The Stranding (16 page)

They waited, scanning the waves.

A little further off, a knobbled flipper wafted out of the water. It waved and wobbled, then dashed down.

‘Hey,’ Lex yelled. ‘What’s that?’

Just near the boat, about fifteen metres off, a slabby black head mottled with white slowly lifted out of the water. The head emerged vertically, water running down the parallel pleats of the whale’s throat and dripping from the lumps along its jaw. Lex stopped breathing, took in the cluster of barnacles adhered to the whale’s throat, the white eye peering at them. Then the whale sank slowly out of sight again.

‘Spy-hopping,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’s called spy-hopping. You’re lucky. We don’t see that very often.’

The head broke the surface again. This time Lex saw the downward-turning angle of the whale’s mouth, several small rings of white marking the top of its head. He wondered how the whale did it, how it lifted its head out of the water like that, whether it used those massive tail flukes to hold itself vertical. And yet the movement seemed so delicate, so controlled. Spy-hopping. What a wonderful way to describe an encounter with a whale. A whale’s way of watching humans. Lex smiled and the whale sank away slowly beneath the rolling swell once more.

Beside him, Mrs B was shaking with excitement, so Lex sat down with her on a bench along the railing. She grasped his hand, wordless for long moments, and then she was laughing and crying, dashing the back of her hand against her eyes to brush the tears away.

For twenty minutes or more, Jimmy guided his boat along at low revs, following the whales as they moved south, travelling slowly. From time to time, he cut the engines and they watched the whales wallowing not far off the boat. There were more spouts with showering drops, and a few more flipper flags. Then, eventually, the whales slipped beneath the waves.

The whales broke the ice for Lex with Mrs B. Over the days that followed, he stood with her often above the cliffs at Wallaces Point watching whales round the headland. They didn’t talk much, but in snippets she told him about the Wallaces. She told him how the first house at the Point had been built by Vic’s father, who had brought his family from Eden hoping for a better future than felling logs in the wet forest. Vic had been just a boy then, and for a while he had attended the same school as Mrs B, before he joined the logging gangs and disappeared for lengths of time cutting wood in the hills. By adulthood he tired of it and took his family west to Albany. It was unusual for families to shift long distances back then, but Vic had been lured by the call of the sea and the mysteries of whaling, based on his grandfather’s old stories of whaling down by Eden. Vic and his family had returned from the west just before the whaling station near Albany closed down. The old house had been in ruins after years of disuse and Vic had started all over again. He had resumed a normal life until retirement, but after his years at sea he couldn’t live away from the water. Hence all the effort to rebuild the house at the Point. There were few whales going by back then, the numbers had collapsed. But Mrs B remembered Vic sitting on the deck for hours, waiting, with his binoculars in his lap.

Lex thought about the old man watching for whales. He understood now why the house was all windows embracing the sea. But he couldn’t rationalise the old man’s thinking. What went on in Vic Wallace’s head when he saw a sleek black back rolling through the swell? Was it a celebration of his past? Did it remind him of the thrill of hunting down a whale, the excitement of firing a harpoon? Or was he thinking of something else? Was he responding to a glimmer of regret, a sense of guilt, of waste, of loss? How could anyone not be moved by the majesty of seeing one of those great animals cruising down the coast? Within his own joyful observation of the whales, Lex couldn’t find any empathy for the old man. He felt only anger at a man who refused to see the imminent death of an irrelevant industry until its very end. What kind of passion for whales did that reflect? At best, Lex could only see it as a passion for killing.

Thirteen

Lex was standing alone on the Point one balmy afternoon, looking for whales and watching Sash and Evan on the beach, when he heard a throaty engine roar. It was the orange Kombi clacking up in a spray of dust. It reversed onto his grass and Callista leaned out the driver’s window, hair flowing over her brown shoulders.

‘Get in,’ she said. ‘I’m taking you for a drive.’

Lex’s heart rate ratcheted up quickly, but he held his face steady. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to know just how much he’d been thinking of her. In fact, now that he was near her again, he wasn’t sure about anything. The way she had reacted last time had been enough to terrify anyone. Especially him, wallowing in uncertainty as he was.

Today there was a wildness about her that Lex hadn’t seen before, a do-or-die recklessness that made him nervous. Even so, he was pleased to see her. He hadn’t really known what to do after that afternoon of passion in the gully. So he had hidden away here at the Point, pretending nothing had happened. He kept telling himself that it was better this way, and that it was too soon for him. But he had been thinking of her often, dreaming of her.

‘I’ll just get some shoes,’ he said.

‘You’ll need boots where I’m taking you.’

Callista turned the Kombi around and kept it idling on the roadside while Lex fetched some boots and socks. He tossed them on the floor of the Kombi, hauled himself inside and watched her as she revved the reluctant beast onto the road. She was thinner and her brightness seemed fragile.

‘You’re a surprise,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’ He hung on to the dangle-strap above the window as the van lurched and jolted over the potholes.

‘Up to the mountains. I want to show you a bit of local scenery.’

‘You don’t have a gun in the back, do you?’

She didn’t laugh. And tension remained thick between them. This wasn’t going to be an easy trip. They were both trapped in the memory of last time: the feel of each other’s skin, the awkwardness of Callista’s outburst and the abruptness of Lex’s departure.

He watched her hands white-tight on the wheel and let the silence spin out. This was her game. He would sit back and let her play it.

On the highway, they headed through Merrigan and just north of town Callista bounced the Kombi onto a dusty dirt road running west. They jolted up and over a wooden bridge spanning the river, where the water ran dark and black beneath them and casuarinas drooped their branches low over the banks.

‘There’s a good swimming hole down there.’ Callista pointed and yelled over the whine of the engine. ‘We can stop for a dip on the way back, if you like. It’s going to be pretty warm up there today.’

Lex nodded and tried not to think of being naked with her in the water. He should be distant with her, careful. Who knew what she wanted from him today.

For a while the road ran along the river, across the green irrigated dairy flats. Lex could smell the grass and the sweet aroma of fresh dung and cows. Beyond the farms he could see the dry creases of the foothills slowly folding away up towards the rugged tops of the mountains with their purple cloaks of distant eucalypts.

Eventually, they turned towards the mountains. Lex held on tight as the Kombi swerved and swayed in the gravel, dust oozing through every crack. The road was roughly corrugated and Callista had to concentrate on holding the Kombi on track as they started to climb. Soon she had to drop into a lower gear and the high-pitched engine roared with effort. There was no space for conversation and Lex was thankful. The air between them was tight and awkward, and anything he said could be wrong. Instead, he studied the landscape, keeping himself focused away from Callista.

The foothills rose and fell and then surged up steadily to a ridgeline. As the road steepened, Lex glanced down the slope falling away beside the van. Spindly eucalypts with streaky rough bark clung to the hillside and the understorey was sparse and straggly. He wondered if there was water anywhere in this dry country.

They swung around a corner. Across the steep valley raw heads of granite jutted. It was surprisingly rugged. Sometimes the drop-off on both sides of the road seemed bottomless. Lex stared out over the craggy mountain tops and tried not to look down. The Kombi’s shaky hold on the road made him nervous, but the surface was mostly good and Callista drove confidently. She knew where she was going.

‘They use these roads to access logging areas,’ she yelled over the engine-shriek. ‘They’re pretty well maintained. That’s the only reason we can get up here in this rust-bucket.’

He nodded. He was watching her knee vibrating in time with the roughly labouring motor.

Eventually the road levelled out, bringing them onto a plateau with logging roads running off periodically to the south and the mountains rearing off to the north-west. Callista parked the Kombi at the head of one of the logging roads. The silence when the engine stopped was immense. Cumulus thunderheads were building westward beyond the peaks, but the sun was still strong. Lex allowed the silence to swell. Taking the lead was her responsibility. He didn’t feel like making it easy for her.

‘There’s a track goes off from here.’ She pointed into the scrub. ‘It leads to that knoll over there. We have to go down and then it’s a bit of a climb. But the view’s great.’

Bush flies buzzed into Lex’s eyes and the corners of his mouth as he tied his laces. Callista was waiting for him at the side of the road, watching him. He followed her over the lip of the verge.

The slope was steep and dry and the track very rudimentary. It was more of a scramble than a walk, but they scraped quickly down to a gully line. From there it was a hard slog uphill to the knoll. Lex had to concentrate on his footing so he wouldn’t slip. His feet scrabbled in the gravel, but Callista seemed to walk like a mountain goat.

They paused for a breather.

‘I grew up in this country,’ she said. ‘It’s a tough landscape, but beautiful. Not many walkers come here. This park is for scrub-bashers.’

The climb to the top was strenuous and committing. It was far rockier and more precarious than Lex had anticipated. They had to scrabble up over boulders and slabs, and use trees for handholds to pull up on.

At the top, a dome of large rock slabs perched high above a delirious plunge down to the valley floor. Lex was wet with sweat. His heart thumped with exhilaration. They were so high. The building clouds in the distance appeared three-dimensional. Over to the east, the sea was royal blue. The air was fragrant with the pungent tang of warm eucalypts. A light breeze licked deliciously at his damp skin. He was very aware of Callista standing puffing beside him, smiling at the view. Hands on her hips, eyes closed in the sun, she looked less translucent than she had in the car when she picked him up at the Point.

‘Let’s sit in the shade,’ she said, bobbing over the rocks to the loose shade of two sprawly eucalypts.

From there the earth fell away, tumbling down into the valley, and the view rolled across the rugged mountains peeling away like torn pages in a book. Callista dumped her daypack and slung the water bottle to him.

‘Thanks,’ Lex said. ‘I’m hot.’

‘You smell good.’

He snorted.

‘No, I mean it. I like the smell of male sweat.’

He used the front of his T-shirt to wipe his forehead. ‘I wasn’t sure if I was going to see you again.’

‘Merrigan’s a small town. There’s no escape.’

‘Who’s running?’ Lex was annoyed at himself for being attracted to her again.

‘If anyone’s been running, it’s been me,’ Callista said. She was suddenly pale again. ‘I’m sorry I threw you out the other day.’

‘I’ll get over it,’ he said.

‘It was that painting,’ she admitted. ‘You shouldn’t have pulled it out.’

‘Maybe you should get rid of it.’

‘I’m working up to it. It takes time to let go of some things.’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

She looked at him with very clear eyes. ‘Aren’t there things in your life that upset you like that?’

Lex thought of Jilly. And that photo of Isabel. But he didn’t want to talk to this woman about that. He hardly knew her.

‘Everyone has baggage,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately you can’t get far in life without picking some up.’

Callista hugged her arms around her knees. ‘My family gave me history. And not all of it’s pretty.’ She looked at him. ‘History can be a burden, you know.’

‘My family history is boring.’

‘Boring or buried. Families have a tendency to bury the interesting parts. They want to escape the legacy of the previous generations. Sometimes it’s better not to know.’

They looked out across the folds and hummocks of the mountains. Lex let the wind flow through his soul. It was glorious up here with the smell of the dry bush rising up to them and the clouds building in massive piles above the mountains. But he was too aware of Callista beside him to lose himself in the landscape. She made him self-conscious and hyper-alert.

‘Why did you come to Merrigan?’ she asked. ‘It seems like a strange place to choose.’

‘The place chose me. The house. It was a great find.’

He noticed her tense.

‘And I needed to get away,’ he continued, watching her. ‘Try something new. I’ve always wanted to live at the coast.’

‘Don’t you find it quiet, after the city?’ She let the tension drop out of her shoulders again.

‘The quiet is good. You can get fenced in by city life. Carried along by the rush of it. I’m glad to stop.’

She smiled and Lex felt his toes curl.

‘Don’t stop completely,’ she said. ‘It’d be nice if your heart kept beating. How else will I get to know you?’

She leaned back on the heels of her hands and looked away from him, gazing across the mountains. Then she continued talking, as if she were thinking out loud.

‘I don’t blame you for running down here,’ she said. ‘It seems like such a fresh place. It looks uncomplicated on the surface. But we have our foibles too. I’ve lived here all my life, and sometimes I wish I could run away. Life gets complex, even down here.’ She sighed. ‘But there’s no such thing as a fresh start, is there? I mean, you take it all with you, whether you like it or not. The things I want to escape are in my heart.’