Martin Towers - Whales

Today's Words

Whales

Martin Towers

My English name is Lucy. One day I attended some training as part of my job. I travelled there by train and went into a room where tables had been arranged to form a rectangle. I signed my name and took my seat half way down one side with my back to the windows and the trees outside.

Other people arrived and then the trainer, a man called David, said that we would begin. He told us about the aims of the day and then said that we would go around the room and introduce ourselves and he asked if, as well as telling the others our names and who we worked for, we could also say something about the most exciting thing that had happened to us in the past six months. The man called David said that he himself would start.

He told us his name and his role within his organisation and then he began to tell us his story. He told us he had recently been with his family for a holiday in Canada. They had stayed beside the ocean and he said that his daughters had been pestering him to take them out on a boat trip to see whales that were known to pass along the coast at this time of year. He had not wanted to do it, he said. He said that anyone who knew him knew that he did not like spending money. There were two people from the team he managed there within the room and they made noises of agreement with this. There was laughter. He continued and said that he had eventually given in to his daughters and they had gone out on the boat. He said they had been out for sometime and they were all beginning to feel that they would be unlucky and would not see the whales but then, just as they were at the point of giving up, a group - I think he called them a ‘pod’ - of whales passed right beside them so that they felt the boat lift and they were able to watch the huge creatures as they broke the surface and slid back beneath the waves. He told us that it had been a truly wonderful experience that he would always remember and he said that it had taught him a lesson that experiences like that are well worth any amount of money that is paid for them. And then he asked the woman next to him to continue so that the introductions and experiences began to pass around the room.

I listened carefully to each person as they spoke and heard about their holidays and about weddings they had been to. One woman spoke about the birth of her sister’s baby and the joy it had brought her. When it was my turn I told them my name and then told them what my family had done to celebrate the Chinese New Year which had just passed. And then I finished what I had to say and David thanked me and I turned and looked to the person beside me so that they could continue with the round.

The turns continued around the room. An attractive young man who reminded me of the singer James Blunt spoke about his brother’s wedding. He said that he had been the Best Man and he said that the last thing he could remember from the end of the evening was going around all the tables drinking directly from lots of half empty bottles of champagne before, so he was told, he had fallen over and gone to sleep on the floor. Directly opposite me there was a man who was smiling at everyone’s words. I could see that his leg was jogging a little beneath the table but I felt that it was with excitement and enjoyment rather than with nervousness. I noticed that his shoes appeared very inexpensive and I could see that the socks he was wearing were of two quite different shades of green. When the woman to his side finished her introduction and it came to be his turn he said his name and then said that he could not think of anything. There had been one or two others who had said the same but they had said it with hands up to their faces, with laughter and embarrassment. I was struck, though, by how strange it was that this man could say what he had said so easily, almost as if his words were an answer in themselves. And then he turned and smiled at the next woman to him as though he was looking forward, now, to hearing what she had to say.

Once the last person had spoken the training itself got underway and we learnt things that would be helpful to us in our work. I was aware from time to time that the man opposite was looking at me. I did not mind; I hope not to sound vain but I am used to men looking at me and I take it as a compliment. There are men, of course, who somehow want you to see that they are looking at them and that can sometimes make me feel uncomfortable - but this man, I knew, was not like this and I knew that he felt that I was not aware that I was being watched by him. I have to admit that sometimes I raised my face and turned it slightly to show myself to my best advantage to him. I was flattered I suppose. Sometimes when I am with my friends Amy and Laura we will laugh together at how exotic and mysterious English men find us. And if we have drunk some wine we will sing words from a song together - ‘my little china girl, you sure look nice with me’ - and then fall into fits of giggles about how silly it all is. But it is always nice when it happens and I know that one day it will happen no more.

I must say that I have not been completely honest when I have said that we all learnt a lot that would help us in our jobs. The truth is that there was much that was spoken about that I already knew because I have worked in my job for some time. I still made sure that I paid attention and contributed whenever I could - and I volunteered to be the one in our small group who would write on the flipchart paper and present our ideas to the rest of the room - but I suppose what was really happening to me was that I had been very taken by what David had told us about the whales. I was able to see them as he spoke and felt the power of them as they moved along through the cold dark water. And when the training moved into areas about which I felt I already had a full understanding I found myself beginning to think about the whales and also to think privately as to what had really, truly, been the most exciting thing to have happened to me in the last six months - as if I had been asked the same question not by David but by my closest friend or by my boyfriend Li. As David spoke and pointed to items on a screen the question began to play on my mind and I became aware that each time it did so I would go to one particular scene I held in my memory in which I was watching Jason from the flats as he ran behind the trees.

On the day in question I had been up to see him in his flat on the very top floor of the block. We had sat together at his table in the lounge and I had talked about how we urgently needed to get some covering for the floor so that any urine that was spilled would not soak into the concrete and cause lasting damage. It is a habit of Jason’s to repeat the end of any sentence spoken to him and this time too he nodded and said ‘lasting damage, Lucy, yes, Lucy’. I remember looking at the chewed-off fingernails on his long thin fingers that were brown with dirt. I remember saying that we also needed to make sure that he would have electricity and therefore heating for the winter ahead. And Jason said ‘the winter ahead, Lucy, yes, Lucy’.

At the end of our meeting I went down in the lift with him and answered his questions about my car and the cars of my colleagues. Jason has a great interest in all types of vehicle and will remember every detail of a car driven by someone who he has met only once five or even ten years before - Jason saying ‘five-door one-point-four engine Lucy, yes, Lucy, green, Lucy,’ as we descended in the lift, as though he was inputting important information into his brain. We were then outside the block. I had said goodbye to Jason and had gone to sit in my car. I had opened his file in readiness to write up my notes but just as I began to write I was taken, from the corner of my eye, by a sudden movement in my rear-view mirror. I looked up into the mirror and saw Jason again. There is a path from the rear of the block which goes off in the direction of the little shopping area that is nearby. The path is lined with trees and the trees appear old as though they have been there since long before the estate was built in the nineteen-seventies - I imagine they would have originally been part of the fields on which the new houses had been built. And I stared into the rear-view mirror and watched Jason as he ran along the path, reappearing from behind one tree after another as he went. He ran wildly; he ran as though he must get to somewhere as quickly as possible to put out a fire or to stop someone from being hurt; or he ran as if he was being pursued by teenage hoodies or by wildly barking hounds who careered after him with their long ears flying behind them. In the training room as David spoke and I half listened I looked at the images I had in my mind of how Jason had run that day. I had known, even as I had watched him, that he was going only to Braggs, the cake shop, to spend some of his money that I had just given him for the week ahead. I knew, even, exactly what it was that he would be buying when he got there: two packs of the egg and mayonnaise sandwiches that they sold. But there was something else about the way he was running that shocked me and made my heart race as I watched. And there was something in my feelings too about the age of the trees that lined the way as he ran.

Was it excitement that I felt that day, my heart beating fastly? Or was it fear? What is it that excites us? Is it excitement that we feel when we gather with friends and family for special events or for holidays? Or is it joy? I know that I have felt excitement as I have left my home for a holiday. I know that I have felt an eager anticipation for what I know lies ahead - but is that, truly, excitement? As I sat in the training room that day I have to say that I wondered about such things as David spoke - and, thinking about the whales he had seen, I wondered whether it is really perhaps only the unknown and the unexpected that truly excites us. And I knew that it interested me to think about such things.

Late in the afternoon David finished the final topic that he needed to deliver to us. He turned and looked at the clock on the wall behind him and he said that it was time to draw the day to a close. He turned to the group of us and asked for any final comments or questions and, after a short silence, someone said how valuable they had found the day and I nodded in agreement as they spoke. Then, after another short silence, the man who was sitting opposite me spoke up and said that he wanted to say that he had remembered something from the past six months that had excited him. I was aware, then, that the whole of the room which had been quiet and tired had suddenly awoken and there was a sense that people were once again fully attentive - because, I suppose, something was happening that was not, in a way, quite right. As the man began to speak I could see a woman at the end of the room looking at him in a slightly sideways manner, as if she was expecting a joke to arise from the situation. And next to her I could see the attractive young man looking across with suspicion etched upon his face.

The man spoke and said that a month or so before, early one evening, he had been standing in his garden having a cigarette. He spoke calmly and easily with his hands together on the table in front of him. He said that he was ‘just standing there and having a quiet smoke’ and he said that, looking back down the garden towards his house, he had noticed a little robin on the ground beneath an archway of branches and leaves there was over the garden path there. He raised his hands from the table then to add gestures to his words - a sweeping motion for the arch and then holding up his hand with his thumb and forefinger an inch or two apart as he spoke of the robin. He said that the robin had seemed very tame and that he was only ‘ten or twelve feet’ away from it. He said that he stood still and smoked his cigarette and watched the little bird.

The man paused there. I think that many of us perhaps wondered for a moment if that was all that the man was going to say. I think that there was a crackle of fear in the room at the thought that this might be the case - but then there was relief as the man went on. He said that then, as he stood there that evening, all of a sudden there had been a noise and a commotion and a big hawk was there in the garden and on top of the robin. He said that the hawk took the robin up in it’s talons and flew away with it over his, the man’s, head. The man said that the hawk had obviously come down through a narrow gap that there was between his house and the shop that there was next door; it would have twisted down over his garden fence he said - his hand in the air and tilting on to it’s side - and then gone in under the archway with the aim of surprising any small birds that might be feeding there. He said that he had heard the desperate sounds of the little robin as it was carried away but, more than anything, he said, he remembered the instant when the hawk had just alighted on the robin, when it had looked up and noticed him, a person, standing there. The man said that his eyes and the eyes of the hawk had met and held for the briefest of moments and he said that he had been close enough that he had seen the bright yellow rings that surrounded the eyes of the hawk. And then, abruptly, the man finished his story and fell silent.

As he had spoken of the little bird being taken away there had been gasps of dismay from women in the room. The men in the room remained silent. As the man was speaking I had glanced once at David and I had seen that, although he was looking towards the man with a show of interest on his face, he was also standing very erectly with his shoulders back and his chin slightly raised. It was as if, I thought, he was feeling somehow challenged by what the man was saying and was preparing himself to respond to it in a calm and effective manner - to say things that showed him not be feeling cheated or made uneasy in anyway by this late turn in the events of the day.

And then it was all over. We said our goodbyes and dispersed from the building and went off on our separate ways. On the train going home I sat and thought back over the day and thought to myself how strange it had turned out to be. I should, I knew, be thinking of what I had learnt that I could take back with me to my work and my colleagues - but instead the day had become something else: it had become a story of whales and hawks and of a wild young man running between the trunks of old trees! And I was aware that I felt excitement, there and then, as the train hurried me along through the fields of the countryside. I leant forward slightly in my seat and looked out of the window beside me, out past the reflection of my face to the fields - looking and wondering at their strange emptiness in the dusk, and at the long dark hedgerows that bounded them.