The Stranding (41 page)

The boats dragged the whale until it was just beyond the breakers where the waves rose up and over its glistening black back. Tim pulled the towel off and shortly after Callista thought she saw a small vapour spout rise.

The wetsuit men remained shoulder-in to the whale. They looked like a mass of black seals, their heads and shoulders bobbing up and down in the water. The whale seemed to be listing to one side. Tim was yelling instructions, getting the men to push it straight using the buoyancy provided by the water. He watched several waves roll in over its back. Then he hollered to the men again. Callista saw the majority of the team cluster along one side of the whale. They ducked their heads low and gouged their shoulders in hard. From the shore, it was difficult to work out what they were doing. Tim was in there too, pushing and shoving against the whale’s reluctant bulk, stopping periodically to yell encouragement to the team. Slowly, the men pushed the whale around, fighting against the waves, until it was facing out to sea, looking the way it had to go.

Callista gazed out there too, squinting into a new band of drizzle that had begun to seep from the belly of a low cloud. The grey sea hardly looked encouraging, but to a whale it must look like home—that wide stretch of heaving, rolling water. She’d imagined they’d tow the whale far out to sea, as far out as possible, where it was truly buoyant and couldn’t see the shore. She had imagined the sling slipping off as the whale slid into the depths with a flick of its flukes. But Taylor had said they couldn’t tow it further, because water could run via the blowhole into the lungs and cause pneumonia. Instead, the plan was to hold the whale facing out to sea until it recuperated enough to swim away. Quick tears flushed onto Callista’s cheeks. Was this the best they could do after finally getting this animal into the water? So much trauma and stress to come to this moment—where it was all up to the whale. It seemed hopelessly optimistic. And there could still be hours to go.

Time slipped into a new holding pattern, marked by periodic vapour puffs as the whale huffed air with each breath. On the beach, the crowd fidgeted edgily. Everyone was still charged with tension. Callista too. She begged Jimmy to allow her onto the next wetsuit team he was mustering. But he rolled his eyes.

‘We need muscles, kiddo,’ he explained. ‘Not pumped-up wenches with fire in their bellies. You’ll be needed soon enough to warm up these fellers when they come back ashore. That Lex of yours is going to need a bit of mothering. He won’t know what day it is. It’s freezing out there.’

He was right. Callista was shocked when the first man stumbled ashore, shivering and blue. In the shallows, he staggered to his knees and had to be helped into the shelter tent by several people.

‘We need to sort out something for Tim,’ Callista heard her father say. ‘He’ll be hypothermic if we don’t do something soon.’

A Zodiac was launched from the shark-cat. It plucked Tim from the water and whisked him away to the boat. Within minutes, he was back, clad in a yellow drysuit. He continued to supervise from the Zodiac while the wetsuit team rotated in and out of the water. As freezing men came ashore, shambling out of the waves into the icy lick of the wind, volunteers teamed up to hurry them into the shelter tent. They peeled wetsuits off and wrapped men in towels and blankets. Steaming hot chocolate was pressed to frozen lips. There was careful monitoring for hypothermia. Mrs Jensen’s tea and coffee team and Sue’s food team were back in their tents keeping the hot drinks and food coming.

Eventually Callista saw Lex come out of the waves. His lips were dark and he was shivering. Hovering on the edge of the group of assistants who reached for him, Callista observed the tight whiteness of his face and the dark hollows beneath his eyes. His hands were shaking and stiff, awkward with the cold. It frightened her. He seemed distant, vague, unaware that she was there. The other volunteers crowded her out in their enthusiasm to help. They walked him into the shelter tent and their hands tugged at him, unzipping his wetsuit, tugging it off and slinging a towel around him, rubbing him dry. They piled blankets around him.

Callista stayed outside the tent, watching the cluster of black bodies surrounding the whale in the steely grey of the late afternoon. Seeing Lex so debilitated by the cold, she wondered how long they could keep this up. Multiplied by the wind chill, the cold was intense. It would be at least half an hour before Lex could even think about going in again.

Thirty-two

As the day grew late, the cordons were dropped and everyone moved forward to the water’s edge. A new heavy quiet fell on the beach. The tide turned and shifted out, and the whale was pushed further out to prevent it wedging in the sand as the water retreated. The wetsuit team continued to rotate on and off the beach, growing colder with each shift. With only an hour and a half of daylight remaining, surely the release time was near.

Eventually, Tim rode the Zodiac ashore to meet with Taylor and Jimmy, and they stood near the tent, punctuating their lengthy discussion with frowns and waving hands. Finally, Tim left the huddle, white-faced, and headed back into the surf. He looked small and lonely as he waded through the waves. The Zodiac scooped him up and rode past the whale and over the swell to the boats.

They must be about to move the whale out at last and Callista was glad. There had to be an end to it, and she hoped it would be before dark. Everyone was cold and weary, and the grey afternoon light was oppressive. Spirits were sinking. She was pleased to hear Taylor’s voice again, crackling in the loudspeaker. But he sounded tired and flat and, as he spoke, outlining the plans for the release, Callista felt dread creep through her.

The whale had been in the water recuperating for at least a couple of hours, and Taylor was pleased about this. But he was adamant that decisions had to be made now that dark was coming on. In a perfect world, the whale would be held a few hours longer before being pushed out to sea. But unfortunately, with daylight running out, Taylor wasn’t willing to take this risk. The overnight weather forecast was for gale-force winds and more rain, and if the whale was released at night and in a storm, it’d be hard to follow his movements and there would be a significant chance of a restranding. Taylor said the other option was to hold the whale overnight in shallow waters. But he wasn’t keen to do that, because the longer large whales were held ashore, the more likely they were to die.

The final option was to release the whale tonight, and soon. Shortly, Taylor said, the whale would be pushed further out and the wetsuit team would come ashore. Once the whale was in deeper water, they would release the harness and move the boats in behind to herd him out to sea. He ought to be able to swim by now, if he was going to make it. And if he was released soon, there’d still be sufficient daylight left to follow him out to sea and keep monitoring him. If possible, they wanted to put a few kilometres between the whale and the shore.

The assumption was that the whale would be able to swim away. Tim Lawton had cautioned that, despite all the rescue efforts, there was a considerable chance the whale might have significant lung damage. He had been breathing fairly regularly, but wasn’t as alert and responsive as Tim had expected after a return to the water. Taylor warned everyone that although they were all hoping the whale would swim successfully out to sea, there was a chance he may not.

Lex came in with the last shift, cold and exhausted. He stumbled out of the water on legs that were numb and felt his mind blurring around the edges. Probably a bit hypothermic, he thought, bumbling with the towel that someone handed him. He staggered into the shelter tent before accepting the hands trying to wrench his wetsuit off. He was so drowsy he could just lie down there in the tent and go to sleep. But people kept pushing at him, holding him up and dragging at the sticky tightness of the wetsuit. Strangers’ hands rubbed him with towels and insistently pressed hot fluid to his lips, forced him to swallow. Somebody brought his pile of clothes. Normally he’d have been indignant to have someone help him into his trousers, like a child. But this afternoon, it didn’t matter.

More hot chocolate. He could taste the drink now. The snugness of his thermals and then the weight of warm layers. Wool. Extra clothes from the volunteer tent. Finally, the cocoon of his coat. He held his arms out and let them help him. He realised Callista was among them, watching him with eyes that were dark with concern.

The others went outside to see if there were other wetsuit men requiring assistance, and suddenly Lex and Callista were alone in the tent.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘We’ll have a look in a minute,’ she said, zipping up his jacket. ‘They’ve started pushing the whale out into deeper water. The vet’s going to assess him out there and see how he’s going.’

Lex allowed her to tug woollen gloves onto his hands.

‘Good,’ he said, sliding his tongue around the thickness of his cold lips. ‘That whale hasn’t much energy left for waiting around.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

Lex hesitated. He was spent. Physically and emotionally. He was ground down by the cold and fighting the surf and waiting for the whale to breathe. Who knew how long he had spent with his shoulder dug into the firm flesh of the whale’s back, his fingers hooked into one of the throat pleats, trying to hold the whale straight.

They hadn’t talked out there. The cold was too intense, the exertion too draining. Each man had been mired in his own internal journey, trying to cope with the magnitude of the whale’s fatigue, the apparent impossibility of the rescue. How could he explain all this to Callista?

‘The whale’s tired,’ he said. ‘He’s sick, and he’s tired. Out there, you keep thinking each breath is his last . . . Maybe he hasn’t got it in him to swim back out to sea. Maybe he doesn’t want to.’

‘Don’t!’ Callista said sharply. ‘You can’t say that. Everyone has worked so hard to get that whale back out there.’

Her face tightened and it almost made Lex cry to think he may have triggered her again. But he had to be honest. There was nothing to be gained by deluding her. She hadn’t been out there. She hadn’t felt the weight of all that flesh trying to list sideways in the water. She couldn’t know about the tremor that had slid through that great body as they pushed it into deeper water. It hadn’t been easy. Lex could still feel his feet struggling to find a foothold on the sandy bottom while the waves pushed through. All they could really do was hold the whale straight, facing seawards.

They had guided the whale out as far as they could. Once their feet were off the sand, they could only bob in the water alongside, while the men near the tail unhooked the sling and let it slip off. They had stayed there, riding the waves beside the whale, until the boats came around behind, rolling wildly in the slap of the waves. And then Lex and the others had swum wide of the boats and back to shore, labouring their frozen limbs into some kind of flailing stroke to slowly inch back into the shallows. There had been moments when he didn’t think he could make it, even though it was only twenty or thirty metres to swim. How could he describe all this to Callista without sounding like he had given up?

‘I don’t know if he’s got the will,’ he said finally, hoping she wouldn’t close him out again.

But she patted his arm and handed him a mug of hot chocolate.

‘Let’s go and see,’ she said. ‘You’re tired and addled with the cold.’

He accepted that, and followed her outside into the onshore breeze, cold as ice off the water.

It took nearly half an hour to follow the whale a kilometre out to sea. By then, the boats were black smudges rocking against the steely sky. Low clouds, dense as burrs, scuttled beneath the higher cloud mass. A bulk-carrier pushed across the horizon. The pulsing throb of the generators further up the beach mingled with the roar of the sea. And the waiting continued.

On the beach, Taylor kept everyone informed via messages relayed from the shark-cat. Far out to sea the whale had stopped and was resting quietly at the surface. The boats stayed with him to prevent him from turning towards the shore. They would sit there with him until after dark, or until he swam further out. Either he was too tired to swim, or just biding time, storing strength.

Lex left Callista with her father and took more hot tea from Mrs Jensen’s tent. It seemed he just couldn’t get enough warm fluids into him. Each time he emptied a cup, the cold would return and within five minutes he would be shaking again. He suspected it was as much about reaching his limits as about suffering from hypothermia.

Darren served him in the tent. The boy was wearing a smile almost as wide as his face. He nodded towards the back of the tent where Helen Beck was sitting with Beryl, Mrs Jensen and the minister. The minister was holding Helen’s hand. Lex stood holding his tea, wishing he felt comfortable enough to sit with them. Even after all that had passed during his time in Merrigan, he was still hovering on the edges with these people. Perhaps he’d never belong. But maybe in his tiredness he was being melodramatic. He had made friends here: Sue, Ben Hackett, Sally, Mrs B. In his own way he was starting to belong, even if he could never be entirely at ease with the church crowd.

For a long time he stood near them, warming himself with the tea and their quiet conversation. He should be helping to set up the lights, but he was more tired than he had ever been. Exhausted to the bone. It was soothing somehow to remain in the tent among people he knew, even if they didn’t encourage him into their midst. They were familiar and he was linked to them by shared experience, and for now that was enough.

Standing quietly gave him space for the first time today to hear a small voice within that had been trying to get his attention all afternoon. There was a worm in him. He could feel it, despite his tiredness, and it was new. Something was settling in him. It was some sort of resolve and acceptance. A way forward that was both heavy and light. For a moment he considered it, then let it ride, allowed it to wash with the burble of conversation around him. He could think about everything tomorrow, when he was fresher.