The Forever Whale. Sarah Lean

never said that before.

      “I didn’t know deer could swim,” I say, keeping my voice low and soft like his.

      “That’s how they came to live on …” Grandad hesitates and looks over his shoulder. His eyebrows are crushed into a frown. He’s looking towards the island in the middle of the huge harbour, even though we can barely see it from here. But I’m not sure why.

      “Furze Island?” I ask.

      “Furze Island,” he repeats. “A long time ago a herd of deer swam over from the mainland and settled on the island.”

      Grandad is still looking far away towards the harbour entrance, maybe for the billow of sails, to see if any broad and magnificent ships have blown in today.

      We are quiet for a few minutes until Grandad speaks again. “It’s your turn to row now,” he says.

      We change places in the boat. I see him stumble. He must be tired today. Grandad and I have taken a thousand journeys like this out in the quiet inlets of the harbour. Here we are just specks, tiny people marvelling at the changing sea and all the ordinary everyday things. These are my favourite days. I feel the familiar tug in my middle as the oars knock in their sockets and I row, pulling, rolling and lifting like Grandad taught me. The paddles splash like a slow-ticking clock.

      “Hannah, I want you to remember something for me,” Grandad says. “Something important, in case I forget.”

      I wonder why he would ever forget something important, but I want him to tell me.

      “Anything for you,” I say.

      “August the eighteenth,” he says. “You’ll remind me, won’t you?”

      “That’s a long time away, nearly a year. Are you going somewhere?”

      I only ask because I know that Grandad has spent all his life here in Hambourne, working with wood, rowing the inlets with me, and watching from his bedroom window for schooners and square-riggers in the harbour.

      Grandad leans against the side of the boat and scratches his white beard and the bristles crackle under his fingernails. His eyes are warm and brown like oiled wood.

      “Some journeys need us to travel great distances. But others are closer to home, like today when our eyes see more than what’s in front of us.”

      “You mean like finding the fawn in the grass?” I see his face folding like worn origami paper into the peaceful shape I’ve always known.

      Grandad slowly puts his gnarly old hand on the bench between us. My hand is still smooth like a map without journeys and I put it on top of his. We pile our hands over each other, his then mine, his then mine, like we always have. He pulls his huge hands out and gathers mine like an apple in his. And, just like always, that feeling is too big to keep inside me and bursts out and makes me laugh.

      “Yes, great journeys like this,” he says. “Those great days that live in our memories and make us who we are.”

      I’m not sure I exactly understand what he means. I just see something in him and I want to be like him too. Somewhere there in his sun-baked skin is a map of everything that made him who he is.

      “Can I come with you on August the eighteenth, Grandad? I want to see what you’ve seen.”

      Grandad’s ancient smile fills his cheeks and his eyes and I think of his face as a whole life-full of memories.

      “It’s all right here.” His huge hand is over his chest. “The greatest power on earth. Remember, you have to think big, Hannah, and when things are good, think bigger.”

      Grandad moved in with us after Grandma died ten years ago. I wasn’t exactly here then, still wriggling and growing into a baby inside my mum, but our home was his before it was mine. Grandad hadn’t liked to live alone and Mum hadn’t wanted him to live alone either. Grandma, who I never met, had done everything for him. She’d pressed his shirts and cooked his tea and put a cushion behind his head when he fell asleep in the chair. Even though he could have done all of these things for himself, she’d thought of him before she did anything.

      I’m named after her. She was Hannah Jenkins, I’m Hannah Gray, and in lots of ways I’m like her.

      Just then a voice calls across the water. Dad is waiting for us on the slope at Gorbreen slipway. It’s late, he’s saying; he’s telling us to come ashore.

      I pull on one oar to steer us in.

      Dad steadies Grandad as he climbs out and tells Grandad he should sit in the car, but he stays by the slipway and stares out to the harbour again. Dad and I roll the trailer under the boat. We pull it up the slipway and I leave Dad to hitch it to the car.

      I stand beside Grandad and wonder why he’s not getting in the car.

      “I think it’s time to put the boat away for the winter, Hannah,” he says.

      I know this means we won’t go out rowing again until next spring.

      A curlew is singing, and it’s soft and eerie, filling the bay and my ears.

      “Grandad, tell me more about the deer,” I say.

      Grandad nods and smiles, but he’s looking at the footprints of seabirds pressed in the soft muddy bank. They’ll be washed away when the tide comes in and draws out again.

      “Come on, you two,” Dad calls. “Time to go.”

      There’s a long moment before we go, when I see into Grandad’s warm eyes and he says, “I have quite a story I’m saving to tell you about the deer.” He says it quietly so only I hear his deep voice through the curlew’s song.

      “Remember August the eighteenth,” he says again. “And one day, I hope you’ll go on the journey and see what I saw.”

      2.

      “READY FOR SOME TOAST, GRANDAD?”

      Grandad likes his toast cooked under the gas grill so it’s dark brown with charcoal around the edge.

      “I’ve got it,” I say because Grandad is staring blankly at the kitchen cupboards. I’ve already found the bread knife and cut an extra piece of bread as always.

      “Watch the toast a minute,” I say and go outside to feed the birds.

      Every morning I still try to do what Grandad and I have always done because it’s helping his memory stay alive. We haven’t been out in the boat again for nearly a year, but there are lots of other everyday things that we’ve always shared. Our early mornings are special, even though things are not exactly the same as they used to be.

      Grandad has Alzheimer’s disease. One moment he is as he’s always been, wise and knowing and safe. Sometimes his memory fades like a ship disappearing into a sea mist.

      Alzheimer’s usually picks on older people, but it’s not fussy about things like how big or bold a person is, or how important they are to their granddaughter. It’s taking all the things Grandad learned, all the things he saw and heard, all the things he loved. Alzheimer’s is a history thief, stealing his past and our future together.

      The hedges shiver with excited twittering as I sprinkle the crusts on the lawn and as soon as I step back the sparrows get busy with the crumbs. I turn the earth with the garden fork that Grandad always leaves there. The robin comes and perches on the fork handle and watches the soil for the wriggle of a worm or centipede. Grandad once said that an ounce of brown and red feathers didn’t seem like much, but it’s the robin’s