Hushed

by Joanne Macgregor

  I unroll the soft bundle packed beneath the shoes to find two sets of high-tech thermal underwear and thick socks, with another note: “So you don’t need anyone else to keep you warm.” Then there’s a bottle of homeopathic Arnica (“for bruising,” according to the label), lying alongside slabs of dairy-free vegan chocolate (“sweets for my sugar”).

  My heart swells and tears well in my eyes. The gifts are so thoughtful — he must have followed our blogs, researched life for crew on the ocean, carefully read my email, and contacted my parents and Zeb. Anyone could have sent a bunch of roses or a bottle of champagne. This gift is an act of consideration and care.

  Lying at the bottom of the package is a small box and a sealed letter.

  I open the box to see my platinum chain and charm bracelet nestle inside. Attached to the delicate links of the bracelet is a new charm — a pig. I laugh through the now-overflowing tears, and immediately put the necklace and bracelet on. They aren’t best suited to life as a galley slave on the Syrenka, but they feel so right resting against my skin, like a soft touch from him, that I don’t care about the practicalities.

  Finally, I open his letter.

  Dear Romy,

  I was so glad to get your email.

  I’m sorrier than I can say at how things ended. Sorry as a one-legged cat eyeing a canary in a tree. Sorry as a fish without fins. Sorry as a man with a heart cracked plum down the middle - which is what I am.

  I’ve woken up since you left, Romy. As you know, I’ve refused to do any more Beasts. (When I told Cilla, she threw one of those damned lizards at me and the thing nearly took my eye out.) And Equus opens on the first of February. I feel excited, terrified, way out of my depth, but alive!

  I’m looking at ways of putting something back into the world, “leaving it a better place” you called it. I used to think there was only one way of being in this business, but as my momma says, “There’s always more than one way to skin a cat” — even a one-legged one. And I’m going to find a way of doing this, living this, without selling my soul.

  I wish you were here, so I could show you what you taught me, how you inspired me. You made me see what matters. I’m heartbroken that the only one that mattered, was the one that got away.

  I miss you! I want to scream it into the night, up to the stars.

  But you are where you need to be, and I hope you’re loving it.

  Love you, always,

  Logan

  I feel warm for the first time in a month, and it has nothing to do with the blazing Australian sun. I connect my phone to the port’s free wi-fi and start typing my reply.

  Dear Logan,

  Thank you!

  When we set sail again next week, I’ll be steady on my feet, warm in my long johns, sweet as chocolate, and wearing a little hog. The crew is over the moon about the fast-boat — you have no idea how much your donations mean to us all.

  I pause, unsure what to say next. I, too, want to scream out to the heavens. “Take me back! I still love you!” — that’s what I want to say. And I want the winds to carry the words around the world and blow them into his heart. But though his letter is full of his regrets over the past, there’s no mention of a future for us.

  And yet, it says he loves me “always.” And haven’t I been wondering about how things could have been different if I’d spoken up and put up more of a fight? I decide to write that down.

  I also have regrets. I’m not sorry I came out here, but I am sorry I ran away — does that make sense? I wish I’d fought harder for us. Because despite what happened, I don’t regret us — it’s still the happiest I’ve ever been.

  This time, I sign it

  Love, always,

  Romy

  And I hit Send before I can second-guess myself.

  Chapter 42

  Foul

  Outside, the pale Antarctic sun shimmers through the ghostly veil of mist shrouding the starkly beautiful sea, the pristine ice, the bleak and hostile endlessness. I’m in the common room waiting for my turn on the Net, and I’m trying to ignore the bitter cold and the unearthly noises rumbling through the ship as we crush through the thick polar pack-ice in our relentless, dogged pursuit of the Koshitsu. Captain Murphy says it’s just ahead, hidden by the mist, trying to evade us even as we stalk it.

  The Syrenka creaks and groans. The ice growls and cracks as it grinds along our sides. At any moment, a sharp edge on a chunk of ice the size of a house could punch a hole through our hull.

  Once we’ve hobbled the whalers — and we’re all determined to do it — we’ll be heading back to Cape Town. I’ve decided that I won’t sign up for another mission. Although this is what I’m meant to be doing — fighting the good fight — it isn’t where I’m meant to be doing it. Truth be told, I’m a feeble sailor. I’m clumsy on deck, sick in a storm, not muscly enough to lob bombs or steer craft, and despite Libby’s best efforts, I can’t even cook very well. I miss high, green trees and long grass. I want to surf with my friends and lie on soft sand afterwards. And I crave the warmth of real sunshine on my skin.

  I want to continue fighting for endangered species, great and small, beautiful and ugly, but on shore and in a warmer corner of the planet. I’ve already thought of ways in which the administrative and support sides of ecological organisations like the one behind the Syrenka can be improved. Maybe I’ll work for the Syrenka in Australia, or maybe I’ll sign up with Green Peace in London. Maybe I’ll study, and maybe I won’t.

  Suddenly my future seems wide open. Was that really me a few months ago, thinking I had to choose between Dad’s world or Mom’s? Between being a gofer in the faux royal world of movies, or being a drudge in suburbia? Neither of those worlds was mine. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can create my own world, or at least my own way in the world. And I know that I need love. I need to love what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and the people I’m doing it with.

  As I sit down at the computer, the boat shudders, and there’s a terrible crunching of ice against the hull — no wonder they call them growlers.

  I log on, and before checking my email, I do a news search on Logan Rush. What comes up first is a string of reviews from the opening of his play last week.

  Gold Rush! (Review)

  10 out of 10 stars to this latest Broadway revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus! Sir Nicholas Dwyer is exemplary as the questioning, cynical psychiatrist, but it is Logan Rush who stuns with his performance, delivering a virtuoso incarnation of the tortured, anguished, disturbed young man. Thirty seconds in and the audience forget Rush was ever the Beast, and see only the haunted victim in pain. A triumph!

  A Rush of Blood (Review)

  When did Logan Rush stop being a beast and become an actor? Before last night’s premiere performance of Equus at Broadway’s Paladium Theater, sceptical theatre-goers may have believed that they would struggle to buy the teen heartthrob as a twisted young soul in violent torment. On the contrary, having seen Rush’s raw and powerful performance, it will now be difficult to buy him as the good-hearted but gormless hero of the Beast saga when the newest movie in the franchise is released later this year.

  There are a dozen other reviews, and all of them sing Logan’s praises:

  “Logan Rush brings a fresh and disturbing interpretation …”

  “… a subtle and powerful portrayal of madness. In this sure-fire contender for a Tony award, Rush’s raw and elemental performance dazzles and disturbs …”

  “Rush is naked to the audience, even before he takes his clothes off …”

  My gaze snags on one news item a little different from the rest.

  Beauty’s Beasts!

  Britney Vaux, the star of the Beast saga who was previously rumoured to have been involved with Logan Rush, is rumoured to be dating her new co-star, the sizzlingly hot Macon Michonne. The two are due to star in Beast: Mars, in which the species-saving lead characters take their mission into outer space.

  The movie will be worth wat
ching just for the couple’s chemistry, say set insiders. Beast director, Cilla Swytch, would neither confirm nor deny rumours that Vaux was romantically involved with Michonne in real life.

  I’ve got to admire the way that cat always lands on her feet. I do a search for news from the last twenty-four hours.

  Rushing to Save

  Still riding the crest of his triumphantly received Broadway debut, Logan Rush today announced his latest plans, saying they have more to do with “getting real” than with acting.

  At a press conference in New York, Rush said he was proud to announce the launch of the Rush to Save Foundation — a non-profit organization that will raise awareness and much-needed funds for earth’s most endangered creatures.

  “We are finalizing our board and management structures, and will soon be choosing those worthy causes and environmental organizations who most need our help. And we’ll be asking my friends and colleagues in the industry to open their checkbooks.”

  To laughs from the assembled press and public, Rush added, “Personally, I have a soft spot for sharks,” alluding to his latest role in Beast: Stars.

  “Yes!” I punch the air in excited delight, and carry on reading.

  When asked what had sparked his desire to champion the cause of conservation, Rush replied: “Last year I met an extraordinary individual who saved my life, twice — once from drowning, and once from terminal stupidity. She taught me a lot about our planet, and its creatures, and helped me see that I could use my position and money to do something which leaves a positive legacy for our planet. She inspired me by showing me it’s possible to make radical changes. It’s easy, in Hollywood, to be so wrapped in fame and the trappings of celebrity that you stop seeing the bigger issues. I can confirm that a good kick up the butt cures that kind of myopia.”

  Wow. Just wow.

  I need to check my email — tell him how awesome he is. Plus, surely there’ll be a reply to my last email from him?

  At that moment, our siren blasts out — the signal for all hands on deck. I scramble upstairs and run with the others to the rail at the prow.

  A ship has passed through the ice field before us, widening a passage in the pack-ice. We sail silently on through the channel — through the thinning mist, and also through the red and brown horror of water stained with blood and crested with floating whale entrails. Nobody says anything. We all understand what must have happened. While we were out of action, the Koshitsu caught a whale — at least one, but maybe more — slaughtered it, and illegally dumped the unprofitable bits and pieces back into the ocean.

  Without a word, Captain Murphy returns to the bridge, and within minutes I hear the protest of the ship’s engines as they are pushed to the limits of their power. We strain ahead for long minutes, then suddenly, we pass out of the channel in the pack-ice and into a section of open sea. As if anchored to the ice field behind us, the mist peels back, and ahead of us we see the Koshitsu in all its ugly deadliness. The captain maintains full speed as we close the distance, and I’m sure that in his wrath he’ll ram us right into the whaler. But he brings us up parallel with the ship, keeping pace with it, a few hundred metres away.

  We’re so near the whaler that I can see the work being done on the deck — the slicing and carving of the vast carcass, the hacking of blubber, the sluicing of blood into the sea. We’re near enough to see their filthy, lying signs again.

  Internal examination of research subject in progress

  Weighing organs

  Collecting tissue samples

  The same female voice as before echoes over the Koshitsu’s PA system: “Warning! Warning! You are too close.”

  “And we’re about to get a lot closer, mate,” Libby says grimly, then erupts in a coughing fit which leaves her weak and wheezing. “Better suit up, mate,” she tells me.

  She’s got a bad dose of bronchitis and has nominated me to take her place on the mission. My ribs are still tender, but not so bad that I feel the need to sit out this fight, so when the second mate issues a command to ready the inflatable fast-boat for deployment, I put on a set of protective gear and join Tiny, Pete, and three others in the inflatable, along with a small mound of slippery packages and stink-bombs. Things are happening fast — too fast for me to get nervous.

  Manami (a forty-year-old lawyer from New York, who speaks Japanese fluently) heads to the bridge, preparing to address the whalers in their own language, and Captain Murphy wishes us luck. I tighten the fastenings on my helmet and goggles, and hold on with white knuckles to the swaying side of the Romying Free as we’re lowered over the edge of the Syrenka. When we touch down on the water, the female voice shrilly demands that our fast-boat turn back and stay away.

  “Warning! Warning! This is the Koshitsu. Stop your aggressive actions immediately.”

  Above us, Manami begins broadcasting loudly from our own PA system. I don’t understand Japanese, but I assume she’s demanding that the whaler cease its illegal slaughter.

  Then a piercing siren — ear-splittingly loud — screams across to us from the whaler.

  “They’ve fired up the LRAD,” Mike shouts in my ear.

  I nod. “They’re trying to silence us.”

  I’ve been told about the Long Range Acoustic Devices that the whalers sometimes used as deterrents, but I never imagined how distracting and painful the deafening, pulsing noise could be.

  Tiny fires up the powerful engines of the fast-boat, and then we’re zooming off at full speed, directly at the whaler. We draw up alongside the Koshitsu, start hurling bombs, and are immediately battered by the powerful jets of the water cannons. One torrent blows my goggles right off, flattens me on the bottom of the boat, and pins me there with a pummelling stream of freezing water. My ribs scream a painful protest as the others cheer — one of Tiny’s missiles has hit the deck right where a whale carcass is being butchered.

  After only a few minutes of exchanging missiles for blasts of water, we peel away from the large ship, because tainting the deck is not the primary goal of today’s exercise. We have a new game plan — to cripple the ship by prop-fouling it. That’s what Logan’s floating rope is for — to throw in front of the whaler’s prow in the hope that they sail over it and get it tangled in their propeller.

  Gasping for breath and holding my aching side, I clamber back into a seat. It’s entirely likely I’ll die soon — if not from drowning then from hypothermia.

  Captain Murphy’s commands crackle through the static of the walkie-talkie that connects him to the fast-boat. “Romying Free, you are free to deploy. Good luck!”

  “Copy that,” Tiny replies.

  We pull ahead of the Koshitsu, and along with the others, I stand up, bracing myself against the lurches and jolts of the bouncing craft. We each grab a section of the blue rope. As we fly over the waves cresting ahead of the whaler, Tiny shouts out, “On three, two, one … Go!” We fling the rope out onto the ocean, across the path of the ship.

  “Rope deployed!” Tiny yells into the walkie-talkie.

  We did it! I hear cheers from the Syrenka sounding out across the water. But then Pete curses and I see that the Koshitsu is still ploughing on at full speed, veering away from the red buoys of the floating rope bobbing and swaying in its wake. We all groan in disappointment.

  “Operation unsuccessful. Repeat, operation unsuccessful. Over.” Tiny’s voice is flat with dejection.

  “Copy that,” Captain Murphy replies.

  There’s a moment of blissful quiet when the alarms and screeching voices and walkie-talkies all stay silent. I sigh. We tried so hard! We’re fighting the good fight. Couldn’t the universe be on our side for a change?

  We rock on the waves, staring at our feet, nodding when Manami’s voice, soft and consoling, tells us, “Never mind guys. You win some, you lose some.”

  But then Captain Murphy’s voice growls out, “True, but I’m not losing this one. Again!”

  “Again?” Tiny asks.

  “Yes, try ag
ain! What do you think this is? A game?” Captain Murphy roars. “We don’t give up after one failure. This is worth fighting for. Again, I say!”

  “Go, Tiny!” I scream, squirming in my seat.

  Tiny turns our craft and we retrace out course, retrieving the rope from the water and coiling it back, ready to be deployed. Then we start our top-speed pursuit of the Koshitsu, closing the distance between us with every passing minute until we draw ahead of its prow.

  “At your command, Captain,” Tiny shouts.

  “Go! Go, go, go!” Murphy commands.

  The inflatable kicks up an arc of water as it maxes out its engines, curving across the water towards our mammoth prey. We streak directly at the speeding juggernaut, hurtling into the white water right under the prow.

  My heart hammers. If I could get a breath, I’d scream, because we’re too close. We’ll be crushed!

  But a fraction of a second later, Tiny swerves our boat. We cross right beneath the path of the ship, hurling out the rope, and then we’re on the other side, with the floating red buoys trailing out behind us.

  “Rope deployed. They’re going over it! It’s gone under the ship!”

  Too nervous to get our hopes up this time, we watch and wait in frozen trepidation. The Koshitsu sails on, but no buoys bob up in her wake. Then a noise echoes across the water between us — a sound like the groaning, squealing cries of a dying animal. The Koshitsu slows. It sways on its keel, and with a last gnashing, mechanical bellow, it careens to a juddering halt.

  And just like that, it’s over.

  We scream with joy, leap up and down, slap each other’s backs, high-five our gloved hands, and wipe frosty tears from our eyes.

  The Koshitsu is crippled. Below the water, Logan’s rope is tangled around the blades and shafts of its propeller, seizing up the propulsion mechanism and disabling the engine. The harpoon vessels will no longer hunt if they have no mother ship on which to store their poached prey, so the floating abattoir will need to be towed all the way back to Tokyo, with its crew shamed and its cavernous holds almost empty. There will be no more whaling in the Antarctic this season.