Nocturne (17 page)

‘
Yep. And I want you to teach me.
’

‘
Today?
’

‘
This morning.
’

‘
Where?
’

‘
Place called Jaywick,
’
he nodded at the Mercedes.
‘
An hour and a
bit.
’

It took me about a second and a half to say yes. I had a loose
arrangement with a firm of locksmiths for a get-together after lunch
but to be frank the thought of spending my precious Sunday trying to
decide between a five-lever Chubb and whatever else they might
recommend was infinitely depressing. Brendan was right. The sun-
shine was glorious. The day was still young. Real life could wait.

Jaywick was out on the Essex coast, a huddle of wooden chalets and
rickety bungalows sheltering behind a long stretch of seawall. It was
far too early in the year for visitors and we bumped along the empty,
pot-holed roads, following signs for the beach. There was something
so
sad
about the place,
so
abandoned and
makeshift and temporary,
that it
actually seemed attractive. Behind the broken, boarded-up windows,
any number of people could be spinning out their lives, and I felt an
enormous temptation to stop, and knock on a few doors, and inquire
further. What did people do here? How on earth did they get by?

I tried to share these thoughts with Brendan but he was too busy
being technical about the wind. He
’
d been on to the weather people
that very morning, and according to the forecast we could expect a
force
3
-4 south-westerly, backing to north-west during the day. I
’
d
spent most of the journey down trying to explain the importance of
wind direction but Brendan isn
’
t a natural listener and I don
’
t think
he
’
d picked very much of it up. In this respect, it had become very
obvious, very quickly, that Brendan and windsurfing were made for
each other. It would, he implied, be like more or less everything else in
his life. In other words, a doddle.

The board, at least, was more or less OK, a Mistral Malibu,
comfortably long, lots of flotation. When you start windsurfing, you
need something solid to take your weight and the Malibu would
certainly do that. Only later, when you
’
ve cracked it, can you start
poncing around on those skimpy little short boards you see in the
pages of the lifestyle mags.

We got changed in the lee of a row of beach huts. The wind felt
stiffer than a 4 to me, and it was cold down by the water, but Brendan
was undaunted. He
’
d borrowed a wetsuit from the owner of the
Malibu and he stripped down to his bathers before struggling into it.
Given his lifestyle, he had a nice body, surprisingly well-muscled, and
his chest was dusted with freckles and little whorls of reddish hair.

He offered his back to me and I did up his zip while he peered out at
the sheet of slate-grey water before us. He
’
d chosen Jaywick for his
baptism on the recommendation of a friend of a friend. A reef of
newly-dumped rocks formed a natural lagoon and the conditions were
said to be ideal for novice work. Looking at the vicious little lop
whipped up by the wind, I was far from convinced but the water in the
lee of the rocks was much calmer and this is where we started.

The flip side of over-confidence is impatience, and within an hour
Brendan had given up. Most people teach in stages, a slow, methodical
process that should get you out on the water, enjoying yourself, within
a couple of days. Stage one involves something called The Uphaul,
getting your balance on the board,
stooping to heave
the sail
rig
out of the
water, and then transferring your weight and your grip so that the
thing begins to move. It isn
’
t as easy as it sounds, and clambering back
on the board after your umpteenth header can be knackering, as well
as bad for morale. In Brendan
’
s case, it was the latter that was the real
problem, and the more irritated he became, the less care he took to get
the details right.

It was, almost inevitably, my fault, an almost identical repetition of
certain situations we
’
d been through at work.

‘
Why won
’
t this fucking thing stay still?
’

‘
Because you
’
re not holding it right.
’

‘
I did exactly what you said.
’

‘
No, you didn
’
t.
’

‘
OK, you bloody do it.
’

I did. I
’
d brought my winter competition wetsuit up to London in
the vague hope that I might - one day - use it, and I backed the board
into the shallows before angling the sail across the wind and launching
into a perfect beach start. I hauled in as much as I dared, testing my
weight against the wind, and once I was sure about the limits of the rig
I took the board out into the rougher water, tracking back and forth
across the lagoon.

The wind, as forecast, was beginning to shift and stiffen a little, and
within minutes the last residues of my headache had gone completely and
I was back in an element I understood far more thoroughly than either
London or television. Out where the finger of rock curled to a point, the
tide was ebbing fast and it was here that I was really able to put Brendan
’
s
board through the whole repertoire, gybing and counter-gybing, exultant
that the skills I
’
d worked so hard to master hadn
’
t left me.

Once or twice, showing off, I planed back towards the beach,
risking extravagant carve-gybes, wondering whether to bother stop-
ping to make adjustments to the sail. The battens hadn
’
t been rigged
pro
perly, my own fault for n
ot checking, but I was only looking at a
tiny percentage improvement and while I was enjoying myself so
much, it hardly seemed worth the effort. What was especially pleasing
was the camera that had appeared in Brendan
’
s hands. He was sitting
on the beach, huddled in my tracksuit top, steadying the long
telephoto lens on his knees. I was beginning to wonder whether he
hadn
’
t engineered the whole expedition to grab the odd snap when I
heard the jet skis.

There were two of them, identical youths on board, crop-haired,
rubber-suited, mad. They must have launched further along the beach.
They came roaring into the lagoon in line abreast, clearly intent on
mischief. I was on a broad reach at this point, flat out across the wind,
and they parted to let me through then hauled the jet-skis round with
wild whoops of glee, the water fountaining behind them. I braced to
hit the twin wakes, and I felt the board lift beneath my feet, light as a
feather. Stable again, I gybed hard, meaning to head back towards the
beach. I
’
d no taste for games like this. With the lagoon to myself, the
sail had been perfect. That was the memory I wanted to keep.

Back on a broad reach, shorebound this time, I picked up speed. The
first jet ski came from my right, narrowly missing me. The second one I
didn
’
t even see. The impact must have knocked me out because I was face
down in the water when consciousness returned, my lungs beginning to
fill with water. Dimly, I felt a pair of hands hauling me out. I tried to
cough. Nothing happened. Someone was hitting me on the back. Hard.
Then a voice I didn
’
t recognise, a flat, ugly, London accent. In situations
like these, oddly enough, you recognise fear. Not mine. His.

‘
Get her out, mate, get her out, she
’
s fucking drowning.
’

More hands. More shouting. Then the scrape of sand beneath my
feet. I was being dragged up the beach. I could hear a third voice,
Brendan
’
s. Soon, I knew, I
’
d start to choke.

‘
You,
’
I heard him snarl.
‘
Don
’
t just stand there. Fuck off and get an
ambulance.
’

‘
Steady mate.
’

‘
Just do what I say.
’

I felt myself being half-lifted, half-rolled, then a hand at my jaw and
a voice in my ear. It sounded so warm, so close.

‘
You
’
re OK, Jules, you
’
re gonna be OK.
’

A mouth over mine, warm air in my lungs, the strangest sensation. I
started to groan, then I turned my head to one side, nauseous, the
water frothing out of me. I began to convulse, coughing and coughing.
I felt strong hands beneath my armpits, hauling me upright, ducking
my head.

‘
Is this the way you do it? Or have I got it wrong again?
’

It was Brendan
’
s voice. He was making a joke. I grinned feebly back.
I was going to survive. I knew it.

We drove back in the late afternoon. I
’
d dissuaded the ambulancemen
from taking me to Colchester hospital for a check-up but I was grateful
for the brandies Brendan had forced on me at a pub on Clacton
seafront. Sitting in the car, watching the A
12
race past, I felt sleepy and
a bit sore but above all grateful. Brendan may have flunked the
windsurfing but when it had come to saving my life he
’
d done just fine.
He
’
d got me to dry land. He
’
d sorted out the bastards on the jet skis.
And then, with a competence and authority I
’
d never suspected, he
’
d
done the full resus number.

We
’
d stopped at a roundabout. A question had been intriguing me
all day.

‘
So where
’
s the wife?
’
I murmured.

Brendan aimed the Mercedes at a gap in the oncoming traffic.
‘
Haven
’
t a clue,
’
he said at last.
‘
I left her on Friday.
’

That, of course, was ambiguous. It could have meant anything and
though I was grateful and - yes, a bit surprised - my gratitude didn
’
t
extend to anything as extravagant as the invitation
to
stay the night
that Brendan clearly felt he
’
d earned. Instead, I offered to cook him a
meal, wandering dozily round the kitchen, throwing together a
spaghetti bolognaise while he drove down to the off-licence in
Lordship Lane for a couple of celebratory bottles of Rioja.

While he was away, I eyed the camera on the kitchen table. It was a
top-of-the-range Minolta, one of the reasons he wasn
’
t keen on
leaving it in the car, and looking at it I thought again about the jet skis.
What had happened out there on the lagoon already seemed like
history. I
’
d never been that close to drowning before but I marvelled at
the way my subconscious seemed to have tucked the incident away.
Only six hours later, it seemed ghostlike and slightly unreal, like
something I
’
d read about in the paper. Had that really been me on the
beach? Half dead,
gasping for air?