Wildering

Meeting the sky

Two weeks ago the last leaves on the windbent trees spiraled to the ground where they would sit and rot. The phone echoed through the empty house, harsh sound disturbing the still air. The voice was familiar.

‘Oliver?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Me.’

Pause.

‘How are you?’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Dozing. It’s been a while since we spoke.’

‘Almost two years,’ father said.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I have some bad news. Garland hung himself.’

‘He is dead?’

‘He was pronounced dead in hospital earlier today.’

Heavy morning cloud sparred with the first hint of dawn. Ears attuned to the crunch of swell on the beach below. A thousand familiar sounds made up the morning ritual. Yet nothing brought him back like the dawn light. Without thought, conditioned response drove our weary bodies into motion. We gathered first at the window commanding the bay, two silhouettes in the melting darkness. The siren song of the swell climbed the cliff and danced with our ears.

On a good morning, a breeze that blew off the land would groom the sea. Long lines of corduroy marched until they felt the seabed, then they curled over and peeled. The symmetry of the scene may be hard to understand; my brother and I saw the beach through practised eyes. For years, we watched the surface of the water from that window, imperceptibly absorbing its movements and changes. Beneath us, sets of waves approached. The largest in each was visible far out to sea, and we counted them as they stacked up: one, two, three. The biggest folded in fluid envelopes and puffs of spit were forced from inside by the power of the water as it moved. We rode with our eyes, chose where to paddle from, where to paddle to, what to line up with, where to take off. Some days she would be the enemy of everyone; others she would greet you like a long lost son.

The light swept across the sleeping land, catching us as we ran down the steps and across the deserted sand, leaving behind us nothing but two neat sets of tracks. The village above slumbered whilst the water seethed. We became the vanguard of the land as it greeted the sea. We were riders on the dawn light, the watermen of the silent night. Upon slipping from one realm into the next a meditative rhythm overwhelmed us. We soared into the enhanced world and extended far beyond the limitations of our landlocked forms. Finally, we were Alive! We were so alive! So we met the day, two figures that played out expression on the great fluid canvas of light and sky.

Yet the picture changed, and I conducted the ritual by myself: a silhouette standing alone at the bay window, a single set of tracks in the sand. Following his death, I believed that echoes of Garland would not follow me into the water. As it transpired I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was there that they began to whisper to me, above the sound of the waves that crashed and roared.

One day soon after that phone call it started. It was a gamble to paddle out, for the swell had been growing all day before it arrived with a sudden fury. For the first time in weeks, I was the only one who made the walk down the long steps. Almost instantly, after the frenetic paddle, I chose a bad wave, a mean one, and it sucked me down with it. The turmoil was overwhelming, and there was no choice but to surrender to its force. I lay limp as it tumbled me over and over. I heard the first whisper way down there in the bubbles and rush.

‘Come down here!' It was just a sliver of sound, barely audible amongst the cacophony. I opened my eyes in shock, and found myself surrounded on all sides by the cloying press of the water, green and grey, the seabed and the sky invisible in the spectrum of colours. The turbulence of the wave advanced away from me, a spinning veil of power that gradually released its grip. I kicked up for the surface, burst through and gasped for air. Ahead of me and out to sea another wave formed.

The next wave grew above me. I was stuck in the base of the trough, at the exact point where time and sound distorts. The second wave of the set is dangerous, because the body is strained from the first. The second almost always carries more power. The wave hit the shallow bank and turned inside out, exploding in a great cavern of water. The power of it chucked the lip high into the air above my body. I had no time to dive, and only just enough to draw a deep breath into my lungs. There was an uneasy second to contemplate the impact that would surely come. The lip plunged downwards, its size and intensity dwarfing me.

Just before the wave came crashing down, as my muscles involuntarily clenched, the voice sung out again, much louder this time. It had that same bleak twang and with a start I realised why it was so familiar. This time, the voice seemed to sound inside my ear. ‘Join me!’ It said. I had no time to muse over its origins or meaning, because the wave broke on my head with a vicious ferocity. I was a rag doll, smashed deep below the surface. I clung to the surfboard, but it was instantly sucked from my hands and disappeared. I kept my eyes open, the rushing of the white water around me was replaced by a great blackness. And in the depths I met my brother.

I twisted my body and head around, fought the pressure of the wave to find the source of his voice. I could not reply, for the air in my lungs had already become thin. I wondered how much longer I could hold on. I tried to swim upward and instantly bumped into something soft. I shuddered and recoiled in horror, but it was just the seabed. I was way down, so I spun around and pushed myself off, and stroked with a growing urgency to the light. ‘Don’t go, brother.’ Garland said. ‘Wait with me. Wait for me to come up.’ After a moment of hesitation in which I approached the limit of my oxygen, I burst above the surface and sucked sweet air deep into my lungs. I was bewildered, frantically scanning for another mass of water.

Yet no wave broke. The ocean suddenly fell into a total calm. A great lull between the sets, when the surface went glassy smooth and the sun poked its head from behind stormy clouds. It was an insane transition from panic to tranquillity. Lazy sea birds circled a fishing trawler out in the bay, the boat running in hard ahead of the gathering swell. My board again surfaced nearby, as if guided by unseen hands. I paddled to it and pulled myself on to the deck, before heading for shore. ‘Don’t go,’ the voice echoed.