Whale Pot Bay (11 page)

The miracle came two days after the scrimshaw episode.

I arrived at the beach soon after sunrise, as usual. In the beginning, I didn’t notice anything different. Then, as I was walking down the track, my eye was caught by something floating in the water beyond the wave break. I stopped and watched for a while, trying to make it out. That’s when I saw the puff of mist, which told me that a miracle was underway.

A moment later I was in the jeep, screaming crosscountry towards Tarquins. At first the butler was annoyed at being disturbed so early, but when he heard what I had to say, he readily invited me in. I declined, saying I had another urgent call to make. I asked him to pass the message on to Milt, before getting back in the jeep and heading for home.

Nobody was up when I arrived at the house. I was so excited that I rushed into Steph’s room without knocking. She was already awake.

‘How dare you!’ she yelled, pulling the bedclothes up tightly. ‘Get out!’

‘Pimi’s alive,’ I spluttered. ‘You’ve got to get up. Pimi’s alive!’

She stared at me, unsure of what to do. She plainly wanted to believe me, but wasn’t sure whether to trust me or not.

Vicky came in. ‘Is this another one of your sick jokes?’ she demanded.

‘No!’ I cried. ‘It’s true. She’s in the bay. I swear to God it’s true.’

The intensity of my voice was having an effect—now Vicky was unsure as well.

I turned to Steph and said in a quieter voice, ‘It’s true, Steph. She’s back. You’ve got to come. She’ll need you. You’re the one she trusts.’

It worked! They finally believed me. However, it still took a valuable twenty minutes before we were all organized and on our way back to the bay. By then I was concerned that Pimi might have left again. What would I say if she had? I shuddered at the thought.

I need not have worried. She was still there, although she’d moved into deeper water. For a minute or so we stood on the clifftop, looking down on her. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but I was thanking whatever guardian angels had kept her alive, and hoping that they would continue to think kindly of her. I knew she would need whatever help she could get, for she would not have returned to the bay unless she was gravely ill.

As soon as we got down to the beach, I rushed into the tent and grabbed our surfboards.

‘We’ll take the inflatable,’ suggested Dad, pointing to the dinghy sitting upside-down on our boat.

‘You take it,’ I replied. ‘We need to get out there and comfort her.’ Actually, I knew it wouldn’t be me who would do the comforting—it would be Steph. But I wanted to be close by when we got out there, just in case the wound was too horrific.

Pimi must have sensed us coming, for she moved in as we paddled out. We met where the waves were beginning
to swell. She showed no fear as we came alongside. I’m certain that she knew who we were. Steph started talking to her, and I saw Pimi’s eye soften and close a little. There is no doubt in my mind that she was as relieved to see us, as we were to see her.

While Steph talked and stroked Pimi’s head, I inspected the wound. It was bad. The whole of her back had swollen, causing the wound to open until it was a wide V across her body. Inside the V, I could see all the layers: the skin, the thick layer of blubber, and then the muscle. It was the muscle that looked the worst. It was bulging, with pink fluid squeezing out every time she moved.

I heard the sound of an outboard, and looked up to see Dad approaching in the inflatable, with Milt and Colin onboard. He turned the motor off and let the boat drift the last few metres. Colin put his stethoscope to his ears, and leaned over to hand the end to me.

‘Reach under, Jake, and hold that firmly against her chest.’

I did so. Pimi gave no reaction

‘Now a little closer to the head.’

I moved it and he listened for a while longer. This went on for some time before he straightened up and gave his verdict. ‘Breathing seems OK,’ he said. ‘Her heart’s not as strong as it was before, but it’s still regular, so there’s no damage there.’ He studied her for a while. ‘It’s the swelling we need to worry about. That must make it very difficult for her to move, and has to be pushing down on her kidneys.’

‘What about the calf?’ asked Milton.

Steph stopped talking to Pimi and lifted her head. ‘It’s alive,’ she said. ‘Pimi told me.’

Colin looked at her strangely, before saying, ‘Well, let’s see if it’s OK then.’

Again I took the end of the stethoscope. This time I had to place it on various parts of her lower body.

‘It’s alive and kicking,’ he declared. ‘Or should I say flipping. In fact it’s in better health than she is.’

‘You don’t have to call the baby “it”,’ said Steph with a smile. ‘He’s a boy.’

Again she got a strange look from Colin, but he said nothing.

‘All right,’ said Milt, taking charge. ‘Now we have to make sure they both stay alive. Whatever is needed, we’ll do it, no matter what the cost. So, Colin, what do we have to do?’

Colin thought for a while. ‘An antibiotic. That’s the most important thing, and the sooner the better. We’ve got plenty back in Palmerston North, but it’ll take most of the day to get it.’

‘We’ll take my plane,’ said Milt, matter-of-factly. ‘What else do you need?’

‘I’ll pick up a vitamin mix at the same time,’ replied Colin. ‘But the next most important thing is to get her to eat. I doubt that she’s eaten since the accident.’

‘She eats squid, doesn’t she?’ asked Dad.

‘That would be the best thing, if we can get some.’

‘Would fishing bait be OK?’

‘Yes, if you can get enough of it. She’ll need about ten kilos a day.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll make sure she gets it,’ said Dad.

‘I’ll look after Pimi,’ said Steph.

‘And I’ll look after Steph,’ I said.

Milt laughed. ‘Good, then everyone’s got a job to do. Let’s get on and do it.’ He turned to Steph and me. ‘You two just make sure she’s still here when we get back.’

‘She will be,’ said Steph, giving Pimi’s head a rub. ‘She says she’s not planning on going anywhere.’

Dad was the first to return. He’d made a rush trip to Eketahuna and cleaned the shop out of squid bait, although that was still only enough for a couple of days. He and Vicky brought out several kilos in the inflatable.

‘I thawed it out in the microwave,’ said Vicky. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t want it frozen.’

She held one up by a tentacle. It was not a pretty sight with its black eyes surrounded by drooping tentacles and slimy pink flesh.

‘Yuk!’ complained Steph. ‘Am I expected to hold that?’

‘Yes,’ answered Dad. ‘Lots of them. There were twenty-eight in the kilo pack I opened. So if Pimi’s got a normal appetite, she’s going to need about three hundred a day.’

‘I’ll feed her,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind the slime.’

‘You do the first few,’ said Steph, ‘and then I might have a try.’

The squishy squid was difficult to hold and it took some time to work out how to stop it squeezing out of my hands. Then I had to get it into her mouth. I stretched my arm down feeling around her head for an opening. I found something and felt around for a while before realizing it was her upper jaw. I’d been expecting teeth, yet there weren’t any. But stretching down further, I touched the lower jaw which did
contain teeth—long, sharp ones. I dropped the squid and quickly pulled my hand out. I felt a rush of water past my hand which must have been her sucking in the squid. Then she lifted her head and nudged my body, which I figured was her way of saying thank-you.

I fed her four more before I worked out the best way to do it. I just had to lay the squid between her teeth, and she would do the rest. I didn’t even need to pull my hand out quickly. She seemed to be able to sense when my hand had been removed.

She gobbled through the first pack of twenty-eight without a break. Then I showed Steph how to do it. The second packet went down more slowly, and halfway through the third she balked—she’d either had enough or was too tired to take any more. We decided to try again later.

Milt and Colin returned after midday.

Colin was pleased that Pimi had eaten so much. ‘You’ve got to remember that she normally feeds for most of the day and even during the night. She won’t take the full ten kilos all at once. You’ll have to feed her three or four times a day.’

‘I can do that,’ said Steph with determination.

‘Good. Now we’ve got to get some antibiotics and vitamins into her.’ He took out a syringe with a needle that was longer than any I’d ever seen.

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want that pushed into me.’

‘It’s got to be extra long to get through the blubber and into the muscle, otherwise the drug won’t get into her
bloodstream.’ Then, without further warning, he darted her and pushed home the plunger.

‘Ouch!’ squealed Steph. However, Pimi gave no reaction. If she’d felt it, then it obviously didn’t bother her.

Three more injections followed, with no more reaction than the first. It was then decided that we should go to the shore and leave her alone for a while. Colin thought that too many humans around for too long might distress her.

We went to Tarquins for lunch and to discuss what to do from now on, which was mostly about security.

‘This has got to be different than before,’ said Milt, sternly. ‘I don’t know how the press got hold of the tracking details, but it’s going to have to be different this time.’

Colin took over. ‘The thing I’m most worried about is someone coming in by boat. They wouldn’t have to come far into the bay before they see her.’

‘That’s unlikely,’ said Dad. ‘We rarely have boats coming in here. It’s too difficult, unless you’ve got the right boat.’

‘But they do cruise past taking photos of Tarquins,’ said Milt. ‘Some go near the mouth of the bay. We need to make sure that they don’t see anything that will make them suspicious.’

‘No more than two people out in the water at a time,’ suggested Colin.

‘And only on surfboards,’ added Milt, ‘as that would seem quite normal.’

After a bit more discussion, it was decided that Steph and I would have the job of feeding her, with Colin coming out once a day to administer medicines and check her progress.

‘OK,’ said Milt, winding up the discussion, ‘that’s it. I think we’ve covered everything. The important thing is that we must continue to behave as normal. If we do, no one will suspect that she’s here.’ Then he gave a little smile. ‘The rest of the world doesn’t need to know that she’s risen from the dead.’

There was one job that we hadn’t discussed at our meeting, and that was looking out for Scatworm and Vermin. I considered that one of my duties. I maintained my watch on Scatworm’s hideout, visiting it every so often in the early morning when we first went to the bay.

Fortunately, my visits were a waste of time: there were no new signs of him, his vehicle, or his stinky smoking habit. It gave me hope that he and Vermin had given up. If they didn’t hear about Pimi, we probably wouldn’t see them again.

Pimi made great progress. Within two days the swelling was down, although not entirely back to normal. Every day she was eating more. So much so that feeding her became a chore. We would load the squid into a white plastic container which would float alongside our surfboards. Then we’d take turns, feeding her a kilogram at a time. We got into the habit of giving her three squid per mouthful to speed things up. However, it still took a fair part of each day.

One day, when we’d finished, Steph passed her ankle rope over to me and said, ‘Hold on to this. I’m going to swim with her for a while.’ She then slipped off her board and took a few tentative strokes away from me. I’d seen
her swimming a couple of times when she’d come off the board in the surf, but this was the first time I’d seen her do it willingly.

She was quickly about fifty metres away from me. While she had a powerful arm action, her legs trailed behind her with hardly any movement. I had a glimpse of how fast she must have been before the accident.

Soon she was back with me, treading water beside Pimi. ‘Come on, Pimi,’ she said, stroking the whale’s head. ‘Come and have a swim with me.’

Steph moved off again, followed a moment later by Pimi. It was amazing: you would have sworn that the whale had understood what Steph had said. If Steph was all upper body with her swimming, Pimi was all lower: she swam with seemingly effortless movements of her tail.

That first time, they went only a hundred metres or so. However, from then on they would swim together after every feed. Both of them got stronger with each swim. Sometimes Pimi would give a little spurt as if challenging the girl to go faster. To do so, Steph had to use her legs, and soon she was kicking almost like a normal swimmer.

One afternoon when we came ashore, Dad and Vicky were on the beach. After talking for a while about Pimi, Steph went off to the tent to get changed. Vicky turned to watch her daughter walk away.

‘Look at her,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was telling you about, Alan.’

We looked, and soon Dad was nodding. For a moment I couldn’t see what they were talking about. Then I realized that Steph was walking differently: her legs were
no longer kicking out to the side. It wasn’t exactly normal walking, but it was a lot better than before.

Vicky turned to me and said quietly, ‘Thank you, Jake.’

I was taken by surprise. ‘What for?’ I spluttered. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘For the swimming.’

‘That’s Pimi,’ I said.

‘Not entirely. Steph wouldn’t be able to do it unless you were out there.’

I shrugged.

‘You know, she thinks a lot of you.’ I remained silent, not sure where this was going. ‘She called you her big brother the other day.’

That was a shock to me. But when I thought about it later, I began to understand what she was suggesting. At first Steph and I had worked together to help Pimi. Now it had reached a stage where we got on reasonably well around the home. Not that it was all happy families or anything near that: there were still moments of conflict, but nothing like there’d been before.