Death of a Whaler

by Nerida Newton

  Flinch knocks on the wall to the side of the door. Hurts his knuckles, makes little sound.

  ‘Hello there,’ he calls in through the screen.

  There is no answer.

  He tries to make out what lies behind the screen, but all he can see is a dark hallway. An umbrella stand with a woman’s dress hat hanging from it, a cardboard box with a white label on the side. In the next doorway, into what he assumes is the living room, streamers of coloured plastic hang fluttering in the breeze. To keep flies out, he gathers. It gives the place the feeling of a deserted carnival. He can’t see what is beyond them.

  He waits a while at the door before making his way back down the ramp. He stands looking at the house for a minute or two, and then decides to wander around to the back, in case someone is outside. The backyard is barren of any grass, just packed earth and, at one edge, taking advantage of a leaky garden tap, a sprawling lantana bush. There’s a twisted clothes line, cords snapped and trailing on the ground. Another engine, tipped on its side, the metal glinting in the sunlight where it hasn’t rusted. The sour smell of the lantana plant carried to him on the breeze. This isn’t what he wanted for Nate. Not this place for his childhood. He had wished for him afternoon games of cricket, school friends who teased and laughed and swam in watering holes, a kitchen that smelt of roasting chook and apple tarts. A lush green backyard littered with toy trucks and plastic soldiers that sank into the lawn, footballs and a mother who tended scraped knees with the sting of Betadine, a kiss and a band-aid. He doesn’t know why he dreamt these things up for Nate.

  Behind him, a door clicks and he sees a shadow recede up a hallway. The steps to the back veranda are rickety but still there and he makes his way up them, expecting them to splinter. There is a screen door here, too, the screen torn in one corner, flopped over itself as if drooping in the heat.

  ‘Is anyone home?’ Flinch calls into the cool dark inside of the house.

  ‘Coming.’ A woman’s voice. It makes Flinch catch his breath.

  He hears her talking to someone, furniture being scraped across a hard floor, a man’s raised voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  She hovers in the shadow just inside. She is in a dressing gown. Greying hair in a bun. She is thin, like Nate; he can see her collarbone protruding below a wrinkled neck, and her fingers, all knuckle. In the mother he can see Nate’s jittery, bird-like demeanour, the fusion of nerves and expectations. It’s harder in her, though, more like sinew, as if she has been whittled down to pure anxiety.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Could I come inside for a moment? I have some news for you.’

  She moves closer to the door.

  ‘We don’t need any religion.’ She is fiddling with the top button of her dressing gown. It is hanging from a thread, about to snap off.

  ‘Oh … no, that’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘We won’t buy anything. And we don’t have money or valuables here either.’

  ‘I just have some news to tell you,’ says Flinch, desperate. He doesn’t want to say what he has to say out here, separated from her by the screen, exposed and dusty and sweating in the heat.

  The woman shrugs and steps back.

  ‘Well, alright.’ She opens the door and it swings inwards on one hinge.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Flinch.

  She turns her back on him and wanders down the hall into the living room and he follows. He sits on the couch, sinking into it and feeling a broken spring under his thigh. Yellowing lace doilies cover the headrests. On the wall, three chipped china ducks in decreasing sizes fly east. There are only a few pieces of furniture in the room. A rocking chair stacked with teddy bears. A coffee table with plastic legs and a fake wood veneer. Kewpie dolls in pink mesh tutus, the kind Flinch has seen dangling from sticks at fetes and fairs, line the windowsill. On the mantelpiece, a broken model plane and a candlestick, a few framed photos. The room is airless and congested. It smells to Flinch of urine and musty piles of newspapers. He has a sense of things trapped. The still ducks on the wall. Dust suspended in the air where the sun cuts to the floor with a beam.

  ‘Do you want a cuppa? Was making one anyway.’ The woman is hovering near him.

  ‘Yes, that would be very nice.’

  ‘How do you have it?’

  ‘White with one.’ The woman wanders back to the kitchen.

  ‘Thank you,’ he calls after her.

  Flinch gets up to take a closer look at the photos on the mantelpiece. One photo is of the finish of a horse race. The horse coming second has been circled with red pen. Underneath the photo the caption, 1st Mighty High, 2nd Stormin’ In, 3rd Janey’s Surprise, Mt Isa Country Cup, 10th October 1964. Next to that, a photo of Nate. He’s only about eight years old, but Flinch recognises him straight away, the long legs with protruding knees, the chin jutting out and up at a defiant angle. Squinting straight into the sun. There’s another one of a younger Nate, nursing a toddler, a small girl, her hair in tiny curled blonde pigtails.

  ‘My children,’ says the woman. She takes a seat in a worn, pilled armchair that groans when she leans back. Her dressing gown, faded paisley, slips apart to reveal flaky, mottled calves and white socks under ruby-red slippers. She smells like mothballs and potpourri. He suspects she wears this every day. Even in the heat. She has placed Flinch’s tea on the coffee table.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’

  Flinch clears his throat. He sits perched on the couch. He wishes he could be closer for this, be in reach of her hand, ready with a handkerchief.

  A dull buzz sounds from the bedroom. The woman sighs.

  ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Excuse me.’

  She walks up the hallway, the hard soles of her slippers making a clacking noise on the floorboards. The buzzing stops. She returns a moment later.

  ‘My husband,’ she says. ‘Has Alzheimer’s. Not long to go, they reckon. But he didn’t want to die in the hospital. The nurses wouldn’t let him have even a nip of booze in there.’ She chuckles.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Flinch.

  ‘What can you do?’ She shrugs. He can read no emotion on her.

  ‘What … what about your children?’ He doesn’t know how he will tell her now, here in this place where things seem forever stagnant, the dying husband in the bedroom up the hall.

  ‘Oh, they’re fine, I guess. Haven’t seen either for a long time.’

  Flinch swallows but his throat and mouth remain dry. Thinks of the letter the priest said he would write and wonders if he had bothered sending it — or, if he did, who mistakenly received it, who opened it then shrugged it all off as a bad joke.

  ‘Those kids knew how to take care of themselves.’

  She’s not looking at him. She’s gazing out the window, towards the lantana.

  She sighs. It seems to come from some place so deep within her that Flinch is worried that exhaling will exhaust her.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘The past is the past. Can’t do anything about it, can you? There’s no point trying to change things now.’

  ‘No,’he says, though he knows itwasn’t a question.

  ‘No,’ the woman repeats. Nods towards the photograph of the children. ‘Nate knew that anyway. Elly had other ideas.’

  Elly. Eleanor.

  ‘His sister,’ Flinch says out loud, before he can stop himself. His hand starts to shake and his teacup rattles against the saucer so hard that he fears it may chip, but he can’t stop himself. He puts it down on the coffee table. Stares at the photo, the children clutching each other. Nate’s arm around the girl’s waist. The forced grins for the camera. Not happy children, he can see that.

  ‘What do you want?’ The mother. She is looking at him with palpable suspicion. Says it almost in anger, turning on him. He realises he has been sitting in silence for one moment too long.

  ‘Oh,’ says Flinch. The confession now seems all wrong, the woman as sharp and brittle as dried bone. �
��I was just wondering, have you, if you, do you need insurance?’

  The woman bursts out laughing, spits her tea into her saucer.

  ‘What would we insure? Look around you, son.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you.’ He is desperate to leave now. The atmosphere of the house has settled upon him like an itch that he cannot scratch.

  ‘No problem. Nice to have a visitor for a change.’ It’s sarcasm, perhaps, but Flinch can’t decide.

  He hurries down the hallway.

  ‘You didn’t bring a briefcase,’ the woman yells after him from the living room. ‘They usually bring a briefcase. Who are you? What do you want?’

  The screen door slams shut behind him. He waits for the sound of her slippers up the hallway, pursuing him, but she does not.

  He needs to double over outside the house to catch his breath, leans against a wall. Through the open window nearby he can hear the buzzer sound, then snatches of a conversation.

  ‘Was it him?’ An old man’s voice, out of breath, the pain sounding like a blade stuck in his throat.

  ‘It wasn’t him, you delirious fool,’ the woman replies. ‘It will never be him. You had your chance. Go to sleep.’

  The man whimpers in short wet breaths, as a child might.

  On the way back to Mt Isa, Flinch pushes the Datsun as fast as he can make it go. It shudders over the gravel, makes crackling noises, small stones fly up to hit the underside. Just outside of town he takes a bend at speed and, before he can brake, hits a kangaroo that is bounding lazily across the road in front of him. There’s a loud dull thud and the Datsun is launched over the body of the animal as if it were as solid as a speed bump. The car spins out of control on the gravel and comes to rest inches from a tree. Flinch sits shaking in the front seat until he notices that half an hour has passed. He turns the key in the ignition and, to his relief, the Datsun starts. He drives slowly back to the site of the accident, stalls the car twice because his legs are still wobbly, his hands sweaty on the wheel.

  The animal is lying by the side of the road. Flinch gets out, leaves the car door open, the engine idling in neutral. He stumbles over to the kangaroo. Its body is intact; its back legs, though, are squashed and bloodied. It’s still warm, breathing in and out slowly, its eyelids half closed, long dark lashes covering its eyes. Blood trickles from its nostrils. Flinch looks around for a large rock, lifts it above his head and throws it down hard on the kangaroo’s skull. The animal jolts and then it is still. The ribcage ceases to rise and fall. Flinch sits down next to it, knees up to save his thighs from burning on the gravel, and sobs into the crook of his elbow.

  NATE

  Breathing becomes difficult but I know not to panic. Many times, swimming in the surf, I’ve been held under water by the pressure of a wave. As soon as I overcame the urge to struggle, the wave would inevitably disgorge me nearer to shore. But that’s not where I learnt to control myself.

  Even now, I can feel the exact pressure of his hands around my neck, smell the foul stench of the whisky as he spat threats into my face.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  I was the distraction so I had to stand still and take it. If I fought him off, and God only knows I could by then, such was the strength of the anger he’d nurtured in me, he’d go for someone weaker. He wanted to dominate. Mum knew to crumple in a corner and take the odd kick up her skirt or slap around the head with little more than a whimper.

  Eleanor fought back.

  The first time he struck her, she was only twelve. He was very sorry, he said. He cried for days after he sobered up. When he begged her, Eleanor sat on his lap and let him dampen the shoulder of her school blouse with his tears and regret. Never again, he said. He realised, he said, that he was out of control. He had a problem.

  He was good for about a month afterwards. All of us crept about the house as if it were a minefield, wondering when the next bomb would detonate, what would set him off. When Mum dropped a teacup and it smashed on the kitchen floor, we froze. ‘Better clean that up,’ my father said, without putting down his paper. This subdued reaction was discussed at length in the lantana.

  But things were back to normal again after payday.

  He didn’t go for Eleanor often, but it was when I thought he was going to that I stepped in, took him on. Let him win.

  Our focus became clearer; we plotted our escape with extravagant plans mapped out on pieces of butcher’s paper and in the back pages of school exercise books.

  Mum couldn’t wait that long. One afternoon, before he came home, she told us to get our toothbrushes and ushered us down the street. We slept that night in the church in town, stretched out on mattresses underneath the pews. The church had stained-glass windows and one depicted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. A lamb was asleep next to a lion. Birds flew in a dazzling blue sky. In the background, a green snake was wrapped around an apple tree. When the sun rose the next morning, the window lit up and coloured reflections covered our bare legs like a quilt.

  ‘That’s where I want to live,’ said Eleanor.

  That same morning, my father was waiting outside the church in his Sunday best.

  ‘Best come home, eh, love?’ he said.

  Mum heard the threat and nodded.

  ‘Are you sure, dear?’ said the minister’s wife.

  ‘I just needed a little break,’ said my mother.

  ‘If you need us again…’

  ‘They won’t,’ my father answered.

  Breathe.

  Hang in there, be brave, someone is telling me. Empty words, hollow words, like wind pipes. Just statements through which to blow noise so that there isn’t silence. Be brave.

  I’d like to say that I am, but I know the truth. If I was brave I would’ve killed him. But instead I left. Mum and Eleanor stood on the steps crying and hugging. My father didn’t come outside when my mate’s truck pulled up to take me into town. I saw his silhouette in the living-room window as we drove off.

  I left Eleanor my pocket knife and some of my savings. I promised to write.

  I took jobs wherever I could. Picked fruit. Loaded boxes off trucks and onto boats at the wharf. Chucked bins onto garbage trucks. Cleared empty beer glasses from tables. Shot wild pigs and culled kangaroos. And somehow ended up here. Butchering whales.

  There was a girl in one of the towns. I moved on before it got too serious. I was my father’s son, after all, and I didn’t want to love somebody so much that I would end up hurting them. I wish I could remember her name now.

  Blood dribbles into my ear and fills the cavity. I think it’s coming from my mouth. I can no longer hear what they’re saying to me.

  I sent Eleanor almost half of every pay packet I earned during that time. More than anything I wanted her to escape too. I knew I would never be free of our childhood. I can kill a whale with little remorse, but seeing a bruise on a woman still makes my stomach turn. Eleanor has a chance, though. She could start again, make a place for herself. Build herself a whole new world.

  Colour has leaked from my world. I am the black and white photograph of myself that my father took when I was seven. Grazed knees, long socks, missing teeth, a rugby ball under one arm. Hair the texture of a toilet brush, spiked thick and straight despite a palmful of Brylcreem and a wet comb. Squinting into the solid afternoon glare.

  The whale is dead. Her massive pectoral fin is flipped upright, extended, so that I can see its pure white underside. It looks like the wing of an angel.

  Somewhere around me, someone is reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over.

  But this is what I know by heart. Words from a letter I kept folded in a shirt pocket and read nightly, like a vigil.

  Dear Nate,

  Well, darl, hope this letter finds you well. Would like to say things have changed around here but you probably already know they haven’t much. I am out of the house more, have a job at the service station, that one on the way out of town. Just work behind the hot food counter serving sa
usage rolls etc to truckies. The Old Bastard thinks I am there every day after school but really I am there for two afternoons and Saturday morn and the other days I go to the library to study. That was the plan, wasn’t it, get the hell out of here and uni looks like the way to go. So far am doing really well at Gr 11 biology and chemistry so think I’ll apply for vet science tho’ don’t know if I could put down someone’s dog but guess that’s life isn’t it and there’d be good things as well like healing wild animals etc.

  Well had better go. Mum would say hello I’m sure, she is very distressed that she doesn’t know where you are and talks about you quite a bit and I say you are probably alright but don’t want to give away that I know about this p. o. box or anything. The Old Bastard isn’t well these days, seems to be losing his edge. Either way it makes him easier to ignore when he’s too tired to start anything. Probably rotting from the inside out.

  My brother I love you and I miss you and I will come and join you one day soon, just be sure to keep letting me know where you are. I haven’t heard from you for a while but you are probably out having adventures either way I hope this letter gets to you.

  All my love,

  Eleanor. XX

  Well, darl

  Thy kingdom come

  Thy will be done

  That was the plan, wasn’t it

  On earth as it is in heaven

  Give us this day our daily bread

  Serving sausage rolls etc to truckies

  And deliver us from evil

  For thine is the kingdom

  My brother I love you and I miss you and I will come and

  join you

  The power and the glory

  Either way I hope this letter gets to you

  Forever and ever, Amen.

  Eleanor.

  TWELVE

  Flinch drops the car back in Mt Isa and returns the keys. The girl comes out to inspect it.

  ‘Bit of stone damage,’ she says. Flinch nods. She doesn’t notice the blood splattered along the chassis. She probably thinks it is mud. He doesn’t mention it.