Sea Change (35 page)

He sets all this on a wooden tray and takes it upstairs to the bedroom, where he finds Marta back in bed, sitting up against the headboard. He wants them to eat in here, to bless this space where they spent the night.

She looks up at him, coy and glad and ever-so-slightly amazed at herself. It’s the first time he’s truly seen her, he thinks. Everything he’s known of her, before, up to this point, can be forgotten. It begins here, he thinks, with this.

‘How are you?’ he asks.

‘Very well.’

‘Me too.’

‘
Ég segi allt ljómandi
,’ she says, smiling.

‘Everything’s shining,’ he replies.

He sets the tray down. The room still has the smell of the night before, of their breathing, of their journey, of their slight uncertainty, and their growing comfort, too, their sheer relief of having chosen to be with each other, with no one else around, no one else knowing. The room seems quietened, as a result.

‘I’ve made you eggs,’ he says.

‘You’re a marvel.’

‘And I put one sugar in your coffee.’

‘Perfect.’

And what he doesn’t tell her should really be the only thing he needs to tell her, now: that the love he thought had left his life - it can be found again.

He has a simple realization - that he doesn’t have to face things entirely by himself. There are people who are willing to share your burden, share it with all their heart, for every breath, every day, for as long as they live. If you are lucky enough to find someone like that, then you are blessed, and right now, Guy feels blessed.

It’s a brilliantly sunny morning. He walks through the village, passing its weathered stone houses and small front lawns bordered with white picket fences, out along the single road that skirts the bay, through the rising outcrops of rock, all lying at the angle of their bedding planes as they point out to sea in long grey slabs. He looks back, at the huddled village, surrounded by the low treeless braes of limestone, and he sees Marta standing where he left her in a small cove of the bay. She’s taken her shoes and socks off, and is about to paddle when she sees him, looking at her. They wave at each other.

Banjo runs up to Guy and leans, panting and friendly, against his leg. Banjo’s mouth hangs open and his teeth are wet with spit and black with soil, while the long candy-strip of his tongue hangs out, quivering. There’s a wild-eyed look of exertion that makes Guy laugh, the dog wags his tail in response, and swallows several times in gratitude.

He disappears among the rocks, crawling and scrambling along them till he reaches their furthermost point where they slope at an angle into the sea. Not his sea this time, but an ocean: the Atlantic.

The sea floods on to shelves of the rock, then drains off, leaving behind glistening mats of gold and green seaweed. He realizes this is the same rocky ledge where the photo of Howard was taken. Guy stands in the same spot, looking out across the vastness of the ocean and at the mountains on the islands in the distance, wearing another man’s trunks and swimming goggles. A dead man at that. It’s a fine way to end up, he thinks, but he isn’t unduly bothered by the thought. Accept all, he thinks. We slip in and out of each other’s lives constantly. We hold on to things, we should let things pass, because all things must pass.

Long tubular sections of kelp stick out of the water, steaming softly in the morning light. When each wave sweeps in, he watches its motion suddenly braking and dispersing, the wave slowing to half its speed, and lifting the necks of the plant in long wide rafts, as if the seawater is suddenly as thick as oil. He can see the kelp swaying eerily beneath the surface in long bronze horsetails. There are deep clear pools in it, and avenues where the seaweed closes and opens as the water pours through.

Guy fixes Howard’s goggles over his eyes and slips into the water, immediately feeling the greasy stroke of kelp around his legs. He pushes his way through it and slides into one of the open pools, sinking beneath the surface into a silently fanning world of weed blowing in the currents. The kelp surrounds him in waving fronds. It feels dangerous and mysterious, the distances opening up and separating and then closing in front of his eyes.

Above him, suddenly, is a sparkle of light, and he sees a cascade of bubbles spearing down towards him as Banjo’s feathery paws paddle the water, the dog’s long belly hair streaming as he swims. Guy surfaces and comes face to face with his dog, huffing away with his chin out of the water, a useless piece of driftwood in his mouth.

‘You OK?’ Guy asks, as Banjo paddles in circles round him. Guy dives again. The water is cool and light and about as refreshing a substance as he can imagine. He kicks and reaches forward into the kelp, which parts effortlessly into a glimpse of open water, and he swims towards it, as the fronds of weed caress his legs and arms. Below him, he notices the seabed is now not so rocky - it’s dusted with a finely crumbled white of coral. There are starfish down there, rubbery and bright orange, with the tips of their legs curling upwards. He sees a crab, scuttling one way, then the other, a rusty pincer raised at his shadow. Nature in all its wonderful abundance, in sparkling glory.

Guy swims through the last ribbons of the kelp, and he notices the seabed lowering steeply. Then he watches how Banjo’s paws, fanned out wide, dig fast at the water, as the dog moves from left to right in uncertain little changes of direction, suspended above the deepness like a puppet.

He treads water, next to his dog, who still has the piece of wood in his mouth. Banjo swims towards him with a newfound urgency, then turns quickly and heads back towards the kelp and the rocks. Guy watches him clamber out, drop the wood, shake and bark. He looks skinny.

Now Guy swims faster, remembering the time he swam in the North Sea, the coldness and the feeling of being cleansed, of being anointed. Around him the water seems so crystal clear, so sparkling, but as it reaches away into the open ocean that same water begins to lose something, its own sense of lightness, its own sense of clarity, but gains something too - a shadow, a wide deep shadow which has that same soft blue light he has sought so many times before. The glow that rises, haze-like, in the bluebell woods. The blueness at the edge of things, where the world seems to reveal a hint of its own true nature. Mysterious. Beyond reach.

He thinks he is on the verge of a great understanding. That the true nature of all things is that of calmness, that the true spirit of all he’s been searching for is here, so close to him, emerging all around. This soft blue light which surrounds us at times, so gentle, so essential. He goes towards it, welcoming it like a pleasant memory, a sense of himself which is balanced and full of well being.

But while he looks there, far away where the water seems to thicken with shadow, he sees something entirely strange and confusing. A stubborn shape, darker and more impenetrable than the water that surrounds it, moving slowly towards him. He looks hard in the attempt to define it and as he does so it vanishes, or fades, into the wider gloom of the ocean. He stays, trying not to move, looking all around. There is nothing. But a sense remains that he’s no longer entirely alone.

The basking shark takes shape again, solid among the shadows, swimming with an effortless side-to-side motion towards him. Its mouth hangs open, enormously, as it filters the plankton, and as he looks into the jaw he can see how the giant fish is ridged from within, like a Zeppelin model, with a structure that seems to be both inflated and solid, its mouth suggesting an open tent-like interior, but a darkness inside which is nothing but flesh, so dark in fact, that it appears to come from a tunnel longer than the length of the shark would allow.

It swims closer now, mottled like a gherkin, coming at him with an easy rhythm, and he makes out its eyes, set either side of the nose like a pince-nez, but as unreflective as a cut of black flint, and when it passes, close by, he sees the rows of gills that strangely turn the shark into a watery soft shape at the front, as if it’s rippling - giving it a sense of illusion, that it’s not really there.

The basking shark has passed a few feet away from Guy, never once deviating from its route, although it must have seen the man looking so closely, so full of amazement. He turns to watch it leave, its long asymmetrical tail waving effortlessly, its tip feathering the surface of the sea like the tip of an oar. Nothing to steer it, no direction for it to go, except on, into the ocean, into the blue distance that seems to collect round it and remove it from view, in parts, in totality.

He lies on his back to stare up at the sky, once more feeling that he’s on that taut line of nothingness, above nothing, below nothing, then he begins to swim back, rounding the rocks, towards Marta. He sees her standing in the cove, knee-deep in the water, the colourful sarong tied round her waist, such a small object in all this hugeness.

To reach her he wades through the water for the last few steps. She holds out her hand and he takes it and he doesn’t let it go. They embrace each other, an intimacy in all this space. Home at last. And he sees, on the ridge of her shoulder, a perfectly formed bead of water on her skin. It trembles and glistens with the sun caught inside. He smiles affectionately at it, at the memories it brings back to him, not of pain and loss, but of love. The whole world in there, if you look close enough. And he brings his hand up towards it, choosing a finger, choosing a different finger, watching the sparkle of light go out as the shadow of his hand approaches. Then he touches it, marvelling at the fragility of the curving strand between his finger and the drop of water and, a moment later, it has vanished.

In loving memory of Kate Jones

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Kate Barker and the editorial team at Viking, and to Karolina Sutton, for all her hard work. Thanks also to Kathryn Court, Alexis Washam and Sloan Harris. I am indebted to my family, especially to my mother, for her ceaseless energy and spirit, my father, and to Andrew, for his guidance. Thanks also to Juliette Howell, James Clatworthy, Barley Norton, Laura Sampson and Cormac McCarthy. For the boat, thanks to Dominique Rivoal, the
Corlea
, the
Vriendschap
, and all the boats of the Fresh Wharf Creek. Also to Neil Trevithick, the
Flood
, the
Anna-Gale
and the
Albatross
. Apologies to the
Janet
, for crashing you into the bridge, and bless the
Misty
, which was lost in the North Sea.

Thanks to the shed, where this book was written.

Thank you Liz, for your love and wisdom, as always, and for driving across America with me.

And to my children, Jacob and Barley, for bringing such happiness.