The Stranding

by Karen Viggers

  ‘Who bought the painting?’ Lex asked. ‘That sunset one with the moon over the water.’

  She glanced sideways at him. ‘Actually, I don’t know who bought it. I didn’t ask.’

  ‘You know I liked it. You could have saved it for me.’

  ‘I wanted to let it go. I don’t need it anymore.’

  ‘But I liked it.’

  ‘It’s my past. And I needed to let it go.’

  He lapsed into silence. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Here he was feeling anxious and unsure around her. He wanted to feel confident, positive, hopeful, but he had forgotten how to be at ease with her. The exhibition and all this time without seeing her had shaken him.

  ‘I’m glad things are going well for you,’ he said after a while.

  She smiled across at him. ‘I can’t believe it’s so good. These commissions Alexander has lined up for me might just generate enough money to keep me going. That means I may not have to do the markets anymore. It’s the first positive break I’ve had in my life.’

  ‘Really? You’ve had to wait thirty-three years for a positive break?’

  She glanced at him then stared back out at the road. When she spoke again her voice was slow and soft. ‘Actually, I did have one other break. But I miscarried.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You don’t have to be. I can deal with it now.’ She was trying to be brave, but her cheeks were flushed and there was a tight edge to her voice. ‘It wasn’t as big as your loss,’ she said.

  ‘It was just as important.’ Lex reached out a hand hesitantly and placed it on her knee. Even in the dim early light, he thought he saw tears flash in her eyes.

  ‘Please don’t be nice,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel like I have to be strong.’

  She drove slowly through a heavy fog patch. ‘I was pregnant when I painted that painting you liked. That’s why I didn’t want you to have it. I don’t want it in my life.’

  She flushed nervously and glanced at him sideways, as if she had said something significant. Then she drifted into silence, driving on autopilot. Lex studied her profile carefully. What was she saying to him? That she couldn’t have both him and the painting in her life? Did that mean she was saying she wanted him? His hand was still on her knee. She hadn’t brushed it off.

  The highway curved around a lake and through a stand of spotted gum. The fog was wet and the wind heaved in the tops of the trees. Lex could feel the Kombi being buffeted by the occasional blast. They must have driven thirty minutes south when they turned off onto a sealed road that wound through cleared farmland and down over a bridge spanning a stream. Then the road climbed a little, heading towards the coast through the green pastured landscape. On a rise, they turned onto a gravel road that soon crossed a cattle grid and deteriorated into a grassy track.

  There were three gates to open. Lex did gate duty between coffee sips, leaving his cup inside the car and pushing the Kombi door out into the snatching winds. Patches of mist curled over him as he struggled with the third gate. The air was wet on his face and his fingers were stiff working with the cold hard wire. He was already damp and shivering when he clambered back into the van. But Callista smiled at him across the space between them, and that was enough for now. She clunked the Kombi back into gear and drove on.

  The track eased around a hilltop, past cows resting beneath a tree, and then swung over a ridgeline to finish beside a tiny cemetery overlooking a wild ocean beach. Callista parked the Kombi across the hill just below the cluster of weather-worn headstones and they sat looking out while thick sheets of mist rolled in from the sea.

  Lex shivered. ‘What is this place? A burial ground for madmen?’

  ‘I love it.’ Callista’s face was flushed bright. ‘Hardly anyone comes here. Sometimes, when you stand on this hill, there’s so much fog it’s like being in heaven.’

  ‘Or hell. It looks miserable out there.’

  ‘You can stay here if you like. I’m going for a walk.’

  She tugged her woollen hat and raincoat from beneath Lex’s things on the back seat. He watched her wriggle into her coat behind the steering wheel and pull her beanie down on her head.

  ‘You coming or not?’ she asked.

  He looked at the shifting mists for a moment. ‘I’m out of bed. I might as well come.’

  Out of the Kombi he yanked his coat on, fighting with the winds. ‘Okay, let’s do it then,’ he said, snugging the hood onto his head and ramming his hands into his pockets.

  Heads down, they hunched into the wind and skidded down a steep sandy path diving off the edge of the grass down into the dunes. Curtains of sea mist slid up over them and dampened their faces. Just before they broke out onto the beach there was a pocket of quiet in a hollow behind the last dune. Lex wiped the wet from his nose and lips with an old hanky he found screwed up in one of his pockets.

  ‘Wild, isn’t it?’ Callista’s cheeks were red and her eyes fizzing.

  ‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘We’ll be sandblasted out there.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s blowing a gale up on the hill, and then you get down on the beach and it’s dead quiet.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  He took her hand and they strained up over the last dune.

  Out on the beach, the wind fetched them. It swirled and then slung into their faces, drawing tears. Lex glanced down the beach, trying to feel Callista’s passion for the place. But it was desolate and all he could muster was an empty reluctance. It was the most godforsaken beach he had ever seen. The sea battered at the sand like a great foaming beast and hunks of seaweed were strewn thickly all the way from the water’s edge to the high tide mark just below the dunes. Gusts of wind threw angry blasts of sand against their coats.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ he suggested. ‘We can light a fire at my place and open a bottle of champagne.’

  Callista shook her head. ‘No, you drank enough champagne at the opening. And this suits my mood today. Just give me fifteen minutes.’ She hooked his arm and pulled him into the blast.

  The sea gushed high up onto the beach, reefing at the sand. They had to walk in the soft upper margins of the beach where all the sea rubbish had been deposited—chunks of tangled fishing nets, faded plastic bottles, broken buoys, dried-out mutton-bird carcasses, broken cuttlefish floats, mounds of seaweed. It was heavy walking. They battled down the beach, leaning into the wind, the sand whipping across their legs.

  Further down, they passed a dune-locked lagoon, ruffled to a light chop. Intermittent sheets of sea mist made it difficult to see and the sand kept kicking up in the fitful wind, forcing them to screen their faces. Lex pulled back a little on Callista’s arm.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, stopping and craning down the beach. She unhooked her left arm to shield her face from the onshore wind barrage. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed. ‘There’s something down there on the beach. Way down. Can you see it?’

  Lex wiped away salt-stung tears with a wet wrist and peered through the fog. There was something down there, but he couldn’t make out what it was and it looked a long way to walk in this awful weather.

  ‘Just some rocks,’ he said.

  ‘No, it doesn’t look right. Let’s go a bit further.’

  He shrugged and pressed forward with her again. The mist thickened to drizzle and they didn’t bother to look up for several minutes. Callista stopped again as a wind gust picked up the curtain of drizzle and cleared the beach briefly.

  ‘I think it might be a whale,’ she said.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘It’s probably dead. Washed up in these winds.’

  ‘Let’s go back,’ Lex said. ‘That bottle of champagne’s calling.’

  ‘No, we’d better check first.’ Callista’s jaw and her hold on Lex’s arm were firm. ‘It might have been washed in last night. It could be alive.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She pushed on down the beach, bu
t Lex didn’t want to go. He had a bad feeling about it. Something to do with her determination and the fact that it might be a stranded whale. There was a collision happening in his brain, but he gave in and caught up, striding along with her, head tucked down into the wind. The mist sank over them again, wet and cold. For a while they could barely see more than ten metres in front of them. Then the wind swept the mist up and flicked it over the dunes.

  They were much closer now. And it did look like a whale. A humped shape wedged in the sand, half-slumped in the water with waves riding over it. Shiny and black. Huge. Lex saw its tail rise slightly out of the water. Damn. It was alive.

  Callista strained into a run, dropping Lex’s arm and labouring through the wet sand, but it was impossible to move quickly. As they approached, the whale lifted its tail flukes and slammed them down agitatedly. Water went everywhere. Poor bastard, Lex thought. It’s trying to get away.

  He stopped as the whale jolted a pectoral flipper in the air, waved it wildly then dropped it with a slap against its side.

  ‘Don’t get too close,’ he yelled, stepping back and lapsing to shocked silence.

  The whale was a spectacular animal, enormous. Lex was awed by its size. He was appalled by the hunched shape of it, swamped in the sand. From head to tail it must have been close to ten metres, slick and black on the back, stark white under the belly and jaw. It was lying on its side, head towards the beach, and he could see the great pleat-like grooves running from beneath its lower jaw down its chest and belly. He had seen all this before, swimming with the whales off the Point, but never like this. It was wrong to see a whale this way. Its body seemed twisted somehow, collapsed on itself. In the water they were rounded and buoyant.

  He squatted, his heart pounding, wondering if there was something they could do to ease its breathing. But he couldn’t think of anything. He studied the knobbles that studded the whale’s great flat head and jawline, then he moved even further back as it raised its pectoral flipper again, flashing the white underside briefly before slapping it down. The whole scene was surreal. They shouldn’t be here. The whale shouldn’t be here. The poor bugger, it was fighting to breathe again. He saw its body wall rise and slump as air whooshed out through the blowhole.

  ‘What can we do?’ Callista walked wide around the whale to its other side. She was clasping her hands and twisting them anxiously. ‘Oh, I can see its eye,’ she called. ‘Poor thing.’ She walked back to Lex, distressed. ‘Do you think it can be moved?’

  ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘It’s so bloody enormous.’

  He watched the whale trying to suck in another breath. It made a wheezing sound through its blowhole and its entire body seemed to heave with the effort. He was horrified. The poor thing was suffocating and they were powerless to help it.

  ‘Dad knows about this stuff,’ Callista said. ‘We’ll have to go and get him.’

  She paused, looking with dismay over the long stretch of the whale’s back. Lex watched her face, feeling dread slither beneath his skin. His heart tripped. He knew what was going to happen. He could see it all before him.

  ‘Could you go?’ she said. ‘I think I should stay here.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ He reached anxiously for her arm. ‘We need to talk about this.’

  She looked at him with blank incomprehension. ‘It’s decided,’ she said. ‘You go, I’ll stay.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  Confused, she pushed aside a strand of wet hair that had escaped her beanie. ‘What are you talking about then?’

  ‘We need to talk this through,’ he insisted.

  ‘Talk what through?’

  ‘We need to discuss what we’re going to do.’

  ‘We need to get help.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re not hearing me. We need to discuss our options.’

  Callista had been stamping around in the sand. She stopped and looked at him, eyes wide with distress. ‘Options? What do you mean, options?’

  His heart rolled with angst. ‘The first option is to go and get help.’

  She stared at him. ‘There’s another?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Breathing hard, she looked back at the whale.

  ‘Have you been to a stranding before?’ he asked.

  ‘No, have you?’

  ‘I know a bit about what happens.’

  Her tension cracked into laughter. ‘What, from reading novels, from movies?’

  ‘From my past life in radio. I did a few stories on strandings. Some interviews with biologists.’

  ‘And that makes you an expert on whales?’ She glanced at him wildly, her disbelief escalating.

  He reached for her arm. ‘Do you know what’s going to happen when we go back into town and call your dad and National Parks?’

  ‘We’ll stop wasting time and get this rescue happening, that’s what.’

  ‘You think it’s going to be that straightforward? We bring in the rescue team, roll the whale back into the water and everyone lives happily ever after?’

  Callista was outraged. ‘You’re being patronising.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘Look how big it is. It’s going to take something more than the tide to shift it. They’ll need to use heavy machinery and that’s going to be stressful. There’ll be people everywhere, machinery, lots of noise. And what’s going to happen in the end? It’ll probably die. Not to mention the rush there’s going to be on this place. A whole horde of lunatics making life difficult. It’s going to be awful. Do you understand?’

  She frowned at him, disbelieving and cross. ‘What’s the second option then? I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘The second option is to walk away and let the whale die in peace.’

  She glanced at the whale then turned to him, eyes like daggers. ‘You call this peace? Dying of suffocation?’

  ‘If we get a rescue happening, it isn’t going to die peacefully.’

  ‘It might not die!’ she yelled. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that a rescue might be possible?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t kid yourself. It’s delusion.’

  For a long moment, Callista stared at him, anger making her body stiff. ‘I thought you’d have more compassion,’ she said, her voice tight, ‘after your daughter.’

  It was the lowest possible blow. Lex was so stunned he almost staggered. What was this woman doing? Did she have any idea what she’d just said? And how completely she had crossed the line?

  ‘This has nothing to do with Isabel,’ he said, livid.

  Callista paled and stepped back, as if afraid he might strike her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But this is about life and death too, isn’t it?’

  He stared at her, still not quite recovered. She clearly had no idea how much she had winded him. ‘This is about pain and suffering,’ he said, jaw tense with anger. ‘And this is an animal.’

  ‘You think that makes its suffering any less?’

  ‘No. But we could make it worse.’

  ‘This whale is alive, Lex, and I’m not going to walk away. It’s stranded on one of my beaches and I refuse to stand here arguing about what to do. For God’s sake, neither of us knows anything about whale strandings. Let’s get the experts in. People who know about whales. Some do survive, you know.’

  He was too battered to fight further. Callista was crazy hell-bent on rescue, and she wouldn’t listen to what he was trying to tell her. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go along with it. But are you sure that’s what you want? Even if the experts say it’s going to die, the public will expect a rescue effort. They won’t allow the whale to be euthanased.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything inhumane,’ she insisted.

  ‘I’m glad you’re confident of that. Because I’m not.’

  There was a determined wildness in her eyes. ‘It’s about giving the whale a chance.’

  Lex gave up. ‘Okay then. I’m going.’
/>   The drizzle closed in again, pattering on their raincoats.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Call Parks.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She turned away from him and started walking towards the whale. Lex watched her go. In the seeping grey mist she looked small and cold and lonely. He hesitated a moment, delaying the immensity of his decision to help her in this task. It didn’t sit easily with him. And he was arrested too by an odd mix of concern, confusion and fear for her. He wanted to tell her not to try anything stupid, not to get too close, that she could be injured, that he cared about her. But he said nothing and started powering back up the beach.

  As soon as Lex was lost in the drizzle, Callista felt isolation thicken around her. Turning her back to the weather, she tugged her coat-hood over her beanie and sat in the wet sand about ten metres from the whale, just beyond the foaming lick of the tide. There was time now for that rapid surge of anger and panic to subside and slip out with the backwash of the waves.

  She was embarrassed she had let slip that comment about Isabel. It had been a terrible insensitivity. No wonder Lex had been upset. Despite her shock and angst about the whale, she had gone a step too far. And the more she considered it, the less she felt he would be able to forgive her. What a shame they hadn’t been able to come to some sort of understanding before things had deteriorated so far. She realised there was as much distance between them now as there had ever been. It was hopeless. One step forward, two steps back. Would they never find a way to get it together?

  Perhaps she ought to let it go.

  Miserable, she examined the slumped mass of the whale. It looked so wrong hunched on the beach with the waves sloshing around it. So enormous and heavy, its body skewed and partly bogged in the sand. It was a humpback whale. That much she knew. Living on the coast all her life, it was impossible not to know humpbacks. Back when she was a kid, sighting a humpback from Grandpa’s house at the Point had been a rare event. Now sightings were part of a visit to the beach, at the right times of year.

  She closed her eyes and folded herself inside her coat. No, you couldn’t be a Wallace without knowing whales. It was heritage. Whales and the sea had coloured her childhood. Grandpa made sure of that, threading his whaling stories through her early days at the Point so they were as familiar as the winds that raked the heath on the headland. She remembered his faraway look when he searched the horizon for signs of whales, pipe clamped between his teeth. He had never talked about killing whales, but dwelled instead on tales of epic chases, following great bold whales through wild southern seas. He had so entranced them with his tales they felt like they were there with him, floundering around on deck in stormy weather trying to keep sight of a pod.