Whale Boy Read online

  Michael told them who had tied him to the boat, and about the whale – caught and lifted from its home to go into the tank in Rose Town. They might not have believed him, had they not heard the helicopter flying by in the dark and seen a huge shape dangling below it. He didn’t repeat what he’d learned about JJ – that she was his mother. It seemed too strange and too horrible. He even wondered if the blow to his head had sent him a little mad and he’d imagined it.

  They wrapped him in a blanket and propped him up and told him to stop talking and rest. The boat belonged to Mr Dringo; like her owner, she was solid and old and rather wide. She chugged along, comforting and safe, with Mr Joseph and So-So taking turns at the tiller, and Eugenia in the middle with Michael. Even the darkness around the boat seemed friendly, and the way her faint stern light picked out the outline of his friends’ faces. Eugenia held a bottle so that he could drink some water and fed him bits of cold fried fish from the restaurant. It seemed to him that he had never drunk or eaten anything so good. He crunched through the cold crispy crust into the sweet flesh, and felt so glad to be alive. He closed his eyes and listened while Eugenia explained how they had come to his rescue.

  ‘A nurse at the hospital – she’s a customer of Miss Harmany,’ Mr Joseph said. ‘She told Miss Harmany that your gran was worried about you. That you hadn’t been in to see her this evening.’

  ‘And I know you’ve been to see her very nearly every night,’ Eugenia chipped in.

  When Michael hadn’t come to work, having agreed to meet Eugenia at the Flying Fish – ‘to talk about the photos and the fish package and all’ – she had begun to worry more. ‘I was so worried, I had to tell Mr Joseph everything.’

  ‘Then So-So came looking for you and said he had a bad feeling about you,’ Mr Joseph added. ‘So we shut the Flying Fish and borrowed Rooseveldt’s boat to come look for you. So-So got its engine to start for the first time in two years!’

  ‘I had your little black book,’ said So-So, ‘so I could see where you been mostly. So that is where we look.’

  It was like a relay race, with each person taking up the next bit of the story. As they spoke, Michael realized that, all along, people had been looking out for him: not only the friends he knew about – Eugenia and Mr Joseph and So-So – but all the people he didn’t know – from the nurses at the hospital, who knew quite well that he wasn’t as old as he’d claimed but didn’t want to get him into trouble, to the bus driver friend of Mr Dringo who had noted his journeys to and from Golden Cove. Nothing in Rose Town was ever really invisible: eyes had been watching and hands held out, ready to catch him.

  They were quiet for a while, lost in the drone of the engine, then Eugenia said, ‘What I don’t get is why they wanted to kill you?’

  She was right, Michael thought. What was so important about him that they wanted him dead? JJ’s icy voice came back to him: Best if these go to the bottom with the boy.

  He opened his eyes and sat up. He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out not one but two medallions: his own familiar crescent moon, and another, smaller oval.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but these are something to do with it. Where’s the torch?’

  Eugenia shone it on the medallions in Michael’s hand. In the white torch light, he showed how the two pieces fitted together to make one whole moon.

  ‘This one’s mine,’ he explained to Mr Joseph and So-So, showing them the crescent shape. ‘Dad gave it to me before he left. He said the other half was Davis’s—’

  Michael stopped in the middle of his sentence. Had JJ said that Davis was dead? Or was this some other dream created by the bump on his head?

  ‘You OK?’ Eugenia asked.

  He nodded and went on, ‘JJ knew about my half. When she found I had it, she and Spargo acted like it was treasure or something. Then she put them round my neck so they’d go down with me.’

  So-So and Mr Joseph looked at each other and shook their heads. Eugenia squinted at the tiny words. ‘When Peter hides the Devil and . . . the angels kiss the lions’ bite,’ she read.

  ‘Surely guidance for a boat,’ said So-So, ‘from the days of the old whalers. Peter is Morne Pierre.’

  ‘And the Devil is the old name for Morne Liberty,’ said Mr Joseph.

  Michael wondered whether he was the only person on the island who hadn’t known this fact.

  ‘Dad said that it was the way to find a place where there were lots of whales . . .’

  Mr Joseph slapped his hand on his leg. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least now we know what they were up to with all that building. It’s all about whales, just like the bad old days. A whale show and a plant for packing whale meat. Two ways to make dirty money!’

  Michael sat up as if he’d been given an electric shock. It was what he’d feared, but to hear it said aloud was awful. ‘Whale meat?’

  ‘Of course – you don’t know!’ exclaimed Mr Joseph. ‘Tell him, Eugenia.’

  ‘That package you gave me,’ she said, ‘with the Japanese writing? The guy Mum works for at the university – he translated it all, but the big letters just say Whale Meat.’

  ‘That’s why Spargo and JJ want to find whales,’ Mr Joseph told him. ‘To fill two million of those packs!’

  Michael rubbed his throbbing head. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘Maybe this riddle stuff is all crazy. Maybe it’s just a story . . .’

  ‘Spargo and JJ don’t think so – that’s pretty obvious,’ said Mr Joseph. ‘Your ancestors went out on the old whaling ships, Mikey. Maybe what the medallions say is true?’

  ‘And the old whaler men knew things,’ So-So added, tapping his head with one long finger. ‘They killed thousands of whales, but Mother Nature, she recover if you give her a little space.’

  ‘So I’ve just helped them to find whales and kill them,’ Michael said miserably.

  ‘They tried to murder you, Michael,’ Mr Joseph told him kindly. ‘And now we have the same information they do. So if there are whales to be found, we can find them and protect them.’ He slapped his hand on the boat’s side for emphasis.

  ‘We just need to work out what the words mean,’ said Eugenia.

  Michael looked at her face, which was lit by the halo of dawn showing over the island. He could see her thinking; he thought he might hear her too if only the engine weren’t making so much noise.

  19

  If Spargo and JJ found that Michael wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean with the Louisa May, they would, as So-So said, ‘want to finish the job for sure’. So the fewer people who knew where Michael was now, the better. Instead of going home to his gran’s house, he went to Eugenia’s. To cover her second all-night boat trip, Eugenia had told her mum that she was staying at her cousin’s again to finish their Carnival costumes, so she didn’t come with him.

  She suggested he hide in the shed until her mum had left for work with Mostyn, then let himself in by the back door: ‘Key’s under the mat, and there’s corn pudding in the fridge. Rest up. I’ll meet you at the Flying Fish this evening.’

  Eugenia was going to the library. There was something she needed to check, she said, and it might help with the riddle. But she wouldn’t say what.

  Michael was anxious to see his gran, but it was impossible for now. Mr Joseph had gone to the hospital to explain that Michael had a little touch of flu and wouldn’t be in to see her today. If any of the nurses asked about him, he would tell them that Michael was ‘missing’ but not to worry Gran with it yet. That way, if the grapevine did reach JJ and Spargo, they wouldn’t be suspicious. And So-So was going to ‘see how the land lie, what is the word on the street’, whatever that meant. Michael had a funny feeling that it might prove to be very useful.

  They had all agreed that it was too dangerous for Michael to go to the police. New Marine Enterprises were building a new police station and providing new uniforms. Nobody was going to listen to some kid telling a crazy story about an attempted murder by the two most import
ant people on the whole island. The newspaper was sewn up too: Sponsored by New Marine Enterprises had appeared across the top of every front page since Spargo donated a new printing press. All Michael could do was sit and wait, and hope that his head would stop throbbing, and that he – or someone – would think of a plan to stop JJ and Spargo, and set Freedom free again.

  He sat at the kitchen table eating corn pudding, with the photos Eugenia had taken with her little camera in front of him. They weren’t going to win competitions but you could see that the whales were real. Not that the photos helped any more. Spargo and JJ were now several moves ahead in the game.

  The house was very quiet, but it was noisy inside his head. He turned on the radio to balance things out a little, and heard Spargo talking! His voice was rich as honey cake as he played the jolly Cornish fisherman. If Michael hadn’t been so hungry, he would have choked.

  It was obvious that JJ and Spargo hadn’t wasted a moment making up a good story to cover the sudden appearance of the world’s first captive sperm whale in the Rose Town Marine Exhibition Centre.

  ‘The young whale is an orphan,’ Spargo’s buttery voice explained to the presenter. ‘One of our boats just came across him at sea. Without his family he’d die, so it was an act of mercy to bring him into captivity.’

  ‘How can you be sure he’s an orphan?’ the presenter asked.

  Spargo gave a chuckle like Santa sharing a joke with his elves. ‘I’m an old hand with whales, me boy,’ he laughed. ‘Been studying them for more years than you been alive. So I know a lone youngster when I sees one. And now he’s safe in our care, people from all over the world can come and see him!’

  ‘Does this mean that there are whales in island waters again after so long?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d say so,’ Spargo replied. ‘I’d say there’s plenty of whales out there. More’n enough for the island to be making the most of them again. Why shouldn’t you make money out of your ocean?’

  ‘Are you suggesting a return to whaling?’

  ‘Why not? We can harvest these whales sustainably and make Liberty the richest island in the Caribbean!’ ‘Well, that’s a lot to think about . . . Thanks for coming in, Mr Spargo . . .’

  ‘Ah now, lad . . . none of that “Mister” – just plain Spargo, remember?’ Michael could hear the matey wink even without seeing it.

  ‘Thanks, Spargo! I’m sure the visitors will be flocking to see the young whale at the MEC.’

  ‘We’ll be open from ten this morning, and all through Carnival. Look forward to seeing you all. Soon the whole world’ll be coming to Rose Town to see our sperm whale!’

  Michael pushed his bowl away. The thought of Freedom held in a tank had finally killed his appetite. He was too agitated and his head still hurt too much for him to rest, even though he couldn’t remember when he had last slept. Just waiting around was impossible. He could at least go and visit his friend in prison. After all, Spargo and JJ were unlikely to be on the door, and they expected him to be fish food this morning. However, one of their thugs might recognize his shirt and shorts, so he would have to change his clothes.

  There was a laundry basket full of clean clothes on the kitchen counter. Gingerly Michael began to look through what was there. Mostyn’s shorts and T-shirts were tiny, Mrs Thomson’s flowery dresses a bit like tents. Michael had hoped that some of Eugenia’s dad’s clothes might be around, but he didn’t visit very often. The only things that would fit were a pink T-shirt that he had seen Eugenia wearing, and her navy-blue school skirt.

  Michael sat back. He couldn’t go out in girl’s clothes. Supposing someone saw him? And then he told himself that this was the whole point. He wouldn’t be Michael Fontaine wearing girl’s clothes, but a girl – a girl who nobody could put a name to – and that was a good thing. He laughed to himself: if Spargo and JJ expected to see him at all, it was as a dead boy washed up on a beach. Not a live girl right on their doorstep!

  He found a straw hat with a ribbon and a brim that covered his face. His flip-flops were fine; everyone wore those. The T-shirt felt just like any T-shirt, as long as he didn’t think about the colour . . . But the skirt felt, well, just wrong, and on him it was pretty short. In some parts of the world men did wear skirts, he told himself – sarongs and kilts. All the same, he had to walk ten times around the kitchen before he had the courage to step outside the door, and even then he only managed it by thinking very hard about Freedom, trapped inside a tank.

  Michael hurried through town, his head down. The shops were putting up decorations in their windows in preparation for Carnival; the streets were full of islanders who had come home for the biggest event of the year. A taxi driver he didn’t recognize called out, ‘Hey, darlin’!’ to him as he turned down a side street towards the MEC. Michael clenched his fists and walked even faster.

  There was a long queue outside the Exhibition Centre. Mothers with children too small for school, old folks and tourists. One old lady tutted at Michael and said something about how no daughter of hers would have been allowed out in a skirt that short. He pulled his hat down even further.

  The entrance was very modern, all glass and chrome. Michael knew the two women taking money for tickets on the door: he had met them in Miss Harmany’s. He whispered his request for ‘one child ticket’, and didn’t look up, but inside the building the lighting was very low, and everyone was too excited about seeing the whale to look at anything else.

  The ‘tank’ was shaped like a giant oil drum, set on its end, with wide glass panels going from the top, which was in the open air, down to the bottom, under cover. A big staircase snaked in a low spiral up the outside of the tank so visitors could look into the water at various levels.

  Michael peered in through the first glass panel. There were small lights in the bottom of the tank – just enough to show him that Freedom wasn’t there. Cries of excitement up ahead, close to the top of the spiral staircase, showed where he might be. Michael squirmed his way up between the crowding people and came out into a big amphitheatre of seats at the top of the tank, overlooking the surface.

  Pfff, pfff, pfff, pfff!

  There was the familiar shiny dark head, with its line of scars.

  But that was all that was familiar.

  Instead of slow majestic spouts, these were short, nervous breaths. Freedom was bobbing up and down in the water amongst the dead squid that floated around him like so much trash tipped into a dirty pond. The tank was huge, but still little more than three times the length of the whale’s own body. And as he was young and would grow every day, so every day that space would shrink.

  Never before had the whale known any boundary except the ocean bed and the ocean surface. His movements had been limitless. In the sea, he had owned all the space around him, from shore to horizon and back again. Every breath had been taken at his own pace, as if he knew he was part of everything around him. That, Michael recognized now, was the source of the peace he radiated when they had met in the sea.

  In less than twenty-four hours, Freedom had withered and shrunk, not in size but in spirit. He had become a thing, not a being; something dead rather than the most incredibly alive creature Michael had ever met.

  Michael had half expected Freedom to be bashing his great head against the side of the tank, damaging both himself and his prison. He had heard stories from the old days of big male sperm whales smashing whaling boats to pieces. But this silent misery was worse. Even if he could have got close enough to call or touch the whale, what possible comfort could he offer that would make this nightmare bearable?

  In despair Michael looked around. The faces were smiling or laughing. Why couldn’t people see that this was wrong, horrible? Only one reflected his own horror and sadness. On the other side of the circle of seats, close to the exit, a man stood staring down at the whale; he seemed almost on the point of tears. Then he turned away sharply, replacing his sunglasses, and disappeared into the deep shadow of the doorway. Michael wanted to call out, but
the man clearly didn’t want to be noticed any more than he did.

  Michael’s heart jumped around in his chest.

  Even under the beard and sunglasses he had recognized his father.

  20

  Everything about Rose Town was getting brighter and louder as Carnival approached. Michael walked through the bustle and noise of the streets in a daze. He had seen his father for the first time in almost seven years. He wondered if Samuel would even recognize him now. Certainly not in a skirt and a pink T-shirt! If he hadn’t felt like crying, he might have laughed.

  He leaned against the shady wall of the supermarket on Mile Street and thought. There were two places where he might find Samuel again: one was Cat’s Paw, visiting So-So. But So-So wouldn’t be there today; he was going to ‘see how the land lie, what is the word on the street’. Mr Loubière or any of the guys on the beach would tell Samuel that. The other place was Gran’s house. Was it really so dangerous to go there? Spargo and JJ thought Michael was dead, so they’d have no reason to be looking for him. All the neighbours had jobs, so there would be no one about at this time of day, and anyway, all sorts of strangers could be found wandering around the island at Carnival time. He decided to risk it.

  He pushed himself away from the wall and began to run; then he remembered: it was Michael Fontaine who ran everywhere, not the gangling girl in the pink T-shirt; he slowed to what he hoped was a demure, though fast, walk.

  He took a long route through the back streets, as the Old Town road felt too exposed. Then through the Botanical Gardens, up Garth Hill and out of town, cutting back through the banana plantation behind Gran’s house, moving stealthily between the trees; or as stealthily as a boy can in a borrowed skirt!

  He was just about to climb over the rickety fence beyond Gran’s grapefruit trees when he heard voices and froze, crouching behind a thorny tangle of bougainvillea.

  ‘Anything?’ It was JJ.

  Michael shuddered at the sound of her voice, and peeked fearfully between the leaves and flowers. She was perched on the edge of the bench on the veranda, not in jeans this time, but an elegant white suit and large film-star sunglasses.