Silver Bay, Page 31

  In the circumstances it felt like the least I could do.

  I was the only person in Reception at the Blue Shoals. The receptionist, who might have recognised me, jerked her thumb towards the leg of the L-shaped foyer, and there, flanked by cardboard screens, which illustrated projected visitor numbers and benefits for the community, it sat in a Perspex case, around four feet by six, unnoticed.

  It was exactly as I had pictured it. In fact, I realised, as I bent over, it was better. Its four buildings were situated elegantly round a series of courtyards and swimming-pools. Its solar canopies mimicked the shape of the hills behind it. It was white and glossy, immaculate and expensive. Despite the weird stasis you get with architectural models, you could imagine the throngs of people round the pools, strolling back to their rooms after a day at the beach. The watersports area, which jutted far into the bay, was punctuated by little plastic boats and even two waterskiers, complete with foam trails. Whale Jetty was lined with expensive white yachts and catamarans. The sand was white and the buildings gleamed with whitewash and glass. The little pine trees climbed mountains behind it, and the sea was turquoise. It looked like somewhere you might like to fall into. It looked, I had to admit, like a little stretch of Paradise, and the business side of me couldn't help but feel a perverse admiration for my own skills. Then I looked down the miniature bay and saw that Kathleen's place and the Whalechasers Museum no longer existed. There was white sand, the headland and nothing else.

  Anger built inside me again.

  'Looks pretty good, doesn't it?'

  I glanced up to see Mr Reilly gazing at the Perspex case. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and his jacket was over his shoulder, as if he hadn't been prepared for the day's warmth. 'You must be pretty pleased with yourself.'

  I straightened.

  'I've been wondering where they got all the little figures,' he said.

  'There are specialist companies,' I said curtly. 'They make them to order.'

  'I've got a son who's obsessed with model railways,' he continued, squatting down so that he could see it all at eye level. 'I should get them to make him a few figures. He'd love it.'

  I said nothing. I was staring at the space where Kathleen's hotel should have been.

  'Different when you see it in three-D, though,' he observed. 'I thought I could see it on the plans, but this brings it to life.'

  'It's a mistake,' I said. 'It's going to be a disaster for the area.'

  Mr Reilly deflated slightly, stood up. 'I'd heard you'd gone native. You surprise me, Mike, given how hard you fought for this place.'

  'I saw what you would lose,' I said, 'and I didn't want to be part of it.'

  'I don't believe we'll lose too much.'

  'Just your whales and dolphins.'

  'You're being a little dramatic, mate. Look, the coastguards have had a clampdown on those disco boats. There's been none here for over ten days now. They've got the message.'

  'Until the building starts.'

  'Mike, there's no evidence that building on shore is going to stress the animals.'

  'But the watersports will.'

  'Beaker have promised to put some pretty tough regulations in place.'

  'You think an eighteen-year-old with a jet-ski cares about regulations? It's all cumulative, Mr Reilly,' I said. 'It's all adding to the stresses on the whales.'

  'I'd have to disagree,' he said. 'At least two humpbacks have been spotted this week, which is about right for this late in the season. The whale-watchers are out again. Dolphins are there. Forgive me for saying this, but I don't really understand why you're so opposed to it.'

  We stood opposite each other, the great glass case between us. I wanted to hit him, which was unusual for me, and a pity, as I suspected in other circumstances I might have liked him. I took a deep breath and gestured towards the model. 'Mr Reilly, do me a favour. Tell me what you see when you look at this,' I said.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. 'Apart from the fact that I wouldn't mind staying there myself? I see employment. I see life in an area that's pretty short on it. I see a new bus and a brick-built library for the school, and I see commerce. I see opportunities.' He smiled wryly at me. 'You should know, Mike. It was you who got me to see those things.'

  'I'll tell you what I see,' I said. 'I see men who've had a beer too many skidding too fast round the bay in motorboats. I see dolphins injured by rudders when they can't get out of the way in time. I see disco boats trying to catch passing trade and too many dolphin-watchers, disorientated whales beaching themselves on that pristine white shore. I see what remains of the humpback migration moving many miles from here, perhaps losing numbers in the process, and the people who relied on them losing their jobs. And I see a bloody great hole where a family-run hotel, a place that has existed seventy-odd years, should be.'

  'There's no reason why the Silver Bay Hotel can't exist quite happily alongside the new development.'

  I pointed at the model. 'They don't seem to think so.'

  'You can't expect them to include every local building.'

  'You a betting man, Mr Reilly? You want to lay five hundred dollars that the Silver Bay will still be around a year after this thing goes up?'

  We were silent for a minute. An elderly couple stood in the doorway of the hotel, glancing nervously at us. I realised I had been shouting. I had to get a grip. I was exhausted, and I was losing my perspective. Reilly nodded reassuringly at them, then turned back to me. 'I gotta tell you, mate, you've surprised me. That's some about-turn,' he said. But his voice was not unfriendly. 'Tell me something, Mike. You're against the development now, but you must have seen the advantages once. There must have been a reason why you tried to sell it so hard. So you tell me now. When you came to me all those months ago, back when you wanted this thing, what did you see when you looked at this plan - truthfully, mind?'

  I looked at this thing, at this unstoppable force, and my heart felt like lead. 'Money,' I said. 'I saw money.'

  When I got back Hannah was in my room on the computer. The window was open, and bright sunlight streamed in on to the white-painted floorboards, showing up the faded colours of the Persian rug, and the sandy footprints my training shoes had walked in after my morning run. Outside, someone's car spewed music, a resounding, relentless thud, and a distant trailbike whined across the dunes. A light breeze passed from the open window to the door. I rarely shut my door now - there had been no guests for weeks, and Kathleen behaved as though I lived there. She wouldn't even take rent.

  'Mike!' Hannah exclaimed. She spun round on the chair, beckoning me closer, and showed me an email she said was from someone in Hawaii, who had fought off a similar development. 'She's going to send us a list of the organisations who helped her,' she said. 'We might be able to get them to help us.'

  'That's great,' I said, trying to sound positive. I wanted to sink my head into my hands. 'Good work.'

  'Me and Lara have been emailing everyone. I mean everyone. Someone from the South Bay Examiner rang and wants to take our picture because of the petitions.'

  'What does your mother say?' I said.

  'She said to ask you.' She grinned. 'I've made a list of everything we did today - it's in the blue file in the corner. I've got Hockey Club now, but I'll carry on when I get back. Are you still coming out with me and Mum?'

  'Hmm?' I was thinking about Mr Reilly. The planning inquiry would close in three days' time, he'd told me as he left the Blue Shoals. But he'd added that between ourselves, nothing had been submitted that was persuasive enough to change the panel's mind.

  'Mum said we could all go out, the three of us, on Ishmael - remember?'

  'Oh,' I said, trying to smile. 'Sure.'

  She pulled on her school cardigan and thrust a newspaper at me. 'Did you see Auntie K's picture with the shark? She's raging. She says she's going to have Greg's guts for garters.'

  The headline said: 'Shark Lady Warns of Tiger's Return'. Underneath it, the photographer had
caught Kathleen as she stepped towards Greg, her own expression almost as baleful as the dead shark's. Beside it, in inset, was the now familiar picture of her as a seventeen-year-old in a bathing-suit.

  'I've scanned it in. I've got to give that one back to Mr Gaines, but he said not to let Auntie K know he'd bought a copy or she'll harpoon him. It's on your desktop if you want to read it, with two others, the Sentinel and the Silver Bay Advertiser, but their pictures aren't as good.'

  Poor Kathleen. She was right: she'd be haunted by that shark till her dying day.

  I watched Hannah gather her things and, with a cheery wave, she was off down the stairs. She seemed to have blocked out her mother's imminent departure. Perhaps some things were too big to contemplate when you were eleven. Perhaps, like me, she was hoping for divine intervention.

  I listened to her sing-song voice as she and her friend made their way up the road. For the umpteenth time, I offered her a silent apology.

  It was then that my mobile phone rang.

  'Monica?' I checked my watch. It must be nearly two o'clock in the morning in England.

  'How's it going?' said Vanessa.

  My first fleeting thought was: Where the hell is my sister? My second was irritation. Vanessa would know very well that my opposition to the plans was coming to nothing.

  'How's what going?'

  'Life. Stuff. I wasn't talking about the development,' she said.

  'I'm fine,' I said.

  'I hear you're still in Australia,' she said. 'I spoke to your mother the other day.'

  'Still playing Canute,' I said, 'against the unstoppable tide.'

  There was a dull noise in the background at her end - and I had a sudden picture of our apartment, the sleek flat-screen television in the corner, the vast suede sofas, the expensive furnishings. I hadn't missed it.

  'Dad's got a cuttings file,' she said, 'all the pieces you've placed about opposition to the development. He throws things at it daily.'

  'Why are you telling me?'

  'I don't know. To let you know that what you're doing is not totally in vain.'

  'But it's not stopping him.'

  There was a brief silence.

  'No,' she conceded. 'It's not.'

  Outside, a flock of parakeets had landed in a tree. I watched them, still with the jolt of surprise that something so vivid could live naturally in the wild.

  'Tina left.'

  So what? I wanted to say, gazing out of the window.

  I closed my eyes. I was so tired. During the day I spent my time wrestling with the immovable, my mind constantly turning over possible opportunities and loopholes, and at night I lay awake watching Liza, frightened to miss the last moments before she disappeared.

  'I miss you,' said Vanessa.

  I said nothing.

  'I've never seen you like this before, Mike. You've changed. You're stronger than I thought.'

  'So?'

  'So . . . I've been thinking.' She took a breath. 'I can get him to stop. I know he'll listen to me.'

  The world seemed briefly to stop turning. 'What?'

  'If it means that much to you, I'll stop it. But I'm asking you - please - let's give it another try.'

  My breath, which had risen like a bubble, stalled briefly in my chest. 'You and me?'

  'We were a good team, weren't we?' She was uncertain, pleading. 'We can be even better than I thought. You've made me understand that.'

  'Oh,' I said quietly.

  'You hurt me, Mike, I'm not going to deny that. But Dad says Tina was a troublemaker, and I don't think you're the kind of person to deceive me intentionally. So . . . so I guess I don't want to lose what we had. We were a team. A great team.'

  I stared, unseeing, at the floor.

  When I spoke, my mouth, suddenly dry, stuck on the words: 'You're saying that if I come back to you, you'll stop the development.'

  'That's putting it very baldly. It's not a quid pro quo, Mike. But I miss you. I didn't understand what this meant to you so I want to put it right. And we could do some serious business with one of the alternatives.'

  'If we're together.'

  'Well, I'm hardly likely to go to all that trouble for someone I don't care about.' She sounded exasperated. 'Is it so hideous a prospect? Us giving it another go? The last time we spoke I thought . . .'

  I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.

  'Mike?'

  'Vanessa, you've really . . . surprised me. Look - I've got to go out now, but let me ring you later. Okay? I'll ring you later. In the morning. Your time,' I said, as she began to protest.

  I ended the call and sat, my ears ringing. I had nowhere to go. Vanessa Beaker was the only person in the whole world capable of stopping the development.

  In the end I made excuses. I told them I had a headache and I had to return some calls. That I had used two excuses where one would have been adequate immediately alerted Liza to the truth: that some other reason lay behind my decision not to go with them on our planned outing. As Hannah, disappointment naked in her face, pleaded with me to change my mind, her mother eyed me curiously and said nothing. I wondered afterwards if she saw it as part of an emotional continuum: that I was choosing deliberately to separate from her in stages . . . that I was trying to protect myself.

  'I'll see you both when you get back,' I said, trying to sound casual.

  'Whatever you want,' Liza said. 'We'll be a couple of hours.' The dog was already on the bridge, pressed close to the two of them.

  It wasn't what I wanted, but I needed to think. Liza and I were so attuned to each other's moods and thoughts that if she spent more than a few minutes in my company she would see straight through me. I waved at the boat as the engines powered up and it bounded over the waves and away from me. I kept waving until I could no longer see them. Then, as they disappeared round the head, I sat down on the sand, drew up my knees and placed my head on my hands, not caring if anyone could see me.

  That was how I began the longest afternoon of my life. Then, unable to face the hotel, I got up and walked down the coast road, over the dunes, and lost myself for a couple of hours, not sure where I was headed, not really noticing my surroundings. I had to walk, because the idea of being still, with those thoughts, was worse.

  I walked with my hands in my pockets and my head down. I nodded at those people who said g'day to me, and failed to meet the eye of those who didn't. My footsteps, even on the uneven terrain, became as regular and plodding as those of a packhorse. Without a hat, or a wallet, seemingly without purpose, I must have attracted a few curious glances, but if I did I didn't notice. Unused to the strength of even the spring sunshine, I got burnt, and by the time I headed down through the pines and landed by the side of the Newcastle road, the skin on the bridge of my nose was tightening. I didn't feel heat or thirst or tiredness, despite my sleepless night. I walked and I thought, and every possible solution felt ruinous.

  I, Michael Dormer, a man renowned for his acuity in decision-making, for his brilliant ability to weigh up the pros and cons of any situation and hit the right answer, now found that whichever way I turned the options made me want to sink to my knees, like a small boy, and howl. And the one person whose advice I could have asked, whose opinion I would have respected, was the one person I needed to protect from what I knew.

  I was back on Whale Jetty when they returned. It must have looked as if I hadn't been away. I had allowed myself a couple of beers, and sat there, suddenly conscious that my jeans were scruffy and that I was holding a bottle. I would have liked to stick a cap on my head but suspected that if I did I might morph into Greg.

  I watched Ishmael come round the headland, turning from a small white blob to a gently bouncing white cruiser. Its swimming nets were stretched across the boom, where Hannah must have been allowed to sit in the water to see the dolphins. As they came closer, I could see her, lifejacket strapped round her, treading surefooted on the deck in her swimsuit and shorts. Milly was standing up at the helm in fron
t of Liza, already anticipating the return home with the same pleasure that, every morning, she looked forward to her journey onto water. They looked beautiful and joyous, and in other circumstances, the sight of them out on the water would have made my heart sing.

  Hannah stood braced at the prow. She waved when she saw me, a huge windscreen-wiper of a wave that shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her legs were thin, with the lean muscularity of pre-pubescence, and in their rare moments of elegance I saw her mother's.

  'We saw Brolly!' she was shouting. As they grew closer, she yelled louder, to be heard above the noise of the engine and the slap of the waves against the hull. 'She was fine! No cuts or anything. It wasn't her in the nets, Mike. It wasn't her you cut free! And guess what - she was with her baby!' She was beaming - they both were, Liza with a mother's pleasure at her daughter's uncomplicated joy. I stood up, wishing suddenly that I had gone with them, that I could have shared a simple outing full of small happinesses.

  There had been other adventures. They had seen a humpback, although it hadn't come close, and some really big sea turtles, and they had fished out a piece of baleen they had spotted near the sound, but Milly had eaten part of it when they weren't looking. That and several biscuits.

  'I do feel sorry for that other dolphin,' said Hannah, jumping on to the jetty as her mother manoeuvred slowly in, the engine grinding gently to a halt. 'But you probably saved it, didn't you, Mike? It would have found its way out. And I'm so happy that Brolly's okay. I'm sure she recognised me. Mum let me sit in the boom nets and Brolly stayed by the boat for ages.'

  Liza leapt nimbly on to the jetty and began to secure the boat with her rope. She had her cap on, so at first I couldn't see her face.