‘Greg never caught that shark, did he?’ I said.
Kathleen Whittier Mostyn, legendary Shark Lady, laughed, a short fierce bark of a laugh, and when she turned to face me there was a steely glint in her eye.
‘One thing I’ve learnt in my seventy-odd years, Mike. If a shark wants to bite you, as far as I’m concerned, you do whatever the hell you have to just to stay alive.’
Twenty-eight
Hannah
It takes three hours and twenty-eight minutes to drive from Silver Bay to Sydney airport, another twenty to find a decent parking space, and on top of that, in our case, four further lots of fifteen minutes’ stopping time for me to be sick out of the back door with nerves. My tummy still gets me – it was like that every time I went out on a whale-watching trip – and I never could persuade Yoshi it wasn’t seasickness. Auntie K knew. She told me every time that it didn’t matter – while my head was in the gutter I heard her telling the others she’d brought eight plastic bags and four kitchen rolls in expectation – and Mike had set off an hour early, thanks to her warnings.
There were five of us in the car – Mike, Mum, Mr Gaines, Auntie K and me. It wasn’t our car, but Mr Gaines’s seven-seater, which we borrowed after Mike pointed out that Mum’s car couldn’t accommodate the one extra person coming home. A convoy of trucks, trailing bits of net and lines and probably smelling of fish, all pretending not to be there, was following us. Every time we stopped they stopped too, but none of them got out. They just sat and looked out of the window as if they were interested in anything but the girl with her head in the gutter. If it had been any other time I’d have wanted to die of embarrassment.
No one had wanted to come too close, knowing what my mum was like about her privacy, but everyone had wanted to be there. My mum didn’t care. To be honest, I don’t think she’d have noticed if the Queen of England had turned up to watch. For twenty-four hours she had hardly spoken, just stared at her watch and calculated and occasionally reached out to hold my hand. If Mike hadn’t stopped her, I think she’d have moved into the arrivals lounge two days ago and waited there.
Mike’s calculations were spot on. Even with our extra stops we got there fifteen minutes before the flight arrived. ‘Fifteen,’ Mr Gaines muttered, ‘of the longest minutes of our lives.’ At least twenty more, Mike calculated, for baggage and Passport Control. And for every single one of them, there Mum stood, as still as anyone ever had, her hands gripping the rail, while we tried to make conversation around her, eyes on the gate. At one point she held my hand so tightly that my fingers went blue, and Mike had to get her to let go. Twice Mike went to the Qantas desk and came back to confirm that the plane had definitely not dropped out of the sky.
Finally, just as I thought I might be sick again, the first trickle of passengers from flight QA2032 came through. We stared in silence, each of us straining to see the distant figures through the swinging doors, trying to match that image with the one we had on a crumpled bit of paper. What if she didn’t come? The thought popped into my head, and my heart filled with panic. What if she’d decided she wanted to stay with Steven? What if we stood there for hours and no one came? Worse, what if she came and we didn’t recognise her?
And suddenly there she was. My sister, almost as tall as me, with Mum’s bright blonde hair and a crooked nose like mine, holding tightly to Mike’s sister’s hand. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink hooded top, and walked with a limp, slowly as if part of her was still afraid of what she might find. Mike’s sister saw us and waved, and even from that distance you could see the smile on her face was as big as a mile. She stopped for a minute and said something to Letty, and Letty nodded, her face towards us, and they began to walk faster.
We were all crying then, even before they had reached the barrier. My mother, silent beside me, had begun to shake. Aunt Kathleen was saying, ‘Thank God, oh, thank God,’ into a handkerchief and when I looked behind me Yoshi was crying into Greg’s chest and even Mike, his arm round my shoulders, was gulping. But I was smiling as well as crying because I knew that sometimes there’s more good in the world than you can possibly imagine and that everything was going to be all right.
And as Letty got close Mum ducked under the barrier and started to run, and as she ran she let out a sound I’d never heard before. She didn’t care what anyone thought – she and my sister locked eyes and it was as if they were magnets, as if there was nothing in the world that could stop them moving towards each other. My mother grabbed her and pulled her in and Letty was sobbing and had hold of Mum’s hair and the only way I can describe it is to say it was as if each of them had had a piece of themselves given back. I pushed through then, and I held on to them too, and then Aunt Kathleen, and Mike, and I was dimly aware of all the people watching who must have thought she was just another kid coming home. Except for the noise. The noise my mother made, as they sank to the floor, surrounded by all of us, wrapped in arms and kisses and tears.
Because the sound that came from my mother, as she rocked my sister in her arms, was long and grievous and strange, and spoke of all the love and pain in the world. It echoed through the great arrivals hall, and bounced off the shiny floor and off the walls, stopping people in their tracks, and causing them to peer round to see what it was. It was both terrifying and glorious. It sounded, Aunt Kathleen said afterwards, exactly like the song of a humpbacked whale.
Epilogue
Kathleen
My name is Kathleen Whittier Gaines and I’m a seventy-six-year-old bride. Even to say those words makes me wince with the silliness of it all. Yes, he caught me in the end. He told me if he was going to pop his clogs he’d like to do it knowing I was nearby, and I figured that was not a lot to ask of a woman, not when she knew she had been loved by a man her whole life.
I don’t live in the hotel any more. Not full time, anyway. Nino and I couldn’t quite agree on where to settle: he said he had to be near his vines, and I told him I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my days inland. So we split our week between our two houses, and while the rest of Silver Bay thinks we’re a pair of mad old coots, this is an arrangement that suits us both fine.
Mike and Liza live in the hotel, which is probably a little smarter and a little more welcoming than it was when I ran it alone. Mike has fingers in other pies, interests that keep him busy and bring in some money, such as marketing Nino’s wines, but I don’t pay much heed, as long as we have a bottle or two of something nice on the tables in the evening. Every now and then Mike gets ideas about making more money, or increasing yields, or whatever the hell it is he talks about, and I disagree, and the rest of them nod and smile and wait quietly for him to blow himself out.