Skylarking (8 page)

SIXTEEN

I
T WAS
B
LACKWELL WHO ALERTED US
. H
E CAME
pounding on the door of our cottage early one morning a few weeks later.

‘Mr Gilbert,' he called, and banged again on the door.

‘Whatever is it?' Father grumbled, pushing his chair back from the table and setting down his tea, which I knew he hated to have interrupted. He strode down the hall to greet Blackwell and find out what the urgent matter was.

Turned out it was a whale. One of the last of the season. A female had near beached herself on the rocks at Murray's, and the tide was on the turn so she'd surely be stuck by mid morning and what else could we do, said Blackwell, but cut her up on the spot and quick before the oil leaked or the blubber fouled.

I came up behind Father to listen to the man explain himself, and my hand flew to my mouth at his suggestion. I was not the kind of girl who was queasy at the thought of blood – far from it – but to slaughter a beast as magnificent as a whale ourselves? We could not.

I knew that there were fortunes being made by those who chased and killed the whales. I knew that light stations all up and down the coast still depended on their stinking oil for fuel, but I could not bear the thought of a creature so big being brought down by a man, especially a man such as Blackwell.

My father evidently didn't think any immediate action was necessary, for he said, ‘Might she not strike out again for the open water when the tide is high this afternoon?'

Blackwell stroked his greasy beard. ‘She might, for sure, Mr Gilbert. But then we'd have lost what might have made us a pretty penny.'

Father's mouth creased, revealing his discomfort. He knew that the killing of a whale – with the blubber to be rendered into oil, the bone itself – would make a handy increase in our yearly income. If we got to the meat before it spoiled, there would be that, too. We had heard, in the past, of men up the coast learning off the blacks how to make the most of a stranded whale. Money aside, the thought still turned my stomach and, from the look of it, my father's also.

‘If you don't want to be part of it I'll get some men from Bennett's to help me carve her up. But then we could do with the lend of a horse and a wagon, Mr Gilbert, to get the blubber up to Edenstown so as to be rendered down – the whalebone as well. There's enough for us all to share in the spoils.'

Father thought for a minute. ‘Murray's, you say. I'll follow you down, Blackwell, to see what might be done.'

He fetched his oilskin, and Blackwell leaned back against the verandah post and brought a pipe from out of his pocket.

I was bursting to tell Harriet the dreadful news, but I would have to get past Blackwell to do it. I gathered myself and stepped on to the verandah, keeping my eyes averted lest he catch my gaze.

‘You and yer friend should come down and see the beast,' he murmured, low enough for me to hear, but not for Father to.

I ignored him.

‘Will be quite a show when we stick her and bleed her.'

I swept past him, as though I didn't care at all what he said, and ran for Harriet's cottage.

By late morning, there was a little crowd assembled down on Murray's Beach. Blackwell and Father and Walker, the older boys – Albert, James, Will and Harry – and Harriet and me.

As we'd rounded the track we'd seen another figure on the beach who had beaten us there. From his tall silhouette, I knew at once it was McPhail. By the tightening of Harriet's hand in mine, it was clear she knew it, too.

Beyond McPhail was the whale. It was lying in the craggy space made between two rock ridges, and water was pushing up and over its bulk each time a set of waves came in. The blue-grey hide of it glistened in the sun, and it looked so unearthly there, pulled up from the deep and deposited on land where it should not rightly go. Oh, it made me sad to see it.

‘Look, Kate – over there!' Harriet pointed out to sea, and I saw the last falling shower of a whale's plume and, breaking the surface of the water, there was the same arc of whale skin, a smaller beast than this one.

‘It must be the calf,' I said, my chest strangely heavy. ‘Come for its mother.'

Father had noticed our pointing and directed his gaze out at the calf. McPhail walked over to join him on the hard sand, where the tide was steadily retreating, and neither of them turned when Blackwell came to stand beside them.

Father said that if the whale didn't loose itself and head back out to sea with the afternoon tide then Blackwell could have his wish. Blackwell looked pleased and set off to Bennett's River to collect some men and some tools.

Harriet and I crossed our fingers, two sets each, that the whale would hear its calf's mournful calls and also that this would be enough, when the water surged high and fast, to pull the whale back to the open ocean and let it on its way.

And so we waited. It passed lunchtime, and Harriet and I handed around the oat biscuits and cordial that we had packed. We two ate perched on separate rocks, each with a view to the whale. The boys raced around, playing at being pirates, darting in towards the whale and hightailing it away again when Father called for them to keep clear.

At some point, Harriet asked, ‘Might I touch it?'

‘Best to stay back,' Father replied. ‘It's a big beast and still alive, and with the water coming in again, we wouldn't want you crushed.'

‘Oh,' said Harriet.

It was always hard for those who disappointed Harriet, because her pretty face fell in such a manner that one felt as though they had dealt her the gravest blow. Inevitably whoever had disappointed her about-turned on their decision. Harriet knew this, of course, and used it to her advantage.

This time, however, Father was distracted by the rising waves, and it was McPhail who saw her fallen face.

‘I see no reason why you couldn't, if someone stands beside you to keep you safe,' he said.

I noticed then the frank look she gave him as her eyes met his. I shifted my gaze quickly for it seemed as if I had witnessed something I shouldn't have. It thrilled me, that look, but it twisted inside me that I had neither given nor received anything like it.

‘Thank you, Mr McPhail,' Harriet said, and I stood up to go with her for she had voiced what I'd been wishing, too. What it might be like to run a hand down that great blue flank, what it might feel like under my skin.

‘One at a time, I think best,' said Harriet.

Of course, it occurred to me: this is what she had intended all along – to get a moment to be close to McPhail, just the two of them.

Father, I could see, thought nothing of it and nodded as though it were a good suggestion after all. I did notice, though, that Walker watched closely as his daughter stepped from rock to rock, leaning into the tall body of the man next to her.

When Harriet and McPhail reached the great head of the whale, Harriet removed her right hand from McPhail's forearm to splay her fingers against the blue-grey hide. McPhail moved in near to Harriet, to the whale, and brought up his left hand and placed it next to hers so that they were joined by the edge of skin on their littlest fingers.

I could not have looked away had I wanted to. The air around the whale appeared to quiver slightly and then a plume of spray burst from the top of the whale's head, and Harriet leaped away. McPhail's arm shot out to grab her waist and they stumbled back together.

Harriet turned to him then, still gripped in his arm, and she tipped her head back and laughed, and McPhail smiled at her, a great splitting of his face, so that it was as if I were seeing that expression for the first time, as if I were seeing the boy McPhail. There were his teeth, the foreign curve of his cheek. And then, as sudden as it had come, the moment ended, and they moved apart from one another.

Harriet looked at me triumphantly before noticing her father's alert, steady gaze.

‘Watch out!' Father called as a high wave curled up, and we all scattered.

By the time Blackwell and his ragged crew arrived from Bennett's River with their saws and hammers and ropes, the tide was sloshing all the way in around the whale's head and, every time a wave surged in, she raised her great tail and brought it down with a heavy splash.

Harriet returned to my side and, although I tried to be distant, eventually we huddled together on a rock, quietly cheering and clapping our hands together as the water rose higher and the whale became more active.

Out in the bay, the calf emerged from the waves every so often.

‘Poor thing,' said Harriet. ‘How awful it would be. Knowing its mother is stuck here and there's not a thing it can do to help.' She stretched her legs out in front of her, revealing her little black boots and stockings, and she tilted her ankles so her feet swung from side to side. ‘I wouldn't know what to do at all if I had to get on without Mother. Though I suppose one day I must. But I really can't bear to think of it at all. Can you?'

Harriet had been spared the intimacy I'd already had with grief and loss. No doubt it was hard for her mother to have endured the loss of a baby and the certainty that she would never have another besides Harriet. But that could not be as difficult as having a child, raising him and losing him, as my mother had done, and as all our family had done with her in our own ways.

‘No, I do not like to think of it either,' I said as I stood and shielded my eyes.

The men were gathering closer to the whale, and there were raised voices.

‘Come,' I said to Harriet and motioned with my hand for her to follow.

Blackwell was standing next to my father and gesturing at the whale.

‘We wait any longer and she'll move off – we'll lose any chance,' Blackwell said.

The men gathered behind him murmured in agreement.

Father looked troubled. I knew it pained him to see the great whale stuck against the rocks, so undignified. He was a light keeper: it was his duty to see the citizens of the sea safely past the cape, and the imminent destruction of the whale seemed to be against every tenet of his profession. But there was no ignoring the truth of what Blackwell said. Father would be denying the other men income, a windfall really, if he continued to hold back the group gathered there.

But hold them back he did – that was the truth of it. No matter that he had no real position of authority over them, my father presided over the cape and his word was as good as rule. But there was a brittleness to the air around Father and Blackwell, as though Blackwell might at any moment determine that Father had no right at all to tell him what he could and could not do.

I glanced at McPhail to see whether he might support my father, but he did not seem to care one way or another if the whale lived or died. He was a fisherman. He baited and hooked and took his catch, the same as the others. If the bounty of the sea was going to throw itself up on the shores, who was he to refuse it?

The whale used the next set of waves to thump her tail, and we all stared. Harriet's hand flew out and gripped my wrist, and we watched in awe as the water gushed in and around the whale and her huge head lifted a little from where it was resting in the rocks and ever so slightly she slid backwards a foot, maybe, at most.

‘Fer Christ's sake!' cursed Blackwell, and he moved towards the whale.

But my Father called ‘Wait!' and held out his arm to block Blackwell's path.

And in that moment the water rushed in, and the whale pushed and lifted and slid out from her holding place into the waves. She listed there for a few seconds so that we saw the ridged pale skin of her belly before she went down and under, and headed out to her calf.

Harriet and I jumped in the air and cheered. We wrapped our arms around each other.

‘Hoorah, hoorah!' we yelled – for the whale, for the getting away.

SEVENTEEN

B
Y THE TIME WE ALL MADE IT BACK UP THE TRACK TO
the station, it was time for dinner.

Mother and Emmaline had spent the whole day baking pies. I suspected that swimming in the gravy were more potatoes and flour than meat, as the lamb stocks were running low, but what did it matter when the pies sat in the centre of the table, all golden pastry and steam curling from the slits in the top? There were four of them to be sliced and shared, and some carrots and mash to go alongside. Mother had not been sure of how many might come back to eat, so she and I hastily set up a table in the kitchen for the younger children and then pulled in some chairs from the verandah so we could all crowd around.

We ate with gusto. Blackwell's behaviour on the beach had not stopped him from availing himself of a free meal at our table. He ate with an aggrieved churlishness.

I nudged Harriet, who sat beside me. ‘Look at him,' I whispered. ‘What a brute.'

‘Shush, Kate,' she said, and smothered a giggle in her napkin. Her cheeks were flushed, and she seemed to be bursting with all the emotion of the day.

Father sat back in his chair and declared that it was the tastiest meal he had shared in some time, and that Mother and Emmaline had done themselves proud.

‘Let us share in each other's company a little longer,' he said. ‘Shall we sing?'

‘Oh yes, let's!' cried Harriet for she, of course, had the sweetest voice of any of us.

We retired to the sitting room, which Mother hurried to make habitable. She asked me to fetch a bottle of sherry and the small glasses from the cabinet, and I placed them on a tray on the sideboard and offered round the glasses to the men.

Father told the children to run off and play or sit and listen, and it was only little Lucy and Albert who joined the party in the end.

‘Well, then, Harriet, a song if you will?' said Father.

Blackwell muttered, and while I could not hear the words, I guessed at their meaning. I glared at him.

Harriet lowered her eyes as was proper, I suppose, in showing a degree of modesty about the whole affair, but at her mother's urging she went to sit at the piano. Mrs Walker had tried to teach us both when we were younger, but Harriet had the greater propensity. I, on the other hand, was all thumbs and could neither master the black and white keys before me, nor the complicated sheets of music; they would not speak to me like the lines of text I raced through in books.

Harriet settled herself on the piano stool and lifted her hands to the keys. The piano was in a poor condition generally – it was too expensive to get someone out to tune it. We tended to make do by covering the clanking discordant notes with hearty singing whenever we had such an evening.

Harriet's wrists were long and slender with the neat button of her sleeve pulled back a little so she might play. With all eyes on her, I was free to observe her as the others did, and she seemed somehow distant from me. Her face, the very shape of her, were so familiar to me, and yet, tonight, in the lantern light in that crowded room, she was no longer only mine.

She lifted her fingers and played a chord, a pleasing one, and then her voice rang out.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

My Bonnie lies over the sea

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

O bring back my Bonnie to me …

It truly was a sweet voice, and I saw Father close his eyes and smile at the verse. Mrs Walker nodded her head gently.

Harriet played another single chord, and inclined her head to us to indicate we should accompany her. Slowly, quietly at first, a few voices joined hers.

I hated singing in front of others, for I knew my voice was awful. Albert had come to stand beside me, and I moved away slightly so that he would not hear how tuneless I was.

Bring back, bring back

O bring back my Bonnie to me, to me

Bring back, bring back

O bring back my Bonnie to me.

I felt a nudge in my ribs. Albert grinned at me.

‘Don't you laugh at me,' I admonished him.

‘I'm not,' he whispered back.

‘Harriet is the songstress – not me.'

‘I don't care much for singing,' he said softly, and the next chord on the piano vibrated right at the core of me. A strange feeling, not unwelcome at all.

I stared straight ahead but I knew he was watching me.

Harriet's voice rang out even stronger now, and I chanced a look at McPhail as she went into the next verse. He was standing against the mantle over the fireplace but he could not keep his eyes from Harriet. They were filled, I saw, with a kind of longing. Albert looked at me with tenderness sometimes, but it was nothing like the desperation in McPhail's gaze.

I forced myself to glance away and, as I did, I caught the eye of Mrs Walker, who traced back to where my attention had been. I witnessed her puzzlement at McPhail's expression, and the way her face moved to a sudden understanding as she looked from him to Harriet and back again.

O blow the winds o'er the ocean,

And blow the winds o'er the sea

O blow the winds o'er the ocean

And bring back my Bonnie to me.

We all joined her to sing the final chorus, but I was rigid now with nerves. It was as though I were approaching the climactic scene in a book, and I wanted to read on and also I didn't, for once I went on, I would know what happened and all the possibilities and imaginings would be reduced to one ending.

I almost wanted Mrs Walker to cause a scene. But then, as always, I was entrapped by my love, my loyalty for Harriet, and I wanted to warn her, to beseech McPhail to look away, for goodness sake. The haunted, hungry look in his eyes had now gone and in its place were tears, which he roughly wiped away.

Harriet stood up and moved back from the piano and we all clapped. Soon after, the evening ended and our guests left. It turned out, however, that Harriet's fate had been sealed.

As we were finishing dinner a few days later, our door burst open and Harriet appeared, wild and breathless.

‘Whatever's the matter, Harriet?' I said, and appealed to Mother with my eyes.

‘You can leave the table, dear,' she said.

I suspect, thinking back on it, that she already knew exactly what Harriet was about to reveal to me.

‘I am being sent to Melbourne!' Harriet said, clutching both my hands in hers, once we were sat on my bed.

‘You're what?'

‘Melbourne. They are sending me to Melbourne to stay with Aunt Cecilia for three months. Three whole months! I am so desperately excited but I told Mother that I could not go without you. Melbourne – can you imagine! And I will stay at Aunt Cecilia's grand house and be introduced around and may have suitors.'

My head was spinning. Not once had I considered that this would be the outcome of that night.

‘But when will you go?'

‘After Christmas, January sometime. I am overwhelmed at the thought of it, Kate! But I told Mother I could not go without you.'

‘And what did she say?' I said, already knowing the answer.

Harriet bowed her head and was quiet. ‘She said it was not possible.' She gripped my fingers tighter in hers. ‘She said that Aunt Cecilia could not be expected to be responsible for two young ladies, and that your mother could not do without you here, that it would not be fair.'

Oh, the hurt of it. The furious envy that bloomed in me. Harriet would go to Melbourne! I knew that this possibility had been spoken of but I never really imagined it would happen. That Harriet would go away. Away from the cape, to adventures unknown and new sights and new places and the types of things I read about and dreamed about and lay awake wondering about. That Harriet should go and not I? That she could win that look from McPhail
and
get to go to Melbourne? I could have roared.

My indignity rose higher in my throat until all I could do was let out a strangled, ‘No. No, it would not be fair to Mother. In fact I must go back and help clear the dishes.' And I rushed from the room so that she wouldn't see my tears.

I heard her call after me, but she knew well enough to leave me be. I hid in the darkness of the verandah and watched her walk slowly back to her cottage, curling my fingers tight into a fist that I bit so that no one would hear my sobs.

And the next day, despite Harriet's news, life went on as before. I was glad for Harriet, truly I was, and I lay with her in the sun as she planned and chatted.

As Christmas approached, she grew ever more impatient for Melbourne and then would turn and cry and say she could never leave. I took the tears; I took the embraces; I took the wailing. I joined in all of it. For I loved her – I loved her, and I wished her well.