That first wave still hadn’t broken so I spun my board around and just paddled for all I could, trying not to hear the groan the wave made as it stood up around me. I felt it lift the back of my board up and then this flat ocean I’d been paddling in morphed sickeningly into the downward slope of a watery mountain. I felt the board pick up its own speed as it skidded downhill and on an instinct I stopped paddling and tried to stand up. As I did so the board hit some chop and I stumbled, ending up on my arse, hands tightly gripping the rails. But I was lucky too. The board was now facing along the wave, towards the shoulder where it would peel to. Behind me there was this detonation of spray, but it was well behind me. And then it was like being spat forward, the water walled up, the chops were stretched flat and I was right in the pocket of this howling freight train of a wave, the biggest, scariest wave I’d ever seen, and only instead of crouching low like some hero surfer, I was sat on my arse.
All I knew was the longer I could ride it, the more chance I had of getting out of the rip current, so I just straight lined along this beautiful, perfect wall. I dared a glance behind me and glimpsed this blue-black curl as the eye of the wave fought to catch up with me, then I looked forward again at the perfection of a long, sloping shoulder that stretched all the way to the neck of the bay. Dignity came back quick and I tried to get off my bum, but as I did so I steered the board too high up the face of the wave and I couldn’t move my weight to send it back down again, so I ended up skipping over the top and onto the flat water behind it.
There was another wave right behind my one, but it didn’t look quite as terrifying as the mushroom cloud that I’d caught out at the point, Even so I paddled like fuck to get out past it, as I did so I caught sight of a pair of heads in the water a bit further out, and kept going until I reached them, my arms dying in their sockets when I got there.
“Fucking hell man, these waves are amazing!” John’s eyes were wide open and bloodshot from the spray.
“Hey Jesse you were right out beyond the point, almost around the corner,” said Darren. “I don’t think you should go right out there, it doesn’t look safe.”
I was panting so hard I could hardly speak and just nodded in agreement. But John didn’t care about that. I’d never heard his voice quite like this before, he wasn’t talking, he was screaming.
“That was one sick motherfucking wave you caught there Jesse. You rode it on your fucking arse!” He slapped the water with both his hands and yelled at the sky. A roar of celebration. “Can you fucking believe this place?”
On reaching them I’d assumed we’d all concentrate on finding a way to get back ashore, just basically getting the hell out of there and never coming back. however it was clear they weren’t moving, but waiting for a wave to ride. Suddenly I was conscious how much I’d been crying and hoped it didn’t show on my face. I looked around me. We were about half way along the north edge of the reef, and the water in here was much calmer, we were well out of the current sweeping north by the entrance of the bay. The waves when they came were smaller too, still big compared to anything I’d surfed before and still clean and, well, perfect. I realised I was sitting out there with the sort of waves we’d dreamed of and talked about for years.
John went for one in the next set. He turned around and began to paddle as this shoulder reared up behind him, the wave already breaking further up the point. I hoped he wouldn’t catch it as being all together somehow felt safer, but when the wave had swept through he was nowhere to be seen. You could see the curl of the wave working down the reef from behind and as I watched it John’s head popped up behind the wave, he must have fallen and let the wave roll over the top of him. He paddled back more amped than ever.
“You’ve got to catch one of these Jesse, this is way better than fucking sex.”
Even out there I felt the lurch. Obedient as Pavlov’s fucking dog an image of Cara formed in my mind, she was wet-haired, bedraggled and - get this - wearing Calm-headed Cindy’s skimpy swimwear. But this time something was different. This time I was there with John. John who’d fucked the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. The most beautiful girl I thought was possible. Who’d pressed his face into that mysterious space at the top of her thighs. Who’d slept on those breasts that tortured my dreams. Who’d pressed himself into her so many times that he’d bored himself. And here he was saying that surfing this wave was better.
Suddenly I wanted one of these waves. I’d suffered so much I deserved one. Not on my arse. Not shaking with fear either. I wanted a real one. The next good swell that came along I started to paddle for it, seriously paddle for it and the thing was it was so easy. I had so much time to jump to my feet and then this beauty of a wave just opened herself up to me. I kept low and stuck my hand into the surface as it built up into around me. I was perfectly in control. I stood up high and held my arms aloft and let out this scream that came from somewhere deep inside. The speed was like nothing I’d felt before, I could arc into turns just by thinking about it, it was like I was some seabird riding the winds of a storm. I’d grown up obsessed with surfing but I realised on that wave I’d never really done it. I’d fucked around on little beach breaks but I’d never really surfed. And that image of Cara Williams in my head? I just laughed. From that wave forward she looked no better than one of the waves in Town Bay. A good one maybe, but nothing compared to what I now knew. How had I ever fooled myself into thinking she was important? When there was so much living to do?
When I could surf?
twenty-three
AT FIRST SHE waited for the call, every time the telephone rang she hesitated before lifting the receiver, allowing herself a moment before hearing that Jim had washed ashore. A moment before the questions would begin about what was found in his blood. Why she’d told the police the tablets were hers. But when the phone rang it was never about that. There were practical calls, handling Jim’s affairs - even without a body the nature of his disappearance meant the coroner issued a death certificate after just six weeks. Personal calls, friends, relatives, phoning to see how she was getting on, checking up on her it sometimes felt. The worst were the impersonal calls, strangers asking for Jim as if they had known him, still happy to try and sell to a dead man. But that call never came. And as the weeks turned into months and into years, Natalie realised that now it never would. Whatever evidence stayed in a body wouldn’t last this long. Whatever happened to Jim would never be known for sure. And then, eight years later, the phone rang, and her life changed forever.
Not too much had changed in those eight years, she was still teaching at university, a lot more confident now with her lectures, settled into her career. The house had been re-decorated, Jim’s more valuable belongings long-since sold, the rest given away, or taken to the tip. After eight years the house felt hers. She had lived there alone for twice as long as they had lived there together, the only traces left of him were the photographs on the walls, a bike in the garage, a few folders of papers kept on a shelf, evidence of his life and death.
At first it had felt like her life was in limbo, waiting for Jim’s body to come ashore so he could be buried, and so she could finally get an answer to the cause of his death. But equally she didn’t want him to be found. She grew to accept that Jim couldn’t have known about her affair, but it didn’t help. She still felt a hot guilt when she thought about it, and doubts always crept in. And when the months turned into years she knew that the secret of Jim’s death would stay a secret. She grieved, and she felt the pain recede into the distance. And the guilt and the shame. But it never quite disappeared entirely.
That morning she had a midday lecture. She got up late. She had time for a coffee before going in. That’s when the phone rang. She almost didn’t answer it, you get so many nuisance calls these days.
Click. A little bit of wind noise, like the caller was outside.
“Can I speak with Jim Harrison please?”
“I’m afraid not, he passed away some time ago. What’s
it regarding please?” She sighed inwardly. Another list to have Jim’s name removed from.
There was a very long pause on the phone and the man’s voice changed when he replied. He sounded confused.
“Oh. I was phoning to say I’d found his wallet.”
Her brain was already returning to how she would deliver her lecture that afternoon, but this stopped her dead. Jim’s wallet had never been found, the police had assumed it was taken when the car was broken into.
“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”
“Well like I said, I’ve found his wallet.”
“Where? How?”
There was no delay this time. The caller seemed on more expected ground. “Yesterday, out on the new cliff path. We’ve been putting a bridge in over the stream and there was this bag stashed in a bush. Bit tatty it was, but it didn’t look like it was exactly abandoned. Anyways we had a look in, there were a few clothes in there and stuff, and this wallet. It had his name and address in it. You know, if lost please contact this number…” The man left his voice hanging. It wasn’t until later that Natalie wondered if he’d been hoping for a reward. But at the time her mind was too busy trying to process the information.
“Are you sure it’s the right Jim Harrison?”
“Well I don’t rightly know that do I? I’m just ringing the number in the wallet.”
“Yes of course. I’m sorry.” She stopped.
“And I assume you’re working somewhere in Cornwall are you, near Porthtowan?”
Again the confusion sounded in the man’s voice.
“Cornwall? No love. No we’re up by Llanwindus, you know the new coastal path that’s going in?”
“Llan…? I’m sorry where is that? Is that in Cornwall somewhere?” Natalie insisted.
“What’s all this about Cornwall? Like I told you, we’re here in Wales. Near Llanwindus.”
“Wales? But that doesn’t make any sense. Jim was in Cornwall when he died, not Wales. That’s where they found his car.”
There was a pause and when the man spoke again she could hear in his voice he was looking for an excuse to end the call.
“Look I don’t know nothing about that. Maybe I’ll just send the bag onto you, would that be best?”
Natalie answered quickly, beginning to panic. “Yes. No, don’t go. Look I’ll give you my address.”
“I’ve got it already. Remember? It’s in the wallet.” The man hung up.
Natalie tried at once to trace where the call had come from, but it was an unlisted number. She replaced the receiver on the wall and stared at it until her coffee went cold.
She didn’t mention the call to anyone at work, and by the time she came home later that day she decided she wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Not because she wanted to keep it secret, but because, by then, she couldn’t be certain she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Better to wait and see if anything actually came through the post, or the man called back. Then no one could accuse her of losing it.
Nearly a week passed. She nearly convinced herself it was some crazy hallucination, but then she saw the postman coming up the drive. He knocked on the door and handed her a parcel wrapped in brown paper. He said something about the weather but she didn’t hear what. She’d seen the postmark: Llanwindus Post Office.
She took the package into the kitchen and sat at the table, just looking at it for a while. Then she steeled herself and began to open it. Whoever had wrapped it had used too much tape, the paper tore easily enough but she had to get scissors to break through the taught web of plastic which gripped the contents of the parcel. When she’d pulled it away she recognised the bag inside with a jolt. She’d even noticed it missing, when she cleared out Jim’s possessions in those black months after he’d disappeared from her life. It was his flight bag, waterproof and designed to carry enough gear for an overnight stop. It wasn’t worn but was faded in places. She undid the twin buckles and looked inside.
She first pulled out a pair of jeans, light blue and battered, underwear bunched up within them. A tee shirt, a black woollen jumper. She raised it up to her face and breathed in, but there was nothing of him there, just dampness. And then out it fell, his brown leather wallet.
It had been a present from her. Special soft leather, hand stitched. Totally overpriced of course but she hadn’t minded that. She’d given it to him to replace a horrible cheap thing he carried around in luminous colours from some surfing brand or another.
She unfastened it and looked inside. His credit cards, personal and business sat in their sleeves. The section for notes held thirty pounds in cash, a handful of coins too. She emptied them out on the table top and watched as they rolled and spun noisily before settling with an unexpected suddenness, the silence returning to the kitchen. His driving licence was there, his face looking off to the left as if in disdain for the bureaucracy of such things, then the slip of card with his name and address on it. Their address, the house that had been hers for longer than it had ever been theirs.
She breathed a few deep breaths and looked again inside the bag, but there was nothing more. And she checked the remains of the packaging for anything, a note, anything that might show who had found it. But nothing again. She sat with her dead husband’s clothes spread out on the table in front of her and asked herself, what it meant. Questions she had hoped would slowly fade into the past once again hammered at the front of her mind. And a sadness too, at losing Jim, and the part she might have played in it. She stroked the soft leather of the wallet. She knew there was only one person she could speak to, but she sat there that morning for a very long time before she picked up the phone.
“Can I come and see you?” She said. “I need your help.”
twenty-four
WHEN WE WERE too tired to paddle another stroke we let ourselves be pushed ashore on the other side of the bay where the waves bent around so far the water was nearly calm. The small beach there was made up of fist-sized rocks, bleached driftwood and plastic bottles. No one spoke as we emerged from the water. Maybe it was the concentration needed to pick our way up the slippery rocks, but I like to think it was something more. What had just happened, it took time to process it. Our minds had just been opened.
We kept up the silence as we walked back around the bay, across the stream, then back out the other side until we stood beneath the Hanging Rock. Then and only then did any of us speak. And of course it was John.
“This place,” he said, quietly, reverently, “We have to keep it secret. We can’t tell anyone about it.”
Darren was peeling off his wetsuit now and I did the same, pulling a towel from my bag. It was like both of us had lost the power to talk.
“If we tell anyone about this place,” John went on. “It’ll be ruined. People will come every day, from miles around. This place will be ruined. This is our wave. Our place. We tell no one.”
This time Darren nodded and managed to get a word out. “OK,” he said solemnly, like he was swearing an oath.
“Jesse?”
John’s blue eyes were locked on mine, trying to read me, willing me to accept what he was saying. For a moment I felt trapped as the elation of the last few hours came up against the misery of the previous month and the two cancelled each other out. But I couldn’t keep it up, the immovable object was crushed before the irresistible force and the flicker of a smile on my lips burst out into this massive grin.
“Oh-my-fucking-God! Do you realise what we’ve got here?” I was laughing now. “Of course I’m not going to tell anyone, this is the best wave in the whole world. This is winning the lottery. This is the dream, the surfer’s fucking dream!”
Then we were all laughing, and I don’t know why, but I opened my arms and grabbed John and pulled him towards me and then we were holding each other, laughing and jumping up and down with Darren trying to join in from the side. And the noise we made echoed up above us as it bounced off the Hanging Rock and out over the reef, and the line after line of perfect waves.
When the buzz wore off there was one immediate problem. There was no way we could keep getting our surfboards to Hanging Rock without someone, sooner or later, seeing us and wondering where we were going. It felt pretty safe once we were there. There were no signs that the owner of the estate, or anyone else, ever bothered coming that way, and the valley walls were so steep you couldn’t be seen from anywhere else, but we were totally exposed getting the boards to the estate’s boundary wall. The obvious answer was to leave the boards there. Right underneath the Hanging Rock there was a little cave, just high enough to walk into if you stooped over, and it got bigger inside so that it was maybe five metres deep. But if we left the boards there, we wouldn’t be able to surf the Town Beach. Since we could only get to Hanging Rock at the weekends, that meant no weekday surfing, and if we stopped surfing Town Beach altogether, then people might get suspicious and wonder where we were going.
For a couple of weeks we wrestled with the problem, but then it was John that came up with the solution. His dad was away so we were at his house for once, sprawled out on the white leather sofas with our feet up on the coffee table. Darren had taken a decanter of brandy from the bookshelf and was poking his finger down its neck, tasting it a drip at a time.
The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller Page 14