Shallow Breath

26

Pete




‘So what made you want to study dolphins?’ Pete asks Connor as they all slouch against the edges of the tent on another balmy evening in Monkey Mia. He has just returned for a visit after spending the semester in Perth, and is trying to be nonchalant about the fact that Desi, nestled in the crook of Connor’s arm, fitting perfectly, is even more gorgeous and suntanned than he remembered. As Pete had greeted them on the jetty earlier, she had slung boxes onto the boardwalk with ease, then taken the boat out to anchor it, dived into the sea and swum to shore. She has come a long way in a short time.

He holds his stubby tightly in his hand, watching an assortment of moths and mosquitos dancing to the hum of the kerosene lamp, while Connor cracks open another bottle and waits for the fizz to subside. ‘A few things,’ he says, taking a swig. ‘I grew up in a place called Half Moon Bay. Dad would take us kids out on our little boat most weekends, and we’d place bets on what we’d see. Odds were we’d get dolphins bow-riding. Now and again a humpback would cannon out of the water, or we’d see a barnacle-encrusted rock breaking the surface, and realise it was a grey whale. Do you know those guys were nicknamed devilfish, since they fought so hard when they were hunted, but they were incredibly friendly to us. They’d even let us stroke them. As we’d reach over the side, my dad would tell us we were touching something far more intelligent than us – that the oldest primitive whale fossil ever discovered was over fifty million years old, the oldest early human fossil, Homo habilis, around two million. He’d say, “If the whales have lived that much longer on earth, think how much more they might know.” Dad’s an avid National Geographic hoarder.’

‘My father was similar,’ Pete says. ‘He worked as an accountant in the city, but he was a passionate conservationist all his life. He campaigned for better conditions for animals in captive facilities, back in the day when not many of them were great. He was my hero.’

Pete falls silent, finding he is picking the label off his beer bottle, spreading foil filaments over his sleeping bag. When he looks up, Desi is smiling at him encouragingly, and he can see the sympathy in her expression. Pete is still getting used to talking about his father in the past tense, since he has only been dead for a few months, from a fast, aggressive cancer that seems to have stolen the life from his mother’s eyes as well. Whenever he remembers his father is gone, an unbearable emptiness crushes him. The opportunity to bring him back to life through these memories is a gift.

He clears his throat. ‘Dad was from the suburbs of London originally, and he never got over marvelling at how much open space there is here. He felt instinctively that everything has a place in life. He was never threatened by the creatures that roamed our garden or found their way into the house. In fact, the only time I ever saw him kill anything was when a large dugite was seen slithering underneath the kitchen table, and my mother stood screaming on a chair. He whacked it with a spade, but he was gutted about it afterwards.

‘And he went to the whale protests in the seventies, down in Albany on the south coast. He didn’t get involved that much, but he wanted to be counted. Said there was a large crowd made up of the locals who supported the whalers and those who wanted the whales protected. They heckled one another continuously, while the police stood around doing nothing. The slipway was cordoned off so you couldn’t see the dead whales or the flensers at work, but it was still going on in the background. Dad talked about the terrible stench, and he was haunted by the constant, grating sound of the head saw – said it never stopped the whole time he was there.’

Desi shivers, while Connor asks, ‘And did it work – the protests?’

‘Seemed to – they’d closed within a year. They turned the old whaling station into a museum, and we went to visit years later. But Dad still cried when he stood where they had stripped the blubber and pushed the meat into the cookers. He used to say that the stories he heard about whales dying – the way they’d scream or strike ships in anger, or cover the bodies of their calves to protect them – sounded exactly like the stories his father told him of the war. He felt that as soon as you begin to group life together – animal or human – that’s when you start to lose understanding and respect. He always encouraged me to see people and animals as individuals.’

‘I think our dads would have gotten along,’ Connor says.

‘They certainly sound a lot nicer than mine,’ Desi adds quietly.

Connor pulls her closer. ‘I grew up around fishermen too – they grow pretty damn tough from doing daily battle with the sea. We can stand at a distance and watch in awe, but it’s an uncompromising way to make a living. And when it’s your currency you’re bound to see things a bit differently.’ He reaches for his cigarettes. ‘But I still loathe it when I hear what happens to the dolphins who get in their way.’

‘So what about you, Desi?’ Pete asks. ‘Where did your affinity with dolphins begin? Was it Atlantis?’

‘No’ – he sees her face come alive with the memory – ‘actually, it was when I was thirteen. I was in the ocean, and a dolphin appeared and swam along with me. It’s hard to describe – it felt like we were in perfect sync. As though we were both completely at peace for a moment, and that was all there was in the world.’

Connor is nodding enthusiastically. ‘So often I hear people who are passionate about animals talk about these moments of connection – of eyeballing a creature whose language and ways are beyond you, and yet knowing in that moment you have an understanding. I think once you’ve had that experience, it changes you forever. I have a friend who feels that way about elephants. And what about you, Pete?’

It is one of Pete’s favourite memories. On a trip to the zoo as a boy, he had idly pulled out a few toy cars from his pocket, and set them on one of the low brick walls that sat at the bottom of an enclosure window. A young orang-utan sitting close by had moved right up to the glass and begun to scrutinise him, her eyes following each car as he drove them around. Every time he paused, the orang-utan would look up, stare him straight in the eye, as though to say, ‘Well, what next?’

He tells the story. ‘I realised we were playing together. From that moment I was hooked.’

Connor grabs another beer. ‘Even though I loved our boat trips as a kid, I didn’t think seriously about studying cetaceans until Humphrey the humpback appeared. Did you guys hear about him?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Pete says, and Desi shakes her head.

‘Jeez, well, in my part of the world, back in the eighties, you couldn’t miss him. I was seventeen when he got lost and swam into the mouth of San Francisco Bay, and up the river. He went further and further in the wrong direction and, as everyone watched, and the media circus grew larger, no one could come up with a way to get him to turn round and go back out to sea. He was obviously dying, when this one guy had the idea that they could lead him out by playing whale song underwater. And it worked. Got him all the way to the open ocean. He was cheered by crowds as he went through San Francisco Bay. We drove up especially to be there. And he was seen for quite a few years afterwards.

‘I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life then, as we all craned our necks to try to see him, and the news helicopters hovered above, deafening us. I wanted to be the guy who had understood enough about this awesome animal to know how to help him.’

‘Well, we’re taking on a challenge,’ Pete says. ‘Right now, the world’s not looking good. The animals need all the help they can get.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Connor answers, raising his drink. ‘Let’s hope that our generation is the one that finally gets it, and begins to make a difference.’

And Pete and Desi lean forward and clink their bottles against his.