Summer Loving (10 page)

I turn around and see what looks to me like a colossal wave heading towards me at some considerable speed. I drag myself onto the board, which Kirstan is holding steady and, looking straight ahead as ordered, paddle frantically. The board rocks from side to side and suddenly I feel the wave lift it up. This is it! I’m going to take this all the way into the beach!

Of course, that’s not what happens. As soon as the wave makes contact, it tips me and the board sideways into the water. I get a few litres of seawater up my nose and in my mouth. I start choking. A terrible feeling of panic starts to overcome me. I pat the sand with my hands to work out which way up I am, then attempt to stand up. Just as I’m doing that, a second wave comes crashing into me. This one somehow brings my surfboard with it and it narrowly misses my head.

Kirstan grabs my shoulders and puts himself between me and the third wave, as it threatens to push me back into the water. He’s laughing.

‘What’s so bloody funny?’

‘Nothing at all! That was a good go. You were, er, on the board there for a good couple of seconds. It was the wave. It came in at an angle. Took your balance.’

‘But you
told
me to take it!’

‘I thought you might be able to catch it. No matter. We’ll wait for another one.’

Which we do. We catch another and another and another and another. Each one of them throws me off the board and into the water. Sometimes I don’t even get on the board in the first place. Well, at least the water isn’t freezing. I’d never be able to take this if we were in Cornwall. Kirstan doesn’t get irritated or lose his cool with me, though. I can see how he’d be quite good at this.

‘Come on, now. Don’t worry about going in the water. It’s nothing. As long as I’m here with you, nothing will happen to you. We’ve only been out here for about fifteen minutes.
We’ll let these ankle snappers go by; they won’t be much use. I’ll get you a good one. Just be patient.

As
long
as
I’m
here
with
you
,
nothing
will
happen
to
you
.

Oh god. That’s what he used to say when he was trying to persuade me to learn surfing all those years ago. I really must stop this. This is unhealthy.

‘Here! Here we go! Get up on the board. Look behind you. See it? It’s about five seconds away. Now paddle! Fast!’

My arms, which are aching by now, paddle as hard as they can. I try to keep the board from wobbling and try to keep it pointing in the direction of the beach. I must keep looking at the bloody beach. My back hurts. I can feel the surge of the wave behind me and suddenly, it’s like I’m flying. It seems like I’m travelling unbelievably fast and the rush is incredible. Water sprays over my face. The beach, which seemed pretty far away a few seconds ago, is now looming up to meet me. I’ve done it! I’ve bloody done it!

Kirstan runs up to me as the sea recedes and leaves me and the board on the sand.

‘Great! Well done!’

‘Woo! That felt great!’

‘That’s just the start.’

He takes my hand and helps me to a standing position. I stand facing him, grinning like an idiot. It’s all I can do to stop myself putting my arms around his neck. This is so, so confusing. It’s like the present and the past are all getting mixed up in my head. I have to keep reminding myself where I am, who I am, and when this is.

I probably try my luck with about thirty more waves before we finish the lesson. I’m feeling exhausted and I’ve no idea how long we’d been in the sea. According to Kirstan, I managed to ride about twelve or thirteen of those into the beach. Lying down, of course. I still can’t stand up. On the three occasions I attempted to stand, I ended up drinking most of the wave, not riding it.

When we’re finished, he helps me off with my wetsuit. I have to say, it was a bit peculiar when he pulled the zip down my back! He rinses both our wetsuits under a beachside shower and we head towards one of the bars. The amount of salt water I’ve had in my mouth over the past hour or so has made me feel even thirstier than I was before.

On our way along the beach, I spot five small cabin-looking things as we approach the hotel. They’re about a dozen feet apart and each one has a different coloured, single door. They have straw roofs, as if whoever made them tried to get a Caribbean theme going. They look like extra-large changing huts that you see in Britain. Kirstan points at them.

‘Yellow door is Janica, Orange door is me.’

‘Wow! That’s where you live? They look really cool.’

‘Yeah. It’s fantastic hearing the waves before you go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning. They’re not palaces, y’know, but who needs a palace?’

‘Your door is the same shade of orange as that surfboard you used to have.’

‘Fancy you remembering that!’

I remember every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of that entire year.

‘It was a pretty distinctive colour.’

‘Wow. Yeah. That one bought it. I lent it to Cliff. Remember him? Really thin guy. Anyway, he was out on it and the leash snapped. It hit some rocks. Hole in it the size of my fist. Big crack down the centre. Couldn’t be fixed. I was really choked. I’d had it since I was fifteen. We buried it in the woods.’

‘You
buried
a surfboard?’

‘Yeah! It was the least I could have done.’

It’s so hot, I can see steam coming off my swimming costume. The guy behind the bar waves at Kirstan and grins, widening his eyes. I guess he thinks Kirstan is on the pull with one of the rich clients.

‘I could murder a coffee.’

‘Oh, they do great ones here. Really strong.’

‘I haven’t got any money on me.’

‘It’s OK. It’ll be free. I’m staff.’

We fetch two coffees from the bar, sit down at a rickety table and look at each other.

Seven

Kirstan has been giving surf lessons here for around nine months. Janica has been here for just under two years. They both live, rent-free, in chalets owned by the hotel that overlook the beach and the sea. I can’t imagine how much Kirstan must love this. He gets up, has a coffee and a croissant, then surfs to his heart’s content before the lessons start, which is daily at 9.30. Last lesson of the day is 4.30 in the afternoon. He and Janica get Sundays off and there are no lessons after midday on Saturdays. Sounds like one of those jobs that people fantasise about.

‘Who was the other guy I saw down in your reception in the wetsuit? Is he a surf instructor too?’

‘Red hair?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s Antoine. He’s the windsurfing guy. He’s fun. Drinks like a fish. Hates all the tourists. French.’

‘Have you tried windsurfing?’

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

I’d forgotten Kirstan’s total contempt for all sports that weren’t surfing. Not that surfing actually
is
a sport, you understand.

‘So what have you been doing since…’

‘Since?’ He fakes an innocent expression.

‘Since you worked in the surf shop.’ He’s trying to wind me up. It’s not going to work.

‘Well, I was there for another year or thereabouts. Maybe less. Didn’t do much. Then Larry – d’you remember him? – he asked me if I’d like to go with him to The South of France for a couple of months. There were a lot of new sponsored surf contests going on at the time and he reckoned him and me could clean up over there as he reckoned the competition was particularly weedy that year.’

‘I thought you never did competitions. I thought you said that…’

‘Well it was a bit against my philosophy, but I wanted a bit of a change.’ His expression suddenly darkens. He swallows and recovers. ‘So we went over there and it took us two or three small contests to get the measure of the other guys and then we started winning. This was Larry, by the way. Not to be confused with Laurie, the one with the stammer.’

‘So what did you do? Did you get money prizes?’

‘No. They just paid us in t-shirts, stickers and key rings and stuff. Of course it was bloody money prizes! God! Anyway, we stuck at that for about three months until the threats started so we got out while the going was good. Larry went off with some girl he’d picked up somewhere to South Africa and I stayed in France for another year and started to give surf lessons at small schools around Seignosse, Hossegor and all that area. Had a blast there, alright. God almighty!’

‘And then you came here.’

‘Oh, no, no. I went to Ireland after that. Underrated surf there, I can tell you. I lived off the prize money and did some more surf lessons. Stayed there for two years or something like that.’

It’s difficult to take my eyes off him; he looks so tanned and healthy. His arm muscles have got bigger and more defined as well. I try to work out how old he must be now. Has to be thirty-one. Looks younger. Why am I bothering to think like this?

‘So from Ireland to…?’

‘Back to the UK. West Wales. Got a regular job with an accredited surf school. Learnt a lot of stuff I didn’t know and they like you to do all the lifesaving to a higher degree. Started shaping boards with this guy who’d done it in America, though he wasn’t American, he was Dutch. Can you imagine it? A Dutch surfer? Doesn’t sound right, does it. I’ve got two of the boards with me here. Ones I made myself, that is. There were three, but one got stolen. First time that has happened. Stayed there for, er, must have been a few years. Then back to France for a while, then South Africa to stay with Larry, around nine or ten months in Sri Lanka then here. Larry’s girlfriend had heard about this place from someone or other, so I gave them a bell.’

‘Phew! What next?’

‘Well, this is actually my last week. I’m finishing after tomorrow’s lessons. There’s a girl coming to replace me. She’s from Mauritius, apparently, wherever that is.’

‘Just outside Guildford.’

‘Ah. I’d forgotten you did geography. Her name’s Cyana. Never heard that one before.’

‘It’s pretty.’             

He laughs. ‘It seems odd, but you might be the last person I teach here! Oh, and I won a few competitions in South Africa, too. Got knocked unconscious there and had to be rescued.
Exciting. Lost a tooth, but I had a fake one put in. Anyway, yeah, next. Janica’s brother runs a surf school in Australia. She’s put in a word, so I’m going down there. I wasn’t too keen at first, ‘cause of all the bad shit in the sea, you know, sharks, jellyfish, tourists and all of it, but she says the sharks rarely attack humans. I don’t believe her, of course. I read all the surf mags. I’ve seen the photographs.’

‘Why is she here, then?’

‘Oh, some love affair or other. Happened ages ago. She’s been travelling from place to place to put it out of her mind. A wandering heartbroken surfer.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Yeah. So what did you think of surfing, then? So far as what you did could be described as surfing. I’m kidding. For a first lesson, that was pretty good.’

I remember the rush I felt zooming across the water. ‘It was fantastic. Really great. It was so
fast
! I didn’t realise. I felt that adrenaline surge you get on things at a funfair. It’s that moment when you know the wave has got you, and is propelling you along.’ I’m smiling. I’m laughing. I feel like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s life for an hour.

‘Yeah, well it seems fast because you’re lying down and you’re so close to the water. Bet you wish you’d learnt all those years ago now.’

I smile, but I don’t reply. It seems so sad to think of that time now. ‘This is weird, isn’t it, Kirstan.’

‘Yeah. We both keep saying that, don’t we? I think we can take it as read now that this is weird.’

‘I’m glad you’re OK. You look really healthy. I used to wonder…I used to wonder if you’d been killed or something, sometimes. If something awful like that had happened to you and I would never have known about it.’

‘I can get out of most tricky situations.’

‘I know.’

I look down at my feet. I’m pursing my lips so I don’t cry again.

‘So am I going to meet this boyfriend of yours? What’s his name? Franklin? Why isn’t he here with you?’

I explain that he’s a big golf fan and that he and a friend have gone to this famous course for a day or so.

‘So he’s come on holiday to this idyllic setting with
you
and he’s off playing
golf
with some other bloke for a couple of days.’

He spits out the word ‘golf’ like it’s poison in his mouth.

‘Yes. I don’t mind. Gives me a couple of days to do what
I
want to do.’

Kirstan take a gulp of his coffee. I can see by his expression that he knows there’s something not quite right here, but he hasn’t worked out what it is yet.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you sound like some middle-aged married couple who are bored with each other’s company.’