams of almost-forgotten things and a squeamishness within her as though something had penetrated her and was disrupting her insides.
She woke at 2 a.m. and rushed to the lavatory where she vomited, hugging the bowl for thirty minutes with no one to hold her hair back while she retched. She crept weakly back to bed, conscious of its emptiness. There was no one to wipe the balls of sweat from her brow and she felt through her cycles of nausea a disappointment far removed from the day’s debacle. I’m home, she thought bitterly. And you’d never know it. A hotel room. Part of her longed for the excitement of confrontation – any confrontation. Surely by now Cleve would know she was back? She was grateful that he had not come, and a little disappointed. She toyed with the idea of seeing him, and she felt tweaks of dread and excitement.
There was no one to hold back my hair, she thought as she slid into an exhausted sleep. ‘Granma, Poppa, Cleve . . . they . . .’ She rolled away into the breathing dark.
Although it was still dark when the Cachalot Zodiacs were dragged down the beach to be launched, the white sand gave contrast to the steamy-breathed silhouettes of bodies and most of the Cachalot people managed to go about their tasks without falling or stumbling into one another. The sixteen-foot inflatables were placed on the sand and fuel drums were crammed into them, and then they were floated in the shallows and the outboards were fitted and fuel lines connected. Queenie carried a plastic drum of fuel on her shoulder and set it down beside the bulbous silhouette of Brent.
‘God, I’m sick,’ he said. ‘Someone said you were too.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Only a bit, it’s nerves.’
‘Hell, I was doubled, man. I think the hotel staff are trying to poison us.’
Queenie laughed.
‘I mean it.’
‘Food poisoning?’
‘Maybe. You know how they feel about us.’
‘They think Americans are gods. We’re all taught that. They’d never poison anyone with an accent like yours.’
‘I’m Canadian, goddammit.’
‘Makes no difference. That’s the way we’re brought up here.’
‘I still think they’d do it. Marks and Georges had a fun time of it out on the pier that night.’
She shook her head in the dark and moved away from the confusion and the fumes to stand alone on the white sand. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. She felt familiar with and estranged from this beach where she had learnt to swim with Education Department classes in the mild summers of her childhood.
Resisting an urge to strip and dive frivolously into the cold white shorebreak, she walked back, sandshoes squealing on the sand, to join the others.
When the Zodiacs were in the water, pushed out past the break into the still deep behind, each of the crews tried to start their motors. Those on the beach could hear the curses and the slaps of starter ropes. One motor turned over and hawked awake, running rough. Fleurier pulled away and opened up across the bay. Marks wrestled with his motor and his Australian companion fiddled with the throttle and choke without success. At length Marks called out to those listening on the beach: he wanted a tow in. Queenie stripped, glad of the excuse, stuffed her clothes and her shoes inside her greatcoat, handed them to someone and waded out.
The water was stingingly cold. It hurt her, finding its quicksilver way into the space between her legs, shrivelling her bladder and tightening her breasts like fists until she became hot and numb. She struck out past the shorebreak in the direction of the curses. Her abdomen tingled as she shoved forwards in the dark, toes out, right out, just like a frog, out and around and around, head out of the water, that’s it, swim . . . and she smiled at the memories that came out of the dark at her. In a few moments she saw Marks’s white cap and altered her direction slightly.
She came up sternwards and called to Marks to throw her a rope. When eventually he saw her he hurled a nylon line that landed beside her.
‘Why didn’t you use your auxiliary?’ she called, breathless.
‘Now there’s a point,’ the Australian said.
‘Bright boys,’ she called, coughing as a small wave clipped her on the chin. The Zodiac was surprisingly heavy, but her feet touched bottom within a minute and she heaved and felt the Zodiac glide in.
Ashore she became aware of her nakedness and the improving light and the others staring at her curiously.
‘Bloody dills,’ she said, for something to say.
The Zodiac was hauled up out of the water. No one present knew much about motors. Marks was cursing. An auxiliary motor, a 9.9 horsepower, was too small to use alone. Four or five males crowded round the bigger motor flashing torches in each other’s faces.
Fifteen minutes elapsed before Fleurier and Brent came buzzing back into view after seeing Paris II, the last chaser to leave the harbour, surge away in the distance, fully lit and gathering her fifteen knots.
‘Missed the mothers,’ Brent called out as they glided in, motors cut. A groan rose from the beach.
Back at the Ocean View Queenie lounged about before breakfast, trying to warm up again after her swim. The mood in the rooms was tense. Some of the Australians passed her in the corridor with contemptuous looks. Bloody friendly, she mused, shutting her door.
After dawn and breakfast Queenie sat for a while with Fleurier who smoked quickly and distractedly in his room littered with stacks of folders and loose papers. Blue moons suspended themselves from beneath his eyes; his smal
l mouth was tight with frustration.
‘What’s all this?’ she asked. ‘The bloody library?’
‘Yes,’ he said without looking at her. ‘My information bank. Sometimes it seems as overwhelming as my other resources. If only my mind was up to them. How to make people achieve. To make them do what they know. Optimism. Leave things up to the winds, the Fates, the gods, whatever. If we have to live on optimism why don’t Brent’s gods wake from their divine coma. The only thing more puerile than Man himself are his gods. Sorry. I’m being the philosophic Frenchman. Straight from the comic books. It happens when you’re angry enough to explode.’
Queenie knelt on the carpet. ‘More scrapbooks. Do you mind?’
‘No, go ahead,’ he waved. ‘Hardly classified information. Information seems such useless shit, sometimes.’
She opened a folder and read: ‘The whale’s first parental duty is to aid the newborn calf to the surface to taste the air for the first time. Danger and distress . . . calves often rescued by being seized in their parents’ mouths . . .’
Queenie, looking up from the mass of dog-eared papers to ask Fleurier a question, found that he was gone. She went to the door but hesitated and returned to the scrapbooks. Outside it was raining and the swimming pool hissed. She picked up a few more folders and skimmed through: ‘Rescues . . . very good indication of refined social sense . . . although it is often maintained that whilst males will come to the aid of females, the reverse does not apply.’
At this, Queenie raised her eyebrows in displeasure but read on.
Twofold Bay, NSW, Aust. Killer whales documented as helping whalers trap humpbacks by preventing them from sounding, jumping on their blowholes and alerting whalers of their presence in an area. They were rewarded with the tongues and lips of killed humpbacks.