Thigh deep, he eased onto the board and began to paddle out through the white water towards the right-hand reef break. The spray hit his face and the waves washed over him. He thought?briefly?he might paddle forever, straight into morning, paddle until he was so far from shore that Cornwall itself would be only a memory. But instead, bleakly governed by love and by duty, he stopped beyond the reef at the swells, and there he straddled his board. He sat first with his back to the shore, looking out at the vast and undulating sea. Then he turned the board round and saw the lights of Casvelyn: the line of tall lamps shining whitely along the promontory and then the amber glow behind the curtained windows of the houses in town, like the gaslights of the nineteenth century, or the open fires of an earlier time.
The swells were seductive, offering him a hypnotic rhythm that was as comforting as it was false. It felt, he thought, like a return to the womb. One could stretch out on the board, bob in the sea, and sleep forever. But swells broke?the sheer volume of the water collapsing in on itself?as the landmass beneath it sloped up into the shore. There was danger here as well as seduction. One had to act or one submitted to the force of the waves.
He wondered if, after all these years, he would recognise the moment: that confluence of shape, force, and curl telling the surfer it was time to drop in. But some things ultimately were second nature, and he found that taking a wave was one of them. Understanding and experience coalesced into skill, and the passage of time had not robbed him of that.
The peak built, and he rose with it: paddling first, then up on one knee, and then erect. No deck grip at the tail of the board, holding the back foot in position, because on this board?on his board?such a device had never been placed. He skimmed for a second across the wave’s shoulder. He dropped into its face. He carved, getting high and fast, with his muscles acting on memory alone. Then he was in the barrel and it was clean. Green room, mate, they would have yelled. Sheeee-it! You’re in the green room, Kerne.
He rode until there was only white water, and there he stepped off, thigh deep in the shallows once again, catching the board before it got away from him. He paused with the inside waves breaking against him. His breath came hard, and he stood there till the pounding of his heart grew slower.
Then he walked towards the beach, the seawater pouring off him like a discarded cape. He trudged in the direction of the stairs.
As he did so, a figure?midnight silhouette?came forward to meet him.
KERRA HAD SEEN HIM leave the hotel. At first she hadn’t known it was her father. Indeed, for a mad moment her leaping heart had declared it to be Santo beneath her, striding across the terrace and up the steps towards the promontory and St. Mevan Beach to have a secret surf at night. She’d watched from above, and seeing only the black-garbed figure and knowing that figure had come out of the hotel…There was nothing else for her to think. It had all been a mistake, she’d thought nonsensically. A terrible, ghastly, horrible mistake. There was some other body discovered at the base of that cliff in Polcare Cove, but it was not her brother.
So she’d hurried to the stairs and she’d clattered down them, as the antique lift would have been too slow. She dashed through the dining hall, which, like the equipment room, opened onto the terrace, and she set across this and flew up the stairs. By the time she reached the promontory, the black-garbed figure was down on the beach, squatting next to the surfboard. So she waited there and there she watched. Only as he approached her after riding a single wave did she realise it was her father.
She was filled with questions and then with fury, with the eternal and unanswerable why’s of nearly everything that had defined her childhood. Why did you pretend…? Why did you argue with Santo about…? And beyond that, the who of it all. Who are you, Dad?
But she asked none of these half-formed questions as her father reached her position at the base of the steps. Instead she tried in the semidarkness to read his face.