A Dream of Wessex (31 page)

There was a sharp wind from the south-east and the waters of Blandford Passage had a deep swell, with white foam rippling back from the southerly mouth of the channel. Protected from the elements by his wet-suit, David Harkman could not feel the wind, although as he left the harbour at Child Okeford and steered his skimmer into the centre of the Passage he was almost upset from his board several times by the swell.

Wave-riding conditions were perfect. It was now too late in the season for all but diehard riders, although the recent spell of fine autumnal weather had brought tourists back to Dorchester in sufficient numbers to persuade the cafes and bars to reopen, and for the last three days Harkman had had to share the wave with no more than about a dozen other riders. The consequent absence of jostling for position on the wave-crest, together with the south-easterly wind and the spring tides, meant that he had had four excellent rides in the last week alone.

He still sought the perfect wave, though ... one that would set the seal on the season. Now that he was able to wave-ride more frequently, he had become known to many of the regulars in Child Okeford, and heard much of their lore. There was always the quest for perfection: a combination of height, speed, daring, timing.

For David Harkman it would be enough to execute a ride for the whole length of the Passage, and not be caught by the curling wave as it broke into the bay. He had still to achieve this; either he fell behind at the last moment, or he was trapped by the thundering pipeline as it rolled on top of him. The fact that he was regularly riding waves of a height and speed that would daunt anyone less experienced was of no consequence to him. Whether the wave was thirty metres high or, as had been the case for the last week, nearer twice that, he needed for his own satisfaction a wave-ride which he completed.

The height of the wave was, nonetheless, a major consideration. The stewards had been talking recently of prohibiting further rides until the waves became weaker; several riders had been injured in the last few days. In the clubhouse at Child Okeford, older hands were saying that the only waves bigger than these were the winter storm-waves, and no one had been known to ride one of those and survive.

With the regular practice Harkman’s proficiency had naturally increased, but as he was waiting for the firing of the cannon he moved to and fro across the Passage, trying to gauge the strength of the swell, getting used to the pressure of the wind.

The wind was an enemy while he climbed the wave; an ally once he reached the crest.

At last the cannon fired, and Harkman and the other riders looked northwards to the Somerset Sea, estimating the distance of the wave. It had been in sight for some minutes; the springtides gained body further out in the Sea, and when Harkman looked he saw the advancing swell like a huge cylindrical drum, rolling towards him half-submerged.

He closed his face-mask, turned on the oxygen.

There was time for one more straight run against the swell, and a flip-reversal from the top of one wave to another ... and then he felt the rising push of the tidal bore. As usual, Harkman had placed himself on the Wessex side of the Passage, and further down towards the mouth than most of the other riders, and by the time he was accelerating before the wave most of the others were at least halfway up.

On a wave as large at this, the engine had to be at full throttle for the whole ride. Harkman drove down and to the side, flipped back and accelerated again, tacking and sheering away from the crest ... but each time he turned, each time he looked for the crest, it was nearer. The wave was piling height on volume, and the immense speed at which it was building towards the gap meant that each turn of his skimmer took him ten or twenty metres higher up the wave: height that had to be lost again if he was not to reach the crest too soon.

Several riders had fallen already, pitched from their skimmers by the ragged swell. Once a rider fell he had almost no chance of regaining the wave, for even if he could mount his skimmer again quickly enough, his engine would certainly lack the power to take him up the reverse side to the crest.

They were now less than a hundred metres from the mouth of the Passage, and Harkman was in the water most broken by the wind. Every swell, every line of foam, was an obstacle to surmount. Each time he flipped the skimmer, and it leapt across the trough from one swell to the next, he could feel the wind beneath the board, lifting and blowing him.

He was judging it exactly right; with less than fifty metres to go to the mouth of the Passage he was almost at the crest of the wave, and he throttled back the engine and let the wave lift him towards its sharpening peak.

As he reached the crest the wave was starting to curl, and he accelerated again, keeping abreast of it. He was heading directly into the wind, feeling the nose of the skimmer being lifted as the wave itself was being held back from breaking.

They passed the mouth of the Passage, and the wave, curling, frothing, continued to rise.

Harkman pushed forward, out to the very edge.

He threw his weight forward, slicing the skimmer down and sideways, diving it through the thinning foam; a moment of grey-green confusion, the suck of water about his head ... and then he was falling through the air.

Beneath him, the rising inner wall of the wave was almost vertical, and Harkman shifted his weight, bringing the nose of the craft down against the wind, trying to match the gradient.

Above him, the wave was breaking at last: slowly, it seemed, and with great and terrible majesty.

A freak gust of wind came from the side, raising the skimmer’s nose, overbalancing him. Harkman, inside the wave’s pipeline, windmilled his arms, felt his foothold on the board loosen...

... But then silence fell.

The howling vortices of the wind, the persistent whine of the engine, the thunderous roar of the wave ... they all died away.

Harkman, falling back from the board, was in the air.

He was frozen in flight, naked and alone in a sky. His arms and legs were free, he could turn his head.

Slowly, slowly, he swum around, twisting his abdomen, trying to face down.

Beneath him, the wave, the cliffs and the sea had vanished. He was floating above countryside: a gentle, green, undulating landscape, with meadows and cottages and hedgerows. There was a road down here, and he could see a line of traffic moving along it, the sunshine glinting up from the metal bodywork. Behind him, where Blandford Passage had been, a little town lay in the valley between two hills yellow in the autumnal haze. He could smell woodsmoke, and petrol-fumes, and mown grass.

He felt he was about to fall, and he thrashed his arms and legs as if this would save him ... but he only turned laterally until he was facing towards the south. Hovering in this alien air, he looked across the Frome Valley towards the Purbeck Hills, and beyond these to the glistening sea, silver and sunlit.

He closed his eyes, forcing the sight away from him ... but when he opened them again nothing had changed.

Looking towards the ground, Harkman felt for the first time the vertiginous effect of his height, and as if this had released something which until then had suspended him, he began to fall. The air roared in his ears, and he felt the pressure of wind on his arms, legs and stomach. The ground seemed to rise up to strike him, and in real fright he clawed at the air with his hands, as if grasping for a rope or a net.

At once his motion ceased, and he was suspended again in the air, although noticeably lower than before. Now he could hear the traffic on the road; a motorbike was overtaking an articulated lorry, and the sound of its exhaust hammered at him.

Harkman wished himself higher ... and at once he felt the pressure of the wind on his back, and he soared upwards. When he had attained his former height, he made himself turn around again ... and he stared across at the quiet countryside, with its wooded hills and its verdant fields and pastures.

What he saw had no meaning for him: it was the product of some unconscious wish that he could not control.

It was something that had excluded him, something that he had in turn rejected.

Because it was from the unconscious past, unremembered, it was at once wholly intimate and voluntarily relinquished. It was the landscape of his dreams, a world that was not real, could not ever become real.

As once before, when he had unconsciously rejected this phantasm from his life, Harkman exercised a conscious option, and expelled the dream.

He looked down at his body: the shiny wet-suit appeared, and was clinging to him, the drops of salt-spray scintillating in the bright sunlight. There was a tightness across his chest, and a weight on his back. Something black and soft and padded wrapped itself around his head, and his vision dimmed as the visor of the helmet fell across his eyes.

Oxygen from the cylinder on his back began to hiss, and he breathed deeply.

He turned himself in the air until he was upright, and he felt for and found the roughened upper surface of the tide-skimmer. The throttle control wrapped itself around his right foot.

He made a few corrections of attitude: leaning forward and tipping the nose of the craft downwards.

The wind started to blow, and the streamlined shape of the skimmer responded, planing in the currents. Harkman kept control, shifting his weight and balance to maintain the craft on an even keel.

A penumbral darkness fell as the Blandford wave curled again over his head; below, the almost vertical rising wall of the wave was a multifaceted frozen mirror of sunlight.

The wave began to move above him, starting and stopping, like the frames of a film inching through a projector. Harkman, truly afraid of the wave’s elemental violence, halted the motion, still seeking to balance the skimmer in the cross-current of wind.

He began to fall, and he lost control of the wave. The nose of the skimmer was pushed up by the wind, and with a desperate outbalancing of arms he managed to bring it down again. The skimmer slapped heavily against the water, and at once he gunned the engine, staggering for balance. He glanced up, saw the black pipeline curling down above him ... and in terror of the wave he raced the skimmer down the slope, down and down and down.

Seconds later, the wave crashed behind him, and foam and spray deluged him, reaching out to clutch him. He was still upright, still racing the wave, still outdistancing it by a few crucial metres that saved him from being overwhelmed by the crushing, swirling spume. He was in the open waters of Dorchester Bay now, the skimmer leaping in spray from the crest of one swell to the next ... but still the wave tumbled and crashed and flooded behind him, dwarfing him even in its collapse.

As the wave spread and flattened it lost its forward speed, and soon Harkman had left it behind him. He turned the skimmer towards the west, and headed for Dorchester. In time he was passing the beaches, where a few tourists still sprawled beneath their multi-coloured umbrellas, and Harkman waved meaninglessly to the people, trying to convey the excitement that was in him.

He raced the tide all the way, and when he skimmed smoothly into the shallow waters of the harbour the visitors’ yachts were still grounded on the mud.

When evening came that day, he and Julia walked down to Sekker’s Bar for a meal of local sea-food, and on the way they paused to look at the goods on sale at the Maiden Castle stall. Mark and Hannah were standing behind the counter as usual, but today there was a new girl serving with them. She looked at David and Julia with curiosity but failed to interest them in buying anything.

As they left the stall, a young peddler dressed in the clothes of Maiden Castle stepped out of the crowd and approached them.

‘Would you look at a mirror, sir?’ he said, and held out a circular glass before Harkman’s face.

‘No, thank you, David Harkman said, and Julia, holding his arm, laughed and pressed herself closer to him. As they went up the steps to the patio of Sekker’s Bar, they heard a girl’s voice shouting angrily, and a few moments later there was a tinkling of broken glass on the paving-stones.