The Last Wave

by Gillian Best

  ‘She’s my daughter too.’

  Her eyes narrowed and she leaned across the bed where our daughter lay. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if you had only paid attention.’

  ‘This isn’t my fault.’

  ‘Who walks into a house without noticing the door’s been left open?’

  ‘You would’ve done the same thing.’

  She scoffed.

  ‘Beth, it was an accident,’ I pleaded.

  She shook her head, her eyes watering. ‘I noticed,’ she said, stabbing her finger into her chest. ‘How could you have been so careless?’

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Martha said.

  I was jolted back to our table on the French coast and saw that I had hardly touched my food.

  ‘Is this your first time in France?’

  I shook my head. ‘Years ago. Paris.’

  ‘Was it as romantic as they say?’

  ‘Quite the opposite, actually.’

  She raised her eyebrow. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Not the memory I was hoping for.’

  ‘They can’t all be good.’

  ‘No, they can’t,’ I said, feigning interest in my now cold fish supper.

  She waited politely for as long as she could, but by the time I had made a noticeable dent in the fish, I could tell that she had lost her patience.

  I set my knife and fork down. ‘We can go whenever you like.’

  ‘No, you finish that up. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll see if I can take a look around.’

  She put her napkin on top of her plate and went off in search of the waitress. I drank the rest of my wine and tried to picture Martha sitting here on her own, waiting to swim. It was difficult because their house – their garden to be precise – is where I always pictured her. There was something about her that was ill-suited to the confines of the indoors, she was at her best when the wind was rushing off the sea and up the cliffs, scattering her hair and making it’s gradual mark on her face. This room did not seem big enough to contain her.

  Overhead I heard creaking floorboards.

  I took one last bite of the fish and its congealed sauce then pushed the plate away. What was she hoping to find here? What had she left behind that was so important to come back to now?

  In Paris, I had left my wife behind. Metaphorically, not factually. We took the same flight home crammed into the tiny seats side by side, but our marriage was finished, left with the crumpled towels in the bath waiting for someone else to come along and clean up the mess. Beth and I were civil to one another, but nothing had been the same since Ellie.

  I had hoped the City of Lights would become the City of Second Chances and that what had brought Beth and I together would reassert itself over the weekend, but it was blame and recrimination instead of passion and romance.

  There was no going back and there was no chance of fixing things that had been broken for longer than they had been functional. I hoped that whatever it was Martha wanted to find didn’t need to be repaired.

  I heard the footsteps moving overhead again and I watched the ceiling as the sound moved toward the stairs, then I listened as she came downstairs. I was watching for her as she turned the corner and I saw her eyes were red. I saw her sniff and wipe her nose and knew that she had been crying. Given the circumstances, it was a relief.

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for anything,’ she said.

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I told you, the food is very good.’

  I got up from the table and offered her my arm, which she brushed away.

  ‘It’s cancer, Henry, I’m not crippled.’

  ‘Time to go home then?’ I asked.

  She looked out the window once more and I thought I heard a sigh. I couldn’t tell if it was wistful, nostalgic, or mournful, but she seemed to have made her peace with something.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s time.’

  From France To England

  On the ferry back to Dover, I sat by myself. Henry preferred the bow and I the stern, it was a difference in perspective.

  Crossing the Channel by ferry on a mild evening with the sun setting in the distance is romantic regardless of circumstances. It’s a slow way to travel and even if you aren’t fond of the sea there is a dreamy quality about being in the middle of open water that is difficult to resist. It’s the ebb and flow of the tides gently rocking the ship, or maybe the vastness comes from the age of the oceans, and that they are permanent while we are not.

  The permanence was comforting, as was the fact that I shared something with the sea: the human body has the same ratio of water to salt. I have always loved knowing that I share something fundamental with the water.

  As I watched France fade away I was glad that the summer crowds had yet to descend and that I was able to be alone with my thoughts. Overhearing the conversations of holidaymakers and the cries of children would have ruined the moment. It was the first time I had ever taken the ferry this way and I wanted to enjoy the view. After a swim, I hadn’t the energy to take it all in and, plus, the ferry’s size gave me a different perspective. I was used to being at eye-level with the sea.

  It was a mackerel sky that evening. The clouds were lit from underneath in a blood red hue and the sun bloomed pink like my myrtle blossoms. I felt that somehow the sea – my sea – knew about my diagnosis and was trying to console me.

  The colours had been this dramatic for me only once before and I hadn’t been able to appreciate them then because I had been swimming. I had been steadily churning my way towards the White Cliffs and trying to get M Sylvain out of my head. It seemed reasonable to think that a 21-hour swim would be sufficient to go through all possible thoughts so that by the time my feet were on the rust coloured pebbles at Dover, he would be confined to distant memory.

  I remember turning my head to breathe in the calm water and having the colour fill my goggles as though they had sprung a leak. My initial impulse had been to stop and take it all in but I knew that if I did the momentum I had built up would have vanished. It was my first successful swim and though I didn’t know that at the time, I felt there was something special occurring. My shoulders ached in ways I had never imagined – deep within the socket. So deep in fact that it was hard to precisely place the pain, I only knew that it hurt when I lifted my arm and on the follow through as my hand grazed my thigh.

  I kept swimming and the nearer I got to Dover the more jubilant I became but I was torn: as much as I wanted to finish the swim, I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to get out of the water.

  Five days earlier, I had taken the ferry across on my own. I was nearly thirty years of age, had been married for ten years with two small children, with friends and the makings of a good life, but I could not have been happier to wave goodbye to all of that and simply start swimming.

  John had been gripped with a panic that something horrible would happen to me out there. That I might succumb to hypothermia or exhaustion, or even drown. Those were things I hardly thought about and certainly did not bother considering them in any more depth than absolutely necessary. I felt safe in the sea and I have never been able to properly explain that to anyone.

  I said goodbye to my family, to England, and the moment I got on the ferry I allowed myself to think of nothing but swimming in order to prepare myself for what lay ahead.

  As far as training went my meagre preparations would be scandalous today but, back then, it was more about the individual and what he or she could do, it wasn’t the way it is now where success is determined by the team a swimmer has assembled.

  I had chosen a good pilot, Charlie, and when the taxi dropped me at my gite in Sangatte I phoned him to double-check.

  ‘Martha,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look good.’

  I slumped into the hard wooden chair in the reception hall where the only phone for guests was located.

  ‘Generally, o
r specifically?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s weather coming down from the North Sea. And the isobars on the Atlantic are worrying.’

  ‘Have I come for nothing?’

  There was a pause and all I heard was the buzz of the line.

  ‘No. But it’ll be tight. I might not be able to give you much notice.’

  ‘I don’t need notice. I need to swim.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Charlie, this is…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be great or good. Just possible.’

  ‘I’m not putting anyone at risk.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to. But understand that I’ll swim through chop, waves, wind, rain.’

  I heard him take a drag from his roll-up and imagined him sitting in his lounge, the pink and yellow flowers on the wallpaper in stark contrast to his unshaven beard and bristly demeanour.

  ‘I have to try,’ I said.

  ‘You have to make it.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Will you? It’ll be harder in rough seas. It’ll take everything, and once you’ve given what you have, it will demand more. And you’ll have to have those reserves.’

  ‘I can do this.’

  My voice – I thought – conveyed confidence that I wasn’t entirely sure I had, but prayed I would develop the moment I was horizontal and moving through the water.

  ‘Phone again tomorrow,’ he said.

  I put the receiver down and wondered if I had squandered the money my church had raised to allow me to pay Charlie, the federation’s fees to make certain the swim was recorded as official, and the petrol, among other things. It was one thing for me to fail on a personal level, it would be a blow to my self-esteem and I would never hear the end of it from John, not after the fight it had taken for me to get back in the water, but it was quite another to let an entire congregation down.

  Charlie was my pilot and I trusted him to let me try if it was at all possible. I knew that he would do his best but that he couldn’t control the weather any more than I could. He knew this part of the sea as though it were his most intimate friend, having been fishing on it for over thirty years. He knew its moods and whims, tricks and traps, better than most. And he could be counted upon.

  I did my best to settle in as the rain streamed down the window in my room. The gite itself was not bad and though I had expected to feel excited to be on my own for a few days, I found that without swimming and my family, I was at a loose end.

  After unpacking the few items I had brought along – two changes of clothes, two swimming costumes and a book – I set out for the shore. The gite overlooked the beach and it offered a quick escape to the water should that be necessary. I walked through the dining room and let myself out onto the deck where the wind caught me off guard and I stumbled.

  The swell had grown since I had got off the ferry and looked to be around five feet, with an on-shore wind and ominous grey clouds hanging low to the north. The rain had lessened from pelting to solid drizzle and it was the first time I had felt disappointed to be on the beach. Everywhere I looked it seemed that the elements were against me and I realised that the chances of me not completing the swim were far greater than the chances of a successful swim.

  Over the years I believed I had learned to read the sea, to listen to what it was telling me and act accordingly. If the wind back home was coming onshore I swam parallel to the beach. If it was offshore then I swam perpendicular, steering myself in the direction of France and repeating in my mind that this is what it would be like on the day I did it for real. On the day after a bad storm I kept a careful watch for jellyfish and bits of detritus that might lead to injury. I watched for changing currents, knew the tides and understood how to time my breathing according to the height and strength of the waves.

  What I saw then as the ocean hurled itself onto the beach and jabbed at the coastline was that the water was angry, and that was no time to be going in. I had read stories of surfers, desperate for waves after a dry spell, who would go to the beach at night and light bonfires, sacrificing boards to Neptune in the hopes that he might provide what they needed, but I had never read of anything similar for swimmers. I knew that oil could calm stormy seas, but that this assault wouldn’t be calmed by a few drops and I didn’t fancy swimming through an oil spill in a few days’ time.

  To make getting soaked through as useful as it could be I walked along the water’s edge trying to learn where the currents mixed and where the water fought against itself. The three miles off the French coast are the hardest of any Channel swim; they are the truest test of one’s strength and determination, which is why I would be starting from this foreign coast. By getting through them when I was still fresh my chances of succeeding were that much better.

  I tried to pinpoint exactly where it was that most people failed so that I would know whether or not my chances were good. If the weather calmed down even slightly, I promised myself I would get in and swim those three miles over and over again. In the event that I wasn’t able to make an attempt then I could at least console myself with the fact that I had conquered some of it.

  I trudged through the wet sand until I could go no further with the wind buffeting my right side and the drizzle chilling me deep into my bones.

  Turning to face the sea, I shouted, ‘I will swim the Channel. I will not get out until I reach England.’

  In return, the water threw salty spray in my face.

  I squared my shoulders and stood up to it as though it were a schoolyard bully. ‘I need to do this. I need to prove to myself that I can. I need to show everyone at home that I am more than a wife and a mother. They need to see that…’

  I paused. I had never said any of these things aloud before and though the beach was empty and the only things that could hear me were the wind, the rain and the sea, the mere fact that I had uttered them gave them a reality that I wasn’t prepared for. It’s one thing knowing your own mind and heart, quietly to yourself, but it’s a very different thing to announce to the world that you need to be seen to be extraordinary.

  Was it a good reason to swim? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. All I was focused on was doing it.

  I was so cold when I returned to the gite that I thought I would never warm up and just as I was beginning to feel truly sorry for myself I realised that there was an unintended benefit to it: this was training of a kind. I was still working towards my swim. By standing outside for hours in the cold and the wet I was conditioning myself. Teaching my body to overcome the elements.

  After I had changed into dry clothes, I lay down on the bed, unsure of what else to do. Dinner was to be served in a few hours and I hadn’t felt like reading. As I stared at the ceiling, going over the swim in my mind, there was a knock on the door.

  M Sylvain, the owner, spoke very little English, but he beckoned me to follow him. He said things like “pleur” and “froid” as he mimed being cold. He shuffled down the corridor and when he turned back and saw that I was still standing in the doorway to my room, he came back and led me by the hand downstairs to the lounge where he indicated that I should sit in the chair he had pulled up in front of a roaring fire.

  I let go of his hand as soon as he allowed it. The minute I was settled in my seat, he rushed off and reappeared moments later with a small glass of Pastis, which I had never tasted before. I did not immediately take to it.

  He smiled warmly and drew up a chair, crossing his legs and chattering away in rapid-fire French. I understood none of what he said, unable even to pick out one word of it. His motive was unclear: was he simply trying to be a good host to his only guest? I couldn’t tell. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, to prepare myself for my swim and think about everything in between here and there. But he remained unmoved.

  Dinner was served – unexpectedly – in front of the fire, and just when I thought he had run out of things to say and we would eat in silence, he switched the radio on and I was bombarded with
his commentary on whatever the news of the day was, coming over the wires.

  The next day I awoke and didn’t know where I was. I was not accustomed to sleeping anywhere but home. To steady myself I opened the curtains, hoping to see a calm sea and clear sky, but instead I saw a red sky and white horses covering the water.

  I phoned Charlie regardless, hoping that he might have better news.

  ‘When are you setting out?’ I asked.

  I heard him draw on his cigarette. ‘Not today.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of chop.’

  ‘Weather’s coming. It’ll meet you when you’re halfway.’

  ‘I’ll swim faster then.’

  ‘If you want to risk your life, you’re more than welcome. But I’m not risking mine, and I’m not risking my boat.’

  ‘But I’ve come all this way.’

  I heard him exhale and then there was a pause and I thought the line had gone dead. Just as I was about to hang up I heard him clear his throat. ‘I know you have. I do. But weather’s coming, and it’s bad.’

  It was my turn to pause.

  ‘I suppose we’re always at the mercy of the furies,’ I said.

  I hung up the phone and the sound of it clattered through the foyer. The day stretched out before me, empty.

  I decided on a walk along the shore. My intention was to see if I could find someplace calm enough to swim, my body and mind were aching for a wet, just to be immersed in the salty brine would have been enough.

  I buttoned my overcoat as I opened the back door and M Sylvain appeared as though from nowhere, which led me to wonder if he, too, was searching for something with which to occupy his time now that holiday season was finished and I was his only guest.

  He waved his hands at me and pointed at the outdoors, saying words I couldn’t understand. Eventually he mimed that I should wait and since I had no intention of heeding him, when he disappeared down the corridor I opened the door and the wind blew through the house.

  When my feet touched the sand at the foot of the stairs I heard my name being called and turned to find him shaking an all-weather jacket at me. Gratefully, I accepted it.