Swell (27 page)

‘I turned up the music really loud and I remember it was George Michael singing
Father Figure
. You know the one,
I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine…
’

Jason nodded and reached out to hold my hand.

‘I tried to listen to the song while my mother screamed at my father for being a loser, for throwing our life away, for not loving her enough to want to give her a good existence, for loving me too much and spoiling me, for everything. She beat him down just like she tries to do to me but then I guess she felt justified. He had acted like an idiot and betrayed her trust.’

‘Did he shout back?’

I shook my head.

‘My father didn’t have a temper. He kept things inside. Like I do. My mother lets it all out, screams and hollers and eventually we all switch off and don’t listen any more.’ I took deep gulps of fresh air. ‘I suppose he felt he had no-one left to turn to but I would have listened, I would have. Instead he gave up. He thought he had ruined everything for us and he decided we would be better off without him and so he did the most selfish thing I think anybody can do and took his own life.’

A sob escaped from my throat. I had said it out loud. My secret was in the air, flying around my head like a pet bird suddenly free from its cage that does not know which way to fly.

‘My God, Bailey, I’m sorry.’

‘I loved him so much. He was the only man in my world and then he left me and I found him dead in his chair. And do you know the worst thing? He was smiling. He died smiling as if he was happy to be leaving us. Is that love? Letting the one person who adores you find you dead?’

‘Bailey, I’m sorry, I wish I’d known.’

I didn’t respond and just allowed myself to cry endless, silent tears. My mind whirled with all sorts of emotions; anger, despair, self-pity, confusion but when Jason pulled me into an embrace, I realised I felt better. Emotionally drained but strangely better. Jason just held me and said nothing, which was exactly what I needed him to do. There was nothing he could say that could change the story or make it make sense.

The sound of the hermitage bell clanging behind us made me sit up and wipe my eyes on the sleeves of my jumper. Jason smiled tenderly at me.

‘Storm approaching.’

‘I think it already hit me. Gosh what a rollercoaster of a day eh?’

‘You bet.’

I gasped and slapped my hand against my mouth.

‘Oh and we didn’t even toast your victory. You’re only a whisker behind Cain now with three contests to go.’

‘Ah it’s not that important.’

‘Yes it is,’ said Rory, appearing behind us with Ruby, ‘you did the business, mate.’

I collected the four plastic glasses together and poured what was left of the sangria into them. I handed a glass to everyone and raised my own.

‘To Jason.’

‘Hear! Hear!’ Rory cheered.

‘Salud,’ said Jason. ‘What’s the matter, Rubes, don’t you like the sangria?’

‘Hmm?’

We all looked at Ruby’s glass. Her and Rory exchanged meaningful looks before Rory nodded and a smile burst on to Ruby’s face as stunning as a sunflower turning to welcome the dawn.

‘You’re pregnant,’ I gasped before she said anything.

Rory and Ruby nodded in perfect synchronicity.

‘Oh my goodness that’s wonderful news!’

We hugged and the boys shook hands before giving in to the hugs and the tears that were now tears of joy.

‘I’m so happy for you guys. You’ll be great parents. Congratulations.’

‘Thanks, Jason and we want you to be godfather if that’s OK?’

Jason looked choked.

‘Me? I don’t know if I can.’

‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ said Rory.

Jason hugged his friend again.

‘Thanks, Man, really I am honoured.’

‘You and Bailey will make the perfect godparents.’

I laughed, then frowned and then cried again when I realised Ruby was serious.

‘Gosh, one life ends and another begins.’

We downed the last drops of fruity wine while Ruby unwittingly rubbed the place where a bump would grow on her tiny frame.

‘Rain,’ said Rory when droplets as big as buckets of water began to smack the ground around us.

‘Uh oh.’

The four of us raced to gather our things and began to run towards the two hundred and twenty-nine steps we had to descend to get us to the car. Rory held Ruby’s hand tightly and we shrieked with a mixture of delight and shock as the heavy rain drenched our clothes until they felt like a second skin. We reached the car and tumbled in, soaking the leather seats and instantly steaming up the windows.

‘We’d better get back to base,’ said Rory.

He started the engine but did not move the car until Ruby had fastened her seatbelt. I wondered whether I would ever find what they had. I had resisted real love for a long time but suddenly I felt as if I was almost ready.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Jason came second in the Mundaka contest to none other than Rory who seemed to have grown from his mentor’s young hopeful into a confident contender since getting engaged and discovering his fiancée was pregnant. Mundaka was a consistent, peeling left-hander that suited Rory’s style as a fluid goofy-footer. Jason was surfing backhand on the wave and displayed his usual ability that made the crowd cheer and gasp in disbelief. His first wave of the final was a perfect ten but he then struggled to find a suitable back up wave for his second score, while Rory notched up two high eights to win. It was Rory’s first ever contest victory on the dream tour and represented his coming of age as a professional surfer.

Some camps suggested Jason had thrown the final to allow Rory to claim the prize money but, as much as Jason adored his friend, I knew he did not have it in him to lose on purpose. He was a natural competitor who lived for winning and, as much as he loved Rory, a man like Jason always wanted to be number one.

Cain, still seething from his defeat in Hossegor, had not regained his composure. He had apparently suffered a mental-block with the wave at Mundaka for years and this year was no exception. He finished fifth, which gave Jason a slim but important lead in the rankings. Personally I put Cain’s poor performance down to the vast quantities of alcohol and cocaine I had seen him consuming in the bar of our hotel the night before the final. Later that night while Jason and Rory were fast asleep in preparation for the competition, Cain was having loud, drunken sex with a too-young-groupie in the
alleyway below my balcony. His regime was not what I would call a lesson in professional abstinence.

We prepared to leave Europe at the end of October with a true feeling of triumph in our team. Jason was back at the top of the world rankings and I was two thirds of the way through his book, which was proving to be a pleasure the more I got to know the subject of my work. Rory had leapt up the world rankings into the top eight and had seventy thousand dollars in his pocket to pay for a wedding at the end of the year and to put money aside for his baby’s future. He wore a constant expression of fulfilment. Jason also took Oli aside and negotiated a new contract for Rory. As the greatest surfer in the world heading towards a record world title, Jason was too valuable to Poseidon for them to deny his requests. He could probably have asked for Oli’s head on a plate at lunchtime and had it delivered on a silver platter with an orange in his mouth by dinner. Ruby did not reveal the details but from the excitable buzz in the air around Rory and Ruby, I suspected Rory’s new salary was substantially more than the last.

Chuck also had a glow about him that money and success tended to bring to his face. Now that Jason was back on top and looked likely to remain so if he maintained his form, Chuck spent much of his day fielding calls with offers of guest appearances and requests for interviews. He filtered out the worst of the bunch and only approached Jason with about ten percent of the demands.

‘Jason, do you wanna throw the first pitch at the Dodgers game?’

‘Nope.’

‘J.C. do you wanna go on the new
Temptation Island
?’

‘Nope. I live on temptation island twenty-four-seven, Chuck, I don’t need to go on a show.’

‘CNN live link to Hawaii?’

‘Yup.’

‘Ad for shampoo?’

‘Nope.’

‘But it’s two hundred thousand k, dude.’

‘Still no.’

‘Motherfucker. I’m never gonna get me a Hummer at this rate.’

‘I’ll buy you a Hummer if you stop trying to make me do shampoo ads.’

‘Love you, dude. Front cover of
Men’s Health
?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Live on stage with Jack Johnson for two songs at some environmental gig? Saving a cactus from extinction or some shit.’

‘Of course. The guy’s great. I’ll do it.’

‘For real? But it’s charity, man, I don’t get commission from that.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Call me a motherfucker again and I’ll downgrade your Hummer to a push bike.’

‘Love you, Man.’

And so it continued daily.

Chuck lived for the buzz of being the centre of attention, even if that spotlight only landed on him thanks to his famous client. Chuck was on such good form he even
decided he would make an effort to get on with Oli. That lasted about three hours until we reached the airport at Bilbao and they had a fight about whether the team manager or the personal manager had the greater right to the last chocolate and almond pastry. Jason solved the problem by eating the pastry himself.

To the delight of the fans in the airport, Jason then took out his guitar and began to strum a Hawaiian song.

His voice was as creamy and sumptuous as Ben and Jerry’s and the women in the boarding lounge leaned towards him like cobras under the spell of a snake charmer. I had discovered over the months that there was very little Jason was bad at. His surfing talent surpassed all others, he had a golf handicap of three, he played a perfect poker face, he sang beautifully, and he spoke Spanish and Japanese. Thank God he did not write like Shakespeare or I would have been out of a job.

Ruby and I exchanged weary looks while Jason sang and every woman in the vicinity dreamed of being alone with him.

‘I’ll just run to the toilet before we board,’ I whispered. ‘Back in a sec’.’

I hummed Jason’s tune merrily to myself as I washed my hands. We were off to Hawaii. To the single most idyllic place I had visited on tour and to the setting for what would hopefully be a fairytale ending to the year. The previous year in Hawaii, I had known so little about the surfing world. Now I was an intrinsic part of that world and I was confident in my own role within what was essentially an intimate community whose names and faces were now so familiar to me.

The sound of a man coughing made me look up and the face staring back at me in the mirror was one I had not expected to see in the ladies’ toilets in Bilbao airport.

‘Cain. What are you doing in here?’

I span around. He was resting against the toilet cubicle with his ankles crossed and his fingers hooked into the belt loops of his jeans that were pulled loosely around his hips with a studded belt. He smoothed his hand over his shaved head and lowered his chin but never took his eyes from me. I had a sudden feeling of déjà-vu that unsettled me but my thoughts were distracted by the menacing figure of Waipahe standing guard at the door. I noticed he had a new tattoo of a spider’s web that covered his neck and spread across his chin like a beard.

‘I think you pretty boys have got the wrong room,’ I said as confidently as I could.

‘Think you’re smart don’t you, Sista?’ said Cain, moving closer towards me.

I pressed my back against the sink unit and glanced around for something to hit him with but a block of yellowed soap was not going to do the trick unless I lathered him to death.

He was now so close to me I could smell the alcohol on his breath and the stale scent of cigarettes absorbed into the cotton of his black T-shirt.

‘Been drowning your sorrows have you, Cain? Looks like you’re letting yourself go a bit for a world champion.’

He pressed his lips firmly together and leaned even closer towards me until I was forced to look away. However the sight of Waipahe cleaning the gaps in his teeth (and there were many) with a flick knife made me look back at Cain.

‘How did he get that through security?’

Waipahe laughed like a drain.

‘I don’t bow down to bullies so just tell me what it is you want. I’ve got a plane to catch.’

‘Yeah me too, don’t worry. We’re on the same flight. All one big, happy family hey, Brah?’

He smiled at Waipahe who spat some molar detritus onto the floor and grinned lopsidedly back.

‘Do they allow him onboard or does he have to fly freight with the other animals?’

Cain placed his hands either side of my hips. I leaned back against the sink until my lower back muscles began to complain. Cain’s groin pressed hard against me.

‘The thing is, Sista,’ he said breathily, ‘I don’t wanna have to listen to Jason fuckin’ Cross playing guitar and singing about my fuckin’ beaches, you get me?’

I nodded and held my breath.

‘And when we get back to Hawaii, to my islands, I don’t want no motherfuckin’ haole messing up my world title. Are you hearing me, Sista? Hmm?’

‘I thought you agreed to let the surfing do the talking,’ I muttered.

Cain moved his face dangerously close.

‘I don’t go making deals with men like him, you get me? In Hawaii, I rule. What I wanna happen, happens.’

I struggled to move but his body had me pinned so tight against the unit our bones were grinding together.

‘You get me?’ he hissed again.

‘Yes,’ I gasped. ‘I’m not missing a word at this distance.’

‘So we got an understanding, yeah?’

‘Not exactly. What does this all have to do with me? I’m just writing Jason’s book.’

He flicked the side of my head.

‘Ouch.’

‘Yeah so you get to decide how it ends.’

‘Well not exactly because it’s fact not fiction.’

He pressed a finger hard against my lips.

‘Then I’ll tell you how it’s gonna end. Jason. Don’t. Win.’