Whale Boy Page 3

  And Michael feels the long column of blue water that stretches down and down and down underneath their boat, right beneath their feet at this very moment, and all the life it might contain. It’s as if his father’s soft, dark voice is reaching down there, taking Michael with it.

  ‘My grandpa told me that there’s a place – a place where the water runs deep enough to lose the highest mountain. That’s where the whales come. So many you can walk on their backs.’

  Michael can see it! This dark blue window of sea where whales crowd to the surface as easy as the bubbles in a glass of lemonade. His heart drinks in this image that his father created, not sure if it’s made up, or real, or something in between.

  Samuel goes on, ‘And he told me that this is half of what you need to know to get there.’

  From under his sun-faded shirt he pulls out a sliver of silver no bigger than his thumbnail, like a tiny shard of moonlight, threaded on a piece of string. He slips the string over Michael’s head, and says, ‘There – see? It’s the head of one of those whales that used to swim right here.’

  Michael runs his finger over the shape. There are words there too, but he’s only just started school, so his father reads them for him, and Michael whispers after him, ‘When Peter hides the Devil and . . .’

  The words feel weighty and important, and Michael finds his eyes pricking with tears as he says them, though he’s not sure why.

  ‘Grandpa said it was a secret, son,’ Samuel says with a big smile. ‘It’s our secret now!’

  Michael nods, and it feels like their two hearts are beating at the same time–

  * * *

  ‘Davis! Davis!’ Gran was shaking him awake, her eyes wild and her hair unbraided in a mad halo around her head. ‘This storm’s lifted the corner off the roof again,’ she yelled. ‘You need to go inside and watch your baby brother!’

  Rain was hitting the roof like handfuls of gravel, and wind tugged at the edges of the tin sheets, strong as a man’s arm. Lightning stunned the air into electric brightness, showing Gran’s frightened face in terrifying clarity, then exploding the sky above their little house with a crack that banished all sense. The sudden noise and light scrambled Michael’s brain, and for a moment he was limp as a doll in Gran’s grasp.

  He came to his senses, and flicked on the torch he kept by his bed for emergencies. Gran was dragging a raincoat on over her nightie, and she had a hammer in her hand.

  ‘Now you stay here, Davis, and watch Samuel while Mummy goes on the roof and gets it all safe!’ she said, trying to sound calm, even though it was clear she wasn’t. She looked smaller and frailer than ever.

  Michael knew exactly what Gran planned to do: climb up the little ladder on the wall at the back of the house to nail down the corner of the tin roof. He’d heard how she’d climbed up there in a storm and nailed it down once before, but that was more than thirty years ago. Somehow in Gran’s mind it was that night long ago, when a hurricane had come and blown the island flat. She’d been a young woman then, raising her boys, Davis and Samuel, alone.

  Michael looked at her and knew that he had to find a way to keep her off the roof. It was no good telling her that he wasn’t her son, but her grandson, and that she was way too old to be crawling about on a rooftop in a gale. The only way was to go along with her in some way. He had never talked back to his gran, but he squared up to her now. He drew himself up tall and tried to look as manly as he could, pretending to be his own grandfather.

  ‘Are you crazy, woman?’ he said roughly. ‘Can’t you tell your own husband from your son? It’s me, Ivor! No way are you goin’ on that roof. Gimme that hammer!’

  He snatched it from her and held out his hand for the nails. Quiet as a lamb, she gave them to him. The look on her face made his heart turn over, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Outside, the rain was coming down like spite. The wind threw it so it stung his skin. The little wooden ladder up to the roof was green with mould and slippery, and the wind made it rattle and shake horribly as he climbed. Michael crawled over the roof to the corner where the metal was loose and bouncing up and down in the gale; another ten minutes and the whole roof would have been flying over Rose Town, leaving Gran’s little home open to the storm. He held the torch in his mouth, and shook his head to clear his eyes of the streaming water. Then he hammered the nails into place – one, two, three, four, five – until the roof was secure. Then he crept back across the roof, down the rickety ladder and went back inside.

  He almost fell over Gran’s body. She was slumped by the back door in a heap. For a terrible moment he thought she was dead, but then she gave a little moan and he knew she wasn’t. The torch fell, smashed on the floor and went out. Michael froze in stupid indecision. Should he light the lamp so he could see properly to help her, or move her first? At last he lit the lamp with shaking hands, and half lifted, half dragged her to her bed.

  She held a hand to her chest and groaned, then opened her left eye and spoke. Her voice was faint and her words slurred, but she was at least back in the real world of here and now.

  ‘I know what you did.’ She chuckled weakly. ‘Got me to think you were my own Ivor.’

  ‘Couldn’t let you go out on that roof, Gran.’ ‘Don’t you play that trick on me again, Michael.’

  ‘OK, Gran. OK.’

  * * *

  Michael walked down the white hospital corridor. Gran was safe, with doctors and nurses to look after her. One of the nurses, an enormous lady with fancy blue-rimmed glasses who told him her name was Sister Taylor, explained what was wrong with Gran. She’d had a heart attack. Her heart had actually stopped for a moment and she could have died. She wasn’t out of danger and she would need to be in hospital for a long while. It was going to cost a lot of money.

  Sister Taylor was quite kind behind her scary glasses; she asked how old Michael was. He didn’t want to be bundled off and cared for by strangers, because then who was going to earn the money to pay for Gran to get better? So he added on a few years – it was an easy lie to tell: he was tall for his age, and suddenly, with the worry and responsibility falling on his shoulders, he felt older. Much older. He hoped that he wouldn’t be found out.

  He told Sister Taylor that his dad would be arriving from England any day. His father had plenty of money, he said; he would pay for everything. For now, at least, she believed him, so he had time to come up with a plan.

  The big doors swung open and let him out into the sunny morning. Michael stood on the pavement, feeling washed out. He pulled the business card out of his pocket.

  SPARGO

  MARINE ENTREPRENEUR

  DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NEW MARINE ENTERPRISES

  There was an address in a place Michael had never heard of, and a string of long telephone numbers. Marine Entrepreneur – what did that mean? Gran said that anyone who had to come up with a fancy name for what they did was probably up to no good. Michael guessed she was right. Why would someone want a boatman who ‘knows how to be quiet’? There were no good reasons that Michael could think of. His father’s warning about bait and hooks echoed in his mind again.

  But he had no choice now. It wasn’t about his dreams, or about chasing some story. This was survival. Washing dishes and sweeping floors wouldn’t pay enough, but fishing just might, and the down payment he’d made to Levi would make a start on Gran’s hospital bills. He couldn’t afford to turn up his nose at Spargo’s offer, however suspicious the old man seemed. Mr Levi had probably had a weak heart all along, Michael told himself.

  St Mary’s church clock chimed the hour. Nine o’clock. Just time to walk down to the Rathborne, the poshest tourist hotel in town, before they finished serving breakfast.

  6

  The Rathborne Hotel announced its name in gold letters over the entrance. There were palms in pots, an old cannon polished to a shine and a doorman in uniform. Michael waited until the doorman was helping some tourists into a taxi, and dodged inside.

  The whale skeleton
that had once stood in the reception area had been replaced with shiny leather sofas. It all looked expensive. To his great relief, Marlee was on reception. She had her hair and nails done at Gifted Hands almost every Tuesday afternoon, and Michael had chatted to her a few times.

  ‘What you doin’ in here?’ she hissed. ‘You wanna get me into trouble?’

  He put the business card on the desk in front of her. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Mr Spargo.’ Marlee’s eyes opened wide and her carefully drawn eyebrows shot upwards. ‘You have?’

  She didn’t look as if she believed him for a moment, but when she ended the call to Mr Spargo’s room, her eyebrows were even further up her forehead.

  ‘He says he’ll meet you here in five minutes.’ Marlee shook her head in disbelief. ‘You are something else, Michael Fontaine. One minute you’re sweeping up in a hair salon, and the next you’re having a meeting with the guy who says he’s gonna make Rose Town the busiest seaport in the Caribbean. We only found out who he was when the Gazette came out this morning.’ She pushed the latest copy of the Rose Town Gazette towards him. ‘You can read it while you wait.’

  Michael perched on the edge of one of the sofas as if he were sitting on red-hot rocks. The lobby was twice as big as the whole of his grandmother’s house. Everything in it was new and polished. There was a huge mirror on the wall opposite him; he avoided looking in it. He didn’t want to see quite how scruffy and out of place he seemed in this sleek setting, and concentrated on the newspaper Marlee had given him instead.

  Spargo was on the front cover. He recognized the crumpled jacket and pale hat, the big square body; the broad, smiling face, eyes sparkling in a nest of crow’s feet. He looked nicer in the picture than he had seemed in real life, Michael thought. Spargo was shaking hands with the mayor, and smiling as if smiling were something he knew all about and could offer you lessons in.

  ROSE TOWN TRANSFORMATION! the headline over the photograph said. Michael read on.

  Spargo, right-hand man to the mysterious international business magnate known only as ‘JJ’ who heads up New Marine Enterprises, or NME, has pledged to make Rose Town great again. The old quay will become a Marine Exhibition Centre, with a very, very special exhibit at its heart.

  ‘I can’t give you any details yet,’ Mr Spargo told the Gazette, ‘but I can promise that once the Rose Town Marine Centre opens its doors, people will come from all over the world to see what it holds!’

  The fish market too will get a complete makeover, with state-of-the-art refrigeration and packaging facilities.

  ‘I grew up in a Cornish village that depended on the sea,’ Mr Spargo says, ‘so I know about places like Rose Town. In a few weeks – perhaps as soon as Carnival time – thousands of tons of marine products will be packed and frozen at the new fish market and sent all over the world. Tourists will flock to the Marine Exhibition Centre. This will bring jobs and prosperity to the whole island of Liberty!’

  As a gesture of goodwill, the NME will build a new road across the island, and a new high school for Rose Town.

  ‘We are incredibly fortunate that NME has chosen to invest in the future of Rose Town,’ said Mayor Lennox Shillingford. ‘Everyone is very excited about this chance to put Rose Town back on the world map.’

  Michael stared at the photograph of the beaming mayor and the two men’s clasped hands. A new road, a new school and a new fish market. Huh! Michael thought. No wonder Mr Levi wasn’t mentioned anywhere!

  There was no time to wonder about anything else, such as why JJ was ‘mysterious’ or what would be so ‘special’ about the plans for the Marine Exhibition Centre, because Spargo was standing in front of him.

  ‘Good to see you, Michael!’ he said, smiling the same wide, white-toothed smile he had in the photograph. In daylight Michael could see that Spargo was really old – but not worn-out old, like Gran was. He looked as if his years had made him stronger and tougher, as if he could carry an elephant up all Liberty’s mountains without breaking a sweat.

  Michael stood up. He took the man’s outstretched hand and greeted him politely. ‘Morning, Mr Spargo.’ Spargo’s hand was like a bear’s paw, huge and strong.

  ‘Ah, glad you can speak then, lad! But none of that Mister nonsense. I been plain Spargo all me life and I ain’t changing now!’

  Spargo’s deep laugh seemed to command you to join in; reluctantly, Michael smiled back.

  ‘So do you agree to my offer?’

  The old man leaned closer to Michael and spoke quietly, but still the question sounded like a challenge, a mixture of being asked to fight and dance. He could already tell that saying ‘no’ to Spargo would be hard; dangerous even.

  Michael nodded. ‘Yes. I agree,’ he said, trying to sound as grown up and serious as possible.

  Spargo straightened up. He moved slowly and deliberately, yet seemed to fizz with energy. ‘Well, no time like the present. C’mon, lad.’

  He strode across the hotel foyer, and Michael rushed after him.

  A car was waiting outside. It had special windows that you couldn’t see in from the outside, but once inside, you could see a shaded version of the world. It had deep leather seats and it was air-conditioned too, so that Michael stepped from the already baking heat of a Rose Town morning into a chill like the inside of a fridge. Spargo leaned forward to say something in Spanish to the driver, then sat back, tapping messages into his phone. Almost no one in Liberty had a phone. Gran used to say that the mobile phone mast that stood on the hill outside Rose Town must be ‘the loneliest thing on the island ’cos nobody talks to it’. Mayor Lennox said it was ‘moving Rose Town into the future’. And here was the future, sitting larger than life in his own air-conditioned limo!

  It was delicious to ride in the cool car. Michael watched the town slipping by outside. At the junction of the Bath Road, just before it crossed the bridge out of town, they passed Mrs Thomson’s car parked outside the bakery. Eugenia was in the passenger seat. Michael wasn’t sure if he wished the windows of the limo were not shaded, so that Eugenia could see him with Spargo, or glad that they were, so she wouldn’t.

  The boat was the only craft tied up at the private marina of a half-built hotel called the Golden Cove, which stood at the end of a long track, about five miles out of Rose Town. She was beautiful – not new, but with a fresh coat of paint, green outside and yellow in, and with two outboards, so if one went wrong you could still get home. She was a good size, yet still small enough for Michael to handle alone. There was a box of fishing gear too, a couple of sturdy handlines, hooks, a bait box and a gaff.

  Michael jumped down into the stern and felt himself glowing with happiness and excitement in spite of his misgivings. Spargo looked down on him from the jetty, his hat in one hand, the other on his hip.

  ‘All yours, Michael!’ he exclaimed. ‘I must say, you look pretty comfortable there! Reminds me of me own first boat when I was nipper. That’s a fair old time ago, I can tell you.’

  Spargo beamed, but his jolly smile seemed forced, and Michael found himself wondering if this big tough man could ever have been a little child, a ‘nipper’. But still, he wanted to impress Spargo and make sure that the boat would be his.

  ‘I was out in my father’s boat all the time,’ he told the old man.

  ‘Yes,’ Spargo replied. ‘I heard about that.’

  How had he ‘heard’? Spargo saw the questioning look on Michael’s face. ‘Your employer, Mr Joseph, told me about you and your da out in the boat,’ he said quickly, stretching out a hand to help Michael out of the boat. ‘Come inside, lad. We need to talk business.’

  Michael took the hand, and the man pulled him effortlessly up onto the jetty. He followed Spargo inside the unfinished hotel. The bar was all concrete and bare wires, but it was shady and relatively quiet, although sounds of drilling and hammering came from other parts of the building. Work was going on, even though it was the weekend. They sat down on two rickety folding chairs on either side of a packing
case.

  ‘OK, so let’s get to business.’

  Spargo was still smiling, but all the time Michael was aware of something colder underneath, as if there were another, quite different sort of face behind the one that Spargo showed him. But this was business, so Michael pushed his unease aside.

  ‘First, it’s important that no one knows where you got the boat,’ Spargo said. ‘I don’t care what you say, just so long as it isn’t anything to do with NME, OK?’

  His blue eyes looked across the packing case at Michael like a pair of lasers. Michael didn’t like lying, and he wondered why such secrecy was necessary . . . But standing in the boat had felt so good.

  He took a deep breath and nodded. ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Good!’ Spargo beamed. ‘Second, this boat is for your use only. No crew! Right?’

  Two people in a boat was safer than one; that way you had someone to haul you back if you fell overboard, but plenty of fishermen went out alone. In any case, Michael had always imagined having his boat to himself, so he nodded again.

  ‘Now we’re cooking!’ Spargo rubbed his big hands together like a child who’d been promised a treat. ‘So you can use the boat, sell your catch, and we’ll pay you for what we need you to do . . .’

  It was great offer . . . too good to be true. Samuel’s voice whispered in Michael’s ear, Where’s the hook? What would Spargo want in return for all these odd promises? Something illegal? Something bad? Was it too late to walk away? Michael’s heart beat in his throat as Spargo leaned forward over the rickety little table, and lowered his voice.

  ‘OK, Michael, so far so good, eh? What I’m about to tell you is strictly, strictly just between us – a secret.’

  Michael swallowed.