“You remember that morning I found
you in my tent ?” Terry shouted the words across to Jaz as he lay on his board
in the morning light, just outside the break and taking a few minutes' breather
after having paddled out for the last fifteen, duck diving when they could and
struggling through white water when the waves came crashing down in too fast
succession. The sun was bleaching the beach with a silver that followed on from
the early reds and pinks. The sea was still empty apart from the two of them
and the cliffs soared on their left hand side as the fountains of spray played
against it’s outcrops.
“Yeah, what about it ?” Jaz grinned
at the thought. Happier these days with recollections of the past than he often
was with dealing with the present. Not just him, most of the people he knew.
“Well, remember that girl, y’know,
you picked her up on the beach that day ? Long hair ?”
“Yeah, her name was Suzannah – what
about her?”
“Just wondered what happened to
her, I mean she was about for a week or so and we never ever saw you, then all
of a sudden she fades out of the picture and you reappear on the scene again as
if it was all totally normal. Never, as far as I remember, said another word
about her.”
Jaz ‘s face cracked into a grin again. He paddled gently to carry himself over closer to Terry.
“She left. Like you say. Think she
was going off to Oz – never really knew where. She was a memory and a half –
about five minutes after I first spoke to her she had her tongue down my throat
and her hands just about everywhere. Took me a while to realise that she was
just as good at this pick up game as I was and I’d been played good and proper.
No-one thought nice girls did that sort of thing the. Still, she was nice, I
mean really nice. She hardly let me out of her caravan for the time she was
here – just emerged for more beer mainly. God I’d forgotten how absolutely
fantastic and how bloody demanding she was. She wasn’t the sort who was going
to hang round my neck afterwards and I suppose she must have seen something
like that in me, ‘specially back then. Maybe that was the attraction. It was a
very strong one. “
Jaz’s flow was interrupted as a set
grew out in the open water, “Come on then, this one !” he yelled.
Terry bailed out first. Swinging
his board off the top of the wave as the white front came crashing down. He
knew he could have stayed up for longer but couldn’t face the tiring paddle
back out again. Jaz rode on maybe twenty metres more and then he too sank
gracefully, still standing, as the wave lost power and gave up the board in
resignation.
The morning sun had lost its
redness now and the water glinted silver and black as the low rays hit every
churn and ripple. The white water frosted over on the backs of the waves which
seemed almost static from the shore but moved with the solidity and sureness of a juggernaut
when you sat in their path. Peeling left to right, cleaning up the surface of
the water with every pass. Terry had no time for anthropomorphising the ocean,
it wasn’t malevolent or benign, not something to appease or fight against - it
was a big machine. A big natural machine which worked according to the things
that powered it – the wind, the roll of the globe, the moon’s pull. It was a
system, albeit not one that he could figure out so easily when he was being
dragged across a rip and smacked on the back of the head by the hard cold
water.
As the morning woke itself so did the village. More people entered the water and gradually they filtered themselves out according to bravado or expertise, depending on which way you looked at it. There were about ten or so people, all male, circling around the outside break. Now the morning no longer felt so exclusive to Jaz and Terry and they decided that enough weas enough. It still took them another fifteen minutes to find that ride back to the shallower water, a ride that was satisfying enough to round off the session. Always just one more wave promising to be that bit better.
No comments:
Post a Comment