Whale Boy Read online

  ‘OK . . . What about this, then? They’re keeping the packages in a safe. A safe, for fish packs? I mean, what do they want to keep so secret?’

  Inside Michael’s head things began to make a picture; he couldn’t see yet what it showed, but he knew it made him feel uneasy. While Mr Joseph argued with Miss Harmany, he slipped the plastic package with its Japanese writing onto his tray with the dirty glasses.

  Back in the kitchen, the chefs had gone home; Eugenia was getting ready to leave.

  ‘Wait a second!’ Michael called.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ she snapped back at him. ‘If I stand here a moment longer, I’m going to fall over.’ She was almost out of the door and showed no sign of staying.

  Michael hesitated. Don’t rely on another soul, then you don’t owe nobody a thing, Gran’s voice said inside his head, but he couldn’t get to the bottom of his suspicions about Spargo alone. He swallowed his pride. ‘Please, Eugenia,’ he said quietly. ‘I need your help.’

  He saw her think of some clever put-down to fire off at him, but she didn’t say it. Instead, she came back into the kitchen and perched on one of the stools. ‘OK,’ she said warily. ‘What?’

  He pulled the fish-plant packaging out of his pocket and gave it to her. ‘I need to find out what this writing says.’

  Michael watched as she examined the package. He could almost hear her brain clicking away.

  ‘It’s Japanese,’ she told him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and your mum works for a Japanese guy now, so . . . Can you help?’

  Eugenia frowned. ‘If you tell me why you need to know, I’ll help!’ She smiled the sassiest of her sassy smiles.

  ‘O-K . . .’ Michael said slowly. ‘I’ll walk you home and tell you on the way. But I don’t want to hear that I’m stupid for not working things out on my own.’

  Eugenia nodded. She looked almost sorry, Michael thought, but he was probably mistaken.

  Michael had been reluctant to admit his suspicions even to himself, but hearing the talk about the tank in the Exhibition Centre and the mysterious packages in the safe had made them impossible to ignore. All that, plus Spargo’s odd desire for secrecy and his strange, threatening manner all added up in Michael’s mind like a line of figures. Telling Eugenia about it lasted all the way down the Old Town road to the other side of Cat’s Paw. They stopped under the one streetlight at the end of Eugenia’s street.

  ‘So you think there’s something bad about that big tank they’re building at the new Exhibition Centre?’ Eugenia asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael said, shaking his head, ‘but it’s like a whole lot of jigsaw pieces that are starting to make a picture. There’s something about that guy . . . just makes me suspicious.’

  Eugenia shrugged. ‘But he’s crazy anyway,’ she said, ‘because there just aren’t any whales around the island any more.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Michael told her, ‘but it’s like Spargo knows that there are whales here somewhere. Like he has some kind of secret information.’

  ‘Or he could just be an old fool . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Michael said, ‘I told myself that too, but then . . . there’s another thing you should know.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I found a whale. A sperm whale.’

  ‘Wow!’ Eugenia exclaimed. ‘So d’you think there are more?’

  Michael nodded. ‘Sperm whales are pretty sociable – that’s how the old whalers used to catch so many.’

  ‘So why was your whale on its own?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I think his family could be around here. But he was kind of exploring. My dad said that’s what young males do. He was so curious, like he wanted to find out about me. He tipped me out of the boat so I was in the water with him.’

  ‘You swam with a whale?’ Eugenia gasped. ‘What was it like?’

  He frowned and thought hard. ‘It felt like . . . like the beginning of the world. Like I was the first person and he was the first whale, in the first ocean.’

  Eugenia stared at him. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘Michael Fontaine is a poet. Who would have guessed?’

  Now it was Michael’s turn to be speechless.

  ‘Would you take me?’ Eugenia asked. ‘Take me to see your whale?’

  ‘Well,’ Michael spluttered, ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Mum gave me a camera for my birthday – just a cheap throwaway one,’ she said, ‘but it might help to get some pictures, to prove there really are whales before Spargo does anything bad?’

  She was right. It might help.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Can you be at Golden Cove by eight thirty tomorrow?’

  ‘I can,’ she replied, ‘and I won’t even have to miss school. It’s half term this week!’

  Eugenia almost danced up the street when they said goodbye.

  13

  She was late. It was almost nine, and the builders were already hard at work by the time Eugenia arrived; they watched as she got into the Louisa May. Michael guessed that they had been told to make sure he stuck to all Spargo’s conditions about the use of the boat. He didn’t care. As soon as he had shown Eugenia the whale and got some pictures that would help prove what Spargo planned, he was going to quit anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Eugenia said. ‘I had to call in at my cousin’s to ask her to cover for me if we’re late back.’

  Michael cast off and turned the Louisa May’s nose out to sea. He was surprised to see how comfortable Eugenia was in the boat.

  ‘You aren’t the only person who knows about boats, Michael Fontaine!’ she said when she saw him watching her coiling the mooring lines and stowing them away. ‘My grandpa used to take me fishing when I was little.’

  Michael headed directly north, and then turned west to the deeper water a mile or more offshore, where Freedom had last dived. The water wasn’t the glassy calm it had been for the last two weeks: the swells grew like great deepening breaths, and the wind picked up. Still, Eugenia seemed at home in the boat, and Michael was quietly impressed.

  For two hours and more he motored up and down, stopping every so often to scan for signs of a spout. He grew more and more anxious, afraid that Freedom wouldn’t appear.

  ‘It was right around here that I last saw him!’ he told Eugenia.

  ‘It’s OK, Michael,’ she said. ‘The whale’s got the whole sea to swim in; no reason he should be in one spot.’

  But he could see that she was disappointed, maybe even wondering if he’d made the whole thing up. How could he prove to her that the whale was real, and how important Freedom was to him?

  The medallion! Now that he was bringing her to meet Freedom, it felt like she was already part of the secret anyway. Michael stopped the engine and sat beside her.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ he said. ‘It’s a secret I’ve never told anyone.’

  He pulled out the medallion and put it in her hand. ‘My dad gave it to me. It’s half of a riddle that the old whalers used to find whales. Kind of directions where to find them.’

  Eugenia was fascinated; she looked keenly at the silver crescent, and read the words engraved beneath the whale’s head.

  ‘I thought Peter could be Morne Pierre,’ Michael explained, ‘and it would hide the Devil if you saw it from a certain position. Except I don’t know what the Devil could be.’

  Eugenia’s face lit up. ‘Don’t you remember in history? Morne Liberty was renamed when the island got its independence. It used to be called Morne Diabolo! Devil Mountain!’

  That was it! If only he’d paid attention in class he could have worked that out! Michael thought.

  ‘You’d have to be beyond Cape Paradis for Morne Liberty – Diabolo – to be behind Morne Pierre,’ he said excitedly.

  ‘But that would only give you a direction, wouldn’t it?’ said Eugenia. ‘Not a single position.’

  She was too clever, that was for sure, but she was right. The two mountains would line up, one hiding the other along
a line that could stretch for miles north of the island.

  ‘Maybe the other half of the medallion tells you how far on that course you have to go . . .’ Michael said thoughtfully.

  ‘Maybe it says something else too . . .’ Eugenia pointed to one of the tiny words. ‘Have you ever wondered why it says “when Peter hides the Devil”, not where?’

  Michael looked at her in astonishment. He’d never thought of that.

  ‘Sperm whales wander around, don’t they?’ she went on. ‘But maybe there’s a time of year when whales gather, and maybe that’s what Spargo knows . . .’ She frowned. ‘Who has the other half of the riddle?’ she asked.

  ‘My uncle Davis, who I’ve never met. My dad never knew what the other half said, because he and my uncle didn’t get along so well.’

  ‘But didn’t you say he’s paying your gran’s hospital bills? So you could ask him what his part says.’

  ‘Except he’s been in England for years, and I have no idea how to contact him,’ Michael said.

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Could we try out the first bit of the riddle?’ Eugenia asked. ‘See if we can at least find the course you’d have to steer for Peter to hide the Devil.’

  ‘Yeah! We could. Looks like my whale isn’t here anyway.’

  Without another word Michael turned the Louisa May’s nose to the north.

  The swells grew, and the surface of the sea broke into choppy waves. But the Louisa May was a sturdy little boat, and Michael was sure he could keep her safe. Further and further north they went, but still Morne Diabolo peeped from behind Pierre so that they looked almost like the twin peaks of one mountain.

  Michael looked ahead: the sea to the north was much rougher, and white caps were visible on the horizon.

  ‘We’re getting pretty close to the channel up here!’ he told Eugenia.

  They both knew what that meant. The channel lay between the island and her neighbour to the north. The water there was open to the wild Atlantic, with waves and winds that had two thousand miles of ocean in which to gather strength. Out in the channel was no place for a little craft like the Louisa May.

  ‘We could try just a little further, though, couldn’t we?’ Eugenia said.

  There was no doubting her nerve, Michael thought. ‘OK,’ he argued. ‘Maybe another half a mile.’

  It was slow progress. The wind grew much stronger as the Louisa May lumbered her way amongst the swells and growing waves, and it took all Michael’s skill and concentration to keep her on course. Waves broke over her side, and Eugenia baled with the plastic carton Michael kept in the boat for that purpose. It was time to turn back. Michael steered round, and faced south again. It was too much of a risk to go further.

  Pppppfffffffff!

  A dark, blocky head spurted a blow from its top corner, and a log-straight back wallowed in the waves: a sperm whale. Then another and another, their spouts making slightly different sounds as they popped through the dark blue surface.

  PPPPFFFF!

  Pppphhhhffff!

  Pwwwafffffff!

  PPPPFFFWAAA!

  Eugenia cried out in delight and surprise, and immediately began clicking away with her little camera. The whales were so close that even its tiny lens would show them clearly.

  In amongst the hills and valleys of the roughening sea, more whales were surfacing! Their black snouts exploded with the first loud breath after a deep dive. The Louisa May was surrounded by more than ten sperm whales. Michael and Eugenia stared around in wonder, hardly able to believe that they were in the middle of a whole school of whales.

  ‘I think you’re a whale charmer!’ Michael told Eugenia. She laughed and took some more pictures.

  Although it was hard to judge the size of the whales, some were definitely bigger than Freedom, and one was much smaller. They gathered together, twenty metres in front of the boat, a mass of lolling giants, water sluicing over and between them. Slab-like noses appeared, crinkly expanses of dark grey flank and pale speckled undersides, with long, U-shaped jaws showing under the surface. Pointed corners of tails, the flat paddles of flippers, a jumbled flotsam of dark shapes.

  The whales rolled around each other, on their sides, on their backs, tail up, tail down, making use of every bit of the three dimensions that their watery world afforded them. They clicked so that the hull rang with the sounds.

  Then two more whales surfaced on the edge of the group. One had a yellowish scar shaped like a target on its back, and its spout made a noise unlike the other whales’, as if some musical instrument had got stuck inside the blowhole.

  Weeeeepffffff!

  The other whale swam very close beside it, and when they turned together, Michael saw Freedom’s four white scars! This must be his family! This big flute-blowing whale could be his mother!

  ‘That’s my whale – Freedom!’ he cried. ‘He’s the one I swam with!’

  The children were as mesmerized, as enchanted as if they had been whisked away by the angels who had stolen poor So-So’s wits. For what might have been hours, they watched the whales lolling and rolling around together. There was no more room left on the camera. Eugenia rolled it up in a thick plastic bag and put it in her backpack to keep it dry.

  Then, as if a signal had been given, the chaotic milling about ended, and the log-like backs and huge heads lined up side by side, blows all going in the same direction, right into the wind. Almost as quickly as they had surfaced, they dived again, Freedom next to the big squeaking whale that Michael assumed was his mother. Their tails rose out of the water long enough for him to see that some, like Freedom’s, were perfect triangles, while others were scratched, torn or misshapen. Big Squeaky’s tail was so worn away that one side was like the prongs of a fork. It struck Michael that Freedom was being raised by an elderly lady, just as he was. One after another they slipped down under the surface with not even the tiniest splash, and were gone.

  The children recovered their wits and looked around. They had followed the whales for quite a way, paying no attention to where they’d been headed. In front of them, far too close, were the white-capped waves of the channel, wild and frightening. When Michael turned back to see if he had at last reached a point where Peter hid the Devil, he saw that the island had disappeared behind a cloud like a huge purple bruise. A squall was racing towards them across the sea, and the little Louisa May was already floundering in the swell, a long, long way from a safe harbour.

  14

  Michael had never been out in such rough seas. His father had always been cautious. If the sky looked wrong, or if there was any report of a storm, he’d stay close to land or haul their boat up the beach at Cat’s Paw and not put out to sea at all. In his eagerness to show the whales to Eugenia, Michael had been careless, and now their lives were in danger.

  Eugenia set to constant baling as Michael did his best to steer a course that would take them back towards the shore, where the wind and waves would lessen.

  ‘How bad is this, Michael?’ Eugenia asked, looking up at him.

  ‘Bad!’ he replied. ‘But I’ll get us through, I promise.’ He never liked to make promises he couldn’t keep, but he didn’t want her to be scared.

  In minutes, the waves had become angry fangs, their tops drooling foam like spittle. The Louisa May was more like a surfboard than a boat. Rain fell, curtain after curtain of it, blue-grey and hissing into the sea. The island disappeared, and the boundary between air and water rubbed to a blur. Water streamed over them, making their clothes stick to their skin, running into their eyes. The wind was racing in from the Atlantic, blowing hard from the north-east. It ripped into them, stealing their heat until their teeth chattered. Michael clamped his hand to the tiller and tried to hold a course.

  The compass was in his pocket. He guessed Anse Gabrielle was east-south-east, so that was where he had to aim. The beach lay beneath Morne Pierre, the highest part of the island. This was the most sheltered stretch, the nearest calmer waters
. But steering directly for Anse Gabrielle would put the boat parallel to the waves; to avoid this, he had to zigzag to and fro, trying to keep in the right general direction, but feeling that in spite of his efforts the wind was pushing him away from the island.

  The waves grew higher, the wind stronger, the sky darker. Rain and waves. Eugenia kept baling without a word of complaint, but water was getting into the outboard too. It began to sputter and misfire. Without an engine to keep her moving forward, the Louisa May would be spun round by the wind and hit with the full force of the waves. They would sink in moments.

  It was time to switch to the back-up engine.

  ‘Eugenia, I need you to steer while I start the other engine.’

  For the first time she seemed unsure, but he showed her how to hold the tiller, and she gripped it tight with both hands.

  Michael pulled on the cord of the second engine with as much sudden energy as he could. Every nerve focused on the lovely sound of the engine starting up, but the sound did not come. He pulled again, almost bursting with the effort. But the result was the same. Nothing. Nothing. It was dead, completely dead. And then the first engine finally died.

  Until the moment when both engines failed, Michael had kept his nerve. Kept the fear at bay. Just done the next thing that needed doing. But now he looked round at Eugenia’s frightened face; at the sea and sky closing in like a trap.

  Sometimes in a storm you can’t even think of getting back to shore. Sometimes you just gotta survive till it’s over and you can see where you are. Somewhere from deep in his heart, his father’s voice spoke. You just gotta survive till it’s over.

  Oars. He didn’t have an engine, but he did have oars and he was a strong rower; had been even when he was little. His father had always said so.

  Michael leaped into the middle of the boat. ‘We got to row,’ he shouted. ‘Quick!’

  They had to fit the oars into the rowlocks fast; with no engine and no oars, the Louisa May would be turned side on to the waves and the next big breaker could simply flip her over. Michael struggled to release each oar from its mounting under the gunwales. He could see the next big wave coming for them, gathering itself, ready to pounce. The Louisa May tipped and rolled, and Eugenia sat there, frozen with fear. Michael knew that, alone, he wouldn’t have time to fit both oars before the breaker reached them. He dropped one on the bottom of the boat and wrestled the other into the rowlock. It seemed to be fighting with him as much as with the sea and wind, but just as the big wave struck, he got it into position. He held onto it, bracing it like a rudder, pushing the Louisa May’s nose into the wave so she had some chance of slicing through it and not being engulfed. Aware of the huge power opposing him, he closed his eyes, fighting it with all his strength. The little boat faltered, tipped, quivered, and then . . . the wave was past, and in the small moment of calm he fitted the other oar into the rowlock and began to row.