Back in Oz nearly all the boys in my class were surfers, so I was too. The town we lived in was a surfer town. We all had posters of the Aussie surfing legends on our bedroom walls and we hung out by the lifeguard’s tower, arguing about whether we’d got tubed or not. We never did of course, we were just groms - that’s what the other surfers called us kids. But being a kid you got to pester the pro’s every year when the world tour came to town. We’d camp out there all day and beg the guys for autographs when they finished their heats. Sometimes they’d even let you carry their boards.
So anyway, my birthday, my actual thirteenth birthday started badly. The rain had been so heavy overnight the lower toilet block overflowed all over the grass. I actually didn’t mind, cleaning up shit with Mum was better than being in school anyway. And when we came in and cleaned ourselves up Mum made me go and look in the little shed at the side of the house. She said there was a surprise there waiting for me. She followed me and watched, and I knew what it was at once. Dad had spent ages talking with the shop guy about this board’s volume and rocker flat, he’d worked out that it was perfect for a kid my size, but I’d just fallen for the airbrushed colour scheme, the whole deck was this beautiful morphing from orange in the tail through yellows and reds to deep purple in the nose. I could see it glowing through the bubble wrap now. It was my surfboard. Our old neighbour - the other side from the fence guy - he’d packed it all up for Mum and sent it over. He was a surfer too and he’d packed it real carefully, cutting a polystyrene block to protect the fins.
I cried as I unwrapped it. Mum did too. She thought it was tears of joy, or release, or finally tears of grief over Dad, something like that. But it wasn’t. I was crying because I knew I was never going home now.
six
IT FELT LIKE it rained the first six weeks we were in Wales. It wasn’t like the rain back home, which came in short bursts but came hard, so the streets would flow with orange-red rivers for a few minutes and then steam as the sun sucked the moisture right back up into the sky. In Wales the rain started when you got up and just hung around all day, right up until you went to bed. Then it did the same the next day. In Wales even the rain was shit.
But then the weather changed. A couple of weeks after my board arrived I came home from school and the sun was shining. You could look up and the sky was blue. I honestly hadn’t thought that could happen here. There was something else different too. I heard it first and although I knew that sound it was like I couldn’t quite place it. It sounded wrong.
The shingle bank meant you couldn’t see the beach from the campsite, but I still ran down to look and my heart was pounding. I held my breath as I climbed the path that led up the bank, I didn’t dare to hope too much but it sounded so familiar. And then I looked over the top and there it was. The beach I’d come to regard as permanently flat and choppy and grey was holding a three foot wave. The sun was shining down on the water so it was like a billion diamonds were floating in the bay and playing with that sunlight. But better than that, there was a small pack of surfers out there already, their backs turned to me, bobbing up and down, then turning as the swells reached them and jumping to their feet, riding them back towards the shore. I didn’t stop to watch for long. I sprinted back to the house and shouted to Mum as I ripped off my clothes, searched for my board shorts.
“I’m going surfing!” I shouted. I didn’t wait for a reply.
It’s scary to paddle out in a new place amongst a group of surfers you don’t know, even more so when you’ve just turned thirteen. But I didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t like the school in the village where weird Welsh country kids eyed me with suspicion every time I came too near. This wasn’t the campsite where people on their shit holidays expected me to care if their shower was cold. These were surfers. I knew these people. I knew I’d fit in. I paddled right into the middle of them, so excited I spun around instantly and caught the first wave that came through.
Sometimes when you’re surfing you can remember the few seconds of riding a single wave for years afterwards as clear as if it was burnt onto videotape. That first wave I caught in Wales was like that. I was lucky, in just the right place at just the right time and I caught the wave easily, and stood up before it even got that steep, then I dropped down the face into a powerful bottom turn, for a kid at least. Certainly I had enough speed to reconnect with the lip with a slashing turn, and then another and another. And then I just pulled into a fast section that nearly tubed on top of me, finally riding out over the dying shoulder of the wave and sinking into the water behind. Even by Aussie standards it was a good ride. Despite, or maybe because of the build-up of emotions inside me, I let out this scream of delight. I sounded like I was an animal or something.
I might have thought I was the same as the other surfers out that day, but in reality they were all staring at me in amazement, this crazy kid in red shorts freezing his butt off while they were all black-clad in wetsuits. I couldn’t have been more different. But anyway. That was how it was when I first met John Buckingham.
Actually I didn’t notice him at first, right at the beginning I didn’t notice anyone. For forty minutes I surfed furiously, taking out all sorts of anger and frustration, and trying to make up for all the sessions I’d missed at home, but then the cold took over, literally grabbing me and forcing my body into a foetal huddle, my arms and chest a mountain of goose bumps. Then he paddled over.
“You’re the new kid from the campsite.” He was about my own age, but bigger than me. He had a wide smile and blue eyes. Even at that age you could tell he was going to be handsome, I mean he already was. He had muscles like a man, and clear skin, except around his jaw where you could see he was already shaving. He had a face that made you want to watch him. He observed my blue flesh with interest. “You’re really good.”
I nodded a frozen thanks.
“Are you cold?”
“Yeah a bit.”
“You’re actually blue.” I managed to make my neck work enough to look down. I saw he was right.
“You need a wetsuit. You can have my old one if you like.”
I looked at him in confusion, wondering how this could happen. “OK,” I said at last. “Thanks.”
“No worries,” he said in imitation of an Aussie accent. “I’m John by the way.”
A wave came along at this point and he turned his board to catch it. He wasn’t very good then but he managed to get to his feet and he slid down the wall of the wave until he was too far away to continue the conversation.
The cold had done for me then, I wasn’t able to catch any more waves. Eventually I struggled in and I got changed, I ran back indoors and hurried to put on all my warm clothes and then I went back down to watch the other surfers. I’d thought this place had literally nothing going for it, but here was something. There was surfing. There was some life.
I hung around when John came in, close enough so he could see me, but not so close that it looked I was waiting for him, on land my confidence had gone again. I watched as he went to where he’d stashed his clothes and bike. I turned away as he changed. He had an attachment for his bike that allowed you to carry a surfboard, lots of guys had them back home, but I hadn’t seen any here until then. He strapped the board to it, but instead of peddling away he left his bike propped against the wall then walked over to me.
“Hey, have you got a bike?”
I shook my head.
“That’s ok. We can walk. What’s your name?”
“Jesse,” I said.
“You’re from Australia aren’t you? I went to Australia two years ago,” John said. I learnt later he’d been to most places. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I said.
“We’re going to get your wetsuit.”
John lived a ten minute walk away, in the opposite direction from the village, in a house twice the size of anything else around. It was screened by trees and set back from the road so it didn’t look too out of proportion. We talked a
s we walked there. He told me how he’d started surfing. He’d gone on some adventure holiday a few years before and it had just grabbed him and not let go. Surfing does that to some people. Then he told me the waves had been unusually bad that summer, but now it was autumn we would surf two or three days a week at least. He said this matter of factly, taking for granted that I would want to. Then we arrived in his driveway and he stopped.
“Oh Shit.” He said. There was a car parked there, a big, new-looking Mercedes.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My dad’s home. I thought he was staying in London.”
It was all still recent enough that the word ‘dad’ did strange things to me. It forced images into my mind. My dad’s face smiling as he struck the lighter, his body slumped over the sodden cardboard model, blood soaking into the dry earth. I forced myself to keep talking, I didn’t know what I might do if I didn’t.
“Don’t you like him? Your dad?” I asked.
John shrugged. “Not really. We don’t get on.”
An idea came to me.
“Does he hit you or something?”
John looked at me like I was crazy and I realised I’d said something wrong.
“No. Why d’you think that?”
“I dunno. I just thought…” I stopped.
“Course he doesn’t hit me. He doesn’t fiddle with me neither.”
I didn’t say anything to this and John looked at me curiously for a bit but then he shrugged again. “It’s alright, he’ll probably stay in his study. Come on.” He led the way into the kitchen, it was massive and looked brand new, like kitchens are in TV adverts. John went to the fridge and took out a bottle of Coke. “You want some?”
“Alright.” I said.
John took down a couple of glasses from a cupboard. He knew just how to pour them so that they filled right up but the yellow foam didn’t overflow onto the worktop.
“My dad’s in property.” He said suddenly. “And restaurants. And hotels. And a few other things too probably.”
He said it with this weird mix of distaste and pride. I didn’t know how to respond, so I said nothing.
“It pays for lots of stuff, but it means he’s a bit of a wanker.” He opened another cupboard and began to search inside it. “Or maybe he does all that because he’s a bit of a wanker, I’ve never worked it out.”
He flashed me a smile to show he was joking. It put me at ease, it made me feel better. John was a natural at that.
“Do you want some crisps?”
He didn’t wait for an answer but spun around and threw a bag at me like he was testing my reflexes.
“I’d live with Mum, she’s alright. But she’s in London and you can’t surf there.” He shrugged like I’d understand why this was the deciding factor in where he chose to live. “She caught him banging his secretary a few years back, so they split up. Now she’s his secretary and his girlfriend, and we all live out here. She’s alright too actually. At least she buys food and stuff.”
I nodded.
“What about your dad?” John said with his head cocked onto one side. “Is he over here? Back in Australia..?”
I hesitated at this because Mum had made me promise not to tell people here what happened to Dad. She said she hadn’t dragged us half way around the world for his death to follow us. So I could tell people he was dead, but not how it happened. But already I didn’t want to lie to John. When you talked to him his eyes would flick over you, like he could see what was true and what wasn’t. And most of all I didn’t want to give him any excuse to not be my friend. I didn’t care that there was something scary about him, his cocky self confidence. I would have done anything to keep him talking to me.
“He died,” I said. My voice slewed about an octave higher as I spoke.
John drank his Coke and munched down a few crisps.
“That’s a bummer,” he said at last. “Was it an accident or what?”
“Accident,” I nodded.
“What happened?”
But all the same I was trapped. I couldn’t let Mum down just like that, so I looked around the room for inspiration. I could see through to the lounge and there was a painting on the wall, one of the red London buses going over that bridge in front of the Houses of Parliament.
“He got hit by a bus,” I said. I should have left it there, but I kept going, I was no good at lying then. “He stepped out without looking. The wing mirror took his head off.”
“Shit! For real?”
“Yeah for real.”
John stopped eating and watched me for a while.
“D’you see it happen?”
“Uh huh.” I nodded.
“Wing mirror took his head off.” John repeated to himself slowly. “Can that really happen?”
I didn’t say anything. I knew I’d gone too far, I felt my cheeks heat up.
“Sometimes I wish my dad was dead.” He finished the drink and left it on the side by the sink. “You wanna get that wetsuit? Come on.”
I followed him back outside and around to the front of the house. He sat on the shiny nose of the Merc and fished out a key and then opened one of the double doors to the garage. It was dark but he punched a light switch and a fluorescent tube flickered a few times before flooding light into the space. It was filled with bikes and boards and under a tarpaulin there was a classic car, a Jaguar, John told me with a shrug. The suit was on a rail at the back, it looked brand new.
“I’ve not used it much. But it’s too small for me now,” John said.
I held it up to me, you could see it was about an inch too long in the legs.
“You’ll grow into it,” he said, and he gave me another one of his warm golden smiles.
“Thanks… John,” I said, wondering as I used his name for the first time if I’d really made a friend like this.
“Is that really true?” John asked suddenly. “Is your dad really dead or did you just say that to shock me?”
I didn’t answer for a while. I couldn’t meet his eyes either. But then I just started speaking like it wasn’t me in control of the words that came out. “He’s really dead, but not like how I said.”
I looked at John and again I felt how his eyes seemed to be able to bore into me and seek out the truth. I felt that if I lied to him then, I’d be failing some important test. So I told him the truth. I told him everything. As I talked he peeled back the tarp on the Jaguar and we sat in it, cool leather seats and wood panels so smooth you wanted to stroke them. He was the only person I ever told the truth to. When I finished he didn’t say anything for a while, then he got out and pulled a bike out from somewhere and wheeled it over to me.
“Here, you can have this as well. The gears don’t work but maybe we can fix them.”
Then he said. “I won’t tell anyone. About your dad I mean. And you shouldn’t blame yourself either. Shit happens.”
seven
“IT’S NOT ME he’s after.”
The words jolted Natalie back to the present in the wine bar. She felt a moment of panic as she saw Alice disappear into the ladies, and how Jim was looking at her. She felt her cheeks glow hot. Up close there was something about his looks that brought to mind a fox. Handsome. Sharp featured. Clever too, just not someone you would trust.
He took a sip from his glass and set it down carefully on the centre of a coaster, the bottom of the glass was square and he twisted it so it lined up at right angles to the table edge. His smile revealed very white teeth.
“So Natalie, what do you do?”
This surprised her. Perhaps with an opening line as predictable as that she’d misread him as someone interesting.
“I’m a psychologist,” she said. She very nearly was too, at the time she was close to finishing her studies. She braced for the gag. People always had a psychologist joke.
“Why?”
That surprised her too.
“Why?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “I’m interested. I’m interested in people. I’m interested in psychology. Why are you a psychologist?”
“I don’t know… That’s a difficult question to answer.” She stopped. His eyes were grey but had flecks of blue that caught the light like quartz shot through granite. She felt the heat returning to her cheeks.
“Why are you interested in psychology?” She asked.
“I don’t know.” He said at once. “That’s a difficult question to answer.”
She smiled. Just a little. Resisted the impulse to bite the inside of her lip.
The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller Page 3