'Greg . . .'
'You sure you don't recognise it?'
She shook her head.
'It's the key to my lock-up.'
She frowned, still not getting it.
'The one by the jetty. Darn - I must have left your present in there. You and your mates might want to scoot down and check.'
They were gone before I could say another word, feet kicking up in the sand, all squeals and sneakers. Kathleen gazed at me quizzically, but I said nothing. Sometimes you just want to savour the moment and, these days, I get precious few to savour.
Within minutes they were sprinting back up the path. 'Is it the boat? Is it the little boat?' Her cheeks were flushed, her hair mussed round her face. I lost my breath. She was so much like her mother.
'Did you check the name?' I said.
'Hannah's Glory,' she told her aunt Kathleen breathlessly. 'It's a blue dinghy and it's called Hannah's Glory. Is it really for me?'
'Sure is, Princess,' I said. That smile nixed my crappy morning. She threw her little arms round me, and I hugged her right back, unable to stop myself beaming.
'Can we take it out? Can I take it out, Auntie K?'
'Not right now, sweetheart. You've got your cake to cut. But I'm sure you can sit in it in the lock-up.'
I could hear her excited chatter the whole way down the path.
'A boat?' Kathleen turned to me, one eyebrow arched, when Hannah was out of earshot. 'You talk to Liza about this?'
'Ah . . . not yet.' The kids were skipping back to my lock-up. 'But I think I'm about to get my chance.'
She was striding towards me, holding a plate with the birthday cake on it, the little dog at her heels. She was beautiful. As always she looked like she'd meant to head for somewhere else but at the last minute she'd decided to stop by you, as a favour, you understand.
'Hi. I've been hanging that bit of baleen on her wall - over her bed, she wants it.' She nodded a greeting at me. 'Stinks to high heaven. She's got four books on dolphins, two on whales and a video. She'll be opening her own museum at this rate. You've never seen a room so full of dolphin tat.' She straightened. 'Where are the kids off to?'
'You might want to talk to Greg about that,' said Kathleen. Then she walked off, one hand raised, as if she didn't want to be around for the next bit.
'They're - ah - checking out my present.'
She put the plate on the table. 'Oh, yes? What did you get?' She began to whip the clingfilm off the sandwiches.
'Old Carter was selling it. Little sculling craft. I've rubbed it down, given it a lick of paint. It's in perfect nick.'
It took her a minute to register what I'd said. She stared at the table for a moment, then looked up at me. 'You got her a what?'
'A little boat. Of her own. I thought once she's had a few lessons she can go and see the bottlenoses with her mates.' I was a bit unnerved by her expression, so I added, 'She's got to have one eventually.'
She put her hands up to her mouth - 0a little like she was praying. She seemed something less than grateful.
'Greg?'
'Yeah?'
'Are you out of your tiny mind?'
'What?'
'You bought my daughter a boat? My daughter who isn't allowed out on the water? What the hell did you think you were doing?' Her voice was blistering.
I stared back at her, unable to believe she was so mad. 'I was giving the kid a birthday treat.'
'It's not your place to give my kid a birthday treat.'
'She lives on the water. All her mates have little boats. Why shouldn't she have one?'
'Because I've told her she can't.'
'Why? What harm can it do? She's got to learn, hasn't she?'
'She'll learn when I'm ready for her to learn.'
'She's eleven years old! Why are you so mad? What the hell is this about?' When she didn't answer, I gestured towards Hannah, who was standing at the door of the lock-up. 'Look at her - she's pleased as punch. I heard her telling her mates it was the best birthday present she'd ever had.'
She wouldn't listen, just stood in front of me, yelling, 'Yes! So now I've got to be the wicked witch who tells her she can't accept it. Thanks a bunch, Greg.'
'So don't. Let her have it. We'll mind her.'
'We?'
It was then that Mike appeared. I'd forgotten about him, asleep in my cab, some time ago. But now he was standing there, a little awkward, his suitcases in hand, his face still crumpled from sleep. I could cheerfully have told him to get lost.
Not that Liza noticed. She was still raging. 'You should have asked me, Greg, before you butted in trying to buy a little girl's love with a bloody boat - the one thing I've been telling her for the past five years she is not allowed to have.'
'It's just a little rowing-boat. It's hardly a bloody two-hundred-horse-power speedboat.' She was making me mad now. It was as if she was accusing me of trying to harm the kid.
'Excuse me - can I just--'
She held up a hand, still facing me. 'Just butt out of my life, okay? I've told you a dozen times I don't want a bloody relationship with you, and you sucking up to my daughter isn't going to change that.' We fell silent, as the words settled around us. By God, she'd known that would sting.
'Sucking up?' I could hardly bear to repeat the words. 'Sucking up? What bloody kind of man do you take me for?'
'Just go away, Greg--'
'I'm really sorry to interrupt but--'
'Mum?'
Hannah was standing beside the English bloke, her birthday smile wiped clean off her face. She looked from me to her mum and back again. 'Why are you shouting at Greg?' She spoke quietly and carefully, her eyes wide, as if we'd frightened her.
Liza took a deep breath.
'I'll - ah - if someone could point me towards Reception?' Mike looked as if he wanted to be there even less than I did.
Suddenly Liza noticed our extra guest. She turned towards him, face still flushed with anger. 'Reception? You want to speak to Kathleen, over there. Lady in the blue shirt.'
He tried to smile, muttered something about an English accent and, after a brief pause, disappeared.
Hannah was still standing next to me. Her sad little voice, when it came, made me want to give that mother of hers a slap. 'I suppose this means I'm not allowed to keep the boat?'
When Liza turned to me, the full force of every bad thought she had ever had hit me square on. It wasn't a pretty feeling.
'We'll talk about it, lovey,' she said.
'Liza,' I tried to keep my voice nice, for the kid's sake, 'I never meant to--'
'I'm not interested,' she cut in. 'Hannah. Tell your friends it's time for the cake.' When Hannah didn't move, she waved an arm. 'Go on. And I'll see if we can light some candles. It's not going to be easy in this breeze.'
I put my hand on Hannah's shoulder. 'Your boat will be waiting for you in the lock-up whenever you're ready,' I said, hearing the defiance in my voice. And then I walked stiffly away, muttering words I'm not proud of under my breath.
Yoshi met me at the truck. 'Don't go, Greg,' she said. 'You know how worked up she gets about stuff. Don't ruin Hannah's day.' She was still holding a party bag - she'd sprinted down from the kitchen to stop me.
It wasn't me ruining it, I wanted to say. It wasn't me determined to stop my little girl doing the one thing she wanted most in all the world. It wasn't me who acted like the kid's childhood was normal but never talked about any family other than Kathleen. It wasn't me who, three or four times a year, would be all over her like a rash and the next day act as if I was something she'd picked up on the back of her shoe. I know when I'm guilty, and I also know that sometimes it simply isn't my fault.
'Tell her I've got a boat to take out,' I said, more sourly than I'd intended. I felt bad afterwards. It had nothing to do with Yoshi, after all.
But I wasn't going out on the water. I was going to head for the nearest bar and drink until someone was good enough to tell me we'd made it into the next day.
Five
Kathleen
It's hard to believe now, given the size of our land, but whaling was once one of Australia's primary industries. From way back in the nineteenth century whaling ships would come from Britain, unload a few convicts on us, then load up with some of our whales and sell them back to us at our ports. Some exchange, as Nino said. The Aussies got wise in the end and caught their own. After all, you could use a whale for just about anything - the oil for lamp fuel, candles and soap, the baleen for corsets, furniture, umbrellas and whips. I guess there was a lot more call for whips in those days. Back then the whalers mainly hunted the southern right whale - they called it 'right' because it was so darn easy to catch. That poor beast was about the slowest thing in the southern hemisphere and, once dead, it would float, so that they could tow it into shore. I reckon it could only have made it easier for those whalechasers if it had harpooned itself and swum to the processing plant.
They're protected now, of course, what remains of them. But I remember, as a girl, seeing one towed into the bay by two small boats. It seemed wrong to me, even then, as I watched the huge, swollen belly hauled inelegantly on to the shore, the blank eye gazing balefully up to the heavens as if despairing at man's inhumanity. I would catch just about anything - even as a little girl, my father would boast, I could hook, land and gut with an efficiency that might have been construed as heartless - but the sight of that southern right made me cry.
Here on the east coast, there hadn't been the whaling madness that we'd heard of out west. Here, fewer whales were taken before the end of the war - except in our little corner. Perhaps because the whales came so close that you could see them from dry land, this bay became a base for whalechasers. (Our whale-watching crews have inherited their nickname.) When I was a girl, they had killed them from small boats. It seemed like a fair fight, and it kept the catch down. But then they got greedy.
Between 1950 and 1962 some 12,500 humpbacks were killed and processed at stations like Norfolk Island and Moreton Island. Whale oil and meat made people rich, and the whalechasers used more and more sophisticated weaponry to increase their catch. The ships became bigger and faster, and the haul a plentiful, grim harvest. By the time humpback whaling was banned in Australian waters, they were using sonars, guns and cannon-launched harpoons - the equipment of war, my father said, in disgust.
And, of course, they killed too many. They swept those oceans until there was near none left of the humpbacks and put themselves out of business in the process. One by one the whaling operations closed, the processing plants shut down or converted to seafood processing. The area sank back slowly into shabby solitude, and most of us were relieved. My father, who had loved the romanticism of early whaling, back when it was about man versus whale rather than whale versus penthrite-charge grenade, bought Silver Bay's own whale-processing plant, and turned it into the museum. Nowadays the scientists reckon there might be fewer than two thousand humpbacks come past us on their annual migration, and some say the numbers will never recover.
I tell this story to the crews, occasionally, when they talk about getting a bigger fleet, or trying to up their passenger numbers, of whale-watching as the tourist attraction of the future, the way to rejuvenate Silver Bay.
There's a lesson in there for us all. But I'm darned if anyone's listening.
'Good afternoon.'
'Afternoon?' Michael Dormer hovered in the doorway, wearing the dazed expression of someone whose body clock was insisting he was in the wrong hemisphere.
'I knocked earlier and left a cup of coffee outside your room, but when I found it stone cold an hour later I figured I'd let you sleep.' He looked like he wasn't taking in what I was saying. I gave him a minute, and motioned to him to sit at the kitchen table. I don't normally let people sit in the kitchen, but I'd just finished preparing the dining room for that evening. I placed a plate and a knife in front of him. 'They say it usually takes a week to sleep through properly. Did you wake up much?'
He rubbed at his hair. He was unshaven, and wearing a shirt and casual trousers - still smarter than we were used to in Silver Bay, but a good step forward from the formal get-up he'd arrived in.
'Only once.' He smiled, a little ruefully. 'But that was for about three hours.'
I laughed, and poured him a coffee. He had a good face, Mr Michael Dormer, the kind that suggested a little self-knowledge, an attribute I find in short supply in many of my guests. 'Like some breakfast? I'm happy to fix you something.'
'At a quarter to one?' He glanced at the clock.
'We can call it lunch. It'll be our secret.' I still had some pancake batter in the fridge. I'd serve them with blueberries, and a side order of eggs and bacon.
He stared at his coffee for a bit, stifling a yawn. I said nothing, but pushed the newspaper towards him, recognising that his disorientation would ease off after a mug or two of caffeine. I moved quietly, half an ear on the radio, distantly calculating the food I needed to prepare for supper that evening. Hannah was at a friend's house after school, and Liza ate barely enough to feed a fly, so it was only the guests I had to worry about.
The pancakes were done. Mr Dormer perked up a bit when I put a plate in front of him. 'Wow,' he said, staring at the stack. 'Thank you.' I'd bet he didn't get much in the way of home cooking. They're always the most grateful.
But he ate like most men here do, with enthusiasm and a kind of single-mindedness I don't often see in women. My mother always said I ate like a man, but I don't think it was a compliment. While he had his head down I had the chance to look him over. We don't get many men of his age on their own; usually they're with wives or girlfriends. The single ones stick to the busier resorts. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I looked at him in the way I always look at men who might be suitable for Liza. No matter how hard she protests, I've not yet given up hope of pairing her off. 'Whales don't stick together for life,' she would scoff, 'and, as you always say, Kathleen, we should learn from the creatures around us.'
She had an answer for everything, that girl. The one time I'd remarked that it would be good for Hannah to have a father-figure, she'd glared at me with such anguish and reproach that I'd felt instantly ashamed. I'd never brought up the subject again.
But that didn't mean I couldn't live in hope.
'That was delicious. Really.'
'A pleasure, Mr Dormer.'
He smiled. 'Mike. Please.'
Not as formal as he seemed, then.
I sat down opposite him, giving myself a coffee break as I refilled his mug. 'Got any plans for today?' I was going to point him towards the leaflets in the front hall, but I wasn't sure he was the amusements-and-day-trip-to-the-tea-gardens type.
He looked down at his coffee. 'Just thought I'd get my bearings, really. My hire car should arrive later so there's not much I can do till then.'
'Oh, there's lots of places you can go when you've got wheels. But you're right. The bus goes to Port Stephens from up the road, but apart from that you'd be pretty stuck. Did you say you were here on holiday?'
A curious thing: he flushed a little. 'Something like that,' he said.
I left it there. I know not to pursue someone who doesn't want to talk. He might have his own reasons for being here - a broken relationship, a personal ambition, a decision to be made in solitude. I can't bear those people who rattle on and on with questions. Mike Dormer had paid me for a week in advance, thanked me politely for his breakfast, and those two things alone entitled him to my professional courtesy.
'I'll - erm - leave you to it, then,' he said, placing his knife and fork neatly on his plate and rising from the table. 'Thank you very much, Miss Mostyn.'
'Kathleen.'
'Kathleen.'
I went to clear his plates without another thought.
I had other guests to worry about that week - namely a middle-aged couple here for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It would have been our first booking through the new Internet advertis
ement had the Mobys not already been fully booked, forcing Liza to take them out instead. That alone would have put her in a bad mood - she had been adamant that she would play no part in the Internet business - but the man complained about everything. The room wasn't big enough, the furnishings were shabby, the shower smelt of mildew. On his first two mornings he finished the box of bran flakes and when I set out a fresh box the next day he complained I hadn't given him a choice. To cap it, he complained that Liza had set off late on their whale-watching trip, even though they'd arrived late at the jetty because he had been determined to look round the Whalechasers Museum, and had made me open it specially. It was included in the price, you see.
His wife, an elegant woman, immaculately put together in the way that makes me wonder about the time and effort people are prepared to devote to such things, followed him round apologising under her breath to everyone he rubbed up the wrong way. The breathless, conspiratorial ease with which she did this suggested it was not a new experience for her. The trip was her anniversary 'treat', she told me apologetically, glancing behind her to where he was pacing towards the hotel, his head sunk into his shoulders. I wondered how many years it had taken for the deep grooves to appear on her forehead. 'He's enjoyed it much more than last year's trip,' she said, and I laid a hand on her arm in sympathy.
'He was a bully,' Liza said, when she came in. 'If it hadn't been for her I wouldn't have taken them.'
We exchanged a look. 'Bet you made her day, though.'
'Not really. Not a whale anywhere. I gave them an extra hour but it was like the seas were empty.'
'Perhaps they knew.'
'I sent out a whale sonar, telling them to bugger off for the day.'
Sometimes I can see her mother, my little sister, in Liza. She's there in the way Liza tilts her head when she's thinking, in her thin strong fingers, in her smile when she sees her daughter. That's when I know my niece's presence here, and Hannah's, is a blessing. That there is an elemental pleasure in seeing the continuation of a family line, a joy that we who are childless might not otherwise experience. It's that jolt of recognition when suddenly you see not only her mother but your great-uncle Evan, your grandmother, perhaps even yourself. I have been grateful for this knowledge, these last five years. Those glimpses of familial brow, frown or giggle have made up, in some small way, for the loss of my sister.