Silver Bay(25)
Author: Jojo Moyes

Nessa will tell you I’m no great psychologist. I don’t care much what makes people tick if I don’t need to know, but I had never met someone so determined to give away so little. Every conversational snippet dragged itself out of her. She seemed to make every personal admission under pain of torture. I asked her how she took her coffee and she frowned as if I had asked about her underwear. When she told me, ‘No sugar,’ it was like a confession. And all tinged with a slight . . . melancholy?

‘Lance says they’ve sighted a female about three miles on,’ she said, after we had been at sea about half an hour. ‘You happy to keep going?’

‘Sure,’ I said. I’d forgotten we were meant to be searching for whales. If you’re not used to being on the ocean, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer bloody scale of it. It’s like a landscape in itself. When you’re out so far that three-quarters of your view is endless water, your eye becomes lost in its vast movement, drawn by an illuminated patch where the sun shines through cloud, or by the distant area where white horses have sprung up. I can’t say I didn’t feel nervous – I’m used to dry land – but once I’d got over the instability, the crashing and creaking that came from beneath my feet, I liked the aloneness, the boat’s freedom to move unencumbered by other people. I liked seeing Liza’s face lose its tense watchfulness to take on the openness of the sea and sky.

‘That’s where we’re headed,’ she said, spinning the wheel, one hand raised against the glare. I could just make out the birds, dive-bombing in an area where it was impossible to see anything. ‘That means there are fish. And where there are fish there are often whales.’

By then we had seen the others. She pointed out Greg’s boat, which looked about the same size as hers, and further away what she described as Moby Two.

‘There!’ she said. ‘Blow!’

‘Blow what?’ I queried. That made her laugh.

‘There.’

I couldn’t see where she was pointing and squinted. Perhaps unconsciously she took my arm and drew it towards her. ‘Look!’ she said, trying to get me to focus along it. ‘We’ll go a bit closer.’

I couldn’t see a thing. It would have been frustrating, except that I was diverted by the childish pleasure on her face. This was a Liza McCullen I had not yet seen in six days of living at the hotel. A wide, ready smile, a lift in her voice.

‘Oh, she’s a beauty. I bet you there’s a calf too. I’ve got a feeling . . .’

It was as if she had forgotten her earlier chill towards me. I heard her on the radio: ‘Ishmael to Moby Two – our girl is portside to you, about a mile and a half ahead. Got a feeling she may have a calf with her so go steady, okay?’

‘Moby Two to Ishmael. Spotted her, Liza. Giving her a wide berth.’

‘We stay at least a hundred metres away,’ she explained. ‘We make that three hundred when calves are involved. It all depends on the mother. Some are curious – they’ll bring the babies right up to see us, and that’s different. But I always feel . . . I don’t like to encourage it.’ She looked directly at me. ‘You can’t guarantee that the next boat they meet is going to be as friendly. Okay! Here we go!’

I hung on and, as if in some delicately choreographed formation, the three boats moved closer together until we were near enough to make out the waving passengers on board each one. The seas were quiet as the engines were turned off, and I stood next to Liza as we waited for the whale to show herself again.

‘Will she definitely come back up?’

I needn’t have asked. When that great head come out of the water, not thirty feet from us, an involuntary ‘whoa’ escaped me. It’s not that I have never seen a picture of a whale, or couldn’t have guessed what it looked like. It’s just that meeting a creature so huge, so unlikely, in its own environment, throws you in a way I find hard to convey.

‘Look!’ Liza was shouting. ‘There it is! Look down!’ And just visible, sheltered half under its mother, I saw a flash of grey or blue, which was the calf. They went past our boat twice, then shouts from the other boats told us she had gone to look at them too.

I was grinning like an idiot. When Liza smiled back at me, there was something triumphant in it, as if she were saying, ‘You see?’ as if there was something she knew. When its weirdly long fin appeared, she laughed. ‘She’s waving,’ she said, then laughed harder when I found myself tentatively waving back.

‘She’s belly up – it means she’s comfortable with us. You know she and the baby use those pectoral fins to stroke each other?’

As we sat, Liza spotted two more in the distance. I was dimly aware of the radio conversation between the three boats, the exclamations of pleasure at this unexpected haul. When she turned back to me, her face was illuminated. ‘Want to hear something magic?’ she said suddenly.

She nipped down into the galley and emerged with a strange-looking thing on a cable. She plugged one end into a box on the side, then threw it into the water. ‘Listen,’ she said, flicking a few switches. ‘Hydrophone. There might be escorts nearby.’

For several minutes, there was nothing. I stared out to sea, trying to spot the whale, hearing nothing but the sound of the water meeting the sides of the boat, the wheeling birds overhead, and occasionally, brought over on a soft wind, the other boats’ passengers. Then there was a low moan, drawn-out, almost eerie. A sound like nothing I had ever heard. It sent shivers up my spine.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

I stared at her. ‘That’s a whale?’

‘A male. They all sing the same song, you know. They’ve done research into it – it’s eighteen minutes long and each year all the whales in the pod sing the same song. If a new whale comes along with a new song, they pick it up instead. Can you imagine them down there teaching each other?’ Suddenly I saw Hannah in her, her face lit with excitement at the prospect of using my computer. I had been wrong when I said Liza McCullen wasn’t beautiful: when she smiled she was stunning.

The smile evaporated. ‘What the—’

It was a thumping sound, regular, insistent. For a moment I wondered whether it was someone’s engine, but then it grew louder, and I knew it had nothing to do with the microphone. Two large boats came round the headland, strung with bunting, packed with passengers. Loud music emanated from four oversized speakers on the top deck, and even from our distance away, the clink of glasses and the hysterical laughter of the well lubricated were audible.