Chapter
2
White Scar
I couldn’t sleep much that
night. There were too many events spinning around
in my head. What had brought us to this? Was it
all because of Mary Grant? Was it dad’s
job? Why did things have to change and why was
everything happening so quickly? My whole life,
all our lives, were being turned upside down.
It was if some unseen hand had shaken the containers
in which we fashioned our lives and spilled out
the contents, expecting everyone to start again.
When dad announced that we were
going to live on a boat I didn’t know what
to say or what to think. Maybe I should have been
excited but I felt so shocked and afraid that
it gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t
have cared less about the house and that miserable
estate. I thought about my room and its en-suite
shower, fitted wardrobe and clean white fittings.
I wouldn’t miss anything there but I would
miss school and my classmates. I would miss the
routine which I thought I hated so much.
Perhaps I was beginning to realise
that our lives were about to change in ways I
had never thought possible. How was I to know
that this was the beginning of an incredible journey
that would become my life?
More shocks were on the way.
“Mum and me have been talking a lot,”
said dad one evening as the three of us were sat
around the table. Bob was down at the boatyard.
“Bob thinks that sailing this boat would
be a tough undertaking for him and the boys and,
well, he’s asked us to come along. And we’ve
said yes, if that’s all right with you.”
“Where would we be going?”
“How does round the world
sound?”
“What about school?”
I said. I cannot say that I had taken in that
last question. All I was aware of was that we
were talking about change and a big change that
would take me away from my school friends and
the town where I had spent all of my life.
“We can teach you,”
said dad. “So can the sea.”
He had a point. Mum had kept
her hand in doing teaching supply work. That was
part of the problem between us – me and
mum. I didn’t particularly like her ways;
she was too much the school ma'm. But she was
good at explaining things even if sometimes she
explained too much. I couldn’t believe that
she had agreed to all of this.
The next day at school my footsteps
echoed on the hard floorboards as I walked in
to the empty classroom at break time and sat at
my desk. I lifted the creaking lid and brushed
my hand across the books inside, glancing at the
familiar ink stains on the unvarnished clean-looking
wood beneath the lid. The desk-top was covered
with inky scratches, gouges and initials including
my own, DAJ. Minutes passed as I stared vacantly
at the poster-covered walls and the blackboard
and the chalk dust, trying to make sense of my
life. Slowly I packed the holdall that mum had
given me that morning, then closed my desk lid
for the last time, turned my back and left. Was
that it? Was school out forever?
Later that afternoon I spent
some time with my school friends, Cindy, Mac and
Betsy. We were up in Cindy’s bedroom sharing
her new pearly lipstick in a make-up session when
I broke the news that I was leaving. I was sitting
with my back to them layering my bottom lip when
I spoke to the mirror. “I’m leaving
to sail around the world.” The shock on
their faces was reflected in the glass. Cindy
said she couldn’t imagine leaving Netherfield.
Betsy said she was envious. We all cried. “Remember,”
said Mac, hugging me, “Wherever you are,
we’re with you.”
“Girl power,” said
Betsy and we all punched the air.
The next few weeks were a blur.
As soon as the summer holidays started I went
to spend some time with the Grants in Whitby while
mum, dad and Bob worked on the new yacht and finished
selling the house and dad’s boat.
I had never been to Whitby before.
On the way there I was struck by the hardy moorland
landscape once we had passed Pickering. Every
now and then dad would point to a hummock on the
skyline. “That’s a barrow,”
he said, “an ancient burial ground. People
have lived on these moors for thousands of years.”
The sun was shining as we crested a hill and I
could see the deeper blue V of the sea defining
the harbour between two cliffs. On the north cliff
stood rows of Victorian hotels above the main
part of the town. Atop the southern side –
the old side - was a handsome sandstone church
perched alongside the imposing gothic-style ruins
of Whitby Abbey. It was these same ruins that
had inspired Bram Stoker, the writer, to set the
start of his vampire novel, Dracula, in the town.
But I never thought of Whitby as a sinister place
of cobwebs, bats and graveyards. Its red roofs,
cawing seagulls and busy fishing wharves, the
pungent oaky smell of smoked herrings and the
crunch of mussel shells under your feet as you
walked towards the pier on the old side of town,
gave the community a lived-in, homely feel. As
soon as we arrived I felt I belonged there.
We parked the car and walked
along a cobbled lane to the harbour-side house
that belonged to the grandparents of the Grant
boys. The boys were staying there which made the
house a little cramped, particularly when I joined
them, but it was cosy.
The main room – what we
would call the lounge – looked as if it
hadn’t been decorated for years. The flower-patterned
wallpaper was yellowing and some of it was peeling
away. There was a long burgundy-coloured velvetcovered
couch against the back wall, another matching
comfortable armchair by the fire and a high-backed
slatted wooden “Windsor” chair to
one side of the fireplace. The fireplace, or range,
was the focus of the whole room. It was made of
black iron and had shelves where you could dry
your wet boots and an oven where grandma Grant
made the most amazing rice puddings coated in
a thick creamy skin. On the mantelpiece were various
mementoes: an old framed photograph of the harbour,
an ebony club, a clay pipe and a Toby jug –
a mug in the shape of a smiling old-fashioned
man wearing a tri-cornered hat and a blue tail
coat.
Grandad Grant had a big bushy
beard and smoked a pipe. His low forehead was
almost hidden under a cloth cap which looked as
if it was fixed to his balding head. Everybody
knew him and people in the town called him “old
Bert”. During the War his ship had been
torpedoed in the Atlantic. He would talk about
those times, easing his back into the wooden chair,
stretching out his legs and wiggling his toes
through the holes in his socks. The four of us,
the Grant boys and me, would sit listening, squeezed
together, on the couch. “We clung all night
to that raft,” he said, staring into the
glowing fire coals. “You couldn’t
move for the cold. And one by one my shipmates
fell away ‘til there was just me and the
skipper. We wuz covered in oil from head to foot,
like frozen sticks of liquorice when they’d
picked us up,” he said, his gaze fixed on
another place in another time.
We were always busy on those
summer evenings as old Bert taught us “all
the knots you’ll need to know and a few
more besides”, while gran, who had been
a nurse, gave us lessons in first aid. “Can
Badger do second aid?” asked Vince, who
knew no better. “Can I do lemonade?”
said Pat who did know better.
I’ll never forget the day
we saw the new yacht sailing into the harbour.
It had taken our parents three weeks to steer
it along the Yorkshire canal system, navigating
a series of locks to reach the sea. Then they
had to sail it out of the Humber estuary and northwards
up the coast. We had run along the south pier
to watch them round the harbour wall. There was
a fresh light breeze for perfect sailing. Old
Bert pointed to the approaching boat in the distance.
“Just there at low tide I used to be able
to see what was left of the wreck of a hospital
ship called the Rohilla,” he said. A lot
of souls were lost the day she struck the rocks.
There’s nothing left there now, all washed
away, but you’ll have to be careful you
kids that you don’t sail too close to shore
wherever you go. Where the sea meets the land
- that’s more treacherous than any ocean;
you mark my words.”
Bob had named the yacht Endeavour
after the ship that the great navigator, Captain
Cook - born not far from Whitby - had sailed to
Australia. Her hull was dark green with a cream
stripe down the side. Her mast was fashioned from
the trunk of a single pine tree. Her hull was
made from sheets of steel, welded together by
Bob so skilfully that you couldn’t see the
joins. Bob was standing by the forestay, the steel
rope that ran between the masthead and the prow.
Mum was at one of the winches. Dad was at the
helm. He was wearing a baseball cap and he was
smiling like he used to smile. We cheered and
waved from the pier end.
It seems odd to think back now,
but I suppose this day had been coming for years.
It was just that no-one, my parents included,
had ever thought it would happen. “I’d
love to have a bigger boat one day. You know,
one that we could sail across oceans,” dad
would say sometimes. It was one of his Sunday
comments, the daydream stuff he would come out
with when he was reading the section of the Sunday
paper that always had pictures of palm trees on
the front.
Dad was a dreamer. Mum was the
practical one. “Well you won’t get
it sitting there,” she would say. “Have
you mown the lawn yet? It needs mowing.”
Dad would glower, then shamble off to the garden
shed. But he was a doer too and had been planning
something with Bob. Now we knew what it was. Inside
the shed we had seen the drawings of boats; all
kinds of plans. There had been a big map of the
world opposite the window above a flat drawer
containing Bob’s charts. Uncle Bob loved
his charts. Some of them were quite old. These
were maps that had come down to him from his father
old Bert’s side of the family. Every now
and again he would show one to us. I suppose this
is why I became so interested in maps myself.
“Look at this one Mo,”
he said one day. It was a dog-eared old sea chart.
“This map belonged to my great-grandfather
and he told my father that it once belonged to
Captain Cook.” He traced his finger across
the yellowed paper. “Look at the markings.”
Some of the writing was difficult to read. Bob
said the island marked on the chart was part of
the Polynesian chain in the Pacific.
“Is that where polystyrene
comes from dad?” said Vince, when he first
saw the map.
“Yes son,” said Bob,
adopting an expression somewhere between earnestness
and amusement. “They have polystyrene mines
that run deep underground and fierce Polynesians
stand guard over the entrances.” Uncle Bob
was like that. You could never quite tell whether
what he was saying was real or invented.
Badger said it was fun to have
a dad who told stories but sometimes it got them
into trouble in school. Pat, who should have known
better, once got into a fight over his school
dinner; gooseberry pie it was. Gooseberry pie
was either loved or loathed and everybody who
had it knew the little rhyme that was recited
ritually whenever it appeared. “Green snot
pie, green snot pie, all mixed up with a dead
dog’s eye.”
Uncle Bob had told his son that
gooseberries were the “staple diet of geese”.
When Pat passed on this nugget of learning at
the dinner table he was loudly mocked and one
boy opposite had flicked some pie across the table.
“Ah, ah, snot on your blazer,”
said the boy before Pat leaned over the table,
grabbed the boy’s hair, and dunked his face
in the pie dish. Pat had to stay behind in school
on that occasion but it was his father who had
the telling off from his mother, the one who would
run away with the doctor.
She was highly strung was Pat’s
mother. She liked things to run smoothly but,
with her three, trouble was waiting around every
corner, particularly when I was with them. She
told Pat I was a “disruptive influence”.
That was rich coming from someone who would disrupt
everything she and Bob had made together.
No-one else minded Uncle Bob’s
stories. In fact we loved them and we usually
knew when they were stories, although I must say
Vince was quite taken by the “styrene mines”
as he called them.
“Maybe we could see them
one day,” he said.
“Maybe we could.”
said Uncle Bob, “We could sail there in
our own boat,” and he would hold up the
plans and show us the calculations.
“It’s going to be
steel. Strong stuff, steel. You need steel in
case you hit things.”
“What kind of things?”
asked Vince.
“Well there are icebergs
for a start, and boats have been known to hit
whales. We hit one once in the southern ocean,”
said Uncle Bob.
“Then there are the big
steel containers that sometimes get washed off
cargo boats. These can float around in the sea
just under the surface of the water. If you hit
one of those you know about it.”
Vince didn’t ask about
the whale. He knew about the whale. We all knew
about the whale. Sighting a large sperm whale
had been the biggest “moment” in Uncle
Bob’s one and only voyage. Sure, it was
quite a voyage - 6,000 miles from Rio de Janeiro,
on the east coast of Brazil, to Wellington in
New Zealand through some of the roughest seas
in the world. But we hadn’t been there.
We didn’t know what it was like, couldn’t
know, said Uncle Bob. He had been sea sick quite
a lot and never tired of telling us.
“There’s nowhere
like the southern ocean, nowhere on this planet
so desolate as that place. It’s hard to
deny God in that place,” he would say, staring
in to a vacant space. That was the signal to scatter.
Bob’s eyes would be fixed trance-like on
part of the wall and when he looked back, we would
be gone. None of us wanted to hear the God stuff.
God stuff never got anywhere.
Sometimes in the Grants’ garden we’d
do the God stuff. Vince would be digging a hole
or something, then suddenly pipe up: “Did
God make this worm?” The worm would be wriggling
in his hand.
“Dunno,” I would
say whereas Pat would say “Yes,” in
an effort to stop the questioning. It usually
worked. Vince would sling the worm over his shoulder
into the pond and carry on digging.
Later Pat would say to Badger
and me: “Those kind of questions never get
anywhere. We don’t know, we can’t
know, so there’s no point discussing it.”
Badger would nod in agreement. Pat was his big
brother after all. But I did wonder.
Now, maybe we would find out.
All those plans were really happening. Bob had
the Endeavour and we were going to sea. “That’s
for your clothes, said dad, handing me a large
open plastic box, the size of a milk crate “and
that,” handing me a smaller one, “is
for anything else”.
“Is that all?” I
said “What about my bike and my CosmoGirl
magazines?”
“Sorry Mo, no room,”
said dad, and “I’m afraid we can’t
take Alfie, either.”
This was the worst news. Alfie
was my West Highland terrier. He would stay with
nana and grandpa in Netherfield. I didn’t
cry then but I did that night. Alfie always slept
on my bed. I didn’t want to go without him.
Vince cried too. But he was crying about his hamster.
He had called it “Hammie”. Little
kids are useless at names. And I’m sorry
to say this, but a hamster is not in the same
league as a dog.
“It’s going to be
a squeeze with all of us,” said dad, “Pets
would suffer and they might fall overboard. We’re
just about set. Another few days and we’re
away.”
We liked Whitby and it was sad
to think that we would leave the place just as
we were getting settled. Sometimes we got up early
and went down to the fish quay to see the boats
emptying their catches. In the plastic boxes topped
with crushed ice there were cod, haddock, hake,
flat fish and sometimes odd looking fish squeezed
among them. Restaurant and hotel owners would
come and bid for the catches and the burly warehousemen
would slam down a new tray after each auction,
hosing the concrete floor in between.
The fishermen used to stay out
at sea for days on end. They were hardy men but
they were kind and often they would give us scraps
to bait our hooks so that we could fish from the
harbour walls. On rainy days we would go to the
museum with grandad and grandma Grant. There we
could see fossils of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs,
great sea creatures that had lived some 250 million
years ago. Their shiny black fossilised bones
had been dug out of the cliffs just south of the
port.
I loved the museum. It had been
built in Victorian times in the park behind the
main town on the north side of the harbour. At
the time Whitby had been famous as a whaling centre.
Many of the paths and gates around the town were
arched with great whalebone jaws salvaged from
the carcasses brought in by the whaling fleet.
Inside the museum were hundreds
of displays connected with whaling and the sea.
On the wall there were long ivory canes made from
the tusks of the Narwhal. In medieval times people
had believed these spirally tusks had once belonged
to unicorns. In one room there was a curious barometer
made from glass jars in which leaches were stored.
Apparently the leaches were sensitive to the weather.
In another case was a severed human hand called
“The Hand of Glory”. It was found
in a cottage on the North Yorkshire Moors. A note
under the exhibit said the hand was used to ward
off evil.
My favourite exhibit was a tiny
ship-in-a-bottle. The model was said to have been
made as a souvenir by a sailor on a whaling ship
to commemorate a remarkable incident. According
to the label on the case, the sailor had been
swallowed by a whale then found alive a day later
in the whale’s stomach after it had been
harpooned by his crewmates. Could this really
have happened? No, said Badger’s gran, it’s
just an old sailor’s story. The old salts
had all kinds of stories about mermaids and giant
squid but they were mostly tall stories, she said.
They spent too much time at sea.
“I wouldn’t be so
sure about that ma,” said old Bert. “There’s
odder things ‘appen at sea than ever ‘appens
on land.”
In another museum case was a
piece of fractured parchment. It looked like part
of an old map; like one of those in old Bert’s
drawer. The sign next to it said: “Fragment
of ancient pirate map, thought to have belonged
to Blackbeard, the most fearsome pirate ever to
have sailed the high seas. Island unknown. From
the collected papers of Lt. Robert Maynard RN.”
I went back to the museum several
times to look at this old scrap of paper. It was
as if some unseen magnet was drawing me there.
I sketched myself a copy of the map in my notebook,
taking down every detail. Mr Harper, the old curator,
who looked like he could have been one of the
exhibits with his horn-rimmed spectacles, baggy
black trousers and tartan waistcoat, had noticed
my interest. We became good friends during my
stay. He took the original out of the display
case and let me examine the underside.
“But there’s nothing
there Mo. I looked myself,” he said, “Makes
you wonder, though. I wonder if it’s a real
treasure map?”
It looked real enough to me.
There was a distinctive pattern of coastline with
several lakes and inlets visible but there were
few markings. An area of water called North Sound
was marked and there were two promontories named
Conch Point and Rum Point both on the north side
of the island according to the symbol marking
points of the compass. At Rum Point there was
a cross and by it were the words: “sight
the cave”. The only other name on the map
was Hell just to the south of Conch Point. Apart
from that there were just two other letters on
the paper: “Gr”.
“What do the letters mean?”
I asked.
“Search me,” said
Mr Harper, “Maybe it’s Grenada. I
wondered too if the letters stood for Great Britain
but that meant no sense at all. You didn’t
find conch shells in Britain and while some pirates
came from Britain the only ones to return were
those taken back in chains for trial and execution.”
He was right about the underside.
But when I looked closer with my magnifying glass
I could see some faint markings in one corner.
“Do you know what these are?” I said.
“Can’t say if I do.
Maybe it’s just dirt or a wine stain,”
said Mr Harper holding the fragment up to the
light.
I couldn’t be certain but
it almost looked like a crude figure. As for the
place called Hell, that was a mystery to both
of us.
It was always gloomy in the museum
so I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the sunshine
when I left that day. I walked across the park
and through the aviary near the swings as I usually
did and as I walked I reached into my pocket and
pulled out my notebook with the map. The caged
birds were twittering in the background. Otherwise
I was alone. And yet I had the strangest feeling
that someone was watching me and I shivered. In
the cage beside me was a large blue Macaw. It
squawked loudly.
“And the same to you,”
I said.
Back at old Bert’s house
on the harbour-side I heaved his large atlas off
the book shelves and looked at the outline of
Grenada, one of the larger Caribbean islands.
Unfortunately the coastline didn’t match
the outline I had traced on my map. As the weeks
passed and the day of our departure drew nearer
I had almost forgotten the map.
“Will we be going to any
pirate islands?” I asked Uncle Bob.
“Possibly,” he said.
“Most of the buccaneers like Blackbeard
and Captain Morgan used to operate in the Caribbean.
We may head that way but first we’re heading
for Boston. I want to look up my brother Ted and
show him the boat. After that we want to get into
the Pacific. We could either head for Panama and
the canal or we could head south for the Horn.”
This was the first time that
either Bob or dad had given us any idea where
we would be going other than vague statements
about sailing to the South Seas. To be fair, none
of us had asked up to that point because we never
thought it would happen. The idea of sailing away
from our home and our school was fanciful beyond
belief. Bob bent over the atlas and began to trace
a route for us with his index finger. It ran south
west, down the coast and around the southern tip
of South America and into the Pacific, then it
made its way across this vast sea to New Zealand
and beyond, to the Polynesians. “Rarotonga,
Aitutaki, The Cook Islands, that’s where
we’re going,” he said.
“What does Rarotonga look
like?” asked Vince.
“Like Never Land,”
said Bob. Vince’s eyes widened. “I
wish we could fly there, like Peter Pan,”
he said.
“It takes longer by boat,
but it will be much more fun,” said Bob.
The week before our voyage we
took the Endeavour to sea every day to make sure
she was sailing well. My mum could be a bit bossy,
particularly with the boys. She knew all the boating
language and would correct us when we got things
wrong.
“You’re supposed
to coil the rope this way,” she said, “But
first you must flake it out properly like this,”
undoing all Badger’s good work. To be honest
she taught us a lot. It was the way she did it
I found irritating. Pat felt the same.
“Doesn’t your mother
ever leave off,” he said.
That made me defensive. “Not
the way your’s did,” I said and regretted
the remark instantly. It was completely out of
order.
“Little bitch” said
Pat and turned away. Mum had witnessed the exchange
but said nothing.
Mum took charge of the charts
and began to plot courses, while making shopping
lists of provisions. “Sorry Mo, I think
we have too much in the way of potatoes there,”
she said briskly, striking a line through my shopping
list. “They will rot after a few days.”
“You know best,”
I said.
Dad was more quiet and thoughtful
than mum. He spent most of the time with Bob,
preparing the boat. In the sea trials we practised
hoisting the sails, working out between us who
would do various jobs and familiarising ourselves
with routines. We would all need to wear lifejackets
on deck, said Bob, adding that we should always
make sure that our webbing safety straps were
secured - he said “hanked on” - to
the boat when we were working in the open. “Clip
on Pat,” shouted mum more times than I care
to remember.
Bob, Pat and Badger were the
foredeck crew, hoisting the various foresails
that were stowed under a hatch above the forepeak
– fore means front on boats. Aft is the
word sailors use for the back end. I worked the
winches in the cockpit. It was Bob’s boat
but he let dad do most of the skippering. Besides
Bob had broad shoulders and the foredeck needed
some “beef” for hoisting the sails.
I should say here that in our
first week together the boys began to call my
mum and dad by their first names. But when she
wasn’t listening, Pat would refer to mum
as “Killjoy”. She was always telling
us off about something. Even I laughed at that
one but I wasn’t going to forgive Pat for
his “bitch” remark, nor he me for
mine. That sort of forgiveness takes time.
I seemed to be getting a reputation,
like my mum, for being a bit bossy. OK, I’ll
admit it, I am a bit bossy, always have been.
I just like to have things right and I know how
things should be. But, like mum, I know how to
laugh at myself when I get things wrong. I think
people can forgive a lot when you have a sense
of humour.
I also know about my good looks.
I would never wear make up ordinarily, except
when larking about with my girlfriends, but I
have never had problems attracting comments from
boys. Usually it was some snot nose in the playground
coming up and saying: “Tommy Jones wants
to go out with you,” that sort of thing.
I’d kissed Badger once and Pat had kissed
me. But that was all. It never got so far as a
snog. I had never been THAT keen on Pat, even
before our ruck.
In fact I wasn’t sure I
was keen on either of them; well not that way.
I’d grown up too close to them, like they
were my brothers. In fact I had probably
punched them both more than I’d kissed them.
With Vince it was different. He told me he loved
me very much, and that was nice.
It was Vince who came running
in to the house early one morning as we were putting
together our final list of provisions. Mum was
casting things aside as quickly as any of us could
add them. One word was repeated time after time.
“No” she said, again and again, sometimes
varying her tone and pitch and sometimes, just
for the sake of variety, she would say “I
think not,” in her haughtiest voice.
“There’s a whale,”
said Vince, breathlessley. “A whale washed
up on the beach. Come quick, it’s still
alive.”
Vince had left on an errand and
returned with nothing but news. Still it was news
that made every one of us - parents and grandparents
included – abandon our jobs and get over
to the far beach as quickly as we could. A crowd
was beginning to gather as we looked over the
beach wall and saw a giant black form slumped
in the retreating tide.
We ran down the slipway that
had been built many years ago to launch the old
lifeboat, took off our shoes and socks, and began
to paddle out. The boys and I had almost reached
the whale when its giant tale thrashed the water
sending a cloud of spray in to the air. “It’s
alive,” said Pat. “Look at its eye.
As we came closer, more cautiously
now, we could see the grapefruit-sized eye staring
blankly. “Come away,” shouted dad,
“That’s close enough.”
“But can’t we help
it?” said Pat.
“I doubt it,” said
Dad. “Its best hope is the next tide.”
Later that day as the tide returned,
a small army of men made their way down and, like
the people of Lilliput busying over the prone
Gulliver, tried to push the great beast back out
to sea. But it wouldn’t shift and it was
still there as darkness fell. Some time during
the night, the whale died.
“That’s a shame,”
said old Bert when we told him the next morning.
“There’s some that give life and some
that take it away,” he said.
He came back with us to the beach
where men in oil skins were already cutting the
animal apart. A large skip had been trailered
down on to the hard sand and others were on their
way. “They have to get it cut up and off
the beach before it moulders,” said Bert.
“It’s the holiday season and they
couldn’t stand the smell.
“It’s a sperm whale,”
he said. “A big one too. A female I’d
say.”
It was a grizzly sight, watching
the men cutting and peeling away the dark skin
and blubber. The sea ran red with blood and sea
gulls began to hover, looking to scavenge some
morsels for themselves. One large incision ripped
open the whale’s belly and its innards fell
on to the sand.
“Look, there’s something
moving,” said Badger.
“My life,” said Bert,
“So there is. Hey, stop,” he shouted
and began to wade over to the group. The men looked
up, quizzically. One of them knew granddad. “Oh
it’s you Bert, what’s the matter?”
“Be careful there,”
said Bert. “That’s its stomach sack
and there’s something moving.”
We had followed him to the whale
and the water was lapping around our knees. I
looked at the others and I could feel the fear
in my belly. The story from the museum came back.
No, it couldn’t be true, I thought. Old
Bert asked for the knife and began to make a gentle
cut in the thin sack-like skin.
I screamed and the boys started.
Badger fell over and any other time we would have
laughed. But not now.
A chalk-white lump was protruding
from the cut, like some great fleshy bone, and
it was moving as if trying to get free. Bert was
moving more quickly now and the “bone”
was thrusting as if trying to escape. Suddenly
it was larger and rounded and no longer bone-like.
There was an eye and a fin, across which I could
see a long jagged scar.
“It’s alive.”
“There now,” said
Bert, talking as if he had just delivered a baby.
Vince must have made the same connection for he
asked: “Is it a baby?”
“No young Vince, that’s
no baby,” said Grandad. “That’s
a dolphin. A very special, very lucky dolphin.”
I had walked up to Bert’s
side. The dolphin was lying almost motionless
although its sides were heaving and its blowhole
sucked as the creature fought to revive itself.
I looked in to its eye and it returned my stare
in a strange knowing way that even now I find
difficult to explain. I reached out my hand and
stroked the smooth skin on its back. “There
now,” I said.
Suddenly the Dolphin began to
arch its back and flap, violently.
“Let’s get it back,” said Bert.
We reached down and helped to
guide it through the waves. Soon, as it moved
in to deeper water, it was able to use its own
power. Within seconds it was moving out towards
the breakers.
“Look at that scar on its
fin,” said Badger. “White Scar.”
“Just Scar. That’s
what we’ll call him,” said Vince.
So Scar he was. The white-scarred dolphin that
came from the whale. The next day there was little
left of the whale but reddened bones with their
few remaining pickings for the gulls. A day later
and even the bones had gone, as if the whole episode
had never happened. It was time for us to leave.
The night before we sailed, dad
called everyone together in grandma Grant’s
house. I think he was speaking as much for the
adults as the children. My father was not a forthright
man but he was very perceptive and he had been
watching the way we had been getting on - or not
- in the past week or two.
“There’s nowhere
to go on a boat, not much privacy,” he said.
“That means we have to be extra careful
about what we say and how we behave with each
other. Sometimes we’ll have to swallow our
words. Sometimes we’ll have to accept that
someone will need a little space. It’s not
going to be easy but I think we can work and live
together. Now is there anything, while we’re
still on dry land, that anyone wants to get off
their chest?”
“Yes,” said mum.
“I’m sorry if I seem like a killjoy
sometimes, but there are things we have to do
at sea for the safety of everyone.”
Pat began to go the colour of
beetroot. “For myself I’ll work hard
not to come across as a know-it-all. Sorry about
the potatoes, Mo. I shouldn’t have interfered.”
Now it was mum’s turn to go red. You could
have knocked me down with a feather. Of all the
people capable of saying sorry, mum would have
been the last on my list.
I was next to speak. “I’m
sorry Pat if I offended you. It wasn’t intentional
and yes, I know I can be a bitch.”
“But there was no need
for him to say so,” said mum when there
was no need for her to add anything.
“Never mind,” said
dad, fearing things were getting out of hand again.
“It’s over. Right Pat?”
“Right Mr Johnson, I mean
right Rory.”
The whole atmosphere lightened
after that and for the first time I began to look
forward to the days ahead. We planned to leave
early the next morning on the high tide. I didn’t
sleep much that night. Alfie was with me on the
bed. Nana and grandpa Johnson had come over from
Netherfield to take him back with them and to
see us off. I think we all shed a few tears when
we hugged our grandparents and said our goodbyes.
I didn’t want to let Alfie go and we were
all crying as we prepared to cast off. Alfie was
barking and nan and grandpa waved.
Just before we stepped off the
pontoon old Bert bent down to Vince and gave him
a bottle. Inside was a miniature ship with masts.
He took out three more from his carrier bags for
the rest of us. “I made them myself,”
he said, “like the one I made for that there
museum.”
“You made the bottle?”
“Aye girl, t’was
me who’d wrote down that whale story too.
My father told me and his father saw it all. But
the bottle’s gone now. Don’t know
where. That’s a mystery.” The hair
on my neck stiffened and I heard a cry, a harsh
cawing noise. I looked up and there was the outline
of a bird against the hazy morning sky but it
didn’t look like that of a seagull. I blinked
and it had gone.
“What was that?”
I said.
“Maybe there’s someone
watching over you,” whispered old Bert as
he hugged me tight. His hair felt bristly and
his breath smelled of tobacco as I kissed him
on the cheek. “Goodbye grandad Bert,”
I said.
There was a light mist over the
water as we motored towards the neck of the harbour.
Gulls were skirting the red tiled roofs of the
town, making their high-pitched throaty calls
and the first fishing boat of the morning was
making its way towards the quay. Passing the pier
end we could see way back now the tiny figures
of our grandparents and the small white outline
of Alfie. Then they were gone. I turned and looked
out to the horizon. “Let’s hoist the
mainsail,” said dad.
“How do we know the way?”
asked Vince.
“That’s easy,”
said Bob, placing a reassuring hand on Vince’s
shoulder. “It’s second to the right,
then straight on ‘til morning.”
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