Silver Bay Read Free Page B

we’re headed.’ Yoshi grinned. ‘He’ll never catch us now. His engine isn’t powerful enough.’
    ‘ Moby One to Blue Horizon . Mitchell,’ Lance yelled into his radio, ‘you want to see this baby you’re going to have to get off my coat tails.’
    Mitchell’s voice came over the radio: ‘ Blue Horizon to Moby One . I’m just here to make sure there’s someone to pick up Greg’s overboards.’
    ‘Oh, nothing to do with the big fish?’ Lance responded tersely.
    ‘ Blue Horizon to Moby One . Big old sea, Lance. Plenty of room for everyone.’
    I gripped the wooden rim of the chart table so tightly that my knuckles turned white as I watched the scrubby headland grow. I wondered whether the whale would slow there, allow us to come closer. Perhaps it would lift its head and eye us. Perhaps it would swim up to the side of the boat and reveal its calf.
    ‘Two minutes,’ said Lance. ‘We’ll be round the head in about two minutes. Hopefully get up close.’
    ‘Come on, girlie. Give us a good show.’ Yoshi was talking to herself, binoculars still raised.
    Whale , I told it silently, wait for us, whale . I wondered whether it would notice me. Whether it could sense that I, of all the people on the boat, had a special empathy with sea creatures. I was pretty sure I did.
    ‘I don’t – bloody – believe – it.’ Lance had taken off his peaked cap, and was scowling out of the window.
    ‘What?’ Yoshi leant towards him.
    ‘ Look. ’
    I followed their gaze. As Moby One came round the headland, all of us fell silent. A short distance from the scrub-covered landmass, half a mile out to sea in aquamarine waters, the stationary Ishmael sat, its newly painted sides glinting under the midday sun.
    At the helm stood my mother, leaning over the rail, her hair whipping round her face under the bleached cap she insisted on wearing out to sea. She had her weight on one leg and Milly, our dog, lay apparently asleep across the wheel. She looked as if she had been there, waiting for this whale, for years.
    ‘How the bloody hell did she do that?’ Lance caught Yoshi’s warning glare and shrugged an apology at me. ‘Nothing personal, but – Jeez . . .’
    ‘She’s always there first.’ Yoshi’s response was half amused, half resigned. ‘Every year I’ve been here. She’s always first.’
    ‘Beaten by a bloody Pom. It’s as bad as the cricket.’ Lance lit a cigarette, then tossed away the match in disgust.
    I stepped out on to the deck.
    At that moment the whale emerged. As we gasped, it lobtailed, sending a huge spray of water towards Ishmael . The tourists on Moby One ’s top deck cheered. It was enormous, close enough that we could see the barnacled growths along its body, the corrugated white belly; near enough that I could look briefly into its eye. But ridiculously swift – something of that bulk had no right to be so agile.
    My breath had stalled in my throat. One hand clutching the lifelines, I lifted the binoculars with the other and gazed through them, not at the whale but at my mother, hardly hearing the exclamations about the creature’s size, the swell it sent before the smaller boat, forgetting briefly that I should not allow myself to be seen. Even from that distance I could make out that Liza McCullen was smiling, her eyes creased upwards. It was an expression she rarely, if ever, wore on dry land.
    Aunt Kathleen walked to the end of the veranda to put a large bowl of prawns and some lemon slices on the bleached wooden table with a large basket of bread. She’s actually my great-aunt but she says that makes her feel like an antique, so most of the time I call her Auntie K. Behind her the white weatherboard of the hotel’s frontage glowed softly in the evening sun, eight fiery red peaches sliding down the windows. The wind had picked up a little, and the hotel sign whined as it swung back and forth.
    ‘What’s this for?’ Greg lifted his head from the bottle of beer he’d been