The Forever Whale

by Sarah Lean

  “You left in a hurry yesterday,” she says.

  “I’m sorry. I went to see my grandad. I told him about the submarine they found in the harbour. I really thought it might help him remember something from the past.”

  “Did he?”

  I shake my head.

  Miss Bennett’s eyes have turned down and I wonder if she feels sorry that I don’t have better news.

  “Do you remember a submarine from the war, in the harbour?”

  She shakes her head. But she doesn’t seem to be listening and I wonder if she’s thinking about Grandad instead. I don’t want anyone else telling me that there’s no hope for him.

  Fern sniffs at a bunch of flowers in a china vase. She starts to eat them. I don’t think Miss Bennett minds; in fact, I think she probably left them there for her. I walk closer and hold out my hand, but Fern is still nervous of me.

  The photograph that Miss Bennett showed me yesterday is on the table.

  “Miss Bennett?” I say. I lean against the big table and watch her wipe a frame and hang it back on the wall. Fern stands beside Miss Bennett. I do care that Miss Bennett has sad memories, but I need to find another path back to Grandad. There is no whale so I need to ask her more about the deer and the war. I’m running out of time. I have to find out what’s so important to Grandad about August 18th.

  “Miss Bennett, you know you told me before that one thing survived that terrible night during that war? What was it?”

  Miss Bennett gently touches the white spots on Fern’s back. The soft dapples remind me of sun and shadows on the ground in the harbour banks. I want to be able to touch her too, but I know Miss Bennett and Fern are special together.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave in the middle of what you were telling me yesterday,” I say. “Please.”

  Miss Bennett opens the drawer at the end of the table and rummages through lots of photographs. She picks out two. The first is similar to the one in the museum, a field full of daffodils and a herd of deer.

  “The daffodil fields on Furze Island were full of flowers once the island recovered after the war.

  We grew them here, sold them at Covent Garden in London. Thousands upon thousands of golden crowns flourished.” Miss Bennett watches Fern as she speaks. “And then one spring after the war I saw the daffodil heads were missing. Some deer must have survived on the mainland and then swum out to Furze. They were eating all the flowers!”

  She shows me the other photograph of her as a young woman in the garden here. She has a deer with her.

  “There was only one deer from the island that survived that night during the war. I called her Fern. I looked after her on the mainland with me until I could move back here.”

  “It wasn’t this Fern though, was it?” I didn’t think deer could live that long.

  “No. Fern is only two years old. It was another deer, her great-great-great, I forget how many greats, but her grandmother. I called the whole family of them Fern. She was the only one on the island for a while until the others swam over.”

  “Why did you call all the deer Fern?” I say.

  She shakes her duster and clumps of dust fall on the carpet. She wipes some more frames.

  “Is it because you couldn’t think of anything else?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. She picks up the next picture, one of an older lady, who looks a little like Miss Bennett.

  “Was it because of someone you knew called Fern?” I guess. I feel the tension in the still air. “Because of someone, like your grandmother?”

  She gently wipes the dust away with her hand.

  “Some things you want to go on forever, even if all you have is a name.” She leans heavily on her stick. “But sometimes it’s better to forget.” She says it sharply and I realise I’ve asked too much. I’ve made her look into the past and see something she didn’t want to see.

  I feel like I’m sinking now too. What if Grandad’s memory is a bad one too? What if something terrible had happened with a submarine? What if Miss Bennett is right and it’s better to forget? Then I think of Grandad’s memory. Had I asked too many questions? Had I worn his memory out?

  “Sorry,” I say. I hang my head.

  “For what this time?”

  “Asking too many questions.”

  She shakes her head and looks at me with gentle eyes. She seems to know what I’m thinking because she says, “It’s the disease. There’s nothing you did to your grandad that could have caused it. We all want to hold on to the good things from our past and leave the rest behind. But it’s not been easy for me.”

  She hands me the framed photograph. I climb on the table and hang it up for her, matching the paler shape left on the wall where it had been before.

  I climb down and she carries on dusting. I look in the drawer at the end of the table. There’s a chunky black and silver camera with a leather strap.

  “Miss Bennett? Will you come round the island with me and teach me to take good pictures?”

  But it’s all been too much. “No,” she says. “Leave me be now.”

  I didn’t know how much that would sting.

  I pass Jodie and Adam who are still clearing gorse along paths nearby.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you going?” Jodie calls.

  “I don’t know.”

  I go down the steps and along South Beach where Grandad had walked me out into the sea. It’s all my fault. I suddenly hate that everything’s about the past. What about the future?

  27.

  I ASK IF WE CAN GO AND VISIT GRANDAD AGAIN.

  He is sitting in the television room with the other lost grandads and grandmas.

  I wrap Grandad’s hand in both of mine and I still can’t hold it all, but there’s nothing else to hold on to. Touching him seems to wake him for a moment.

  “Tell me about the submarine, Grandad,” I say. “Did you see a submarine in the harbour in the war? Do you remember a fire on Furze Island? Did you know Grandma then? Do you remember what happened to the deer? Did you know Fern?”

  The ocean of nothing fills his eyes.

  “Hannah,” Mum says, “too many questions. You’re confusing him.”

  I know I shouldn’t do that, but I’m desperate for something more from him. I can’t think bigger without him.

  “Grandad, it was a submarine, wasn’t it?” I say.

  “What’s that you’re asking him?” Dad says.

  “She’s talking about the wreck we saw in the harbour,” Jodie says, nodding towards the television. “Look, it’s on the news.”

  I know the look Jodie gives me then is to make sure Dad thinks we were together when we saw it being lifted. I can’t tell them what happened with Miss Bennett.

  There’s footage on the TV of the discovery in the harbour. A small Second World War submarine with a huge hole blasted in its side has been rusting away in the deeper channel and they are talking of restoring it and putting it in the museum.

  I point at the television. “Look, Grandad. The submarine I was telling you about. Do you remember the submarine? Where were we going on a journey, Grandad? Was it to do with the war? Was it in the harbour?”

  “When did you tell him about a submarine?” Dad asks.

  But I see Mum shake her head at him. She takes me in her arms and holds me tight.

  “It’s all right,” she whispers into my hair. “I miss him too. We want to remember him as he used to be, but we have to try and see him as he is now so we know how to … how to be with him the best we can.”

  “Why can’t we take him home now?” I say. “He doesn’t want to be here, he wants to be home with us. I can help look after him. He’ll get much better if we’re with him all the time.”

  I know the Alzheimer’s won’t get any better, but the people in the care home said his speech and mobility are improving a little. And now and again there were moments when he was vivid and just as he’d always been.

  “We should tell her,” Dad says to Mum. “It�
��s only fair.”

  “Dad, he won’t be too much trouble; he’d want to be with us,” I say.

  Mum closes her eyes.

  “Listen, Hannah,” Dad says, “it wasn’t our idea to put Grandad in a home.” I see him take a breath. I can tell he’s trying to steady himself and that makes me more scared of what he’s about to tell me. “A while back, when Grandad was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he made us promise that if he was to do something that … worried us, we were to move him to a home. He didn’t want to be a burden to us; he wanted us to be free to get on with our own lives.”

  I shrink as Dad says it.

  I’m shocked that it was Grandad who’d made that decision, that he thought we wouldn’t want to take care of him.

  “But why? Doesn’t he think we love him?”

  “Of course he does,” Mum says softly. “But I think he’s always loved us even more.”

  And then I hear a voice from the local newsreader on the television say, “… not far along the coast from the harbour where the submarine was found, there’s been another unusual sighting today. The humpback whale has only been recorded off the south coast a handful of times since records began. Despite this rare and extraordinary sighting, it is also one of concern to marine welfare organisations as to why the whale would be so far off its usual course …”

  “Jodie!” I say. She’s as wide-eyed as me.

  Grandad’s eyes rise to the television and I see a flicker in his eyebrows, as if he’s searching through files, trying to catch a memory. He looks at me; his old smile gathers around his eyes.

  I go round the back of Grandad’s chair and lean my head on his shoulder, wrap my arms round his wide chest and lay my hands on his heart. His one hand folds round both of mine.

  “I’m going to find the whale, Grandad.” I whisper. “I’m going to find it for you.”

  28.

  I TAKE THE BINOCULARS AND MY CAMERA TO FURZE Island the next day, to watch the horizon for the whale. If only I could film it and show Grandad. I don’t know why, but I’m so convinced by Grandad’s old smile, so sure now that it is a whale he wanted us to find after all, not a submarine. I’ll try anything, but the best place to see beyond the harbour is from Miss Bennett’s house up on the cliff top, on the east side of the island.

  On the ferry over I tell Jodie what had happened with Miss Bennett.

  “Don’t go and see her today,” she says.

  I try and think of a good answer because I need her on my side.

  “If I don’t talk about the war then she’s fine. So I’ll just talk about nice things.” I know that Miss Bennett lives apart from the rest of the world for her own reasons, but that she’s happy to share her house with any animals that want to join her. And I choose to be with her too. “She’s got the best view from her house,” I say. “I might be able to see the whale from there.”

  “It’s not here, Hannah, it’s further along the coast.”

  “I don’t care,” I say. “They said it’s closer to here now and I’m going to try to film it for Grandad.”

  And then Jodie says, “Is that her?”

  Miss Bennett is at Furze Island quay. Her walking stick is hooked over the back of a wheelchair, her camera round her neck. She waves away the lady from the visitor centre who is pushing her.

  Jodie puts her arm across my shoulders and walks up to Miss Bennett with me.

  “You must be Jodie,” Miss Bennett says. “Hannah has told me lots about you.”

  Jodie nods and bites her lip.

  Miss Bennett closes her eyes and her face softens. “I’m not used to having inquisitive children around,” she says, knowing we need some kind of explanation. “Was it you who cut the gorse by my back gate?”

  Jodie twitches her mouth; she doesn’t seem sure whether she should admit it. “Yes, me and Adam, but—”

  “Thank you,” Miss Bennett says.

  My mouth wants to smile and I am trying hard not to. In fact, I just want to spring on Miss Bennett and tell her she’s lovely and I am so glad she’s here.

  “Don’t upset Hannah,” Jodie says in her big-sister voice. “She’s having a tough time at the moment. But I expect you know that.”

  Miss Bennett straightens her back and nods slowly to Jodie.

  “All right?” Jodie says to me. “I’ll be cutting back more gorse where I was before.” She squeezes my arm. “You know where I am if you need me,” and she runs to catch up with Adam who’s gone on with the others.

  “Well,” Miss Bennett says, “what shall we take pictures of?”

  29.

  “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT AROUND the island?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe this year, maybe many years ago. All the days blur into one now. Some days I can’t tell the past from the present.”

  “That’s what a memory is,” I say. “Something from the past we remember today.”

  “So it is,” she says. “Quite a mystery really.”

  We spy a fidgety red squirrel and I squat beside Miss Bennett and film while she waits patiently with her camera. I film for six minutes while Miss Bennett takes only one photograph of the squirrel with the sun on its golden back. She explains that because you only have twenty-four chances with the film in the type of camera she has, you have to take your time and wait for the right moment. I think about that when I’m filming afterwards, taking more time to get in the right position, to see the best possible picture first.

  I push Miss Bennett to the cliff edge near to her house, where you can almost see down to the edge of East Beach. She looks up from the camera at the view and back to her camera lens, moving a little to one side to change the angle and get the perfect picture.

  “I’ve taken this picture many times before,” she says.

  “Grandad once told me that nothing stays the same because the world doesn’t keep still for a minute,” I say.

  “True,” Miss Bennett smiles. “But in comparison, memories feel as solid as rocks.”

  She frowns, at herself, like she’s made a mistake. “Maybe they’re not,” she mumbles, I think because she suddenly remembers that Grandad has Alzheimer’s.

  I ask her to teach me to take good pictures. I learn loads in just a few minutes about how much sky and sea looks right, how something in the foreground reflects something in the distance, about how a picture can tell a whole story if the right elements are captured together. I realise then that all her photographs are the things she’s keeping alive all by herself.

  “I really wanted to go to your house, to watch the harbour entrance and look out to sea,” I say. “A whale is out there and I’m hoping to film it.”

  “Yes, I heard about it,” she says.

  Miss Bennett unhooks her walking stick and gets out of the wheelchair.

  “Follow me,” she says. “There’s an even better view.”

  You couldn’t see the other path near to her house, not at first. It is thick with ferns and crowded with long grass. Under my feet I can feel the edge of a step. I go ahead and hold Miss Bennett’s arm to steady her as we climb down. We come out on a kind of sandy ledge that slopes down to East Beach, where the shore is narrow, way past the Keep Out sign. Then she stops and knocks back some ferns.

  Hidden behind the ferns is the boathouse I’d seen from the beach, its wooden doors faded grey, with thin windows at the top just under the roof.

  “Is this yours?” I say.

  “You’ll see,” she says. She has a key in her pocket and undoes the rusty lock. “This boathouse is one of the few things here that survived the war.”

  Inside it smells of dust and old varnish; I remember the smell from somewhere. From around the quay? Maybe Grandad?

  A wooden rowing boat, about as long as a car, rests on a trailer with wheels. It’s the same boat from the picture of Miss Bennett when she was seventeen.

  She smoothes the bow and I see the curve roll under her hand.

  Miss Bennett smiles. “I was always out in the
boat as a child, taking photographs. My father gave the boat to me, when he went off to war,” she says. “But I haven’t been out in her for many years.

  “You’re younger and a lot smaller, but the memory plays tricks.” She looks at me. “I knocked down the wall,” she says quietly. “I knocked it down and there you were in the sea with your camera. For a moment I thought I was looking into the past, at myself.”

  I think that’s why she let me in. Because I’m like her.

  You can see right out through the harbour from here. I look out to the wide sky and the sea vanishing far, far away past the land. I’ve only heard about the whale. But, even zooming in with my video camera to the wide horizon, I know the whale will seem tiny and be very hard to find.

  “That’s where the poor deer swam, out there,” Miss Bennett says. “They were confused because of the smoke blowing onshore. They swam the wrong way.”

  I see where the sea disappears, curving over the earth. I realise there is no land out there, nowhere to go. Miss Bennett stares at something far away in the past. It wasn’t the bombs or fire that killed the deer. They were too scared to stay here. I think of those deer swimming and swimming and swimming, looking for somewhere safe to go. My heart aches, just as hers must have done, knowing that they’d gone for good.

  I’ve reminded her once again of the terrible memory. But there must be something good I can find for her, something she can hold on to.

  30.

  “CAN I LOOK INSIDE?” I ASK.

  She takes off her hat and pushes her cobweb hair away from her face. “Why not,” she says.

  I climb on the trailer and go round the edge, unhooking the tarpaulin cover and rolling it back to the stern. Underneath are three bench seats and the oars. I sit on the middle seat and a smile lights Miss Bennett’s face. It’s the boat that she loves.

  “Shall we go out in it?”

  “I’m a decrepit old lady. I won’t be going out in any boat.”

  “Just pretend,” I say, feeding the oars into their sockets. “I’ll row and you can sit at the stern, and I’ll pretend to take you away from the island.”