White Dolphin

by Lewis, Gill

  I burst upwards to catch a breath of air.

  Felix takes a breath too. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Cuttlefish,’ I say.

  Felix frowns. ‘What old ladies feed to budgies?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘That’s the cuttlebone, its skeleton inside.’

  ‘I want another look,’ says Felix.

  We float on the surface, faces down, slowly spinning with the current. We are skydivers looking at a world far, far below.

  The red cuttlefish is still there, watching us, watching it. It’s a strange feeling, being observed like this. Another cuttlefish swims into view, a pale brown one with a perfect white square patch on its back. I remember Mum telling me that males and females come to breed and lay their eggs on kelp in the spring and summer. The red cuttlefish is changing colour again. Its head and tentacles are still bright red, but its body now has zebra stripes of black and white. The stripes begin to ripple across its body in moving patterns. The brown cuttlefish is changing too. Bands of dark colour sweep across its body.

  I see Felix beside me take a breath and dive down. He reaches out his hand. His fingers almost touch the tentacles of the red cuttlefish, but both cuttlefish propel backwards and he is left groping in a billowing black cloud of ink. Felix bursts upwards again for air. I keep looking under water, but when the ink clears both cuttlefish have disappeared. They could be anywhere by now, perfectly camouflaged against the pale sand or dark grey rock.

  Mr Andersen helps to haul us out of the water. He wraps Felix in a big beach towel and Dad wraps my blanket round me too.

  ‘What did you two see over there?’ says Mr Andersen. ‘You were there for ages.’

  ‘Cuttlefish,’ I say.

  Mr Andersen turns to Felix, ‘Cuttlefish?’

  Felix nods. He can’t stop his teeth from chattering. ‘They were amazing, Dad. You’ve got to go and look. Just don’t try and touch one, like I did.’

  ‘I think we should take a look,’ says Dad. ‘I’ve not seen them before, myself.’

  Dad and Mr Andersen strip off their T-shirts and jump into the water with the face-masks and snorkels.

  I sink down out of the wind and take a bite of pasty.

  Felix takes a bite from his pasty too and stares out to sea, his face lit up in golden light.

  ‘I’ve not seen anything like that before,’ he says.

  I look at him and nod. ‘It’s not just there,’ I say. ‘It goes on and on. There’s a whole coral reef down there and I’m going to see all that someday.’ I finish my pasty and shake the crumbs from my blanket. ‘Mum said when I’m sixteen I can learn to scuba dive. She said she’d take me out to see the reef. If it’s still there, that is.’

  Felix slides down beside me and leans against Moana’s curved hull. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘The dredging ban is lifted in a week’s time,’ I say. ‘Then dredgers from up and down the coast will come and haul their metal rakes across the seabed for scallops. It’s not just scallops they’ll be ripping out, but everything else, all those things you’ve seen today. There’ll be nothing left.’

  Felix stuffs the end crust of his pasty in his mouth and sucks his fingers. ‘So stop them,’ he says.

  I glare at him. ‘Easy for you to say. What can I do? Just sit out here in a rubber dinghy and turn their trawlers away?’

  Felix rubs his towel in his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘But if it meant that much to me, I wouldn’t give up without a fight.’

  I pull broken pieces of wicker from the tattered lobster pot and look at Felix. ‘You don’t know Dougie Evans. No one can stop him. No one.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The man you saw who wrecked our lobster pots,’ I say. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘So why’s he got it in for you?’

  I flick the pieces out into the water. I don’t know how much Felix knows about me and Dad. ‘Mum got the dredging ban put in place for a ten year study of the reef,’ I say. I sit up on one of the seats and stare out to sea. ‘But she never got to finish her research. Time ran out. Her funding ran out too. That’s why the ban is being lifted. She never got to show her final results.’

  ‘So Dougie Evans wasn’t happy about the ban?’ says Felix.

  I nod. ‘He said Mum was a greenie foreigner who couldn’t tell him what to do. But all the local fishermen were on her side, especially when she found out Dougie Evans was trying to sell his fish as line-caught fish.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ says Felix.

  ‘It’s more expensive, but people will pay more because it’s dolphin friendly. Hundreds of dolphins drown in fishing nets each year.’

  ‘So he hates you because your mum found out he was a cheat?’ says Felix.

  ‘It wasn’t just that,’ I say. ‘Dougie had another son too. Aaron. He was seventeen when he was swept off one of Dougie’s trawlers in a bad storm. Dougie blamed Mum, saying that if he’d been able to fish closer to the shore where the reef is, his son would be alive today.’

  Felix gives a small laugh. ‘And my mum thought London was dangerous! She thought we’d moved to a safe sleepy fishing town. I think she’s in for a shock.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Dad lets Felix take the tiller as a light breeze takes us home. The golden sunlight of afternoon slants across the bay. I stare down into the water hoping to see the white dolphin. Once or twice I almost imagine something white rushing beneath our bow waves, twisting in our wake. I want it to be her. I want to see her because maybe then it means we’ll keep Moana. But instead, all I see are cloud reflections skimming across the water.

  Mrs Andersen is waiting for us on the harbour wall, twisting her scarf around her hands. She waves as we slide through the gap into the deep-water moorings. Mr Andersen waves back and Felix grins and gives the thumbs up. His face has caught the sun and his hair is salt-crusted and windswept. He looks a different boy to the one we took out this morning.

  The tide is too low to take Moana to her mooring site at the pontoon, so Dad takes her alongside the trawlers and the lifeboat.

  ‘We’ll help you take down the sails and sort her out,’ says Mr Andersen.

  Dad smiles. ‘We’ll be just fine. You go on home. Kara and I will wait for the tide to come in and take her to her mooring.’

  Mr Andersen puts out his hand and pumps Dad’s hand up and down. ‘Well, thanks, Jim. It’s been great. I’ll be in touch.’

  Felix stands up and steadies himself on Moana’s side. His dad helps him out onto the rough steps cut into the harbour wall. Felix opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, but then turns, grasps the rusty hand rail and lifts one foot to the next step. I watch Mr Andersen sling his bag over his shoulder and climb up behind Felix, up to the top, to Mrs Andersen peering anxiously down.

  I tidy up Moana and wipe the salt spray from her decks. Dad helps me stuff the wrecked lobster pot in a spare canvas bag.

  He slings it on the floor and sighs. ‘It’s not as if we’re going to be using them much longer.’

  I wipe up crumbs from the seats and tip them out into the harbour water. I look down to see small fish dart up and take the crumbs. ‘D’you think Mr Andersen will buy her?’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ Dad says. ‘He’s going to have a chat with his wife and ring me later.’

  We have to wait another hour for the tide to creep in. I hear it sucking across the mud, filling in the lugworm holes. Two oystercatchers run up and down the shoreline, stopping to probe their orange bills deep into the mud. I help paddle Moana across to her mooring, watching the oar swirl through the still water.

  ‘It was a good trip today,’ I say. ‘Moana sailed well.’

  Dad smiles. ‘She never lets us down, does she?’

  I shake my head, but can’t help feeling that’s exactly what we’re doing to her.

  We walk back to Aunt Bev’s through the town in early evening, tired and sunburnt. I flop down on the sofa. Daisy’s watching a game show on TV an
d Aunt Bev is knitting bootees for the baby. I hardly move until the phone rings. I strain my ears to hear who Dad is talking to.

  I hear Dad say goodbye and put the phone back. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear what he’s got to say. Aunt Bev puts her knitting down and glances at the door.

  Dad walks in, sits down next to me and runs his hands through his hair.

  Aunt Bev mutes the volume. ‘Well?’ she says.

  Dad shakes his head and frowns. ‘Mr Andersen doesn’t want to buy her.’

  I sit up. ‘What?’

  Aunt Bev glares at him. ‘I said you should’ve dropped the price.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ says Dad. ‘Mr Andersen seemed keen at the time, but he said something about listening to Felix, and “doing the right thing”.’

  ‘They’re going back to London,’ I say. ‘That’s what they’re going to do.’

  Aunt Bev snatches up her knitting. ‘Let’s hope you find another buyer soon, Jim. It’s the only way you’ll pay those debts.’ She shakes her head and turns the volume back up.

  But I can’t take the grin off my face.

  Maybe it was the white dolphin I saw beneath the bow waves. Mr Andersen has changed his mind. He doesn’t want to buy Moana.

  Moana’s still our boat.

  She’s ours for now, at least.

  CHAPTER 16

  I sit in Mrs Carter’s office after school while she watches me press sticky tape across the last of the ripped pages of the Bible. Some of the pages were never found. Lost at sea. Presumed drowned.

  I close the Bible and push it across the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter.

  School finished half an hour ago. Through the office window, I can see some of my class in the play park beyond the school gates. Jake is sitting next to Ethan, twirling round and round on the preschool swings.

  Mrs Carter leans forward, elbows on the table. ‘Kara, did you know that I asked your father to come and see me today?’

  I nod. Dad said she wanted to see him about me breaking Jake Evans’s nose.

  ‘And you know that while I have every sympathy for your situation, I cannot accept violence in the school?’

  I nod again.

  ‘I’ve told your father that if this happens again, we will have no choice but to exclude you.’

  Part of me wants to laugh. It hardly seems a punishment. I’d do anything not to have to come to school.

  Mrs Carter opens the Bible at one of the ripped pages. Her voice is suddenly soft and measured. ‘Your father and I spoke about this too.’

  I frown and look down at the Bible. I’ve already said that I was sorry. I don’t like to think about them talking about me, discussing me behind my back.

  Mrs Carter pulls her chair closer to the table. ‘Can I tell you a story, Kara?’

  All I want to do is go.

  ‘It’s about a man,’ she says, ‘who dreams he is walking with God along a beach.’

  I stare at my hands. I’m in no mood for one of Mrs Carter’s Bible stories.

  ‘The man looks back at the path they have taken and he sees that in one place there is only one set of footprints. He’s angry at God and says, “You left me when I most needed you. See, there is only one set of footprints in the sand.” ’

  I pick at a loose corner of sticky tape holding the page together. A memory of Mum flashes through me, the time she carried me out of the sea after I’d stepped on a weaver fish. I’d wrapped my arms around her neck, pain throbbing through my foot. I’d clung to her and watched her bare footprints trail out behind us. I look up at Mrs Carter. I already know the ending to her story.

  She smiles at me. ‘God said to the man, “I never left you. Those footsteps you see are mine. They are when I carried you.” ’

  I close the Bible and slide it over to Mrs Carter.

  ‘God never leaves us, Kara.’

  ‘What if you don’t believe in God?’ I say. The words have tumbled out before I could stop them. I know Mum doesn’t believe in Him.

  I think Mrs Carter is going to give one of her assembly speeches, but she doesn’t. She gets up from her seat and puts the Bible back on the shelf next to the atlas and the dictionary. She sits back down on the table edge. ‘You know, Kara,’ she says. ‘When you love someone, they never really leave you, ever. Some part of them always stays with you deep down inside.’

  I nod and shift in my seat. I feel hot and stuffy all at once. I don’t want her talking to me about all this. I just want to go.

  ‘You can go home now.’ Mrs Carter is smiling at me. ‘It was good to talk today, Kara.’

  I almost run out of her office and grab my coat from my locker. I don’t want to go out through the front gates and everyone in the park. I feel too churned up inside. Instead of heading out of the main doors, I walk along the corridor to the staff car park on the other side of school. If I take the top road out of town, I can swing back along the coastal footpath without anyone, especially Jake and Ethan, seeing me.

  It’s not just that. I want to give myself an excuse to go back to the cove, to look for the dolphins again. Dad’s not expecting me home for at least another hour, so I still have time to spare. Maybe I’ll have time to go and see Moana. I can’t believe she’s ours still. Felix wasn’t at school today, so I guess I’m right, and he’s going back to London after all. I’m glad he’s not buying Moana, but part of me wanted to see him at school today, because when he saw the cuttlefish and the reef, it seemed to mean something to him too.

  The road from the school winds up the hill under a tunnel of branches throwing zebra stripes of deep shadow on the tarmac. Beyond the tunnel of trees, I catch glimpses of the sea in gaps and gateways between the high banks of the hedgerows. Goose-grass and bindweed scramble over stunted wind-bent hazel. I climb the stile to the wheat fields and run along the stubbly footpath to the cliffs. Above, the sky is clear and blue. A breeze carries the coconut smell of gorse from the bushes along the clifftop and a single seagull hangs in mid-air, angling its wings to catch the updraught from the sea.

  I scramble through the gorse and look down. The water in the cove below glitters in the sunlight. I have to shade my eyes against the flashes of reflected glare. But I see something else moving through the water. The blue-grey body of a dolphin twists and turns in the shallows. I can hear it calling, its high-pitched whistles. It surges forward in a spray of surf, trying to beach itself on the sand. I can’t believe it’s really here, as if it’s me it’s waiting for.

  I scramble down the cliff and jump the last few feet to the small beach uncovered by the ebbing tide. I run through the maze of boulders. My feet slap on the soft wet sand. Pooled water and pale boulders reflect bright white light. I don’t stop. A flock of seagulls lifts into the air and a raven croaks and hops down from a boulder in the shallow waves. Another raven flaps up and flies away. Its wingtips almost brush my head.

  And that’s when I see it.

  Even though the boulder is snagged with weed, it’s too smooth and white to be a rock here. It’s not a rock at all.

  It’s a dolphin.

  It’s the white dolphin lying beached upon the shore. Small waves run in and furl around her. But the sand is wet and hard. The tide mark of scum and seaweed curls around her tail flukes. The tide has turned and is ebbing out to sea.

  The other dolphin in the water rushes at the shore again. I was stupid to think it was me she was waiting for. She’s not waiting for me at all. She’s trying to reach her calf beside me on the sand.

  I’ve never seen a dolphin so close up before. I’ve seen them in the distance and in books, but I’ve never been right next to one. I guess the white dolphin must be young but I can tell she’s not newborn. She’s maybe one of last year’s calves. I follow the curve of her back and dorsal fin to her tail flukes. She’s not really white at all. Her body is pale pink and her fins and tail are tinged with blue. Deep scratches, dark with blood, line her back. Her blowhole is clear of the water, but I cannot hear or see
her breathe.

  I take a step towards her. Her eye is partly open. The lids are dry and crusted with salt. The eye beneath looks dull and lifeless, like frosted glass. She doesn’t blink or move.

  I crouch down beside her in the sand. Strands of thick seaweed are wrapped around her lower jaw. Only as I look closer, it’s not weed at all. It’s fine mesh fishing net. Fine mesh nylon wrapped so tightly, it has cut deep into the skin behind her dolphin smile. Her tongue is blue-black and swollen. Shreds of nylon twist around her peg-like teeth. Flies buzz up from the wound and I see peck marks from the ravens around her jaw.

  I sink down onto my knees and feel bile rising up inside me. I can see how she came to be like this. I can see her drowning, tangled in dark waters, thrashing in a fishing net trying to escape.

  I close my eyes and try to push those thoughts away.

  But the image of the dolphin drowning haunts me.

  I splash water on my face and open my eyes.

  The sun is bright white in the sky. A line of sweat trickles down my back beneath my shirt.

  I don’t want to be here any more.

  I stand up to leave. But I want to touch the dolphin once before I go.

  I wet my fingers and reach out to trace them in an arc across her face.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘PFWHOOOSH!!’

  I fall back into the water.

  A blast of wet breath fills the air.

  It stinks of fish.

  The dolphin draws in a breath, a whistling sucking through her blowhole, then the blowhole snaps shut again.

  The dolphin’s eye is wide open now. She is watching me.

  I slap the water with my hand. ‘You’re alive,’ I shout. ‘You’re alive.’