The Red Whale
Photo Tom Kay
The whale had washed up in the small port of Whitehaven on the west Cumbrian coast and it was a long train journey up there from Bristol, the final section being a one-carriage rattler that hugged the coast down from Carlisle and tipped me out on a station so remote it seemed as if I had travelled backwards through time. It was dark and misty and I could only see a few feet in front me, but I managed to make out the lights of a car and when I went over I was pleased to find that it was a taxi. An extremely old vehicle in fact, a type of which I hadn’t seen in years – an Austin Princess. But it was in immaculate condition so I guessed the driver must have been an enthusiast of classic seventies models.
I asked him whether he could take me to see the whale.
'Just to the docks?' he said.
'Then on to the Chase Hotel.'
'Oh aye,' he said, 'get in then.'
The driver had a hood up over his head and he never turned round once so I have no idea what he looked like or what age he was.
'That’ll be five pounds all in all.'
'I don’t have cash,' I said.
'Ah well,' he said putting the Princess into gear and rolling off down the road into Whitehaven. 'Money isn’t the only reason for working, is it? ‘
‘People have jobs because of the human contact, don’t they? The interaction with others. The stories some of my passengers have told me have been worth much more than a fare. Much more. Before I took up driving I was under the weather a bit. You know, always moaning about being stuck in west Cumbria, out on a limb. I wasn’t listening to myself. I’d forgotten about the mountains and the sea and Chilli Con Carne from The Royal Oak in Beckermet. But once I started on the taxis, hearing other people's stories, other people's problems, it helped me get some perspective.' He pulled up on the dockside. Floodlights had been set up around the whale and I could make out the shape of it in the mist, even though it was well covered up. A sperm, as they had said, and a big one at that.
'I don’t have many stories, I'm afraid,' I said to the taxi driver. 'I work at the University in Bristol, in marine biology.'
'Bet that takes you places?'
'I've been all over, it's true.'
'I can tell you a story,' he said. 'About the last whale that came to Cumbria. Maybe this one's come looking for him. It's a well-known legend round here – the tale of the red-skinned whale. See over there?' He waved out to where the Irish Sea was frothing up against the long pier. 'Whitehaven has a disused underground coal mine which extends a mile out to sea and it is said that one day in the nineteenth century a large whale, a bottlenose probably, managed to swim into one of the pit shafts and then onwards inland into the labyrinth of iron ore mine chambers under Cleator Moor and Frizington. It eventually emerged out of the Florence pit head in Egremont, its body covered in dark red iron ore dust. From there it proceeded to slither down the road and into Egremont town centre where hundreds of revelers were in the middle of the annual crab-apple fair. The superstitious local crowds believed the giant red beast to be a serpent from hell and it was shot dead by a farmer named James McNally, stuffed and put on display in the foyer of the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater. A fire at the pub in 1967 is believed to have all but destroyed the creature, apart from a piece of its red-stained baleens which are used behind the bar to keep envelopes and letters in.'
'That’s a good story,' I said. 'Not sure a whale would be able manage in an underground pit shaft, to be honest.'
'Well, you just never know, do you?'
He dropped me at the Chase Hotel and I asked him for his address so I could send him the fare, but he waved me away.
'Think of a story,' he said. 'And when you’ve thought of one, let me hear it.'
When he'd gone I looked down at the card – it was printed in a old-fashioned text with a black ornate frame all around it and it just said Mr George F. Wilkinson, Taxi services, Whitehaven 334 567. No area code.
The following week when I needed a lift back to the station, I looked for the card but it was nowhere to be seen, and his name wasn’t listed anywhere. I put it down to the rural way of doing things, and walked the mile or so wheeling my bag behind me, thinking all the time of that giant red whale bursting out of the earth like a volcanic eruption and wondering why I didn’t know any stories like that.
