The Stranding (43 page)

Lex guided them slowly up the dunes. The cold wind whisked through the grasses and swirled around the cars, everything wet with sea mist. He asked Mrs B if he could bring her car back later, and whether she would mind going home with Helen. He needed a car, and he figured a ride with Beryl wouldn’t improve Mrs B’s black mood.

Mrs B held his hand tight after he helped her into Helen’s car. ‘Come over when you get home. I’ll have some sherry and hot scones waiting for you.’

‘Thanks, Mrs B, but there’s no need to wait up.’

‘I’ll be awake,’ she said.

Lex watched them leave, the headlights cutting crazily through the mist as the cars bobbed over the uneven ground until they found the track. Then he turned wearily back down the dunes.

Thirty-three

It was close to midnight when Lex got home. He sat on the couch in the dark and listened to the wind rattling the window panes. The house was cold. It never held the heat well with all those windows. And there was nothing outside. It was black as pitch. He could be nothing and nobody in this darkness and it matched his mood. Apart from the ache in his muscles and bones, there was nothing left in him. It was good to sit with the emptiness, beyond the clamour of emotions. This was his peace.

When he thought of the whale, there was a knot in him. It was tangled somewhere between his chest and his throat and felt similar to thoughts of Isabel. Another battle lost. Callista too. His weariness magnified. How to move beyond this inertia? He could have a shower and go to bed. Wash off the salt and search for something positive in the day. But perhaps he was too exhausted to make any assessments right now.

A light came on in Mrs B’s house and Lex remembered the scones and sherry. There was warmth there, at least. And company. Perhaps he should have that shower and go over. Debrief. Purge the day’s events. Or perhaps he should say nothing. Mrs B knew anyway. She always seemed to know. He opted for the scones and sherry.

Mrs B lit some candles on the old wooden table and switched off the lights. The flames flicked and jiggled in the breeze seeping under the door. They sipped sherry and listened to the wind banging some loose boards up near the eaves.

‘I’ll fix those for you tomorrow,’ Lex said.

Mrs B grunted and poured some more sherry from her crystal flask with its heavy stopper.

‘No rush,’ she said. ‘They’ve been thumping away in the wind for years. If I woke up and it was quiet, I might think I was dead.’

Lex watched the candle flame fluttering. The alcohol eased warmly through him, and he focused on the quiet crackling of the fire in Mrs B’s old stove.

‘What went on there today?’ Mrs B asked, after a while.

Lex watched the candle flame in silence.

‘The vet must have known,’ she said. ‘They should have shot the poor thing. Put it out of its misery.’

‘It was complicated on the beach.’

‘Complicated enough to justify cruelty?’

‘It wasn’t my call. I wanted to walk away right at the beginning.’

‘I’m not blaming you, lad. It’s just that I don’t understand all that craziness, the lack of judgment. They ought to have known when it was time to stop.’

He shook his head wearily. ‘It should have stopped before it started. But I learned a few things out there today, Mrs B. I learned that wildlife is public property. And that whales belong in the realm of the sacred. When a whale is involved, nothing justifies euthanasia. The public owns the whale and the public wants to save it. Pain and suffering don’t come into it. Even the vet said it’s hard to assess. And if he can’t say what’s going on, who else can make those decisions? And what’s objectivity amongst all those emotional people anyway? What does it mean?’

‘Did they talk about euthanasia?’

‘Of course not. The peaceful death option was over the moment I turned away from Callista on that beach and went back to call National Parks. I knew that’s the way it would be. Rescue or burn in hell.’

‘The girl was just emotional. She’d have come around in time.’

‘I doubt it. She held her stance all day.’

‘Do you really think she’d have admitted a turnaround to you? She is a Wallace, after all.’

Lex hesitated. ‘She did help me after I came out of the water on that last shift.’

‘Perhaps that was her way of giving ground. These things can be subtle, you know.’ Mrs B poured some more sherry.

‘She was right about one thing,’ Lex said. ‘Leaving the whale to die on the beach wouldn’t have been peaceful either.’ He sipped his sherry, working through the events of the day. ‘There’s more to it too. There’s this strange notion that whales are a symbol of everything grand and beautiful on earth. Everything wild and free. I don’t know why that is. There’s nothing rational about it. Maybe it’s because they’re so big, and because you can never really see them. And if you do, it’s such an awesome event . . . Remember how you and I were blown away seeing those whales close up on Jimmy’s tour? You can’t kill that, Mrs B. You can’t kill people’s passion for wild things.’

He paused and slid his fingers around the stem of the sherry glass, watching his thoughts form in the flicker of the candle flame. ‘I can see Callista’s point now. I can see what she was trying to tell me. If you can’t help a stranded whale on your own beach, then what hope is there? If you can’t act with passion to save a creature that represents the pinnacle of freedom, then you kill any sense of being able to do something worthwhile in this world. You’re left with nothing. And we’re already powerless enough when it comes to changing things.’

He stared at the flame. ‘It was awful today.’

Mrs B reached across the table and covered his hand with her firm dry grasp. ‘I know,’ she said.

They drank more sherry. Filling time with quiet companionship until Lex felt sufficiently warm to go home to bed.

•

Lex slept the unmoving, undreaming sleep of exhaustion and woke in the grey morning feeling muscles he never knew he had. He wished he could roll over and re-enter oblivion, but a growling hunger niggled him. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, wondering what his feelings would be today about yesterday, whether sleep had changed his perspective, as it so often did. Yet as he lay there going over the day’s events, there was little new or satisfying to find in another analysis. Whether he agreed with what had taken place or not, the basic fact remained—they had done all they could and with good intentions. That had to be enough. The ethics of the situation were a separate issue. Ethics belonged to a world of public discussion and debate. Not to any one individual with strong opinions of their own. Even at the beginning, it had never really been his decision to make—the decision to walk away.

In a way, it was just as it had been with Isabel. He had done all he could and with good intentions. However awful the outcome had been, the whale’s death, and perhaps also Isabel’s death, hadn’t been his fault. He felt strangely released. Settled.

After breakfast, he took a hammer and some large nails from the toolbox in the laundry cupboard and went next door to ferret out a ladder from amongst Mrs B’s junk. She boiled the kettle while he secured her loose roofing boards. Then they ate leftover scones and drank tea on the verandah. It was disconcerting that a day could feel so normal after yesterday.

‘You’re brooding on something,’ Mrs B said after a while. ‘I know it.’

Lex placed his cup back on the saucer. He was surprised how steady he felt on the cusp of this decision.

‘When my little girl died from cot death, she was barely eight months old. I lost something enormous with her—a whole life that I wanted to invest in. And it’s taken a long time for me to come this far, but now I see that I’ve gained something from losing her too. She’s taught me a lot through grief. So perhaps in a way her life wasn’t wasted.’

Mrs B listened to him, kindness flowing from her old blue eyes.

‘Yesterday sealed something for me,’ he said. ‘I love it here. The sea, the sky, the wind.’

Mrs B’s lips tightened slightly. ‘But you have to go.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘The worst of the grieving is over.’

‘Is it always like that? Suddenly you reach up out of this dreadful black hole and you can see light?’

She smiled. ‘It hasn’t been as sudden for you as you think. It’s been very gradual, this seeing the light you’re talking about. Don’t forget, I’ve been watching you. You’ve been healing a bit at a time. That’s the way it is with the deepest wounds in life.’

He nodded. ‘Today I’m exhausted, but somehow I feel like I have the energy to start living again. Properly.’

‘And what do you think you’ve been doing here, lad?’

‘I’ve been marking time—healing, trying to find my feet again. It was like I was destroyed somehow when Isabel died, and this place has resuscitated me. I’ve been rehabilitating.’

‘You think you have to go back to the city to find this life you’re ready for now?’

‘I need to go back to get some closure on things and to pick up some old threads.’

‘Not every tapestry requires completion in this life. Sometimes it’s all right to take up something new. In fact, it’s necessary.’

‘I have tried here, Mrs B. But I’ve made too many mistakes.’

‘The girl?’

‘I think it’s done. Over.’

She regarded him steadily with unjudging grey-blue eyes. ‘You do what you have to do, lad.’

Callista arrived at the Point in the early afternoon. She climbed the steps slowly and found Lex inside pulling the zip on a suitcase. Books and clothes were all around him in piles on the floor. Panic surged in her throat.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Packing.’

‘I can see that.’

He tugged the zip closed and pushed the case against the wall. When he stood up, he grimaced.

‘My body’s a bit the worse for wear today,’ he said.

She held her face still as she watched him, her heart battering wildly. She’d come hoping for some sign of intimacy from him. Some suggestion that he was pleased to see her. But everything about him was distant, withdrawn and impersonal.

‘So you’re leaving,’ she said.

‘I’ve decided to go home.’

‘Back to Jilly?’

He rubbed at his back, massaging a stiff spot. ‘No. That’s over. I’ll go back to radio. Shane seemed to think they’d have me back.’

Callista struggled to suppress her dismay. ‘You never talked about your life much. About being a journalist.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess it seemed irrelevant here. I can tell you now if you want. There’s nothing much to it.’

‘That’s not what Shane said.’

‘Well, no, I suppose he wouldn’t when he’s been lusting after my wife and my job for years.’

Callista shivered. ‘I thought she was your ex-wife.’

‘She is.’

‘Shane said you were a celebrity. The life of the party.’

‘You have to have a public face to hide behind.’

‘What’s your real face then?’

He bent over to pick up a loose handkerchief from the floor. ‘It’s boring. You’ve seen it. I’m as ordinary as the next person.’

‘Why go back then? To all that pretence?’ She’d couldn’t believe he’d contemplate it.

‘It’s what I do best.’

‘Pretence?’

He looked weary. ‘No. Radio.’

‘So you’ll just slot back into your old life?’ She laughed, cynical.

‘It’ll be different,’ he said. ‘I’m different.’

Callista glanced despondently around the lounge room. It already felt as if he had gone. There was a coldness in the place that hadn’t been here before.

‘What will you do with the house?’ she asked.

‘I’ll keep it. I can come down on weekends. And I’ll organise my holidays when the whales are due back in spring.’

‘And you’ll just pop by to visit your old Merrigan friends? It won’t be the same, you know. You won’t belong any more.’

‘I never did, really.’

‘That’s an insult.’ She succumbed to rising irritation. ‘When you took the time to engage with people around here, this community welcomed you with open arms. You’re already a celebrity here, for doing real things—saving Mrs B, the Show Girl competition. Not for spinning superficial chat on talkback radio. Tell me, how many city people are going to stop and talk with you in the street? You won’t get any sense of community back there.’

‘Radio’s a kind of community.’

‘That’s rubbish, Lex, and you know it. You’re talking about a bunch of like-minded people sticking together because they live in a cocoon. A real community is a mixture of people with different opinions. It’s a mosaic.’

‘Whatever.’ Lex looked at her tiredly.

‘You’re running again, I thought you were bigger than that.’ Callista felt sick with disdain. She’d expected so much more from him. All she needed was a sign that he wanted her.

‘I’m not running,’ he said. ‘I belong in the city.’

‘You don’t really think it’s going to be better, do you?’

‘Maybe not. But I’ll be busier.’

‘Filling up your time and your mind so you can’t see where you’re at.’

‘Maybe so, but I can’t milk cows for the rest of my life.’

‘It’s that journalist friend of yours, isn’t it? He’s run us down. He’s painted us as a bunch of yokels and you’ve believed him.’

‘It’s not that at all.’

He was shutting down, his face closed and distant. She reached out with everything that was left in her: anguish, receding hope and exasperation.

‘There are other things you could do here if you used your imagination. You could start up a local paper. Use your skills. The community would support you. If you hadn’t been wallowing in your own problems for so long, you might have thought of it earlier.’

Lex’s eyes flashed. ‘Callista. Stop.’

‘No, I won’t stop. I think you’ve been incredibly selfish. I suppose I should have expected this sort of behaviour from a city person, especially from a journalist. You come down here, use up all the friendship and support of our community, and then you just walk away. We don’t deserve that.’

Lex was angry now and she felt a flash of triumph. At least she had stirred a response from him.

‘Is that why you’re here?’ he said. ‘To have a go at me? It’s not as if I haven’t tried with you. But there’s no winning whichever way I turn.’