Blue (19 page)

Nanna was only in the hospital for two days before they moved her to a hospice.

“Come visit her with me?” Zeke asked.

“Yeah, of course I will,” I said, grabbing his hand.

Zeke drove us there in his camper van, but hardly said a word during the whole journey. As he reversed into a space in the hospice car park, I saw Garrett's green motorbike and pointed it out to Zeke.

“Wes is here too,” he said, nodding at the hospice entrance, where Wes was talking to someone on his cell phone. I jumped out while Zeke was rooting around in the van for a card and a basket of flowers and I heard Wes say, “That's bull. You know how I feel.”

Wes turned around, saw us and flinched.

“I gotta go. I'll hit you up later,” he said, and hung up.

“Chick troubles?” Zeke asked.

Wes just shrugged and said, “Tough day. Go sign in and then I'll show you to Nanna's room.”

Nanna was lying flat in her bed. The left half of her face had slumped, there was drool at the side of her mouth, and she could hardly talk. But when she saw Zeke, she smiled and started moving her good hand in an undulating motion. Then she grabbed a Get Well Soon card, turned it on its side and skimmed it along the bedcovers, like a surfboard.

“I think she's saying she wants to go to the beach and watch some surfing,” I said. “Is that right, Nanna?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Nanna, you wanna go to Fistral?” Garrett asked.

She nodded again, her eyes wide with hope.

“We can't take her,” Wes said flatly.

“Why not?” said Garrett. “The doc says she's only got one or two days left, if she's lucky. Her body's, like, filling with fluid or whatever as her heart shuts down.”

“Dude. She can hear you,” Zeke said.

“She knows. So let's give her one last awesome memory. Take her to go see the surf.”

“What if it kills her, bro?” Wes said.

“Then she dies by the ocean instead of in this fugly hospice.”

“Feel how cold her hand is, even under all these covers,” I said. “She is gonna be freezing in the sea air.”

Zeke nodded. “Iris is right. So we're gonna have to keep her as warm as possible. We'll have to take a ton of blankets.”

“Can we really do this?” I said.

“No,” Wes said. “We can't.”

“Just one hour,” Zeke said. “And then we'll bring her back.”

Garrett exhaled. “OK. We're making this happen. Let's go.”

“Right now?” I said.

Zeke raked his hand through his hair and said, “We can't just waltz her through the lobby. How are we supposed to get her out of here?”

“Window,” Garrett said.

Nanna was smiling her lopsided smiled and waving her fist around.

“Seriously, bro?” Wes said.

“Do it.”

Wes sighed and cracked open the window. Garrett went to Nanna and gently lifted her out of her bed.

I stood next to Wes and looked out of the open window. The hospice was on a hill, so it was going to be a drop of maybe seven feet.

“It's gonna be tricky getting her out,” I said.

Very gently, Garrett handed Nanna to Wes.

“I'm not throwing Nanna out a fucking window,” Wes said.

“So you wanna catch her then?” said Garrett.

“OK, so I'll pass her down. Man, this is not gonna end well.”

Zeke turned to me and said, “Baby, can you go tell the receptionist that Nanna is resting and that we'll be staying with her for a couple hours? Ask her to give us some time to say goodbye?”

I nodded and tried not to blush because Zeke had just called me baby for the very first time.

He carried on: “Then, once you're back, lock the door. We'll get her back before they even know she's gone.”

I did it and the receptionist smiled and said that was absolutely fine and that she understood that people needed to say goodbye in their own way and in their own time.

Little did she know.

When I got back to the room, I asked, “Who's catching her?”

“I am,” Garrett said. “Zeke's driving.”

I watched as Wes passed Nanna down to Garrett and Zeke, then I gathered some of her blankets and scrambled out after them, landing in Zeke's waiting arms. Garrett wrapped Nanna in the blankets and carried her into the back of Zeke's camper van. Wes and I jumped in the back too, holding Nanna still so that she wouldn't get slammed against any of the surfboards as Zeke took the corners. He drove at maybe ten miles an hour, if that, all the way to the esplanade.

Nanna's eyes sparkled with excitement when she clapped eyes on the surfers out in the line-up. Seventy-five years old, but she was buzzing like a grom.

“Water,” she whispered.

Garrett took Nanna in his arms and carried her down the old stone steps and past Bodhi's, where Zeke's family had gone to celebrate after they'd taken Nanna for her final tandem-surf.

How quickly things could change.

Nanna kept saying “ocean,” so Garrett waded into the sea up to his knees and Nanna tilted her head back so that she could see the surfers, the breakers rolling in and the backwash swirling around Garrett's legs.

We were standing a little way behind Garrett, in the shallower water, but Nanna moved her head and motioned for us to
wade deeper so she could see us and the waves. Wes, Zeke and I stood apart, thigh-deep in the sea, and looked back to Nanna. Then Zeke threw his arm over Wes's shoulders and turned to me to take my hand.

Nanna smiled.

Garrett's face was stern and I could see that he was only just holding it together. Then Nanna started wriggling in Garrett's arms, her fingers reaching for the baby waves. Garrett bent his knees to let her splash the water. When he looked up, I couldn't tell if his face was wet from the sea or his tears. Maybe it was both.

The tide was coming in fast and the sand getting even more tightly packed with tourists. Garrett wanted to walk up the beach where it was quieter, but someone was having a fire and Nanna started whimpering when we walked past.

“I think she wants to stay here,” I said to Garrett, who looked down at his grandmother and smiled.

“Then this is where we stay.”

Some of the surfrats were passing around a bottle of whisky and, as it went past, Nanna reached her hand out for it.

“Is she on meds? Is she even allowed to have some?” Wes asked.

“Yeah. And yeah,” Garrett said.

“She wants it, she gets it,” Zeke said.

Garrett took a swig, then put the bottle to Nanna's lips. She drank deeply, and then lay back on to the sand and looked up at the sky.

“Tired,” she mouthed.

“You can't sleep here, Nanna,” Wes said. “We gotta get you home.”

She waved her good hand around at the beach. This was her home. The beach was home to all of us.

Then she whispered, “Kiss me,” and Garrett, Wes, Zeke and I planted light kisses on her cheeks, lips and forehead.

“She's shivering,” I said.

Half a dozen of the surfrats sitting around the fire handed hoodies and sweaters down to me and one kid passed down his beanie hat. Garrett, Zeke and Wes loaded her up with the clothes, covering her head, lap and shoulders. Then they huddled around her: Garrett behind, with his arms wrapped around her waist; Zeke and Wes on either side of her. A triangle of body heat keeping their grandmother warm. Their own little boat.

Nanna closed her eyes and almost immediately strange gasps and gurgles started up in her throat.

Wes turned to Garrett and said, “She's hardly breathing. We need to get help.”

“Leave her be,” Garrett said.

“Zeke, come on. She's gonna croak out here.”

“I think I can live with that,” Zeke said.

“We're gonna be in deep shit if the cops find out about this. Zeke, you could get into trouble with your sponsors. And you really don't need any more heat in that department.”

“Screw 'em.”

Nanna took one huge breath and then stopped breathing altogether. Her face looked calm, ancient and beautiful.

Garrett's eyes were full of pissed-off tears and Wes was white as a sheet. Zeke stroked Nanna's hand, his fingers light on the paper-thin skin.

The surfrats gathered around, quiet and respectful. Garrett gave them back their clothes and then carried Nanna in his arms across the beach to Zeke's camper van, laid her on the spare duvet and pillow that Zeke kept in there, and Wes and I jumped in next to her. Garrett and Zeke walked around to the front of the van.

I closed Nanna's eyes and then Zeke drove back to the hospice.

He swung into the car park, backed up the van so it was near Nanna's window and we got her back in the way we took her out.

Zeke ran at the wall, scrambled through the window and into the room and then leaned back out, hands stretching down. Garrett and Wes held Nanna up and Zeke took her.

Garrett gave me and Wes a leg-up, and then he climbed the wall and shut the window behind him.

The room was so silent.

Zeke brushed the sand off Nanna's cheek and I combed it out of her hair. Then Zeke laid Nanna gently in her bed and Garrett pulled the covers up and over her.

Wes was silent, Garrett was flushed with the effort of holding in tears, but Zeke looked at Nanna and smiled.

Because, even after she had passed, on Nanna's face there was a look of pure stoke.

There was to be a Paddle Out for Nanna, which is how surfers remember their fallen comrades.

Everyone was welcome. Nanna's family and friends were there and plenty of the Fistral tribe had turned up with their boards to paddle out to the calm water beyond the break, where they would sit in a circle and honor Nanna.

Garrett, Wes and Zeke stood together on the beach. Dave was there, supported by Sephy. Elijah was there too, standing next to Kelly, who had a rented swell board under her arm. Anders and Saskia were in Florida, meeting with a few New Smyrna Beach surfers that had started to get attention, but they both sent bouquets of roses, which we stripped for petals.

I went up to Kelly, and Elijah turned to me and said, “How's Zeke doing?”

“Devastated.”

“Garrett too,” Kelly said. “He's been telling me all these stories about her and then he gets angry when it makes him cry. He couldn't sleep properly so he's smoking this rank damn weed to try and make himself all calm and chill, but I think it's actually making him worse. He's all over the place.”

I nodded. Kelly would help him though. She was really good at striking a balance between tough love and sympathy and it seemed to me that Garrett needed both.

“What about Wes?” I asked Elijah.

“I dunno really. Shut down. Not saying much at all. I just wish he'd let me in, you know? But he won't. Says he can handle it. He's so self-contained it drives me crazy. It's like he doesn't trust me enough to let down the walls. He hasn't cried
once
. But he's hardly eating, and I caught him necking vodka on the sly.”

“Just be patient,” Kelly said. “He'll open up when he's ready.”

“Don't think so. If anything, this has made him pull away from me even more.”

“He knows you care about him.”

“Does he? I don't think he has any damn idea. It's like he finds the whole concept of two guys caring about each other absolutely excruciating. Yesterday, I said, ‘Wes, I really love you,' and he just looked at me and said, ‘
Mahalo
.' Then he went surfing.”

“Ouch,” I said, remembering the many, many times that Daniel had pulled that sort of thing with me.

“Do you think he's going to tell his folks about you?” Kelly said.

“Probably not. He hates confrontation and is scared to death of any big emotional scene that might involve, you know, feelings being talked about. I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. He acts so weird in public. I have to stay like
two feet away from him at all times. I touched his hand in the Central last week and he flinched so hard he almost choked on an ice cube. So now we practically never leave my apartment.”

“He wants to move in with you though, and he invited you here today, right?” I said. “That's gotta mean something.”

“Dunno what,” Elijah said. “All I know is that I can't stand being put in the closet again. I already busted out of it once.”

Kelly took Elijah's hand, and I could see the strain in his eyes. She gave him a long hug and then we all turned to look at the three brothers, grouped so closely together—Zeke gesturing and shouting something to Sephy, Garrett sucking on a cigarette and Wes waxing his board—and I thought about how they'd totally changed our lives. It was scary to think how gray my days would have been if Nanna hadn't moved back to Newquay. I'd never have met the Francis family; they'd just be another bunch of strangers living their lives in a foreign country that I'd probably never visit.

A bunch of kids joined our group and looked around, waiting for someone to give the sign to start. There were silver surfers present too, who didn't look much younger than Nanna. Maybe they had even tandem-surfed with her back in the day.

After twenty minutes there were at least a hundred surfers gathered for Nanna. Dave thanked everyone for being there for his amazing mom. Then he gave the nod and we all paddled out together.

It took a while for so many of us to get into the right position, but eventually we'd made a wide circle.

Dave wanted his family to read out a poem that Nanna had loved. We'd all been given a line to recite, even me, Kelly and
Elijah. We'd practiced in the morning, and we had our lines scribbled on the noses of our boards.

The poem was “The Deep” by John G. C. Brainard, and it went like this:

Sephy sang a Polynesian song about love, her voice sounding out over the water as clear as if she had a microphone, and the rest of us threw handfuls of sunset-colored petals into the sea.

Dave paddled into the middle of our circle and upturned a bag of ashes on to the water, where they glistened in the sunlight, silver and perfect, before melting away.

Then, we surfed.