The Ribbons Are for Fearlessness

by Catrina Davies

  Outro

  And then it was all over. Except it wasn’t, because endings are as hard to pin down as beginnings are, and every ending is also a beginning.

  If this was a romantic novel I would have bumped into Jack on the long, sandy beach called Amado where I fetched up after Cabo San Vicente. The car park was a dusty field full of vans and tents and surfers, and the sun was so strong it burned my eyes. Every time I got out of the sea and climbed back up the crumbling cliff I couldn’t help but imagine he’d be standing there by my van in a pair of jeans and a flat cap he’d bought in some charity shop, with an old rucksack by his feet.

  “How did you know this was my van?”

  “Ben told me to look for a giant yellow rust bucket.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “Ben again.”

  “Ben didn’t even know I was coming to Portugal.”

  “He said you’d be in Sagres.”

  I’d put the board down and try to unzip the wetsuit. But the zip would be stuck.

  “Come here.”

  Jack would tug it down, his fingers brushing my skin.

  “Since when did you learn to surf?”

  “Since Norway.”

  “Did you really go to Nordkapp and see the midnight sun?”

  “Nope. I went to Knivskjellodden. It’s even further.”

  “Why didn’t you let me take you surfing?”

  “You never asked.”

  Jack would offer to buy me a beer and we’d walk to the village and sit on red plastic chairs and drink Sagres and eat peanuts.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Dunno. I’ve got a tent.”

  “Are you flying back from Faro?”

  He’d pull his cap down over his eyes. “I was thinking maybe we could go back together in your van. Surf our way up the coast.”

  I’d let myself imagine it. Lying in his arms with my head on his shoulder, his hand resting on my knee while he drove, like Pierre’s had. But then the dream would fall apart, because we’d be laughing, like Pierre and I used to laugh, and I couldn’t remember ever laughing like that with Jack.

  I stayed at Amado for a month. Every weekend I went back to Lagos and busked for two days, making enough to live on for a week. Sometimes people would come with me. Surfers who made and sold jewelry, or played guitars, or made things out of driftwood. It turned out that there were plenty of other people on my path, after all.

  I could have stayed at Amado forever, and I almost did, but one of the surfers I was friendly with had to go back to England and offered to pay the diesel if I would drive him in the van. I went to Lagos one last time and busked until I had enough for a ferry ticket to England, and then I drove with him across Portugal and Spain and over the border into France, and all the way back to Brittany, and the whole thing took two days.

  I didn’t sleep on the overnight ferry from Roscoff. Instead I stood out on deck and watched the sunrise from the back of the boat. I was alone. The surfer I had given a lift to lived in London, so he was catching a ferry from Calais. This time I didn’t need Stan and his bottles of warm white wine to keep me from crying. I stared down at the water slipping away beneath me, like time, and I thought about my cello, and how the first thing I was going to do when I got back was find someone to stick the seams back together. And I thought about my van, and how I still didn’t have a spare tire, or an MOT certificate, and how I didn’t even care.

  I snuggled down into my red Patagonia coat, which was better than Jack’s, and put my hands in the pockets. Hanna’s ribbons were still there. I shivered slightly. For all I knew Jack was still in Portugal. I hadn’t called Ben. I didn’t know what to say.

  Instead of going to Broadsands I went straight to the beach.

  The fog was so thick I couldn’t even see the sea, I could only hear it. It was just like Knivskjellodden. I pulled on my wetsuit and paddled out anyway. Surfing is a hard thing to learn, because you never get the same wave twice. I was still very much a beginner. But at least I could catch waves before they had broken, and get to my feet most of the time, and ride them in a straight line toward the beach. Which is what I was doing when I saw Jack.

  I fell off and went under, and when I came back up there he was, paddling toward me. I barely had time to spit the water out of my mouth and clamber back on my board before he was right there in front of me, one of his big hands reaching for my board and pulling it toward him until we were sitting side by side, bobbing around in the fog together. And his hands weren’t that big, after all, and although my heart was thumping like a train, I realized that the Jack of my imagination didn’t exist, and the Jack right there in front of me was just a man, and a scared one, and I’d have been willing to bet that his heart was thumping like a train, just like mine.

  “Where did you learn to surf?”

  “Norway.”

  “Only you could grow up in Cornwall and learn to surf in Norway.”

  Jack had walked to the beach, so I gave him a lift up to Broadsands in my van. First he wanted to look in the back. I felt proud. Even in the heavy fog, my van had the feel of summer, as if some of the bright sunshine of Amado had found its way permanently into the pores of the wood. Hanna’s book lay facedown on the plywood offcut that served as my kitchen. Jack picked it up and read the first page.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Someone gave it to me. You can borrow it if you like.”

  “Thanks.”

  He bit his lip just like he used to. We looked at each other. And I saw that Jack’s eyes were not slate blue after all, but light blue and sort of watery, and he wasn’t half as tall as Børge, and his eyes didn’t have laughter lines that joined up with his mouth like Pierre’s had.

  “So?”

  “So.”

  “How was yours?”

  “You went first.”

  “Oh, you know. Full of Spanish. Fucking cold.”

  I almost laughed out loud. I’d forgotten how Jack used to hate everything. A couple of girls walked past the van, carrying the foam surfboards you learn on. I could feel them looking at him.

  “How long have you been gone anyway?”

  “A year. I left a month after Andrew died.”

  I still couldn’t believe Andrew wasn’t going to be there, rolling joints in the bar, with a pint of Guinness next to him, reading The Surfer’s Path and taking the piss out of all the articles.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ben would understand.

  I drove, with Jack slumped on the passenger seat. I went over the speed bumps slowly.

  When I had left there had been banks of flowers by the side of the road. There were no flowers anymore.

  “What was her name?” I said, breaking the silence.

  “Who?”

  “The girl you lived with in the shed. The one you brought back from Patagonia.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Topsy,” he said at last.

  “Topsy?”

  “She’s American.”

  “When did you meet her?”

  “Right away. I should have told you. I guess I was in love. I wasn’t thinking much about anything else.”

  I stared in front of me at the road. Love.

  I wish I could feel you naked beside me.

  I pressed play on the tape player. It was halfway through “Bruca Maniguá.”

  “I took your tapes,” I said. “I listened to them all the time.”

  “What tapes?”

  “The ones in the box you left behind. You said I could have them.”

  “They weren’t mine.”

  “Whose were they?”

  “I dunno. I must’ve got them in some car boot or something.”

  Ben came running out wearing his chef’s cap and hauled open my door and pulled me out and gave me a massive hug, so massive my feet left the ground. He smelled of the old days, of chip fat and marijuana.

  “Someone said they saw a big y
ellow van at the beach.”

  I mumbled something about Rattler and being tired and then we were all sat in the bar and Jack was skinning up and it was like none of it ever happened.

  “Can you work tomorrow?” said Ben. “I’ve got a load of people arriving.”

  I took a few moments to answer. I looked around at the crumbling paint and the empty bottles lined up on the bar and the fog staring in through the windows.

  “I don’t mind working tomorrow. But I don’t want my job back.”

  They both stared at me.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Busk in Truro, I suppose. Go away again.”

  “You’ll have to pay rent.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the deal. If you want to live here and not work.”

  “I don’t want to live here.”

  “Where will you live?”

  “In my van.”

  Ben and Jack looked at each other.

  “I need some time out,” I said, and had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself giggling uncontrollably. I knew if I started laughing I would never stop.

  “What happened to you?” said Ben, crossly.

  I tried to tell them about Hanna, but it was just like the old days. They took the piss.

  “She sounds like a Bond girl.”

  “I’d give her one.”

  “Maybe if you gave her one you’d get ribbons, too.”

  So I gave up trying to talk to them and instead I went to my van and got the ancient guitar that Francis Philippe had given me at Salagou, and I went back into the bar and I sat down and I started to play the chords from “Bruca Maniguá,” the song that will always remind me of Hanna and that night we drove through the wilderness together. And then I started to sing the words I had finally finished writing on the long journey home. And it certainly shut them up. They stared at me like I was a freak of nature, and I could hardly blame them. I used to die of shame if one of them accidentally heard me playing my cello through the thick walls of the bunkhouse, and now here I was singing in public.

  You said you wrapped me up in light that day,

  You said you’d show me how to find my way,

  You said these moments are all precious,

  And the ribbons are for fearlessness …

  It wasn’t easy. I had to stop and take a big swig of Rattler, which is when I noticed they weren’t taking the piss any more.

  “What is that?” asked Ben. “It’s really familiar.”

  “It’s an old Cuban song. Ibrahim Ferrer did a cover. That’s probably why you know it. I used it loads busking. That girl I was trying to tell you about got me into it. In fact, this song is about her.”

  “How can an old Cuban song be about some girl you met in Norway?”

  “They’re my words.”

  Jack and Ben looked at each other.

  “Start again from the beginning,” said Jack.

  Acknowledgments

  Although I did this on my own, I could never have done this on my own.

  I have been blown away again and again by the warmth, generosity and kindness of humans, just a few of whom I have listed here.

  I owe a massive debt of gratitude and love to my blood relations—Terry, Daisy, Colin, Naomi, Rosie, Tristan, Tamsyn and Barnabas—for being the most eccentric and inspiring bunch of people anyone could hope to belong to. I would also like to thank my non-blood relations—Kirstan Gorvin and Ben Vavrecka—for being top brothers.

  I’d like to extend huge thanks to David and Jane Cornwell for their initial support and continued encouragement and advice. I’d also like to thank Rebecca Winfield, for believing in me and for offering such excellent editorial notes, and everyone at Summersdale for being so positive and taking such a lot of care, particularly Jennifer Barclay and Sophie Martin. I am grateful to Mark Watts for so readily granting me permission to quote from his father’s book.

  I’m indebted to everyone who helped with the van, especially Henry Dowell, whose week-long carpentry workshop and general off-grid friendship will never be forgotten—not to mention the rusting weapon, which would have got me out of all sorts of scrapes if everyone hadn’t been so damn friendly.

  I’d like to thank all the countless people who offered me support, both emotional and physical, during my year-long journey, but most especially Jan Inge Hellesmark and Philippe Schott, whose extraordinary kindness completely changed the way I feel about the world. And I will never forget JB, whose words and ribbons I still treasure and strive to live up to.

  Back home I’d like to thank my extended Penwith family for the hot showers, houses, parties, vegetables, doors, dances, stoves, surfboards, bread, cheese, chocolate, shelving, paid work, books, and laughter. You are too numerous to list here, for which I am eternally grateful, so I will just single out those who were most directly involved in keeping me sane(ish) during the many stages of this project. Emma Bohadana for the clothes and the counseling, Dave Spenceley for the nuggets of music and wisdom, Becky Martin for listening and sharing the shed thing, and Will West for living with me and feeding me and making sure I didn’t completely forget how to have fun.

  I want to thank everyone who has helped with the EP, especially the incredibly talented Richard Blackborow, whose patience and generosity knows no bounds, and Alan Shepherd, whose encouragement has been invaluable.

  And finally, I want to thank Ashley Moffatt for the inspiration.

  About the Author

  Catrina Davies was born in Snowdonia and grew up in the far west of Cornwall. When she isn’t surfing her way around the world, she divides her time between writing and music.

  The Ribbons EP, a collection of songs that helps to tell this story, is available through the author’s website:

  www.catrinadavies.co.uk/ribbonsep (or scan the QR code below).

  She currently lives in a tin shack near Land’s End, where she is working on her second book and recording her second album.