I instantly regret my decision to insert myself into the race, instead of just letting the boys get on with it. I should have stood aside and let Ray mash Joel into the ground, but I saw red, and when that happens, I make irrational and stupid decisions.
Ones I later come to regret. In this case, a mere few minutes later.
But I can’t back out now – I’ll look like a coward, and I can just see the delighted expression on Joel’s face if I withdraw from the race. Also, I’m pretty sure Cara actually wants nothing to do with any of it, so if I can inconvenience her a little as well, I will do. This comes from a place of sheer, petty jealousy, I’ll happily admit. I’ve got ten years and ten pounds on her at least, and I don’t like it at all.
I didn’t like that smug smile she had on her face when she handed me that Tic Tac, either. I could tell she was taking great delight in my misfortune.
My stomach gives a small gurgle as Joel and Cara draw up alongside us. This is probably nerves, but I’m also hoping and praying it isn’t anything else. I can’t just drop my shorts and shove my bum over the side of the kayak, now can I?
‘We all ready, then?’ Joel says in that voice he always uses when he wants to sound cheerful, but is really anything but inside.
Gah.
I wish I didn’t know him as well as I do. I wish I couldn’t read him like a book. But I do, and I can. He was a huge part of my life for so long, whether I like it or not, and all the contents of that book stay with you long after the fact. I know what he’s doing. I know he’s trying to prove that he’s ‘still got it’. It’s quite exceptionally sad.
‘Yes,’ Ray replies calmly. He doesn’t sound flustered in the slightest. I’d like to think I know Ray as well as I know Joel, and I’m pretty sure that he’s as calm as he sounds – but we’ve only been together for a relatively short time, and I have to confess there are things about him I’m still discovering. He’s not a man of many layers, though, I know that much. What you see is what you get. That’s the thing that attracted me to him in the first place. Ray is simple to understand, and simplicity is very attractive. He probably is as calm and collected as he appears.
But I can’t be one hundred per cent sure . . .
I despise the fact that I know the man I hate more than the man I love.
‘Excellent!’ Joel replies, voice cracking a little at the end. ‘On the count of three, then?’ He raises one hand. It’s shaking slightly. ‘One! Two! Three!’
Joel brings his hand down and I feel the kayak surge forward underneath me.
Oh shit. That’s right, isn’t it? I have to help Ray paddle, don’t I? Properly this time, as well. Up until now I’ve been making half-hearted efforts to dip my paddle blades into the water and at least look like I’m contributing, but I haven’t been really. Ray’s been doing all the work.
But that’s not going to wash now. Ray is by far the stronger, better kayaker of the two men, but I am also by far the weaker of the two women.
I slap my paddle awkwardly into the water and wrench my arm back. The instant I do I feel a sharp stab of nausea suffuse my being. Unbidden, images of half-digested beef Bolognaise enter my mind, and the nausea grows.
Oh, Christ. Am I going to be able to do this?
From my left-hand side I see Joel and Cara starting to catch Ray and me.
Yes! Yes, I can bloody do this, because that man cannot win!
I grit my teeth together, try to ignore the nausea, and attempt to copy the long, strong strokes Ray is easily pulling off in front of me.
This is partially successful, and we move into a relatively healthy lead.
I turn my head back to look at Joel, who is a picture of suffering. His face is beetroot red, and every time his right arm sends the paddle back into the water, he winces painfully. Behind him, Cara now looks quite determined. What she’s determined about I don’t know – maybe it’s rethinking her relationship with my ex-husband. One can only hope.
Regardless, she’s making a lot more effort than I am, and is therefore powering them both back towards us again.
Oh God!
I’m letting Ray down!
‘You okay back there?’ he asks me, hardly out of breath at all.
‘Yes! Yes, I’m fine! Just trying to keep up with you!’
‘You’re doing fine! Just remember . . . long, strong strokes!’
‘Yes!’
Long, strong strokes. Long, strong strokes.
Just keep them long, strong and strokey, Caddick. You’ll be fine.
And for a few minutes I am.
As we come alongside the island and start to kayak down its length, I do start to get into something of a rhythm. The nausea goes to the back of my mind, and my concentration levels go up. This doesn’t seem to correlate much with a faster pace from the kayak, but at least I feel like I’m psychologically contributing something, rather than just being a dead weight.
All I hear is the sound of my paddle hitting the surface of the water, and sliding beneath.
Swoosh, it goes.
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
Swoo—
Thwack!
My concentration is broken completely when my paddle connects with something, making an almighty clattering noise.
I look over to see that Joel and Cara have drifted very close to us. So close that Joel’s paddle has just hit mine.
‘Oi! Get away!’ I scream at him, desperately trying to restore my rhythm as I do so.
I was just starting to get into it there . . .
‘You get away!’ Joel roars back, also stabbing his paddle back into the water on the other side of the kayak.
I do much the same thing, which means that when we both go to swap sides with our paddles once more, we inevitably try to stick them in the same patch of water, and they clash again.
‘Fuck off!’ I bellow. ‘Move out a bit!’
‘You move in a bit!’ he screams back.
‘No!’
Thwack!
‘You’ve got all that bloody ocean on your side!’ I tell him, blood pressure rising like a volcano.
‘It gets too deep! We can’t go out beyond the white buoys!’ he whines.
Thwack!
‘Don’t be such a scaredy cat!’
‘Stop being so bloody stubborn!’
Thwack!
Up front Ray decides to take matters into his own hands and steers us closer to the shore.
Dammit! That’s given ground to Joel! Why did he do that?
It also means that it’s given Cara a chance to bring their kayak level with ours. She’s now really got her head down, and is motoring along like someone who’s suddenly decided they want to win.
Get back into the groove, woman!
Yes!
I will indeed get into the groove! Just like Madonna once told me to do back in the Eighties . . . although, to be honest, I always thought that song was a barely concealed bit of innuendo about her vagina.
Regardless, I try my hardest to concentrate again, as the two kayaks briskly race towards the other end of the island.
And it works.
With me humming ‘Into the Groove’ under my breath, we start to increase our speed again – this time with me definitely contributing something to proceedings.
I’ve just reached the bit of the song where Madonna is letting me know that dancing can be such a sweet sensation, when I feel the kayak slow considerably.
Ray must be flagging!
Oh no! I’m not doing enough! I’m not paddling hard enough!
I redouble my efforts, the cords of my neck muscles starting to stand out as I wrench the paddle back through the water.
‘Amy!’ I hear Ray exclaim ahead of me, but I ignore him. I have to concentrate on my strokes!
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
‘Amy!’
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
‘Amy! Dugong!’ he cries, lifting
his paddle out of the water completely.
What is he doing? We have to keep paddling!
Joel’s kayak comes alongside again. They’re catching us!
‘See, cow!’ Joel screams at me.
‘Fuck you!’ I scream back.
Yes! I can see that you’ve caught us, you utter bastard! And don’t call me a fucking cow!
‘See cow!’ Joel cries again, this time pointing ahead of him.
‘Stop calling me a cow!’ I roar back at him.
Ray has now actively stabbed his paddle down into the water, causing us to veer sharply off to the right, towards the shore.
What is he doing?!
‘Dugong, Amy!’ he exclaims again.
Dugong?
What the hell is he talking abou—
Then I see it . . .
Breaking the surface of the otherwise calm ocean water is a massive grey lump – the back of a sea creature that in any other circumstance I would be delighted and privileged to get a look at.
I have to yank my paddle out of the ocean with all of my might to stop it whacking the poor creature. The water is so clear that I can see its enormous head turned up towards me, its placid eyes regarding me with a look of endless patience.
‘Sea cow!’ Joel cries again, and I understand what he’s actually saying this time. There’s an excited, boyish expression on his face as his kayak passes by, on the other side of the majestic animal.
We’ve all stopped paddling now. Partially so we don’t stab them into the dugong that’s calmly making its way along the bottom of the shallow sea, and partially because the sight of it has taken us all by complete surprise.
This is one of the most endangered species on our planet, and here we are – lucky enough to see one in its natural habitat. Probably one of the very few left in this area of the world.
For a moment, our race is completely forgotten about, as we all slide serenely past the grazing creature, watching it with awestruck expressions on our faces as it moves beneath us.
‘That’s amazing,’ Ray says, staring down into the water.
‘Oh God, isn’t it lovely?’ Cara remarks, doing the same.
Tears actually prick my eyes.
It’s a big, fat greyish brown lump, with a face only a mother could love, but it’s also one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
The kayaks glide by it, and as they do I can’t take my eyes off the dugong, until the angle is too sharp to be able to see it anymore under the surface of the water. That’s when I look up, and Joel’s eyes meet with mine.
For the first time in years, there’s no malice or hurt in our combined expression. We both know we’ve just experienced something incredible – and for the briefest of moments, our anger towards one another disappears.
The look goes on between us for slightly longer than it probably should, before I feel the kayak surge underneath me again, as Ray gets back to the race.
I break away from looking at my ex-husband’s awestruck face, and try to get my head back into the competition.
For a good twenty feet, neither kayak gets up much speed as we all try to process what we’ve just seen. But as we get further away from the dugong, and start to come past the other end of the island, the reality of the race reasserts itself.
So much so, that by the time we’re paddling alongside the other row of water bungalows, the run-in with the majestic sea cow is firmly pushed to the back of my mind.
. . . though I have a feeling that when all is said and done, seeing it will be one of the strongest memories I will have of this holiday, whatever else happens.
Ray is now glancing over at Joel every once in a while to check where their kayak is in relation to ours – and unfortunately, they’re pretty close. That’s thanks to Cara’s fitness levels, and Joel’s stubborn streak.
I swear that man would die just to prove a point.
Looking at him I can see that he’s obviously not enjoying this race one bit. All his talk of friendly, light-hearted competition was of course a load of old cobblers. This was, is, and always will be about him measuring the size of his dick against Ray’s.
The fact of the matter is that they both own penises of roughly the same size, but I wouldn’t tell either of them that, because even saying a man has a penis roughly the same size as another man is taken as an insult, for reasons I cannot fathom for the life of me.
Mind you, I’m not sure Ray would care all that much. He’s so laid back about almost everything in life, I have to marvel at the fact he doesn’t walk around with permanent back ache. Going from the maelstrom of neuroses and stress ticks that Joel is, to the calm, steady demeanour that Ray cultivates was both a shock and a relief.
I was intensely glad to find a man who doesn’t make my life more hectic than I can handle. I recognise that I have my own set of strange mental quirks that don’t play well with others, and Ray has been a calming influence on them, whereas Joel just exacerbated them at every opportunity – deliberately or otherwise.
I’m so pleased to be living a life without Joel Sinclair causing me constant stress and emotional drainage.
. . . or rather I would be, were it not for the fact that I’m currently getting splattered in the face by Indian Ocean water, as I paddle like a mad thing, in a race I actually want no part of.
Oh, and I’ve also just thrown up.
A few moments ago, while I was talking about Joel’s penis.
I didn’t mention it, as there wasn’t much to it, to be honest. Barely visible. I’m breathing so hard and am so covered in sea water that a little bit of unstoppable vomit is hardly worth the bother of detailing.
It just came out as I was ducking the paddle into the water on my left, while simultaneously taking another huge, ragged breath.
I should be horrified by this, but I’m not. All I can think about is beating Joel, and winning this race. That’s where my mind is at, as Ray starts to shift the kayak around to the right, and we head to the end of the water bungalows. The ones that you can see the sunset from on the veranda . . .
Aaaargh!
‘Faster, Ray!’ I demand of my fiancé. ‘We’ve got to get ahead again!’
‘Okay, sweetheart!’ he calls back and starts to paddle harder.
Our kayak surges once more into a healthy lead as we round the island, and start to head back in roughly the direction that we came.
This side of the island is a lot busier with people than the other. This is largely due to the fact that the gorgeous coral reef that surrounds the island is most easily accessible from this side. This means there are quite a lot of guests snorkelling their way through the water, forcing us to head further out into the deeper ocean to avoid them.
This is the last thing I need as I’m getting increasingly more and more tired. The waves out here are a bit choppier, which makes the paddling harder. If we weren’t a good two thirds of the way through this race, I would probably be thinking about giving up.
The fact I’m getting weary means that Joel and Cara have closed the gap again.
‘Push, Ray! Push!’ I encourage feverishly, not wanting us to lose our lead.
‘Trying as hard as I can, sweetie!’ he cries back, trying to sound as positive as possible about the situation. It’s quite clear that I’m the dead weight in this kayak, though. Just like Joel is in the other.
Speaking of whom, he’s now covered in snot.
Yep, there’s a glistening trail of nose production streaming across his cheeks now.
Joel always gets snotty when undertaking exercise.
We went through a short post-Christmas weight-loss program one year that largely consisted of eating the blandest food imaginable, and going for a daily jog.
You haven’t seen true horror until you’ve seen Joel Sinclair’s face after a two-mile run in six degrees. There’s something about physical exertion that gives him a runny nose. It looks like someone’s rubbed a bag of slugs across his face.
It appears he s
uffers from the same problem in hot temperatures too, as he currently looks like the same person’s been at him with a bag of tropical sea slugs.
Mind you, I now have vomit over my cute blue bikini top, so who am I to judge?
Cara is covered in neither vomit nor snot, but even she looks like she’s been through the wringer. It doesn’t matter how young and beautiful you are, you still look a mess when you’ve had sea water thrown at your face for fifteen minutes.
I can’t see what Ray looks like, but I can picture the look of good-natured determination on his face. It’ll be the same one he employs when bargaining with a client over the price of a new yacht. Or when he’s approaching orgasm.
Actually, come to think of it, Ray isn’t the most expressive of people in the facial department. Being that laid back all the time isn’t commensurate to a lot of animated facial expressions.
I’m happy to take that over what the hell is going on to my left, though. Joel is doing enough animated facial expressions for all four of us and the rest of the island’s inhabitants combined. His lips are wide open, and his teeth are gritted. His eyes are bulging out on stalks and keep looking over at Ray, his thinning hair is flapping about like kelp in a tropical storm, and those trails of snot are getting longer by the second.
You might not want him to be your teammate in a kayak race, but if you’re commanding a navy about to go to war with a pirate horde, you could do a lot worse than superglue him to the front of your biggest ship. Those pirates would turn tail in terror if they saw that grisly visage coming at them. I know I fucking would.
And would you look at this?
As we fly past the beach full of snorkellers and get more or less halfway down the island’s length, we’re breaking out into a decent lead again.
This is because Joel, despite all his effort, and the look of terrifying desperation on his face, is starting to flag badly. And even Cara’s efforts are now not enough to prevent Ray and me getting further and further ahead.
As we head in the direction of the main pier that passengers from the boat plane disembark from when they first arrive on Wimbufushi, I have to resist the urge to crow in triumph. We are going to win this race, and we’re going to do it by a country mile if we keep up this pace!
You Again? Page 15
