by Gillian Best
The Last Wave
The Last Wave
Gillian Best
First published 2017
Freight Books
49–53 Virginia Street
Glasgow, G1 1TS
www.freightbooks.co.uk
Copyright © 2017 Gillian Best
The moral right of Gillian Best to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-911332-31-2
eISBN 978-1-911332-32-9
Typeset by Freight in Plantin
Printed and bound by Bell and Bain, Glasgow
For Mom, Dave, and Kerri
The best Bests.
And for the artist Richard Stone, who put a novel in his painting and read the first draft on the installment plan.
Contents
The Last Wave
Falling Down
The Spring Tide
Coming Out
John Asks
La Manche
From France to England
John Dear
The Tide Turned
The Fifth of September
Coming Home
Growing Up
Unwitnessing
Writing on the Walls
Repeater
The Last Wet
Soul Mass
Baptism
Acknowledgements
The Last Wave
I reached out for my wife and my hand touched the place where her shoulder should have been. I buried my face in her pillow and felt a few stray grains of sand brush against my cheek. Her body was absent, but I knew exactly where her hips should have been.
I did not know where she was, but it was easy enough to guess. She always did prefer the seabed.
The mental snapshots I keep of her are full of water. Her hair was never dry, damp towels covered the radiators and, for an hour or so after a swim, her nose dripped as though the seawater was trying to get back to its rightful place.
The swimming costumes – all dark, all practical – the bathing caps and lanolin to keep the chafing down followed her wherever she went. She only deigned to swim in the sea: never a pool and never heated. The sea is alive, expansive; a pool is dead and confining. The sea is freedom. There is nothing in a pool: no current, no tide, no waves and most of all no history. Antiseptic and cold in their perfection, swimming pools. Horrible things.
She swam at every opportunity, regardless of weather or temperature. On the coldest days, I worried if she was gone too long because hypothermia had once forced her back onto the land. If it was too cold, in the depths of winter, to keep herself from going mad she sat shivering on the beach, staring out at the froth, desperate to be engulfed in it.
She would say: The sea has always been here. It’s seen everything.
‘Martha,’ I called.
Downstairs, the sink was full of dishes, cups and crumbs covered the counter and I thought to myself that this was a bit much even by her standards. Her dedication to the water rarely prevented her from keeping a clean house. I piled the dirty crockery into the sink and brushed the crumbs onto the floor as Webb loped over. The window was open and the wind was up, the flowered curtains snapped like the lifeguard flags at the beach in summer threatening to push the shells off the windowsill.
Webb budged my leg so I patted his head, ‘Good boy.’
‘We’ll miss the tide,’ I said to the closed bathroom door.
Webb barked and I gave him half a slice of stale toast from the countertop, which he gobbled down, barely slowing to chew. He grinned at me, drool oozing from the sides of his mouth.
‘Come on, Martha,’ I said. ‘You won’t have time to eat.’ I waited at the door for a reply, but she was silent so I looked through the pantry for the porridge she ate each morning. I couldn’t find it.
A gust blew through the window again and as I turned around I saw the old tea box where I kept my tobacco on the top shelf. I took it down and just as I was ready to roll the paper up tightly, another whoosh of wind came through the kitchen and the unmade cigarette flew onto the floor. Webb sniffed around my feet.
‘No,’ I said, moving his snout away with my foot. ‘Bad dog.’ But he was relentless and I had to shove him harder which caused him to lose his balance. He fell down yelping and I felt like a beast. He was older than me and had a harder time of it balancing on three legs.
I rolled it up again but it was a struggle: my fingers were not as limber as they had once been.
‘Martha, we’ll miss the tide,’ I said to the closed bathroom door.
It was early September but the weather was closer to November and the sky was dull like wedding silver that hadn’t been used in years.
I went out into the front garden to have my fag and saw the neighbour, Henry. A real curtain twitcher. He waved but I didn’t, Martha would say I’d been rude but I did not want to get involved in a conversation with him. He had too many questions and I was not interested in answering any of them.
I gave up on the cigarette and went upstairs to our room, looking for Martha. There was no sign of her.
As I passed the window I saw the front gate was open and though I thought it was closed when I was outside moments earlier, I rushed outside to look for her. It was then that I realised I was in my slippers, the rain coming down in earnest.
Who would go swimming on a day like this?
Martha.
But there was no sign of her. I walked to the gate and strained to see through the wet, past the bend in the road, which was the route she always took down to the sea.
Henry shouted to me from his window and I asked, ‘Have you seen Martha?’
He replied but it got lost between the window and my ears, the rain pounding the ground and mist dampening the sound of his voice. These days, most things sound as though I am under water.
Good, Martha used to say. That’s how I ought to sound.
Henry stood in the doorway, his track jacket collar flipped up against the weather. ‘John,’ he said. ‘Are you alright?’
I worried about him: no wife, no children, a middle-aged man living by himself. There was an eagerness to help that was off-putting. Henry was the type of man you saw checking his hair in the reflection whilst he pumped the petrol, the sort of man who was either on the brink of a mid-life crisis or in the midst of one, I could never be certain.
‘Fine,’ I said, shutting the door quickly. He was in the habit of inviting himself over for a cup of tea and though I disliked rudeness, I did not have the time to deal with him.
‘Martha?’ I shouted. ‘Darling? I called, opening the bathroom door. ‘My love?’ I said as I went upstairs.
But she wasn’t there. There were no signs of her and as I sat on the edge of our bed I had the sense of having been here, like this, before. The moment was on the tip of my tongue, a hazy idea that I felt more than thought. Her dresses had been laid out across the white duvet, black with long sleeves, navy with a fuller skirt and green tweed. I could not picture her wearing any of them, they were not the sort of thing she wore everyday. They lacked a certain practicality.
I heard knocking at the door and expected to see Martha standing on the front step, sheepishly admitting she had forgotten her keys and ready to apologise for leaving without Webb and I. I was hoping she would regret trying to steal a bit more time in the sea by leaving without us.
But when I looked out the window, it was Henry. I ducked back in quickly.
‘John,’ he called. ‘Open the door.’
I slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains closed, hoping he’d take the hint. I had never met someone so pushy. How did Martha manage to slip past him? If he’d seen her she would have felt obligated to invite him in and they’d be in the kitchen, Henry prattling on about the leaks in his roof, or foxes or badgers.
The hinges on our front door creak in a distinctive way and have done since the day we bought the house. I would know the sound the door makes on opening anywhere.
‘John,’ he called from inside our house.
‘Go away,’ I shouted.
Henry’s footsteps on the stairs sounded confident as though he believed he had a right to do as he pleased and enter our house as though it were his own.
‘What’s going on?’ He stood at the edge of our room, where the hardwood flooring in the corridor meets the dove grey carpeting in our bedroom, with one hand in his pocket and the other resting on the doorframe. It was the sort of pose one might take at a pub while trying to affect an air of nonchalance.
‘Do you make a habit of home invasion?’ I kept my back turned to him.
‘John,’ he said.
I turned my head in his direction and as I did I glanced at the wardrobe and that’s when I saw it: the worn leather case I always brought along for her attempts. This was not its proper place. I kept it downstairs next to her swimming bag. Martha must have moved it during one of her cleaning sprees.
I picked it up and ran my hands over its worn leather that was creased and cracked from frequent exposure to salt water. It was the size of a briefcase and soft, with no hard edges and though the clasps had lost their shine and there were the beginnings of a hole in one of the corners, it was perfect. Some things get better with age, their history eclipsing the shine of shop-bought virtue.
I opened it to make sure everything was in the right place: the jar of pebbles, one for each attempt, the maps and charts, the tide table, the tins of grease. A flask for chicken broth and half a packet of stale biscuits. Had Henry not been hovering over my shoulder I would have opened the pebble jar. There is something tenacious about the smell of the sea, it seeps into everything it touches, including stone, and on days when she’d wanted to go but couldn’t, the smell had taken her there instead. When she inhaled the scent, she always did so with her eyes closed.
‘Webb,’ I called, getting up and pushing past Henry in the doorway. I went downstairs and the dog met me in the kitchen where I found a piece of rope to tie to his collar for appearance’s sake.
I heard Henry coming down the stairs and picked up my pace. Case in one hand, dog in the other, I threw the front door open and set out down the path. But he was behind me.
‘Please John, you’ll regret it.’
I looked over my shoulder and met his gaze, giving him a moment to explain himself. He was silent; Webb and I carried on.
As we passed through the front gate, I felt his hand clamp down on my shoulder.
‘Get your hands off me! We’re late enough as it is.’
‘Late for what, John?’
Every day it was the same thing. Where are you going? What are you doing? Care to come over for supper? Can I come round for a cuppa later? Do you need any help? Always snooping around too, in the cupboards, the refrigerator. He thought I didn’t notice.
‘It’s a training day,’ I said.
‘Training for what?’
It was like talking to a three-year-old.
‘It’s raining,’ he said. ‘Why not leave it for today?’
I was standing in the rain so I knew it was raining. He must have thought I was an idiot.
‘Have to get moving,’ I said, turning toward the road. ‘Mustn’t keep her waiting.’
Webb barked his agreement. He was irritated by Henry’s intrusiveness too.
I pictured her in the sea: strong arms churning through the water, elbows raised high and glimpses of her face – masked by goggles – when she turned to breathe as she swam parallel to the shore. It was better when she swam across and not out because I could go with her then, in a way. I was her lighthouse, but rather than protecting her from harm I was what called her back to the land.
‘John, I don’t think you should go.’
I turned and he was behind me. ‘Frankly, Henry, I’m not at all interested in what you think.’
He put his hand firmly on my shoulder. ‘She isn’t there.’
‘How would you know? Are you psychic now?’
‘Why don’t you come over? I’ll put a fire on. There’s a bit of Battenberg cake left that my sister brought at the weekend.’
‘How kind,’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘John, she passed away.’
The rain clouded my glasses but I saw the pity in his face. ‘Why would you say something like that!’
I yanked Webb’s collar and we walked off as Henry’s shouts became lost in the rain.
When we arrived, I noticed two things: the wind was offshore which meant that Martha would have to fight the currents as well as the air, and that I was still wearing my slippers. I squinted to see her swimming cap. I didn’t know if she would be wearing the yellow one, which she generally favoured for training sessions, or the red one, which she always wore for her Channel attempts. I had known her to wear the red one for practice sessions when she needed extra encouragement, and the weather was certainly the sort that would require greater stamina.
Though it was mid-morning it looked like dusk but that was alright. Martha hated sunny days for swimming. The sun turned the water into a mirror, she said. I want to see under the surface. I want to know what I’m getting into.
When we were young I watched her disappear into the foam and the froth, returning two or more hours later, utterly spent. I wrapped my arms around her as we sat on the pebble beach while she gave me her numbers: first half-hour, breathing every five strokes, second half-hour every three; breaststroke for twenty minutes. It was mathematical, calculated and repetitive. She said it was meditative, the endless counting. One, two, three, breathe. Kick, pull, glide, breathe. Focus. Don’t think about how cold it is, how far there is to go, the aching in your shoulders, or the stinging of the salt. Just swim.
It was difficult watching her in the sea as she was pummelled by waves breaking over her. I wanted to keep her with me on dry land but I knew that to try would only push her toward the sea. Instead I looked forward to the moment she emerged from the water, enjoyed watching her figure arise from the deep walking straight to me. And were it not for her aquatic adventures I would not have had the pleasure of wrapping my arms around her as she leaned back, her wet hair soaking me through. I was glad to be included in some way, to have a job: what the sea took from her, her heat and strength, I gave back.
On the beach the pebbles were cold and hard, the rain too. The place was deserted except for a group of teenagers halfway down shielded by an outcropping of rock. They were all anoraks, cans of something and tinny music muted by the wet.
I sat on the ground and as Webb barked in circles I tried to work out where Martha could be.
‘Cut it out,’ I said. He wasn’t usually like this.
I looked at the teenagers and there was something familiar about the scene. I felt I’d been here before, with a group of people, but perhaps closer to the pier. I felt an echo – nothing as solid as a memory – of miserable weather, Marmite and cheese.
The motion of the sea was calming in a way, even though the wind was blowing the tops of the waves off into mist and I thought that perhaps that was why I couldn’t see her, that the water was hiding her, keeping her fr
om me. I scanned the horizon, looking out towards France, my eyes open and unblinking, but she wasn’t there.
But if she wasn’t there and she wasn’t at home, where was she? Those were her places. She could be counted on to be in either one of them at almost any given moment. It was unlike her to miss a swim, and even more unlike her to disappear.
Walking in the direction of the teenagers, I continued to search. What if something had happened? What if she had overestimated herself? Underestimated the conditions? What if she needed help?
‘Have you seen her?’ I shouted. ‘My wife, Martha? Was she here?’
A girl about fourteen years old walked over and smiled, as though she recognised me.
‘You again?’
‘Have you seen her? Short bob, about five and a half feet tall. Red or yellow bathing cap.’
She looked at the ground. ‘Not today.’
‘That’s impossible. She has to be here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Why would I have come if I wasn’t?’
She took her hood down as though she was looking for something but I wasn’t sure what it might be. ‘I’ve seen you here before.’
‘Martha comes every day. She’ll make an attempt in early September.’
‘It’s nearly October,’ she said.
I looked inland. The point where spectators stand is an outcropping covered in matted down grass. I wouldn’t have ever had cause to be up there because if Martha was swimming then I was in the support boat, but I could picture the view from up there, or rather, I felt what it was like to stand there.
And then I was sitting at home with the three dresses laid out and there were people with me in our bedroom. Our daughter, maybe. I blinked and I was standing in the rain listening to Henry. Everything was now and then, before and after, past and present all jumbled together, crashing into one another.
The pebbles made me wince as I tottered over them in my slippered feet, and my toes felt numb from the cold. I knew then where she was. I dropped to my knees and opened the case. Everything that was Martha was there: the grease, the ear plugs, the bathing caps, old goggles and the pebbles. I counted them, ten in total. One for each attempt.
