The table burst into noisy laughter. Liza didn't look up. 'Oooh,' said Lance. 'A private party. Like the private party you gave those two air stewardesses back in April?'
Mike was gazing at my niece. She was saying little, as was common, but her stillness marked her out in the exact opposite way that she had intended. I tried to see her through his eyes: a still-beautiful woman, who was both older and younger than her thirty-two years, her hair scraped back as if she had long since stopped caring what she looked like.
'And you?' he said quietly, leaning towards her across the table. 'Do you chase whales too?'
'I don't chase anything,' she said, and her face was unreadable, even to me. 'I go to where they might be and keep my distance. I find that's generally the wisest course of action.'
As their eyes locked, I became aware that Greg was watching. His eyes followed her as she rose from the table, saying she needed to pick up Hannah. Then he turned to Mike, and I hoped that only I could see the wintriness in his smile. 'Yup. Generally the best course of action when it comes to Liza,' he said, his smile as wide and friendly as that of a shark. 'Keep your distance.'
Six
Mike
The bay stretches around an area of four miles between Taree Point and the outlying Break Nose Island, a short drive north from Port Stephens, a large port favoured for recreational activities. The waters are clear and protected, perfectly suited to watersports and, in the warmer months, swimming. There is little in the way of a tidal system, making it safe for bathing, and there is a thriving but low-level cottage industry in cetacean-watching.
Silver Bay is three to four hours' drive from Sydney and accessible most of the way by a major highway. The seafront is made up of two half-bays. One, at the northernmost point, is virtually undeveloped, and another, home to Silver Bay proper, is a short drive away, or perhaps a ten-minute walk. This supports a number of small accommodation units and retail outlets, most of whose business comes from residents of Sydney and Newcastle. There is a . . . I paused, staring at the screen . . . an existing operation ripe for redevelopment, and numerous buildings with little economic worth. It is highly likely that the owners would see a fair financial settlement as advantageous both to themselves and the local economy.
As far as competition is concerned, there are no local hotels of any size or stature. The only hotel located within the bay is half its original size, having suffered a fire several decades ago. It is run on a bed-and-breakfast basis. There are no recreational facilities, and it would be unlikely to create a problem in terms of competition should the owner be unwilling to sell.
I couldn't present anyone with this, I thought. It was all over the place. And it didn't matter how many facts and figures I had gleaned from the local planning department and chamber of commerce, I still felt as though I was writing about something I knew nothing about.
I had discovered almost as soon as I had arrived that this was not a straightforward site. I was used to square footage in the City; executive apartments, razed seventies office blocks waiting for a new health-and-fitness chain, new prestige headquarters. On such jobs I could go in, look around unobserved, work out the local rental yields against property prices, the disposable income of nearby residents, and, at the end of the day, disappear.
This, I had known from the moment I stepped into Greg's beer-can-filled truck, would be different.
Here, I was acutely aware of my visibility. Even in a sweatshirt and jeans I felt as if my lack of a salt crust gave away my intentions. And considering how empty it was, the area seemed too inhabited somehow, too influenced by its people. It was a new experience for me, but somehow I couldn't see straight.
I sighed, opened a new document and began to type in headlines: Geography, Economic Climate, Local Industry, Competition. I thought, with a little resentment, about my new two-seater sports car, the one I had promised myself on the back of this deal; the car that was waiting for me, paid for and polished, on the dealer's forecourt. I consulted my watch. I had been sitting there for almost two hours and strung together three paragraphs. It was time for another tea break.
Kathleen Mostyn had given me what she described as her 'good' room, some other guests having recently departed, and the previous night had brought up a tray with tea-and coffee-making equipment. She wouldn't have given it to the last occupants, she muttered, because they 'would no doubt have complained that the water didn't boil fast enough'. She was the kind of woman who in England would have been running a school, or perhaps a stately home. The kind who makes you think 'Age shall not wither her', sharp-eyed, fiercely busy, wit undimmed. I liked her. I guess I like strong women: I find it easier not to have to think for two. My sister would have other theories, no doubt.
I boiled the kettle and stood at the window, preparing a cup. The room was not luxurious but was oddly comfortable; the polar opposite to most of the executive-class hotel rooms I stay in. The walls were whitewashed, and the wood-framed double bed was made up with white linen and a blue-and white-striped blanket. There was an aged leather armchair and a Persian rug that might once have been valuable. I worked at a small scrubbed-pine desk with a kitchen chair. I had the feeling, when I looked around the Silver Bay Hotel, that Kathleen Mostyn had long since decided that decorating for guests required far too much in the way of imagination, and had chosen instead to whitewash everything. 'Easy to clean, easy to paint over,' I could imagine her saying.
I realised pretty quickly that I was her only long-term guest. The hotel had the air of somewhere that might once have been pretty smart, but had long since settled for pragmatic, then decided it didn't want much in the way of company anyway. Most of the furniture had been selected for practicality rather than some great aesthetic. Pictures were largely confined to old sepia-tinted photographs of the hotel in its former glory, or generic seaside watercolours. Mantelpieces and shelves, I had discovered, often contained odd collections of pebbles or driftwood, a touch that in other hotels might have signified stylistic pretensions, but here were more likely just the day's finds, needing a home.
My room looked straight out across the bay with not even a road between the house and the beach. The previous night I had slept with the window open, the sound of the waves lulling me into my first decent night's sleep for months, and I had been dimly aware, as dawn broke, of the whalers' trucks, their tyres hissing on the wet sand, and the fishermen heading back and forth across the shingle to the jetty.
When I told Nessa about the setting, she had accused me of being a jammy bugger and said she'd given her father an earful for sending me away. 'You wouldn't believe how much I've got to organise,' she'd said, her voice half accusing, as if my presence in London had been of any help.
'You know, we could do this differently,' I ventured, when she had run out of complaints. 'We could fly off somewhere and get married on a beach.'
The ensuing silence was lengthy enough for me to wonder what it was costing.
'After all this?' Her voice was disbelieving. 'After all the planning I've done you want to just fly off somewhere? Since when did you start having opinions?'
'Forget I said anything.'
'Do you know how hard this is? I'm trying to work and do all this and half the bloody guests haven't even replied to their invitations. It's so rude. I'm going to have to chase up everyone myself.'
'Look, I'm sorry. You know I didn't ask to be here. I'm working on this deal as hard as I can and I'll be back before you know it.'
She was mollified. Eventually. She seemed to cheer up when I reminded her it was winter over here. Besides, Nessa knows I'm not a holiday person. I have never yet managed to lie on a beach for anything resembling a week. Within days I'm scouting inland, looking at the local paper for business opportunities. 'Love you,' she said, before she rang off. 'Work hard so you can come home soon.'
But it was hard to work in an environment that conspired to tell even me to do the opposite. The Internet connection, routed through the phone line, was s
low and temperamental. The newspapers, with the city pages, didn't arrive until nearly noon. Meanwhile the beach, with its elegant curve and white sand, demanded to be walked on. The wooden jetty called out to be sat on, bare legs dangling into the sea. The long bleached table where the whale crews relaxed on their return spoke of ice-cold beers and hot chips. Even putting on my work shirt that morning hadn't motivated me.
I opened an email and began to type: 'Dennis. Hope you're feeling OK. Went to the planning dept yesterday and met Mr Reilly, as you suggested. He seemed to like the look of the plans and said the only possible problems were--'
I jumped at a knock then slammed my laptop shut.
'Can I come in?'
I opened the door to find Hannah, Liza McCullen's daughter. She was holding out a sandwich on a plate. 'Auntie K thought you might be hungry. She wasn't sure if you wanted to come down.'
I took it from her. How could it be lunchtime already? 'That was kind. Tell her thank you.'
She peered round the door and caught sight of my computer. 'What are you doing?'
'Sending a few emails.'
'Is that connected to the Internet?'
'Just about.'
'I'm desperate for a computer. Loads of my friends at school have them.' She hovered on one leg. 'Did you know my aunt is on the Internet? I heard her telling my mum.'
'I think lots of hotels are on the Internet,' I said.
'No,' she said. 'She's on the Internet. Herself. She doesn't like to talk about it now but she used to be famous round here for catching sharks.'
I tried to imagine the old lady wrestling with some Jaws-like creature. Oddly, it wasn't as hard as I'd imagined.
The child was hovering in the doorway, plainly in no hurry to leave. She had that light, gangly look that girls get just before they burst into adulthood; the opaque quality where, for a couple of months, or even years, it's impossible to tell whether they're going to be great beauties, or whether hormones and genetics will conspire to pull out that nose a little too far, or make that chin a bit heavy. I suspected in her case that it would be the former.
I looked down, in case she thought I was staring at her. She was very like her mother.
'Mr Dormer.'
'Mike.'
'Mike. When you're not too busy - if you're not too busy - one day, can I have a go on your computer? I'd really like to see that picture of my aunt.'
The sun had cast the whole bay in radiance, the shadows shrinking, the sidewalks and sand bouncing reflected light back into the air. Since I'd arrived at Kingsford Smith, Sydney's airport, I'd felt like a fish out of water. It was nice to have someone ask me to do something familiar. 'Tell you what,' I said, 'we could have a look now.'
We were sitting there for almost an hour, during which time I decided she was a sweet kid. A little young for her age in some ways - she was much less interested in her appearance than the London kids I knew, or pop culture, music, all that stuff - yet she carried an air of wistfulness, and a maturity that sat awkwardly on such a young frame. I'm not usually great with kids - I find it hard to know what to talk to them about - but I found myself enjoying Hannah McCullen's company.
She asked me about London, about my house, whether I had any pets. She found out pretty quickly that I was due to get married, and fixed her big, dark, serious eyes on me as she asked, with some gravity, 'Are you sure she's the right person?'
I was a little taken aback, but I felt she deserved to be answered with equal gravity. 'I think so. We've been together a long time. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses.'
'Are you nice to her?'
I thought for a minute. 'I hope I'm nice to everyone.'
She grinned, a more childish grin. 'You do seem quite nice,' she conceded. Then we turned to the important business of the computer. We looked up - and printed out - two different photographs of the young woman in the bathing-suit with the shark, and a couple of pieces about her by people she had evidently never met. We visited the website for a well-known boy band, a tourism site for New Zealand, then a string of facts and figures about humpback whales that Hannah said she already knew by heart. I learnt that a whale's lungs are the size of a small car, that a newborn calf can weigh up to one and a half tons and that whale milk has the consistency of cottage cheese. I have to admit that I could have done without knowing that last one.
'Do you go out with your mum much to see the whales?'
'I'm not allowed,' she said. I heard the twang of an Australian accent, noted the way that her sentence lilted upwards at the end. 'My mum doesn't like me going out on the water.' Suddenly I remembered the fierce exchange between Liza McCullen and Greg when I had arrived. I do my best to stay out of other people's private business, but I vaguely remembered that it had been something about Hannah and a boat.
She shrugged, as if she was trying to convince herself she didn't care. 'She's trying to make sure I'm safe. We . . .' She looked up at me, as if wondering whether to say something, then apparently changed her mind. 'Can we find some pictures of England on your computer? I sort of remember it, but not very much.'
'We certainly can. What was it you wanted to look at?' I began to type in the words.
Liza McCullen appeared. 'I was wondering where you were,' she said, standing in the open doorway. She looked from one of us to the other, and the way she did so made me feel vaguely guilty, as if I had been caught doing something wrong. A second later, I felt really pissed off.
'Hannah brought me a sandwich,' I said, a little pointedly. 'Then she asked if she could look at my computer.'
'There are twenty-three thousand one hundred web pages for humpback whales on the Internet,' Hannah said triumphantly.
Liza softened. 'And I suppose she wanted to check out every one.' There was the hint of an apology in her voice. 'Hannah, lovey, come and leave Mr Dormer alone now.'
She was wearing the same outfit she had had on the last two times I had seen her: dark green canvas jeans, a fleece and a yellow storm jacket. Her hair, as then, was scraped back into a ponytail, and the ends had been bleached white, although her natural colour was much darker. I thought of Nessa, who, for the first year of our relationship, used to get up half an hour earlier than me to do her hair and put on her makeup before I could see her. It had taken me almost six months to work out how she had slept in lip gloss without leaving it all over the pillows.
'I'm sorry if she's been bothering you,' she said, without fully meeting my eye.
'She hasn't bothered me in the slightest. It's been a pleasure. If you want, Hannah, I'll bring the computer downstairs and set it up for you to use when I'm out.'
Hannah's eyes widened. 'Really? By myself? Mum! I could do all the stuff for my project.'
I didn't look at her mother. I'd guessed what her response would be - and if I didn't catch her eye, I couldn't acknowledge it. It was no big deal, after all. I unhooked the computer, having first closed all my password-protected files.
'Are you going out now?'
A thought had occurred to me. Something Kathleen had mentioned earlier that morning.
'I am,' I said, placing the laptop in Hannah's arms. 'If your mother will take me.'
Given that Silver Bay's meagre economy relied almost entirely on tourism, and that, according to local-government figures, the average monthly wage was equivalent to less than a thousand pounds, you'd have thought that Liza McCullen would be glad to take out a private charter. You'd think that a woman whose boat had just cost nearly two hundred dollars in repairs, who had no trips lined up until Monday and whose aunt had stated several times that she was much happier on the water than she was on land would jump at the chance to take a commercial trip out to sea. Especially when I offered to pay the equivalent of four people's fares - the minimum the boats needed allegedly to make a trip economically viable.
'I'm not going out this afternoon,' she said, hands deep in her pockets.
'Why? I'm offering you almost a hundred and eighty dollars. That's got to
be worth your while.'
'I'm not going out this afternoon.'
'Is there a storm coming?'
'Auntie K said it was set fair,' said Hannah.
'Have you got some special knowledge about the whales? Have they gone on a day trip somewhere else? I'm not going to ask for my money back if they don't show, Ms McCullen. I just want to get out on the water.'
'Go on, Mum. Then I can use Mike's computer.'
I couldn't quite suppress a smile.
She still wouldn't look at me. 'I'm not taking you out. Find someone else.'
'The others are big boats, right? Full of tourists. Not my scene.'
'I'll ring Greg for you. See if he's going out this afternoon.'
'Isn't he the one who loses people off the side of his boat?'
At this point Kathleen had arrived and was standing on the landing, watching the scene in my room with quiet surprise.
'I'll give you a ticket for Monday,' Liza said finally. 'I've got three other people going out then. You'll have a better time.'
For some reason I had started to enjoy myself. 'No, I won't,' I said. 'I'm antisocial. And I want to go this afternoon.'
Finally she looked directly at me and shook her head, a little defiantly. 'No,' she said.
I was aware that something about this scene had struck Kathleen. She was standing behind Liza, saying nothing but watching intently. 'Okay . . . three hundred dollars,' I said, pulling the money out of my wallet. 'That's a full boat, right? I'll pay you three hundred dollars and you can tell me everything there is to know about whales.' I heard Hannah's sharp intake of breath.
Liza looked at her aunt. Kathleen raised her eyebrows. I was aware that the atmosphere in the room had become a vacuum. 'Three fifty,' I said.
Hannah was giggling.
I wasn't about to let go. I'm not sure what had got hold of me by then. Perhaps it was boredom. Perhaps it was her reticence. Perhaps it was because Greg had attempted to warn me off, which had made me curious. But I was going out in that boat if it killed me.
'Five hundred dollars. Here, cash in your hand.' I pulled out the other notes. I didn't wave them at her, just held them in my closed hand.
Liza stared at me.