‘Rules? What the hell do you know? You think an eighteen-year-old boy with a jet-ski wants to talk about rules?’ She was shaking with rage. ‘You watched us try to save that baby whale, and now you can stand there and say your bloody watersports park won’t affect anything? Worse, you got my daughter to tell you what was most needed so you could suck up to the planning department and win them over.’
‘I thought it might be something good,’ he protested. ‘She said they were things they needed.’
‘They were things you needed to get the bloody planning department on your side. You’re sick, you know that? Sick.’
‘It’s not my decision,’ he said helplessly. ‘I’ve been doing my best to make this thing work for everybody.’
‘You’ve been doing your best to line your pockets,’ I said. I moved a step closer to him, and I saw him square, as if he were preparing himself for a blow.
Liza turned back, tearful now. She shook her head and said bitterly, ‘You know . . . everything you said you were is a lie. Everything.’
That was the first time he looked angry. ‘No,’ he said urgently, reaching out a hand. ‘Not everything. I wanted to talk to you. I still want to talk but—’
She brushed him off as if he was toxic. ‘You really think there’s anything you have to say that I’d want to hear?’
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to say something about the development,’ he continued, ‘but I had to get it worked out first. Once I realised what the whales meant to you guys, I wanted to find a way to keep everyone happy.’
‘Well, congratu-bloody-lations,’ she spat. ‘I hope you’re happy, because this thing’s going to destroy us, and it’ll destroy the whales. But, hey, as long as your investors get a good return, I’m glad you’re happy.’
I offered to hit him then.
‘Oh, don’t be such a bloody fool,’ she said, and with a dismissive wave that seemed to include both of us, she pushed past me and out of the kitchen.
A girl was standing in the hallway, blonde with expensive clothes and a diddy little handbag held close to her chest. She stood back to let Liza pass. ‘Is everything okay?’ she said. Another Pom. This must be the girlfriend, I thought. Too good for the likes of him.
‘I’ll have you, mate,’ I said to him, pointing my finger into his face. ‘Don’t think any of this is going to be forgotten.’
‘Oh, calm down, Greg,’ said Kathleen, wearily, and pushed me out of the kitchen. Like it was my bloody fault. Like any of it was my bloody fault.
‘Vanessa, perhaps you’d like to come in and sit down. I’ll make a pot of tea.’
Thirteen
Kathleen
Newcastle Observer, 11 April 1939
The largest grey nurse shark ever caught in New South Wales has been landed in a fishing community north of Port Stephens – by a 17-year-old girl.
Miss Kathleen Whittier Mostyn, daughter of Angus Mostyn, proprietor of the Silver Bay Hotel, hauled in the creature on Wednesday afternoon out in waters near Break Nose Island. She landed it unaided from a small sculling craft while her father had briefly returned to the hotel to fetch some provisions.
He said: ‘I was genuinely shocked when Kathleen showed me her catch. The first thing we did was bring it into shore and call up the appropriate authorities, as it was my guess that she had broken some kind of record.’
A fisheries spokesman confirmed it was the largest shark of its kind ever netted in the area. ‘This is a considerable achievement for a young lady,’ said Mr Saul Thompson. ‘The shark would have been difficult to land even by a proper game fisherman.’
The shark has already become a considerable attraction, with local game fishermen and sightseers travelling some distances to see the creature. Mr Mostyn plans to have it mounted and placed in the hotel as a record of his daughter’s estimable catch. ‘We just have to find a wall strong enough,’ he joked.
The hotel staff say bookings have trebled since news broke of Miss Mostyn’s rize, and the record is sure to add to the area’s growing reputation as a fine place for game-fishing.
I dusted the glass frame and put the yellowing newspaper cutting back against the wall, alongside the photographs of the stuffed shark. The taxidermy itself hadn’t been particularly successful – I suspected my father had been in such a hurry to put it on show that he had not had it done by anyone of genuine skill – and the creature had fallen apart when it was moved from the hotel into the museum, stuffing oozing from the seams around the fins and along the joint of the tail. Eventually we admitted defeat and put it out with the bins. I watched out of the window with amusement on the day the bin men came.
It didn’t help that it had been handled by pretty much every visitor who ever walked in. There was something about a stuffed shark that made people want to touch it. Perhaps it was the frisson of knowing that in normal circumstances they wouldn’t be that close to one without amputation or death following hard behind. Perhaps it gave them some strange sense of power. Perhaps we all harbour a perverse need to get close to things that might destroy us.
I looked away deliberately from the photographs and ran the duster lightly over the other objects and curios, seeing the museum through the eyes of the kind of tourist who would be interested in a top-of-the-range watersports park. Or, as the newspaper had put it, a ‘proper’ Museum of Whales and Dolphins. I had not had a visitor in ten days. Perhaps I couldn’t blame them, I thought, carefully placing a harpoon back on its hooks. This was increasingly less a museum than a bunch of old fishbones in a rackety shed. I was only keeping it going because of my father.
They were all up at the hotel, sitting outside, loudly discussing their ideas to fight the planning decision over beer and chips. I hadn’t wanted to be among them, didn’t want to feign sympathy for as yet uncommitted crimes against free creatures of the sea. My own feelings, my own reservations, were quite different from theirs.
I heard the door creak and turned. Mike Dormer was there. It was hard to see his face, as he stood against the light, so I beckoned to him.
‘I haven’t been in here before,’ he said, glancing around as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his normally straight-backed posture stooped and apologetic.
‘Nope,’ I agreed. ‘You haven’t.’
He walked around slowly, staring up at the beams, from which hung old lines, nets and buoys, whaler’s overalls from the 1930s. He seemed interested in everything in a way genuine visitors rarely were.