The good news is, Freaky Fred Head has finished mixing the Whale Music.

I have scuttled down the cliff, I am on top of a huge rock, the waves crash against it and seaspray wets the tootsies. If I cant my head upwards I can see Claire climbing down the rockface. Occasionally I’ll shout to her, “Be careful!” but she is very sure-footed. Look up in the rookeries, see what are perched there, speakers, huge things with fourteen-inch cones, horns for the high frequencies, louvres to spread the music across the ocean.

Above me, standing on my lawn, sipping cocktails around the swimming pool, are people. My friends and family. I know what you’re thinking—“Be careful, Claire!”—you’re thinking that I have gone radically fuzzy, that I hurried down the scarry crag to avoid social intercourse. No way, it is in fact social intercourse I am after. Listen as the “Song of Congregation” erupts into the salt air. Yes, I am expecting the Whales.

Claire is just above me now, preparing to join me on the huge rock. “The music’s beautiful,” she says.

I take her hand, and she is beside me.

But we are halfway through the “Song of Congregation”, and I have yet to see a solitary fluke. I was afraid this might happen. There is a great furious flurry of notes—besotten as I was that night, I sure played the hell out of the Yamaha 666—but on the horizon is nothing but the steady roiling of the water, the slow movement of dark clouds.

“It’s not working,” say I.

Claire squeezes my hand. “What’s the matter?”

“Where are they?” I plop the plump keester down disconsolately.

“Oh, Des,” Claire says, and she sits down beside. “The music wasn’t really for the whales, was it? I thought it was for us.”

The last notes of the “Song of Congregation” fly away, the Beast’s cry has gone to die on a lonely archipelago.

From above, from the top of the rockface, I can hear a smattering of applause, but it is a puny human thing.

The new song begins. I am sickened at heart, this music has all the natural majesty of a Veg-o-Matic.

“Hey, Desmond,” asks Claire, trying somehow to cheer me, “what’s this one called?”

“This?” I look down at the water. People have tossed their garbage into the ocean, look there, a pop can, a cigarette package. “This is called ‘Have You Guys Seen Danny?’ ”

Claire swings her head upwards, her eyes are strange. “No, Desmond.”

“Yes. It’s called ‘Have You Guys Seen a Guy in a Silver Porsche?’ ”

“No.” Claire takes my head between her hands. “No, Des.” Tears stream down her cheeks. I, too, start to cry. “Be happy, Desmond. Why can’t you be happy?”

I place my head on her shoulder, I gaze out at the desolate sea. “But,” I whisper, “I have to tell him that I forgive him.”

“Desmond.” Claire holds me, we are all alone.

And then the “Song of Sadness” begins. The terrible burden of humanity sits upon me just as that pelican there sits upon the rock, immovable, unflappable, even though Mother Nature dances about as though she were on bad drugs … Wait, though.

Something distant, something deep and dark as a mystery, breaks through the waves. Then it’s gone.

“Umm …” I begin uncertainly, I wipe tears off my chubby cheeks.

A fluke breaks into the daylight, the mighty tail towers above the waves.

I climb to my feet and a huge head rises with me, the eyes large as tires, the bluish maw twisted into what appears to be a smile. It is so close that I could reach out and pet it. Claire screams, and as the monster disappears, her scream turns to laughter.

There is a moment of tranquillity, and then the whales rise all around us.

Scores of them, their gleaming backs black as the bottom of the deepest hole, the bellies preternaturally white and lined with heavy scars. They churn the water, the ocean boils with life.

“Yowzers,” mutters Claire.

I am a fat man perched on a rock, the soul God gave me is not much good for anything. Still, I raise my arms towards the sunlight, hold them there for a long moment. Claire leaps up and down, she cries and laughs, she makes whooping noises, embraces me, shakes her fists gleefully in the air.

I lower my arms with all the grace and dignity I can muster.

The whales begin to sing.