Silver Bay Read online

  I had kept the museum open since my father died in 1970, and had always allowed visitors to climb over the remains of the hull, to run their fingers over the splintered wood, their faces coming alive as they imagined what it must have been like to ride on the back of a whale. Long ago I had posed for pictures, when the sharp-eyed recognised me as the Shark Girl of the framed newspaper reports, and talked them through the stuffed game fish that adorned the glass cases on the walls.

  But there weren't too many people interested now. The tourists who came to stay at the hotel might pass a polite fifteen minutes walking round the museum's dusty interior, spend a few cents on some whale postcards, perhaps sign a petition against the resumption of commercial whaling. But it was usually because they were waiting for a taxi, or because the wind was up and it was raining and there was nothing doing out on the water.

  That day, behind the counter, I thought perhaps I couldn't blame them. Maui II was more and more like a heap of driftwood, while there were only so many times people could handle a whalebone or a bit of baleen - the strange plasticky filter from a humpback's mouth - before the delights of mini-golf or the gaming machines at the surf club became more inviting. For years people had been telling me to modernise, but I hadn't paid much heed. What was the point? Half the people who walked round the museum looked a little uncomfortable to be celebrating something that is now illegal. Sometimes even I didn't know why I stayed open, other than that whaling was part of Silver Bay's history, and history is what it is, no matter how unpalatable.

  I adjusted Maui II's old harpoon, known for reasons I can't recall as Old Harry, on its hooks on the wall. Then, from below it, I took a rod, ran my duster up its length and wound the reel, to confirm that it still worked. Not that it mattered any more, but I liked to know things were shipshape. I hesitated. Then, perhaps seduced by the familiar feel of it in my hand, I tilted it backwards, as if I were about to cast a line.

  'Won't catch much in here.'

  I spun round, lifting a hand to my chest. 'Nino Gaines! You nearly made me drop my rod.'

  'Fat chance.' He removed his hat and walked from the doorway into the middle of the floor. 'Never saw you drop a catch yet.' He smiled, revealing a row of crooked teeth. 'I got a couple of cases of wine in the truck. Thought you might like to crack open a bottle with me over some lunch. I'd value your opinion.'

  'My order's not due till next week, if I remember rightly.' I replaced the rod on the wall and wiped my hands on the front of my moleskin trousers. I'm old enough to be beyond such considerations, but it bugged me that he'd caught me in my work trousers with my hair all over the place.

  'As I said, it's a good batch. I'd appreciate your opinion.' He smiled. The lines on his face told of years spent in his vineyards, and a touch of pink round his nose hinted at the evenings afterwards.

  'I've got to get a room ready for a guest coming tomorrow.'

  'How long's it going to take you to tuck in a sheet, woman?'

  'Not too many visitors this deep in winter. I don't like to look a gift horse . . .' I saw the disappointment in his face and relented. 'I should be able to spare a few minutes, long as you don't expect too much in the way of food to go with it. I'm waiting on my grocery delivery. That darned boy's late every week.'

  'Thought of that.' He lifted up a paper bag. 'Got a couple of pies, and a couple of tamarillos for after. I know what you career girls are like. It's all work, work, work . . . Someone's got to keep your strength up.'

  I couldn't help laughing. Nino Gaines had always got me like that, as long ago as the war, when he'd first come and announced his intention to set up here. Then the whole of the bay had been taken over by Australian and American servicemen, and my father had had to make pointed references to his accuracy with a shotgun when the young men whooped and catcalled at me behind the bar. Nino had been more gentlemanly: he had always removed his cap while he waited to be served, and he had never failed to call my mother 'ma'am'. 'Still don't trust him,' my father had muttered, and, on balance, I thought he had probably been right.

  Out at sea it was bright and calm, a good day for the whale crews, and as we sat down, I watched Moby One and Two heading out for the mouth of the bay. My eyes weren't as good as they had been, but from here it looked like they had a good number of passengers. Liza had headed out earlier; she was taking a group of pensioners from the Returned and Services League (RSL) club for nothing, as she did every month, even though I told her she was a fool.

  'You shutting this place up for the winter?'

  I shook my head, and took a bite of my pie.

  'Nope. The Mobys are going to try out a deal with me - bed, board and a whaling trip for a fixed sum, plus admission to the museum. A bit like I do with Liza. They've printed some leaflets, and they're going to put something on a New South Wales tourism website. They say it's big business that way.'

  I'd thought he would mutter something about technology being beyond him, but he said, 'Good idea. I sell maybe forty cases a month online now.'

  'You're on the Internet?' I gazed at him over the top of my glasses.

  He lifted a glass, unable to hide his satisfaction at having surprised me. 'Plenty you don't know about me, Miss Kathleen Whittier Mostyn, no matter what you might think. I've been out there in cyberspace for a good eighteen months now. Frank set it up for me. Tell you the truth, I quite like having a little surf around. I've bought all sorts.' He gestured at my glass - he wanted me to taste the wine. 'Bloody useful for seeing what the big growers in the Hunter Valley are offering too.'

  I tried to concentrate on my wine, unable to admit quite how thrown I was by Nino Gaines's apparent ease with technology. I felt wrongfooted, as I often did when talking to young people, as if some vital new knowledge had been dished out when I'd had my back turned. I sniffed the glass, then sipped, letting the flavour flood my mouth. It was a little green, but none the worse for that. 'This is very nice, Nino. A hint of raspberry in there.' At least I still understand wine.

  He nodded, pleased. 'Thought you'd pick up on that. And you know you get a mention?'

  'A mention of what?'

  'The Shark Girl. Frank typed you into a search engine and there you are - picture and all. From newspaper archives.'

  'There's a picture of me on the Internet?'

  'In your bathing-suit. You always did look fetching in it. There's a couple of pieces of writing about you too. Some girl at university in Victoria used you in her thesis on the role of women and hunting, or somesuch. Quite an impressive piece of writing - full of symbolism, classical references and goodness knows what else. I asked Frank to print it out - must have forgotten to pick it up. I thought you could put it in the museum.'

  Now I felt very unbalanced indeed. I put my glass down on the table. 'There's a picture of me in my bathing-suit on the Internet?'

  Nino Gaines laughed. 'Calm down, Kate - it's hardly Playboy magazine. Come over tomorrow and I'll show you.'

  'I'm not sure if I like the idea of this. Me being out there for anyone to look at.'

  'It's the same photograph as you've got in there.' He waved towards the museum. 'You don't mind people gawping at that.'

  'But that's - that's different.' Even as I said it, I knew the distinction made little sense. But the museum was my domain. I could dictate who entered it, who got to see what. The thought of people I didn't know being able to dip into my life, my history, as casually as if they were scanning the betting pages . . .

  'You should put up a picture of Liza and her boat. You might get a few more visitors. Forget advertising the hotel with the Mobys - a fine-looking girl like her could be quite a draw.'

  'Oh, you know Liza. She likes to pick who she takes out.'

  'No way to run a business. Why don't you focus on your own boat? Bed, board and a trip out on Ishmael with Liza. She'd get enquiries from all over the world.'

  'No.' I began to tidy up. 'I don't think so. Very kind of you, Nino, but it's really not for us.'

  '
You never know, she might find herself a bloke. About time she was courting.'

  It was a couple of minutes before he realised that the atmosphere had changed. Half-way through his pie, he saw something in my expression that gave him pause. He was disconcerted, trying to work out what he'd said that had been so wrong. 'Didn't mean to offend you, Kate.'

  'You haven't.'

  'Well, something's wrong. You're all twitchy.'

  'I have not gone all twitchy.'

  'There! Look at you.' He pointed to my hand, which was playing restlessly up and down the bleached wood.

  'Since when was tapping my fingers a crime?' I placed my hand firmly on my lap.

  'What's the matter?'

  'Nino Gaines, I have a room to make up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've already wasted half the day.'

  'You're not going in? Aw, come on, Kate. You haven't finished your lunch. What's the matter? Is it what I said about your picture?'

  No one except Nino Gaines calls me Kate. For some reason this intimacy just about finished me off. 'I've got things to do. Will you stop going on?'

  'I'll email them, ask them to take it down. Perhaps we can say it's copyright.'

  'Oh, will you stop wittering on about that darned photograph? I'm going in. I really have to get that room finished. I'll see you soon.' I brushed imaginary crumbs from my trousers. 'Thank you for the lunch.'

  He watched as I - the woman he had loved and been perplexed by for more than half a century - stood up, less heavily than age should have allowed, and began to walk briskly towards the kitchen, leaving him with two half-eaten pies and a barely touched glass of his best vintage. I felt his eyes burn into my back all the way back to the house.

  Just for once, I imagined, he might have felt a bubble of frustration at the unfairness, at the arbitrary manner in which, once again, he had apparently been judged. Because I heard him stand and his voice on the soft wind. He was unable, just this once, to contain himself. 'Kathleen Whittier Mostyn - you're the most contrary woman I ever met,' he yelled after me.

  'No one's asking you to come,' I shot back. To my shame, I didn't even bother to turn my head.

  A long time ago, back when my parents died and I was left in charge of the Silver Bay Hotel, plenty of people told me I should take the opportunity to modernise, install en-suite bathrooms and satellite television, as they had at Port Stephens and Byron Bay, that I should advertise more to spread the word about the beauty of our little stretch of coast. I paid them heed for all of two minutes - our lack of custom had long since ceased to worry me, as I suspect it had most of Silver Bay. We had watched our neighbours up and down the coast grow fat on their profits, but then have to live with the unexpected results of success: heavy traffic, drunken holidaymakers, an endless round of updating and installation. The loss of peace.

  In Silver Bay I liked to think we had the balance about right - enough visitors to provide us with a living, not so many that anyone was likely to start getting ideas. For years now I had watched Silver Bay's population rise and double during the summer peak, drifting down in the winter months. The growth of interest in whale-watching had caused the odd peak now and then, but in general it was steady business, likely neither to make us rich nor cause too many upsets. It was just us, the dolphins and the whales. And that suited most of us fine.

  Silver Bay had never been particularly hospitable to strangers. When the first Europeans arrived in the late eighteenth century, it was dismissed at first as uninhabitable, its rocky outcrops, its bushland and shifting dunes too barren to support human life. (I guess back then the Aboriginals weren't considered human enough.) The coastal shoals and sandbars put paid to too much interest, grounding and wrecking visiting ships until the first lighthouses were erected. Then, as ever, greed did what curiosity could not: the discovery of lucrative timber forests up and down our volcanic hills, and the vast beds of oysters below did for the bay's solitude.

  The trees were logged until the hillsides were near-barren. The oysters were harvested for lime and, later, for eating, until that was banned before they, too, were depleted. If I'm honest, when my father first landed here he was no better: he saw the seas leaping with gamefish - marlin and tuna, sharks and spearfish - and he saw profit in what nature had provided. An endless array of prizes on his doorstep. And so, on this last rocky outcrop of Silver Bay, our hotel was built with every last penny of his and Mr Newhaven's savings.

  Back then, my family lived in quarters completely separate from the rest of the Silver Bay Hotel. My mother didn't like to be seen by guests in what she called 'domestic mode' - I think that meant without her hair done - while my father liked to know that there were limits on how much access my sister and I had to the world outside (not that that stopped Norah: she was off to England before she hit twenty-one). I always suspected they wanted to be sure that they could argue in private.

  Since the west wing burnt down we - or, for the most part, I - had lived in what remains as if it were a private house and our guests boarders. They slept in the rooms off the main corridor, while we had the rooms on the other side of the stairs, and anyone was welcome to use the lounge. Only the kitchen was sacred, a rule we made when the girls first came to live with me a few years ago. They were complete opposites. When Liza was not outside with the crews, she spent all her time in the kitchen. She disliked casual conversation, and avoided the lounge and the dining room. She liked to have a closed door between her and the unexpected. Hannah, with the conviviality of youth, spent most of her time draped across the sofa in the lounge, Milly at her feet, watching television, reading or, more often now, on the telephone to her friends - goodness knows what they found to talk about having already spent six hours together at school.

  'Mum? Have you ever been to New Zealand?' As she entered the kitchen, I saw a deep indent running down the side of her cheek from the binding of the sofa cushion where her face must have been resting on it.

  Liza reached out absently to try to smooth it away. 'No, sweetheart.'

  'I have,' I said. I was darning an old pair of socks, which Liza told me was a waste of my energy when the supermarket sold them for a few dollars a pack. But I'm not the kind of person who can sit and do nothing. 'I went to Lake Taupo a few years ago on a fishing trip.'

  'I don't remember that,' said Hannah.

  I calculated. 'Well . . . I suppose it was about twenty years ago, so that would be fourteen years before you came.'

  Hannah looked at me with the blank incomprehension of a child who cannot imagine anything existing before they were born, let alone any period of time that long ago. I couldn't blame her - I can just about remember being that age, when an evening without one's friends seemed to stretch to the length of a prison sentence. Now whole years flash by.

  'Have you been to Wellington?' She sat down at the table.

  'Yup. Got a lot of houses built into the hills round the harbour. Last time I went I couldn't imagine how they stayed up there.'

  'Were they on stilts?'

  'Something like that. Foolish, though - I heard the whole town was built on a fault line. I wouldn't want to be in a house on stilts when the earth moved.'

  For a moment Hannah digested this.

  'Why do you ask, sweetheart?' Liza patted her legs for the dog to jump up. Milly never had to be asked twice.

  Hannah twisted a strand of hair in her fingers. 'There's a school trip. After Christmas. I was wondering if I could go.' She looked from one of us to the other, as if she'd guessed what we would say. 'It's not that expensive. We'll be staying in hostels - and you know what the teachers are like. We'd never be allowed to go anywhere without them.' Her voice got a little quicker. 'And it's meant to be very educational. We'd be learning about Maori culture and volcanoes . . .'

  It's a terrible thing to watch the face of a child who knows she is asking the impossible.

  'I could help out with my savings if it costs too much.'

  'I don't think it's possible.' Liza reached out a hand. 'I'm
really sorry, lovey.'

  'Everyone else is going.'

  She was too good a child to get angry. It was more a plea than a protest. Sometimes I would have preferred it if she had got angry.

  'Please.'

  'We don't have the money.'

  'But I've got nearly three hundred dollars saved up - and there's ages to go. We could all save up.'

  Liza looked at me and shrugged. 'We'll see,' she said, in a tone that suggested even to me that she clearly wouldn't.

  'I'll make a deal with you, Hannah.' I put down my darning. I was doing a terrible job anyway. 'I've got some investments that are due to come in around spring next year. I thought I might pay for us all to take a trip up to the Northern Territory. I've always fancied a look round Kakadu National Park, maybe a wrestle with the crocodiles. What do you think?'

  I could see from her face what she thought: that she didn't want to be travelling round Australia with her mum and an old woman, that she would rather be headed for a foreign country, flying on an aeroplane with her friends, giggling, staying up late and sending homesick postcards. But that was the one thing we couldn't give her.

  I tried, Lord knows I tried. 'We could take Milly too,' I said. 'Perhaps if we've got enough money we could even ask Lara's mother if Lara would like to come with us.'

  Hannah was staring at the table. 'That would be nice,' she said eventually, and then, with a smile that wasn't very much like one, she added, 'I'm going next door. My programme's on in a minute.'

  Liza looked at me. Her eyes said everything we both knew: Silver Bay is a beautiful little town, but even a stretch of Paradise will become ugly if you're never allowed to leave it.

  'There's no point blaming yourself,' I said, when I was sure Hannah couldn't hear. 'There's nothing you can do. Not for now.'

  I have seen many times over the past few years the doubt that flickered across her face. 'She'll get over it,' I said. I laid a hand on hers, and she squeezed it gratefully.