Whale Pot Bay (10 page)

But it was too late. As the boat moved away and the water calmed, we saw Pimi rise to the surface, in the middle of the pool of red. Then her injuries became visible, bringing gasps and screams of shock. Across her back, where the tracking pad had once been, was a deep gouge cut by the spinning propeller.

While most people were trying to cope with the horror of the scene, the photographers were clicking away furiously. Some were taking shots of Pimi, while others concentrated on the reaction of the onlookers. Vermin’s camera was aimed at Pimi. Then, as I watched, he tilted the camera so that he included Milt’s boat in the shot. Slowly he panned the length of the boat until the camera was pointed directly at me, and there it stayed. I turned away, not wanting to be part of his horrible home video.

When I looked back, the camera was on Pimi again. She was now lying head-down in the water, with only the arch of her back and the deep wound visible. A strange silence settled over the scene as we watched her slip slowly away beneath the surface. Soon she was gone.

The silence seemed to last for ages, before being broken by a loud voice. It was Vermin. ‘Well,’ he shouted, ‘that’ll keep the sharks fed for a while, won’t it?’ Then he laughed wildly at his own joke. But nobody joined him in the laughter: none of the business people; or the journalists; not even his mate, Scatworm.

The trip back to Whale Pot Bay was mostly a silent affair, broken only by Steph’s quiet sobbing. We’d spent several hours at the location where Pimi had disappeared, cruising back and forth, without success. She never resurfaced within the several square kilometres we patrolled. I think Milt would’ve searched all night, if we hadn’t been there—he was deep into blaming himself for everything. Finally, even he had to accept that she was gone, and we headed for home.

It was early evening by the time we came ashore. Milt invited us up to Tarquins for a meal, which we accepted although nobody seemed particularly hungry. Steph was given some paracetamol and put in a bed with the hope that sleep might lessen some of the grief. The rest of us sat in the lounge, moping as if we were at a funeral. Actually, it was worse than a funeral. The only funeral I’ve been to was Grandma’s, and that was almost a fun thing with people telling stories about her life and what a character she’d been.

We had no such stories about Pimi. Every time we’d had contact with her, things had gone wrong: the death of her first baby, followed by her own stranding, and now this…I think we all needed to talk about it, but no one was prepared to start the conversation. In the end, Milt turned on the television so we could watch the news. That provided more than enough for us to discuss.

The event was the second item. Before it began, the announcer warned that some scenes might be disturbing for some viewers.

It started with an aerial view of the boats clustered around something in the water. With all the noise of the boat engines, I hadn’t noticed that there’d been a plane out there as well. The overhead scene cut to a closer view that must have been taken from one of the boats. I figured it was from Vermin’s camera, as that was the only video I’d seen. The film clearly showed Pimi lying in the red-stained water. It looked like a shot taken just after the journalists’ boat had zoomed past us.

A voice-over was saying, ‘This is the scene that we found when we first saw her.’ It was Vermin’s hissy voice. ‘You can see that the whale is already injured, and the only boat there at the time was Milton Summer’s. They must have gone over the top of the whale and cut it with the propeller.’ There was a pause in the voice as the view cut to a later scene where Pimi’s injury was in full view. ‘In this shot,’ continued Vermin, ‘you can see the injury made by the propeller.’ The camera zoomed in and we had our first close look at the cut. It looked worse than what I’d seen at the time. Any hope I’d had that she might have survived disappeared as I watched her head sink into the water and her body slowly slide away. The final shot in the film was of our boat with Milt staring down at the empty water from the upper deck. He looked extremely upset by what he’d just witnessed.

As the film finished, the presenter’s image returned. ‘Unfortunately, Milton Summer has been unavailable for comment,’ she said.

This was followed by the co-presenter adding, ‘You can see more of this remarkable footage in our programme after seven.’ They then moved on to the next item.

Immediately, Milt was on his feet and pacing angrily around the room. ‘That is so wrong!’ he shouted. ‘It’s all wrong.’ More pacing. ‘All my phone calls were patched through to the boat and nothing came through. They haven’t tried to contact me at all.’ He clenched his fists and beat them against the air. ‘It’s all bullshit. My boat doesn’t even have a propeller. Anyway, we were well clear of Pimi when she surfaced.’

‘We all saw her when she came up,’ said Dad, ‘and she wasn’t injured at that time. The blood came later.’

Suddenly Colin sat up straight. ‘It wasn’t blood,’ he said, quietly.

‘What!’ exclaimed several of us together.

‘It wasn’t blood. It was ink.’ The room went still as we waited for him to explain. ‘Pimi inked. It’s what pygmy sperm whales do when they’re frightened. They squirt a red-brown dye out of their anus. It’s meant to put off the attacker. They might also use it to confuse prey so that they can catch them more easily.’

Dad nodded. ‘So she got frightened by the journalists’ boat screaming in the way it did?’

‘Yes,’ replied Colin. ‘Normally she would have dived after inking, but I suspect she was still too exhausted.’

Vicky pointed at the television. ‘How do we get those people to tell the truth?’ she asked.

Milt was beginning to calm down. ‘Let’s wait and see what they show after seven.’

So we did, and the first thing we saw was Vermin sitting
next to the presenter. Milt rushed to the screen and stabbed a finger at him. ‘That’s that weird shop assistant.’ He turned to us. ‘Scott Grey. He’s the one who leaked the information about me surfing. He’s the one who started all of this mess.’ Then he nodded slowly. ‘Now it’s all beginning to make sense—he’s trying to get back at me for losing his job.’

Vermin was describing what had happened out on the water, or at least his version of it. His video footage had been carefully edited to suit his argument. For example, the shot of Pimi after she’d inked showed only the front half of her body. The place where the tracking pad was attached was invisible. Hence he could claim that the injury had already happened, but we just couldn’t see it. Without doubt he must’ve known it was a lie.

The story was the same as given earlier, except more of the video was shown. Only at the end did it add anything new. They showed the segment where Scott Grey had panned the camera along the boat before zooming in on me sitting in the captain’s chair. I was surprised to see that I had hold of the wheel.

They froze this image on the screen behind the two men in the studio. ‘This is why it happened,’ Vermin said. ‘A boy was driving the boat at the time. Milton Summer let a boy take charge. No wonder they ran over the whale.’

‘Are you saying,’ put in the presenter, ‘that the boy was at the helm?’

‘Yes,’ replied Scott Grey, looking straight into the camera. ‘He had to be. As you saw in the other shot, Milton was on the upper deck. You can’t drive the boat from up there.’

There was a gasp around the lounge—we all knew that
was not true. I was too stunned to gasp or do anything. My face was being broadcast all over the country, and this man was saying that I was responsible for it all; that I’d killed Pimi.

The programme moved on to something else, leaving us sitting there staring at each other in shock. Eventually Dad asked, ‘So, what do we do about this pack of lies?’

Everyone looked at Milt, waiting for a response. He seemed totally exhausted. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he admitted. ‘In the end people believe what they want to believe. Any complaint we make will just reinforce their views. You fight against it, and you end up losing what little private life you have left.’

‘But what about Jake?’ pushed Dad. ‘I’m not happy with him being blamed for the whole thing.’

Milt sighed, loudly. ‘Of course. You’re right. Let’s get some sleep and look at it tomorrow. I think we’re all too stressed to make sensible decisions right now. We’ll leave it until the morning.’

As it turned out, we didn’t have to do anything in the morning—the newspaper did it for us. The main story had the true facts along with a strong criticism of the TV news. It seemed as if the paper’s editor was trying to make ammends for their role in the disaster: if they hadn’t published the tracking details the day before, then none of it would have happened.

The article was supported with several photos. The main one was, as expected, a close-up of Pimi’s injury. However, beside it was another showing the full length of Pimi in
the red-coloured water. It clearly showed that she was not injured at that time. The caption had a description about inking very similar to that given by Colin the evening before.

There were photos of Milt’s boat at the shipyard before it was launched. These showed that there was no propeller, nor anything else hanging below the boat that could have caused the injury. There were also photos showing that the boat could be controlled from both the main and upper decks.

But the most revealing part was a side-box on page three containing an interview with Scott Grey.

Interviewer:	Is it true that you are the one who first released the information about Milton Summer’s surfing?
Scott Grey	Yes.
Interviewer	And you lost your job because of it?
Scott Grey:	Yes.
Interviewer:	Do you have an axe to grind with Milton Summer?
Scott Grey:	No.
Interviewer:	Then why did you distort the truth on the television news?
Scott Grey:	I didn’t distort it.
Interviewer:	I have shown you photographs that clearly show that your version of events is not true. What do you have to say about them?
Scott Grey:	It was very difficult out there. Things were happening so quickly.
Interviewer:	Do you still think that the boy was driving the boat?
Scott Grey:	Yes. You might be able to do it from up on top, but the boy was definitely steering it.
Interviewer:	I have here three sworn statements from journalists who say the boat was always controlled by Milton Summer. Are you saying they’re liars?
Scott Grey:	Yes.
Interviewer:	Do you still maintain that Milton Summer’s boat caused the injury to the whale?
Scott Grey:	Yes.
Interviewer:	These same three sworn statements say that they felt their own boat hit the whale and they never saw Milton’s boat touch it at all. Are you saying they’re lying?
Scott Grey:	Yes.
Interviewer:	I say that you’re the one who is lying, Mr Grey. What’s your answer to that?

At this stage Scott Grey swore and left the interview room.

It was satisfying to have the truth revealed in such detail. But, as Dad said, it didn’t really change anything. It didn’t change any of the things that had happened. Nothing the newspaper could say would bring Pimi back.

The new year had hardly begun and already it seemed as if the gloom of winter had settled over our house. Anyone studying our family at that time would have described it as dysfunctional.

Steph was inconsolable. She spent a good part of each day lying in bed. When she did get up, she would burst into tears at any little thing that went wrong. And there were plenty of those, many of them caused by me.

I’d always found some things the women did annoying; now, they became a major issue. The first was all the plastic bottles that cluttered up the shower. You couldn’t find a place to put the soap because of bottles of body wash, skin lotion, hair shampoo, conditioner, and so on, and so on. It might have been OK if they’d both used the same brands. But no, they had to be different, meaning there were twice as many bottles as there needed to be. I got so fed up one day that I threw them all out onto the bathroom floor. Steph was the first to find them, which led to another fit of weeping. That started Vicky and Dad yelling at me as if I was the one at fault. After being forced to put them all back, I decided that in the future I’d stay dirty.

Then there was the toilet deodorant. In the good old days, Dad and I used to joke about who created the worst stink when we went to the toilet. That stopped when the women arrived. Vicky soon had us using a
spray deodorant. Every time we made a stink, we had to press the button for two seconds. This gave out a sickly, artificial smell that was much worse than any natural stink I might have created. Of course, one day I forgot to do it. Within a minute, Vicky was marching me back to the toilet, ordering me to use the deodorant. So I did. I held the button down until the can was empty. By the time I’d finished, the smell in the house was so bad we had to evacuate. This resulted in even more yelling and crying.

After that episode, I decided that the less time I spent around the women the better. Early each morning I would go to Whale Pot Bay to take photographs. I had been given the job of official photographer for the dig—a job that I took seriously. I found that the light was best in the mornings. It was also a time when I could be by myself, and increasingly that’s what I wanted. I would get so involved in what I was doing that I’d lose track of time. Melanie and Colin usually came down around ten, and most times they would surprise me, as I was unaware that several hours had passed since I’d arrived.

The dig was starting to get interesting. We had uncovered remnants of wood close to the cliff at the back of the mound. At first we thought that they might be part of a building. But it soon became clear that they were part of a boat, probably a wooden whaler. This confirmed what we’d suspected: Whale Pot Bay once had an onshore whaling station.

I told Steph about the find, hoping it might pull her out of her state, and help get her back to normal. It didn’t. She thanked me for telling her, and then withdrew back into her shell. The situation was starting to affect Dad
and Vicky’s relationship. Things finally came to a head one day when I arrived home earlier than usual. I found them in the garage pulling an engine out of an old van, Vicky covered in as much grease as Dad.

‘See,’ she said to me as I climbed out of the jeep, ‘I’m learning to do the things you used to do.’ It was said in a friendly way, and I should have responded in the same manner, but I didn’t.

‘Why?’ I asked, rudely.

She stared at me for a moment, trying to decide whether to react or not. In the end she said, ‘Because, once you go away to school, I’m going to have to help Alan with some of these bigger jobs.’

‘Who says I’m going away to school?’

‘You have to go to school. You won’t get the education you need staying here. You’ll only waste the rest of your life.’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

She started to answer, but Dad put a hand on her arm. ‘Leave it, Vicky,’ he said.

By then she was angry, and she turned on him. ‘No! I won’t leave it. We can’t let—’

‘I said leave it!’ Dad yelled.

Vicky glared at him for an instant, before bursting into tears and running out the door.

For a while Dad and I faced off as if we were going to hit one another. Then he grimly shook his head, turned, and went after Vicky.

I stood for several minutes, calming down and trying to make sense of it all. Deep down, I liked Vicky. I remembered back to the time after her first visit when I’d
caused things to go so terribly wrong. Dad had been so unhappy then, and so had I. That was not what I wanted. And, if I was honest with myself, the life we’d had before she came hadn’t been all that great either. Maybe she was right when she said I’d waste my life if I stayed in Hauruanui. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore; in my own way, I was just as confused as Steph.

After that I spent even more time at the bay, not only taking photos but also doing some of the actual digging. Melanie had given me a rectangle measuring three metres by two, which was my own private little dig. It was fun and helped take my mind off the troubles at home.

It was my job to work through the shell layer, recording all the different types of shells. I soon found that it wasn’t just seashells. There were fish skulls, starfish skeletons, sea eggs, and even a preserved seahorse. However, the shells were what Melanie was most interested in, especially the unusual ones that came from deeper water than the horse mussels. She was using my photos to identify them so that she could find out what depth of water they lived in. From that she could calculate the size of the waves that had caused the catastrophe. But so far it didn’t seem to have worked, as her results suggested waves much bigger than could’ve been produced by any storm. Either her calculations were wrong or the waves had been created in some other way.

One morning I decided to dig into the sand for a while, thinking I might find some human remains. I knew enough not to dig with a shovel, so I began scraping a
metre square with the trowel. I’d found several small stones and a couple of shells before the blade hit against something bigger. With care I scraped the sand away to reveal a yellow horn-shaped object, which was covered with black markings. It looked like some of the markings might be writing. Although I was impatient to dig the thing out, I thought it best to wait for the experts.

Half an hour later, Melanie and Colin arrived. Immediately, Melanie was on her hands and knees, examining the thing with a magnifying glass.

‘Get a brush out of the tent,’ she ordered.

I did so. ‘What do you think it is?’ I asked handing her the brush.

She didn’t answer until she’d brushed away the sand to uncover the full length of the object. Then she gave a delighted whoop. ‘Yes!’ she shouted. ‘Yes, it is!’

‘It is
what?
’ I asked, impatiently.

She stood up. ‘Scrimshaw! That’s what it is.’

‘What’s scrimshaw?’

‘A carved whale tooth,’ replied Colin with a smile. He bent down to study it. ‘A sperm whale’s tooth, to be precise. It’s a beauty. From a big bull, I would think.’

I leant over and could see that it clearly was a tooth, although a much bigger one than any I’d seen before.

Half an hour later it had been excavated and cleaned. It was now more yellow than brown, and the markings were much clearer. On it was a drawing of a sperm whale blowing at the surface. You could see the entire whale, as if the water was transparent. In the background was the rock on which Tarquins stood. The view was almost the same as the one in Milt’s photo, except that instead
of a house there was a whaler’s lookout hut. Below the drawing were the initials
BCF,
and alongside that the date,
1836.

Melanie was excited about the date, because it told us that whatever event had caused the destruction of the whaling station must have happened after 1836. It was information that would help in her search for the cause.

I was allowed to take the tooth home that night to show the others. I hoped that it might catch Steph’s interest, and maybe help her out of the depression. As dinner was finishing, I laid it on the table and said, ‘See what I found today?’

‘That looks interesting,’ said Dad, picking it up. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a sperm whale’s tooth,’ I explained. ‘The whalers would carve them in their spare time. Then they’d spit tobacco juice into the lines to make them show up. It’s called scrimshaw.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, holding the tooth out to get a better look. ‘I can see it now. Where have I seen that view before?’

‘Milt’s photo,’ I said. ‘Take the house away from the photo and it’s the same view.’

Steph stirred at the mention of Milt. ‘Can I have a look?’

Dad handed it over. She turned it around so that the picture was the right way up. ‘Yes,’ she said with the start of a smile, ‘it is, too.’

Then she brought it in for a closer look. The smile disappeared, to be replaced with one of concern, which quickly changed to shock.

‘What is it, darling?’ asked Vicky.

‘Th-the whale,’ she stammered. ‘It’s got a baby inside, just like Pimi had.’ She dropped the tooth, threw her chair back and rushed from the room. A moment later we heard her vomiting into the toilet, with the retching interspersed by loud, gasping sobs.

Vicky picked up the tooth, looked at it for a moment, then thrust it in front of me.

‘There!’ she said. ‘You must’ve seen that!’

I looked, and sure enough, if you studied it closely, there was a baby whale, but to me it looked like it was beside not inside the bigger whale.

‘How insensitive can you be?’ she shouted, standing and leaning over the table towards me. ‘Don’t you have any feelings for others at all?’

For a moment I thought she was going to slap me. Instead she spun around, and rushed away to comfort her daughter.

Dad got up and started stacking the dishes, leaving me sitting at the table wondering what I’d done wrong. But that’s the way it is, I guess. When things start falling apart, even trying to do the right thing can be a mistake. The spiral down to total collapse was well underway.

If ever a family needed a miracle, it was ours.