Raw Blue (7 page)

11

Collision

Coastalwatch

Swell size 1–1.5 metres – Swell direction S

The strength of yesterday’s southerly change has made for erratic climate-change–style extremes today. It’s more like winter than summer. Some solid 3–4ft waves around this morning, pushing up to 4–5ft during the day. Strong SW winds forecast to turn SE …

By the time I get down to the back car park dirty grey clouds are scudding across the sky. It’s close to low tide and the break isn’t liking the southerly swell, really sucking up on the right bank, showing a dirty underbelly of grey water pockmarked by sand. The water’s surface looks scaly in the wind.

I walk down to the break with one of the crows who was in the car park getting changed when I arrived. He’s a nice old guy who likes to talk, always as excited as a kid. One day he just started talking to me like he’d known me his whole life. I didn’t mind though. In fact, I liked it.

‘Bloody crowded,’ he says when we see the break. ‘I’ve got to get back up to Crescent Head.’

‘Crescent Head would have to be crowded too, wouldn’t it?’

‘The point break is, but the beach breaks aren’t. You can have some good surfs there all to yourself. Uncrowded.’

I’ll have to check with Hannah whether uncrowded is a real word. In surfing it is. Crowds are a major concern. I saw a photograph of Manly on one of the surf websites the other day. It showed a line of surfers, maybe four or five deep, stretching from Queenscliff down to the south end without a break. It looked like hell. Maybe it’s good that this place has got such a bad reputation.

As though he can read my mind, the old crow says, ‘Been a bit of aggro lately. Few broken boards. Bit of a biff in the car park the other day.’

I wonder how it happens, the breaking of the board. Does the aggressor wait until the person has laid it down on the bitumen and is unlocking their car, unaware? Or do they rip it out of the person’s arms and break it across their knee?

I start unwinding my leg rope from around my board.

‘That little Shane bastard has got a lot to do with it,’ the old guy says, nodding his head at a surfer making his way across on a right.

I stare out at ‘Shane’ and see the flash of colour on his forearms, which are covered in tatts. Just looking at him gives me a bad feeling.

‘He’s always stirring things up that one. Got a mouth on ’im, that kid.’

Because the swell is from the south it’s breaking over at Carparks – in line with the top car park – and peeling right. Most of the guys are clumped over there, constantly trying to make the inside. I stick to the Alley, paddling against the sweep to hold my position. There’s a bad feeling about the place today and I don’t want to be around the hassling. But that Shane guy comes for me anyway. He catches a wave in and paddles out so he’s right behind me, singing to himself –
these boots are made for walkin’ … nah nah nah-nah nah nah … gonna walk all over you
. I glance around at him and his eyes are glassy, not looking at me, but even so he’s making some sort of point. A hand squeezes my stomach. He’s lean and wiry, with cropped blond hair. The tattoos on his forearms are lurid swirls of red and green like decaying Christmas decorations. His face is sharp, so beautiful it cuts, and there’s something erotic and poisonous about him.

He stops just on my inside and stares back at the beach, raising his right arm in the air. There are two guys walking towards the Alley, boards under their arms. One of them waves in return.

In a lull between sets, he turns his attention to me.

‘Excuse me, young lady.’ His tone, overly polite, starts my heart thudding.

‘Yep?’

‘You wouldn’t happen to have the time on you, would you?’

I look at my watch. ‘It’s ten to nine.’

‘Nine o’clock?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Time for a fuck?’

I act like I haven’t heard him, my face frozen.

He laughs and paddles across to a guy not far from us, saying, ‘Did you hear that, mate? It’s fuck time. Fuck o’clock.’

I feel sick. Why’s he targeting me? Because I’m the only female out in the water and he wants to make something of it?

The two guys Shane waved to are paddling past me now. With shock, I realise one of them is Ryan.

He gives me a hard stare and sucks air through his teeth. ‘Gettin’ a few?’

When I don’t answer, he frowns as though he’s going to say something else, but then one of the crows calls out, ‘Hey, Rhino! Wet the bed, mate?’

And he moves on, paddling over to talk to the crow, drifting belly down beside him on his board.

Shane has paddled through the main clump of guys and continued on so he’s deep inside. I see him go on the first wave of the next set through. The wave’s massive and hollow, with a slicing lip sharp enough to take your head off. It’ll barrel, but there’s no way he’ll make it out. He takes the drop anyway and I see him driving his board forward into the pit before the shoulder of the wave blocks my view. He eventually surfaces in the sea of white water that follows, washed all the way in near the beach. He gets out in front of the car park and starts walking towards the Alley rip. Which means he’ll paddle out near me again.

In a panic, I take the next wave coming through. I don’t look to see if anyone’s on it. I’m thinking I’ll ride it in and hang out in the whitewash until Shane’s passed, then go home. Leave. Give up.

‘Oi, oi, oi!’

I look over to see a guy charging across from deep inside like a train. I pull off and he goes into a hard turn, spraying my face. This becomes some sort of nightmare because then a massive set rolls through and I’m right in the impact zone. I hesitate for a second then start paddling forward, really ripping the hell out of my shoulders to get clear. And then Ryan takes off, deep inside on a right, his backhand. I see him coming and I’m right in his path and my head’s all screwed up because I panic and start paddling left, trying to beat him to the shoulder, which is something you never, never do. He sees me now and his eyes widen in confusion, a split second of indecision. Should he try to bottom turn around me, or cut across the wave face above me? He goes to bottom turn, late, off-balance, and that’s when I realise he’s going to hit me. I abandon my board, sliding over the side, arms up to protect my head.

I hear the
thunk
of fibreglass hitting fibreglass, his body slams into me and the lip crashes down on the two of us. Then everything’s a churning mess as we’re dragged under by the suck. Grey-white turbulence swirls like a hallucination, my chest is tight and I fight the panic to breathe. I’m kicking, wriggling, clawing for the surface, and I keep bumping up against him, hitting him with my arms and legs. The drag doesn’t let up and I’m really losing it, going crazy claustrophobic, thinking he’s going to drown me.

I break through the surface and suck back air and he’s there beside me saying, ‘Easy, easy, easy …’

I gasp, still struggling, trying to find a foothold, pushing him away from me.

Sharper now. ‘Take it easy, mate. Just hang on a second.’

I go under again, thrash my way up, gulp water, start to cough.

‘Jesus,
settle down
,’ he barks.

He finally gets a foothold, leaning back from the pull of the sweep running down the beach, and I’m wrapped around the back of him like a piece of seaweed.

‘Bloody leg ropes are tangled.’

Our boards are knocking against each other, tomb-stoning in the sweep. He pulls his board towards him, which drags mine with it. I’ve managed to stand by this time, reaching down to undo my leg rope which must be wrapped around his legs somehow.

‘You all right?’ he asks.

‘I was trying to get out of your road.’ I start coughing and water streams out of my nose.

He undoes the mess our boards are in and pushes mine across to me. ‘Well, yours is screwed.’

I see what he means. The front third of my board is snapped, the fibreglass hanging by threads, the stringer broken clean through.

‘Wonder what shape mine is in,’ he mutters, pulling his own board through the water towards him. He runs his hand up the side of the board, his face grim. ‘What a shit. New board, too.’

I see his shattered left rail. For a moment I forget everything else because this is bad enough. I’ve wrecked someone else’s board, paddling in front of them like a bloody idiot. The whole crew is probably watching, just shaking their heads. Stupid, stupid girl.

‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry.’

The reform sucks up behind us and thumps down on me so I lose my footing and go under again. When I surface he’s climbed on his board and is catching the next line of white water. He rides on his stomach to shore.

I follow him, feeling worse than awful. I want to be swallowed up by the sea, to disappear.

He’s on the beach, checking his board.

I hurry across the sand towards him, carrying my broken board. ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’

‘Yeah, you keep saying that.’ He’s picking at the crack in his fibreglass. He turns the board over and halfway down I see the big crease running across the width of it.

I dump my board on the sand. ‘I’ll pay for it to be fixed. I didn’t mean –’

‘What did she do, mate?’ Shane’s standing behind us, his board tucked under his arm. His eyes are too bright and they’re fixed on the ding. ‘New board and all.
Aw
, that sucks, mate. That’s the pits.’

Oh God, let me rewind time. Take me backwards so I can never have come here.

He steps too close to me with those wide mad eyes and smiles. ‘You’ve
fucked
it.’ He says ‘fucked’ so hard that spittle sprays my face.

‘Piss off, Shane. This has got nothing to do with you,’ Ryan mutters.

Shane’s eyes don’t blink.

‘
Shane
. Get lost, mate.’

Shane looks from me to Ryan and then back to me again with a maniac’s grin, then walks off.

‘
Whoo-eee. Ha ha ha
. She’s worked ya over, Rhino!’ he shouts without turning around.

Ryan squats down, staring at his board, his pale freckled forearms resting on his knees. He’s wearing a T-shirt instead of a rashie and it clings to the solidness of his shoulders. It’s strange to me that I can have knocked up against his body like that when I don’t even know him.

For some reason I think of a Sunday afternoon when I stayed out in the surf after sunset, the headland becoming a dark silhouette against a purple sky, the water turning grey. The floodlights at the tidal baths looked like showers spilling gold onto the sand and I was humbled with wonder at so much beauty. But it was all a trick. Because now I’m going to be cast out, exiled.

I’m just waiting for him to tell me to go.

Ryan looks up at me, sucking air through the small gap in his front two teeth. With his freckles, his lank wet hair, the way his ears stick out a bit, you can see the boy he once was, except for his eyes which are grey and tell you nothing.

‘
So
.’ He pauses. ‘So, eh?’

And that’s when I bend down and pick my board up, hands all shaky-shaky, and hurry off.

‘Hey!’ His voice is surprised.

I start to run, slip-sliding steps that don’t seem to move me forward in the soft sand. My legs are burning by the time I reach the top of the dune. The bitumen in the car park hurts my feet. I can’t stop sniffing. When I bend over to get the car key out of my leg rope, water gushes out of my nose and I don’t worry about wiping it off, letting it stream over my chin – in too much of a hurry to get the hell away.

I open the Laser’s boot and throw my board in any old how. His board might have been creased but mine’s snapped clean in two.

I hate him. I hate all of them. I hate this place.

I grab my towel out of the back of the car and give my face a vicious wiping over, then blow my nose on it.

Too late I spot him at the bottom of the dune, walking into the car park, seeing me there and heading my way. I didn’t expect him to follow me. I put the towel down and wait for him to reach me, dead-faced.

‘You all right?’

I shrug and I can’t keep looking at his grey eyes because I feel like they can see all the way into me and I don’t like it.

‘Don’t worry about Shane. He’s full of it. He’s an arsehole to women and an arsehole to men. That’s just him.’

‘I’ll give you money to get your board fixed,’ I say, my voice thin and glassy.

‘Nah, don’t worry about it. Shit happens, mate. That’s what surfing is half the time – shit happening. I know a shaper who owes me a few favours. He’ll fix it for free. He can do your board while he’s going.’

I shake my head, feeling like I’m at high altitude, can’t get enough air.

‘It’s no biggie, mate.’ He leans in and pulls my board out of the back of the car, the snapped topped section dragging as he does it. He unfastens the leg rope and drops it in my wet tub. ‘Keep that so you can use it in the meantime. I’ll drop this off when I take mine.’

He turns my board over and runs his fingers down its belly. ‘Custom-made, eh?’

For Carly 6’ 1". 18¼. 2¼
is written in pencil along the stringer near the tail. When I ordered it I asked the shaper to write
For C
, not Carly, because I was worried that if I ever went to sell it guys wouldn’t buy a girl’s board. He must have forgotten.

Ryan looks up at me. ‘It won’t be the same – once they’re broken they never handle the same way again – but you’ll still get some use out of it. You got a pen?’ He waits but I don’t move. ‘A pen, mate,’ he says again.

I try the front door handle but it’s locked.

Ryan pulls the boot down, takes the key out and hands it to me. There’s an old biro in the pocket in the driver’s-side door. I pass it to him. He sees my hand is shaking.

‘What’s your phone number?’ he asks. ‘This guy – Mark, his name is – he shapes for Hard Cut in Dee Why. He’ll ring you when he’s done.’

He scratches my mobile number onto the back of his hand. A bit of me on him. Then he hands me the pen back and looks at me for a second. ‘You okay?’