Angie’s words made me grow cold all over again, and I surprised myself by saying, “I used to be with a man like that.”
I said the words so quietly that I wasn’t sure if she even heard me. She must have, though, because she looked at me so sympathetically that I almost burst into tears. But she said nothing, just turned her head slightly and kept looking straight at me, waiting for me to go on.
“Except that my fiancé did hurt me,” I said finally. “Just once. And it nearly broke me – not as much as the way our relationship wore me down over the years, but the way it finally ended hurt – in so many ways.”
Angie put her hand over mine on the table.
I took a deep breath in and straightened up. “Still, it was probably the best thing he could ever have done. It was the wake-up call I needed to finally get out.”
And then I told her all about the last time Ian and I met.
It was yet another argument about my work. I’d been due at The Mill on Saturday night to host a group of potential sponsors for the performance of the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra. Ian had been expecting me to come with him and his family to his father’s club for another of their family dinners – his brother’s birthday or something. He wasn’t happy when I told him I couldn’t make it until later that night.
I didn’t retaliate – not even after he shook me until I couldn’t see straight, then shoved me so hard that I fell back over a kitchen chair, badly injuring my lower back. He threw me away like yesterday’s rubbish, but I didn’t hit back. Instead, I just struggled to the spare room in pain and shock, waited for him to go to work the next morning, then packed my bags and walked out of our rented apartment for the last time. I wrote a short note calling off the wedding and left it there for him with my engagement ring. I never saw or spoke to him again.
“Good for you honey,” said Angie. “That wasn’t easy. How were you afterwards?”
I took a deep breath in. I’d already surprised myself by telling Angie as much as I had about Ian. I’d never really told anyone the full story about the fateful row in the kitchen two weeks before our wedding date – not my family, not even Katy. At the time I think I was probably just too ashamed – I knew they’d never liked Ian, and I felt I’d let them all down by letting it go so far. I just wanted the whole mess to go away, so I told everyone we’d had a row, that the wedding was off and we were finished as a couple, and they seemed to accept that without too many questions. Maybe they’d been expecting it all along.
“I was all right, I guess,” I said to Angie eventually. “My family and friends were amazing – they really helped me get over the break-up.” I took a deep breath in and sat up straight. “But anyway, tell me, Angie, what happened between you and your husband?” I’d already told her more than I’d told anyone about Ian, and I wanted to change the subject.
Angie sat back in her chair. “For me, it was my baby girl that changed everything – she was the only good thing to come out of our marriage. Amy gave me back somethin’ I’d lost. I looked into her darlin’ green eyes, and I knew I had a future again.” She smiled and paused for a few seconds. “Soon after she was born, somethin’ inside me cracked ’n’ I said to myself: enough, no more – this creep is not going to destroy me, he is not going to steal my spirit, and no way is he going to get a chance to hurt my little girl. So I faced up to him, told him I was leavin’ and takin’ my baby with me. Course, he tried to stop me, so I pulled a shotgun on him.”
I looked at her in shock.
“Oh now, don’t go gettin’ yourself all het up! I’m from Texas – we have our own way of dealin’ with things. I wasn’t ever gonna actually shoot him.” She laughed. “Guess he didn’t know that, though! Naw, I just wanted to shake the son of a bitch up a little – and y’know what? It worked – he ran off a-cryin’ to his momma. Pretty much left us alone after that. A year later, I met my Ron at a rodeo. As soon as my divorce came through we got married, bought a plot of land, built the ranch, had a couple of strong sons and one more darlin’ girl together – and the rest, as they say, is history.” She patted my hand. “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say, Mel, is that bullies are just spineless cowards underneath all the show. If you let them control you, they’ll go right on doin’ it until they crush your spirit and they win. But if you can somehow overcome your fear, find your strength within, and woman-up . . .” she gave me a soft punch in the arm and winked, “well, then you get to do somethin’ real sweet – you get to watch them crumble before your very eyes. And boy oh boy, is that a happy sight! But hey, you know all this – you’ve been through it yourself.”
I looked at her. Had I? I wasn’t so sure.
“To be honest, Angie, I never saw my fiancé crumble,” I said after a while. “In fact, I’m not sure he cared all that much when I left him. He made a couple of feeble attempts to contact me again but, other than that, nothing much.” I closed my eyes as realisation dawned. “Oh God, I let that bully push me around for years. And I thought I was past all that, back in control of my life, but here I am getting pushed around again – only this time it’s in work.” I looked back at her. “Question is, Angie, how do I stop it? I don’t want to have to leave my job as well as my fiancé. I love working at The Mill, even if my boss and others have made it very stressful over the last year or so.”
“Can you use guns in Ireland?” Angie asked with a loud guffaw.
I tried to smile, but I felt so close to tears that it wasn’t easy.
Angie squinted at me. “Aw, I’m sorry, kid, I shouldn’t joke. Y’know, in any bad situation you got three options: you can either accept it as it is, change it somehow, or get out of it altogether.”
I thought about it for a second, then nodded. “I suppose that’s true, Angie, but which should I do in this situation?”
“You’ll find the way, Mel, don’t worry. Sounds like you’ve taken a few knocks over the years. Made some poor choices of the heart along the way maybe?”
I nodded. “I guess.”
“Well, y’know, honey, that’s okay. Really it is. What’s not okay is not to learn from those mistakes. See, I can tell you’re a strong, courageous lady. Look at ya, comin’ all the way out here to the Arctic Circle on your own, wantin’ to spot them orcas. All ya need to do now is just dig down a little deeper inside yourself to understand what’s been going on in your life, and to overcome whatever fears have been keeping you from leading the happy, fulfilling life you deserve. ’Cos that’s all that ever holds us back, y’know? Fear. Once you overcome that, you’ll find you can do just about anythin’.”
I smiled. “Hopefully.” Then I remembered the sign in the airport. “Y’know, on my journey I saw a saying written on the floor in Oslo Airport. It said: If you cannot be where you are, Go to where you can be, and I will be there waiting for you. You see, I think that’s been my problem back home, Angie – with everything that was going on in my life I couldn’t just be. I think I needed to come here to Norway, needed the beautiful surroundings and the peace to help me work it all out.”
“It sure sounds like it,” said Angie.
I put my hand on her arm. “Maybe the I that was waiting for me was you – maybe I needed to meet a wise American woman to point me in the right direction!”
Angie let out another of her loud guffaws. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been called wise, but I’ll take it. Thanks, honey.”
There was a bit of commotion just then over at the boat guides’ table. Our guide Pål was standing up and talking loudly on his radio in Norwegian. He was nodding a lot, then he shouted over to Johann who was up ordering at the café counter.
The only word I recognised in all of the excited Norwegian ones that Pål shouted over our heads was: orcas!
“Yee-haw!” cried Angie. “This is it, honey. Let’s go!”
Chapter 13
MELANIE
I stared at Pål as he waited for everyone to be loaded back as quickly as possible into the Zodiac. “We just got a rad
io call from a local fisherman,” he said once he had everyone’s attention. “He has told me that there is a large pod of orcas feeding over near Henningsvær in the Lofoten Islands.”
I clutched on to Angie’s arm, and we smiled at each other.
Pål went on. “We will try to take you there, but this means we will have to travel very fast. It will give us only a short time to see the whales in daylight. And we will be coming back in the dark, so the temperature will fall very low. If you are too cold now or don’t want to come back in the dark, one boat can go back to the harbour and anyone who would like to return to the Inn can change to that boat now.”
Some of the group rose to switch boats.
I turned to Angie. “To hell with the cold – I’m not moving. I haven’t travelled this far to give up now.”
“Me neither, honey,” said Angie.
We sat tight and waited for the boats to get organised, and before long were racing against time through the fjords. The Universe seemed to be with us – the wind was in our favour, and having fewer people made the boat lighter. With just eleven of the original sixteen people left on board we coursed through the waves at such speed that there was still a good bit of daylight left by the time we got to the bay.
It had been a long day, but the destination was more than worth the journey. The bay of Henningsvær was surrounded on three sides by tall, jagged rocks and mountains and the sun was at a low angle above us, casting late-afternoon hues of pink, peach and red across them.
In the distance, I could see a small fishing boat. The sky above the fishing boat was awash with activity, alive with the noise of hundreds of gulls and even a couple of sea eagles squawking and battling for their share of the fisherman’s catch.
Pål slowed the Zodiac down, and we moved slowly towards the scene.
And then I saw them – their tall, black triangular fins rising high above the water. We didn’t have to hunt for orcas – they were everywhere – not just one or two, but about twenty or thirty in total, in small pods of between three and six each. I could hardly trust myself to breathe, afraid it was all a dream and I might wake up.
When we were about a hundred metres away from the fishing boat and the biggest pod of whales, Pål turned off the engine. There was a flurry of activity as people tried to get a good view of the whales. After a few minutes there was a loud cry from a passenger at the back of the boat, and I strained to see what was happening. A small pod of orcas had started to swim towards us. I tore off my gloves and quickly retrieved my camera from its waterproof bag under my seat. Then I stood up on the seat to get a good angle, but I stumbled as the boat lurched. There was a communal scream on board, and then laughter. One of the whales had swum under the Zodiac, giving it a nudge as he went by.
“They are investigating us, just being curious,” shouted Pål. “No need to worry.”
It was difficult to work out who was more curious about whom as the pod of three whales circled around our now seemingly very small boat. They swam directly underneath a few times and drowned out the noise of the gulls with the thrilling “whoosh” of their blow as they resurfaced. One minute they were there alongside us on the surface, revealing their true scale, the next they would disappear and we wouldn’t know where they would emerge again until the large black dorsal fins rose dramatically back up out of the water.
I took photograph after photograph from where I stood on the seat.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” I said down to Angie as the whales began to swim away.
“Sure is!” she said. “Did you hear Pål there? He said that we can get into the water in a couple of minutes – he’s just waiting for the right moment. We’d best get ready, honey.”
I took Angie’s outstretched hand and got down from the seat. We put our cameras away and retrieved masks, snorkels and fins. I pulled up the hood of my dry suit. Then I stopped for a moment and took a long, deep breath.
“We have to wait for them to come close again,” Pål was saying. “There is no point in letting you into the cold water if they are not near. When Johann gives you the signal, enter the water as quietly as you can. Remember from the safety briefing this morning – float on the surface, keep your head down and look below.” He paused. “Now please put on your masks and fins and sit on the side of the boat, but do not go until the signal.”
The group of three orcas that had been circling earlier began to swim towards the boat again, their dorsal fins rising and falling in the water in front of us. I quickly put on my mask and fins and pulled myself up onto the boat’s rim.
Angie was a bit ahead of me and helped me up. She squeezed my arm. “Good luck, Mel!”
I smiled back, but I was distracted. I hadn’t wanted to take my eyes off the orcas for a single second, but when I’d put on my mask it had started to fog up. I quickly took it off, spat on the inside of the glass, cleaned it with my finger and dipped it in the bucket of sea water behind me that Pål had filled for us to clear our masks. It seemed to work – the fog cleared and I put the mask back on.
Then Pål said the word we had been waiting all day to hear: “Now!”
And with that we slipped as quietly as we could off the side of the boat into the water below, careful not to make a splash that might scare the orcas. Apart from the small exposed part of my face around my mouth, I couldn’t feel anything. The dry suit and layers of clothing underneath mercifully kept out the cold and made us very buoyant – we floated effortlessly in the icy water.
My eyes level with the surface, I could see the orcas’ dorsal fins coming towards us. Then they disappeared entirely. I put my head down into the water, and there was silence. All I could hear was my own quickened breath through my snorkel, and the trickling sound of the sea moving around me. I squinted to try to adjust to the murky darkness, and I wasn’t sure if it was the poor visibility of the water or my mask fogging up again, but it became very difficult to see anything at all. I squeezed my eyes closed for a second to try to focus better.
When I opened them again I could see quite clearly, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I seemed to be suspended high above the water. There was no noise – nothing except the emptiness of pure silence. I could see the scene below me – the Zodiac bobbing in the waves, Pål at the wheel. Human black blobs, their arms and legs outstretched, were floating on the surface of the dark, choppy water. And amongst them was me – I was a little adrift from the others, and as I looked at my body below I instantly sensed its anguish. I felt all of its tension and tightness as it anxiously scanned the water for whales.
I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath, feeling the clear ice-cold air seep down my snorkel and into every cavity of my body – gradually easing the tension, banishing the anxiety.
I slowly opened my eyes and I was back inside my body. It took a few seconds to adjust back to the cold, dark water but, as soon as I could focus, I saw her – a whale was swimming up towards me from the depths. This time both the water and my view were clear – I could make out the orca’s every feature. But I wasn’t scared; I was only afraid that she might swim away if I stirred so much as an inch. I watched spellbound as she swam closer and closer. Then just before she got to me, she turned abruptly and swam by on her side. I got a sense of her full size then; I could see the large white markings along the bulk of her body, and I was mesmerised by the almost mechanical movement of her tail as it moved up and down, propelling her through the water.
No sooner had she swum past than she doubled back and started to come towards me again on her other side, this time just a couple of feet below me. When her head was directly beneath me, she stopped and seemed almost to hover there. As we looked at each other an instant calmness washed over me, and I knew I was meant to be there. It was as if everywhere I’d ever been, everything I’d ever done, everything I’d ever seen had led me to this moment, this connection with another being, this communion of spirits. I looked into the eye of the whale, and she stared back at me so intensely t
hat I felt she was trying to tell me something. But what? I felt so limited by my human intelligence. I wanted to reach out to her, but not physically – my arms stayed spread out on the surface of the water; I just wanted to understand, to be able to communicate with this creature that filled me with such awe and joy.
And then, just as quickly as she’d arrived, the orca gave a quick flick of her tail, turned and swam back down into the deep.
It was like coming out of a trance. I became aware again of where I was. I popped my head up above the surface and looked around. Pål was calling over to us to come back on board and I felt quite dazed as Johann helped me up the back steps of the Zodiac.
“Did you see them?” he asked.
I looked up at him. “Yes, yes, I did.” I was almost surprised to hear my own voice.
“How was it?”
“It was possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever . . .” But I couldn’t finish my sentence. Thankfully Johann didn’t notice; he was already helping someone else behind me up the steps. I climbed up into the boat and sat down to take off my mask and gloves.
Angie collapsed beside me. “Did you see them, honey? Weren’t they gorgeous?” She took off her mask and slumped back in the seat. “Woweee – those incredible expressive eyes – just beautiful.”
I nodded.
“I can’t believe we’ve just come eye to eye with wild orcas.” Angie shook her head, then looked up to the sky. “Ron, honey, if you’re lookin’ down, I did it, sweetheart. That was for you, my love.”
I felt my eyes mist up.
Angie looked around at me, tears in her own eyes. “It is a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”
Just then a few people on board let out a communal gasp as two orcas swam up to circle the boat. Unlike earlier, when we’d just arrived and everyone on board was squealing with delight and moving about the boat in excitement, this time there was a respectful silence and stillness on the Zodiac. We watched entranced as the orcas rolled through the rippling sea, before diving down into the dark water, then popping back up again.
Look into the Eye Page 12