The Forever Whale

by Sarah Lean

  “I know it’s a baby harness,” I say, just in case.

  “You never know when one of those things might come in handy,” he says. “You’ve practically invented something new though.”

  “Where’s Josh?”

  “He had to stay home and tidy his room because they’ve got family coming for a barbecue this afternoon,” Linus says. “It’s just me. Where’s Megan?”

  “Abroad on holiday,” I sigh.

  Then he hands over his scooter and says, “Do you want to film from the scooter?”

  Linus jogs across the road and waves to make me follow him. He runs backwards, calling, “You can go really fast down Southbrook Hill.”

  I’ve already pressed play on the camera and am kicking my right foot against the pavement to catch him up.

  At the bottom of Southbrook Hill we sit on the pavement with our backs against somebody’s garden wall and play the film back on the small screen. Linus pushes his nest of curly hair away from his face because he’s sweaty from running.

  “It’s good,” he says. “Like an action film.”

  And it is good. Because the pavement and houses and everything either side are whizzing past, as if we’d stayed very still and it all rolled towards us. We hear the rattle of the scooter against the road and Linus’s footsteps running and sometimes his legs kick into the picture and sometimes they don’t. And there’s a blustery noise of the wind against the microphone that suddenly goes quiet when we stop at the bottom, and I don’t know why but I like that.

  I’m not in the film again, but it makes me think of something.

  Before I play it again I say to Linus, “Pretend you don’t know I was filming it and it’s the first time you’ve seen it and you’re not allowed to think that it’s me on the scooter and you running. Pretend you don’t know anything and watch it again.”

  And I can see by the way he shakes back his curly fringe that he’s getting ready to do it. Linus leans right in as if he’s looking for something hidden in the film that he didn’t see before. That’s why I like Linus. He wouldn’t mind looking at a caterpillar on the playing field at school even if all the other boys are having a game of football.

  I press play and we see and hear it all again: the whizzing street, the rattle, the footsteps, the blustering and then the stopping.

  “Well?” I say because he isn’t saying anything. “Did you pretend, like I said?”

  And I don’t want to tell him what to say. It’s no good thinking something extraordinary if nobody else thinks it. He shrugs.

  “Never mind,” I say. “I’m just practising things at the moment. But I think the scooter is a good idea because it makes the camera steadier than when I’m walking.”

  Then Linus says, “Well, it’s kind of like anyone could watch it and think it’s them running or on the scooter.”

  That’s what I’m thinking too, about Grandad as a boy, of his childhood memories. People with Alzheimer’s seem to remember things from long ago. Maybe if he watched a film like this he’d remember being a boy.

  I give Linus my best smile.

  “Is the film for your grandad?” he says.

  I nod.

  “Thought so,” Linus says. His hair falls over his eyes, but I see him. “My nan had Alzheimer’s; we made a photo album for her and took her roses because they were her favourite. I was too young to think of making a film.”

  I didn’t realise he knew about Grandad. I didn’t know about his nan either. I’m sad for him, but it’s nice knowing I’m not the only one.

  We sit together for a minute, thinking of our own grandparents and memories.

  “Thanks for trying to help me with Grandad,” I say. Linus shrugs. “Linus?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know where I can find a whale?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, not find it exactly. I saw one on a nature programme.”

  “Oh.

  “Linus? What do you think is the greatest power on earth?”

  “Probably a space rocket because it has to get through the atmosphere. What do you think?”

  “I think …” I’m thinking it’s probably something like your memory, but I don’t say it. “I think I should be in the film too.”

  I rip off the tape and harness and give the camera to Linus. He points it at me and I talk.

  “Grandad, it’s me, Hannah. We were supposed to be going on a journey together, but …” Then I tell Linus to stop filming. Every time I think about the future I feel afraid, like something is crumbling inside me and I can’t hold on to it. Grandad’s not coming home. He’s not going anywhere with me. I’m ten – how am I supposed to make the journey on my own? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go.

  17.

  THE YELLOW FERRY IS THE BRIGHTEST THING ON the quay. But it isn’t the only bright thing. The sun is shining on the green tiles of the Anchor Inn, and sparkling on the choppy waves and catching the white bellies of the gulls that are spinning round the chinking masts.

  The gulls laugh and the air tastes of salt and vinegar on chips.

  Everything looks like it’s made of white and yellow sunlight and I film it all. I wonder if it’s the same as when Grandad was a boy.

  The harbour is huge, one of the biggest in the world, with lots of inlets further inland where Grandad and I have explored from Gorbreen. Furze Island is in the middle of the harbour like a green roundabout in the motorway sea. That’s where I’m going with Jodie. It takes about twenty minutes to walk across the island from east to west, and about half the time across the middle. There are a few stone cottages and a shop, but not many people live there. There are no cars and all the criss-crossing paths are for walking around the island or leading you down to the beach. It’s for wildlife really.

  There are eleven other teenagers mooching around the yellow sign by the ferry when Jodie and I go over. The girls are huddled together and the boys are in a row near them. Straight away I know which boy is Adam. He’s the one that makes Jodie fidgety and twist her hoop earrings when he stands next to her.

  When Jodie says she had to bring her little sister with her, Adam says, “Hey, squirt, you could be our camera girl.”

  Jodie goes pink because Adam leans on her arm, but I don’t like that he called me squirt!

  “Hannah, actually,” I say, as tough as I can. “It’s a palindrome, which means it’s the same spelled forwards as it is backwards.”

  Adam laughs. “What do you say, do you want to do some filming for us … Hannah the palindrome?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  I suppose he’s all right because he doesn’t leave me out and it makes Jodie glad that I’m there. Sort of.

  “Hey, Jode,” Adam says. I widen my eyes at her, but she doesn’t say anything even though she wouldn’t normally like anyone calling her Jode. “Hannah could record some of the things we’ll be doing, you know, like a before and after thing so we can document the project.”

  “Yeah, great idea, Adam,” she exaggerates, like it’s the cleverest thing she’s ever heard. She thinks I’m embarrassing.

  It’s nice then because Jodie can be more normal with me like she is at home and doesn’t have to act like she’s been lumbered with her little sister.

  Jodie and her friends are excited about what they’re going to be doing and suddenly everyone is talking and talking as we board the ferry. They’re too busy to notice the little sailing boats banking in the breeze, or that the white clouds are flat on the bottom and bubbly on the top and seem to be queuing to come in from over the sea. That’s what I film. I lean over the side of the ferry and point the camera at the bow breaking the waves. Jodie grabs my jacket tight so I don’t fall in and I notice that her group have moved away and all the girls are gathered round Adam.

  The breeze is strong when we get off the boat. People struggle against it as it bustles them along the gangway, as it snatches at their clothes. I feel the breeze swooping along
the harbour wall, pushing into our backs like soft, salty hands.

  A man and lady are waiting at the Furze Island visitor centre and they talk for a bit and then put the volunteers into two groups and Jodie tells me to just keep quiet. I follow Jodie and her group across the island and sit at the bottom of the steps that lead down to the beach while they turn right and spread out with their rubbish bags.

  This is South Beach, where Grandad and Mum and I came once.

  I film the crushed flint and shells crackling under my feet and the surf sizzling and scalloping on the sand like lace. I zoom in and film an oystercatcher skimming the waves. I talk as if I remember, but I don’t. I say, “Remember, Grandad? We came here one day.”

  Just then a laughing face with brown floppy hair comes up close in the picture and waves. It’s Adam and he holds up his black bag and says he’s found two plastic bottles already and a piece of driftwood. His voice gets carried away in the sea breeze. He runs along the beach with the wind, over to Jodie who’s found some fishing line tangled in seaweed.

  Adam shows Jodie the pale cracked driftwood and he turns it over and points at something. Normally people find special things for themselves on the beach, like shells and smooth pebbles with spying holes. I think Adam must really like Jodie because he gives his special piece of wood to her.

  I take off my sandals and walk out into the shallow water and keep filming. I walk a long way, but the water only comes up to my knees. I say out loud, “Grandad, remember you walked me out in the sea? You told me something when I was too small to remember, but you made me stop crying.”

  The divers with red inflatable boats that I’d seen at Hambourne slipway are out in the deep channel of the harbour. There are other boats there too and another much bigger boat with a crane moored alongside them. The picture blurs the closer I zoom in, but I can see the divers in the water.

  “They’ve found a wreck or something buried on the seabed, Grandad. It was on the news. One of those planes that takes photographs of the ground saw a long dark shape in the water and took a picture of it. They’re not sure what it is yet though.”

  The divers are waving their arms, like they’re telling the others to stop.

  “They’ve got a crane, so it must be big, Grandad. Maybe they need something stronger to pull it up.”

  I stop, turn round, scan the coastline of the mainland and look back out to the channel. Grandad had said that some journeys are over long distances. Some are closer to home.

  It can’t be deer or a whale, but I wonder if what they’ve found on the seabed could be the same as what I’m looking for.

  18.

  SOUTH BEACH, FURZE ISLAND, AGAIN. THIS TIME Jodie and the others have turned on to a shorter section of the beach. There is a barbed-wire fence saying Keep Out so people can’t go around to East Beach because the cliff is crumbling there. I film again. From this end of the beach I zoom the camera to the harbour entrance between the curves of the land, where the chain ferry crosses from one side to the other.

  The deep water swirls and sucks and tugs at the boats. Sails stretch and boats lean into the wind. Beyond there I can see a little of the open sea that’s like polished green glass. I wonder if Grandad ever rowed out there, but I need to find some more paths, some more clues about deer or whales.

  At lunchtime Jodie, Adam and I sit on the beach with ham sandwiches, flapjacks and bottles of lemonade.

  Adam goes down to the sea and throws some skimmers. Showing off.

  “How’s the filming going?” Jodie says.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “I’m doing a journey kind of thing. But I need more things to film. I haven’t got anything about deer or a whale yet.”

  “Adam’s got something to tell you,” Jodie says, looking pleased with herself, and calls him over.

  “Jodie told me you wanted to know about whales. I’ve already researched some stuff about them,” Adam says. He winks at Jodie.

  “Did you know that a humpback whale’s heart is so big you could climb inside it?”

  “Is it really?” I say.

  “About as big as a car,” Adam says.

  I think of Grandad immediately. “Do you think having a big heart means you can love … bigger?”

  Jodie blushes, but Adam doesn’t look at her. “Whales’ eyes are bigger than apples,” he continues, “and they can blow water out of their blowholes about four metres high, maybe more.”

  And of course that means we have to try with our lemonade, making lemony spray out of our mouths. We laugh and Adam makes the tallest spray so Jodie thinks that is something worth liking about him even more. I run in the sea and swirl the fizz in my mouth and lose some in the breeze. It doesn’t matter, Jodie says, when I worry about my clothes. It doesn’t matter at all.

  And then, right there in front of me, a long smooth curve rises out of the harbour waters. I swallow the lemonade as the dark shape surfaces.

  “Look!” I shout. “Quick, look, Jodie! There’s a whale!” Jodie and Adam stand up to see, as the tide falls away from the hump. It’s gone for a few seconds and then emerges again as if something huge is swimming just below the surface. “It is, it is!”

  I run back and turn the camera on, trying to steady the camera and myself. I zoom in, bring the dark shape closer and closer in the picture. “Grandad said it was coming!” I don’t care why, I just think that if I can film it, if I can show Grandad, then he’ll remember the story. He’ll remember the deer and it will all make sense.

  Jodie touches my shoulder. “Look properly,” she says.

  I can see now. The falling tide has exposed a muddy sandbar.

  “You couldn’t get a whale in here,” says Adam. The harbour’s too shallow and they wouldn’t be able to get past the chain ferry anyway.”

  “Don’t say that,” I say.

  Jodie nudges Adam. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s true though.”

  He doesn’t know everything, but he can make someone go from being high to down in the dumps in two seconds flat. I see Jodie widen her eyes at Adam.

  “They have been seen once or twice off the south coast before though, Hannah,” Adam says. “There was actually one on the news the other night.”

  I’m burning Adam with my eyes because I don’t want to speak to him, but I want to hear more.

  Jodie speaks for me; she sounds irritated and I’m not sure why. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “It’s hundreds of miles away, east, out in the English Channel.”

  “Grandad might have seen one there a long time ago,” Jodie says for me. “Sometimes they go off course, or turn up in unexpected places.”

  “Jodie, can we go there?” I say.

  And then she tells me all the reasons why we can’t: It’s too far; she’s got the project to do; Dad and Mum won’t agree; what will we do when we get there? Exactly where is it that I’m suggesting we go?

  I walk to the shoreline, crouch down and film the waves pulling away from me. The tide is going out and my feet are sinking in the sand, just like my hope is.

  19.

  I’M GETTING BORED. BORED WITH FILMING THE SAME seabirds and Adam and Jodie and the seashore and the nothing that’s out there but salty water.

  Jodie and Adam are making a chart of seabirds that they’ve seen and I’ve decided I don’t like him that much any more. I’m moaning like Jodie does. “We’re not going to see a whale here so I want to film deer,” I say. “There’s none down here though.” But now Jodie’s in a mood. She says it’s tough, she’s busy, find something else to do. But time is running out. August 18th is less than a few weeks away. It’s still a mystery what all these things have to do with what Grandad wanted to tell me. I’m more desperate than ever. I need to find enough things to show Grandad, so he’ll remember.

  I wade out into the water again, but I’m still seeing the same sea. Then I get a funny feeling, just like before when they unveiled the faceless statue, that someone is standing behind me.

  I look up, scan
along the East Beach. There’s what looks like an old boathouse on the corner of the cliff, overgrown with ferns. I look up to the cliff top, about ten metres above us. An old lady is standing there in a gap where a high brick wall has fallen down. I think she’s looking right at me. I turn from side to side, to see what else she might be looking at, but when I look up again she’s still staring at me. She must live here. Maybe she knows where to find the deer. She must see everything from up there.

  “Jodie,” I whine, thinking if I get on her nerves she’ll agree to anything. “I want to walk up to the cliff top, but I’m not supposed to be on my own.”

  Jodie’s eyes are wide, her lips tight, and she’s trying not to get cross in front of Adam. “Just make sure you meet me at the quay for the ferry,” she whispers, flicking her head towards Adam. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “I won’t,” I say. Inside I’m smiling. She’s very easy to get round if it means she can be with Adam on her own.

  I go up the steps and follow the path along the cliff top until the gorse is so thick I can’t get through. I hear rustling in the spiny shadows. I creep away from the cliff to stalk round the bushes. There’s a wall behind the overgrown gorse and bracken. I can see the roof of a house and palm trees spiking high into the sky. I find a gate that’s open, just wide enough for a big cat to go through. Gorse has grown behind it too so it won’t open any wider. There’s a garden, crazy with rubble and wildness.

  The old lady from the cliff top is now stooped in the middle of the garden, a dark silhouette with the sun behind her. She is wearing a crumpled straw hat and leaning on a stick. She’s holding out her hand, feeding a deer. I knew it!

  I turn the camera on, take a step, but as I force back the gate the crackling gorse startles the deer and it skitters through the open front door of the house and is gone.

  The old lady stomps towards me, thumping the ground with her stick. She is looking directly at the camera. Her skin is criss-crossed with ancient wrinkles, spotted with big brownish freckles. Her hair sticks out from under her hat like cobwebs. The only smooth part of her is the apple of her cheeks. And then she says, “Did you get a picture?”