‘That’s even worse. We’re talking water, not wood.’
‘Same difference. It’s a living thing. And so are you. Fight it, like just now, and the river will always win. Make it your friend — ’ the sudden grin took her by surprise ‘- and anything can happen.’
They tried again. This time, Lizzie was worse. Sheer concentration made her nervous. Nervous, she began to wobble. Wobbling finally brought them to a halt. By now they were back beside the stretch of beach that led to the compound.
At slack tide the water was like a mirror. Downstream, Lizzie could see a couple of quads heading seawards. For a moment she envied them but then she felt the gentlest tap on her shoulder. It was Pendrick.
‘Drink?’ he suggested.
They went to a pub on the seafront. To Lizzie, it was the sanest decision they’d made all evening. There were benches and tables on the big apron of forecourt and Pendrick disappeared inside to the bar. Lizzie gazed out at the beginnings of a decent sunset. For mid-April, it was still warm.
‘Cheers. Here’s to your lovely bum.’
Pendrick was back with the drinks. He slid into the bench across the table. The same subtle grace, she thought. The same instinctive sense of balance that had just steadied the bloody double.
‘Thanks for putting up with me.’ She lifted her glass.
Pendrick shrugged. The double was history. They’d have another go when she was ready. Meantime he’d just remembered what date it was.
‘You know what I was doing this time last year?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Rowing.’
‘I said surprise me.’
‘We were a week out from Cape Cod. It was an evening like this. I remember it like yesterday.’
Lizzie was staring at him.
‘Cape Cod’s in Massachusetts,’ she said.
‘You’re right.’
‘You’re telling me you were on the Atlantic? For a whole week? Rowing?’
‘Yeah. And the next week and the week after and. .’ his hand closed around the pint of Guinness ‘. . for ever really.’
Lizzie had abandoned her drink. Something in this man’s face had been nagging at her since she’d first met him and now she realised what it was. The hair, she thought. He had hair then.
‘You’re the guy who rowed the Atlantic,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘And lost his wife.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It was all over the papers.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Happy anniversary, eh?’
Lizzie didn’t know where to take this conversation next. As a working journalist she’d have had no problems. There were ways you could get people to open up. But this was different. She felt she’d begun to know this man a little. She’d shared something precious with him. She might have fucked up just now in the double but she’d fallen in love with rowing and that she owed to Pendrick.
‘You want to talk about it?’ she said at last.
‘You want to listen?’
‘Of course.’ Lizzie fought an urge to reach for his hand. ‘Tell me.’
He gazed at her then looked away. For a moment Lizzie thought she’d blown it — too hasty, too blatant — but then he was back with her. He wanted to start somewhere else. He wanted to start in Thailand.
He and his wife, he said, had spent the best part of three years bumming round the world with a couple of surfboards and not much else. They’d spent time in California, in Oz, in New Zealand. He was an electrician by trade, and Kate had nursing qualifications, and whenever the money ran out they’d work for a couple of months then hit the beaches again.
‘Is that when you got your scar?’ Lizzie had been dying to ask.
‘Yeah. I got dumped on a reef down near Melbourne. Place called Suicide Beach. Split my face open from here to here. .’ His finger tracked down from the corner of his eye. ‘Thank Christ Kate was there. She stopped most of the bleeding and got me to a hospital. My own bloody fault.’
‘It didn’t put you off?’
‘Never. Surfing’s a drug. You can’t get enough.’
‘Sounds great.’
‘It was. Kate and I? We had nothing in the world except the ocean. It’s amazing how rich that can make you feel.’
‘I’m sure. Did Kate think that way as well?’
‘Most of the time.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
After New Zealand, he said, they took a flight to Bangkok, bought an old camper van from a Scouser heading home and drove south.
‘You know Thailand at all?’
‘No.’
‘The best bits are down by the Malay border. We ended up in a village just inland from the beach, place called Ao Lok. We spent the whole summer there, Mr and Mrs Idle, just surfing, swimming, making friends with the locals, totally lovely people. It was a brilliant time.’
After a while, he said, they’d become part of the village. They were renting a hut from someone who’d gone off to work in Phuket. Pendrick would do the odd wiring job for various neighbours while Kate would help out with the kids when they got sick. In return, families would give them food and invite them along for the party when a daughter was getting married or a long-lost cousin flew in from Europe or the States.
‘It was like we belonged.’ He was smiling. ‘It was a nice feeling.’
‘And Kate?’
‘She was cool with it. In fact she loved it. I think it gave her something we’d never had before. We both came from broken homes. The last thing these people were was broken.’
Ao Lok, he said, was as perfect as perfect can be.
‘Like how? Tell me.’
‘You could hear the surf at night through the trees. We lived on fruit and bread and fish and rice. Like I say, we were in the water most days. Kate used to look after this little boy, Niran, and she taught him to swim. Once he’d got his confidence, I’d paddle him out on the surf board. He loved it. Fantastic little kid. Always grinning. Happiness on legs. We wanted to kidnap him. Tuck him in the back of the camper and drive away. But what would be the point? Where in the world would ever be more perfect than Ao Lok?’
Lizzie mistook this as a question. She was trying to offer something similar in her own life but failed completely. Pendrick hadn’t finished.
‘You know something really strange?’ he said. ‘For years we’d always been moving on. It becomes a kind of habit, maybe stronger than that, maybe a kind of addiction. You’re convinced there’s always something better round the next corner, and so you look and you look and then you find somewhere like Ao Lok and you realise you’ve found it. It’s the end of the line. It’s where you belong. It’s where you want to stay. Maybe for ever. Except we couldn’t. Because it became impossible.’
‘How come?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Daft question.’
Pendrick got up to fetch another Guinness. Then he was back.
‘Boxing Day.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘We’re up and about and Kate’s taken Niran down to the beach. I’ve told them I’ll be along later. We’ve sold the camper and I’m trying to sort an old moped we’ve just bought. Next thing I know, there’s this roaring noise, a bit like thunder. It gets louder and louder then there are people running up from the beach through the trees. They’re yelling about a huge wave coming. I run down towards the beach and get there in time to see this wave breaking way out in the bay. They’re right. It’s vast. Kate’s down there too. The water is being sucked out to sea ahead of the wave and she’s running after Niran. By the time she catches him, the wave’s on top of them both. That’s the last I saw of the kid. No one ever found him.’
‘And Kate?’
‘She survived. Sort of.’
Afterwards, he said, he and Kate went to America. They’d made friends a while back with a couple from California, surfers like themselves. Kate was really close to the woman — nice girl, half Sri-Lankan. They picked up casual jobs for a while, then got green cards, which made it all legit. They were still spending time by the ocean, he said, but it was never the same.