‘I did like Jordana,’ she says.
Dad is waiting for us in front of the Worm’s Head Hotel.
‘Shall we have a little explore towards the Worm?’ he says.
‘Worm me up,’ I say.
He starts off along the cliff path.
I wait for Mum while she puts on her terrible purple fleece.
The wind drones. I play at being italicized: opening my zip-up top into wings, leaning forward, propped up on a gust.
Mum is now wearing the world’s worst piece of clothing. She puts her arm through mine, as if we are man and wife. I try not to feel ashamed.
We walk on the gravel path. Sheep chew grass on the clifftops. They cannot suffer from vertigo because their brains are not sufficiently developed. A sheep cannot imagine a sudden slip of the hoof, the whoosh of adrenalin, seeing its own life in flick-book montage with barely enough time to be very disappointed.
We walk past a family in matching lemon-yellow sailors’ anoraks. They are of Asian origin. The children pose for a photo next to a ram.
Mum gets up on tiptoes to speak into my ear. I have just recently grown taller than her and she likes to make a point of it.
‘Every year, at least three people die along these cliffs. Blown clean off,’ she says.
‘I’ll be very careful,’ I say.
‘I was just telling you the statistics,’ she says.
I look at her face. The short curly hair at her temples is being blown into Medusa snakes.
‘Don’t lie to me. You’d hate it if I fell off here. You’d be gutted.’
‘I’d get over it,’ she says, grinning.
This is amazing.
The path spreads into a plain as we walk past the National Trust information lodge. Dad has already gained some distance on us. He reaches a ridge and is a clear silhouette, severed at the knee by the horizon, his corduroy trousers flapping. He disappears over the other side. From here, it looks as though he could be stepping out into nothingness, ending it all.
The sky has turned a cooler, lighter blue. The single strip of cloud has grown from dishcloth to duvet. The sun is dropping faster now. I pretend that time is speeding up.
We step up on to the ridge, experiencing the wind’s full potential. I would compare the feeling to being in a fight, but that comparison is beyond my experience.
Beneath us, there are shallow steps to the left that lead towards Worm’s Head. The Worm can only be reached during low tide. The tide is high. To the right, Dad’s following a steeper path cut into the rock; it zigzags down to the disused lifeboat hut, clinging to the cliff.
‘They say that shack is haunted,’ Mum says.
‘Who says?’
‘They say.’
We follow Dad round to the right. As we dip below the ridge the wind suddenly cuts out.
‘Do you have any primary evidence?’ I ask.
Mum’s hair settles back against her skull. We adjust our balance in the lack of bluster. It’s like stepping off a boat on to dry land. My mum still has me by the arm.
‘They say that the old lifeboat man wanted his son to become a lifeboat man too.’ Her voice is clear. ‘And one day, they were out on the boat. The father was teaching the son how to be a lifeboat man.’
‘You should practise this story in your head before you tell it.’
We take the steps together, careful to stay synchronized.
‘All of a sudden, a storm came rolling in from Ireland,’ she says.
‘Storms don’t come from Ireland. This is going to be like one of your jokes. You’re going to mess up the punchline.’
‘The father wanted to get the boat back to land immediately, but the boy said that if he was going to learn to be a proper lifeboat man he would need to learn how to handle difficult conditions.’
‘Valid,’ I say.
‘But the father was not convinced – he said that they needed to go back to the hut straightaway. The son pleaded with him.’ She puts on her whiny teenager voice: ‘ “Dad, I’m ready, I swear to you. I’m ready.” But he was not convinced.’
‘This is basically the plot of The Karate Kid.’
‘The father said: “You’re not ready yet. Sorry, son, we’re taking her back in.” ’
‘That’s good, Mum, because boats are female.’
‘But the boy was really stubborn. He’s your age, fifteen, sixteen, and he thinks he can do anything.’
‘Are you trying to make me relate?’
This is the sort of thing Miss Riley does in Religious Education. When Jesus was your age…
‘And the boy won’t help his father taking the boat back in. He’s stormed off below deck.’
‘Stormed off. Nice.’
‘And so the father sets about steering the boat back to the lifeboat hut. But the storm’s become more powerful than he first anticipated and he’s having trouble hooking the boat in, on his own.’
‘Why wouldn’t they just take the boat back to the beach rather than trying to moor it to a precarious shack against a cliff. That’s just dumb.’
‘So the father runs below deck and pleads with his son to help. He says: “Son! She’s closing in!” ’
‘Storms are female as well.’
‘ “We’re gonna have to park her up on the beach!” he says.’
‘They’re having a domestic in the middle of this storm. You’re just making this up as you go along.’ I cup my hands around my mouth and yell to Dad in my Hollywood voice: ‘Pop! Help! She’s closing in!’
Dad is peering in through the windows of the shack. He doesn’t look up.
‘Cheesy,’ I say. ‘This ghost story is chee-zee.’
We reach the bottom of the steps and approach the hut. It’s still just about white but the paint is flaking off. I look in through a small, smashed window. The shack looks charmingly spooky from far away but when you get up close, you realize that it’s just an old shed: it smells of piss and there are broken Heineken bottles on the floor.
‘So the son comes back up on deck. But by this time the storm has really taken hold. The waves are towering, pushing them towards the cliffs. And in the battle to save the ship, the boy is thrown overboard.’
‘He’s wearing a life jacket of course,’ I say.
‘Yes, he is. But they are too close to the cliffs. And before the father can pull his son out, the boy gets tossed against the rocks. He gets flung against the cliffs and his father can’t do anything but watch.’
‘That’s just not convincing. You should have at least let the tension build a little,’ I say.
Dad’s standing next to the mechanism that they used to tow the boat in: a hook hanging from a kind of crane that sticks out over the water.
‘And the boy’s dead, or soon to be dead, still floating in his life jacket, with his desperate father screaming at him to pick up the life rope.’
‘Why didn’t the father dive in?’ I ask.
‘Because then they would surely have both died.’
‘It would have been a nice gesture.’
It’s too sunny and clear to be scared of anything. I could watch Hellraiser in this light, no problem. This is Ouija weather.
I can see why someone wrote a ghost story about this spot. In fact, it would probably be in my top-three best hypothetical spots to commit suicide. And on a day like this, you couldn’t do much better. I imagine the coastguard’s helicopter spotting the body, waves crashing into the cliffs below, seagulls at my eyeballs already, a pod of seals mourning from the water. And the coastguard has a high-quality video camera and they sweep past and the shot goes out on local news at first, but then it gets picked up by the international news corporations and photos of my corpse are being constantly downloaded from the net and soon it’s back on the News at Ten and CNN under the pretence of a story about how messed up the internet is – and how upsetting for the family – but actually, it’s such a beautiful helicopter shot that they’ll find any excuse to show it.
‘And so h
is son died,’ I say. ‘And the old man survived the storm, then hung himself from this beam?’
‘Correct,’ she says.
‘Yawn,’ I say. ‘I’m not frightened.’
Dad is standing on the edge of the concrete foundations. He is peering down, watching an ongoing grudge match: The Waves versus The Rocks.
‘It’s hanged, not hung. He hanged himself,’ Dad says. He steps back, turns around. ‘Who are we talking about?’
‘The creepy old lifeboat man,’ I say.
‘Oh yeah, that’s true,’ Dad says.
‘Shut up it’s true,’ I say.
Dad looks at me blankly. There is the sound of the waves slapping and butting.
‘He had spent years of his life saving people on the Gower coast and then his son drowned while under his supervision. He hanged himself,’ he says.
‘And now he haunts these shores,’ I say, wiggling my fingers in the air and making a horror face.
‘Oliver,’ he says disapprovingly.
The sunlight is coming side-on: making half his face bright, half of it dark.
‘My fault.’ Mum butts in. ‘I thought it was a ghost story.’
Dad looks at her. ‘Jill, that’s terrible.’
She bares her teeth.
‘It’s true. It happened,’ Dad says. ‘In the eighties.’
‘That is awful,’ she says. ‘Why did I think it was a ghost story?’
I put my head on her shoulder.
‘Because the thought of losing your beloved son – i.e., me – is so terrible that even when you hear about it happening to other people, you have to convince yourself it’s not real.’
I notice that the sun is setting. I do not believe in scenery but still, there it is.
‘It’s an absolutely stunning day,’ Dad says.
The sun dissolving against the horizon like aspirin. A bright, white path of light on the surface of the water.
Mum leans into my arm.
‘You might be right, Oli,’ she says.
I feel a little bit ill at the vastness of the ocean. There are dark patches and lighter patches on the water. The dark patches are shaped like continents.
‘Why are there bits of water darker than other bits?’
‘Maybe something to do with the currents,’ Dad says.
‘Imagine all the mental things that live down there,’ I say.
Particularly those at the deepest parts. Voluminous jelly creatures that could squeeze through a keyhole but have mouths so wide they could swallow a whale. Pressure makes no bones. I consider telling my parents that I want to become a marine biologist; it’s already one of the most commonly proposed career paths among my schoolmates.
The sun is setting. The light is yolky and warm.
‘You know they used ultrasound during the Second World War to detect submerged objects,’ I say.
I am standing in between them, shoulder to shoulder.
‘I didn’t know that,’ Dad says. He is a Welsh historian.
The sun is setting. All the colours are there.
‘How deep is the ocean?’ Mum asks. Her real surname is Hunter. Jill Hunter. The sun is setting.
‘Not sure,’ Dad says.
I like it when my parents do not know things.
Goldfish grow to fit the size of their bowls.
‘The ocean is six miles deep,’ I tell them.
The sun is setting.
And it’s gone.
Acknowledgements
I wrote the majority of this book whilst studying creative writing at the University of East Anglia. I am very grateful to all the tutors and students there for their help and encouragement. In particular, I’m thankful for the expertise of John Boyne, Megan Bradbury, Andrew Cowan, Doug Cowie, Sian Dafydd, Patricia Duncker, Seth Fishman, Paulo Mellett, Micheèle Roberts, Clive Sinclair, Joel Stickley and Luke Wright. Particular thanks to Tim Clare, whose patience, enthusiasm and friendship have been invaluable. Also, I would not have been able to write this book without the Curtis Brown Prize and the assistance of the AHRC.
For energy, support and attention to detail, I would especially like to thank my agent, Georgia Garrett. Hefty thanks also to Simon Prosser, my editor. I’d also like to thank Francesca Main, Emma Horton and everyone at Penguin, Philippa Donovan, Rob Kraitt, Naomi Leon and everyone at AP Watt and Claire Paterson.
I posted the first chapter of this book – when it was just a short story – on ABCtales.com; the response it received had a large part in my decision to write Submarine. I’d also like to thank Lara Frankena; in the chapter Apostasy, the twigs that spell the word ‘help’ are taken from her poem ‘Vipassana Meditation Retreat, Ten Days’ Silence’.
For their support and for living with this book, thank you: Fran Alberry, David Rhys Birks, Ben Keeps Brockett, Simon Brooke, Ally Gipps, Alison Hukins, Matt Lloyd-Cape, Toby Gasston, Gregg Morgan, Alastair O’Shea, Dylan O’Shea, Emily Parr, Ian Rendell, Laura Stobbart, Maya Thirkell, Hannah Walker and Mial Watkins.
To my family, for their encouragement and love: Mum, Dad and my sisters, Anna and Leah.
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