‘Dad,’ she called. ‘Isn’t it great!’
Jimmy looked up. His eyes were hollow.
‘The whale,’ Callista said. ‘Aren’t you pleased about it?’
Jimmy threw another coil of rope. ‘The whale isn’t going to make it, Callie. Taylor couldn’t tell the crowd, but the poor bugger hasn’t a hope in hell. Started bleeding from the blowhole. Erratic breathing. And he couldn’t float straight. Kept wallowing onto his side and trying to correct in time for the next breath.’
‘There’s a chance though, isn’t there?’
Jimmy cast another coil of the heavy rope. He stood up a moment with his hands supporting the small of his back and stretched, studying Callista. ‘You look awful, girl.’
‘I feel terrible.’
He gestured out to sea. ‘They’ll follow him out another kilometre or so then they’ll turn back. When they drop the vet off, I’m going to send you out to the boat in the Zodiac. Jordi’ll take you home. I’ll be here for hours yet. Have to pack away.’
He finished coiling the rope. ‘Is Lex still around?’ he asked.
‘Somewhere.’
‘Good, we’ll need his muscles. The crowd will disperse pretty quick now. Nothing to hold them here. Packing up isn’t half as romantic as rescue.’
‘There’s nothing romantic about whale rescue.’
‘You learned something.’
‘You’ve left me with nothing positive to take home.’
‘Would you have believed me if I put on a smile?’
It was eerie riding the Zodiac out to Jordi in the dark. As they left the floodlit shore, the Zodiac operator gave Callista a spotlight to help him navigate through the incoming waves. Then he asked her to extinguish it and they used the soft light emanating from the boat to find their way over the swell towards it. Jordi hauled her aboard, and waved to the operator who pulled away and zipped off to the shark-cat.
Jordi said nothing, of course. In his brief glance she saw he had knowledge he didn’t want to share and she let him keep it. What Jimmy had told her had been enough. Jordi waved her to a seat but she walked past it to the bow and stood there as he swung the boat seawards and set a course to take them out around the headland. Way out there she could see the periodic blinking of the beacon to guide them out from the rocks. For a while she looked down into the water and followed the rhythmic surge of white froth as the bow ploughed through the swell, slicing the black water.
Some distance out a squall closed in. Rain sluiced across Callista’s face and Jordi called her to cover, but still she stayed out there. Somehow the punishment of the weather seemed fitting and she wanted to ride through it, even though it was irrational. Her face chilled and the cold rain was like needles on her skin. Jordi called again. But this pain was something that she needed. She couldn’t explain why. She stayed out there, feeling the rain run under her hood and down inside her coat.
The squall ended as quickly as it began. Suddenly she was in clear night again, watching the dim beams of the boat illuminating the water beyond the bow. She realised she had lost the beacon in the squall, because suddenly there it was, blinking out of the blackness. It was like life really. The truth was always there, only you lost it sometimes in the murk of your private storms. It took major events for you to catch sight of it again. And then there were moments of vivid clarity when the path seemed so obvious you wondered how you had lost your way.
It was the barriers she didn’t understand—when you thought you knew where you were going and then a roadblock appeared, so enormous you couldn’t see a way over it. That was how it was with Lex. She needed him to show her where the right footholds were so she could reach him safely. But he was always looking the other way.
Lex returned to the tea tent to a group of weary faces. He had planned to help pack up, but there was another job to do first. This group needed shepherding back to their cars. He’d have to borrow a spotlight from one of the rangers to lead them up the beach. Mrs and Mr Jensen looked overwhelmed by the whole experience. Helen was quiet and subdued, with Darren clamped to her hand, his face white and tired. Beryl was pale and bedraggled, despite the lipstick and the henna, and Mrs B sat stiffly turned away from her on a foldout chair with one hand on her stick, ready to go at first call. Her mouth was a tight line and her old blue eyes flashed into his. She was angry about the rescue. And about the proximity of Beryl. Sue and John Watson were still packing away in the food tent. They would make their own way back. The minister had left earlier, just before dark.
Before taking the Merrigan crew up the beach, Lex tracked down Jimmy. He was dismantling the volunteer tent with two other men.
‘I hoped you’d find me,’ Jimmy said, setting down a bunch of tent pegs so he could shake Lex’s hand. ‘We need all the help we can get.’
‘I have to take some of the locals back to their cars first. There’s a few of them looking pretty weary.’
‘We’ll be here a while.’ Jimmy regarded Lex for a lengthy moment.
‘No good, eh?’ Lex said quietly.
Jimmy shook his head.
‘Does she know?’
‘I sent her home with Jordi.’
‘Good. Best to get her off the beach.’
Jimmy grasped his shoulder. ‘We’ll see you soon.’
It was a long march down the beach in the dark. The beam of the spotlight lit a bright circle outside of which everything was cast in the deepest black. Lex instructed Darren to lead the way with the spotlight and he walked just behind, supporting Mrs B and Mr Jensen. Beryl and Helen assisted Mrs Jensen, who was stiff after standing all day in the cold. It was eerie following the bright blaze of the beam with the night slick and black around them.
Lex guided them slowly up the dunes. The cold wind whisked through the grasses and swirled around the cars, everything wet with sea mist. He asked Mrs B if he could bring her car back later, and whether she would mind going home with Helen. He needed a car, and he figured a ride with Beryl wouldn’t improve Mrs B’s black mood.
Mrs B held his hand tight after he helped her into Helen’s car. ‘Come over when you get home. I’ll have some sherry and hot scones waiting for you.’
‘Thanks, Mrs B, but there’s no need to wait up.’
‘I’ll be awake,’ she said.
Lex watched them leave, the headlights cutting crazily through the mist as the cars bobbed over the uneven ground until they found the track. Then he turned wearily back down the dunes.
Thirty-three
It was close to midnight when Lex got home. He sat on the couch in the dark and listened to the wind rattling the window panes. The house was cold. It never held the heat well with all those windows. And there was nothing outside. It was black as pitch. He could be nothing and nobody in this darkness and it matched his mood. Apart from the ache in his muscles and bones, there was nothing left in him. It was good to sit with the emptiness, beyond the clamour of emotions. This was his peace.
When he thought of the whale, there was a knot in him. It was tangled somewhere between his chest and his throat and felt similar to thoughts of Isabel. Another battle lost. Callista too. His weariness magnified. How to move beyond this inertia? He could have a shower and go to bed. Wash off the salt and search for something positive in the day. But perhaps he was too exhausted to make any assessments right now.
A light came on in Mrs B’s house and Lex remembered the scones and sherry. There was warmth there, at least. And company. Perhaps he should have that shower and go over. Debrief. Purge the day’s events. Or perhaps he should say nothing. Mrs B knew anyway. She always seemed to know. He opted for the scones and sherry.
Mrs B lit some candles on the old wooden table and switched off the lights. The flames flicked and jiggled in the breeze seeping under the door. They sipped sherry and listened to the wind banging some loose boards up near the eaves.
‘I’ll fix those for you tomorrow,’ Lex said.
Mrs B grunted and poured some more sherry from her c
rystal flask with its heavy stopper.
‘No rush,’ she said. ‘They’ve been thumping away in the wind for years. If I woke up and it was quiet, I might think I was dead.’
Lex watched the candle flame fluttering. The alcohol eased warmly through him, and he focused on the quiet crackling of the fire in Mrs B’s old stove.
‘What went on there today?’ Mrs B asked, after a while.
Lex watched the candle flame in silence.
‘The vet must have known,’ she said. ‘They should have shot the poor thing. Put it out of its misery.’
‘It was complicated on the beach.’
‘Complicated enough to justify cruelty?’
‘It wasn’t my call. I wanted to walk away right at the beginning.’
‘I’m not blaming you, lad. It’s just that I don’t understand all that craziness, the lack of judgment. They ought to have known when it was time to stop.’
He shook his head wearily. ‘It should have stopped before it started. But I learned a few things out there today, Mrs B. I learned that wildlife is public property. And that whales belong in the realm of the sacred. When a whale is involved, nothing justifies euthanasia. The public owns the whale and the public wants to save it. Pain and suffering don’t come into it. Even the vet said it’s hard to assess. And if he can’t say what’s going on, who else can make those decisions? And what’s objectivity amongst all those emotional people anyway? What does it mean?’
‘Did they talk about euthanasia?’
‘Of course not. The peaceful death option was over the moment I turned away from Callista on that beach and went back to call National Parks. I knew that’s the way it would be. Rescue or burn in hell.’
‘The girl was just emotional. She’d have come around in time.’
‘I doubt it. She held her stance all day.’
‘Do you really think she’d have admitted a turnaround to you? She is a Wallace, after all.’
Lex hesitated. ‘She did help me after I came out of the water on that last shift.’
‘Perhaps that was her way of giving ground. These things can be subtle, you know.’ Mrs B poured some more sherry.
‘She was right about one thing,’ Lex said. ‘Leaving the whale to die on the beach wouldn’t have been peaceful either.’ He sipped his sherry, working through the events of the day. ‘There’s more to it too. There’s this strange notion that whales are a symbol of everything grand and beautiful on earth. Everything wild and free. I don’t know why that is. There’s nothing rational about it. Maybe it’s because they’re so big, and because you can never really see them. And if you do, it’s such an awesome event . . . Remember how you and I were blown away seeing those whales close up on Jimmy’s tour? You can’t kill that, Mrs B. You can’t kill people’s passion for wild things.’
He paused and slid his fingers around the stem of the sherry glass, watching his thoughts form in the flicker of the candle flame. ‘I can see Callista’s point now. I can see what she was trying to tell me. If you can’t help a stranded whale on your own beach, then what hope is there? If you can’t act with passion to save a creature that represents the pinnacle of freedom, then you kill any sense of being able to do something worthwhile in this world. You’re left with nothing. And we’re already powerless enough when it comes to changing things.’
He stared at the flame. ‘It was awful today.’
Mrs B reached across the table and covered his hand with her firm dry grasp. ‘I know,’ she said.
They drank more sherry. Filling time with quiet companionship until Lex felt sufficiently warm to go home to bed.
•
Lex slept the unmoving, undreaming sleep of exhaustion and woke in the grey morning feeling muscles he never knew he had. He wished he could roll over and re-enter oblivion, but a growling hunger niggled him. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, wondering what his feelings would be today about yesterday, whether sleep had changed his perspective, as it so often did. Yet as he lay there going over the day’s events, there was little new or satisfying to find in another analysis. Whether he agreed with what had taken place or not, the basic fact remained—they had done all they could and with good intentions. That had to be enough. The ethics of the situation were a separate issue. Ethics belonged to a world of public discussion and debate. Not to any one individual with strong opinions of their own. Even at the beginning, it had never really been his decision to make—the decision to walk away.
In a way, it was just as it had been with Isabel. He had done all he could and with good intentions. However awful the outcome had been, the whale’s death, and perhaps also Isabel’s death, hadn’t been his fault. He felt strangely released. Settled.
After breakfast, he took a hammer and some large nails from the toolbox in the laundry cupboard and went next door to ferret out a ladder from amongst Mrs B’s junk. She boiled the kettle while he secured her loose roofing boards. Then they ate leftover scones and drank tea on the verandah. It was disconcerting that a day could feel so normal after yesterday.
‘You’re brooding on something,’ Mrs B said after a while. ‘I know it.’
Lex placed his cup back on the saucer. He was surprised how steady he felt on the cusp of this decision.
‘When my little girl died from cot death, she was barely eight months old. I lost something enormous with her—a whole life that I wanted to invest in. And it’s taken a long time for me to come this far, but now I see that I’ve gained something from losing her too. She’s taught me a lot through grief. So perhaps in a way her life wasn’t wasted.’
Mrs B listened to him, kindness flowing from her old blue eyes.
‘Yesterday sealed something for me,’ he said. ‘I love it here. The sea, the sky, the wind.’
Mrs B’s lips tightened slightly. ‘But you have to go.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘The worst of the grieving is over.’
‘Is it always like that? Suddenly you reach up out of this dreadful black hole and you can see light?’
She smiled. ‘It hasn’t been as sudden for you as you think. It’s been very gradual, this seeing the light you’re talking about. Don’t forget, I’ve been watching you. You’ve been healing a bit at a time. That’s the way it is with the deepest wounds in life.’
He nodded. ‘Today I’m exhausted, but somehow I feel like I have the energy to start living again. Properly.’
‘And what do you think you’ve been doing here, lad?’
‘I’ve been marking time—healing, trying to find my feet again. It was like I was destroyed somehow when Isabel died, and this place has resuscitated me. I’ve been rehabilitating.’
‘You think you have to go back to the city to find this life you’re ready for now?’
‘I need to go back to get some closure on things and to pick up some old threads.’
‘Not every tapestry requires completion in this life. Sometimes it’s all right to take up something new. In fact, it’s necessary.’
‘I have tried here, Mrs B. But I’ve made too many mistakes.’
‘The girl?’
‘I think it’s done. Over.’
She regarded him steadily with unjudging grey-blue eyes. ‘You do what you have to do, lad.’
Callista arrived at the Point in the early afternoon. She climbed the steps slowly and found Lex inside pulling the zip on a suitcase. Books and clothes were all around him in piles on the floor. Panic surged in her throat.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Packing.’
‘I can see that.’
He tugged the zip closed and pushed the case against the wall. When he stood up, he grimaced.
‘My body’s a bit the worse for wear today,’ he said.
She held her face still as she watched him, her heart battering wildly. She’d come hoping for some sign of intimacy from him. Some suggestion that he was pleased to see her. But everything about him was distant, withdrawn and imper
sonal.
‘So you’re leaving,’ she said.
‘I’ve decided to go home.’
‘Back to Jilly?’
He rubbed at his back, massaging a stiff spot. ‘No. That’s over. I’ll go back to radio. Shane seemed to think they’d have me back.’
Callista struggled to suppress her dismay. ‘You never talked about your life much. About being a journalist.’
He shrugged. ‘I guess it seemed irrelevant here. I can tell you now if you want. There’s nothing much to it.’
‘That’s not what Shane said.’
‘Well, no, I suppose he wouldn’t when he’s been lusting after my wife and my job for years.’
Callista shivered. ‘I thought she was your ex-wife.’
‘She is.’
‘Shane said you were a celebrity. The life of the party.’
‘You have to have a public face to hide behind.’
‘What’s your real face then?’
He bent over to pick up a loose handkerchief from the floor. ‘It’s boring. You’ve seen it. I’m as ordinary as the next person.’
‘Why go back then? To all that pretence?’ She’d couldn’t believe he’d contemplate it.
‘It’s what I do best.’
‘Pretence?’
He looked weary. ‘No. Radio.’
‘So you’ll just slot back into your old life?’ She laughed, cynical.
‘It’ll be different,’ he said. ‘I’m different.’
Callista glanced despondently around the lounge room. It already felt as if he had gone. There was a coldness in the place that hadn’t been here before.
‘What will you do with the house?’ she asked.
‘I’ll keep it. I can come down on weekends. And I’ll organise my holidays when the whales are due back in spring.’
‘And you’ll just pop by to visit your old Merrigan friends? It won’t be the same, you know. You won’t belong any more.’
‘I never did, really.’
‘That’s an insult.’ She succumbed to rising irritation. ‘When you took the time to engage with people around here, this community welcomed you with open arms. You’re already a celebrity here, for doing real things—saving Mrs B, the Show Girl competition. Not for spinning superficial chat on talkback radio. Tell me, how many city people are going to stop and talk with you in the street? You won’t get any sense of community back there.’
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