by Lewis, Gill
When Carl has finished speaking, the lights come on and he asks for questions from the hall. Someone asks where they’ll release the dolphin. Someone else asks if the white dolphin will change colour. But no one is interested in the reef. It’s out of sight, out of mind. Then Dougie Evans stands up. He walks up on the stage next to Carl, his cap in hand. He faces everyone, and I notice he’s wearing his oldest clothes. They look worn and shabby.
‘It’s good to see so many here today,’ he says, ‘tourists and locals too.’
His voice booms out across the hall. An easy smile sits on his face, but he doesn’t fool me.
He opens his arms wide. ‘I hope you’re all having a lovely time. But this lovely town of ours in’t just for sandcastles and holidays. We’ve been fishing from this port for hundreds of years. It’s our livelihood. When tourists go home, we’ve still got to make a living.’
Everyone is listening now. It’s hard not to. There’s something about Dougie Evans which holds people. I glance across the room and see Jake looking smug.
‘There’s plenty of reef round this coastline,’ Dougie goes on. ‘There’s plenty for everyone. We dredge for scallops in our bay like the farmers plough their fields.’
The room is silent. I look around and see all eyes fixed on Dougie.
He puts his fist against his chest. ‘Fishing is the heart of this town,’ he shouts out. ‘Always has been. So if you still want the freshest scallops on your plate, then support us too. Support the fishermen. Don’t sign the petition for the ban.’
The murmur of voices rises and a ripple of applause flows back across the people. It’s not just some of the fishermen who are clapping, but tourists too. Dougie Evans takes a quick bow and steps down to take his seat again.
‘Say something, Carl,’ I mutter under my breath. But Carl just stands there, shuffling his feet while Dougie grins, victorious.
‘STOP!’
Heads turn to the shout from the back of the hall. Dougie Evans squints to see who’s calling. I turn too. Chairs scrape and feet shuffle as people clear a space for Felix to get through the aisle.
He stops in front of me, the dolphin memory stick clutched in one hand. ‘Kara, I’ve found something, something important.’
‘What?’ I say.
Voices are rising in the room. It’s hot and stuffy. There’s nothing to keep people here now. I see people at the back of the hall get up to leave.
Felix glances at them too. ‘You’ve got to buy me some time. Stop them going. Get up on stage and say something, anything you want about the bay. Two minutes, that’s all I need. Tell them they’re about to see what they could lose.’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t.’
Felix glares at me. ‘Just do it.’
I watch him walk back down the aisle.
I’ve never stood in front of a crowd like this before. I see more people at the back of the hall stand up to leave. I don’t know what Felix has found, but I can’t lose this chance. I climb up the steps and face the audience. I don’t even know what I’m going to say. The sea of faces stares back at me. I feel sick and dizzy. I see Jake’s mouth curled in laughter. Dougie Evans is watching me too. His eyes bore right through me. I look around the walls of the hall, at the mural of traditional fishermen, fishing boats and nets and barrels of salted fish.
‘Dougie Evans is right,’ I say. My voice comes out much louder than I expect. The hall is silent, listening. A few people sit back down in their chairs. ‘Fishing is the heart of this town.’ I look around. This is my one big chance. ‘The boat my mum and dad rebuilt together, fished from this harbour a hundred years ago. Back then, she would have come home full of pilchard and herring, so full the fish would be spilling over her sides back into the sea.’ I swallow hard. The back of my throat is dry, like sawdust. I look around and fix my eye on Dougie Evans. ‘But she can’t do that any more. We’ve taken all the fish from our seas. Dougie Evans’s trawlers have to go further and deeper to find fish, and even then they sometimes come back empty. Now we’re dredging our bay for scallops, tearing up the reef. I wonder, will we still be fishing here at all in another hundred years?’ I glance across the hall. There’s no sign of Felix, but I remember what he wanted me to say. ‘You’re about to see what we could lose.’
I stand there in the silence and look around the hall. I don’t know what’s meant to happen now. I climb down the steps and sit next to Dad.
The hall lights go out.
The whole room holds its breath.
A clear voice cuts through the silence. I have to grab the edges of my seat. My head spins and I feel myself tip forward.
I hear Mum, speaking through the darkness.
CHAPTER 28
‘Let me take you on a journey through our last great wilderness, a place of mountains and deep valleys. Yet it doesn’t lie in some distant land, but here, below the surface of our cold Atlantic sea.’
Dad takes hold of my hand. The room is silent. The huge screen on the stage is dark at first. A faint greenish glow in the centre of the screen becomes brighter and brighter and we are rising up, towards the sun shining through the surface of the water. Bright green kelp fronds reach upwards to the rippling mirror screen of light. A seal swims up to the camera, his nose almost touching the lens. It’s as if he’s watching everyone in the hall. His big dog eyes are chocolate brown. He snorts a breath. Silver bubbles spiral upwards and he twists away, flippers pressed together, his grey body sliding through the water. And we’re twisting through the water too; down, down, down through shafts of rippling sunlight, past rocks jewelled with pink and green anemones, down past coral mounds and feather-stars and sea-fans.
This must have been the last film Mum made here in the bay.
Her voice guides us into dark green waters full of rocks encrusted with soft pink corals and yellow sponges. A cuckoo wrasse hovers in mid-water, bright blue and yellow, lit by torchlight. A purple sea-slug threads its way through reddish seaweed. Beneath all this, the rocky bed is alive with corals and urchins. A velvet swimming crab scuttles by. Everything is alive in here.
But suddenly, a tearing sound rips through the hall. The image on the screen changes and fills with metal chains and billowing mud and sand. When the mud settles all that’s left is a gravelly sea bed, littered with broken sea-fans. The silence in the hall is still and deep.
Mum’s voice speaks out one last time.
‘Unless we protect our oceans, there will be nothing left but wasteland.
‘We are not farmers of the sea. We never sow, we only reap.’
The lights come on. No one speaks. We’ve all been brought back from another world, the images still vivid in our minds. Mum’s voice is still ringing in my head. Carl climbs back on the stage. He clutches his notes in his hand and is about to speak, but a ripple of applause starts at the back of the room and rolls forward like a wave. I look across to see some of the fishermen nodding. Others are just staring at the screen, transfixed. Only Dougie Evans is sitting hands folded tight across his chest. Jake is glaring at me from across the room. I turn away. I don’t want to spoil this moment. I heard Mum’s voice again. I want to hold it deep inside. Hold it and keep it there for ever.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you,’ says Felix. ‘I didn’t have time.’
I roll my jeans up and dip my feet into the pool. Angel glides past on her side, her small eye watching me. I stretch my leg out and she lets my toes brush against her smooth warm body.
‘How did you find out?’ I say.
Felix sits beside me on the rocks and holds out the memory stick. ‘Tepuhi,’ he says. ‘I should have thought of it before. The Maori name for dolphin. It’s the password. The one your mum used for the memory stick.’
I take it from him and curl my fingers around the moulded plastic dolphin. It seems strange to think that it holds a memory of Mum, a snapshot of the past, as if it holds part of her inside it too. ‘Was there anything else on there?’
‘Not much e
lse,’ he mumbles.
I want to ask him what he means by ‘not much else’ but Carl sits down beside us.
‘I’m glad that’s over,’ he says. His tie hangs loose around his neck and his pressed trousers are now crumpled. He runs his hands through his hair. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘D’you think it’ll make a difference?’ I ask.
‘There were loads of signatures for the voluntary ban on dredging,’ he says. ‘I counted hundreds of names.’
‘What about the fishermen?’ I say.
‘I don’t know,’ Carl says. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’
Angel swims past us again and slaps the water with her tail. I reach out to run my hand along her head and the bumpy scar across her jaw.
Carl frowns. ‘She’s becoming too dependent on us,’ he says, ‘and we’re worried for her mother too. There were lots of boats out on the bay today. She could get injured by their propellers.’ He stands up to wipe the water from his trousers, then crouches down beside me and Felix. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, because no one else must know . . .’
I feel my heart sink because I know just what he’s going to say. ‘You’re going to let her go, aren’t you?’
Carl nods. ‘Sam thinks she’s ready. But we don’t want lots of people around when we release her.’
Angel lifts her head above the water. It’s as if she’s listening to us too. I want her to go back into the wild, but I feel torn apart inside. I know that once she’s gone, it could be the last time I see her.
‘When?’ I say.
‘Tomorrow,’ says Carl, ‘we release her on the beach, at dawn.’
CHAPTER 29
I’m the first on the beach. I wrap my arms around me and wish I’d brought my coat. The Milky Way is a river of stars across the sky. I remember Mum telling me the Maori story of Tama-rereti and how he scattered tiny pebbles into the sky to light up his way, and how the Sky God put Tama-rereti’s canoe up in the sky as the Milky Way to show how all the stars were made. I dig my toes into the cool sand and listen to the line of breaking surf. I want to see the mother dolphin. I strain my ears for the sound of a dolphin blowhole opening out on the water.
‘Kara, is that you?’
I turn.
Dad is walking towards me, silhouetted against the street lights. ‘I heard you leave the house. What are you doing out here?’
‘Carl’s releasing Angel at dawn.’ I can’t stop my teeth from chattering. A cool wind is blowing off the shore.
Dad takes off his fleece and slips it over me. The sleeves are far too long and the fleece comes down to just above my knees. Dad hugs me tight against him and we watch the dawn spread across the eastern sky, a pale strip of light fading out the stars. A flock of sanderlings skims low across the beach and settles further along the shoreline.
‘Here’s Carl,’ says Dad.
A pickup drives towards us, its headlights reflecting in the wet sand.
‘I hope Felix and his dad get here in time,’ I say.
The pickup stops beside us and Carl and Greg jump down followed by Felix’s dad and Sam. I lean over the back of the pickup to see Felix sitting by Angel’s head. Angel is wrapped in wet towels on the yellow flotation raft.
Carl scans the water. ‘Any sign of the mother dolphin?’
I shake my head. ‘I hope she’s not waiting by the pool.’
I take a front corner of the raft with Dad and we all help lift Angel down.
She’s heavy, a solid mass of bone and muscle. I rest one hand on her head as we carry her to the water. Her breaths are short and shallow, her eyes wide open.
‘Not too deep,’ says Carl. ‘Let’s wait for her to get used to the water. We don’t want her swimming off too early.’
We float Angel out into the waves until we’re waist deep in water. The waves are breaking further out, running to the shoreline in steps of broken surf. Angel is strangely calm, as if she’s waiting too. I feel her clicks and whistle pass right through me, invisible pulses of sound spreading out through the dark waters of the bay.
The sun’s rim rises above the hills behind us, turning the sea to liquid gold.
I feel Angel’s body tense. She’s still and silent, listening.
Maybe I can feel the vibrations of whistles through the water too, because I sense her mother near us.
‘Pfwhooosh!’ She surfaces close by.
‘Just watch her,’ says Carl. ‘She could turn aggressive if she wants her calf.’
Angel flaps her tail, desperate to swim.
Carl and Greg deflate the two long cushions of the raft and let it slip beneath her. I run my hands along her back one last time as she surges forward to meet her mother. They swim side by side, their bodies touching, and slide together beneath the sea.
Two plumes of warm breath rise in the chill dawn air.
I watch the space where they had been, and feel a strange emptiness deep inside.
It’s not for what I’ve lost.
But for what I hope will be.
CHAPTER 30
Carl offers us a lift home in the pickup truck. My shorts are soaking wet and I’m freezing cold. I sit in the back with Dad and Felix. We bump along the rippled sand and turn up the slipway to the coast road. The newsagent is open early. The shopkeeper is already putting the papers on the display racks outside. Dad raps on the window for Carl to stop and he jumps out to buy Aunt Bev some bread and a local paper.
I snatch the paper from his hands. On the front is a huge picture of Angel. I flick to the inside pages and see a double spread with photos of Carl and Dougie and the school hall. Daisy and I are pictured too.
‘What does it say?’ I ask. I push the paper into Felix’s hand.
Felix holds up the paper. ‘ “Save our Seas: Locals and tourists filled the school hall yesterday to give their support to the marine reserve . . .” ’
Felix is silent for a moment while he skim-reads the article. He breaks out in a huge grin. ‘We’ve done it. Listen here . . . “Local fishermen signed the petition for the voluntary ban on fishing and dredging the area, while a law to ensure the bay gets statutory protection is put through parliament. The petition was signed by over six hundred people in less than two hours.” ’
‘So the fishermen are on our side,’ I say. ‘They’ve promised not to dredge the bay until a new law is passed to protect the reef.’ I can’t help grinning. I never dreamed it would happen like this. We’ve saved Angel and we’ve saved the bay.
‘We’ve got to remember this moment,’ Felix says. ‘It doesn’t get much better than this.’
I nod, because he’s right and nothing can take away this feeling.
Nothing.
Not even Dougie Evans’s jeep parked in Aunt Bev and Uncle Tom’s drive.
Carl pulls up outside the house. We can hear raised voices coming through the open kitchen window. Uncle Tom and Dougie Evans are doing the shouting. Aunt Bev is standing with her back to us, pressed against the kitchen sink.
‘Do you want us to come in with you?’ says Felix’s dad.
Dad shakes his head and looks grim. ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I guess Dougie Evans has seen the paper too.’
Dad and I jump down from the pickup. I wave at Felix as they turn the corner and disappear out of sight.
I follow Dad up the path towards the door. I try hard not to step on the cracks in the paving stones, but Dougie Evans flings the door open and stops in front of us. I see he has the same paper in his hand.
He chucks it on the ground. ‘Means nothing, this,’ he snarls. ‘It’s not worth the paper it’s written on.’ He kicks it with his foot, and the pages scatter into the air.
Dad stands back to let him through and he glares at me as he passes. I think he’ll walk right past, but he stops and turns back to face me.
‘Saving bloody dolphins like your mum, eh?’ His face is pressed close up to mine. Sweat glistens on his forehead. ‘Look what happened to her.’
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‘Go home, Dougie.’ Dad pushes himself in front of me. ‘Just go home.’ Dad’s voice is calm, but his hands are clenched.
I try to slip in front of Dad. I want him to be safe, but Dad just holds me back.
‘No one tells me what to do,’ Dougie shouts. ‘No one.’
He turns away and storms down the path to his jeep. He spits on the pavement, climbs in and roars away.
And we are left in dust and silence.
Dad puts his arms around me. ‘Ignore it,’ he says.
I lean into Dad and walk into the house with him. But I can’t help thinking Dougie Evans would rip up the whole sea and everything in it if he could.
Aunt Bev is standing at the sink, her hand across her belly. Uncle Tom goes to put his arm around her but she shrugs him off. ‘You didn’t listen to me, did you?’
Uncle Tom sits down at the table and puts his head in his hands.
‘What happened?’ Dad asks.
Aunt Bev shakes her head and stares at her husband. ‘I told him not to sign that petition, but he wouldn’t listen.’
Dad looks between them. ‘Bev, what happened?’
‘He’s lost his job. Dougie fired him just now.’
Dad pulls up a chair next to Uncle Tom. ‘He can’t just do that,’ he says.
‘Of course he can,’ snaps Aunt Bev. ‘He’s Dougie Evans. He does what he likes. You should’ve known that, Tom.’
Uncle Tom gets up. He grabs his jacket and walks to the door.
‘Where are you going now?’ snaps Aunt Bev.
‘Out,’ he says. ‘I need fresh air.’
He pushes past us and I hear the front door slam shut.
‘We need the money, Tom,’ she calls after him through the open window. ‘What are we going to do without money?’
I back away to the door too. Aunt Bev’s in no fine mood. I expect the shouting to start at me and Dad, but she sinks into a chair. She pushes back thin strands of hair from her face and stares up at the ceiling.