by Andrea Kitt
So half of our week was spent being ill, but the other half was so exquisite, it made it completely worthwhile. That first moment of discovering a coral reef... Its almost as good as discovering your first Christmas stocking! I didn’t know what to expect: had some vague idea about lots of fish. The surface of the water looked so innocent, just like any other seaside scene, with the narrow beach and the flatness reaching to the horizon, and a few wavelets near the shore.
We slipped in with our masks on, swimming in the direction we had been told, noticing the odd rock and bunch of seaweed and a few colourful fish, then more rocky, corally bits and a few more fish... And then suddenly: paradise. Completely unexpectedly, a huge cliff dropped down through clear water to a golden sandy bottom over a hundred feet below.
And the surface of the cliff was absolutely teeming with life – the most richly beautiful, colourful, intricate life you could ever imagine – truly another world, hidden beneath the benign surface of the sea. There were fish of every shape and colour, from tiny flashes of electric blue to long, thick monsters lurking in the depths, from yellow fish with blue stripes to green fish with black spots. There were fat fish in glorious shades of turquoise, mottled fish and pouty fish, spiky fish and horned fish and fish with elegant tails, drifting and cruising in a leisurely, slow-motion dance, weaving in and out of little crevices and caves, nibbling at the coral. One pair I remember in particular for their loveliness: they swam side by side for a while then swirled together head-to-tail in an elegant circle, then resumed their journey next to each other and then circled each other, again and again.
We would swim off and explore places on our own, then when we found something interesting we beckoned to one another, or sometimes surfaced and exchanged a few words, then led the other person to our find, using sign language to point out exactly what and where it was.
I remember Simon in the hotel bedroom putting on his snorkel, pretending to nudge somebody and pointing at me in amazement, as if I was some weird underwater discovery. I also remember when I complained about the maid coming in and doing useless things such as pulling the sheet so tight on the bed that I couldn’t get into it: Simon put on his mask and flippers and said, “Well there are lots of useless things she doesn’t do – such as this!” as he waddled sideways across the floor at the foot of the beds, waggling his hands around his head, making funny faces and crying, “Woopwoopwoop!” This was when we were feeling euphorically well again, and had taken so much medicine we could probably have stayed there happily for months and eaten whatever we wanted. But we had only a couple of days left, and were absolutely making the most of it.
The first reef we discovered was the one in down-town Dahab, but speaking to the hotel staff we learned about others that were even better; so as soon as we could (and bearing in mind the weather and the tide) we took a taxi to the Blue Hole. Now when you take a taxi, you kind of presume that there will be a road to go with it – but we were soon to learn that in this part of the world that is rarely the case. What began as a smooth, tarmacked affair deteriorated, after a very short time, into a rough track, and then even less than that: boulders and pot holes, ups and downs and shaking from side to side. We were simply driving through the desert. The whole area was in the process of being developed, but happily it was far from complete.
The last part of the journey to the Blue Hole was particularly alarming. We were keeling about all over the place, aiming for a steep slope that looked very much like the edge of the world; then we lurched to the summit, dropped almost vertically down the other side and bumped along a short stretch of rubbly sand, with a tiny shanty-town collection of buildings on one one side and the ocean on the other. They were more like shelves than houses: no walls, just broad, carpeted steps in the centre, and on either side areas with mats and cushions and low tables for sitting and eating. We found a spot we liked, ordered fish, rice and salad, and were soon joined by two hungry cats, and then a tortoise, who seemed to be a restaurant mascot, introduced to us by some English children.
Tummies full, we went back outside and prepared to plunge. What a strange fashion parade, out there by the water... We wouldn’t have looked out of place in Dr Who! All the masks and tubes and canisters, suits and flippers, contrasted strangely with sexy bits of swimming gear on other parts of the body. Walking down the High Street we would have definitely been arrested... but here it was perfectly normal.
And so: eyes down, and back to the world of stillness, slowness and magic. At last, I had found my fairyland; it was bright and vital, and I took to it like a fish to water! The Blue Hole is an enormous crater-shaped formation, made entirely of coral. Deep down there are caves through which divers dare each other to swim to the outside, and sometimes perish before they get there. But we were more than happy to just drift around the rim. Simon pointed out some pencil urchins with thick purple spines; we saw large clams with dark blue lips that slowly opened and closed, and soft white and red anemones; there were lion fish with rippling feathery fins, and of course hundreds of other fish. Even at night, back in the hotel room, as soon as I shut my eyes I was back floating in the water, feeling the gentle drift and sway, aware of the flickering colours of life that teemed all around me.
The other place we were told to go to was the Moray Eel Garden. A taxi took us even further this time, always with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, down south to a beach with palm huts and a palm-roofed restaurant, and nothing else for miles around. Although we didn’t see any eels, it was a wonderful underwater garden, and the corals were particularly magnificent. There were nuggetty buds of bright blue and purply pink, sheaths of lime green, layer upon layer of yellow netted fans, corals with delicate branches, some with tiny filaments that shimmered and shivered in the shifting water; and gorgeous, creamy coral that really did look like fairy castles. Most of it grew in a mass on the reef, but sometimes a tiny island of coral grew up from the sandy seabed: a great Christmas-cake collection of different colours and textures, with all our fishy friends weaving in and out and circling slowly round.
On this beach I had a strong experience of Africa. There was some argument when we got home as to whether we had been to Africa or the Middle East, but to me it was Africa, and that’s all that matters! After a couple of good swims, Simon retired to a hammock and I took a stroll down the beach, dipping in from time to time to cool off then letting the warm wind dry me. And I had a glorious sense of the vastness of the continent: that I could stride on and on through this solid, hot land for thousands of miles, feeling the ancient rock beneath my feet and the ancient sun in the sky, and there would be so much beauty, and she would hold me and keep me warm. Having passed through the initiation of sickness, I had now been accepted: my horizons had expanded so that this part of the planet was also my home.
On the last evening we went on a camel ride up the desert valley. Camels are funny creatures, but I think I could get fond of them, with their grumpy faces and big flappy nostrils, their enormous lashes and big, dark eyes. They have hugely curving necks that lurch forward like a duck, great sturdy legs with a multitude of knees, and large cloven feet for plodding through the sand.
We were led by a lad younger than Simon who spoke very little English but was fluent in camel talk, so every time they stopped to chew on a plant he would make lots of camel noises and hit them with a small stick to urge them on. It was all rather disorganized, but good fun. We wobbled and bumped up into the desert then back down to the beach as the sun was setting; then the great beasts swayed down onto their knees and we slid off, finding our feet again on the hard baked earth.
On the last morning we climbed the small mountain-shaped mountain at the back of the hotel and looked down at the scene of all our adventures. We could see the tidy layout of the hotel and its grounds, and just make out which was our bedroom and which was the dining room. With our eyes we followed the road to the right, into the town then beyond through the desert towards the Moray Eel Garden, and to
the left towards the Blue Hole; and in front of us spreading far and wide was the Red Sea and its wealth of hidden secrets, with the misty hills of Saudi Arabia just visible on the distant horizon.
44
Kidnapped
When Simon and I got back from Egypt, something terrible happened. I didn’t realize it at first. Simon stayed with me for a day or so just to settle back in and bathe in the afterglow of our adventures, sharing the holiday diary with Tim and Judy and generally enjoying the newness of being back home with a slightly different perspective. Then I took him to his dad’s as usual; but he didn’t come back.
After the normal three or four days, I went to fetch him, and was told that dad was depressed and needed him to stay longer. When I asked how long, Sam looked grumpy and defensive and wouldn’t say. The next time I tried the same thing happened, and the next time. Sam’s words echoed in my head, “I’m afraid of Simon being kidnapped.” It seemed as if that was exactly what was happening. I was missing Simon terribly: he was still only fourteen and up until then he had been living with me for at least half the time. Now suddenly day after day went by and he didn’t come home. Worst of all, I didn’t know if he ever would.
I’m not sure how Simon felt: he’s the kind of boy who is so sensitive to other peoples’ feelings he often doesn’t know how he feels himself, which is why it was so easy for Sam to make Simon feel sorry for him. I tried not to worsen things by making him feel torn between us, but I needed him to know I was unhappy. I began to meet him at school, where we would sit in the car and have a few minutes quality time together, and of course I would try to find out what was going on with his dad.
Slowly I understood that what was happening was largely a reaction to Judy’s refusal, a couple of months previously, to ever stay with her father again. Sam had decided (without telling me anything) that “If I was having her, then he was having him” - with no consideration of the fact that Simon and I, unlike he and Judy, were very close and had no desire to abandon each other. He kept telling me it was what Simon wanted. Poor Simon didn’t know what he wanted: he just wanted his parents to stop arguing and for there to be love and harmony. I know what Sam is like when he’s trying to push a point, and with his arsenal of emotional hooks a soft-hearted boy like Simon would have been easy to persuade that his dad needed him, and it was only fair, and they were men together against the hysterical women who didn’t understand, and this was the time of life when a boy needed his father, and any other argument he could pull out of the hat. All of which had some truth in them, but which boiled down in the end to emotional blackmail.
I thought long and hard, sat down and wrote Sam the most thoughtful, compassionate, sensible and understanding letter I could squeeze out of my distressed heart, only to be told a few days later that he had thrown it in the bin without looking at it. I was beside myself. It had now been over a month. I talked about it endlessly to Tim, and we decided in the end to go to a solicitor. If I could just know that Simon and I could have some regular time together, I was quite prepared to allow Sam more time than before; but this not knowing and hardly seeing him from one week to the next was tearing me apart.
I remember bumping into a friend in the supermarket – a Catholic woman whom I didn’t know very well but who had been to a little therapy group that I ran. She noticed my distress and invited me to have a cup of tea with her. She was the mother of one older son, and as we were sitting there in the cafe she told me about some of the anguish she had been through, and about Mother Mary and how much pain she suffered when Jesus was crucified, and how every mother of a son experiences the pain of separation, because inevitably he turns into a man and finds another woman. “But Simon is only fourteen!” I told her, “And its all so cruel and insensitive... If only his dad would just talk to me about what’s going on!” But I was grateful to her for helping me see things from a broader perspective, and for the comforting presence of Mother Mary.
It was also comforting at this time to talk to my friend Sally, who had been through the same sort of pain when the father of her sons lured them to live with him by means of riches, technology and making her seem like the wicked one. To have someone who really understood how I felt was very precious.
I stated my case to the solicitor, and waited for them to put things in motion. That Christmas was miserable. I spent the day at Kharis’s house. Her husband Nigel always put on a tremendous spread for their family and Lucia’s and Carmen and any other relations in the vicinity. I managed not to cry for most of the day, but I was aching inside. I didn’t even know if I would see Simon at all over this special family time.
Eventually Sam received a solicitor’s letter. Bizarrely, they failed to state what I had asked for, and instead made some outrageous demand, saying I wanted Simon for all of the holidays and every weekday, or some such thing. The twofold benefit of this cock-up was firstly that there was no way I was going to pay them after such very unprofessional behaviour, and secondly that it finally put the wind up Sam and made him realize I was serious. So about three months after the awful grabbing of Simon, we sat down and came to an arrangement. It wasn’t great, but at least it was something. For the time being, Simon would stay with me for one weekend a fortnight. I cherished those weekends, and made the absolute most of them that I could.
I was worried that Simon would find it hard living with his father, so I would watch carefully for signs of stress and ask him how it was going, but he seemed to be coping remarkably well. Particularly I was afraid of him shutting off and becoming emotionally numb, but he was as responsive and empathic as ever. He did say a few years later that sometimes dad talked so much he could hardly remember how to talk himself, but he obviously didn’t find it as unbearably crushing as I had done. Happily it seemed that the good feeling of being boys together outweighed the problems with Sam’s personality; and Simon began to do lots of cooking and organizing in the house, so he probably enjoyed caring for his dad and feeling useful.
Of course Simon was growing up too, and sometimes it was harder now to find common ground between us. I would slip easily into the old mummy role of watching him skateboard, listening to the tunes he had composed on guitar or computer, cooking him food... generally being the passive appreciator of all things Simon, whilst inside I had that disturbing feeling of quietly disappearing.
It’s a strange sort of missing, when a child grows up. There they are in front of you as always, and yet it’s not quite the same: they are no longer the person you have known for so many years, and certainly don’t need you in the same way. I was very aware that most of the time it was inappropriate for me to reach out and touch him: those days were gone. Sometimes if we were watching a film together he would lean into me, and occasionally if I was upset he would put his arms around me, which was very special; but most of the time we had to love each other from a respectful distance, as was only right and proper.
The one time I did feel a wonderful sense of togetherness was when making music. Simon was by now studying ‘A’ level music and music tech, and playing a lot with friends, and though I loved to hear what he was doing I would sometimes feel a bit jealous and wish I could find a musical outlet myself. What I loved more than anything was when he would get into some rhythmic, jammy groove on his guitar then I would join in with my voice, making up the words and tune as we went along. Sometimes we would pick a subject, like the rain outside or the leg of the chair. It seemed the more random and mundane the thing we chose, the more crazy, funny and inventive the song became. We would look at one another and laugh and feel the creative juices flowing, and I would experience moments of pure contentment, fulfilment and joy.
Simon also helped me produce a CD of twelve songs I had written – starting with the anguished ones about Jamie, and including happier ones about Tim and my father. He took a lot of persuading and was often not in the mood, and at that time he wasn’t such a techno genius as he was to become later, and my equipment was a bit lacking too; but sometimes he
suddenly got inspired, and after several years we finally had the finished product. I particularly treasured a song called ‘How Come’ in which each line that I sang was echoed by poignant notes from his electric guitar, making it sound like a deeply empathic conversation.
We took one last holiday together, when Simon was sixteen, to Turkey. For the first half of the week it rained, and then Simon came down with a mysterious fever, despite the fact that we had been religiously avoiding all the attractive pieces of salad on our plates. So what with my usual insomnia and lazy bowels, by midweek things were looking pretty grim. I remember being in a restaurant by myself, because Simon was up in the hotel room lying in bed. I sat next to a window, looking out at the grey drizzle and sending a desperate text to Tim telling him how awful I was feeling.
Things got better: we did a fair amount of swimming and snorkelling, and took a boat trip around the islands. Then on the last day, to make up for the iffy nature of the rest of the holiday, I treated us to a special adventure. We were driven up a very steep mountain in a jeep, then got out and paired up with an instructor who helped us into our harness and ran with us to the edge of a precipice, where we allowed the wind to lift us up and out over the ocean.
Suspended by the great arc of a parachute we wheeled and soared, looking down over the hills, the lagoon where we had been swimming and boating, the hotel and shops, the wide sweep of the bay. I’m ashamed to say that I threw up in mid-air, due to a propensity for motion sickness, but my instructor was ready with a plastic bag, so it didn’t get too messy! Our feet touched down on the walkway at the top of the beach, and we returned to the hotel with a whole bunch of amazing photographs.