Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (24 page)

‘You’re right. He wasn’t. Brain-dead, me. So what do we do about that?’

‘I get myself a Facebook page.’

‘As Kinsey?’

‘Of course. Then send this guy a friend request and add a message about Counterstrike so he knows who I am. Fingers crossed, he friends me.’

Suttle nodded in approval. Once ShattAr got in touch, his Facebook profile might give them everything they’d need to have a proper conversation.

‘You really think he’ll do it?’

‘I’ve no idea, Sarge. Worth a try though, eh?’

The line went dead. Outside, after a decent sunset, the light was beginning to die. Suttle got up and went to the window, peering into the gathering darkness. Lately he’d made an effort to tally the jobs that badly needed doing around the property but knew that lists were no substitute for the real thing. He checked his watch, wondering how Lizzie was getting on. Nearly half eight. Late.

Lizzie’s outing with Pendrick was a disaster. Rowing in the double turned out to be a circus act after the comforting embrace of the quad. The slightest wobble, a single mistake with either blade, seemed to threaten a capsize. By the time she and Pendrick got down to the dock, she was ready to give up.

Pendrick was rowing in the bow seat, checking their progress over his shoulder, feeding her instructions as they picked their way through the buoys and moorings. Heavy on green. Go red. Equal pressure. Lizzie tried to process all these commands, turning them into strong tugs on the right-hand oar or the left, but her brain had turned to mush.

In the end Pendrick beached them on the long curve of Dawlish Warren and helped Lizzie get out.

‘Useless,’ she said. ‘Totally fucking hopeless.’

He told her not to be dramatic. Rowing the double after a single outing in the quad was a tough call.

‘So why are we doing it?’

‘Because I thought you could hack it.’

‘Wrong. I can’t.’

‘You can. You just have to relax. Listen to me.’

With infinite patience he pointed out what she was doing wrong. She had to ride the double like a horse. She had to feel the river through her bum. She had to think of the double as a musical instrument, amplifying the suck and nudge of the tide.

‘Listen to your body,’ he said, ‘and you won’t go wrong.’

Lizzie began to laugh. This sounded wildly karmic. She’d tried yoga once and been just as challenged.

A smile ghosted over Pendrick’s face. Maybe he’d got the wrong metaphor, he said. Maybe she should start thinking about the
grain
of the river, how to feel it, how to make it a friend.

‘That’s even worse. We’re talking water, not wood.’

‘Same difference. It’s a living thing. And so are you. Fight it, like just now, and the river will always win. Make it your friend –’ the sudden grin took her by surprise ‘– and anything can happen.’

They tried again. This time, Lizzie was worse. Sheer concentration made her nervous. Nervous, she began to wobble. Wobbling finally brought them to a halt. By now they were back beside the stretch of beach that led to the compound.

At slack tide the water was like a mirror. Downstream, Lizzie could see a couple of quads heading seawards. For a moment she envied them but then she felt the gentlest tap on her shoulder. It was Pendrick.

‘Drink?’ he suggested.

They went to a pub on the seafront. To Lizzie, it was the sanest decision they’d made all evening. There were benches and tables on the big apron of forecourt and Pendrick disappeared inside to the bar. Lizzie gazed out at the beginnings of a decent sunset. For mid-April, it was still warm.

‘Cheers. Here’s to your lovely bum.’

Pendrick was back with the drinks. He slid into the bench across the table. The same subtle grace, she thought. The same instinctive sense of balance that had just steadied the bloody double.

‘Thanks for putting up with me.’ She lifted her glass.

Pendrick shrugged. The double was history. They’d have another go when she was ready. Meantime he’d just remembered what date it was.

‘You know what I was doing this time last year?’

‘Surprise me.’

‘Rowing.’

‘I said surprise me.’

‘We were a week out from Cape Cod. It was an evening like this. I remember it like yesterday.’

Lizzie was staring at him.

‘Cape Cod’s in Massachusetts,’ she said.

‘You’re right.’

‘You’re telling me you were on the Atlantic? For a whole week?
Rowing?
’

‘Yeah. And the next week and the week after and . . .’ his hand closed around the pint of Guinness ‘. . . for ever really.’

Lizzie had abandoned her drink. Something in this man’s face had been nagging at her since she’d first met him and now she realised what it was. The hair, she thought. He had hair then.

‘You’re the guy who rowed the Atlantic,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘And lost his wife.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It was all over the papers.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Happy anniversary, eh?’

Lizzie didn’t know where to take this conversation next. As a working journalist she’d have had no problems. There were ways you could get people to open up. But this was different. She felt she’d begun to know this man a little. She’d shared something precious with him. She might have fucked up just now in the double but she’d fallen in love with rowing and that she owed to Pendrick.

‘You want to talk about it?’ she said at last.

‘You want to listen?’

‘Of course.’ Lizzie fought an urge to reach for his hand. ‘Tell me.’

He gazed at her then looked away. For a moment Lizzie thought she’d blown it – too hasty, too blatant – but then he was back with her. He wanted to start somewhere else. He wanted to start in Thailand.

He and his wife, he said, had spent the best part of three years bumming round the world with a couple of surfboards and not much else. They’d spent time in California, in Oz, in New Zealand. He was an electrician by trade, and Kate had nursing qualifications, and whenever the money ran out they’d work for a couple of months then hit the beaches again.

‘Is that when you got your scar?’ Lizzie had been dying to ask.

‘Yeah. I got dumped on a reef down near Melbourne. Place called Suicide Beach. Split my face open from here to here . . .’ His finger tracked down from the corner of his eye. ‘Thank Christ Kate was there. She stopped most of the bleeding and got me to a hospital. My own bloody fault.’

‘It didn’t put you off?’

‘Never. Surfing’s a drug. You can’t get enough.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘It was. Kate and I? We had nothing in the world except the ocean. It’s amazing how rich that can make you feel.’

‘I’m sure. Did Kate think that way as well?’

‘Most of the time.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

After New Zealand, he said, they took a flight to Bangkok, bought an old camper van from a Scouser heading home and drove south.

‘You know Thailand at all?’

‘No.’

‘The best bits are down by the Malay border. We ended up in a village just inland from the beach, place called Ao Lok. We spent the whole summer there, Mr and Mrs Idle, just surfing, swimming, making friends with the locals, totally lovely people. It was a brilliant time.’

After a while, he said, they’d become part of the village. They were renting a hut from someone who’d gone off to work in Phuket. Pendrick would do the odd wiring job for various neighbours while Kate would help out with the kids when they got sick. In return, families would give them food and invite them along for the party when a daughter was getting married or a long-lost cousin flew in from Europe or the States.

‘It was like we belonged.’ He was smiling. ‘It was a nice feeling.’

‘And Kate?’

‘She was cool with it. In fact she loved it. I think it gave her something we’d never had before. We both came from broken homes. The last thing these people were was broken.’

Ao Lok, he said, was as perfect as perfect can be.

‘Like how? Tell me.’

‘You could hear the surf at night through the trees. We lived on fruit and bread and fish and rice. Like I say, we were in the water most days. Kate used to look after this little boy, Niran, and she taught him to swim. Once he’d got his confidence, I’d paddle him out on the surf board. He loved it. Fantastic little kid. Always grinning. Happiness on legs. We wanted to kidnap him. Tuck him in the back of the camper and drive away. But what would be the point? Where in the world would ever be more perfect than Ao Lok?’

Lizzie mistook this as a question. She was trying to offer something similar in her own life but failed completely. Pendrick hadn’t finished.

‘You know something really strange?’ he said. ‘For years we’d always been moving on. It becomes a kind of habit, maybe stronger than that, maybe a kind of addiction. You’re convinced there’s always something better round the next corner, and so you look and you look and then you find somewhere like Ao Lok and you realise you’ve found it. It’s the end of the line. It’s where you belong. It’s where you want to stay. Maybe for ever. Except we couldn’t. Because it became impossible.’

‘How come?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Daft question.’

Pendrick got up to fetch another Guinness. Then he was back.

‘Boxing Day.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘We’re up and about and Kate’s taken Niran down to the beach. I’ve told them I’ll be along later. We’ve sold the camper and I’m trying to sort an old moped we’ve just bought. Next thing I know, there’s this roaring noise, a bit like thunder. It gets louder and louder then there are people running up from the beach through the trees. They’re yelling about a huge wave coming. I run down towards the beach and get there in time to see this wave breaking way out in the bay. They’re right. It’s vast. Kate’s down there too. The water is being sucked out to sea ahead of the wave and she’s running after Niran. By the time she catches him, the wave’s on top of them both. That’s the last I saw of the kid. No one ever found him.’

‘And Kate?’

‘She survived. Sort of.’

Afterwards, he said, he and Kate went to America. They’d made friends a while back with a couple from California, surfers like themselves. Kate was really close to the woman – nice girl, half Sri-Lankan. They picked up casual jobs for a while, then got green cards, which made it all legit. They were still spending time by the ocean, he said, but it was never the same.

‘That was five years ago.’ He was studying his hands. ‘Time’s supposed to be the healer, isn’t it? Time’s supposed to make the difference. No chance. Kate had lost it. She became someone else.’

Lizzie nodded. This, at last, sounded familiar. She was getting to know a lot about strangers in her life.

‘Difficult,’ she said simply.

‘It was, believe me. And it was especially hard because I couldn’t see an end to it. There was no way Kate could make peace with what had happened because there was no peace to make. Ao Lok and Niran and all the rest of it had taken us to a place we could never get back to. And once that happens, believe me, you’re fucked.’

Lizzie reached for his hand. It seemed the simplest thing in the world.

‘So what did you do?’ she said.

‘In the end, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I figured we had to do something big, something amazing. Double or quits time. The ocean again. Another crap decision.’

They’d saved like crazy for a couple of years and moved east to Cape Cod. Backers had paid for the boat and the provisions and everything else they needed, and they’d made contact with one of the charities that had sprung up after the tsunami. They’d put together a support team in a town called Woods Hole and spent a week or two rowing up and down the coast to get the feel of the boat.

‘And then?’

‘We went for it. April’s supposed to be kind, and to be fair the weather wasn’t that bad, but what nobody ever tells you about is the rowing, the routine, the sheer fucking monotony of going on and on, day after day, just on and on. If you’re not careful, if you’re not strong, something like that can break your heart.’

‘And did it?’

‘You’re talking about me?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I more or less survived.’

‘But Kate?’

‘Definitely.’

‘It broke her heart?’

‘Yes.’

He looked up. His eyes were glassy. He gave Lizzie’s hand a squeeze and then withdrew his own.

‘We had a couple of storms on the way over.’ He reached for his drink. ‘In that kind of sea there’s no way you can keep rowing so you get into this shithole of a cabin, the pair of you, and try and make sure the hatch is watertight, and just ride the storm out. This kind of stuff can go on for days. The cabin’s tiny, just room for the two of you. Kate had done her best to cheer the place up. She’d put photos everywhere, places we’d been, friends we were missing, but it’s dark most of the time because you’re trying to preserve the batteries, and the boat’s all over the place and you start to recognise the pattern of the waves, the intervals before they hit you, and you realise after a while that you’re just helpless, a sitting target, tense as fuck, waiting for the big one.’