Anne Keenan
The whale next door

I don't believe in coincidences.
     One January morning, I was wrapped in a blanket in front of a fire. The first symptoms of a rotten winter cold. The fire was low and I moaned enough until himself went outside to get more coal. Seconds later, he was back.
     'Get the camera!'
     'What?'
     'It's a whale! In the loch!'
     We live on a sea loch and the unexpected can happen. We have been delighted by otters, great northern divers, porpoises and my beautiful shellducks. But a whale? I was sceptical. I grabbed my coat and my brand new video camera and ran. I was tumbling down the slope after him and I couldn't see a whale. I couldn't see anything except the tears blurring my warm eyes in the cold air. Then I heard it blow and saw the great spout lift out of the water right in front of my wee house, and into my small world came this leviathan from another world altogether. And I was stunned into silence.
     'There's something wrong. He’s heading inland and up the loch.'
     We knew there was a problem. The whale was slowing down, turning and blowing more slowly.
     An hour later, we were all on the beach. The coastguard, the police and the vet had all been alerted. The farmer, the fishermen, the families were all there. The Receivor of Wrecks had already been in touch to say that the whale was the property of the Crown but obviously Her Majesty had no pressing need for a whale. And all the time he was circling in the bay just under the old burial ground. Quieter and quieter until I could bear it no more. Some people went out on a little boat and touched him. He didn't seem to mind at all. They said he felt soft and warm. A strange sort of spongey feeling. I wanted that touch but I couldn't take that step. It was too much reality and too much to bear. I kept staring at the stark white scars slashed across his head. All around me, people were asking questions. What are those marks? Why is it here? Can we save it? The vet said no. I went home. The whale died six hours later.
     I wrote my final year dissertation at university on Melville's 'Moby Dick'. Some people thought that a strange choice for a girl from East Kilbride. My feminist friends were incensed that I chose to write about a book that had no women characters. I'm not so sure they were right about that one.
     I knew those scars. I knew they had come from his battles with giant squid in the depths of the ocean. Battles in places we will never know; outwith our ken. At least for now. Where had he been? What had he seen? So many questions; no chance of an answer. I looked at that eye as he swam in ever decreasing circles, the blow becoming weaker and weaker until he turned on his side and lay on a sandbank.
     It was five weeks before they took him away and I walked every day to the beach to look at him. I touched him in death with awe and I hope with respect. He changed everything here for those five weeks. Children escaped school to see the whale, strangers knocked on my door to ask directions. Local people who had never met each other chatted on the beach and then came to our home for a warming cup of coffee. I met a reporter from the Sunday Post.
     'Is it true that there's a graveyard here and the whale came here and died?'
     'Yes.'
     'Wow. What a story.'
     One morning, I found a picture of a whale drawn in the sand perhaps by a child or a parent trying to explain the wonder in our midst. I walked around it and hoped for a low tide. The day after he left us, I found a piece of driftwood in the sand near where he had lain for all those sad days. It was shaped like a little whale, perfect in every respect even down to that all seeing eye. No person had carved this piece; it was driftwood, crafted by the sea. I treasure it to this day. Someone gave me a gift.
     I wish I could have shown it to my mother but she died before we moved to this place by the sea. She would have understood.
     'What is this dissertation you're writing?'
     'It's about an American 19th-century novel. About a man and a whale.'
     She kept on ironing. She had been sick for a long time but wouldn't give in. The ironing had to be done, the small battles had to be won.
     'Why are you so interested in this Herman Melville?'
     'Well, he came to Scotland. He was here.'
     'He came to East Kilbride? I knew she was teasing me.'
     'No, he came to Bridge of Allan. Near the university.'
     I thought I might explain my theory on Melville and existentialism or the moral ambiguity in 'Moby Dick'. She was inordinately proud of her children's academic achievements but also worried that we would get 'too big for our boots' or 'forget where we came from'. She was proud when I was selected to spend a year studying in America but, I knew, a little concerned about the creature who had returned. So instead, I reminded her of the Sunday afternoon we had spent years before, curtains closed against the sunshine, watching Gregory Peck's Ahab battling his nemesis. We loved that film.
     She kept on ironing.
     'Well, they fairly put you in your place, don't they?'
     'Who?'
     'Whales...'