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