Too Close to the Wind

by Richard Attree

  “So, Nicole, you have a contract with the Master?”

  She gave me a strange look.

  “Oui, mi contrato with him is starting when you give me the letter yesterday—Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead …”

  She paused.

  “And this contract somehow involves me?”

  “Oui, it is involving you … and me …”

  She paused again and seemed to rethink her answer.

  “No, this is my contract with him: I must help you, like he help me. Teach you, like I teach him.”

  I thought about this, chewing it over as I digested Nicole’s delicious Dominican cuisine. The Master had hinted he had plans for me beyond my present mission—ambitions for me to “fulfil my potential”, as he’d put it. Now it seemed his master plan involved Nicole. Apparently, he’d assigned us roles: she was cast as the teacher and I was her pupil. It seemed impolite not to follow his script after she’d shown me such generous hospitality, and besides: this was the start of my new life. It looked like the next chapter would be a steep learning curve.

  But something still disturbed me—something in her voice when she’d told me about her contract with him … a wrong note, something out-of-tune … Maybe it was her reference to the Day of the Dead, along with the stuff about Voodoo … Perhaps it was just my paranoia about the Master … But something wasn’t quite right.

  It was time for me to take the path back through the darkness to the Windsurf Hotel. I finished my glass of wine and thanked her for a lovely evening. She smiled coyly and asked me what I was doing tomorrow:

  “You come to my school mañana and help me teaching the childrens English, no?”

  I shrugged and considered this request—or was it a demand? It was hard to tell, given her use of the language.

  “I no speaking good, your language, N’est-ce pas?”

  I grinned. Now it was my turn to be coy. She may be correct about her incorrect grammar but there was no doubting how sexy her accent was. She gave me a positively Parisian pout, straight out of ‘Jules et Jim’. It did the trick. I knew I wanted to see her again.

  “Well, far be it for me, a mere Antipodean, to correct a teacher’s language ...” I put on my mock-pompous parody of an upper-class-twit British accent.

  “¿Qué?”

  “... especially one who is fluent in French, Spanish and Creole” I continued in the same tone, “but yes, your English is rather what we call ‘Pidgin’, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “What is this Pidgin?” she demanded, pouting expressively.

  “It’s a small bird, found in large numbers in places like Trafalgar Square, London, where they shit a lot!” I replied, trying to keep a straight face.

  She looked at me incredulously, not sure if I was being serious.

  “I no shitting pigeon! Merde!” she exclaimed, the pouting now off-the-scale cute.

  We looked at each other and collapsed in laughter. Her soulful, serious artist cover was blown and the ice was well and truly broken.

  “OK. Adios. Au revoir Madame Pigeon. Hasta mañana.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and I promised to return tomorrow.

  A little way down the path, slightly unsteady from the wine and perhaps also her kiss, I stopped and glanced back. Nicole was hugging her daughter and the two dogs, Legba and Simbi were trying to muscle between them for a cuddle.

  8

  Learning Curve

  The next morning I had an early session sailing the waves on the reef. It was nowhere near as good as the previous two days but that’s the nature of windsurfing. No two days are the same—no two waves are the same, for that matter. It’s what keeps things fresh, spontaneous. But when the wind and waves aren’t cooperating, the kiters are cutting you up and yelling abuse at you and you’re out of sync with nature, then it’s time to take a rest. So I wasn’t in the best of moods when I arrived at the little school in the jungle for my first day as Nicole’s visiting professor of English.

  She introduced me to the children: “Este es el señor Malcolm. He is helping us speak like the pigeons in London ...”

  Blank stares.

  “Él nos ayudará a hablar inglés como las palomas.”

  The classroom erupted in giggles. Then noticing my glum expression she added: “but today he is looking like a black dog.”

  I scowled at them, to illustrate the sentence.

  A cheeky little boy raised his hand. “Yes, Miguel?”

  “¡Él no es un perro negro, él es un pollo negro grande! y ...”

  More laughter. Nicole interrupted: “No, Miguel, today we are talking Eenglish ...”

  “He no black dog—he big black cheek’n!”

  I applauded Miguel and corrected him in my mock-posh British accent: “I am not a black dog, nor am I a big black chicken—I am a kangaroo! I bet you haven’t seen many of those around here?”

  Puzzled expressions, including Nicole, but now I had their attention. I picked up some chalk and drew a passable likeness of my nation’s favourite critter. Then I hopped around the room doing occasional kickboxing moves in a somewhat bizarre impression of a kangaroo with a baby roo in its pouch. My performance seemed to go down well and the black mood soon left me, lifted from my shoulders by the kids’ energy and enthusiasm to learn.

  Nicole asked me to tell the class how windsurfing worked so I grabbed a brush and illustrated my explanation by painting it into their ongoing mural, piece by piece:

  “This is the board: la tabla. This is the sail: la vela. This is the mast: el mástil. And this is the boom, um ...”

  I had no idea of the Spanish word but they knew what it was—most of them had a close familiarity with these objects, on the beach, and as essential components in the construction of their houses. I added a windsurfing kangaroo just to complete the picture.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of laughter, pidgin English and flying paint. Before long it was the end of the lesson and I was reflecting on how much fun it had been. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised—after all, teacher was the profession listed on my, or rather: Malcolm Fraser’s passport.

  Nicole seemed happy with our afternoon’s work and invited me back to the hut for a celebratory cerveza and some more of her food. I accepted gladly—I was starving and gagging for a cold one after all my exertions, particularly the kickboxing kangaroo. She prised Jacqueline away from the mural and closed up the classroom.

  As the three of us walked cheerfully along the path I couldn’t help sneaking glances at this muy elegante mujer. It had been quite a while since I’d enjoyed anyone else’s company, let alone a beautiful young woman like Nicole (the Master was more ‘challenging’ than enjoyable). My last romantic relationship had ended disastrously and I was in no rush to start another, but romance is like windsurfing: unpredictability is the name of the game!

  When we got back to the pueblo I was greeted as an amigo. Kids smiled at me, adults nodded and said hola, even the dogs remembered me. I’d been a recluse for so long I’d got used to being an outsider, but right then I felt part of a community again. That evening I began to demolish the wall I’d built around myself.

  Nicole cooked the same simple, delicious Dominican meal and we had a few glasses of the local vino tinto. After dinner, she insisted on initiating me into the pleasures of Mama Juana and that did the trick… Any remaining doubts that we would soon also be enjoying the pleasures of the flesh vanished into a euphoric rum-and-tree-bark haze.

  She sent Jacqueline to a neighbour’s house and we became lovers—as simple as that! No coyness, no persuasion, no complications. We simply tore each other’s clothes off and got down to it like a couple of dogs on heat. Straightforward honest lust. My God, how I needed it!

  Afterwards, we lay in her bed, in the afterglow, and laughed as the sweat rolled off our bodies. I kissed her, wondering what it meant, but feeling happy in the moment. Sex is like windsurfing for me—total, spontaneous immersion in the now. My previous relat
ionships had always been sexual but the sex was shallow, skin deep, like going through the motions in the gym. Sex without passion is like windsurfing without waves—one dimensional, frustrating. I always got bored pretty quickly and moved on.

  This felt different. The passion was more than skin-deep. The sex had soul. We were soulmates making love. There was an honesty in our lovemaking, a trust in our touch. It cut through the mistrust we each felt for the rest of humanity.

  “You are the first man since I leave my husband” she whispered to me. “I no trust anybody after him.”

  I could hear the anxiety in her voice when she spoke of him, almost as if she had to lower her voice in case he was stalking her.

  “But you trust me?”

  “Oui, I am seeing myself in you.”

  She looked into my eyes and smiled. I understood what she meant. She recognised her loneliness reflected in me, as I did mine in her. We were mirror images of each other. Two mixed-up mulattos: African-French, Irish-Aboriginal. Reflections within reflections. Soulmates.

  We made love again—or rather, we had glorious, uncomplicated passionate sex again. There was no need to complicate it by using the ‘L word’. No talk of “us”. No tears of regret. No worries.

  That was the first Ozzie expression I taught her. She loved it:

  “Oui, you are my meester No Worries Malcolm, the Kangaroo Kid!”

  I kissed her laughing mouth.

  “And you are Mademoiselle Pigeon, my Voodoo Child.”

  I explained how the Hendrix song had been playing in the bar when I’d been looking for her. A flicker of doubt clouded her smiling eyes at the mention of Voodoo and her contract with the Master. But it was soon ‘No Worries’ again. That would be the last time I’d think about him for almost a year.

  The next day followed a similar pattern: a frustrating session on the reef redeemed by an inspiring couple of hours with the children in the classroom and a cathartic release of frustration with Nicole. After that, we went into town for our first date—a post-coital dinner at my favourite restaurant in Cabarete: ‘Las Brisas’.

  She looked stunning, in a dress that was spectacularly sexy and elegant. I introduced her to a few of the local windsurfers—a cosmopolitan tribe gathered from all over the world. She beguiled them, effortlessly switching from Spanish to French to her own idiosyncratic version of English, which had already started to improve with my help. She was a fast learner and I wondered if I might be able to teach her my sport as well. She laughed at the suggestion, didn’t say no, but told me she “no have much time for learn to surf ...” I corrected her grammar and she added:

  “I must spend my time making tourist paintings to sell on the beach, teaching los niños and ... (she looked at me significantly) ... learn to speak English better.”

  The idea was shelved but it got me thinking: if not Nicole, then perhaps I could teach some of the kids to windsurf? The empathy I shared with them surprised me and it reassured Nicole. I loved messing around in the classroom and she found it easier to trust one of the male species who was just a big kid himself. I got on well with her daughter and even the two dogs liked having me around. I took them for long walks, exploring the jungle paths while Nicole and Jacqueline worked on their tourist paintings.

  Over the next few weeks our passionate fling evolved into a serious romance. I spent plenty of time in Nicole’s hut, gradually leaving more of my few possessions there, but it took a while before I moved in with her. I didn’t want to rush things. We maintained a healthy independence until the Windsurf Hotel became an unnecessary extravagance and I became a full-time resident of the little pueblo in the jungle.

  We were each fiercely protective of own space but we’d recognised we were soulmates that first night. I guess it was another example of the Master’s ‘gravitational attraction’. It took a while, but Nicole was only the third person (after my brother-in-arms, Robo, and Alejandro himself) to get to know the Nick concealed inside the surf-punk disguise.

  December 2015. Autumn turned to winter, although the four seasons are not well defined in the DR. It’s hot all year round but some months are also wet and some months are windy. In the autumn the wind is unreliable—all or nothing, hurricanes or calm, and it rains a lot. Some years there’s flooding. In the summer it’s humid, windy, and the Atlantic is flatter.

  After Christmas the place lit up with day after day of strong wind and waves—often challenging, sometimes majestic, occasionally even life-threatening. I had a number of long swims back from the reef with broken equipment but nothing much fazed me after my adventure drifting around the other side of the same ocean. I felt invincible and I pushed myself to the limit. Bit by bit I gained the locals’ respect until it was all high-fives on the beach and whoops on the reef. Even the kiters took me seriously and we shared waves without the usual abusive shouts.

  I was happy—happier than I’d ever been in my life. Every day was much the same, but in a good way. I learned to appreciate the stability of a healthy routine shared with the right people and to live in the present moment, like a dog—a No Worries dog, rather than un perro negro. Malcolm Fraser, the English teacher from Sydney, was happy doing what it said on his passport; and Nick Kelly, the Kangaroo Kid from WA, was happy with Nicole, his Voodoo Child.

  January 2016. The new year kicked in with an epic Merengue party on the beach. Once I’d recovered from the mother of all Mama Juana hangovers I resolved to give something back to the community that had welcomed me so warmly.

  I began with a renovation program in the pueblo and schoolhouse, using recycled windsurfing equipment from the rental centres on the beach. My first project was to build an extension to Nicole’s hut. She and Jacqueline had nowhere to paint their tourist paintings when it rained, and I was fed up with the kitchen being turned into an artist’s studio. My real motive, though, was to encourage her to rediscover her own work.

  It worked! Paintings started to appear in the new studio and stayed there rather than being sold for a few pesos on the beach. A new style began to emerge—just as radical as the strange portrait above the bed, but lighter and less brooding. She didn’t speak much about her work, but the studio had given her the space to explore art again, rather than just make paintings to live.

  When the rest of the community saw Nicole’s studio they were impressed. I’d come up with some new ways of cannibalising windsurfing components, reconfiguring them in a way that hadn’t been thought of before. What’s more, I’d been able to persuade the rental centres to donate their unused equipment before it was falling to pieces. Some of it was still in good enough condition to use for its intended purpose and this motivated me to revisit an idea that had been drifting around my head for weeks: why not start a windsurfing school for the local kids?

  Windsurfing is like a religion for me. I’d been telling them about it from my first day as their English teacher—using it to illustrate ideas, describing the places I’d visited, even telling them my survival story. They were enthralled, but none of these kids had ever been given the chance to try the sport. Here we were, a few hundred metres from one of the best spots in the world, with a thriving windsurfing economy, and yet none of them had a clue how much fun it was, let alone how it might even provide them with a job.

  The only way for a poor Dominican kid to escape from the ghetto was to be discovered by a baseball scout and taken back to the USA to join a top team. That was every local kid’s dream. Each Major League team has a training academy in different parts of the island to help develop upcoming players and every season the scouts scour the country looking for talent. Dominicans are famous as some of the best pitchers in the world. It’s in their blood, like West Indian fast bowlers or Jamaican sprinters. Perhaps these kids were also naturally talented windsurfers? I intended to find out.

  I started by setting up an old board and rig on a patch of grass outside the school and showing them the basics. Of course they loved it and Nicole had to impose strict rules: an hour of Eng
lish and if sufficient progress had been made, form a queue and you get your turn on el simulador de windsurf.

  The day came for our first outing to the beach and you’ve never seen a bunch of kids so keen to get their lessons done and dusted! I’d managed to persuade the French windsurfing centre at the far end of the beach to lend us some beginner equipment and even the hard-bitten instructors were chuffed to see the children having so much fun. They were used to adult tourists obsessing about looking cool and learning everything logically, but my lot just jumped straight in with manic Merengue enthusiasm. Before long most of them were tacking and gybing and some were experimenting with freestyle, inventing new ways of falling in. Merde, it was a joy to watch!

  Our weekly lessons became daily après-school sessions and soon we were a regular part of the Cabarete windsurfing scene. The local dudes thought it was cool, the tourists started to notice us and the foreign rental centres’ consciences were pricked. Nicole and I went round all of them asking them to donate equipment and collect money from their clients for my little escuela de windsurf—the ‘Kangaroo Windsurf School’.

  As the conditions became more challenging it became clear that one of my pupils was something special. Miguel, the little boy who’d piped up cheekily on my first day in the classroom, was more than just an unusually quick learner—he was a potential star. Within a few weeks he’d left the other kids behind and was sailing with me on the reef. A couple of months of intensive advanced coaching and he was looping. By the spring he was already better than me—somewhat humbling (and a bit galling) to see such natural raw talent.

  Nicole and I persuaded the French windsurfing centre to sponsor Miguel in a local wave sailing competition. Not only did he beat the other juniors easily, but he pushed the adults hard and came third in the pro fleet! Word spread about this talented Dominican kid and a visiting journalist wrote a piece about him for ‘Planche’ magazine, focussing on how we’d given him the opportunity to discover his hidden talents. It was heartening to see how proud the other children were of Miguel. They weren’t jealous of his success at all. They just thought it was fantastic that one of them was now a famous windsurfer.